Canonical hierarchy?

We continue our way through Why Priests again today. Küng goes through an exegetical study of the New Testament, looking at the passages related to church governance. Here is his conclusion:

The decline into an institutional ministry cannot be said to be normative; nor can the change with respect to the origin, as such, be called apostasy. The New Testament data shows [sic] that there are various models of congregational order and leadership in the New Testament which cannot be reduced to one another, even though they were combined with one another in the course of time. The New Testament therefore does not allow us to canonize one congregational structure alone. This does not mean simply one more difficulty for the Church. On the contrary, it gives it the freedom to move with the times and to be capable of new developments and modifications of Church ministry for the good of men and the congregations. The individual New Testament models need not be imitated, but the crucial New Testament elements must be preserved and put to the test under completely different conditions, so long as we still want to claim to be Christian.—Why Priests, pages 49-50

<idle musing>
I would probably argue more strongly for a New Testament style organization, but the fact that he doesn't want to canonize the traditions that have since developed is encouraging. I suspect my main disagreement is over what is considered crucial :)
</idle musing>