A Favorite Theologian in the NY Times
The helicopter took Pope Benedict XVI to humble retirement as if a President or other national official had completed a term of service or had lost an election. The problem for the next Pope, and for Catholics all around the globe, is that Emeritus Pope will be just across the alley. My guess is that Emeritus Benedict XVI will have much more influence on the choice of the next Pope as well as the future of what being a Roman Catholic will mean. I am not a Catholic, but I am a practicing Christian and the image of the Roman Catholic Church reflects on all Christianity and all practicing Christians. The image of the priests, bishops, and cardinals reflects on people who serve in ordained Christian ministry beyond the Roman Catholic Church or other historic episcopacy traditions. One of my favorite theologians, Hans Küng, wrote and OP-ED in the New York Times a couple of days ago. His “A Vatican Spring?” raises interesting questions not only for what being a Roman Catholic, practicing or not, will mean in the coming decades, but also by extension what being a practicing Christian will mean as well. My denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) would do well to ask ourselves some of the questions that Küng raises in this brief writing; and yes brief as compared to a lecture I once heard or his book, On Being a Christian, this is extremely brief and straight to the point. Disciples are not suffering from a shortage of seminary trained clergy. American culture and protestantism is defined differently today than during our expansion years from 1972 to 1985. Now, my denomination is in a contraction phase where the number of congregations can afford the salary of seminary trained minister are shrinking not matter if these congregations are in a rural or urban setting. Rather than addressing that hard issue, my denomination is making it easier to get ordained. We need more bi-vocational seminary trained ministers and congregations that can embrace bi-vocational ministry. Sometimes we call this “tent making” ministry, but it is more complex that than and it is a harder issue than finding a minister that will serve a congregation for less, but do the same as was done during expansions. Küng’s OP-ED applies to us all.
Click the title to read the entire article.
“A Vatican Spring?”
by Hans Kung | New York Times Opinion | Feb 27, 2013In this dramatic situation the church needs a pope who’s not living intellectually in the Middle Ages, who doesn’t champion any kind of medieval theology, liturgy or church constitution. It needs a pope who is open to the concerns of the Reformation, to modernity. A pope who stands up for the freedom of the church in the world not just by giving sermons but by fighting with words and deeds for freedom and human rights within the church, for theologians, for women, for all Catholics who want to speak the truth openly. A pope who no longer forces the bishops to toe a reactionary party line, who puts into practice an appropriate democracy in the church, one shaped on the model of primitive Christianity. A pope who doesn’t let himself be influenced by a Vatican-based “shadow pope” like Benedict and his loyal followers.