When the heretic Hans Kung met with Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, Kung said it was a deeply personal conversation. Benedict said he “respected” Kung’s “path” (without agreeing with it all). He urged Kung to teach students in regard to world religions and in other areas; and so, again, an ominous pluralism was seen to emerge in sharper and sharper relief.

Scandalously, though Kung lost his license to officially teach Catholic theology as a Catholic Theologian years before, he was never the subject of excommunication. And he never ceased to teach and shape Catholic students for the future.

Such a de facto pluralism which can embrace even a Hans Kung – whose heresies go beyond Luther to the Person of Christ Himself – cannot, it is clear, be reconciled with Sacred Scripture or Tradition and thus a mysterious rupture, of some sort, occured.

One day the Church will tell.

I hoped to the end that Benedict would decisively act against Kung and his clones by resurrecting what Dietrich von Hildebrand called “the charitable Anathema,” (1) which safeguards Catholic dogmas and truths and seeks the reconciliation of the offender, but that hope was not to be realized.

When potentially lethal ideological viruses are not eliminated they threaten the entire body. Evidently Benedict thought that to so isolate him was more expedient. So the Uber-rainbow pluralism of the Francis years was inevitable.

(1) published by Alice Von Hildebrand in 1993 from Dietrich Von Hildebrand’s lectures, given between 1966 -1976.

It is a difficult time we are living through. Still, we cannot abandon the Church in her Hour of crucifixions. St. Augustine said,

“…no man ought to sever himself from the unity of the Church before the time of the final separation of the just and unjust, merely because of the admixture of evil men in the Church” —Saint Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, Bk. IV, The Complete Works of Saint Augustine. Ch.12.19, (1407) — SH, 2018

+ The meanings of Anathema (Catholic Encyclopedia)

+ See also Catholic Answers

+ John XXIII, Benedict XVI and Francis

+ Benedict XVI and Humane Vitae