Marquette Actually Acts Catholic?

Seattle U. prof, Marquette settle
over rescinded job offer

By Jack Broom

Seattle Times staff reporter

"A Seattle University professor has reached an agreement with Marquette University, which abruptly rescinded a job offer to her last month, a move that had triggered speculation that the Milwaukee, Wis., university objected to the lesbian scholar's published works on gender and sexual orientation.

Terms of the resolution between Marquette and SU professor Jodi O'Brien (pic above) were not disclosed. But in a statement to the media, O'Brien said she hopes the agreement will lead to "a legacy of community betterment [at Marquette], including research and education regarding issues of gender and sexuality."

Marquette officials had denied that O'Brien's sexual orientation or the quality of her published work were factors in the Jesuit university's decision to rescind its offer to her to become dean of its Helen Way Klingler College of Arts and Sciences.

At the time the job offer was revoked, a Marquette spokeswoman said officials at the Jesuit university were concerned about some of O'Brien's published writings "relating to Catholic mission and identity."

In a news release Wednesday, Marquette's president, the Rev. Robert A. Wild, S.J., said: "We deeply regret the upset and unwanted attention that we caused this outstanding teacher and scholar, and we are grateful for the graciousness with which she has handled this matter in the weeks since the decision was announced."

Wild said his decision to rescind O'Brien's contract reflected his judgment for the university on her writing as it pertained to the university's mission and identity.

"To be sure, the university recognizes that, as is true of many judgment calls, different individuals and institutions could reasonably reach a different conclusion." Wild said.

O'Brien, in her statement, said her goal was reaching an accord that would be "responsive and respectful to the members of the Marquette community and the Milwaukee area residents who have shown such tremendous support for me.""

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.

Comments

[James M. Essig]

I am convinced that folks will only fully appreciate human sexuality and adhere to Church Teachings regarding appropriate forms of its expression if they obtain a sense of the wonderment and mistique about the more sublime and intangable aspects of human nature, especially with regards to the nature of the human soul which includes its resemblance and likeness to the TRIUNE GOD.

I remember as a 4 year old boy, while I was living with my family in Arlington Virginia just a few miles outside of Washington D.C., asking my Mom where my Soul was located within my body, and what did the human soul like, to which my Mom, if my memory serves me correctly, said it is a form. At the time I first clearly recall asking her this question, I was playing with my toy “Colorforms” template by which one would take small rubber-like, membranous material based, variously colored and shaped, renditions of articles of clothing and place them over a black colored template whereby one could dress the template with the self-adhesively removable stickers. I think I may have actually had some idea, at that very day, about the human soul, that is not too far removed from how it is commonly summarized in theology or philosophy classes. I had thus sort of arrived at the notion; even then, that the soul did not have a geometric shape, but nonetheless, was some sort of ideal in the sense that my young and very limited mind could comprehend. I have not lost the sense of wonderment regarding the sublime nature of the human soul since then, and the personal sense of mystique about the topic has only deepened and grown over the years since my childhood.

The Human Soul resembles that HOLY TRINITY in terms of intra-enumeration of fundamental aspects. Just as the ONE TRIUNE GOD, has THREE DIVINE PERSONS, THE FATHER, THE SON, and THE HOLY SPIRIT, one can think of the Human Soul as having 3 power aspects, The Heart, The Intellect, and The Will. Each one of these power aspects of the Human Soul is truly the Human Soul.

Now a Catholic Church written document refers to the TRIUNE GOD, in HIS THREE PERSONS as being THRICE HOLY. Well, perhaps we can refer to the Human Soul as being Thrice Psychological, or Thrice Intra-personal.

From Freudian Psychodynamic Personality Theory, we can refer to the Human Psyche as tri-partite in terms of the Conscious, Sub-Conscious, and Unconscious. The Conscious has the least amount of data, knowledge and experience, the Sub-Conscious, the next greater amount of data, knowledge, and experience, and the Unconscious, the bulk of the data, knowledge, and experience. Likewise using the perhaps outmoded but still philosophically relevant Freudian Psychodynamic Personality Theory, we can categorize the Human Psyche by the Ego, Super Ego, and the Id.

