Flashback: “with Kung, it is all about Kung.”

A reader, responding to my recent post about Dr. Hans Küng, reminded me of this bit of rather humorous, and telling, information:

I really appreciated your dissection of the Guardian’s story about Hans Kung. In light of Kung’s worn out tirade, I thought that you might appreciate something that I had inadvertently discovered some time ago that I haven’t seen anyone else pick up on…Kung was the subject of Wikileaks cables! In fact, The Guardian featured this quote 2 years ago. It was buried among other, more juicy subjects, (If you recall, the cables warned that the Pope’s invitation to Anglicans “was so inflammatory that it might lead to discrimination and even violence against Catholics in Britain”).  But I really got a kick out of it, because on this topic, the [U.S.] Embassy’s assessment seams to have been spot on!

The Wikileak cable, as it appeared in The Guardian, contained the following:

6. (SBU) The harshest public criticism for the decision has come from a former friend of the Pope, the Swiss theologian Hans Kung. In an article published in several major European newspapers, Kung states that “having brought back the extreme anti-reformist faction of the Pius X fraternity into the fold, Pope Benedict now hopes to fill up the dwindling ranks of the Catholic Church with Anglicans sympathetic to Rome”. For all its color, Kung’s criticism is not influential with mainstream Catholics, according to an Embassy contact who is himself skeptical about the wisdom of the apostolic constitution. Kung, XXXXXXXXXXXX adds, comes across as personally bitter and has used such a strong language in criticizing the Pope that moderate reformists would not want to be associated with him or his opinion pieces: “with Kung, it is all about Kung.”

Indeed.