Letters

US theologians (letter)

Fr G.H. Duggan SM

Contents - Oct 2002 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Positive developments in liturgy - Michael Gilchrist Power without responsibility: the vendetta against Dr Pell - Peter Westmore News: The Church Around the World - AD2000 Commission for Australian Catholic Women justifies its existence - Michael Gilchrist Liturgy: Vatican control over ICEL tightens - Dr William Oddie Bishop Power: Church teachings need to be 're-examined' - AD2000 REPORT US billionaire promotes orthodox teaching - Zenit News Service Catholic liturgy in the 21st century: major challenges facing the Church - Fr Peter Williams John Henry Newman's critique of liberalism - Michael Davies Letters: Archbishop Pell (letter) - Eamonn & Patricia Keane Letters: "The Pell Show" (letter) - Stephen Hitchings Letters: Justice? (letter) - Godwin Brown Letters: Shepherds (letter) - Br Con Moloney CFC Letters: Church "renovation" (letter) - B. Tooley Letters: Church re-design (letter) - Michael Barry Letters: Soul and body (letter) - Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini Letters: Zero tolerance (letter) - Alan A. Hoysted Letters: Letters to the Bishops (letter) - Mavis Power Letters: Catholic education (letter) - Dr Garrick Small Letters: US theologians (letter) - Fr G.H. Duggan SM Letters: Celibate priesthood (letter) - Cyril Drew Letters: Good response (letter) - C.G. Jarrells Letters: Novus Ordo (letter) - Maurice Collins Letters: New Zealand (letter) - Kevin E. Fennessy Poetry: The Great Deliverance - Marion Craig Books: The Courage to be Catholic, by George Weigel - Michael Novak (reviewer) Books: Completed Jew, by Andrew Sholl - Michael Casanova (reviewer) Books: Godfaring: On Reason, Faith and Sacred Being, by Francis Clark - Br Christian Moe FSC (reviewer) Books: New Titles from AD Books Reflection: Devotion to God through the Angelus and Rosary - Fr Fabian Duggan OSB

Some of your readers, sickened by the sexual scandals at present gravely troubling the Catholic Church in the United States, may be wondering about their causes. They will find at least a partial explanation in Msgr George A. Kelly's book The Battle for the American Church (pp 104-114).

Msgr Kelly tells how the executive of the Catholic Theological Society of America, which was elected by a minority (150-170) of the Society's 1500 members in 1977, commissioned a book Human Sexuality to be written by five of its members. It is in Kelly's words "the most outspoken contradiction of the Catholic moral code by Catholic theologians in the recent history of the American Church"; and he quotes eleven texts to show that this judgement is justified. It allows among other things premarital intercourse, contraception, homosexual relationships, masturbation and bestiality.

Sister Agnes Cunningham SSHM, on the staff of Mundelein Seminary, Chicago, one of the five authors of the book, said, "I do not know on what grounds the bishops could intervene." Brought to the attention of the Bishops' Conference, it should have provoked a thundering condemnation. All it evoked was a timorous, deprecatory squeak. It is clear from Kelly's account that the bishops were routed by the revolutionary theologians.

FR G.H. DUGGAN SM
Silverstream, New Zealand

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 15 No 9 (October 2002), p. 15