Bishops' response to rebuked theologian could take months

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Bishops’ response to rebuked theologian could take months
Jun. 16, 2011
By Dan Morris-Young
Theology

BELLEVUE, WASH. – The U.S. bishops’ committee on doctrine will respond soon by letter to theologian Sr. Elizabeth Johnson whose 2007 book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, was severely criticized by the group, according to the executive director of the bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine.
The committee will be thanking the Sister of St. Joseph, a professor of theology at Fordham University in New York, for her recent 38-page letter countering the doctrinal unit’s critique of her work, Capuchin Fr. Thomas Weinandy told NCR June 15.
The interview took place on the sidelines of the U.S. bishops’ semi-annual meeting.
Weinandy said, “The letter will acknowledge receiving her letter and thank her for sending her response to the committee and saying the committee would also study her response very thoroughly and at a future date get back to her.”
Weinandy said it was not yet clearly decided who will draft the letter, but that it could be Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington who heads the committee.
“There is no set timeline” for the committee’s in-depth response, the priest added, but felt it would be “months.”
The bishops’ doctrine committee in late March, after studying the book for one year, concluded Johnson’s 2007 book “does not accord with authentic Catholic teaching on essential points” and “completely undermines the Gospel and the faith of those who believe in the Gospel.”

Ihttp://ncronline.org/news/theology/bishops-response-rebuked-theologian-could-take-months
 
How long did the author spend considering the USCCB criticism before responding?
 
manualman said:
Dale, How do you keep such good track of so many things!!?
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😃 😊

The trouble is that I don’t! I forget so much. 😦

In this case, however, I remembered that I had posted the links to those two statements in an earlier thread on the controversy. So it was simply a matter at looking at my previous posts.

(sigh) I think we will be talking about this situation months into the future, so I thought it would be good to re-post links to the two primary documents.
 
Dale

I don’t know anything about Elizabeth Johnson but I see she is listed as a “feminist theologian”. Might I guess her book attempted to protray God as female?

Ran
 
Ranp said:
I don’t know anything about Elizabeth Johnson but I see she is listed as a “feminist theologian”. Might I guess her book attempted to protray God as female?
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Ran, I haven’t read her book so I can’t say for sure. I think her position is less than that, but that she is also comfortable with referring to God in female terms.

Here are some quotes from her book which the bishops’ committee objected to. You will need to click on the thumbnails of the text to make it readable.
 
Okay, I am going to have to post a total of three times. The document from the bishops’ committee, unfortunately, does not allow us to copy text from it. Rather, we are forced to copy an image of what they wrote.

Okay… here is part two of Sr. Elizabeth’s statement.
 
And the final section of Sr. Elizabeth’s views about God and female terms or images which the bishops’ committee objected to.
 
Just a coincidence - on the “other” Sr. Johnson thread, there were several posts about the points being made in Sr. Johnson’s book. And there were quite a few posts by her defenders. The language below is from the book “Saving Leonardo”, and is describing at this point the thinking of artist Mark Rothko, The reason I find the quote intriguing is that it is similar to posts on the other thread which either describe Sr. Johnson’s thinking, or the thinking of her defenders (I don’t remember which). Perhaps Mr. Rothko and Sr. Johnson had the same teacher. 😉

What kind of religious experience did Rothko have in mind? In earlier paintings, Rothko had explored Christian symbols, along with images from ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology.** But eventually he became convinced that every particular concept of the divine is too limited and must be transcended**. Thus the huge, almost undifferentiated color fields were intended to suggest that ultimate reality cannot be identified with any definite or specific image of the divine. In negative theology, we can make no positive statements about who or what the divine is. We can approach the truth only through the negation of images. Yet if you cannot identify the divine in any positive way, how do you even know it is real? How do you know there really is a spiritual presence that you are experiencing, and not just an illusion or wish fulfillment?

This excerpt from Saving Leonardo was obtained via public download at this URL. My emphasis in the above.
 
wisdomseeker said:
I wonder how long would take for the bishops assume their authority and denounce such thing? what is up with this dialogue back and forth? who is the authority? the bishops or this woman? none this makes any sense.
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Elizabeth Johnson’s Quest for the Living God is an excellent work in theology. That’s why we theologians assign it in our classes!
 
wisdomseeker said:
I wonder how long would take for the bishops assume their authority and denounce such thing? what is up with this dialogue back and forth? who is the authority? the bishops or this woman? none this makes any sense.
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The Bishops are the authority. Period. But they aren’t necessarily heavy handed authoritarians. Sister asserts that there were misunderstandings in their interpretation of several passages of her book. I don’t have a problem with them taking a second look at her “request” even if the manner in which she made her “request” was rather snarky.
 
Corki said:
The Bishops are the authority. Period. But they aren’t necessarily heavy handed authoritarians. Sister asserts that there were misunderstandings in their interpretation of several passages of her book. I don’t have a problem with them taking a second look at her “request” even if the manner in which she made her “request” was rather snarky.
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It was not snarky at all. Have you even bothered to read Dr. Johnson’s response, or are you simply accusing her out of ignorance?
 
StAnastasia said:
It was not snarky at all. Have you even bothered to read Dr. Johnson’s response, or are you simply accusing her out of ignorance?
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Yes, I have read her response - several times. I have read the letters from the two theological associations. I have read the Bishops letter and Archbishop Wuerl. I have read several of Sisters essays that are available online too. And yes, Sister’s response was a bit snarky. She was accussatory and came very close to claiming the Bishops of being unqualified to judge her work. Also the way she made her repsonse to the Bishops public was, at best, lacking in discretion.
 
grannymh said:
Obviously, not all theology classes are about Catholic theology.
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Funny! This is your old ploy of “You’re not a real Catholic like I am.” If you want to suppress Dr. Johnson’s work you’d better get on the phone to the bishops in all the dioceses that include Catholic colleges or universities where faculty admire, appreciate, and assign Quest for the Living God. Suppression of thought usually backfires. This whole episcopal critique and its attendant publicity has drawn a lot of attention to Sister Johnson’s work, and made her even more widely appreciated among theologians and laity than she was before. 😃
 
grannymh said:
Obviously, not all theology classes are about Catholic theology.
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StAnastasia said:
Funny! This is your old ploy of “You’re not a real Catholic like I am.” If you want to suppress Dr. Johnson’s work you’d better get on the phone to the bishops in all the dioceses that include Catholic colleges or universities where faculty admire, appreciate, and assign Quest for the Living God. Suppression of thought usually backfires. This whole episcopal critique and its attendant publicity has drawn a lot of attention to Sister Johnson’s work, and made her even more widely appreciated among theologians and laity than she was before. 😃
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Where did this response come from?

Everyone knows that there are all kinds of theology courses. For example, what does a course on Hinduism have to do with “You’re not a real Catholic like I am”? Or what about systemics, historical development and so on? What about Protestantism?

Speaking of thoughts…StAnastasia, what do you consider as the theological highlights of Quest for the Living God?

P.S.
For readers’ information.
All I want to do is to clarifly Quest for the Living God in the light of the Bishops’ Statement.
 
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