Hans K ng
Hans Küng (born March 19, 1928) is an eminent Swiss theologian, formerly of the Roman Catholic Church, and a prolific author. Since 1995 he has been President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos).
Born in Sursee, Canton of Lucerne, Küng studied theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and was ordained in 1954. He then continued his education in various European cities, for example at the Sorbonne in Paris. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Justification. La doctrine de Karl Barth et une réflexion catholique".
In 1960 Küng was appointed professor of theology at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany. Just like his colleague Joseph Ratzinger, in 1962 he was appointed peritus by Pope John XXIII, serving as an expert theological advisor to members of the Second Vatican Council until its conclusion in 1965.
A persistent critic of papal authority, which he claims is man-made (and thus reversible) rather than instituted by God, Küng became the first major Roman Catholic theologian to reject the doctrine of papal infallibility, in particular in his book Infallible? An Inquiry (1971). Consequently, on December 18, 1979, he was stripped of his right to teach as a Roman Catholic theologian but carried on teaching as a tenured professor of ecumenical theology at the University of Tübingen until his retirement (Emeritierung) in 1996.
In the early 1990s Küng initiated a project called Weltethos (Global Ethic), which is an attempt at describing what the world religions have in common (rather than what separates them) and at drawing up a minimal code of rules of behaviour everyone can accept.
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