A Fitting End to a Life of Rejecting the Truths of the Faith?

Hans Kung is considering ending his own life by assisted suicide. Kung, 85, suffers from Parkinson's. He sees Pope John Paul II and Muhammad Ali who also suffered from the disease as models to reject rather than emulate. In the third volume of his memoirs the perennial rebel theologian writes:

I do not want to live as a shadow of myself....No person is obligated to suffer the unbearable as something sent from God....People can decide this for themselves and no priest, doctor or judge can stop them...[It is a] surrendering of life...a return of life to the hands of the Creator....How much longer will my life be liveable in dignity?...A scholar who can no longer read and write - what's next?

Can any of us be surprised that a man who has so often publicly dissented from the teachings of the Church would be contemplating the ultimate act of rejecting the God of life while framing such rejection as a virtue? Kung was banned in 1979 from teaching as a Catholic theologian which did little to moderate his heretical views which includes support for abortion. In 2007 when Mexico was debating the legalization of abortion he said, “The Church’s absolute prohibition of abortion is a merciless extremism that could be anything but Christian.” Kung himself openly said he would sign the counseling verification forms required in Germany before an abortion. He also vigorously opposed Vatican authority and promoted the spirit of the age which made him the darling of the liberal left. Kung embodied the "spirit of Vatican II" in its worst manifestation.

In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, Kung implied that "the staging of his death might be a last protest of the official Church.” If so it will also indicate a decision to walk through the gate under the sign reading, "Abandon hope all you who enter here."

Please pray for Hans Kung. I have always been chilled by his arrogance. Interestingly one of his books is titled in English, My Struggle for Freedom. Does it strike you as it did me? I immediately thought of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Both men rejected the teachings of the Church, Hitler for a paganism reminiscent of Norse mythology and Kung for his own vision of the modernist Church. But Kung isn't dead yet and where there's life there's hope.

My husband and I are about to pray our rosary. I'm adding Hans Kung to my rosary journal and asking Our Lady, Refuge Sinners to pour out the grace of conversion on his hard heart.

Blessed Jacinta and Francisco of Fatima, please pray for him.