Regarding the Human Intellect, we can classify its nature in terms of Abstract Thought and Processes, Experiential or Intuitive Thought Processes, and the Memory.

We can classify abstract reasoning into three commonly made distinctions as; Mathematical Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Creative Reasoning which can include either or both of the former forms of abstract reasoning.

Regarding the memory, it is commonly classified into three broad categories such as the long term memory, the short term memory, and the working memory, the later of which is routinely active in our daily working schedule and which involves the pre-frontal cortex as one of its principle mediators.

We can classify the Human Heart into the Instinctive Appetites or Drives, the Emotions, and The Refined Spiritual Sentiments and Consolations such as authentic spiritual joy. Unfortunately, I seem to be stuck in the Instinctive Appetites or Drives mode because of my multiple vices, which require me to feel the need to attend the Sacrament of Confession frequently, especially with regard, at least as of before I recently started the South Beach Diet, the vice of gluttony. Too many Wendy’s Triple Baconator Combo Large meal I suppose. Grins and Giggles! We can classify the Instinctive Appetites in three commonly made distinctions as the erotic sexual drive, the drive to eat and drink, and the drive to sleep or rest. Of the drives that are ubiquitously active in every conscious and fully functioning person; Saint, Sinner, Celibate, Married, Single, Adult or Child, alike, we have the drive to eat and drink, the drive to rest, relax, and/or sleep, and the drive to eliminate bodily waste. I suppose breathing can be considered a drive, but as it is regulated by the autonomic central nervous system and since most of the time, it is occurs unconsciously, as one goes about their daily activities, it is not included in this listing.

We can classify the Will in terms of Rational and Fully Deliberative Acts, Semi-Deliberative Acts, and Instinctive Volitional Reactions. One aspect of such volition classification involves moral culpability, as in acts that are; Mortal Sins, Venial Sins, or Non-Sinful and Morally Good Acts.

From an ontological consideration, we can classify the metaphysical properties of the Human Soul in terms of three categories; Its Substantial nature or its Essence, Its Power Aspects of Heart, Intellect or Will which are otherwise often referred to as its Faculties, and its Purely Accidental Properties such as individual experiences, daily working and living activities, sensations, and the like, from a conscious, subconscious, and/or unconscious stand point.

Since we are made in GOD’s image and likeness with our Souls being the aspect of we humans that is of greatest importance and by which we are most made in GOD’s Image and Likeness, and since GOD is a TRIUNE GOD, we can expect that at some ontological and existential levels, we resemble in our Soul’s the TRIUNE NATURE of GOD. We will not likely fully understand this aspect of our Souls being in the Image and Likeness of GOD until we behold GOD in Heaven where after the Final Resurrection of the Dead at the End of Time, we will have access to the wonders of all creation for eternity.

To fully respect each aspect of our nature including but not limited to its affective aspects, we need to regain a sense of the mystery of our souls.

[RB2]

Hey James you write well, but the transitory unlasting nature of this comment section is really not worth the effort of all that.

Better pastures for you is definetly recommended.

[Matilda Buchanan]

The continuing employment of dissenters in Catholic theology faculties is a cause of great scandal that ultimately contributes to the spread of the culture of death and to the emptying out of Churches.

