(Please read the following article by way of background–KSH.)
Both the Vatican and the U.S. bishops are investigating a book by a prominent American Catholic theologian, Vietnam-born Fr. Peter Phan of Georgetown University. The book raises issues about the uniqueness of Christ and the church, issues that were also behind recent censures of other high-profile theologians, as well as a recent Vatican declaration that the fullness of the Christian church resides in Catholicism alone.
The case confirms that no subject is of greater doctrinal concern for church authorities, including Pope Benedict XVI, than what they see as “religious relativism,” meaning the impression that Christ is analogous to other religious figures such as the Buddha, or that Christianity is one valid spiritual path among others.
Critics of writers such as Phan, who offer a positive theological evaluation of non-Christian religions, assert that their work courts confusion on these points, while others believe church authorities are drawing the borders of theological discussion too narrowly.
Phan, a priest of the Dallas diocese, is a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. The book in question is Phan’s 2004 Being Religious Interreligiously, published by Orbis.
Sources who asked not to be identified said that Phan received a July 2005 letter from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith signed by Archbishop Angelo Amato, the congregation’s number two official. It presented 19 observations under six headings, charging that Phan’s book “is notably confused on a number of points of Catholic doctrine and also contains serious ambiguities.”
The letter said the book is in tension with the 2000 Vatican document Dominus Iesus, which states that non-Christians are “in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.”
In contemporary society love is a feeling and religion is a feeling of spirituality. In that sense anything that makes one feel spiritual is valid.
Our job is to communicate God’s sacrificial love for all people and his desire for us to follow his example. Feelings are a byproduct not a goal.
My first thought upon hearing this news was that this is going to be a blockbuster academic brouhaha – a titanic struggle between the values of the Catholic academy versus the overwhelming secular academy’s insistence on “free inquiry,” with the future of Georgetown and all other major Catholic institutions hanging in the balance. But then, I realized that the issue has nothing to do with sex, so almost no one will give a flying fig over the fate of Father Phan.
The interesting question is the roll of who judges the product of a Christian theologian. Outside the Catholic Church it is basically public opinion or the approval of one’s acadamic buddies. In the Catholic Church it is the successors to the apostles (the bishops) and the successor to St. Peter (the pope).
This creates a conflict with the academic wizards who claim the right to be the sole arbiters of whether a theologian is actually teaching Christian orthodoxy and should keep his title and position. In otherwords the academic world is organized on the Protestant principle and it is clear that the various academic organizations use “academic freedom” as a tool to infect the Catholic Church with heresies they approve of.
No. 3 – Maybe many bishops and priests approve of Fr. Phan’s “heresies”.
#4 Rob – Only the Phanatics.
Ah, yes, they like to pick on former presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America. I attend one of their meetings, when Charlie Curran was given an award (he who was driven out of his Catholic University position) with lavish praise. I suspect that Phan will some day be honored for his contributions to advancing theological discourse.
If things go true to form, first Phan will be criticized, then the criticism will be modified, then it will be muted, then the points at issue will be forgotten, and Phan will continue to think and write. So often the curia types in Rome are so far behind theological discourse that they begin to feel they’ve gone too far and end up backtracking at some point. We’ll see if Benedict tells them to keep the pressure on.