US University Accused of 'Sovietisation' of Catholic Intellectual Life

The Guardian (UK) ^ | 11/1/12 | Lizzy Davies

[marshmallow]

University of San Diego rescinded visiting fellow invitation to liberal theologian who has argued case for same-sex marriage

A leading British historian has accused a US university of "colluding in the Sovietisation" of Roman Catholic intellectual life after it rescinded an invitation to a prominent liberal theologian who has argued the case for same-sex marriage on the grounds that she "dissent[s] publicly" from the Church's moral teachings.

Tina Beattie, director of the Digby Stuart Research Centre for Catholic Studies at Roehampton University, was one of 27 theologians, clerics and activists who earlier this year wrote a letter to the Times arguing that Catholics could, "using fully informed consciences ... support the legal extension of civil marriage to same-sex couples."

The intervention, in August, prompted an outcry from traditionalists and led to the cancellation of a lecture Beattie was due to give in Bristol.

It has now emerged that Beattie, who had been invited to be a visiting fellow and give public lectures at the University of San Diego this winter, has had that invitation rescinded by the Catholic institution, whose president said Beattie's "public stances" were not in keeping with the campus. The decision, which Beattie learned of last week and which she made public on Thursday, has sparked criticism from theologians on both sides of the Atlantic.

Eamon Duffy, professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge, has urged the university to reconsider. "It is deeply dispiriting that the president of a Catholic university should characterise academic discussion and debate among Catholics as 'dissent', and should seek to suppress academic exchange by black-balling an individual whom the church has not condemned," he wrote in a letter to the university's president, Mary Lyons.

[faithhopecharity]

A Church-sponsored university has every right in the world to make its facilities unavailable for the promulgation of patently anti-Christian speakers or teachings.

Would that Notre Dame had had the ecclesiastical cajones to do likewise 4 years ago (instead of forever smearing a great school’s reputation with shit)!

[backwoods-engineer]

I’ll take “Psychological Projection by Communists” for $100, Alex.

[JoeFromSidney]

I'm surprised at that coming from Duffy. He's been pretty orthodox in the past.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Not ironically at all, the Catholic church is already reaping good benefits in “standing for something”, instead of being a ‘reed in the wind’, bowing to every social fad, no matter how anti-Christian or trendy.

The left in particular abhors moral certainty, because it bestows credibility and superiority where the left wants no one to have any. They are fine with churches that compromise themselves until nothing remains, because they despise religion and faith, and see it as nothing more than contrivance.

But refusing to bend and compromise beliefs is a threat to leftism like no other. So they attack it in any way they can.

[Rashputin]

Maybe Duffy figures that the powers that be have already spoken so he can make a show of solidarity with his fellow academics in order to try and stay on good terms with one and all.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I'm with you, I'm shocked that Eamon Duffy, of all people, would say such a thing.

If we're speaking of academic freedom, we need to keep in mind that the university's Frances G Harpst Center for Catholic Thought and Culture has a right to develop and promote its own perspective, especially as an element of freedom and diversity. The pro-gay lecturer can lecture at hundreds of universities. But for the sake of diversity, can't a "center for Catholic Thought and Culture" draw its own line about the "contradiction between Beattie's beliefs and the centre's mission"?

Or isn't the Center allowed to have a distinctive mission?

Surely, in the name of Catholicism? At least in the name of diversity?

I am astounded that Duffy, precisely as a principled academic and historian, would not see this.

I really admired his "The Stripping of the Altars".

Now he wants to strip the "Catholic Centers"?

:o(

[Mrs. Don-o]

I lifted this off of Fr. Z's blog:

William Tighe says:
2 November 2012 at 9:59 am

Eamon Duffy might well be characterized, if a bit simplisitically, as “an ultramontanist liberal.” He has fairly conservative liturgical and devotional predilections, but his doctrinal views are hardly conservative; in 1998 he himself told me that all a pope would have to do to “authorize” the pretended ordination of women would be simply to sign a document authorizing a change of “church practive” on that matter. I hope that he does not entertain the same view on the matter of sodomitic pseudogamy.

For a brief “spiritual autobiography” by Duffy, see:

http://www.thepastoralreview.org/cgi-bin/archive_db.cgi?priestsppl-00018