A victory has been won recently however against one such dissenter. In Scotland defenders of the Catholic Faith have been successful in having Pauline Books and Media withdraw books authored by Thomas Groome from display in the window of their shop in Glasgow. Groome is a Professor of Theology and Ministry at Boston College. The protesters threatened to demonstrate outside the shop and leaflet customers if the books were not withdrawn. The Sister who runs the shop gave an undertaking the display would be taken down, a commitment which she later honoured.
One of Groome’s books on display was What Makes Us Catholic. Published in 2002, this book has been widely used throughout the English speaking world, with Boston College’s theology department conducting courses on it in various countries via the internet.
I have read and excellent and indepth review of What Makes Us Catholic published online by Eamonn Keane (google ‘Promoting Thomas Groome’s Errors in the Archdiocese of Armagh and Beyond’). In what follows, I draw heavily on Keane’s review of Groome’s book.
Groome states the focus of the book as follows: “My focus throughout this book is Catholic Christian identity…I try to describe the defining attitudes of Catholic Christianity as these might shape how people engage in the world” (p. XVIII)
On women priests Groome says: “It would appear that the Western church is insisting upon celibacy and maleness for priesthood at the expense of people’s access to Eucharist – so central to Catholic identity and spirituality” (pp. 102-103 ). He adds:
“There can be problems in making an argument from nature to favor society or social arrangements. For example, there has been much gender and racial bias in how the dominant culture has interpreted ‘nature’. As late as 1880, the Massachusetts Medical Society argued that women were unsuited ‘by nature’ to be physicians. This is not unlike the argument that the Catholic church still makes against women becoming priests” (p. 104).
Then, ridiculing the magisterium and Catholics who accept its teaching he says:
“Catholics can have an air of know-it-all, acting as if ours is the only and completely true faith, replete with all the answers. Surely, this is more the sin of pride than a truly catholic spirituality. Some of the hubris is encouraged by a teaching magisterium that typically sounds absolutely certain in its pronouncements, as if faith is no longer a ‘leap’ and all can be assured. The joke rings true that when the Catholic church finally agrees to ordain women, the pronouncement will begin with, ‘As we have always taught…’.” (p. 263)
Drawing on crackpot biblical interpretations of early Christian origins by radical pro-abortion feminist theologian, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Groome goes on to assail the hierarchical structure of the Church when he says:
“Note the spirit of equality in the first Christian community. A great scripture scholar of our time, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, argues that a defining aspect of Jesus’ ministry was his attempt to forge ‘an inclusive discipleship of equals.’ Jesus’ community should be totally inclusive, with a radical equality among the members. Indeed, there are roles of leadership, but all Christians are equal before God…The Catholic church has yet to function as an ‘inclusive discipleship of equals.’ In fact it has looked more like the Roman Empire (its first structural context) with its top-down chains of command and severe inequalities” (p, 188).
Together with his reliance on Fiorenza, Groome in What Makes Us Catholic, also draws on the on the work John Dominic Crossan who is also a heretic. Referring to Crossan’s book The Historical Jesus, Groome states:
“For first-century Palestine, nothing bespoke the inclusivity of Jesus’ ministry more than his table fellowship…The New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan explains that in Jesus’ world, ‘Open [table fellowship] profoundly negated distinctions and hierarchies between female and male, poor and rich, Gentile and Jew.’ Jesus welcomed all to the table – total inclusion!’” (p. 189)
Born in Ireland in 1934, Crossan was ordained to the priesthood in 1957 but left it in 1969. He is one of the leaders of the ‘Jesus Seminar’ which is a group of scholars who posit that over 80 percent of what Jesus is reported to have said and done in the Gospels is fiction. This fictional material would include the Resurrection of Jesus. Apart from this, Crossan in his books asserts that Jesus did not rise from the dead ( in an April 10, 1995 article in Time Magazine he said that dogs probably devoured the body of Jesus), that there was no Virgin Birth etc. I will say no more on this, lest I blaspheme!
