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The Marquette University news media center points out that the Rev. Bryan Massingale, associate professor of moral theology at Marquette, has been elected Vice President of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA). The Vice President automatically becomes the President-elect, and the President-elect automatically becomes the President, so Fr. Massingale (diocesan, not Jesuit, by the way) was essentially elected as future president of CTSA.

Obviously it is a compliment to our school if a member of her faculty is elected to the presidency of a major national scholarly organization. However, my enthusiasm is tempered both by CTSA’s long history of wild liberalism and Fr. Massingale’s own clearly majorly leftist bent.

First, a brief comment on CTSA’s liberalism, followed by a much longer exposition on Fr. Massingale’s writings.

CTSA has been characterized by Bernard Cardinal Law as “an association of advocacy for dissent… a victim to the various politically correct currents of academe… a theological wasteland.”

Avery Cardinal Dulles, a former president of CTSA, comments on a convention as part of a dialogue on the CTSA for Commonweal:

The convention speakers mounted a series of attacks on Catholic doctrine more radical, it would seem, than the challenges issued by Luther and Calvin.

Most notoriously, the convention put itself on record as collectively opposing the irrevocable character of the teaching that the church has no authority to ordain women. The conclusions of a committee report to this effect were endorsed by a landslide vote of 216 Yes, 22 No, and 10 abstentions. The vote was widely, and I believe correctly, interpreted as a dissent not only from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s declaration on the subject but also from the pope’s call for definitive adherence to his teaching.

The theological dissent, however, runs far deeper, as the convention addresses demonstrate. In an orchestrated chorus they rejected fundamental articles of Catholic belief regarding priesthood and Eucharist as expressed by the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, the synods of bishops, Paul VI, John Paul II, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

This prevasive liberalism has become so bad that as his last act, the past president of the CTSA called on the Society to tone down the criticism of the Vatican.

What to say of Professor Father Massingale is, obviously, a more delicate and nuanced subject. On the one hand, he is a credentialed and accomplished theologian with a national reputation, earned from years on the lecture and conference circuit. He earned praise from Archbishop Dolan for a presentation on Catholic social teaching. According to his biography, “He is a consultant to the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, providing theological assistance on issues such as criminal justice, capital punishment, environmental justice, and affirmative action. He is currently working with the U.S. Bishops on a forthcoming pastoral statement on the sin of racism.” Cardinal McCarrick cited a statement from one such consultation on criminal justice.

If any of you, dear readers, know Fr. Massingale’s name, it is probably from the controversial essay he wrote for the Catholic Herald last fall urging a No vote on the Wisconsin Marriage Amendment, and subsequent media coverage (I criticized the essay the time).

This not the only time that Fr. Massingale has explored the line on homosexuality: From a 2004 speech at Alverno:

We are also a Church experiencing internal tensions–and even some divisions– over human sexuality. We don’t always want to admit it, but to be honest, the Church struggles over how to reconcile its traditional wisdom and teachings with contemporary experiences and the evidence of the human sciences.

And from another 2004 address:

I am not against “chaste celibacy” or “celibate chastity.” But these phrases become pious cliches when their use evades, hides or avoids the complex and sometimes messy realities of human sexuality. Spiritual piety is no substitute for sexual honesty.

In the same speech, he cites another author for several “transitions” in the Church, including, “Richard Schoenherr lists them thus: .1. A shift from dogmatism to pluralism in worldview; 2. The change from a transcendentalist to a personalist construction of human sexuality…’”

He continues down this progressive path later in the speech, as well:

For I believe that a new Church is coming. It will be browner and poorer, more sensuous and feminine, less clerical and more collegial, less concerned about charity and more conscious of justice and more multilingual and polycentric than the one we know now. That Church will better reflect the diversity of God’s Trinitarian life. It will be a new Church . . .yet it can only come with the passing of this one. I dare to suggest that it is our task to facilitate the present Church’s passing in order to assist in the birthing of the new.

And later:

[There is] a groan - a desire [among priests] - for a more mature understanding that obedience is not passive docility, but respectful collaboration with ecclesiastical authorities that stems from our common love of and concern for the Church. Deeper still, from some there are groans that convey a sense of betrayal, as the Church increasingly seems to be in retreat from the vision of Vatican II.

If Fr. Massingale is clearly a liberal, on no issue is that more true than race relations: One reviewer of a Massingale article summarizes his position this way:

Massingale concludes his article by proposing six shifts in U.S. Catholicism to achieve a more adequate ethical method for achieving racial justice. They are (1) a shift from stress on racism to white privilege: (2) a shift from parenesis to analysis; (3) a shift from personal sin to structures of sin; (4) a shift from decency and respect for the other to “distributive justice”; (5) a shift from moral suasion to liberating awareness; and (6) a shift from unconscious racial supremacy to intentional racial solidarity.

He is a firm proponent of affirmative action:

Beginning, then, from a core conviction regarding the equal dignity of all human persons and a condemnation of all discrimination based on race and gender, the Catholic ethical tradition embraces the use of affirmative action as a concrete means of overcoming entrenched social practices which result from racial and gender bias. Thus in our ethical tradition, one sees the constant link between the sin of racism and the moral endorsement of affirmative action.

He is pretty forward in his charges:

Despite boldly worded documents from the U.S. bishops, the Catholic Church’s tangible response to racism has been largely “pathetic, ineffective, tepid and anemic,” charged a leading African American Catholic ethicist during a day-long forum on race in America, Feb. 27 at the University of San Francisco. …
The moral theologian called on the Church to:
-) Acknowledge “Catholic complicity” in the history of racial injustice from justifications of slavery and refusal of black applicants to religious life to “punishing or maligning” Catholics involved in the Civil Rights Movement;
-) Provide “privileged attention” in listening to victims of racism;
-) Become “pro-active” in promulgating principles of racial justice in catechetics, seminaries and other arenas;
-) “Act with others” to “work for social change”.

These positions have placed Fr. Massingale pretty squarely in the liberation theology camp. As the San Diego News & Notes reported in 1997:

WHAT WITH THE DEMISE OF MARXISM, the philosophical foundation of their movement, liberation theologians have been pretty hard up lately. The new trend in the movement, according to Religious Ed Congress speaker Father Bryan Massingale, liberation theologian and professor at St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, is the pursuit of individual “liberation theologies” for groups oppressed by Church and society (feminists, gays and lesbians, minorities, etc.). Like the political movements from which they spring, these groups will pressure for the “right” to have their ideologies accepted. (Father Massingale had no comment on possible conflicts between these ideologies — such as pro-family Hispanics versus feminists.)

Massingale’s views appeared to be based on the assumptions that: 1) Jesus and his Church are imperfect and not authoritative, and 2) the Church and the Bible are of purely human origin. Criticizing the Church as unjust, Massingale said this is to be expected, since the Church’s founder was not enlightened himself. Illustrating his point about Jesus being unjust: “Jesus said, ‘Slaves, obey your masters.’” When an audience member pointed out that St. Paul had made that particular statement, Massingale replied that Paul said many other inappropriate things as well, unjust to women and others.

Finally, Fr. Massingale is pretty much of a peacenik hippy when it comes to America’s response to 9-11, going so far as to say that Catholicism and Americanism are incompatible, dividing the loyalties of Catholic Americans.

Obviously Fr. Massingale is a liberal. But he’s made his comments just carefully enough to avoid reaching Maguire or Harak out-landishness. Still… alas.

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