German theologian Kueng urges bishops to pressure pope on reforming church in crisis

German theologian urges bishops to pressure pope

BERLIN — Dissident theologian Hans Kueng urged bishops on Thursday to push for reforms in the Roman Catholic Church in defiance of Pope Benedict XVI.

Kueng, an 82-year-old former colleague and friend of the pontiff, said the church was now in its deepest crisis since the Protestant Reformation after recent revelations of sexual abuse by clergy caused an erosion of trust.

In an editorial published Thursday in daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and other publications, Kueng said bishops should call for a new synod to discuss reforms.

Kueng accused pope of not living up “to the great challenges of our time,” saying on the fifth anniversary of Benedict’s election to the papacy that his traditionalist approach had failed.

Bishops should not be “actors without voice or rights,” Kueng said, arguing that it was legitimate for them to press Roman authorities for reforms if the pope blocked their efforts.

The Catholic Church in Pope Benedict’s German homeland has been rocked by a widening abuse scandal in the past three months with hundreds of self described victims of heavy physical or sexual abuse coming forward.

At least one case of a pedophile priest who was reassigned to parish work after being accused of abusing minors has occurred in the Munich archdiocese where Benedict, then Joseph Ratzinger, served as archbishop from 1977-82.

The pontiff has not commented on the cases in his native country.

Kueng, who once worked alongside the young Ratzinger at the Second Vatican Council, sharply criticized the pope for his handling of abuse cases.

“It may not be silenced that the worldwide system of covering-up of sexual offenses by clergy men was steered by Cardinal Ratzinger’s Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” Kueng said in the editorial, which also appeared in the New York Times, La Repubblica and other dailies in France, Spain and Switzerland.

The congregation and its former head have recently come under attack by abuse victims for allegedly rebuffing or moving slowly on calls to remove molesting priests, essentially granting impunity to them and letting them keep ministering to minors.

Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, met Thursday with the head of the German Bishops Conference, Robert Zollitsch — two months after she had irked him by saying she believed the church was not truly interested in clearing up all sexual abuse cases.

The justice minister has spoken of a “wall of silence” surrounding the church.

Some German dioceses have reported big increases this year in the number of people leaving the church. Zollitsch’s Freiburg archdiocese said 2,711 left the church in the southwestern region in March — compared with 1,058 a year earlier.

The Wuerzburg diocese in Bavaria said 1,233 left the church there in March — three times the 407 recorded a year earlier. The Munich archdiocese, where Benedict once served as archbishop, said it did not yet have figures for March.

Associated Press Writer Verena Schmitt-Roschmann in Berlin contributed to this report.