No, I cannot think either that, if he came again today, he would agree
- that difference of denomination should continue to be considered an impediment to marriage -- indeed that such a marriage should recently have been made an obstacle for Catholic lay theologians who wish to engage in pastoral service (as is also true for Protestant would-be pastors);
I hadn't known about this one until I read it in the book. The John Paul II papacy seemed to go out of its way to find ways to insult Protestants, insulting them in ways that I hadn't ever seen in the Catholic Church and I can remember the very last years of Pius XII. More on that in a minute.
- that the validity of the ordination of Protestant pastors and their Eucharistic celebration should be disputed, that open communication and common celebration of the Eucharist, shared church buildings and parish centers and ecumenical religious instruction should be prevented; indeed that ecumenical services should be systematically forbidden on Sundays, in an era of increasingly empty churches;
It's especially a scandal that John Paul II and Benedict XVI did this because, among other things, JPII made a raid on Episcopalian-Anglican clergy who didn't like the ordination of Women, allowing those Protestant priests to become Catholic priests - perhaps violating vows they had previously made, I am speculating on that - EVEN IF THEY WERE IN MARRIAGES WITH LIVING WIVES AND CHILDREN. It was more important for them to attack the ordination of women in churches whose apostolic succession was not deniable (if it was not valid then none of it in Western Europe would seem to be on unshakable ground) than the enduring claims around the necessity of having an unmarried priesthood. Again this was also a deliberate insult to Protestant churches.
I have read that it was one of the points of the awful and disastrous liturgical changes made by Benedict XVI to use different language for the rite of Communion from that used by Protestants, I am not that familiar with the issues involved but if it was that important to these unmarried-men to do that that they would use the Eucharist to do it, they have degraded the sacrament into a political tool. Is it any wonder that the churches have emptied under such a regime.
- that, instead of entering into open and reasonable debate, the attempt should be made to silence theologians, university chaplains, teachers of religion, journalists, organizational officers and people responsible for youth work with decrees and "declarations" (and even, whenever possible with disciplinary or financial measures).
No, if we want to be Christian, we cannot demand freedom and human rights for the church externally and not grant them internally. We cannot replace urgently needed reforms in the church by fine words about Europe, the Third world, and the North-South conflict at synods, church assemblies, and papal rallies. To put it briefly, justice and freedom cannot be preached only where it costs the church and its leaders nothing.
Talk is cheap and that kind of talk that issues from the Vatican, from so many Bishops and Cardinals is especially cheap when they align themselves to the billionaire funded Mafia right-wing hierarchy colluding abomination that is the right-wing Catholic apparatus that runs media and organizations. That promote an absurd view of pre-Vatican II Catholicism that anyone who can remember that far back will remember as a time of appalling corruptions - such as those of the Pius Popes with fascist and other gangster governments and masses made meaningless through being delivered in a language fewer than 1% of those attending understood (including not a few of the priests who may have had a vague sense of what the words they were pronouncing were supposed to signify to those who understood them) and had no relevance to an adult understanding of their moral significance. Is it any wonder that the words spoken by such people on world issues today are so empty and devoid of meaning?
I have a friend, a man in his 90s who isn't a Catholic but who regularly has nonsense about this fed into his ear by a right-wing Catholic he meets at the coffee shop and, apparently a waitress. He knows I am old enough to remember the Latin mass because I told him I did. His coffee shop friends talk about how beautiful it all was, the mystery, the music* in short, the mass as a community theater theatrical production devoid of meaning. My most meaningful memory of the fabled Latin mass was as a young kid looking down from the choir loft as the priest intoned the Eucharistic rite in Latin, as most of the congregation ignored what he was saying, knowing he'd pause for them to give the rote-learned, probably little understood Latin responses so their attention could wander elsewhere, that is beside the blue hairs and bald heads who used the time to say the rosary instead of paying attention to the action at the altar. Oh, yeah, and they couldn't really see that because for most of it the Priest had his back to them. A return to such stuff would probably empty out the churches even faster because it is entirely foreign to all of today's Catholics much younger than me who didn't grow up with it. There is no more certain sign that the Catholic right's Christianity is inauthentic than its actions aimed to making the least among us ever lesser and the powerful ever more so, but their political use of the liturgy is a close second to that.
Kung's extensive internal criticism of Christianity and the Catholic church isn't done yet. I will conclude my comments on it tomorrow.
* The idea that parish masses used Gregorian Chant in any meaningful form of the music is an instance of creative memory, there were a few monastic settings that might have been true for but not in almost any parish church. In my experience, the only exception to that was the use of an accompanied, awful rendition of the Kyrie Orbis Factor. Catholics were notorious for their cheapskate pastors not wanting to spend any money on music so Catholic music was, in almost all cases in the United States and in many elsewhere, dreadful, cheap, mawkishly sentimental and badly performed. It still is that in many cases. And who knows when some reactionary ultra-misogynist Pope or whoever decides that women aren't to sing in church choirs - see Joyce's The Dead for a description of that.
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