Clash of the Conciliar Titans

by Thomas A. Droleskey

As has been noted in several recent articles on this site, revolutionaries frequently turn on their own.

All manner of Protestant revolutionaries spit and then fought bitter wars with each other.

The Jacobins of the French Revolution pretty much wiped out most of the Girondists, who took a "moderate" view on how to implement and then institutionalize the revolution's anti-Theistic agenda.

The Bolsheviks, the hard-core of Russian Marxists-Leninists led by Vladimir I. Lenin himself, prevailed over the "moderate" Mensheviks following the abdication of Russian Tsar Nicholas II on March 15, 1917.

Even the Bolsheviks turned on one another over time. Consider, of course, the fate of Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, who had run afoul of Lenin's successor, the mass murderer named Josef Stalin.

Why should we be surprised that the conciliar revolutionaries, once former comrades-in-arms in those heady days of the proceedings of the "Second" Vatican Council when many of them served as periti (experts) and pulled most of the strings behind the scenes there, have been at each other's throats? This is what always happens in revolutions no matter the "causes" that are advanced therein.

The Marxist "community organizer" and professor agitator, Saul Alinksy, whose theories helped young Barry Soetero (aka Barack Hussein Obama) to cut his eyeteeth in the jungle that is Cook County, Illinois, Democratic Party politics, put it well he gave full credit where credit was due:

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.” ( Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.)

All revolutions are inspired by the devil, yes, each and every single one of them, including the conciliar revolution.

We have seen various spectacles and side shows in recent months that have been staged by "ultra-progressives" who believe that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict has turned his back on the conciliar revolution by seeking to effect some kind of juridical rapprochement with the Society of Saint Pius X even though their "pope's" clear intention is to "pacify the spirits" (i.e., neutralize) the Society.

Several articles on this site, including Victimized By His Own Revolution and "Joe" Hasn't Changed, Fellas, have examined the commotion caused by these "ultra-progressives." There is no need to do again in this article, which focuses on one of the chief ideological theoreticians of the conciliar revolution, Father Hans Kung, who has publicly declared Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI to be in "schism" from what he thinks is the Catholic Church for having "broken" with the conciliar revolution and extending an olive branch to the supposedly "counter-revolutionary" Society of Saint Pius X. Kung says that Ratzinger/Benedict has, in effect, "vacated" the papacy, which he does not hold, of course, making Kung a sedevacantist. No, you can't make all of this up. This is something akin to Godzilla battling Mothra, wouldn't you say?

Here is Kung's statement:

Both in the official and in the alternative activities in the Mannheim Katholikentag*, the prevailing sentiment was one of resentment and frustration over the delayed reforms in the Church. In fierce contrast with that, Pope Benedict XVI prepares, apparently for Pentecost, the final reconciliation with the Catholic Church of the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X, with its bishops and priests. This should happen even if the SSPX keeps rejecting key conciliar documents, having to be incorporated into the Church with  the use of skillful canonical tactics. Before the Pope does this, he must be duly warned, not least by the bishops, because of the following: 

1. The pope would be including in the Church bishops and priests that are definitely invalidly ordained. According to the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Paul VI  "Pontificalis Romani recognitio", of July 18, 1968, the ordination of bishops and priests by Archbishop Lefebvre is not only illegal but also invalid. This view is shared among others by a relevant member of the "Doctrinal Commission", Karl Josef Becker, SJ, now a cardinal.

2. With such a scandalous decision, Pope Benedict would, in his overall regretted isolation,  be even more separated from the People of God. The classical doctrine regarding schism should be a warning to him. According to it, a schism of the Church happens when there is separation from the Pope, but also when the latter separates himself from the body of the Church. "Even the Pope could become a schismatic, if he will not guard the unity and communion proper to the whole body of the Church." (Francisco Suárez, major Spanish theologian of the 16th/17th centuries). 

3. A schismatic pope loses his position according to that same teaching of the constitution of the Church. At least, he cannot expect obedience. Pope Benedict would be therefore encouraging the already widespread popular movement of "disobedience" against a hierarchy that is disobedient to the Gospel. He would bear sole responsibility for the grave rift and the strife created inside the Church. Instead of reconciling with the ultra-conservative, anti-democratic, and anti-Semitic SSPX, the Pope should rather care about the majority of reform-minded Catholics and reconcile with the churches of the Reformation and the entire ecumenical movement. Thus he would unite, and not divide. (Hans Kung denounces Benedict’s move to regularize the situation of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X.)

Talk about confusion.

