Tubingen Theologian: 'The Church Tends to Live a Half Heresy'

Edit: the theologian admits that the Church has "a tendency to half-heresy" whatever that means. He strikes one as schizophrenic. At one point he complains about how the Pope wasn't ecumenical enough during his trip to Erfurt and that the there was a positive ferment before the Pastoral Council, then he's saying things like "ecumenism can't come at the price of truth".

He is the lay successor of Cardinal Kasper and the Holy Father.

Dogmatic Theologian Hilberath:  Instead of the Pope and Bishops, only the Pope and the Curia lead the Church -- Better not to have a 'Third Vatican Council', there isn't any progress expected from the curia in terms of current occupants of the Episcopal chairs.

Stuttgart (kath.net / CBA) Dogmatic theologian, Bernd Jochen Hilberath holds that a Third Vatican Council is not currently desirable. Whether the current staffing of the bishops is not occupying expected episcopal offices, there are no steps currently for the future, said the Catholic theologian on Tuesday evening in Stuttgart.

He fears in one such case many more backwards steps for the Catholic Church. For a further Council, he foresees the need for "a comprehensive process of fermentation" in the entire population of the Church, as was also present in the years from 1962 to 1965.

The Church lives according to Hilberath's estimation, "tending to a half heresy", therefore with false doctrine: in the sense of the Second Vatican Council all of the Bishops and the Pope had to lead the Church together, however the Church was headed de facto only by the Pope and the Roman Curia.

The theologian directed criticism at the ecumenical meeting of Pope Benedict XVI in the wings of his Germany visit in Autumn. The testimony that he gave at the Erfurt meeting with representatives of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) where no "ecumenical gift" [Some concession or praise for Lutherans in general was expected in some circles] was brought was "below par". It went without saying that ecumenism can not be accomplished at the expense of truth.

In the view of the theologian some of the ecumenical problems within the Church itself would be resolved, if Christians were more involved with the fight for justice. 99.9 percent of humanity is not particularly interested in the question of apostolic succession, but are very interested, however, in questions of justice. Hilberath stressed, in the sense of a saying of the Ex-Constitutional Judge Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, the Church also exists from presuppositions which they could not make, and had not made. The Church lives not for itself, rather for the Gospel.

Hilberath spoke at an event in the house of the Catholic Church in Stuttgart. The layman occupied the Professor's chair, which was held previously by Cardinal Kasper, and before that Joseph Ratzinger, today Pope Benedict XVI.
Link kath.net...