{"id":1481,"date":"2007-06-11T11:30:38","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T11:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/theologians-in-la.html"},"modified":"2007-06-11T11:30:38","modified_gmt":"2007-06-11T11:30:38","slug":"theologians-in-la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/theologians-in-la.html","title":{"rendered":"Theologians in LA"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Allen has many reports on the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America.<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s a lot there…<\/p>\n

From the group’s outgoing president: (after the jump)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Public statements by the Catholic Theological Society of America criticizing the Vatican and the bishops \u201chave done us damage,\u201d the body\u2019s outgoing president said today, concluding that the prerequisite to fostering dialogue is \u201cmaking fewer public statements defending ourselves against ecclesiastical power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe price has been too high compared to what we have gained,\u201d said Daniel Finn of St. John\u2019s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. \u201cI wish we were not facing this trade-off, but I believe we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finn made clear that he was not trying to stifle criticism, but said that in the future, such statements should come from individual theologians, perhaps with others signing on, but not in the name of the CTSA.<\/p>\n

The comments by Finn came in his \u201cPresidential Address\u201d at the conclusion of the annual conference of the Catholic Theological Society of America in Los Angeles, California.<\/p>\n

Over the years, the CTSA has issued a number of critical statements on official church teaching or disciplinary interventions against theologians. In 1997, for example, the CTSA issued a statement on the ban on women\u2019s ordination, concluding that there are \u201cserious doubts regarding the nature of the authority of this teaching and its grounds in tradition.\u201d More recently, the CTSA board issued a statement in 2005 defending American Jesuit Fr. Roger Haight after he was censured by the Vatican\u2019s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.<\/p>\n

Those statements have produced backlash, including Cardinal Bernard Law\u2019s famous declaration that the CTSA has become a theological \u201cwasteland.\u201d Also in 1997, then-Fr. Avery Dulles, now a cardinal, said that the CTSA \u201cconstitutes a kind of alternative magisterium for dissatisfied Catholics.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his address, Finn made clear that he was not questioning the content of the CTSA statements, but their impact.<\/p>\n

First, he said, they have produced a distorted image of the society.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have become the public face of CTSA for nearly everyone who does not attend our conventions,\u201d he said. \u201cThey present us as individuals who gather to defend ourselves against hierarchical authority, but that\u2019s only a small part of what we\u2019re up to.\u201d In the end, he said, the statements give \u201ca false impression to outsiders.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a special risk, Finn argued, in an era of \u201cideological splintering of news outlets,\u201d so that statements which appear to challenge church authorities will be \u201cspun\u201d according to the agendas of different groups.<\/p>\n

The risk of misleading impressions of the CTSA is true not just of the general public, he said, but also among the hierarchy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany bishops form their view of us on the basis of our public statements, often influenced by advisors who are conservative theologians who don\u2019t attend our meetings,\u201d Finn said.<\/p>\n

Second, Finn argued, the public statements have exacted a steep internal cost in the CTSA by driving conservative theologians away.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey felt no longer welcome, out of a sense that they\u2019re on the margins of a group that pokes funs at Vatican shortcomings and puts the CTSA name on statements they do not endorse. They feel it\u2019s not their group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that we\u2019ll ever get those folks back, but there is a long future of others to come,\u201d Finn said.<\/p>\n

Instead, Finn argued, the CTSA \u201cshould be the place where Catholic theologians of all perspectives come to do their theology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur church is wracked by divisions caused by ideological simplicities on all sides, and we need broader dialogue in the church than we have today,\u201d Finn said. \u201cIn the CTSA, all theologians should feel respected, and a majority should not employ the mechanics of majoritarian democracy to produce statements that the minority would find offensive and leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Allen has many reports on the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America. There’s a lot there… From the group’s outgoing president: (after the jump)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nTheologians in LA - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/theologians-in-la.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Theologians in LA - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Allen has many reports on the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}