For two years Küng guided a research project on Women and Christianity, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. For most of the religions of the world, women are a problem. From time immemorial they have been subordinate to men, second class in the family, politics and business with limited rights and even limited participation in worship. It is not only in Christianity that equal rights for women has been a scandalously neglected issue. Through an examination of the history of women in Christianity, Kung points to the scandals of the past.
Roman Catholic Canon Law is androcentric and male-dominated. The role of women in church has often been positive throughout its history, but the prohibition of women servers at Mass and of the ordination of women to the diaconate and the priesthood are characteristics of a Church that takes a consistently ‘negative’ attitude towards contraception, abortion and divorce.
From his position of intellectual freedom, as an independent Professor at the University of Tubingen, Küng has been free to analyse the mistakes of the past and to sketch out a new theology of Women in the Church. This is not stridently feminist theology but rather one that sees the role of women as being vital for the development of the Church as an institution and for preaching the Christian Gospel.