Kung introduces new book, 'Can the Church be Saved?'

The Catholic Church is seriously, possibly terminally ill and only an honest diagnosis and radical therapy will cure it, one of the sharpest critics of Pope Benedict XVI, the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Kung, has written.

Kung who is a former colleague of the pope at the University of Tubingen, introduced his new book, "Ist die Kirche noch zu retten?" ("Can the Church Still Be Saved?").

Kung is one of today's most outspoken Roman Catholic theologians. Because he questioned the infallibility of the pope in 1971, he had his "missio canonica," the license needed to teach Roman Catholic theology, withdrawn. Thereafter, he became professor of ecumenical theology in Tubingen. He remains a Catholic priest.