[Vision2020] Vatican Scolds Nun for Book on Sexuality

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June 4, 2012
Vatican Scolds Nun for Book on Sexuality By LAURIE
GOODSTEIN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/laurie_goodstein/index.html>and
RACHEL
DONADIO<http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/d/rachel_donadio/index.html>

The Vatican<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html?inline=nyt-org>’s
doctrinal office on Monday denounced an American nun who taught Christian
ethics at Yale Divinity School for a book that attempted to present a
theological rationale for same-sex relationships, masturbation and
remarriage after divorce.

The Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said
that the book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” by
Sister Margaret A. Farley, was “not consistent with authentic Catholic
theology,” and should not be used by Roman Catholics.

Sister Farley, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of
America <http://www.ctsa-online.org/>and an award-winning scholar,
responded in a statement<http://notesfromthequad.yale.edu/statement-margaret-farley>:
“I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of
current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against
this teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.”

The book, she said, offers “contemporary interpretations” of justice and
fairness in human sexual relations, moving away from a “taboo morality” and
drawing on “present-day scientific, philosophical, theological, and
biblical resources.”

The formal censure comes only weeks after the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith issued a stinging
reprimand<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/vatican-reprimands-us-nuns-group.html?_r=1>of
the main coordinating group of American nuns, prompting many Catholics
across the country to turn out in defense of the nuns with protests,
petitions and vigils.

The nuns’ organization, the Leadership Conference of Women
Religious<https://lcwr.org/>,
said on Friday that its board had declared that the Vatican’s accusations
were “unsubstantiated,” and that it was sending its leaders to Rome to make
its case. Three bishops have been appointed by the Vatican to supervise an
overhaul of the nuns’ organization.

The censure of Sister Farley, who belongs to the Sisters of Mercy of the
Americas <http://www.sistersofmercy.org/>, is the second time recently that
a book by an American nun has been denounced by the church’s hierarchy. In
2011, the doctrine committee of United States bishops condemned “Quest for
the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God,” by Sister
Elizabeth A. Johnson, a professor of theology at Fordham University in New
York.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, led by an American, Cardinal William J.
Levada, has spent more than two years reviewing Sister Farley’s book, which
was published in 2006. The office first notified Sister Farley’s superior
of its concerns in March 2010, and said it had opened a further
investigation because a response she had sent to the Vatican in October
2010 had not been “satisfactory.” It said her book had “been a cause of
confusion among the faithful.”

The dean of Yale Divinity School, Harold W. Attridge, a Catholic layman,
and the president of the Sisters of Mercy, Sister Patricia McDermott,
issued statements in support of Sister Farley. So did 15 fellow scholars
who, in a document released by the divinity school, testified to Sister
Farley’s Catholic credentials and the influence she has had in the field of
moral theology.

Cardinal Levada’s statement about the book, dated March 30 but released on
Monday, said that it “cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic
teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and
interreligious dialogue.” Pope Benedict XVI approved the statement’s
contents and ordered its publication, it said. The statement comes as the
Vatican struggles to contain a controversy over leaked documents that
showed infighting and mismanagement in the papacy of Benedict XVI, who on
Sunday concluded a three-day meeting in Milan to promote family values.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican had not
called for any sanctions against Sister Farley and was not expected to do
so because she has retired from teaching.

Sister Farley’s book finds moral and theological justifications for same-sex
marriage<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
which aside from abortion, has become the major galvanizing political and
moral issue for American bishops. The statement took Sister Farley to task
for writing that same-sex marriage “can also be important in transforming
the hatred, rejection, and stigmatization of gays and lesbians.” She wrote
that “same-sex relationships and activities can be justified according to
the same sexual ethic as heterosexual relationships and activities.”

“This opinion is not acceptable,” the Vatican statement said. The Catechism
of the Catholic Church, it said, says homosexual acts are “acts of grave
depravity” that are “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural
law.” It said that Sister Farley’s assertion that sometimes divorce is a
reasonable option for couples who have grown apart contradicted church
teaching on the “indissolubility of marriage.”

The statement quoted liberally from some of the racier passages in “Just
Love,” including ones in which Sister Farley writes that female
masturbation “usually does not raise any moral questions at all.” She adds
that “many women” have found “great good in self-pleasuring — perhaps
especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure —
something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary
sexual relations with husbands or lovers.”

The Vatican said this assessment contradicted church teaching that “the
deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of
marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.”

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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