Posted on 09/14/2007 9:53:17 AM PDT by Ebenezer
The Vatican and U.S. Roman Catholic bishops are investigating the writings of a well-known American theologian who has analyzed how the Catholic faith relates to other religions.
The inquiry's focus is the Rev. Peter Phan, of Georgetown University, a Vietnamese-American priest from the Dallas diocese and former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America.
The U.S. bishops' Committee on Doctrine has traded correspondence with Phan since July 2005 seeking clarification on his writings, said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"There was not complete satisfaction with his response, which is why the dialogue continues," Walsh said. She did not go into further detail.
Phan declined comment Wednesday.
According a story published in the National Catholic Reporter on Wednesday, the Vatican raised concerns that Phan's 2004 book, "Being Religious Interreligiously," is "notably confused on a number of points of Catholic doctrine and also contains serious ambiguities."
The Vatican has condemned the writings of other Catholic theologians — including the Rev. Roger Haight, an American Jesuit, and the Rev. Jon Sobrino of El Salvador, a champion of liberation theology — on similar grounds.
Earlier this year, Pope Benedict XVI released a document reasserting the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, reiterating themes in the 2000 Vatican document Dominus Iesus. That document states non-Christians are "in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the church, have the fullness of the means of salvation."
The issues underpinning Phan's case are causing great debate among Catholic theologians grappling with how Catholicism relates to other faiths outside a European context, said Terrence Tilley, chairman of the theology department at Fordham University and president-elect of the Catholic Theological Society of America.
"To come to judgment as the Vatican seems to be doing so quickly, before theologians have had time to work out and critique the positions ... it's just premature," Tilley said. "It's in a sense cutting off debate before the debate's started."
ping
The ‘debate’ was settled 2000 years ago with Jesus’ death & resurrection. Theology which posits otherwise is wrong.
God bless Pope Benedict XVI, he’s working hard to expunge the Catholic Church of new-age, liberal theology which has no place in God’s Holy House.
“Yes, indeed. But this
is about the Vatican.
Why bring up Jesus?”
Why not? It’s about salvation, isn’t it?
Isn't one of their big shots down there - the CHAIR, I think - who was all over the liberal TV networks at the time of Pope John Paul II's death and Pope Benedict XVI's election, an ex-priest who left and got married?
Here's one of his "magisterial pronouncements":
Chester Gillis, professor and chair of theology, on young Americans who identify themselves as being members of the Catholic Church but live life on their own terms and not just by Rome's edicts:
"My sense is that this is an enduring condition, not just an anomaly. … There's a tension between Catholicism and American culture … [and] American culture is winning out."
A faith in flux: Young Catholics in the region and across America identify strongly with their church, but aren’t in lockstep with it. June 5, 2006, Philadelphia Inquirer
This is his bio from the website:
Chester Gillis is the Amaturo Chair in Catholic Studies in the Department of Theology and the Director of the Program on the Church and Interreligious Dialogue in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. An expert on the U.S. Catholic Church, the history of Catholicism, and the papacy, including Pope Bendedict XVI, his other areas of expertise include interfaith dialogue. He is the author of Roman Catholicism in America, Pluralism: A New Paradigm for Theology, A Question of Final Belief, Catholic Faith in America and editor of The Political Papacy and is currently working on a manuscript on interfaith marriages. He teaches, The Problem of God, Christianity and World Religions,Christology, Catholicism and Society, and Christianity and Interreligious Dialogue.
Education Ph.B., Ph.L., S.T.B., M.A. University of Louvain, Ph.D. University of Chicago
Racist jokes are unbecoming ... and have no place on this forum.
Anyone who thinks it's funny has a depraved sense of humour. Slander isn't funny. Ever.
If that was supposed to be profound and meaningful, it's also a miserable failure. It was instead, ignorant and stupid.
If I had in a momentary lapse of reason made a statement like that, I would beg the moderators to remove it. I wouldn't want folks who happen upon this thread to think I was a moron.
That much, at least, is true. American culture has a huge streak of libertinism. American culture supports sodomy as an "alternative lifestyle" and infanticide as a "constitutional right". And this streak of libertinism has infected the Church to some extent ... hence we have (for example) alleged Catholics who vote for Ted Kennedy, and bishops who refuse to rebuke John Kerry.
“What’s with Georgetown and its theology department anyway?...”
More of what’s depressingly wrong with this “Jesuit Catholic” school...
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=437
Phan's most creative chapter discusses Jesus in relation to the Confucian conceptions of the eldest son and the ancestor. He theologically constructs Jesus as a model of filial piety and as the ancestor par excellence. As firstborn of the children of God (Rom. 8:29), Jesus offers worship to God the Father. Phan compares Jesus' role with that of the Vietnamese emperor who, as high priest, offers sacrifices to the Son of Heaven in the name of his people. And if Jesus had been a Vietnamese firstborn son, he "would no doubt have taken upon himself with utmost seriousness the responsibilities of ancestor worship," Phan writes.Asian immigration to the U.S. provides the context for Phan's "intermulticultural theology"--a theology shaped not only by the majority and minority cultures, but also by the "much more complex and challenging encounter of several cultures at the same time ... the encounter is not between but among cultures."
I imagine it's the "intermulticultural theology" that has him in hot water.
From an article by Phan about Mission we get this:
4. With whom? Of course, with all Catholics, each in his or her position in the church and the world. However, in mission oriented toward the Kingdom of God and not to the growth of one’s own church, missionary collaboration must not be limited to fellow Catholics. Rather, crossing denominational barriers, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant missionaries must abandon mutual antagonism and competition and work together in a common witness to the Gospel. It is well known that divisions within Christianity have been a scandal to non-Christians and a serious obstacle to a credible evangelization. There is no reason why church divisions, which are the results of internal quarrels among the Western churches, should be exported to the churches in the other parts of the world.Furthermore, mission must be carried out in collaboration with followers of religion as well. Since these are not “objects” but “subjects” of the church’s mission, they must be treated as responsible agents of the church’s mission with whom missionaries must enter into dialogue of the various kinds described below. In addition, where the Christians form only a tiny minority of the population, for example in Asia, the church’s mission of promoting liberation and integral development cannot be carried out successfully without an effective collaboration of non-Christians. [15]
To the first paragraph I can add my hearty, "Amen." To the 2nd, if he is speaking of respect for the culture as Patrick had for the ancient Irish, then I also say Amen.
The nature of Fr. Phan's dispute with the Vatican could be quite interesting ... and instructive in how to preach the Gospel to non-western cultures without committing heresy in the process.
I don't trust AP to be able to get the story right.
They should be a scandal to Christians, as well. Jesus is "The Truth" not "a truth" ...
A refreshing lack of "nuance."
Modell: You know what word I'm not comfortable with? Nuance. It's not a real word. Like gesture. Gesture's a real word. With gesture you know where you stand. But nuance? I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.-- (1982)
“Racist jokes are unbecoming”
Peter Pan is racist? huh?
See Post number 5, on this thread, for an example of that sort of racist joke.
Sometimes, I think "theologians" can have a tendency to overestimate their own importance.
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