Direct and personal attack on Hans Küng

FOCUS 19/2011: Interview: Matthias Matussek fordert Rückkehr der katholischen Kirche zur Tradition - Kurzfassungen - FOCUS Online

The writer and author (of "The Catholic Adventure") Matthias Matussek has turned on the critics of the church, Hans Küng and Heiner Geissler. In an interview with the news magazine FOCUS, Matussek said that they were "two old, narcissistic and sick men, both of whom believe that they would be the better pope. In any case, they think themselves infallible. Matussek called for a return to the tradition of the Catholic Church. In a "totally uninhibited society", the avant-garde should recognise tradition, he said. Matussek defended celibacy as the strongest signal to the "anti-bourgeois counter-world". Celibacy received criticism mainly because "refusing sexual intercourse is apparently the last mortal sin in our over-sexed society." The author also criticized the typically German support for the ordination of women. In this country, "a lot of energy is squandered on reform papers circulating in the ecclesiastical establishment, instead of taking into account the worldwide Church. The Germans take this too seriously. "Matussek praised Pope Benedict XVI. for his humanity and directness in the "hardest job that one can have on this earth."

Cathcon- how do you know you are narcissistic? When you keep a statue of yourself in your garden!

At seminary, Hans Küng was deeply conservative, and a vigorous supporter of the definition of Our Lady's bodily Assumption into heaven, in contrast to the present Pope who was a radical at seminary.  While Hans Küng was moving to the left, Joseph Ratzinger was moving to the right.  They were good friends at the Vatican Council, where both were advisers, as they were at that stage occupying the same intellectual ground.