Throughout What Makes Us Catholic, Groome can never get away from his apparent need to sideline the doctrinal truth regarding the Church being an hierarchical institution. He says: “Vatican II championed a communal understanding of the Church, insisting that its primary nature is to be ‘a people of God’ rather than a hierarchical institution” (p. 188). This is simply false. I will not go into this point here, but let me say that the question is well dealt with in Keane’s article. Groome is consistent in his erroneous assertions however. Throughout his work he rarely fails to blur the distinction between the hierarchical (ordained) priesthood and the common priesthood of all the baptised, something that would call for a rejection of the hierarchical nature of the Church as something established by Christ.
In What Makes Us Catholic, Groome uses ’suspicion’ to chip away at the integrated structure of Catholic faith and life. He says:
“From experience we know well the human capacity for error…Should it surprise us, then, that we find the same – error and sin – throughout the history of the Christian people? Besides approaching Christian Story with retrieval and creativity in mind, therefore, we also need to approach it with a bit of healthy suspicion” (p. 28 )
Applying ‘suspicion’ to the teaching of the Church in What Makes Us Catholic, Groome concludes as follows: “It is clear that women carried on functions of ministry in the first Christian communities that would now be associated with the priesthood. Disciples and their communities of faith should be as fully inclusive” (pp. 189-90). While not stating in What Makes Us Catholic what these functions were, he does however in his book Sharing Faith assert that the authority to preside over the celebration of the Eucharist was not related in any way to a special power bestowed through a sacrament conferred by the apostles or their successors, while at the same time he erroneously asserted that women presided over the celebration of the Eucharist. He says:
“Instead, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the ‘sacramental powers’ resided in the whole community and in its enacting of the sacred symbols that made manifest God’s saving presence; the community chose certain people to preside at divine worship for the sake of ‘holy order.’ Usually, but not invariably, this designation fell to the community leader, not because of a sacral power, but by her or his function of leadership. Power to celebrate Eucharist did not lead to community leadership, but rather leadership led to presiding at Eucharist” (Sharing Faith, p. 310).
Contrary to Groome’s heretical reconstructions of early Christian origins, the fact remains that it is Catholic doctrine that Jesus commissioned the apostles at the Last Supper to preside over the celebration of the Eucharist, and that in passing on this power to their successors, they conferred it only on men, something which they knew to be in keeping with “the will of the Lord.” But on this point Groome is again consistent in his assault on Catholic teaching. In Sharing Fait, and by way of a quotation from Kenan B Osborne cited approvingly, Groome puts forth the following heretical proposition:
“Of the traditional Catholic notion that the apostles were commissioned at the Last Supper to preside at Eucharist, Osborne writes, ‘In spite of the long tradition of this view, contemporary scholars find no basis for such an interpretation. In other words, Jesus did not ordain the apostles (disciples) at this final supper to be ‘priests,’ giving them thereby the power to celebrate the eucharist’” (Sharing Faith, p. 512, note 27).
In What Makes Us Catholic, Groome has nothing good to say about the celebration of Holy Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. He says:
“I was present for a papal mass on that Epiphany morning, and the liturgy reflected the same exclusivity – no women or people of color in the sanctuary, only white men and none of them looked poor. Now I found myself wondering if Jesus, who founded a radical inclusive community of disciples – catholic at its best – would recognize any of this as his legacy” (p. 239)
This stands in stark contrast with his experience of liturgy at the Abbey of Iona which he describes as follows:
“The storm howled through the rafters of the great stone Abbey of Iona as if gathering us from the four winds. We were a rainbow community, with all the hues of humanity, assembled around the high altar to share ‘the bread of life.’ Although our diversity was dramatic, more amazing still was the local inclusivity. For old neighboring enemies – English Anglicans, Scottish Calvinists, Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Catholics – were assembled here to celebrate as one Body of Christ. I’d never imagined a gathering like it this side of eternity, if then…As the sacred drama unfolded on this Sabbath morning, the presider invited us ‘to come to the table of company with Jesus…the table of sharing with the poor of the world…the table of communion with the earth in which Christ became incarnate.’ What Christian could refuse such an invitation? It felt as if the whole world came forward as one grand communion, the living and dead, the saints and sinners…” (pp. 107-108)
In a part titled “Concerning the Celebration of Communion” in the Iona Abbey Worship Book, we find the following:
