In June, Margaret Farley spoke to the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA): The CTSA responded to the Vatican’s criticism of Farley’s book, Just Love, by defending her. Lisa Miller of the Washington Post also defended her by saying Farley was acting in the grand tradition of the late Catholic feminist Mary Daly. Also speaking at the conference was retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland. Who are these people?
In the 70s, the CTSA sponsored a book by Rev. Anthony Kosnick, Human Sexuality, that took a radically nonjudgmental position on homosexuality, swinging, adultery, and bestiality; it was used to teach seminarians at a time when the sexual abuse scandal was in full swing (the book was censured by the Vatican). Mary Daly taught at Boston College for decades, maintaining that Christianity was a form of “phallicism” and oppression; she quit when she was told she could no longer ban men from her classes. Weakland resigned as Archbishop of Milwaukee after it was discovered that his male lover of 23 years was paid $450,000 from church funds to keep quiet.
The fact is that some on the Catholic left are prepared to embrace virtually every expression of sexual deviance, no matter how perverse. Worse, after contributing to the root causes of the priestly sex abuse scandal, they have the audacity to blame the Vatican and the U.S. bishops. Moral depravity on a large scale does not spring from a social vacuum—it is driven by a milieu that invites it.
