Nun Censured By Vatican For Her Writing On Sex Speaks In Farmington Hills

Sister Margaret Farley — who graduated, taught and served as a board trustee at the University of Detroit-Mercy and is a retired Yale Divinity School professor — showed up in Farmington Hills Friday to discuss her controversial support  of gay marriage and other positions that prompted the Vatican last year to censure the prominent theologian’s book on sexual ethics.

“You just can’t back down and say, I apologize, because it would contradict one’s integrity,” Farley, 78, who became a Sister of Mercy through the order’s local congregation, told about 400 people gathered Friday at Mercy Center in Farmington Hills, according to a Free Press story by Patricia Montemurri.

“That’s the problem in our church. Nobody is allowed to disagree,” Farley said.

"It was a rare public appearance for Farley since the Vatican’s watchdog office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, declared in June 2012 that her book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” didn’t uphold Catholic moral teaching on several issues and shouldn’t be used as a Catholic teaching tool.

"The Vatican critique, issued six years after the book’s publication, brought on a tsunami of publicity and outspoken support, said Farley, who became a symbol of the Vatican’s crackdown, begun under now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, on the liberal leadership and positions of many American nuns.