Father Hans Kung long ago expelled from the bosom of the Catholic Church by denying the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, making him an adherent of the Arian heresy, even though he has formally maintained his "good standing" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. See Appendix B below for a recitation of Kung's various defections from the Holy Faith and how conciliar officials have dealt with him in far less severe terms than Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Saint Pius X, who has ran afoul of conciliar officials for his personal views concerning the nature and extent of the crimes committed by agents of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany against Jews. (Even here, however, there is something of an unexpected irony in that Bishop Williamson's view of papal infallibility, based as it is in the Gallicanism of the Society of Saint Pius X, as as false as Kung's outright rejection of the doctrine itself.)

In actual point of fact, you see, both the German-born Father Joseph Ratzinger and the Swiss born Father Hans Kung, who is one year younger than his former professional colleague, expelled themselves from the Catholic Church by adhering to various Modernist propositions back in the early days of their priestly lives. Here is yet another case of apostates reprimanding apostates, although's Kung's berating of Ratzinger/Benedict serves the latter's purposes very, very well in generating sympathy for him as "Poor" "Pope" Benedict. This helps Bishop Bernard Fellay and those inside and outside the Society of Saint Pius X who support him to "make the case" for a "reconciliation" with conciliar officials to help the "pope" fight the likes of Hans Kung even though their "pope" has not seen fit to sanction Kung in the slightest for anything he has said or written and went so far as to have a friendly dinner with him at the Apostolic Palace on September 26, 2005.

There are a few observations that should be made about Kung's commentary, which might, when coupled with rebellion of "ultra-progressives" in Austria, signal that the possibility of these impatient conciliar revolutionaries breaking with Ratzinger/Benedict in a formal sense is more than just talk.

First, Father Kung has cogently stated the case for sedevacantism, which is not some "freak" or "fringe" theory but part of the canonical doctrine of the Catholic Church (see yesterday's article, Way, Way Over The Rainbow), although his application is false.

Second, it is interesting that Hans Kung says the Holy Orders of the Society of Saint Pius X are invalid, something that conciliar authorities themselves do not state, when it is the conciliar rites of priestly ordination and episcopal consecration that are invalid, the latter being almost identical to the rite used in the heretical and schismatic Anglican sect that was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae, September 18, 1896.

Third, Kung overlooks the simple fact that Ratzinger/Benedict has worked very hard to embrace Protestant sects, going so far as to accept as valid Anglican liturgical books that were declared to be heretical by Pope Saint Pius V in Regnans in Excelsis, March 5, 1570, thus permitting Anglican converts to conciliarism to retain books that are as null and void as the conciliar rites themselves. Ratzinger/Benedict has praised Martin Luther. Ratzinger/Benedict has given "joint blessings" Protestant "clergymen." Ratzinger/Benedict rejects what he calls disparagingly "the ecumenism of the return."

Father Hans Kung may not like the slowness of Ratzinger/Benedict's pace of revolutionary "progress." However, Ratzinger/Benedict disagrees with Kung only on the margins. The conciliar "pope" is simply more careful to appear to sound like a Catholic in order to make it appear that he is attempting to steer a "legitimate development of doctrine" that is actually a rupture with and contradiction of Catholic teaching. Kung and Ratzinger have different views and methods, to be sure. They both agree, however, on the same goal: the tearing down of the "bastions" of the past.

Indeed, it was just Wednesday, May 23, 2012, two days ago now, that Ratzinger/Benedict once again trumpeted his "hermeneutic of continuity and of reform" that has been analyzed on this site endlessly, including in yesterday's article. He is a tireless zealot to justify conciliarism on the basis of the Modernist notion of the evolution of dogma that is both philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned:

[M]ay the 50th anniversary of its beginning [of Vatican II], which we will celebrate in the fall, be an occasion to deepen the study of its texts, the condition for a dynamic and faithful reception. "That which above all concerns the Council is that the sacred deposit of the Christian faith be kept and taught in a more efficacious way," Pope Blessed John XXIII affirmed in his opening address. And it is worthwhile to meditate and read these words.

The Pope charged the Fathers to deepen and present such a perennial doctrine in continuity with the millennial Tradition of the Church: "to pass on the doctrine, pure and whole, without attenuations or distortions," but in a new way, "according to what is required by our times." (Address of solemn opening of the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican II, October 11, 1962). With this key for its reading and application - according to a view, certainly not of an unacceptable hermeneutic of discontinuity and of rupture, but of a hermeneutic of continuity and of reform -, listening to the Council and making ours the authoritative indications are the path to ascertaining the ways with which the Church may offer a significant response to the great social and cultural transformations of our time, which have visible consequences also on the religious sphere. (Hermeneutic of rupture "unacceptable")

 

All I can see as it as become another late night for me is this: see Appendix A below for a review of how Ratzinger/Benedict's view of dogmatic truth has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church.

