Michael Dowd
U.S. Bishops Urge Catholic Schools to Ban a Nun’s Book
Just last Sunday I was preaching at a church in Atlanta and the minister selected the following quote from Roman Catholic feminist theologian and epic of evolution enthusiast, Elizabeth Johnson, as the reading (one of Connie’s and my favorites):
“The world is almost mind-numbingly dynamic. Out of the Big Bang came the stars. Out of stardust came the Earth. Out of Earth came single-celled creatures. Out of the evolutionary life and death of these creatures came human beings with consciousness and freedom that concentrates the self-transcendence of matter itself. Human beings are the Universe become conscious of itself. We are the celebrants of the Universe.”
Then this morning I was alerted to the following, which was written by NY Times religion writer Laurie Goodstein, and appeared in the April 1 print edition of The New York Times, and can also be found online here. I know Sr. Elizabeth and, frankly, I think she’s awesome. I hope this “ban” (and Laurie’s NYTimes article) helps sell lots more copies.
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A committee of American Roman Catholic bishops announced Wednesday that a popular book about God by Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, a theologian at Fordham University in New York, should not be used in Catholic schools and universities because it does not uphold church doctrine.
The book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, examines different understandings of God through experiences of the poor and oppressed, Holocaust victims, Hispanics, women and people of religions other than Catholicism. Among the chapter titles are “God Acting Womanish” and “Accompanying God of Fiesta.”
The bishops’ committee on doctrine said in a statement: “The book does not take the faith of the Church as its starting point. Instead, the author employs standards from outside the faith to criticize and to revise in a radical fashion the conception of God revealed in Scripture and taught by the Magisterium,” the church’s teaching authority according to the popes and bishops.
Sister Johnson declined an interview, but said in a statement that the bishops never invited her to discuss the book and that she was unaware that the bishops were assessing it until they had already decided to issue a condemnatory statement.
“One result of this absence of dialogue is that in several key instances this statement radically misinterprets what I think, and what I in fact wrote,” she said. “The conclusions thus drawn paint an incorrect picture of the fundamental line of thought the book develops. A conversation, which I still hope to have, would have very likely avoided these misrepresentations.”
The president of Fordham, the Rev. Joseph M. McShane, said in a statement that Sister Johnson is a “revered member of the Fordham community,” who regards the bishops’ action as “an invitation to dialogue.”
Sister Johnson is a prominent feminist theologian and a former president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the American Theological Society. She belongs to a religious order in New York, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood.
The Rev. Thomas Weinandy, executive director of the bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine, said, “The primary concern was not over feminism or nonfeminism. The bishops are saying that the book does not adequately treat a Catholic understanding of God.”
He said the doctrine committee had no authority to mandate that the book be removed from Catholic educational institutions or to discipline Sister Johnson.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s enforcer of doctrine, has disciplined several theologians during the papacy of Benedict XVI, who was in charge of that office before he became pope in 2005.
Father Weinandy said the impetus for reviewing Sister Johnson’s book did not come from the Vatican. He said several American bishops who did not serve on the doctrine committee had raised concerns about the book.
Theology professors at Catholic universities said they did not see a theological cause for the bishops to condemn Sister Johnson’s work.
Stephen J. Pope, a theologian at Boston College, said: “The reason is political. Certain bishops decide that they want to punish some theologians, and this is one way they do that. There’s nothing particularly unusual in her book as far as theology goes. It’s making an example of someone who’s prominent.”
Sister Mary Catherine Hilkert, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame, said, “She is deeply rooted in the Catholic tradition and committed to her vocation as a theologian.”
Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, the committee chairman, said in a statement that Sister Johnson might have avoided problems if she had sought a bishop’s approval, known as an “imprimatur,” and made revisions before publishing her book. The hardcover was published in 2007 by Continuum, a company based in New York. The paperback is due in July.
Father Weinandy said that while imprimaturs are recommended under canon law, they are not required, and that while they were once common, few theologians now request them.
Nicholas Lash, an English theologian, points out in his book Theology for Pilgrims page 229 that “The Cathechism (of the Catholic Church) deplorably begins, not with God, but with our ‘search’ for God.”
Hence it does not take “the faith of the church as it’s starting point.”
So logic would suggest that this same Catechism be also banned from use in Catholic institutions!!!
Though I’ve not read the work mentioned, it’s condemantion by these bishops almost certainly means that the work is both of import and likely to be on correct in its explorations.
I expect the bishops have no interest in dialogue. Only “instruction”.
I love the book, and Elizabeth Johnson. She’s a brilliant woman. Just about the time I began to unravel because I discovered the patriarchal nature of the church, a sweet nun gave me Ms. Johnson’s She Who Is. All of Johnson’s books have been “gifts” to me. She’s a blessing to many of us. Sorry about this, but the most gifted theologians always seem to be on the edge. Yea!
I read Johnson’s book and found my faith affirmed and deepened. It was a text for my theology class in a MA for Holistic Spirituality at a Catholic college. Last weekend I wrote a twelve page paper on “Quest.” I recommend the book highly!!! There are more articles about this situation at the National Catholic Reporter: http://www.ncronline.org
Very sad. And the equivalent of a 5-star review for this reader — one more book to add to the list.
One of the things that many Roman Catholic bishops fail to do is to recognize what Vatican II has recognized long ago, that there are many people at different levels of society with experiences of God, which can enrich considerably our Catholic faith. From these we can find universal truths and insights discovered by the poor and other religions as well… and even liberal nuns.
The hierarchy of the Church, because of its own authority structure, is unable to open dialogue in cases like this. Everything is imposed from top-down, without any sort of reflexion on what could be learned (or could be rejected) from other standpoints. None of us are infallible, not even the Magisterium, and one thing St. Paul asks us to do is to look at everything and retain what is good itself. The authoritarian dictation without any dialogue whatsoever is a move that is getting old in the Church, and it is something that I know will *have* to change in the long run.
I am angry when I see the remarks of the U.S Bishops on the Quest for the Living God written by Sr. Elizabeth Johnson. It appears their negative statement has been published without any dialogue with her, though it is four years since the book was published. The statement, after their attack on the book, that they are in favour of dialogue seems like a sick joke.
As a Catholic religious who has found Elizabeth Johnson’s book most helpful, I am especially appaled that this sort of treatment can be given to a respected Catholic theologian in the 21st Century. It seems to me that the bishops are driving another nail into the coffin of our institutional church.