The Catholic Church

by KUNG, HANS

• ISBN13: 9780812967623
• ISBN10: 0812967623
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2003-01-07
• Publisher: Modern Library

Summary

In this extraordinary book, the controversial and profoundly influential Hans Kung chronicles the Roman Catholic Church's role as a world power throughout history. Along the way, he examines the great schismsbetween East and West, and Catholic and Protestantas well as the evolving role of the papacy, the stories of the great reforming popes, and the expansion of a global church infrastructure. The book concludes with a searching assessment of how the Catholic faith will confront the immense challenges posed in the new millennium by those seeking reform of traditional strictures.

Author Biography

<b>Hans Küng</b> obtained a doctorate in theology from the Sorbonne in 1957. In 1962 he was named a theological consultant for the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII, and he played a major role in the writing of the documents of Vatican II, which radically modernized key areas of Catholic teaching. The author of many books, he lives and teaches in Tübingen, Germany.

Table of Contents

Chronology	xi
Introduction: The Catholic Church in Conflict	xvii
I. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH	1	(14)
Founded by Jesus?	3	(2)
The Meaning of ``Church''	5	(1)
Was Jesus Catholic?	6	(2)
The Earliest Church	8	(1)
Peter	9	(3)
A Fellowship Made Up of Jews	12	(1)
The Break Between Jews and Christians	13	(2)
II. THE EARLY CATHOLIC CHURCH	15	(18)
Paul	18	(1)
The Pauline Churches	19	(2)
The Birth of the Catholic Hierarchy	21	(2)
A Persecuted Minority Endures	23	(10)
III. THE IMPERIAL CATHOLIC CHURCH	33	(22)
A Universal Religion for the Universal Empire	35	(2)
The State Church	37	(3)
The Bishop of Rome Claims Supremacy	40	(4)
The Father of Western Theology	44	(5)
The Trinity Reinterpreted	49	(2)
The City of God	51	(4)
IV. THE PAPAL CHURCH	55	(22)
The First Real Pope	57	(3)
Errant Popes, Papal Forgeries, and Papal Trials	60	(2)
Christianity Becomes Germanic	62	(2)
Medieval Piety	64	(3)
Islam	67	(1)
A State for the Pope	68	(2)
The Western Equation: Christian = Catholic = Roman	70	(2)
Catholic Morality	72	(1)
The Legal Basis for Future Romanization	73	(4)
V. THE CHURCH IS SPLIT	77	(32)
A Revolution ``from Above''	79	(5)
A Romanized Catholic Church	84	(10)
Heretics and the Inquisition	94	(7)
The Great Theological Synthesis	101	(3)
The Ongoing Life of Christians	104	(5)
VI. REFORM, REFORMATION, OR COUNTER-REFORMATION?	109	(30)
The End of Papal Domination	111	(3)
Thwarted Reform	114	(4)
Renaissance, but Not for the Church	118	(2)
Reformation	120	(2)
Was the Program of the Reformation Catholic?	122	(3)
Responsibility for the Split	125	(9)
The Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation	134	(5)
VII. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH VERSUS MODERNITY	139	(30)
A New Time	141	(3)
The Scientific and Philosophical Revolution: Reason	144	(2)
The Church and the Copernican Shift	146	(1)
The Cultural and Theological Revolution: Progress	147	(2)
The Consequences of the Enlightenment for the Church	149	(2)
The Political Revolution: Nation	151	(1)
The Church and the Revolution	152	(4)
The Technological and Industrial Revolution: Industry	156	(3)
A Sweeping Condemnation of Modernity---The Council of the Counter-Enlightenment	159	(10)
VIII. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH---PRESENT AND FUTURE	169	(34)
Silence about the Holocaust	176	(5)
The Most Significant Pope of the Twentieth Century	181	(6)
Restoration Instead of Renewal	187	(3)
Betrayal of the Council	190	(6)
New Departures at the Grass Roots	196	(4)
A Vatican III with John XXIV	200	(3)
Conclusion: Which Church Has a Future?	203	(6)
Epilogue: Can the Catholic Church Save Itself?	209	(6)
Index	215	(14)
Discussion Guide	229

Excerpts

As the author of The Catholic Church: A Short History, I want to say quite openly, right at the beginning, that despite all my experiences of how merciless the Roman system can be, the Catholic Church, this fellowship of believers, has remained my spiritual home to the present day.

That has consequences for this book. Of course, the history of the Catholic Church can also be told in a different way. A neutral description of it can be given by experts in religion or historians who are not personally involved in this history. Or it can be described by a hermeneutical philosopher or theologian, concerned with understanding, for whom to understand everything is also to forgive everything. However, I have written this history as someone who is involved in it. I can understand phenomena like intellectual repression and the Inquisition, the burning of witches, the persecution of Jews, and discrimination against women from the historical context, but that does not mean that I can therefore forgive them in any way. I write as one who takes the side of those who became victims or already in their time recognized and censured particular church practices as being un-Christian.

To be quite specific and quite personal, I write as one who was born into a Catholic family, in the little Swiss Catholic town of Sursee, and who went to school in the Catholic city of Lucerne.

I then lived for seven whole years in Rome in the elite papal Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum and studied philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. When I was ordained priest I celebrated the Eucharist for the first time in St. Peter's and gave my first sermon to a congregation of Swiss Guards.

After gaining my doctorate in theology at the Institut Catholique in Paris, I worked for two years as a pastor in Lucerne. Then, in 1960, at the age of thirty-two, I became professor of Catholic theology at the University of Tiibingen.

I took part in the Second Vatican Council, between 1962 and 1965, as an expert nominated by John XXIII, taught in Tiibingen for two decades, and founded the Institute for Ecumenical Research, of which I was director.

In 1979 1 then had personal experience of the Inquisition under another pope. My permission to teach was withdrawn by the church, but nevertheless I retained my chair and my institute (which was separated from the Catholic faculty).

For two further decades I remained unswervingly faithful to my church in critical loyalty, and to the present day I have remained professor of ecumenical theology and a Catholic priest in good standing.

I affirm the papacy for the Catholic Church, but at the same time indefatigably call for a radical reform of it in accordance with the criterion of the gospel.

With a history and a Catholic past like this, should I not be capable of writing a history of the Catholic Church which is both committed and objective? Perhaps it could prove even more exciting to hear the story of this church from an insider who has been involved in such a way. Of course, I shall be just as concerned to be objective as any neutral person (if there really are such people in matters of religion). However, I am convinced that personal commitment and matter-of-fact objectivity can as well be combined in a history of the church as they can in the history of a nation.


From the Hardcover edition.

---

Excerpted from The Catholic Church: A Short History by Hans Kung
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.