Haight on trial
• HAIGHT ON TRIAL The news is pathetically familiar—yet another theologian barred from teaching, and set to writing a take-home exam for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. According to Robert Manning,...
...Who could deny that...
...When theologians struggle with questions about Jesus, about salvation, and about the worldwide role of the church itself, how can silencing and harassment possibly advance our understanding...
...What impact do their conclusions have on other areas of church teaching and on church practice...
...This is a long process that should engage theologians, bishops, pastors, and indeed, at some level, the whole people of God...
...How does the church teach...
...How do the novel elements of their theology relate to classic formulations...
...Haight has debated his ideas with his theological peers, some of whom strongly disagree with his conclusions...
...This may not be easy, but it is absolutely necessary...
...Its process is the antithesis of the careful discernment of teaching that the church needs today...
...If the CDF cannot do that, the church should devise another means...
...How does Haight's work (and that of Jacques Dupuis, S.J., for example) fit in with the work of other Catholic and Christian theologians...
...Another step might be a Vatican-sponsored public examination of the state of the question, drawing in theologians, philosophers, missiologists, and others...
...Haight's book was reviewed critically in Commonweal by Notre Dame theologian John Cavadini (October 8,1999), while a more positive review by Fordham theologian Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., appeared in America (November 6, 1999...
...We do not suggest that book reviews or theologians' discussions alone can settle the matter of church teaching...
...These are critical matters...
...Catholics everywhere must grapple with the challenges of religious pluralism—as Haight, and others recently scrutinized, have been doing...
...According to Robert Manning, S.J., president of the Weston School of Theology, Roger Haight, S.J., professor of theology at the school, "has begun the work of clarifying his book," Jesus Symbol of God (Orbis), by responding to questions from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) (Boston Globe, April 24...
...What is required is dialogue, conversation, criticisms, countercriticisms, prayer, and Christian charity...
...Neither by popular vote, nor by curial fiat will these matters be resolved, as the history of theological silencing shows (in this regard, Bernard Doering's report on the correspondence of Jacques Maritain and Charles Journet is instructive...
...see page 17...
...Other reviews have appeared in more scholarly venues...
...What does the church teach...
...But the secret process by which the CDF begins its investigation and then alone serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and defense counsel is shameful, inviting subterfuge and hypocrisy...
...Another process is needed—one that honors both the struggle of theologians to clarify and enlarge our knowledge and the responsibility of the church for right teaching...
...Yet these are one step in the process of clarification...
...Catholic belief and practice are a great gift handed down from generation to generation and rightly guarded by the faithful and their bishops...
...But the CDF's secretive methods do nothing but undermine the very teaching role of the church...
Vol. 128 • May 2001 • No. 10
