A Meeting in Rome

This report was a pleasant surprise:

VATICAN CITY --Pope Benedict XVI met with one of his fiercest critics, the Swiss dissident theologian Hans Kueng, in yet another sign the pontiff wants to reach out to prominent Catholics who fell from grace under his predecessor.

In an interview with The Associated Press from his home in Tuebingen, Germany, Kueng called Saturday's meeting "extraordinary" but said it was wrong to speak of reconciliation.

"I am sure that this will be seen in the Catholic world, and even more than that, as a hopeful sign because it shows that he (Benedict) has more positive intentions than maybe what was seen at the beginning," Kueng said.

The two former university colleagues met for several hours and had a friendly theological discussion, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement Monday. He said the two did not discuss the "magisterial" differences that divide Kueng and the Roman Catholic Church.

While this meeting of two theological antagonists is certainly encouraging, don't hold your breath that the Vatican will suddenly endorse Kueng's Global Ethic.

"If you cannot see that divinity includes male and female characteristics and at the same time transcends them, you have bad consequences. Rome bases the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the father and Jesus is his son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God." —Hans Kueng to Newsweek in 1991.

Comments

[Pi.]

It is worth noting that both sides admitted to not having discussed their differences at all, which would either make it a very friendly meeting, or an incredibly short one.

Pi.