Hans Kung denounces Benedict’s move to regularize the situation of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X:
With such a scandalous decision, Pope Benedict would, in his overall regretted isolation, would be even more separated from the People of God. The classical doctrine regarding schism should be a warning to him. According to it, a schism of the Church happens when it separates from the Pope, but also when the latter separates himself from the body of the Church. “Even the Pope could become a schismatic, if he will not guard the unity and communion proper to the whole body of the Church.” (Francisco Suárez, major Spanish theologian of the 16th/17th centuries).
A schismatic pope loses his position according to that same teaching of the constitution of the Church. At least, he cannot expect obedience. Pope Benedict would be therefore encouraging the already widespread popular movement of “disobedience” against a hierarchy that is disobedient to the Gospel. He would bear sole responsibility for the grave rift and the strife created inside the Church. , he would have alone the responsibility. Instead of reconciling with the ultra-conservative, anti-democratic, and anti-Semitic SSPX, the Pope should rather care about the majority of reform-minded Catholics and reconcile with the churches of the Reformation and the entire ecumenical movement. Thus he would unite, and not divide.
While Benedict heals the greatest schism in the Church to come from the Vatican II, Kung has united himself to the heretics and holdouts in being a sedevacantist (someone who believes the throne of Peter is “vacant”).
Thus the irony: Kung, in adopting the views of a heretical fringe and separating himself from the Church, has become guilty of just what he falsely accuses Benedict of doing.
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