Hans Kueng, Priest

Kueng was a precisely defined Icon of heterodox and aggressive Liberalism. He described himself as a victim of the Inquisition because Rome deprived him of the right to claim that his words and writings were authentic Catholic Teaching. But Rome left intact all his canonical faculties as a Catholic Priest. Although he had flouted formally the anathemas of Vatican I, he was, unlike poor Doellinger, never excommunicated. He accepted a secular professorship. Of course, the liberal media described this, in their quaintly perverse way, as the 'silencing' of Kueng! 

Yet he protested, of course, when the 'excommunications' against the Bishops of the SSPX were withdrawn! Well, he would, would'n' he? ... as a celebrated courtesan once said.

Even one of his own admirers was moved to describe Kueng as conducting himself like a second Magisterium ... and commented that just one Magisterium was enough for him! When it is suggested that Kueng might have become pope, people forget that the limits and restrictions implicit in the Petrine Office would never have been acceptable to such an incorrigibly arrogant individual.

But Kueng was a man whose armoured lack of self-doubt meant that he  never forgot and never forgave. God grant him that he may now be able, finally, to forgive, even as the Father's full forgiveness is offered unconditionally to him. And to you, dear Reader.

He was, like me, a man whose hands had been anointed with oil and who had stood before the Altar of the LORD offering up the Sacrifice of the Immaculate Lamb. His first Holy Mass was offered in the Crypt of S Peter's on 11 October 1954, the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Theotokos. At one time, day by day he drained the Chalice of the Great Victim, as I am privileged to do. May God forgive him his sins, as I pray that God will forgive mine, which are so many, pretty well many beyond number. As we celebrate hic in via the Light of Christ's Resurrection, I pray that Kueng may know, and, knowing, may not hate, the glorious Face of the Beatific Vision.

Among his many honorary doctorates are listed honours from the Universities of Cambridge and Dublin. Happily, I do not recall that Oxford ever sank so low! Among the bodies thus honouring him was an American Jewish institution which was so fanatical in its hatred of its fellow Jews ... that is, of Orthodox Judaism ... that it once organised a banquet in which course after course was pointedly devised so as to humiliate adherents of the Torah.

Liberalism's spiteful malevolence, you see, is not confined to any one religion. And, apparently, it unites its votaries across 'denominational' boundaries in a satanic ecumenism.

But the closer one is to another person or group, the more virulent, it seems, may be one's hatred of them.

I pray that the Lord may never again allow me to forget this.