What might be useful to point out yet again is how Ratzinger/Benedict himself wrote in the decades prior to Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, that the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service did represent a "rupture" with the past. While Ratzinger/Benedict supports the "liturgical renewal" as he forges ahead with his "reform of the reform," he is "indulgent" of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition for reasons of history and aesthetics, not for reasons of doctrine.

Here is what Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger wrote about rupture:

What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it--as in a manufacturing process--with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product. Gamber, with the vigilance of a true prophet and the courage of a true witness, opposed this falsification, and thanks to his incredibly rich knowledge, indefatigably taught us about the living fullness of a true liturgy. As a man who knew and loved history, he showed us the multiple forms and paths of liturgical development; as a man who looked at history form the inside, he saw in this development and its fruit the intangible reflection of the eternal liturgy, that which is not the object of our action but which can continue marvelously to mature and blossom if we unite ourselves intimately with its mystery. (Joseph "Cardinal: Ratzinger, Preface to the French language edition of Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy.)

The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic. It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.

But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans. There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth. thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer living development but the produce of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused an enormous harm. For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something "made", not something given in advance but something lying without our own power of decision. (Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, Milestones.)

 

A mind that rejects the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas will be forever mired in the true swampland of contradiction and paradox. And that, alas, is where Ratzinger and Kung, despite their differences in various matters, will forever live unless they convert back to the Faith of their youth before they die.

The Catholic Faith does not coexist with error. Holy Mother Church makes no terms with error of any kind. As spotless and as immaculate as our Blessed Mother, Holy Mother Church cannot give us liturgies that are incentives to impiety or full of any kind of innovation. Holy Mother Church cannot give us doctrines that are unclear, ambiguous, or subject to reinterpretation and revision over the course of the centuries. No restoration of the Catholic Faith in times of apostasy and betrayal in the past has ever come from any kind of falsehoods or deliberate misrepresentations as part of a "strategy" to take back the Church "brick by brick," as some like to say. Truth is the only foundation of the life of the Catholic Church as she was founded by Truth Incarnate and is vivified, enlightened and guided infallibly by  God the Holy Ghost to the glory of God the Father, the Author of all Truth.

The Catholic Faith will not be "restored" by means of any kind of concessions made to error. Pope Gregory XVI made this very clear in Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834:

As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth. (Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834.)

 

There is also another irony in all of this: if it is possible for Ratzinger/Benedict to cast aside dogmatic formulations and papal statements because they are conditioned according to the particular historical circumstances in which they were made, then why cannot a future "pope" in the conciliar structures cast aside his statements and allocution? Are not his statements and allocutions as "historically conditioned" as those of that past that he seeks to "re-read" anew or ignore entirely? This makes a mockery of the infallibility of Holy Mother Church, subjecting each succeeding generation of Catholics with as differing interpretations of Catholic teaching as there are such differing interpretations of the American Constitution. Thus it is that Pope Saint Pius X was very prophetic when he noted the following about the sophisms contained in Modernism:

It is thus, Venerable Brethren, that for the Modernists, whether as authors or propagandists, there is to be nothing stable, nothing immutable in the Church. . . . From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to he reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has indeed tried to fasten on everything in Catholicism as a disciple of the New Theology that was condemned by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, and is merely an "indulgent" father to those who are attached to the "extraordinary form of the one Roman Rite" as he prods them along into an acceptance of conciliarism as being perfectly in accord with everything taught by the Catholic Church from Pentecost Sunday right up until the the time of the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958. Leonard Swidler and his fellow "ultra-progressives" are simply too blinded by their zeal for falsehood to notice what their pal has been doing throughout his priestly life, including in the last seven years as "Pope" Benedict XVI.

We know that Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart triumphs in the end. May it be our privilege to suffer all of the difficulties of the moment in the understand that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has known from all eternity that these problems would arise and that the graces He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross that flow into our souls through the loving hands of His Most Blessed Mother are sufficient for us to proper under them with much gratitude. The royal road of the Cross is the one and only road that can lead us home to Heaven safely as members of the Catholic Church.

God has known from all eternity that we would be alive in these troubling times. He has not abandoned us. He has given us true shepherds in our Catholic catacombs at this time who understand the apostasies of the moment and who have withdrawn from them quite rightly. Let us give great thanks to God for being alive at this time and there is work for us to do as His consecrated slaves through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be faithful to Our Lady's Fatima Message by praying as many Rosaries as we can each day. A trite saying? Not at all. A simple fact of Catholic life that can never be stated enough.

