Cleaning the Catholic House of Dissent
Last week, Revealer contributor Jo Piazza sent us a press release that reminds us how the RCC conducts its discipline. Maryknoll Superior General, Edward M. Dougherty, has focused the church’s disapproval on Father Roy Bourgeois for his “public support of women’s ordination.” Bourgeois was given 15 days to recant that support, or face dismissal from his order and/or laicization.
According to Mary E. Hunt at Religion Dispatches, the threats to Father Bourgeois are one part of a broader effort to make the church “lean and mean” and absolutely compliant with the Pope, to clear out less conservative members. Priests who ally themselves with women religious are one target; theologians are another. Hunt points to the recent condemnation by the U.S. Catholic Bishops Committee on Doctrine of the 2007 book by Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, Fordham Distinguished Professor of Theology, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God. Continue Reading →