Bishop's book of the month

Last week there was a humorous exchange at the Bishop's meeting over an apparent typo in the draft of Faithful Citizenship where it said "end marriage" instead of "defend marriage."

Though sometimes you have wonder.  Last week Leon Suprenant posted about the use of a book by a dissident theologian being recommended by the USCCB's marriage website at www.foryourmarriage.com.   A Daring Promise: A Spirituality of Marriage By Richard R. Gaillardetz is promoted as the book of the month. Gaillardetz is your typical dissident theologian and Charles Curran admirer who apparently supports homosexual acts, women's ordination,  has a quite flawed view of the structure of the early Church and a narrow view on papal infallibility and the magisterium (though an expansive one on the sensus fidelium).

The book that is recommended is reviewed on the bishop's site and says.

Several points may disturb some readers.  draws upon Pope John Paul II's theology of the body yet offers gentle criticism. After admonishing couples to embrace church teaching on family planning through sound understanding and surrender to the rigorous demands of Christianity, he notes that a couple who still "cannot discover in (magisterial teaching) God's will" can follow their consciences. While he says most "domestic churches" are constituted by marriage and include children, he includes under that term other households.

Gee how could basically saying that if you don't want to follow the Church's teaching on the grave sin of contraception you just follow your badly formed conscience  be something to "disturb some readers?"  Well I guess if you just happen to be faithful to Church teaching and truth.   Forget about those "rigorous demands of Christianity" and for example "picking up your cross daily."  If only Gaillardetz had been there for Onan to explain to God how Onan's was just following his conscience.

One Amazon reviewer noted about this book "He comments on how he ran into a former classmate who was brilliant in college and now she was married with kids and he couldn't help but feel sorry that she "sold out" and stopped using her God given mind."

The comment section of the original post has some detailed critiques of the writings of Richard R. Gaillardetz.

In a new post by Leon Suprenant.

Regarding our recent post on the U.S. Bishops’ new “For Your Marriage” website, we received the following comment from marriage and family expert John F. Kippley regarding the site’s recommendation of the work of Dr. Richard Gaillardetz:

“Thanks for directing me to the long analysis of the works of the dissenting theologian,  Dr. Richard Gaillardetz.  It appears that what he is doing is simply a repeat of what Fr. Curran and others did in the Sixties . . . I thought the bishops were beyond that stuff. . . . It is just crazy that the bishops would even mention works by someone like Gaillardetz. . . .”

Another reader contacted the USCCB about the problematic site and received this response:

“Dr. Gaillardetz is a well-known and respected Catholic theologian who holds the chair in Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo. He has been a guest presenter at a meeting of the Bishops’ Committee on Marriage and Family. I don’t know if you’ve read “A Daring Promise,” but it presents a realistic–and hopeful–vision of married life in a way that is accessible to average Catholics. It is an important book in its field. I think our reviewer did justice to the book by identifying its strengths as well as noting what might be disturbing.”

Despite this disappointing response, we have good reason to believe that the shortcomings of the site are being addressed at this time, and we’ll keep our readers posted regarding further developments.

I hope he is right, but I am not exactly encouraged by the response.  When you say dissenting from the magisterium "might be disturbing" instead of saying that it is flat out wrong you are not exactly making your case.