[In the following interview, Küng discusses the current and possible future path of the Catholic Church in terms of reform and tradition.]

Last November Commonweal's David Toolan spoke with Hans Küng in New York City. Among other topics covered were issues of authority and dissent in the Catholic church today.

[Toolan:] What do you think of the Vatican's current actions?

[Küng:] If you want an explication of the context of Rome's present attitude, you have to see that the Catholic church in the Second Vatican Council achieved an integration of the two great paradigm changes after the Middle Ages. We integrated the paradigm change of the Reformation: vernacular language, participation of the people in the liturgy and the church, collegiality, people of God. … We used the arguments for the vernacular that Martin Luther employed four hundred years ago. But we were not absolutely consistent. Had we been, we would have had to introduce the marriage of priests or optional celibacy. Pushed by the American bishops especially, we also achieved the integration of the modern paradigm: freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and a new attitude toward Judaism and world religions.

The principal compromise here was that, practically, the bishops were not able to integrate democracy in Rome. It is said that the church is not a democracy, but it's also not a medieval, hierocratic, pre-modern system of the ancien régime type either. The whole question today is who will ultimately come through. Will the pope and the curia be able to reimpose on the Catholic community the medieval, Counter-Reformation, anti-modernist paradigm? Or will we finally, despite this setback, move again under a new pope? I am sure that under the present pope nothing will basically move to what I would call the post-modern paradigm—which implies another attitude in most fields.

What would you say, however, if you were trying to find common ground with sensible, critical conservatives? I think of a recent book by Robert Bellah and his colleagues on American culture where the argument is made that our individualism destroys any sense of public good. Sensible conservatives—not reactionaries—are concerned about some very real weaknesses in the Enlightenment paradigm.

I think we progressive theologians could agree to a great extent with conservative thinkers on such a criticism of the modern paradigm. I am also a critic of the Protestant paradigm as divisive and destructive of the unity of believers. It has the consequence of continually dividing people into smaller and smaller churches. So yes, I think we could agree with much conservative criticism of both the Reformation and modern paradigms. I agree with the pope on many of his criticisms of modern society. But the real way is not to go back to Catholic Poland as he believes. The way is to go forward on the line traveled by those people who showed in recent decades that religion can be, at one and the same time, preserving of the old values certainly, but also liberating. I do not see a contradiction in these two functions.

But if the proposal is to go back to an authoritarian religion, then we will only succeed in alienating people within the church and also Protestant churches. I cannot imagine that the Catholic clergy, sisters, intellectuals, and even ordinary people would be willing to go back to the medieval paradigm which prescribes everything in the bedroom. Restoration is the great illusion.

Of course conservatives would claim that they are merely being faithful to the spirit of Vatican II, or to the tradition. The tension I see here seems to lie between the spirit of Vatican II and the Code of Canon Law.

The new code is precisely an expression of the medieval paradigm. For instance, the code puts women in the same state of dependency and inferiority that they suffered in the Middle Ages and before modern times. I mean it is a medieval code. The words are Vatican II but the spirit remains that of medieval clericalism, authoritarianism, and a passive laity.