When one hears news out of the Vatican these days concerning Catholic
theologians, more often than not the names that appear are authors
seeking new ways of doing theology or of nuancing traditional
magisterial teachings in light of contemporary understandings of human
anthropology and culture—be that around synodality, same-sex
relationships or the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate.
It
can be easy to forget that the situation was rather different less than
a generation ago, when many theologians—American scholars among
them—found themselves in a more adversarial relationship with the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, now the Dicastery for the
Doctrine of the Faith.
One of the more public examples of that
long-standing tension arose in 2012, when Margaret A. Farley, R.S.M.,
found herself the subject of an investigation and official notification from the C.D.F. concerning her 2006 book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics.
The
notification was a publisher’s dream—the book shot to the top of the
best-seller lists for a time—but was an unhappy moment for the American
Catholic theological community.
The C.D.F. notification stated
that Farley’s book “affirms positions that are in direct contradiction
with Catholic teaching in the field of sexual morality” and “is not in
conformity with the teaching of the Church.”
Though Farley was not
silenced or prevented from teaching in Catholic institutions, the C.D.F.
decreed that the book “cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic
teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and
interreligious dialogue.”
The C.D.F. decreed that Just Love
“cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in
counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.”
Sister Farley released a statement
to the National Catholic Reporter soon after, explaining her rationale
for writing the book.
“Whether through interpretation of biblical texts,
or through an attempt to understand ‘concrete reality’ (an approach at
the heart of ‘natural law’), the fact that Christians (and others) have
achieved new knowledge and deeper understanding of human embodiment and
sexuality seems to require that we at least examine the possibility of
development in sexual ethics,” she wrote. “This is what my book, Just Love, is about.”
Just Love had received positive reviews upon its release, including a 2006 review in America by Lisa Sowle Cahill,
who called it “the product of years of experience, reflection,
scholarship and wisdom.”
As a theologian, she wrote, “Farley gives us a
social ethic of sex that incorporates both the biblical option for the
poor and the orientation of Catholic social thought to the universal
common good. As a feminist, she reminds Catholics that their tradition
should make its global option for women more consistent, more explicit
and more effective, especially in the areas of sex, motherhood, marriage
and family.”
After the 2012 notification from the C.D.F., America solicited responses from prominent Catholic theologians
James Bretzke, S.J., Richard Gaillardetz and Julie Hanlon Rubio, all of
whom expressed concern about the way Farley and her work had been
treated. “Professor Farley does hold positions contrary to current
Catholic teaching, but these positions are not the most important points
in her book,” Hanlon Rubio wrote.
“Rather, the significance of her work
lies in her use of compelling philosophical language and in her
treatment of neglected issues like sexual violence, infidelity, polygamy
and prostitution. Catholics on all sides should seize the opportunity
she offers to discuss sexual ethics in a new way.”
Gaillardetz was
critical of the C.D.F.’s methods, which he saw as part of a
longstanding trend of not valuing the contributions of theologians:
What
would happen if the magisterium were to view theologians as serving the
teaching office of the church by challenging faulty arguments, raising
difficult questions and proposing alternative frameworks for the
church’s prayerful discernment? What would happen if theologians and the
rest of the faithful were to attend seriously to official magisterial
teaching with an attitude of respect but with a determination to test
its adequacy in the light of their own insight and intuitions? Perhaps
the church would become a more authentic school of humble Christian
discipleship, one better equipped to offer the world the liberating
message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Farley remains a
prominent figure in Catholic ethics and is the Gilbert L. Stark
Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale University Divinity
School, where she taught from 1971 to 2007.
(Among her doctoral students
at Yale was Drew Christiansen, S.J., the former editor in chief of America.)
A past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the
Society of Christian Ethics, she has authored or edited eight books on
various subtopics of Christian ethics.
In a 2006 review for America, Lisa Sowle Cahill called Just Love “the product of years of experience, reflection, scholarship and wisdom.”
I worked with Sister Farley on two of her books when I was an editor at Orbis Books: a revised 2013 edition of her 1986 book Personal Commitments (in which she first surfaced some of the ethical questions she addressed more fully in Just Love), and a 2015 book of essays edited with Jamie Manson, Changing the Questions: Explorations in Christian Ethics.
The latter collection is a testament to Farley’s wide range of
interests and expertise—in addition to essays on the intersection of
ethics and public life, she also wrote on feminism, ecclesiology,
scripture and more. Her work has also focused on ethical responses to
AIDS and on the status of women in the developing world.
A classic
example is a 1991 essay for America after a monthlong
visit to China with a group of female theologians, “A New Form of
Communion: Feminism and the Chinese Church.”
In that essay, she noted that the isolation
and persecution of many Christian churches in China after the 1949
Communist takeover had resulted in a Christian community that was
recognizable to a foreigner and yet unique in many ways.
“In time and in
place it has found a separate but not alien way from that of the West,”
she wrote. “Radical discontinuity with the history of Western
Christianity has ironically allowed the Chinese church a graced
continuity with Christian tradition, a radical hope for a life, not in
isolation but in a new form of communion, with the rest of the world’s
Christians.”
She also found a Christian community where women had more
prominent roles and voices—and where some of the systematic sexism of a
Eurocentric church was less of an issue. On that front, she wrote, the
Chinese church had much to teach us.
In
1992, Farley received the John Courtney Murray Award for Excellence in
Theology from the Catholic Theological Society of America.
In 2008, she
was honored with the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, one of the highest honors in the field, for Just Love.
She is still an occasional visitor to America’s offices for meetings of the “All-Africa Conference: Sister to Sister” project, which supports the initiatives of women religious in sub-Saharan Africa.
