This is an important heads up. Note the ecumenical tone of the authors.
Note #8937 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
05223 Sept. 28, 2005
Pope meets with rebel theologian Hans Kung
by Luigi Sandri Ecumenical News International
ROME - After meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the pontiff's summer residence, dissident Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung says he is hoping for new openness from the Vatican.
"I hope that my meeting with the Pope is a sign that the great problems facing the church and its faithful will be re-discussed in an open fashion," Kung told the Italian daily newspaper, La Republica, after the Sept. 24 meeting.
Kung's license to teach Catholic theology was revoked by the Vatican in 1979 because he departed from church dogma on concepts such as papal infallibility and the virgin birth. Kung's efforts to arrange a meeting with Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, were unsuccessful.
Kung, a native of Switzerland, is known as a pioneer in dialogue with non-Christians through his Global Ethic Foundation. He and Pope Benedict met in a "friendly atmosphere," according to Vatican spokesperson Joaquin Navarro Valls.
Kung and the pope agreed that it made "no sense, in the framework of the meeting, to enter into a dispute on the persistent doctrinal differences" between Kung and the Vatican.
Instead, Benedict praised Kung's efforts "to contribute to a renewed recognition of the essential values of humanity through the dialogue of religions and the encounter with secular reason," Navarro Valls said. Kung applauded Benedict's efforts to foster dialogue between religions.
Benedict was known as Joseph Ratzinger when he was Kung's colleague at Tubingen University in Germany. After 1981, when Ratzinger became the guardian of Vatican orthodoxy as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he and Kung found themselves at odds.
Kung told the German newspaper Die Sueddeutsche Zeitung that his meeting with Benedict was a "sign of hope."
In August, the pope met with Bishop Bernard Fellay, a leader of the Catholic traditionalist movement founded by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who opposed the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and was excommunicated in 1976 by Pope John Paul II.
The Italian media have reacted positively to Pope Benedict's willingness to talk to the Vatican's doctrinal opponents.
The Catholic news agency Zenit described the meeting between the Pope and Kung as "a further gesture of conciliation." The Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote: "The Pope's meetings with Bernard Fellay and Hans Kung have not resolved any issues, but have broken the ice in which Pope John Paul II had frozen contacts with dissident sections of Catholicism for a quarter of a century."