US bishops’ chief doctrine official criticizes leading American theologian

January 20, 2010

The current issue of Origins reprints an essay by Father Thomas G. Weinandy, executive director for the Secretariat of Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, that is strongly critical of an address by Dr. Terrence W. Tilley, chairman of Fordham University’s theology department and outgoing president of the Catholic Theological Society of America.

“I was present for this address and found it quite troublesome on a couple of levels,” writes Father Weinandy. “First, while one would expect a presidential address to a scholarly society to be itself a work of substantial scholarship, this was not the case. Much of its theological argumentation was superficial and fallacious. Second, while this was an address of the President of a theological society that calls itself Catholic, much of the address’s Christological content and many of its suggested proposals contain doctrinal ambiguities and even errors.”

 

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Further information:

• Terrence Tilley’s Christological Impasses: The Demise of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (FCS Quarterly, p. 4)
• Three Impasses in Christology (CTSA Proceedings)
• Jeff Mirus: The One and Only Theological Impasse (Catholic Culture)