Nearly two decades ago, a Roman Catholic nun from New York City drew
an overflow crowd at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where
she was honored for challenging images of God as exclusively male,
authoritarian and aloof from human suffering.
As
she received the 1993 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion,
Elizabeth Johnson said an exclusively male concept of God is “idolatry”
and forces women “to subtract themselves from their bodily, sexual
selves.”
Now, as a
2008 book she wrote comes under fire from bishops in her own church,
virtually the entire faculty at the Presbyterian seminary, including the
seminary president, are rallying to Johnson's side by making an
unusually forceful statement in a dispute that involves another
religious group.
Their
action follows a March report by the Committee on Doctrine for the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops, which said Johnson's book contains
“misrepresentations, ambiguities and errors” in discussing the nature of
God.
Twenty
professors at the Presbyterian seminary have sent an open letter of
support to Johnson, saying they were “deeply saddened” by the bishops'
actions.
“We
realize, of course, that a Protestant seminary can have no formal
standing to speak about relations between a Roman Catholic theologian
and her church,” said the May 22 letter, which was publicized by a
seminary news release last week.
The
professors — from various Protestant denominations — pledged to be an
“informal community of resistance” for Johnson and said they shared her
goal of combining academics with service in the church.
“We
do not see in your work the sorts of inattention or disrespect to the
Christian teaching that the bishops perceived,” said the letter, whose
signers included seminary President Michael Jinkins.
The
bishops' conference declined to comment on the seminary letter,
spokesman Don Clemmer said. Louisville Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz said
he supported the work of the doctrine committee but declined additional
comment.
Johnson,
69, is a professor of theology at Fordham University, a Catholic school
in New York City. She is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph,
Brentwood, N.Y.
Her 1993 Grawemeyer Award honored her book “She Who Is: The Mystery
of God in Feminist Theological Discourse.” The Presbyterian seminary has
used her writings as class texts for at least two decades.
The bishops' critique focuses on Johnson's 2008 book “Quest for the Living God.”
In
it, she continued to challenge the traditional use of male images to
represent God and said the concept of a “distant lordly lawgiver”
reinforces authoritarian rule in the church and elsewhere.
She
wrote that traditional names for God are metaphors that cannot convey
divine mystery, but the bishops' report said it is “possible to make
statements about God that are true” even if incomplete.
Johnson said there are biblical roots for using such feminine images for God as “mother” and “Holy Wisdom.”
The
doctrine committee said the basic fault of Johnson's book is it “does
not take the faith of the church as its starting point.”
“Instead,
the author employs standards from outside the faith to criticize and to
revise in a radical fashion the conception of God revealed in Scripture
and taught by the Magisterium (church teaching authority),” the
committee said.
The
bishops also say that Johnson went too far in trying to find a new way
of understanding how an all-powerful, loving God could have allowed
suffering on the scale of the Holocaust.
She
cites other theologians as presenting a God who not only suffers in the
person of Jesus, but whose very divine nature is changed and wounded by
human suffering — something the bishops said “undermines God's
transcendence,” or eternal existence apart from creation.
The bishops did not seek any punitive measures, such as calling for Johnson's removal from the Fordham faculty.
But
they cited the relative popularity of her book among lay readers as a
reason to declare officially that it doesn't represent church doctrine.
Amy
Plantinga Pauw, a theology professor at the Presbyterian seminary,
called Johnson a “prophet for Protestants” and not just Catholics. Pauw
said virtually all professors signed the letter, other than those away
on such things as sabbaticals.
Pauw said it was the first formal statement she could recall by the
faculty on behalf of an embattled professor at another seminary.
She
said members did give informal support in the 1990s to professors under
fire for their feminist views, including Molly Marshall, who resigned
under pressure from Louisville's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,
and Carmel McEnroy, a nun who was fired from St. Meinrad School of
Theology in Southern Indiana.
Johnson
declined to be interviewed for this story.
But she said in a statement
that the bishops' report “radically misinterprets” her writings and said
the bishops didn't speak to her before issuing it.
Cardinal
Donald Wuerl of Washington, chairman of the doctrine committee, said in
a statement that Johnson herself could have initiated such dialogue by
seeking an “imprimatur,” signifying bishops' approval of her writing.
The
faculty letter reflects a new development since the ecumenical era of
Protestant-Catholic cooperation took its first big steps in the 1960s,
said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Catholic priest, senior fellow at
Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center and author of three
books on the Catholic hierarchy.
“Before
the beginning of the age of ecumenism, theologians just threw stones at
each other and at the leaders of other churches,” Reese said.
“In the
period of ecumenical good feeling, you only threw stones at people
within your own church. Maybe we're getting to a new stage where we see
various groups in different churches who see that they have a lot in
common with each other, even more than they have in common with some of
their leaders.”
Leaders
of the Catholic Theological Society of America — a scholars'
association — criticized the bishops' lack of dialogue with Johnson.
They
said the report reflects “a very narrow understanding of the
theological task,” rather than encouraging theologians to express
tradition in language that speaks to contemporary culture.