When will the CDF learn?

Friday, May 9th, 2014

Whac-A-Nun season opened with a bang in Rome as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) again excoriated the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).

Rapped knuckles belonged to LCWR, to Fordham theologian Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, and to any other American woman walking around with letters after her name.

Even Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, charged with keeping LCWR in order, took a hit for not controlling those uppity females.

To be sure, the main target of CDF’s latest document is Barbara Marx Hubbard and her “conscious evolution,” which admittedly has spread its bubbles across the websites and newsletters of many institutes of women religious.

Hubbard, a Jewish agnostic, is the 84-year-old “futurist” who was the featured speaker at LCWR’s 2012 assembly. She was, to put it kindly, rather different. (She told me at the assembly she did not like all that sin and redemption business in Christianity.)

However, to lump the serious theological work of Elizabeth Johnson in with obviously gnostic claptrap is not only intellectually dishonest — it is a huge public relations mistake.

That is what CDF did. Has CDF ever heard of the Internet? How about television? Statements like this always backfire.

Score: LCWR 2, CDF 0. When will they ever learn? Continue reading.

Phyllis Zagano is a Catholic scholar and lecturer on contemporary spirituality and women’s issues in the church.

Source: National Catholic Reporter

Image: Hofstra University