Sister [Margaret] Farley, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar, responded in a statement: “I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.”
The book, she said, offers “contemporary interpretations” of justice and fairness in human sexual relations, moving away from a “taboo morality” and drawing on “present-day scientific, philosophical, theological, and biblical resources.”
The formal censure comes only weeks after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a stinging reprimand of the main coordinating group of American nuns, prompting many Catholics across the country to turn out in defense of the nuns with protests, petitions and vigils.
A typical NYT case of journalistic overkill. The book is denounced; the earlier investigation into American religious women is said to have produced a ‘stinging rebuke’. Current Vatican difficulties are dragged into the story although they have no relevance. Yet when we read the actual wording from Rome it contains the mild comment that the book is not consonant with Catholic teaching, and does not represent it. It is apparently regarded as outrageous by the NYT that the Roman Catholic Church should have the temerity to say what does or does not concord with its teaching. Of course, the NYT itself makes more lofty pronouncements in a week than any pope does in a year.
“Of course, the NYT itself makes more lofty pronouncements in a week than any pope does in a year.”
Let me know what charity to direct my gift to. Brilliant.
The real problem as I see it is that the “H” word has become taboo in the Vatican. The entire report could have been summed up in a single sentence. “This work and its author are heretical.”