Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Cardinal Wuerl defends USCCB's critical position on book: Quest for the Living God


Cardinal Wuerl | Photo: Reuters

If you follow my Twitter Feed you will have noticed a recent news story about the USCCB's Committee on Doctrine which issued a statement critical of the book, Quest for the Living God by Sister Elizabeth Johnson:

The book “contains misrepresentations, ambiguities, and errors that bear upon the faith of the Catholic Church as found in Sacred Scripture, and as it is authentically taught by the Church’s universal magisterium,” the critique notes.


From Catholic Culture, a followup:

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, chairman of the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has written a 13-page letter to US bishops defending the committee’s recent critique of Sister Elizabeth Johnson’s Quest for the Living God.


Cardinal Wuerl’s letter follows a recent critical response from the directors of the Catholic Theological Society of America, who charged that the bishops had not followed their own procedures in reviewing the book, had misunderstood Johnson's arguments, and had cast a shadow on the work of Catholic theologians.


“The Church’s teaching office, when grasped in the context of faith, is a great assistance to the scholarly research of theologians since its judgments are determinative of good theology,” Cardinal Wuerl writes. “The alternative is the principle of private judgment, which Blessed John Henry Newman labeled a ‘principle of disunion,’ conceived in opposition to the judgment of the Magisterium.”


“When a theologian does not understand his or her role within the communion of the Church, the role of a servant-- like that of a bishop-- to the truth, he or she risks usurping the bishop’s central role of leading people to salvation. Isolated from the community of faith, the theologian seriously endangers the faithful by proposing a ‘different Gospel’ (2 Cor. 11:4) which is no longer salvific.”


Cardinal Wuerl added that the catechetical crisis of the past few decades made the critique of Sister Johnson’s book particularly necessary.
Continue reading further details and links: Cardinal Wuerl defends USCCB critique of Sister Johnson’s book



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The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!
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