Hans Kung
After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism and colonialism and the end of the cold war, humanity has entered a new phase of its history.Collection: History
Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war.Collection: Religion
All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved.Collection: Experience
That means that every human being - without distinction of sex, age, race, skin color, language, religion, political view, or national or social origin - possesses an inalienable and untouchable dignity.Collection: Religion
That is the Roman way: to give favors to the favorites.
A human person is infinitely precious and must be unconditionally protected.
Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia - even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts.
We are convinced of the fundamental unity of the human family.
We are conscious that religions cannot solve the economic, political and social problems of this earth.
The Gospel has to be the norm.
The Epistle to the Romans is an extremely important synthesis of the whole theology of St. Paul.
And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops.
Second, we also got a more authentic liturgy of the people of God, in the vernacular language.
It is an absolutely unique success of the church community to have introduced such an epoch-making change, in just a few years, without having a serious division.
As a matter of fact, you have deficiencies in all religions, but you have truth in all religions.
I remember the Curia said, that's up to the American bishops, not up to Rome.
If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors.
I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years.
But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.
However, if the religions in essence merely repeat statements from the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, such a Declaration becomes superfluous; an ethic is more than rights.
Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.
Humanity today possesses sufficient economic, cultural and spiritual resources to introduce a better global order.
At the same time we are aware that our various religions and ethical traditions often offer very different bases for what is helpful and what is unhelpful for men and women, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.
There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions.Collection: Dialogue
God's love does not protect us from suffering. God's love protects us in the midst of suffering.Collection: God
In the last resort, a love of God without love of humanity is no love at all.Collection: Thought Provoking
I am firmly convinced that there is life after death, not in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person into God's infinity, as a transition into another reality beyond the dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither affirm nor deny.Collection: Reality
If you cannot see that divinity includes male and female characteristics and at the same time transcends them, you have bad consequences. Rome and Cardinal O'Connor base the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the Father and Jesus is His Son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal Church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God.Collection: Jesus
Alluding to hell is a warning that a person can completely neglect his purpose in life. I don't believe in an eternal hell.Collection: Believe
It is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain.Collection: Intriguing
In my view, the Catholic Church as a community of faith will be preserved, but only if it abandons the Roman system of rule. We managed to get by without this absolutist system for 1,000 years. The problems began in the 11th century, when the popes asserted their claim to absolute control over the Church.Collection: Views
There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions.Collection: World Religions
A Church which abandons the truth abandons itself.Collection: Church
We should think about whether canonizations, which are an invention of the Middle Ages, still make sense today.Collection: Thinking
In the event that my illness worsens, I want to have a guarantee that I can die in a dignified manner. Nowhere in the bible does it say that a person has to stick it out to the decreed end. No one tells us what "decreed" means.Collection: Mean
Even apart from the image of a truly merciless God that contradicts everything we can assume from what Jesus says about the Either of the lost, can we be surprised at a time when retributive punishments without an opportunity of probation are being increasingly abandoned in education and penal justice, that the idea not only of a lifelong, but even eternal punishment of body and soul, seems to many people absolutely monstrous.Collection: Jesus
I'm not saying goodbye to life because I'm a misanthropist or disdain this life, but because, for other reasons, it's time to move on.Collection: Goodbye
For many people, the pope is still, to a certain extent, a positive role model and a moral force, although others feel that this aspect has suffered greatly.Collection: People
Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command.Collection: Law
I don't cling to earthly life because I believe in eternal life. That's the big distinction between my point of view and a purely secular position.Collection: Believe