Pope Francis rehabilitates old foe of Pope Benedict

There has been a rift between Professors Peter Hünermann and Joseph Ratzinger for decades. This did not prevent the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio, from awarding Hünermann an honorary doctorate. Georg Gänswein rehashes the old feud in his book. What does Peter Hünermann say about this?

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict XVI's personal secretary, describes discord within the Vatican walls in his book to be published on Thursday. One example: the theologian Peter Hünermann from Tübingen.

Benedict XVI rejected a contribution - also because of Peter Hünermann (second from right)

Gänswein jumps back to 2018: at that time, the Vatican wanted to publish a series on Pope Francis' magisterium - with various authors. Through Georg Gänswein, the then head of the communications dicastery Dario Viganò approached the Pope Emeritus and asked him to write a foreword.

The dogmatist Peter Hünermann in Rottenburg in 2008.

Benedict refused him this request and sent a written message: Out of love for Pope Francis, he would gladly comply with Viganò's request. However, he was not in a position to read all the contributions adequately. There were too many. According to Georg Gänswein, Benedict XVI also took offence at the name Peter Hünermann: it was not possible for the Pope Emeritus to remain silent about this name. 

Hünermann is associated with Pope Francis

Benedict XVI could not have expressed his dislike of the Tübingen dogmatist Peter Hünermann more clearly. Later, Viganò tried to conceal the last passage from Benedict's letter. The tensions between the Pope Emeritus and the current Pope were not to be discussed publicly. Only at the insistence of the press was the full version published.

Piquant: Pope Francis maintains a good relationship with the now 93-year-old Hünermann. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he awarded the Tübingen professor an honorary doctorate and later received him personally in Rome as Pope.

Peter Hünermann was critical of Hans Küng

Peter Hünermann is no revolutionary. Companions describe him as a pious intellectual. On many points, Hünermann was in line with Rome. In 1982, Hünermann was appointed to the chair that Hans Küng had to leave. Later, Hünermann voted in the faculty against rehabilitating Hans Küng.

Nevertheless, much stood between Hünermann and Ratzinger. The dispute has a long history: "We met for the first time in 1970," Hünermann recalls. He was a lecturer at the University of Freiburg at the time and was to be appointed professor: "Joseph Ratzinger wanted to get me to Augsburg at the time, but I preferred to go to Münster.

"So now you are President of the Socialist International".

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hünermann became the first president of the European Society for Catholic Theology, founded in 1990. That was too much for Joseph Ratzinger. 

(Cathcon: by their fruits shall ye know them.....the publications in their East-West series)

On Ash Wednesday 1991, Ratzinger summoned his alleged adversary to Rome and received him with the words: "So, Mr Hünermann, now you are President of the Socialist International," he recalled. Hünermann objected. Ratzinger: "But the idea came from Greinacher."

Cologne Declaration criticises Pope John Paul II.

Norbert Greinacher was a pastoral theologian in Tübingen who fell out of favour with his book "The Church of the Poor - On the Theology of Liberation". "I explained to Cardinal Ratzinger in vain that we were concerned with open dialogue with the Church in the East," says Peter Hünermann. Ratzinger, however, suspected a conspiracy of theologians who clearly opposed the authority of the Pope. 

From the Vatican's point of view, Ratzinger's concern was not unfounded: in 1989, the "Cologne Declaration" appeared, in which theologians criticised Pope John Paul II and called for "Against Incapacitation - for an Open Catholicism".

Accusation: "ridiculing the Pope"

With this at the latest, the relationship between the two thinkers had suffered irreparable damage. Ratzinger even complained about Hünermann to the Bishop of Rottenburg Stuttgart in 1994. The accusation was that Hünermann had "ridiculed the Pope" in a statement on the fringes of the Catholic Assembly in Dresden. Hünermann says: "I did not respond to that."

The two professors did not meet again later. Nevertheless, Hünermann's name appears in Georg Gänswein's book of revelations.

Where Hünermann agrees "wholeheartedly" with Benedict XVI.

Today, Hünermann cannot explain why Gänswein has revived this old feud. He himself had no interest in a confrontation. "One should let the dead pope rest."

At least Gänswein's remark has something good: for Georg Gänswein quotes Benedict's sentence according to which the supposed contrast "Benedict, the great theologian" and "Francis, the practical man without theological training" is not true. Peter Hünermann tells kath.ch that he "fully subscribes" to this sentence of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Under the title "Nient'altro che la Verità" Georg Gänswein's book of revelations is being published in Italian this week - literally translated: "Nothing but the truth". The German translation will probably be published by Herder-Verlag in February. 

11.01.2023, 9.45 a.m.: In a first version, there was a mix-up: It was not the nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò who had asked Benedict XVI for a foreword to the book series on Pope Francis' magisterium, but the then head of the communications dicastery, Monsignor Dario Viganò.

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