| Human responsibility the basis for human
rights, Küng says
By PATRICIA LEFEVERE
Special to the National Catholic Reporter
New York
It’s not that Hans Küng is too big for the Catholic
church, or the church too confining for his scholarship. It’s rather that
the Swiss theologian has gradually turned his attention to a broader arena --
the world -- since the Vatican sacked him as a Catholic theologian in 1979.
In the nearly two decades since Rome withdrew his missio
canonica, or license to teach Catholic theology, Küng has expanded his
vision beyond change in the church and toward what he terms “a realistic
vision of the future.” In his latest book in English, and his fourth on
the subject since 1991 -- A Global Ethic for Global Politics and
Economics (Oxford University Press, 1998) -- he places a tall order:
universal ethical standards and a vision of peace among nations.
The latter won’t occur without peace first among the
religions, he says. And Küng has spent much of the 1980s and early 1990s
studying and writing about the world’s religions.
Filming a Jewish wedding
NCR spoke with Küng, now professor emeritus at the
University of Tübingen, Germany, during a recent visit to New York. He
came to film a Jewish wedding -- part of a seven-hour television series
he’s developing to present the major world religions and their
contribution to global ethics and world peace.
It’s a project that is taking him to El Salvador, India,
China, Japan, Australia, Zimbabwe and Israel, and one that he hopes to see
aired on networks around the world next fall. The series is sponsored by the
Global Ethic Foundation, which Küng heads in Germany and Switzerland. The
foundation is underwritten by a 5 million Deutschemark grant from its founders,
Count and Countess van der Groeben of Germany.
Since becoming its president in 1995, Küng has met with
bankers, heads of corporations, government and faith leaders, presenting the
case for establishing universal norms that cross political, economic and
religious lines, but are morally acceptable to all -- even nonbelievers.
“The reason why human rights are not realized in many nations
is because there is no moral impetus behind them,” Küng said. Without
moral energy, politicians and statesmen will merely do what is
“opportunistic, comfortable or politically expedient,” not what is
right and necessary.
He points to Bosnia and argues that had the United States,
Germany, France and Britain agreed that they would not tolerate war in former
Yugoslavia, but would intervene, the bloodbath and ensuing loss of human rights
could have been averted. What the Western powers lacked was a clear ethic and
the will to abide by it, he said.
Küng also finds moral decay in global economic trends. In
June of 1997, he and German President Roman Herzog stood atop the tallest
skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, surveying the landscape of one of the
prominent Asian “tigers.” Within days, Thailand was forced to devalue
its currency, the baht, and soon after Asian economies from Jakarta to
Tokyo fell into disarray.
The Indonesian situation, with its beating of Chinese shopkeepers,
looting of businesses, rape of women and run on the banks “showed clearly
that the crisis was not just economic, but also moral,” he said. On the
economic side, widespread cronyism, nepotism and corruption were all activities
that Western leaders and firms knew about and even encouraged, he said.
Küng criticized both former German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl’s fishing expedition with Indonesian President Suharto while Suharto
was in office, and President Clinton’s starting his China trip in
Tiananmen Square. “As heads of state they have to visit, but they should
also show they disagree with these violators of human rights,” he told
NCR.
Küng is convinced that the United Nations’ Universal
Declaration of Human Rights will not be heeded without first a Universal
Declaration of Human Responsibility. The United Nations has been working on
such a proposal. Several nongovernmental organizations -- including church
groups represented at the United Nations -- discussed the idea in
“values” caucuses that preceded the 1995 conferences on social
development and on women.
If one were to view the Human Rights charter as a chair, its four
legs would be the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, the founding of the
Red Cross in 1864, the League of Nations in 1920 and the United Nations in
1945, Küng said. Each of these compacts was designed to grant liberties,
mitigate suffering, resolve disputes, protect human rights and keep peace.