“We celebrate Communion twice weekly in the Abbey Church, on Sunday morning and on the evening before the guests leave. Because we are an ecumenical community, we bring a wide range of traditions to this celebration. Some call it the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion, while others refer to it as the Eucharist, the Mass or the Breaking of Bread. We believe that the invitation to this sacrament comes not from any Church or individual, but from Jesus. We therefore invite in Christ’s name all who hear his invitation and who wish to respond by receiving the bread and the wine.”
Promoting his false ecumenism in What Makes Us Catholic, Groome says: “The ecumenical dialogue encouraged by Vatican II also helped Catholics to realize how much they hold in common with other Christians, and that our differences are more of emphasis than of kind” (p. 32). This is simply false. I will not elaborate this point, any person with a modicum of Catholic faith will see Groome’s statement for what it is.
Groome follows up the statement above in What Makes Us Catholic by saying: “Remember, too, that there are three major expressions of Catholic Christianity, each with its own distinctiveness – Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Roman Communion” (WMUC 33). He adds: “…Vatican II avoided the term Roman Catholic, wanting to honor the catholicity of the whole Church of Christ – Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic” (p. 242). Further on in the book, and in reference to the statement by Saint Ignatius of Antioch that “Where Christ is, there is the Catholic Church,” Groome says:
“The surrounding text indicates Ignatius’s meaning, namely, that when the spirit of Jesus prevails in a community, it is complete, the ‘whole’ Church is present. In other words, each Christian community constitutes its own unique expression of Church, and the completeness of the local community is an instance of Christian catholicity” (p, 245-46)
As Keane points out in his commentary on this passage from Groome’s book, “Groome has failed to include a key element regarding the nature of the Church which St. Ignatius referred to in chapter 2 of his Letter to the Smyrnaeans. Where St. Ignatius speaks of Jesus Christ being present wherever a Christian community is gathered, he has in mind a community gathered around its bishop, or someone the bishop has appointed.” Having said this, Keane went to reproduce the words of Saint Ignatius where in chapter 8 of the Letter to the Smyrnaeans he says:
“You must all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father, and the presbytery as you would the Apostles. Reverence the deacons as you would the command of God. Let no one do anything of concern to the Church without the bishop. Let that be considered a valid Eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop, or by one whom he appoints. [2]Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be there; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. Nor is it permitted without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate the agape; but whatever he approve, this too is pleasing to God; so that whatever is done will be secure and valid.”
Continuing with his dissembling and false ecumenism in What Makes Us Catholic, Groome says:
“The Reformers associated catholic with the hegemony they were rejecting. By contrast, Western and Eastern Catholics began to claim that they were fully catholic and that this proved their credential as the Church of Jesus Christ. Vatican II avoided such polemics and proposed catholicity as a challenge for the whole Christian Church. Catholic is not an accomplishment of any denomination but a vision for what Christians – Protestant and Catholic – should become together. The Catechism echoed this sentiment, saying that the Church is ever ‘called to realize’ its catholicity” (p. 247)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church never “echoed” any such nonsense. It did list the various Rites that are present in the Church and which possess their own spiritual and liturgical traditions and practices (cf. n. 1203), but they are all nevertheless in communion with and governed by the Successor of St. Peter, the Pope. This is the same Church as was manifested at Pentecost, it was universal then, and it remains “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” due to the fact that “Christ governs her through Peter and the other apostles, who are present in their successors, the Pope and the college of bishops” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 869).
In What Makes Us Catholic, Groome promotes a form of inclusive language that has been rejected by the Church. He says:
“Once, having seen Jesus in prayer, the disciples requested, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’ Jesus taught them first to address God like a Loving Parent [footnote inserted here], then to reverence God’s holy name, to pray that God’s reign might be realized as God’s loving will on earth as in heaven…” (p. 186).
With this statement, Groome inserts a footnote which reads:
