The Rhine Breaches the Tiber

First Things, 14 April 2021

Küng was a creative and brilliant theologian. During and after the council, his project of ecumenical reunion became, in effect, remaking Catholicism to be more like liberal Protestantism.

On October 11, 1954, the newly-ordained Father Hans Küng celebrated his first Holy Mass at the tomb of St. Peter. Exactly eight years to the day later, Vatican II would open in the grand basilica above, and the precocious priest would emerge as one of its most influential characters.

When Father Hans Küng died during Easter Week, I happened to be reading the final section of Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity, doing some research for an essay on the Holy Spirit. The short final section of that 1969 book on the creed contained some gems. And the thought occurred: Does anyone read Hans Küng anymore?

The Swiss theologian, born less than a year after Ratzinger, became an international theological and media sensation with his 1961 book proposing a reforming agenda for Vatican II: The Council, Reform and Reunion. He lectured to huge American audiences in 1963, welcomed to the White House by President John F. Kennedy as “what I would call a new frontier man of the Catholic Church.”

At the council, Küng would not draft any major speeches or conciliar texts, but wielded significant influence nonetheless as a skillful presence in the mass media. On the eve of his abdication in 2013, Benedict XVI would speak about the “real council of the Fathers” and the “council of the media,” lamenting that “the Council that reached the people with immediate effect was that of the media, not that of the Fathers.” It was Küng’s work that he was speaking about.

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