Congratulations to Sister Margaret Farley!

[As is well known, Margaret Farley's moral positions on several issues regarding human sexuality--including homosexuality--differs from that of the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. In my judgment, Farley's (dissenting) moral positions are compelling.]

The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 6, 2007

Yale Scholar Wins Grawemeyer Award in Religion

[Sister of Mercy Margaret Farley] has won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for her views on sexual ethics, the University of Louisville announced this evening.

Margaret A. Farley, an emeritus professor of Christian ethics [at Yale Divinty School] and a Roman Catholic nun, will receive the prize, which carries a $200,000 award, in recognition of her efforts to promote fairness in sexual relationships. In her 2006 book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (Continuum International Publishing Group), Ms. Farley argues that justice is the quality that forms, guides, and protects loving relationships.

Susan Garrett, director of the award program, said in a written announcement that Ms. Farley’s argument “is an important message in light of all the confusion surrounding sexuality today.”

The award in religion is one of five annual Grawemeyer prizes presented in recognition of achievements in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Ms. Farley is the third Yale scholar to receive a Grawemeyer this year. On Wednesday two psychologists from the university, along with a professor at Fordham University, were named the winners of the award in education. The winners of the awards for music, psychology, and “ideas improving world order” were announced earlier this week.

The awards were established in 1984 by H. Charles Grawemeyer, an industrialist and University of Louisville alumnus. More information about the Grawemeyer Awards and the Grawemeyer Foundation at the University of Louisville is available on the organization’s Web site. —Jason M. Breslow

[Click here to read the announcement posted by Yale Divinity School.  An excerpt from that announcement follows:]

Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, is a widely known Christian ethicist who was on the faculty of YDS from 1971 to 2007. During the course of her career, she has been a progressive theological voice in a broad range of areas including feminist theology, medical and sexual ethics, the role of women in the church, homosexuality and the church, and religious perspectives on the environment. Not infrequently, her views have been seen as a challenge to those of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.       

"I am deeply honored to receive this award, and humbled,” said Farley. “It is an author's greatest hope that her work will be well received not only by scholars but by general readers who seek insights into human experience and activity. The Grawemeyer Award in Religion has been so important for writers like myself who try to explore human relationships, including relationships with the divine. I am extremely grateful to be included in a long line of religious authors selected for this Award over many years."      

In his nomination of Farley for the Grawemeyer Award, Yale Divinity School Dean Harold Attridge wrote, “ Just Love is a carefully nuanced work that demonstrates the synergies of science and religion; how coupling religious awareness with other forms of knowledge can serve to elucidate matters fundamental to the human condition; and how customs particular to diverse religious traditions can each contribute to the process of discernment despite differences.”

The decisive question posed in Just Love is, “With what kinds of motives, under what sorts of circumstances, in what forms of relationships, do we render our sexual selves to one another in ways that are good, true, right, and just?” Farley's answer rests on the fundamental notion that morally appropriate sexual relationships, heterosexual as well as same-sex, must be characterized by justice.       
“It's an important message in light of all the confusion surrounding sexuality today,” said Susan Garrett, a professor at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in a Dec. 6 announcement from the seminary. Garrett, who directs the award program, added, “The religious right issues stark decrees while the entertainment industry tells us ‘anything goes.' People are confused about what's right.”

For Farley, “just love” requires consideration for the autonomy of persons, recognizes the uniqueness and equality of partners, and does no harm to self or others. Individual differences should be respected, but each individual must be treated as having unconditional value. In the book, Farley uses that framework to challenge traditional— and frequently negative—views of homosexuality, masturbation, divorce, and remarriage after divorce.       

“As a Catholic ethicist,” Attridge said, “Farley grounds her analysis in Christian theology and tradition. But she underscores the importance of enlisting the best information available—across a broad range of intellectual fields and religious/cultural traditions—to examine this complex aspect of life that is so connected to feelings of meaning and purpose.”

Indeed, in Just Love Farley declares, “In sexual ethics, the relevant disciplines will include not only philosophy but biology, medicine, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even history, literature, and art. . . Insofar as these disciplines give us a kind of ‘access' to reality – to the world and the universe, to human persons and the meanings of sexuality, to tragic or beneficial consequences of action – they are necessary for the doing of sexual ethics.”       

Reviews of Just Love praised it as a valuable contribution to ongoing discussions of topics so difficult that they threaten the unity of the church. Writing in The Christian Century magazine, William C. Placher said, “Margaret Farley has the guts and the clarity of mind to give us a third alternative to ‘narrowly constituted moral systems and rules' on the one hand and sexual chaos on the other.” And Dolores L. Christie, in Catholic Books Review , wrote, “No topic more than sexuality needs to be treated in a dispassionate manner . . . Farley has, in her usual fashion, covered the topic with impeccable scholarship, practical wisdom, and a compassion and acceptance for the existential reality of human beings in a sexual world.”