INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM AND CATHOLIC THEOLOGIANS

The following essay--by Luke Timothy Johnson, who is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament at Emory University, where I too now teach--is from the 1/27/06 issue of Commonweal.  I hope the essay is widely read.

After the Big Chill

Intellectual Freedom & Catholic Theologians
Luke Timothy Johnson    

Suppose we indulge our fondest hopes. Let us imagine that Pope Benedict XVI turns out to be quite unlike what many expected, and that he embraces a spirit of theological openness and generosity. No longer would a respected and respectful editor of a Jesuit journal be removed for the sin of advocating fairness; no more would a leading theological ethicist be removed from a tenured position or a systematic theologian be quelled by the same threat.

In this new atmosphere, local pastors would no longer be summoned to account in Rome on the basis of parishioners’ calls to the bishop (as priest friends of mine have been). Scholars (like me) would not be disinvited to conferences on Aquinas because they criticized John Paul’s theology of the body, or be asked to sign a statement that they would not do anything to “embarrass the church” when lecturing at a university, or, on the basis of other anonymous calls, be warned by the vicar-general of an archbishop who is now a cardinal against being “soft on the bodily Resurrection” of Christ when teaching New Testament to adult Catholics. The “big chill” within contemporary Catholicism includes all those mechanisms, overt and covert, by which the Vatican has deliberately sought to suppress theological intelligence and imagination in the name of doctrinal and moral “Truth.”

Now suppose all these measures stopped because Benedict XVI turned out to be someone who actually moderated his predecessor’s repressive instincts. Would the church then be in a state beatific? Would a healthy balance between magisterial authority and theological inquiry be struck then?

I am not sanguine. For one thing, the chill has become systemic. The episcopacy shaped by John Paul II will continue to perpetuate its fearful distrust of theologians. Defenders of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) argue that its investigations and sanctions of theologians are about “truth in advertising”-Catholic theologians in Catholic colleges should teach the way the Vatican says they should teach. Such a claim does little more than reduce theological truth to catechesis.

Is there a better way to think about the relationship between theologians and the church’s hierarchy? I think so. If we focus our hope for the church on the personality or policy proclivities of this or the last or the next pope, we simply perpetuate the Vatican’s tendency to identify the church with the magisterium and the magisterium with the pope. That, in turn, contributes to the ill-conceived conviction that all theological wisdom must spring from a single source. This fixation is problematic even-perhaps especially-if we grant that John Paul II and Benedict XVI are genuine and even important theologians. This fixation on the papacy results in the steady theological impoverishment of the church as a whole, precisely at a time when the task of articulating the church’s faith is urgent and daunting. The effort by the Vatican and its allies to control theological debate reflects little trust in the capacity of theologians to criticize one another-something they have never been reluctant to do-and even less trust in the best-educated laity in Catholic history that is hungry for intellectual engagement with the faith that is not condensed and condescending. Defenders of the CDF’s actions like to say that theology is an ecclesial, not merely an academic, vocation. I agree. It is precisely because theology is done by and for the church that it requires the highest gifts of theological intelligence and imagination. Some of the best theological talent available to the church today is found outside the clergy. If these lay theologians teach in Catholic colleges or seminaries, they are placed under strict control; if they teach in Protestant or secular schools, they are largely ignored. Many in the hierarchy seem indifferent to the academic theological community, while others seem hostile to the climate of intellectual freedom that theology needs.

[To print and/or read the whole essay, click here.  Here is the concluding paragraph:]

The theological impoverishment of the church today is real and if something is not changed, it will undoubtedly get worse. Perhaps it’s too much to hope that the present model of the church as household can open itself to a healthy conversation with the image of the church as the living body of the resurrected Christ, particularly if the present heads of household think that theirs is the only model that is true to revelation. But they are wrong. The alternative (and, I insist, complementary) image of the church is, if anything, truer to the good news as found in Scripture. Those of us who long for a church in which it is possible to be both smart and holy, both loyal and critical, live in hope that something of this vision may gain recognition. Still, suppose the big chill continues, through the papacy of Benedict XVI (despite our fondest hopes) and the papacies to follow. What can theologians do? They can continue to speak prophecy and to practice discernment among God’s people. What is at stake is the integrity of the church’s witness to the living God.
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