Friday, December 9, 2011

Fr. William Clark, S.J. On Fordham's Sr. Elizabeth Johnson's Discredited Book


Sr. Elizabeth A. Johnson, CSJ
The Board of the College Theology Society wishes to express to our membership our sadness and grave concern in response to the statement released on October 28, 2011 by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine regarding the case of Professor Elizabeth Johnson. 
The Committee on Doctrine has chosen to publicly criticize and discredit—not once but twice—a work by one of our most esteemed colleagues without entering into a process of dialogue with her about the issues being raised. 
Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, prepared a substantive response that repudiated the criticisms of her work as unfounded, and requested that a formal dialogue beestablished between her and the Committee on Doctrine to discuss the range of theological issues raised by their initial Statement issued March 24, 2011. 
Her request was not granted; instead the second statement not only repeated the previous characterization of her work without engaging the issues she raised in her response, 
but also raised new criticisms of Dr. Johnson’s retrieval of female metaphors and symbols of God as foundwithin both biblical texts and classic texts from our Catholic theological tradition.
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Link (here) to the full statement of The College Theological Society. 
You can read the full list of signers of this letter as well.

William Clark, Ph.D., S.J.
College of the Holy Cross
Worcester, MA
Board Member

5 comments:

Sawyer said...

I've read the documents in question. The bishops' analyses and criticisms are correct and vastly superior to the theological mush and equivocations that Sr. Johnson presented.

Anonymous said...

I've read them too Sawyer and the bishops are wrong.

Joseph Fromm said...

Dear Anon December 11, 2011 9:55 PM,

How are the Bishop's wrong?

Anonymous said...

so many closeted homosexuals against a one woman

Anonymous said...

C'mon Froom--Sawyer's glib response deserves an equally short rejoinder.

The issue is discussed fully on the relevant websites, e.g.,Fr. Clark's article.