Fordham Theologian Criticizes Church’s Investigation of Women’s Orders

By Charles Huckabee
Chronicle of Higher Education
August 18, 2014

http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/fordham-theologian-criticizes-churchs-investigation-of-womens-orders/84175

A theologian and nun who drew the ire of U.S. Roman Catholic bishops with a book they considered radical and flawed fired back on Friday, saying the church’s investigation of women’s orders was “unconscionable” at a time when the hierarchy’s moral authority has been eroded by financial and child-abuse scandals, the Religion News Service reported.

Speaking in Nashville, Tenn., as she accepted an award from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, a professor of theology at Fordham University, lambasted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ criticism of her 2007 book Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, published by Continuum. The book saw a spike in sales in 2011 after the bishops issued a statement saying the work contained “misrepresentations, ambiguities, and errors.”

In her remarks on Friday, Sister Johnson said she suspected that the bishops had not read the book. “To this day, no one, not myself or the theological community, the media, or the general public, knows what doctrinal issue is at stake,” she said.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents most orders of Roman Catholic nuns in the United States, has been the subject of a Vatican-ordered doctrinal investigation since 2009. An archbishop has been appointed to oversee changes in the group’s charter and approval of speakers at its assemblies. In April, a Vatican official advised the group not to honor Sister Johnson.