“The texts of the New Testament make it clear that Jesus addressed God as ‘Father.’ It is also evident, however, that Jesus’ sense of father included many characteristics that, even today, would be associated culturally with a mother. It is certainly true that by referring to God as father Jesus never intended to legitimate patriarchy or male superiority” (p. 304).
For several decades Groome has promoted a form of inclusive language to be surreptitiously introduced to children and into Catholic liturgy. In reference to what he termed “central themes for the hearts of Christian religious educators,” in Sharing Faith goes he lists among other things “God the Father/Mother, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit” (Sharing Faith, 427). Again in Sharing Faith, he says: “One traditional (since Augustine) imaging of the inner life of the Trinity poses the Holy Spirit as the Love between God the Father/Mother and the Second Person, revealed in Jesus Christ” (pp. 442-43).
In the 1991 edition of his book Language for a Catholic Church, Groome erroneously asserted that Christ’s maleness was one of “the ‘accidents’ of his life.” (p. 27). In the 1995 edition of the same book, Groome went so far as to cast a dark shadow over the historical concreteness and reality of the Incarnation itself when he said it “is helpful to reduce reliance on gender-based pronouns” when referring to Jesus so as “to emphasize his humanity rather than his maleness” (p. 28). He continued :
“As for all human beings, Jesus had to be one gender or the other, and the Gospels give no indication of any particular significance in his being male. Better, then, to treat this as one aspect of the ’scandal of particularity’ that was his life: as a person, Jesus was a man, a Jew, a carpenter, from Nazareth, etc. It is through his divinity and humanity, not particularly his maleness, that Jesus is our Saviour and Liberator” (pp. 26-27).
As pointed out by Pope Benedict XVI in his book Jesus of Nazareth, “God is never named or addressed as mother, either in the Old or in the New Testament” (p. 139). The most fundamental reality of all Christian prayer, worship, and action in the world, is that it is offered through the Son, in the Spirit, and to the Father. Groome’s program for “inclusive language” is a poisoning of the wellsprings and foundations of Christian prayer.
To assert that the fact that the Incarnation of the Son of God took place in the male form is of no more than ‘accidental’ matter in the plan of redemption is erroneous. Again anyone with a modicum of authentic understanding of Catholicism and its being rooted in real events that occurred in history, not to mention its sacramental system, will understand Groome’s heretical affirmation here for what it is. Suffice to say again, Groome is consistent. He wants us to avoid using male pronouns to refer to Jesus because he rejects that teaching of the Church which holds that the one who represents Jesus in the Sacrifice of the Mass by lending Him his voice so as to pronounce the words of consecration must be a man, since Jesus who becomes present in the ordained priest was and remains for ever a man: “Jesus Christ, the same Yesterday, Today and Forever”.
In What Makes Us Catholic, Groome says:
“Christian faith holds that the divine and human natures in Jesus never interfered with each other. So, as human, Jesus had to be reared and taught like any person. Luke’s Gospel explicitly states that Jesus ‘grew in wisdom, age, and grace before God and all the people’ (Luke 2:52)” (p. 129).
Earlier in What Makes US Catholic Groome says: “Echoing his Hebrew faith, Jesus preached such radical love as ‘the greatest commandment’ (Mk 12:31)…” (p. 66). Later he adds: “For more than two hundred years, critical scripture scholars have attempted to describe ‘the historical Jesus’ – the kind of person he was, how he lived, what he preached. From this scholarship we can now glean a reliable picture of the faith that Jesus modeled for disciples” (p. 176). Finally on this question of the alleged “faith” of Jesus, he says:
“No matter what ‘hat’ Jesus wore – wisdom teacher of love and happiness, prophet of peace and justice, miracle worker restoring health and feeding the hungry, liberator from sin and oppression – they all had this defining purpose: that God’s rule of peace and justice, love and freedom might come and God’s will of fullness of life for all be realized on earth as in heaven. This was the core of Jesus’ own faith: living for the reign of God” (p, 176)
While the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the “human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge” (n. 472), it is careful to add:
“But at the same time, this truly human knowledge of God’s Son expressed the divine life of his person. ‘The human nature of God’s Son, not by itself but by its union with the Word, knew and showed forth in itself everything that pertains to God.’ Such is first of all the case with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his Father. The Son in his human knowledge also showed the divine penetration he had into the secret thoughts of human hearts” (n. 473).
The next paragraph of the Catechism says: “By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal. What he admitted to not knowing in this area, he elsewhere declared himself not sent to reveal.”
