Time & Perspective Quote by Hans Kung

Kung is doing the quintessential reformer’s two-step: he opens the windows to let the whole world in, then insists the room still has a center. “Catholicity in time and in space” is his capacious vision of the church as truly universal - spanning centuries of tradition and the messy plurality of global cultures. But he refuses to let “universal” become a synonym for “vague.” The line “only meaningful for me if” functions like a doctrinal seatbelt: without a “concentration on the Gospel,” catholicity collapses into museum curatorship (collecting artifacts from every era) or bureaucratic multiculturalism (tolerating everything, proclaiming nothing).

The intent is corrective, even preemptive. Kung anticipates the common critique of post-Vatican II openness: that dialogue, aggiornamento, and historical consciousness dilute the faith into ethical platitudes or institutional brand management. His answer is that breadth is not the enemy; drift is. The subtext is a warning to both camps. To conservatives: universality doesn’t mean freezing one period’s European Catholicism as timeless. To progressives: universality doesn’t mean endless accommodation to the spirit of the age.

Context matters: Kung spent his career pressing Rome on authority, ecumenism, and modernity, often at personal cost. So when he says “for me,” it’s not relativism; it’s testimony. He’s staking a claim that reform and fidelity are not opposites. The rhetorical power lies in the tension he holds: expansive in scope, strict in focus - a church wide enough to be global, sharp enough to be recognizable.