Shared obligations
But the existence of the Human Rights declaration has not outlawed
human rights abuses in China, Tibet, Myanmar, Indonesia, Israel, Palestine,
Bosnia and elsewhere. While every right implies obligations, there are certain
responsibilities that have yet to be included in human rights, Küng said,
even though an acknowledgment of these principles is fundamental to the
assurance of human rights.
Küng advocated a universal document that would set forth
concrete human responsibilities associated with human rights. It would state
that all people share an obligation to:
- contribute to the common good;
- consider the impact of their actions on the security and
welfare of others;
- promote equity, including gender equity;
- safeguard the interests of future generations by pursuing
sustainable development and protecting the global commons;
- preserve humanity’s cultural and intellectual heritage;
- be active participants in governance; and
- work to eliminate corruption.
The principles of human responsibility were expounded by the
25-nation Commission on Global Governance that met in Oxford in 1995. The
commission stems from an initiative by former German Chancellor Willy Brandt,
who established it in 1992 with the backing of the then U.N. Secretary General
Boutrous Boutrous Ghali.
Küng said there is support for such a charter from many
quarters, including the Inter-Action Council, which consists of ex-heads of
state led by another former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt. Others on board
are Jimmy Carter, Costa Rica’s Oscar Arias Sanchez, Mexico’s Miguel
de la Madrid, Canada’s Pierre Trudeau, France’s Valery Giscard
D’Estaing, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, Japan’s Kiichi Miyazawa and
Australia’s Malcolm Fraser.
Küng met with the group in Vancouver on May 22, 1996, when
the former heads of state approved a report titled, “In Search of Global
Ethical Standards.” The report draws heavily on the 1993 Chicago
Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which Küng
drafted.
That much-debated statement has served as a working document on
global ethics at several subsequent gatherings. Widely published, it has sold
40,000 copies in Germany alone. In March 1996 Küng, along with Austrian
Cardinal Franz König, met in Vienna with leading Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu
and Shinto leaders and with some former heads of state. The group’s
endorsement of the report on global ethical standards helped to affirm the
statement made by the former presidents and premiers in Vancouver.
The ex-heads of state noted that what the United Nations
proclaimed in its Human Rights charter is “confirmed and deepened” by
the parliament’s declaration “from the perspective of human
responsibility.” The statesmen are also convinced that “there will be
no better global order without a global ethic,” Küng said.
Despite what he called “limited successes” among world
political and religious figures, Küng believes that enormous work remains
to “alter the consciousness of humanity.” He is convinced that such
change can occur, adding that “millions realize that politicians must act,
not only talk.”
Just how likely are the world’s elder statesmen and Bretton
Woods executives to heed the advice of a theologian? Küng deflects the
charge of political naiveté or moral arrogance by pointing to a
half-century of study and 60 years of reading daily papers. Neither a pessimist
nor an optimist, he calls himself “a realist.”
Attitudes are changing
Küng said he finds hope in what he has observed over the past
two decades: changes in attitudes toward war and disarmament, toward the
economy and ecology, and new partnerships between men and women.
What prompts people to be concerned for the fate of the earth and
the future is less important than their taking shared responsibility for peace,
justice, the preservation of creation and a renewed ethic, Küng said. He
credits his own engagement in these questions to “a kind of hidden
hand” that has been guiding him since Rome censored him and changed his
job title 19 years ago.
“Even in my darkest time when I didn’t see any future,
the way forward kept opening up with possibilities for new adventures. I was
always challenged by new opportunities,” he said. He finds a parallel in
the gospel where John speaks of Christ as “The light shines in the
darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
In A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics,
Küng says that he could not have survived so long “in the face of so
much darkness in the world and the church without this light.” But for him
the light of Christ is no mere consolation in a future world, but “a basis
for commitment, protest and resistance against unjust conditions here and today
... strengthened by hope in God’s kingdom.”
At 70, Küng mused: “I’m ready to stop whenever
it’s time, though I would prefer to die on duty.”
To read the U.N. declaration on human rights, click the
Documents button on the NCR Online page, then click The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
National Catholic Reporter, December 11,
1998
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