By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and RACHEL DONADIO
"The Vatican’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 and an award-winning
scholar, responded in a statement: “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 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, 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, 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...
...Sister Farley’s book finds moral and theological
justifications for same-sex marriage, 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.”
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