As Keane points out, the passages from the Catechism of the Catholic cited above “indicate that in Christ there existed a communicatio idiomatum, meaning that properties of his divinity can be referred to his humanity as a consequence of the unity of the divine and human natures in the one Person of the Word Incarnate. In consequence of this, throughout his life Jesus was in possession of the Beatific Vision. Being in possession of the Beatific Vision throughout his earthly life, Jesus did not therefore live by faith.”
Keane recalls how in November 2006, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a Notification approved by Pope Benedict XVI warning against erroneous notions about the Person of Jesus Christ that had been spread far afield by the Jesuit theologian Fr. Jon Sobrino A section of this Notification headed “Self-Consciousness of Jesus” said: “Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, enjoys an intimate and immediate knowledge of his Father, a ‘vision’ that certainly goes beyond the vision of faith. The hypostatic union and Jesus’ mission of revelation and redemption require the vision of the Father and the knowledge of his plan of salvation” (n.8). The Notification recalled a passage from Pope Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis Christi which teaches that Christ was in possession of the Beatific Vision from the first moment of the Incarnation, on which basis it rejected as contrary to Catholic Christological doctrine the false assertion that Christ had or needed the theological virtue of faith. Hence, when Groome speaks in What Makes Us Catholic of the “the faith that Jesus modeled for disciples,” and when he says that the reign of God “was the core of Jesus’ own faith” (p. 176), Groome has stepped beyond the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy.
Below I paste a few random quotations from Groome’s What Makes Us Catholic to show how lacking his work is historical perspective and reality. He says:
“The Catholic church often sins egregiously against catholicity. Both insiders and outsiders can experience it as a hierarchical club, marked by inhospitable signs of sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia. Its dominant culture – patterns of thought, symbols and rituals, structures and laws – all are distinctly Western, or even European parochial…For all its claims to catholicity, Catholicism is struggling to become an inclusive church” (p. 241).
Elsewhere in What Makes Us Catholic he says:
“Though very embarrassing, evidence abounds of slavery and racism, of hatred of women and sexism, of intolerance and bigotry in the Church’s beliefs, practices and worship throughout its history…It [Catholic Church] participated in the destruction of millions of innocent women who were put to death as witches” (p. 28).
Later on he says:
“The pages of history are strewn with evidence that the Catholic church has failed – often miserably – to live by the faith that does justice…It has executed countless people for dissent by its Inquisition, and conducted witch-hunts, using horrible misogynist rhetoric to justify destroying millions of innocent women” (p. 228)
In the passages above, Groome has distorted the historical record and grossly exaggerated the historical atrocities carried out in the name of the Church during her history (see Keane for a balanced and accurate discussion of this question).
As the foregoing reveals, Groome’s error extends way beyond the question of the ordination of women. For Catholic dioceses or bookshops to promote his work is cooperation in evil, the evil of leading faithful Catholics away from the truth. One might argue that the same might be said about promoting the works of Aristotle who reached erroneous conclusions on several important points, including ethical ones. This would be a wrong conclusion. Aristotle was a great philosopher, albeit limited by the knowledge of his time. In Groome’s case we have the situation of someone contradicting Catholic doctrine while claiming to be a Catholic theologian in good standing. With patronage from the Jesuits and his books sold by Catholic nuns, his work will appear to poorly formed Catholics as sound doctrine.
On June 11, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of sin, satanic influence and the toleration of heresy as lying at the root of the priestly sexual abuse scandals. Taking Psalm 22 where it says “Your rod and your staff – they comfort me”, Pope Benedict went on refer to the need for the “rod” of discipline to correct errors in the Church. “The Church too must use the shepherd’s rod,” he said, adding “the rod with which he protects the faith against those who falsify it, against currents which lead the flock astray.”

Matilda Buchanan

[anthony rowe]

why do we continue to call protestants Catholic, just because they sit in the pews next to us? you either accept all of the teachings of the Catholic church or you don't. This is no democracy, you cannot elect a representative who will change the laws for you some day.

[James]

Matilda, are you related to Jim Essig?