Anyone heard of these modern theologians?

[Havard]

A family member is considering attending this course:

regonline.com/builder/site/tab1.aspx?EventID=1034434

Or for quick reference, here’s the syllabus:

Session 1 Beginning the Journey Dr. Thomas H. Groome
Session 2 God Loves Us: The Reason to Hope Rev. Michael J. Himes, Ph.D.
Session 3 The Trinity: God Calls Us to Relationship Michael J. Himes, Ph.D.
Session 4 Encountering Jesus in the Gospels 1: Mark and Matthew Celia Siros, Dr. Daniel Harrington, S.J.
Session 5 Encountering Jesus in the Gospels 2: Luke and John Thomas Stegman, S.J., Dr. Christopher Matthews
Session 6 Our Response to God’s Invitation: Living Your Strengths (To be determined)
Session 7 Faith: Our Response to God’s Invitation of Relationship Dr. Terrance Tilley
Session 8 Passing on the Traditions of Following Jesus Dr. Terrance Tilley
Session 9 We Need the Church Rev. Michael J. Himes, Ph.D.
Session 10 Framing an Adult Church Jane Regan, Ph.D.

 

[mdgspencer]

They are not prominent theologians. In that case you could check about them by googling to see what you can find about their lives and also googling to see what you can find about what they wrote, if their publications turn up on the first search.

 

[anodos]

I’d be worried if I saw this guy on the list: youtu.be/8eZO09MvRyA

 

[triumphguy]

Groome is very famous in Educational circles.
Harrington is a very well known scripture scholar.
Stegman, ditto.

 

[Abu]

Groome is a rank dissenter.

Groome replied disparagingly to John Paul II’s Magisterial intervention *Ad Tuendam Fidem *(To Defend the Faith): “It’s a pretentious attempt by the present pope to stifle conversation and dialogue….I read the blessed thing and without being too melodramatic, I was on the verge of tears. It is a very sad day.”
A Generation Betrayed, Eamonn Keane, Hatherleigh Press 2002, Preface, p 2].

The late Msgr Michael J Wrenn writes of the “sorry and sad reminiscence of Thomas H Groome”, whom he was interviewing, when he was Archdiocesan Director of the Office of Religious Education, with the possibility of having him as his assistant. Groome had presented his thesis aimed at translating “Liberation Theology concerns into Catechetical methodology.”

After two and one-half hours, Groome said: “…the problem with you is that you still believe in the myths which you learned when you sat on your father’s knee and your mother’s lap.” Msgr Wrenn replied: “That’s blasphemy… Tom Groome would subsequently leave the priesthood, seek laicisation and serve as a Professor of Religious Education at the Jesuit Boston College – in direct contravention of the rescript for laicization which forbids former priests from teaching religion at any level!” [GB p xvi].

 

[triumphguy]

I said Groome is famous in educational circles, not that he takes tea with the Bishop!

When I did my B.Ed. in a secular university his text on praxis was the main textbook. If you want to learn about critical theory, he’s the man to read.

When I was studying for the M.Th in a catholic seminary Harrington was used in a few of the courses.

 

[Abu]

Groome acknowledges his dependence on Jurgen Habermas for the development of his *shared praxis *approach to religious education, and Habermas is one of the most influential representatives of the neo-Marxist social philosophy known as Critical Theory. From this he promoted the *hermeneutic of suspicion *for Sacred Scripture as well as Sacred Tradition.

Father Donald Keefe, S.J., formerly Professor of Dogma at St Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, N.Y., wrote of Groome’s Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision:
“Groome and his disciples have long been active and worse, successful, in promoting this perversion of catechesis in Catholic precincts, to the point that some version of his ‘shared praxis’ is now normative for what most Catholic grammar, high school and college students learn from most Catholic catechists and religious educators. While this successful demolition of Catholic education reveals as much about the quality of Catholic education in their dioceses as it does about Groome, it is still worthwhile to detail his approach to religious education in order to make clear that it is a program for submitting the historical order of Catholic life and worship to a universal solvent, the teaching method which Groome trendily denominates ‘shared praxis’.

“For ‘praxis,’ read idolatry of method; for ‘shared,’ read the mimetic servility which idolatry denotes.
‘Shared praxis’ is a programmatic return to the historical pessimism which relativizes all the historical mediation of God to man that is the historical worship of the historical Church; this ‘praxis’ consequently denies the significance of the ecclesial ‘structure’ which would stand in the way of the historical pessimism, the flight from historical particularity, that is inherent in idolatry as such.”

This warning about theologians by Cdl Ratzinger is most apt:
In his press conference on Donum Veritatis, 1990, on theologians, then Cdl Ratzinger stressed that “The problem is not whether we need them, but what their proper role is… First of all 'faith precedes theology’…If theology leaves this firm ground it stops being theology and declines into scepticism, and the crumbling of existence into irrationalism is inevitable.” Perpsective, Dossier, Oct 1990, Margaret-Maria Dudley].