"No mean scholars"

Dave Armstrong said...

“Venerable Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI are post-Vatican II. Last time I checked they were both considered no mean scholars.”

http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2010/01/solemn-announcement-but-with-no-thanks.html?showComment=1263326183493#c3437578749922483456

“During those years a certain Karol Wojtyla from Krakow is also preparing for his doctorate in theology at the Angelicum. He has been rejected at the Gregorian, the top place in Rome, because he hasn’t completed his studies in Poland satisfactorily. So he has to content himself with the Roman Dominican university (a hotbed of traditional theology in contrast to the first-class French Dominican college, Le Saulchoir)…Rejection from the Gregorian must have been quite a blow for the ambitious Wojtyla…while this Polish student learned some philosophy, he evidently has a very thin theological foundation-not to mention a lack of knowledge of modern exegesis, the history of dogmas and the church,” H. Küng, My Struggle for Freedom: Memoirs (Eerdmans 2003), 79.

“However, I was unaware that with my critical questions about Wojtyla’s theological limitations I had touched on a sore point in his life story of which he never spoke–unlike Joseph Ratzinger and ‘the drama’ of his habilitation. Rather, this man who in his youth had devoted himself not to theology but to professional acting can admirably disguise the fact that he studied only lightweight theology. He was turned down as a doctoral student by the Gregorian, Rome’s top university–as I already reported in My Struggle for Freedom (III: Dogmatics Romans-style), to the disproval of some Pope venerators–because of a deficient theological background (certainly not deficient intelligence), so that he had to go to the second-ranking Dominican Anglicum University,” H. Küng, Disputed Truth: Memoirs II (Eerdmans 2008), 435.