“That, sir, is not true.”

George Weigel pens a most satisfying and crushing rebuke to graying theological hotdog Hans Kung’s outright lies about Benedict XVI.

Weigel is more charitable than me when he tells Kung that he is obviously an intelligent man. I well remember a conversation I had with a priest of my acquaintance, a Dominican who is probably the closest I will ever get to meeting St. Thomas Aquinas. The man is all cool intellect, not given to rhetorical excess or emotional burblings. Asked in private conversation to assess Kung, he replied in tone of genuine baffled wonderment, “I’m really beginning to think he’s just… stupid.” It wasn’t spoken as an insult but rather in the tone of somebody who has puzzled over the problem for several years and simply can’t account for the data in a more rational way.