We must be earnest about making reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our sins and those of the whole world. We do not know if this day will be our last day alive as a member of the Church Militant on earth. Let us make this day and every day joyful by lifting high the Cross and thanking God that He has chosen us, as unworthy as we are, to plant a few seeds for the Resurrection of the Mystical Body of Christ and the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

 

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory VII, pray for us.

Pope Saint Urban I, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Appendix A

Condemnation of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Deconstruction of the Nature of Dogmatic Truth

 

 

These firings, therefore, with all diligence and care having been formulated by us, we define that it be permitted to no one to bring forward, or to write, or to compose, or to think, or to teach a different faith. Whosoever shall presume to compose a different faith, or to propose, or teach, or hand to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth, from the Gentiles or Jews, or from any heresy, any different Creed; or to introduce a new voice or invention of speech to subvert these things which now have been determined by us, all these, if they be Bishops or clerics let them be deposed, the Bishops from the Episcopate, the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or laymen: let them be anathematized. (Sixth Ecumenical: Constantinople III).

 

 

• For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward

  • not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence,
  • but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
• Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.

God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.

The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either: the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.

Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. . . .

3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.

But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1870.)

Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. . . . The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way. (Pope Saint Pius X, The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910.)

Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

Appendix B

A Hans Kung Primer

There was the time back in 1979 when the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger's old colleague from University of Tubingen, Father Hans Kung, was slapped on the wrist by the then named Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and removed from a chair of theology at University of Tubingen, whereupon Father Kung, who published Infallibility? An Inquiry in 1971 wherein he denied the doctrine of papal infallibility, simply moved over to teaching position in "ecumenical theology" that was created for him by the university's administrators, who took the additional step of rechartering the University of Tubingen as a secular institution. Just another conciliar shell game, you see. Kung continues to remain in perfectly "good standing" as a priest in the counterfeit church of conciliarism despite supporting the killing of the sick and the infirmed under the auspices of "euthanasia."  He is a pantheist.

Kung endorses a "one world ecumenical church" and is a unequivocal, full-throated supporter of the disproved ideology of evolutionism. He has even gone so far as to criticize his former college, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict, for having a theology was stilted by the decrees of the Council of Nicea, which happened to condemn the Arianism for which Hans Kung has quite an affinity. So much for the cordial dinner that he shared with Ratzinger/Benedict in the Apostolic Palace on September 26, 2005, four weeks to the day after the false "pontiff" had met with Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Society of Saint Pius X at Castel Gandolfo (the summer residence of popes since Pope Urban VIII first used it for that purpose in 1626. Insofar as Kung's criticism of Ratzinger/Benedict is concerned, what applies to Dr. Leonard Swidler applies also to himself (see "Joe" Hasn't Changed, Fellas).

The Devil's Final Battle listed just some of Kung's more egregious apostasies:

 

 

It needs to be pointed out that these are only some of Hans Kung's heretical views, but they were the only ones mentioned within the Vatican's sanctions. Thus, in effect. the Vatican left Kung's other heterodox tenets untouched. For example in one of his most famous books entitled On Being a Christian, Hans Kung:

 

• denies the Divinity of Christ (p. 130)
• dismisses the miracles of the Gospel (p. 233)
• denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus (p. 350)
• denies that Christ founded an institutional Church (p. 109)
• denies that the Mass is the re-presentation of Calvary (p. 323)

Kung has never retracted these unorthodox and heretical statements. Moreover, Kung has publicly called for a revision of Church teaching on issues such as papal infallibility, birth control, mandatory celibacy of priests, and women in the priesthood. Despite this blatant rejection of Church teaching, the only penalty that the Vatican ever inflicted against Kung was that he was "not allowed" to be considered a Catholic theologian, and as such, was not allowed to teach theology in a Catholic university. This "penalty" was circumvented when the University of Tubingen, Kung's home campus, retained Kung as a teaching professor and simply restructured part of the university so that Kung, a great celebrity, may continue teaching in that part of the university which is now chartered as a "secular" school.

Meanwhile, the Vatican has never condemned Kung as a heretic, never excommunicated him (as canon law provides), never ordered that his books be removed from libraries in Catholic seminaries and universities (where they are now found in abundance), never prevented him being a guest-lecturer at Catholic institutions, never obstructed him from publishing articles in Concilium or other progressivist "Catholic" publications. Father Hans Kung is not even suspended. Rather, to this day, Kung remains in good standing in the diocese of Basle, with no other canonical penalties leveled against him. (Paul Kramer, ed., The Devil's Final Battle.)