Catching up on some recent news, lots of Catholics are following up on the recent USCCB pronouncement on Prof. Dan Maguire’s pro-abortion, pro-gay, pro-dissent-of-the-moment is unacceptable from a Catholic theologian by demanding that Marquette University remove him from his teaching post.
Both Human Life International and the Cardinal Newman Society have called on the Jesuit university to fire Maguire because his continued presence on the theology faculty is a grave scandal.
Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, (HLI), said, “I call upon Marquette to stop hiding behind false ideas of tenure and ‘academic freedom’ in the face of theological malfeasance and dismiss Dan Maguire. A Catholic university should be Catholic and not tolerate false teachers like Maguire.”
[…]CNS president Patrick J. Reilly wrote to Marquette president, Robert Wild, a Jesuit priest, saying, “Marquette University is responsible for presenting Maguire to students and the general public as an expert in moral theology and ethics. Marquette gives Maguire the legitimacy he needs to publicly undermine the Church and secure frequent media appearances.”
Marquette claims that academic freedom trumps fidelity to the magisterium. While it may be true that academic freedom is a necessary component for the study of, say, biology, when it comes to teaching theology at a Catholic university, that freedom must remain within certain bounds.
Of course there are bounds outside which no professor may stray. If a theology professor declared that Jews are subhuman or Christ-killers, he’d be out on his butt faster than you could say anti-Semite and the university would be trumpeting the necessity based on Christian moral teaching. So why does Maguire get a free pass on abortion, gay marriage, contraception, and the rest? Because he’s espousing the liberal viewpoint?
This is a question of consistency and for consistency’s sake, Maguire should go.
Incidentally, does anyone else remember a little document called Ex corde ecclesiae, which required all thologians at Catholic universities to request a teaching mandate from their local ordinary and was supposed to ensure this sort of thing didn’t happen?
Whatever happened to that? Oh yeah.
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