Hans Küng is a Roman Catholic priest who believes that Protestantism must undertake a second reformation if the Christian church is ever to be made one, but that is by far the lesser half of his thought. Küng also believes that his own church must reform drastically, with reunion in mind; in one of the year's most important, and most discussed, religious books, he argues the case for a Roman Catholic reformation from within, and makes some concrete proposals for the agenda of next fall's Second Vatican Council.
Küng teaches theology at the University of Tübingen in West Germany, and is regarded by many as the most promising theological talent to appear among German Catholics since World War II. Born in Switzerland, he went to Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, became full professor at Tübingen when only 32. His suggestions for Catholic renewal are published in The Council, Reform and Reunion (Sheed & Ward; $3.95), which contains approving introductory messages by two cardinals. Among Protestants, President Henry Pitney Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary praises its liberal, ecumenical spirit, and San Francisco's Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike was so impressed that he has ordered copies for every priest in his diocese.
Fallible Infallibility. Author Küng admits that his church has been guilty of "a spurious, self-righteous 'splendid isolation' " from the intellectual currents of the age. He expresses sympathy for many modern men who are exasperated by "the lack of any openness among the Church's leaders towards new problems and insights, new forms and values." In displaying her claim of infallibility before the world, for example, the Catholic Church has refused to admit, "in all honesty and humility, that errors had occurred even in cases where she was perfectly capable of error and in simple fact had erred."
Catholics, says Küng, are traditionally wary about talking of reform— the word has dangerous Protestant overtones—but in the present age that is precisely what is needed. "Every institution, even the holiest (the celebration of the Eucharist), every aspect of organization (even the primacy of Rome) can, through the historical process of formation and deformation, come to need renewal, and must then be reformed and renewed. Indeed, the holier the institution, the worse the damage, and the more urgent the renewal."
Sympathy for Luther. Küng points out that historically Catholicism has proved that it can reform. During the 10th century—a "saeculum obscurum of the worst abuses in Church and Papacy"—the monasteries, notably the great Burgundian abbey of Cluny, provided both the spiritual means and the men to effect reform. Even before Luther broke from Rome, men like the Dominican Vincent Ferrer and the Franciscan Bernadine of Siena were working to renew Catholicism from within. Yet one major reason why the Vatican rejected Luther's cries for change was because "neither Rome nor the Church's leaders elsewhere were in a fit state to understand the spiritual needs of the age; nor, hence, to grasp Luther's theological and practical demands."