Word: ng
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...ng says that he is speaking out not only to keep ecumenism alive but because, since Vatican Council II, Rome has severely damaged "the unity and credibility of the Catholic Church." The system of Pope plus Curia, he charges "is still characterized by a spiritual absolutism, formalistic and frequently inhuman juridicism, and a traditionalism spelling death to genuine renewal that are really shocking to modern man." The charges seem a logical enough extension of Kűng's increasingly liberal theology. He has already argued for a lay and clerical role in the selection of bishops and has also...
...ng argues from both history and philosophy. He recites a syllabus of papal errors, from the famous fallibilities of St. Peter to the "high-handed" decrees of Pope Paul. The whole idea of papal authority, Kűng says, was ambiguous as late as Augustine and not absolute until Aquinas, who leaned unwittingly on forged quotations from Cyril's Book of Treasures and other false texts. Belief in infallibility evolved later, and has been defined dogma only since Vatican Council I a century ago (see box). Drawing on Catholic historians, Kűng claims that infallibility as propounded...
...debate and bad feeling that papal infallibility has caused-several bishops at Vatican I walked out rather than approve it-it has been used formally only once since then, in the 1950 pronouncement that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven after her life on earth. In Kűng's view, reform-minded Vatican Council II actually made things worse. It not only reiterated Vatican I's teaching, but went on to extend infallibility to the entire hierarchy. That affirmation was drawn from the direct, exclusive succession of Catholic bishops in an unbroken line from the apostles...
...ng's reading of church history serves only as preparation for his much more fundamental philosophical attack. He doubts if any infallible statements are possible, whether from Popes, councils or even the Bible. At this point the argument strikes home, not only for Rome but for traditionalists in all branches of Christendom. Only God is infallible, Kűng says; propositions of faith are not God's word but at best the divine message translated by man's words-often inadequate, open to misunderstanding and changeable in different languages or contexts. Because there are half-truths...
Does the introduction of doubt unglue Christianity? Unlike many of his critics, Kűng does not believe so. For the individual, he says, belief is not the acceptance of infallible propositions but a commitment to Jesus Christ and his message. For the church as an institution, says Kűng, the concept of service should be stressed rather than one of authority. In doctrine, he would replace the word infallibility with the less limiting but also traditional concept of "indefectibility"-a quality of permanence in the truth that is undisturbed, in Kűng's view, by individual...