Theologians say Vatican doctrine office needs overhaul
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
PARIS (Reuters) - Pope Benedict is coming under mounting criticism from his former German theologian colleagues, one likening the Catholic Church's doctrinal office, that the pontiff once headed, to a 19th century censorship bureau.
Its censure in March of Father Jon Sobrino, a leading liberation theology proponent, prompted an appeal for a thorough overhaul of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the modern-day successor of the Inquisition.
"The structure of the CDF must be reformed," Peter Huenermann told Reuters by telephone from Tuebingen, Germany.
"It still operates just like the censorship bureaus most European countries had until the end of the 19th century," Huenermann, the appeal's author and a retired theology professor from Tuebingen University, said.
About 130 theologians in Germany and Austria have backed the appeal and messages of support are starting to come in from other countries as it gets translated.
The protest amounts to a vote of no confidence in the way Benedict, who headed the CDF for 24 years before becoming pope in 2005, deals with critical thinkers in the Church.
The European Society for Catholic Theology, based in Leuven, Belgium, has also protested against the CDF censure, saying it was badly argued and had ignored "the theological developments of the last 50 years."
Huenermann, whose Tuebingen colleague Hans Kueng the CDF banned from teaching Catholic theology in 1979, said there was a need for change.
"It has a small staff of functionaries ... who work from denunciations they get," he said. "But we live in a time when theologians everywhere are constantly researching new topics. There are many new issues, like bioethics and technology."
MODERN QUALITY CONTROL
The CDF, now headed by Cardinal William Levada from the United States, said Sobrino's "Jesus the Liberator" and other writings contained "erroneous or dangerous" passages that stressed Christ's humanity more than his divine nature.
In his article, Huenermann disputed the criticisms the CDF made and said some were wrong, unsubstantiated or "based on a hasty reading" of Sobrino's books.
He said the CDF should work like an academic review board, using modern methods such as peer review for publications to allow theologians to test out new ideas. He said he and some colleagues were considering drawing up a proposal for reforms.
Huenermann launched the protest wave in April by publishing an article in the German Catholic monthly Herder Korrespondenz calling for "modern quality control" for Church theology.
Colleagues created a virtual petition by sending in emails declaring their support for his appeal. The article has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Czech.
Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, taught theology in several German universities including Tuebingen before taking over the CDF, where he disciplined many liberation theologians and kept close tabs on Catholic theology professors.
Asked why German theologians were leading the protest against the office once led by the German Pope, Huenermann laughed and said: "Maybe because we still trust him enough to show some understanding for this."
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Edit: looks pretty bad for Viganò and the Bergoglian spin machine. It looks like anti-Roman theologians hostile to Benedict and John Paul II were prominent in the multi-volume Bergoglian theological paperweight.
[Sandro Magister] The end has not quite been written on the story of the “personal” and “confidential” letter written February 7 by Benedict XVI to the prefect of the secretariat for communications, Dario Edoardo Viganò, and partially made public by him on March 12.
Not only was there a key passage in it that was purposefully omitted in the press release sent out by Viganò himself:
> The Double "Foolish Prejudice." The Complete Text of the Letter by Benedict XVI
Not only had the beginning of this paragraph been manipulated to make it illegible in the photo of the letter released by Viganò’s secretariat:
> Vatican doctors photo of Benedict’s praise for Francis
There’s more. The letter by Benedict XVI that Settimo Cielo published on March 13 in its complete form was in reality not complete.
http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2018/03/17/more-on-the-letter-of-benedict-xvi-theres-another-paragraph-in-which-he-writes…/?refresh_ce
AMDG
"The Church comes away badly in scandal".
"In the context of the book launch, Forcades emphasized that the Church's relationship to homosexuality had finally changed with the election of Pope Francis. He tries to do the utmost, including through the Family Synod, to change the Church's attitude toward homosexuality."
"What children need is an adult, mature and responsible love from parents who sacrifice their needs for the children. Whether they are growing up with two women or two men is not a problem."
Tolentino's "model" for the future of Christianity
"The history of the West (and of the Church) might have been different if a symbolic, open and sensitive way had been chosen as an approach to the real, rather than creating the clear, triumphalist grammar we know. I repeat: maybe the story would be different. This is where the extraordinary work of Teresa Forcades i Vila, the feminist theology of history which the reader holds in her hand, comes to our aid."
"is in any case courageous: to show the contradictions and seek alternative interpretations that support a break of meaning and civilization. One conviction left by the book is that the future of Christianity depends especially on the purification process that succeeds us in its past and present. "
"Teresa Forcades i Vila reminds us of the essentials: that Jesus of Nazareth neither codified nor regulated. That is, he has created an ethic of relationship; he transformed the poetry of his message into the visibility of his flesh; he showed his body as a premise."
"What spiritual fruits can the participants of the fasting exercises of Ariccia get from it?"
