Hans Kung Quotes

God’s love does not protect us from suffering. God’s love protects us in the midst of suffering.

The Epistle to the Romans is an extremely important synthesis of the whole theology of St. Paul.

Alluding to hell is a warning that a person can completely neglect his purpose in life. I don’t believe in an eternal hell.

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.

A human person is infinitely precious and must be unconditionally protected.

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.

Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.

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.

We should think about whether canonizations, which are an invention of the Middle Ages, still make sense today.

The Gospel has to be the norm.

Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war.

In the last resort, a love of God without love of humanity is no love at all.

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.

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.

Second, we also got a more authentic liturgy of the people of God, in the vernacular language.

Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia – even inspire and legitimate violent and bloody conflicts.

I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years.

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.

We are convinced of the fundamental unity of the human family.

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.

Humanity today possesses sufficient economic, cultural and spiritual resources to introduce a better global order.

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.

A Church which abandons the truth abandons itself.

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.

We are conscious that religions cannot solve the economic, political and social problems of this earth.

It is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain.

There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions.

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.

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.

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.