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The Church as Institution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Cornelius Ernst O.P.
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The Foreword to the original edition of Hans Küng’s Strukturen der Kirche is dated May 1962; the new Foreword to the English translation is dated March 1965. Apart from a Preface by Cardinal Cushing and some paragraphs from Pope Paul’s striking speech at the opening of the second session of Vatican II, no changes seem to have been made for this English edition. One might have expected that a book written on the structures of the Church before the Council had met at all would date painfully after three sessions of the Council and the enormous upheaval in the life of the Church which has accompanied them; and this might seem especially likely for an author whose writings are always ‘conversational’ (or should one say ‘dialogical’), contributions to a continuing debate, or even sometimes publicist, more concerned to change other people’s ideas than to explore ideas in depth. Indeed Küng’s own writings, including this book, have played a considerable part in the upheaval, and no future history of Vatican II will be able to ignore the impact of The Council and Reunion, especially on the English-speaking world.

It must then clearly be said that Structures of the Church retains real value and interest even today. This is not to say that a good deal of the rather longwinded book (358 pages in English) has not now outlived its immediate interest, the first part in particular. The general thesis of the book, for instance, that the ecumenical council by human convocation is the representation of the Church as ecumenical council by divine convocation, should by now be familiar to Küng’s more popular presentation of the thesis in The Living Church;

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 47 , Issue 544 , October 1965 , pp. 26 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © 1965 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Structures of the Church, by Hans Küng. Translated by Salvator Attanasio. Burns and Oates; 42s. The American edition of this translation was published last year; I understand that the delay in producing a British edition has been due to the need to revise the translation. With real regret I feel bound to say that the revision could have and should have been far more extensive. It might have been possible to tolerate the abundance of misprints, the clumsiness of style and a general cloudiness of rendering which fails to do justice to Kting's exceptionally lucid German; but there remains an intolerably large number of errors pure and simple. One howler I shall treasure is ‘apostolic paradox’ (p. 140) for ‘apostolic paradosis’. That illiteracies of this kind are still possible in the Anglo‐Saxon world – the Catholic part of it – is surely some indication of the quality of theological communication there. The present review is based on the German text; page references are to the English text.

2 The generalization in its restrictive sense applies least to his first book, on Barth (discussed in Blackfriars, June 1960, pp. 323–7); the present book is his most theologically ‘serious’ publication since that work.

3 p. 326. The English version quaintly has ‘in the dialogue once and for all’ instead of ‘in conversation once’.

4 Cf. Y. Congar, Lay People in the Church, pp. 230 f.

5 The excellent essay which Küng analyses at some length, originally published in the Karrer Festschrift Begegnung der Christen, is now available in Congar's collection Chrétiens en Dialogue, Paris 1964, pp. 409–36.

6 The earliest source for the whole paragraph cited in the apparatus of the Codex is Pius IX, in his allocution ‘Singulari quadam’ of 9.12.1854.

7 What ever may be thought of Mt 18:18, at least verse 17 cannot be confined to the inner circle of disciples, the Apostles.

8 Küng should not be reproached for relying so heavily here and elsewhere in his book on the results of specialists, de Vooght, Tierney and others; the sheer mass of evidence to be mastered in any synoptic approach to ecclesiology makes any other course impracticable. And there are real advantages in having some of these specialist studies conveniently summarized.

9 Delahaye, Karl, Ecclesia Mater chez les Péres des trois premiers sticks. Pour un renouvellement de la Pastorale ? aujour? hui, Paris 1964Google Scholar. Cf. also Minear, P. S., Images of the Church in the New Testament, Philadelphia 1960Google Scholar; Rahner, Hugo, Symbole der Kirche, Salzburg 1964Google Scholar.