I began this day reading a posting by David Gibson on the Commonweal blog which says that the Vatican has added new penalties to those already in place for American theologian Roger Haight (www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=2644. Previously, he had been forbidden to write in the area of christology or to teach in Catholic institutions. He is now forbidden by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the contemporary embodiment of the Inquisition, to write about theology at all or to teach anywhere, including in non-Catholic institutions.Roger directed my dissertation. Because of that connection, and the gratitude I owe him for the hard work he put into that arduous process (arduous for both of us), I feel what is being done to this good Jesuit at a deep level. I am, frankly, appalled and angry, and I'm not sure that writing out of the space of anger and disgust is wise. Most of all, I would not want anything I write to bring further harm to a man in his 70s whose vocational life has been well-nigh destroyed by church fiat.
Because I went to a Jesuit university, I know a bit about Ignatian spirituality. I have long admired the Jesuit emphasis on living for others, and on placing oneself each day in God's hands, in the hope that God will use one's heart, mind, and soul to serve good ends and combat bad ones. I pray the Suscipe prayer of Ignatius of Loyola at the start of each day, before I begin my work.
At the same time, as I say this, I have to say honestly that few Jesuits I have ever met impress me. Many of those who taught or tried to guide me at Loyola were, frankly, too enmeshed in the top-level social circles of New Orleans to make much impression on me. I was simply not in their scope of vision, a scope limited to those with money, power, and significant family ties. I remember sitting through an entire semester of a math class at Loyola taught by such a Jesuit, who never learned my name, but persisted on addressing me by the name Danny--the name of another young man in the class who fit the ideal this priest, whose unique vocation was to take well-heeled Garden District matrons to the Holy Land each summer, pursued.
A few Jesuits I've met have, however, significantly impressed me, and have made a dent on my hard-hearted hell-bound heart. One of these was my undergraduate professor C.J. McNaspy, who embodied the Jesuit ideal of wide learning and catholic sympathy for everybody and, in particular, those on the margins. C. J. was a Jesuit, a person for others, par excellence.
As is Roger Haight. Roger worked his rear off to teach graduate students. Not a single other professor I had in grad school prepared for class as assiduously as Roger did. No other drew from students the response Roger did--a response out of the depth. In his classes, what one thought was not so important as how one thought, as the basis on which one made theological judgments. Knowing the theological literature, being able to cite it fluently, being persistent about pursuing its arguments and capable of defending one's own arguments: these were what counted in Roger's class.
As a result, even when I took classes in 19th-century theology from him in the fairly moderate 1980s, in a fairly moderate graduate school in theology, there were strong reactions against Roger. Because he pushed students to think and not to parrot.
One of these, I recall, came from a California nun with whom I took a class, and who was the first right-wing Republican nun I had ever had the misfortune to meet. This sister was not to the right in terms of lifestyle. Indeed, she dressed in expensive, tailored clothes and had immacuately coiffed hair. She moved among and expected to continue to move among highly placed Republicans in her home county, Orange Co., California.
Her reactionary views were political and theological. With Roger, she was persistently at daggers drawn for reasons murky to me. It was clear she was on a crusade--to purify the church and make it safe for her sort. She relegated the rest of us, her fellow students, to the sidelines in class, where we were expected to enjoy the privilege of listening to her rail at Roger for his christological heresies. Yes, that was the term she used--in the 1980s, in a theology class: heresies.
She would not be challenged to think or defend. She preferred to parrot, to repeat the creed and to point out that, in her humble opinion, Roger's christology from below did not conform to the words she was reciting from the creed. She preferred to hobnob with the rich and powerful in both church and society. A christology from below made her uncomfortable, because it said something about those with whom she stood in solidarity socially and politically.
It was also clear to me that Roger was not supported by some of his fellow Jesuits in Canada, though I could perhaps cause trouble for him by telling all that I saw in that respect. Some of these Jesuits were staunch anti-communists from Eastern Europe, with a penchant for "reporting" to the authorities anyone they suspected of being less than orthodox.
One of the first articles I sought to publish in graduate school got panned by a Jesuit in that network, who happened to be at Fordham at the time, and who had whited out his scathing critique of my work on connections between peacemaking and economic justice so badly that his name was still legible on the letter encouraging the Jesuit journal to which I had submitted my essay not to publish it. Fortunately, a more progressive Catholic journal took the article gladly when I sent it to them.
There was also among Roger's confreres in the Jesuit community in Toronto a priest who has been made bishop, and who is, in my view, hardly distinguishing himself by some of the pig-headed and theologically dubious actions he has taken to earn a name for himself as defender of an orthodoxy willing to butt heads with the Canadian government. He is a John Paul II appointee, the kind of priest being made bishop under the current regime.
I interacted with this priest a number of times as I went through graduate school. I wanted to wash my hands each time I shook his--and mentally, want to wash them even today, as I think about him. I am fairly certain that he has played a big role in bashing his Jesuit brother, who to my mind, far more faithfully embodies Jesuit ideals than he, the big bishop, does. This bishop is also a big old gay basher, to boot--a quality that helps rather than hurts, if one wants to be appointed to office in the church of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Reading some of the comments on the Commonweal blog defending what the CDF is doing to Roger Haight infuriates me even more than I am already angered by the cruel, unjust action of the Vatican towards Haight. One respondent suggests that the CDF never undertakes actions like this without "due diligence" and abundant evidence. Just trust the big papa at the top . . . .
Really, I want to say sarcastically to him? Really? The way the Inquisition undertook actions against witches in the past, with due diligence and abundant evidence? Witches were never burned at the stake until their inquisitors proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were witches: by neighbors who had seen them cavorting nude on mountaintops with the devil, or riding across the sky, or casting spells that caused harm to others. Neighbors and relatives who often benefited economically by accusing the witch of witchcraft. Witches were not ever condemned until the Inquisition had gathered as much evidence as possible to prove the heinous crime of the witch--evidence gathered under torture, if needed.
Really? Trust the authorities? Give ourselves and our minds over to a doctrinal-purity commission that carries on the Inquistion, that does its work in secret, that will not allow the accused to know who has accused him or her, or of what he or she has been accused, so that he/she may defend himself/herself? Everything the Catholic church and other churches have done is worthy of trust?
Nothing I can say will ever change the minds of such folks. And, sadly, those who "think" like this are now at the very center of the Catholic church--again. There may have been a brief moment in the 1960s and 1970s, when Steve and I foolishly headed off to study theology, in which it appeared that a window had opened.
John Paul II and his henchman Ratzinger, the current pope, decisively slammed that window. And for many of us, what the church is doing to people like Roger Haight does not elicit trust. It provokes deep anger and alienation. A church whose leaders behave with such conspicuous lack of justice and charity has an uphill battle in trying to convince many folks that it stands for justice and charity.
