Courtney McGrail“Own your heresy,” directed New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on twitter.com just before the Synod of Bishops ended, apparently drawing to a close an exchange with Minnesota-based theologian Massimo Faggioli.
Mr Douthat had said of a much-debated proposal for a penitential path back to the sacraments for divorced-and-remarried Catholics: “It’s not fundamentalism to note that Kasper’s proposal takes a view of marriage that the Church has consistently rejected,” adding, “and if you take a view the Church has consistently rejected, you don’t get to whine when the ‘h’ word comes up.”
The Twitter debate rolled on, and the New York Times published a letter from Dr Faggioli and other theologians about a recent Douthat article.
“Aside from the fact that Mr Douthat has no professional qualifications for writing on the subject,” they began, “the problem with his article and other recent statements is his view of Catholicism as unapologetically subject to a politically partisan narrative that has very little to do with what Catholicism really is.
“Moreover,” they continued, “accusing other members of the Catholic church of heresy, sometimes subtly, sometimes openly, is serious business that can have serious consequences for those so accused. This is not what we expect of the New York Times.”
Republished
Dozens of theologians added their names to the letter – since republished on americamagazine.org and dailytheology.org – and Mr Douthat replied in a nytimes.com piece entitled ‘Letter to the Catholic academy’. “I have great respect for your vocation,” he said. “Let me try to explain mine.”
Arguing that columnists have a duty to explain and provoke so readers gain a sense of why things matter, he said while the world has been rightly fascinated by Pope Francis’ reform agenda, “the main parties in the Church’s controversies have incentives to downplay the stakes”.
His challenge, then, was to show what’s really at stake, opining that there is a danger that the Church’s ancient teaching that marriage is indissoluble could “become an empty signifier” and that such a development “would unweave the larger Catholic view of sexuality, sin and the sacraments”.
Mr Douthat summed up and countered the opposing arguments, seeming to take serious offence at how the theologians had apparently dismissed his view by effectively saying: “You don’t understand, you’re not a theologian.”
While he lacked theological qualifications, Mr Douthat observed, “neither is Catholicism supposed to be an esoteric religion, its teachings accessible only to academic adepts”.
Fascinating responses followed from across the Catholic internet, notably from Dorothy Cummings McLean and Dr Adam DeVille on catholicworldreport.com, while California’s Bishop Robert Barron weighed in on aleteia.org, to say that while he didn’t wholly agree with Mr Douthat’s analysis, he thought it an entirely legitimate one.
Dr Barron dismissed the conceit that “because he doesn’t have a credential from the academy, Douthat isn’t qualified to enter into the discussion”, and said it would be absurd to disregard on such grounds the views of Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, C. S. Lewis and others whose insights were formed outside academic echo chambers.
“The letter to the Times is indicative indeed of a much wider problem in our intellectual culture,” he observed, continuing, “namely, the tendency to avoid real argument and to censor what makes us, for whatever reason, uncomfortable.”
Criticising the notion that universities should be made “safe spaces” through censorship, Dr Barron says for his first time ever he recently found himself agreeing with Richard Dawkins, who said on Twitter: “A university is not a ‘safe space.’ If you need a safe space, leave, go home, [and] hug your teddy … until [you are] ready for university.”