Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee followed up this in his weekly newspaper column regarding his correspondence with dissenting theologian Dr. Daniel Maguire. Last week, Maguire published on his web site the letter he received from Dolan and his response regarding Maguire’s heretical positions on various Church teachings.
Now Dolan has his say from his point of view.
After my arrival here four years ago, I sought counsel as to whether or not I should publicly warn the faithful about his erroneous opinions. Voices I considered wise advised me that this was not necessary, since the great majority of our people already recognize his views as clearly inconsistent with legitimate Catholic teaching.
I wonder how wise those advisory voices were, because (a) Milwaukee has been a hotbed of dissent all the way through the tenure of Dolan’s predecessor, Archbishop Rembert Weakland and (b) it’s a mighty big assumption that everyone knows that Maguire is a dissenter. And if his opinions are so erroneous that you’re thinking about warning the faithful, why do nothing about the fact that he’s teaching theology at a Catholic university in your archdiocese, i.e. Marquette? Now that Dolan is publicly stating that Maguire’s dissenting opinions are “wrong and disingenuous”, it seems he’s recognizing that those “voices” indeed gave some bad advice. Then when you consider the next two points in Dolan’s column, you see the need for bishops to speak out more often, not less, and not to give the faithful the benefit of the doubt when it comes to knowing what’s acceptable in Catholic teaching and what’s not.
Priestesses and Call to Action
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