I could easily go on and talk, for example, about the use of public money without official controls; or about financial scandals in Rome, Chicago, and other places. I could mention the nomination of of bishops, contrary to ancient Catholic tradition, without the participation of clergy and people, or of priests and diocesan councils; or the continued disregard paid to the age limit of 75 for bishops, a principle solemnly laid down by Vatican II and so on.
Most of this directly addresses the scandals and scandalous behavior of the hierarchy, especially in Rome under John Paul II and his right-hand man who would become his successor, Benedict XVI, from the time when Hans Kung wrote this little book.
I would like to know if such a book has ever been written by an anti-Christian in criticism of their institutions and their "side" because I'm unaware of such a book containing such extensive and frank internal criticism from them. It would not surprise me if one of them reading this would claim because they have not generated such scandals when those are, if anything, more numerous than the ones of Christianity, especially in the modern age. Such is the low level of internal criticism of modernism, atheism, materialism, scientism, etc. , if by "low level" you mean virtually nonexistent.
I mention all this so openly, not because it gives me any pleasure to do so, but simply because it is the theologian's duty and responsibility to speak the truth, whether it is opportune or inopportune, even if punishment might follow.
As I said previously, the internal criticism of the monotheistic tradition that started in the Eastern Mediterranean region starts almost as soon as they started writing down their scriptures and it extends right down to the modern period of that long, long tradition. It isn't the duty and responsibility of theologians to do that, it is their job description.
But, although I am aware of the sinister nature of much of what is called Christian, and although I am aware also of the most important scientific, scholarly, or popular objections to Christianity - historical, philosophical, psychological or sociological - I should nonetheless like to say this; that in this disoriented age I receive my essential values from Christianity, despite everything. Not from what is called Christian, but from what is truly Christian; from the Christian message itself, from a Christian faith that is not merely believed but actually lived, from being a Christian. But here a question arises which must form the theme of our next section.
That is what I have come to see, as well. Virtually every accusation against the monotheistic tradition in the modern period and earlier is based in morality that, in the modern period, is directly drawn from Christianity. The criticisms of the failures of the church, such as those Kung has enumerated in this second chapter is of their failure to live up to the core of morality as taught by Jesus, Paul, the Prophets and The Law. The attempted replacement for Christian morality in Western life in such garbage as utilitarianism, of appeals to natural selection, the action of the imaginary dialectic, etc. have been catastrophic and completely unsuccessful on their own terms. You cannot derive unselfish behavior of any kind from natural selection without distorting the idea of unselfishness into a just-so story of self-interest, you cannot overlook the enormous violence that is inherent to natural selection, the destruction of those so "selected"* The violence and enormous death rate by those seeking to push their imaginary engine, the dialectic, onward is far more impressively known to be real than their metaphorical pendulum.
Utilitarianism - implicated in both of those, is incredibly incompetent in its conception. The idea that people are capable of discerning the "greater good to the greater numbers" in history is absolutely absurd, such a problem is vastly dependent on myriads of factors, many of which cannot be known until the future after such a utilitarian decision was taken. Not to mention that it leads to such absurdities as the idea that if the survivors would be made much happier in the absence of one group of people or another that they have to go, no matter how innocent they are. It is such a complex absurdity that it would have to have at least as long a series of posts as those I've done criticizing Darwinism and scientism. It seems to me that the utilitarians spend an inordinate amount of their time drawing up lists of who it's OK to kill. Never a good sign among academics, always people to be wary of and to watch closely, though the funding agencies never seem to do that much. None of which seems to be held up to the kind of internal criticism that Hans Kung and his fellow theologians do continually.
* I can never get past that word without remembering that it was exactly the term that Mengele and his fellows who stood in for "nature" at the train siding at the death camps, used as they consciously practiced what Darwin claimed nature did in choosing who it was more economically efficient to kill immediately, who to work to death, first, who to use in their scientific researches and experiments.
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