The best known Catholic theologian in the world today is probably Hans Kϋng, a Swiss priest celebrated as teacher and writer. Ironically, however, this renowned interpreter of Christianity to the modern world has operated since 1979 under a cloud. In that year the Vatican withdrew official approval of him as a teacher of Catholic theology. He continues a priest in good standing but he is not allowed to claim church backing for his teaching.
Official disapproval has not slowed Father Kϋng down. Besides continuing to teach at the University of Tübingen in Germany, he has authored some twenty-five books on subjects judged important by readers of many nations. On Being a Christian and Does God Exist? stand out among those which have sold widely.
On a visit to Harvard University this week, Professor Kϋng concentrated on what he calls a “global ethic.” His current interest is the spread throughout the world of a standard of conduct that will be accepted by all the world’s religions as well as the peoples of the world.
In a lecture entitled “World Politics and Global Ethic” and in other talks, he laid out the main lines of his vision. He believes that “there can be no world peace without religious peace.” More positively, he is convinced that world religions have much to offer that will support peace among nations and peoples.
A first principle of a global ethic would be “to treat every human person in a truly human way.” Religions support this requirement and provide motives for putting it into practice. No global ethic could take the place of religion; Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and the sayings of the Buddha provide far more meaning than general principles could ever do.
The global ethic proposed by Professor Kϋng focuses on four basic prohibitions – – those against killing, lying, abusing sexuality, and stealing. They express the Buddhist moral outlook as well as that of Christianity and other world religions.
Dr. Küng and others who support this ethic see it as necessary for the survival of the world’s people. There is an urgency to it; otherwise bloody crises like those in Yugoslavia will continue to develop.
At the end of Professor Küng’s talk at Harvard Divinity School, a doctoral student from Yugoslavia stood up and asked about the right of people to self-determination. The lecturer responded by denying that every group had the right to such self-determination; otherwise, he argued, we would have three separate nations within present-day Spain, for example.
But Dr. Küng suggested that people could form confederations within a larger nation. He proposed his own native Switzerland as an example of such a structure.
In reviewing his career and the development of his thought leading up to his current concentration upon the global ethic, Father Küng offered many other insights. He stressed the importance of holding firmly to one’s own tradition. For him the religious ideal should be “steadfastness in your own faith and openness toward other traditions.”
About conflict within the Catholic Church, he suggests that people in authority operate in “different paradigms,” that is ways of thinking which belong to different eras of church history. He considers the current Pope to be out of step with history in many of his actions.
When the famous encyclical Humanae Vitae was issued by Pope Paul VI in 1968, he talked with that pope for hours and was convinced that Paul wanted to accept the morality of birth control. Paul VI ultimately declared birth control immoral not because of sexuality, Dr. Küng is convinced, but because the pope felt he could not compromise the doctrine of papal infallibility.
Professor Küng shows a basic respect for atheists and agnostics. For any global ethic to be valid, these groups have to be included in the mix. Also important in this coalition are political leaders. Frequently they are more progressive in their thinking than are theologians, Dr. Küng suggests.
To the many critics who say that the global ethic is a utopian dream, Father Küng points to the great changes in attitudes that have taken place in the world over the past thirty years. On matters of ecology, war and peace, and the relations between men and women, much has changed, giving promise of a better world.
Richard Griffin