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Hans Küng: Theologian with Feelers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

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The headway of reform in English-speaking Cathohcism owes a great deal to the intrepidity of Fr Hans Küng's publishers. The spectacular popularity of The Council and Reunion, the paperback which made his name, demonstrated his charismatic audacity in bringing out into the open what a vast number of reflective Catholics had long been nervously and fumblingly trying to articulate for themselves. Of course extravagant claims have been made for him: he is not the long-awaited new Aquinas nor the anti-Christ. He is a hardworking theologian with some good ideas, as the only two major studies he has so far written bear witness. The first of these is Rechtfertigung (1957), a confrontation of Karl Barth's doctrine of justification with Catholic teaching; and the second is Strukturen der Kirche (1962), an attempt to situate the papacy with regard to the episcopal college and the general Council inside the mystery of the Church. Neither of these books is yet available in English.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The Living Church, by Hans Kung; Sheed and Ward, 12s. 6d.

2 Ward, Newman, vol. 2, page 127.

3 ibid., Page 141.

4 ibid, vol. I, page 584.

5 Cornelius Ernst, ‘The Gospel and the Church’, in Blackfriars 43 (1962), pp. 301-313.

6 Informations Catholiques Internationales, 15th December, 1962, page 3.

7 Peter Fransen, ‘The Theological Implications of the Discussions of the Liturgy at the Second Vatican Council’, in Scottish Journel of Theology 16 (1963), pp. 1-20—important article; the phrase quoted occurs on page 10.

8 The finest statement of the problems involved in transition to vernacular liturgy to come my way is that by Aelred Watkin: ‘Taina: Some thoughts on a vernacular liturgy’, in Downside Review 80 (1962), pp. 26-40.

9 Cf. numerous recent works by Fr Yves Congar.

10 Cf. Yves Congar, ‘Traditio und Sacra Doctrina bei Thomas v. Aquin’, in Kirche und überlieferung, Freiburg, 1960, pp. 170-210; a turning-point in the understanding of St Thomas.