Bishops Urge Catholic Schools to Ban a Nun’s Book
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.
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