Hans Küng's extremism runs full circle

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | May 24, 2012

You’ve head the theory that when left-wingers push things to an extreme, they meet the right-wingers coming from the other direction? Here’s a bit more evidence:

Hans Küng, the favorite theologian of the Catholic Left, has rendered his judgment that Pope Benedict XVI should not reconcile with the traditionalist bishops of the SSPX because they were not validly ordained. Since the Church has always recognized those bishops’ ordinations as valid—albeit illicit—this requires some explanation. Küng is ready. The ordinations were invalid, he says, because in 1968 Pope Paul VI set forth a new ritual for episcopal ordinations, and the SSPX bishops were ordained using the old ritual.

Do you see what he’s saying? That once the new ritual was introduced, the old ritual became invalid? Some extreme traditionalists take the position that the new ritual is invalid, and refuse to recognize the authority of bishops ordained since 1968. Küng has now embraced the mirror-image position. At both extremes the theories rely on the same basic assumption: that the post-conciliar Church is radically different from, and cannot coexist with, the pre-conciliar Church.

Interesting, isn’t it, that Pope Benedict has argued forcefully and repeatedly against this “hermeneutic of rupture?” But Küng is not likely to be swayed by the Pope’s teaching. You see, in Küng’s opinion the Pope is in schism, and likely to “be even more separated from the People of God.” In other words, as Rorate Caeli notes, Hans Küng has become a sedevacantist!