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Published: March 27, 2007

A “Public Correction” of “Erroneous Views”

California bishops join in saying theologian's views “do not present Catholic teaching.”

Two California bishops --- Allen Vigneron of Oakland and Edward Clark, a Los Angeles auxiliary --- have joined eight others in condemning a theologian's opinions on sexual morality. In a statement approved this month by the administrative committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the bishops' committee on doctrine, of which Vigneron and Clark are members, said two pamphlets by Marquette University’s Professor Daniel Maguire “do not present Catholic teaching.”

After reviewing the pamphlets, “The Moderate Roman Catholic Position on Contraception and Abortion” and “A Catholic Defense of Same-Sex Marriage,” the bishops’ committee concluded that Maguire’s “views about contraception, abortion, same sex ‘marriage’, as well as the very nature of Church teaching and its authoritative character, cross the legitimate lines of theological reflection and simply enter into the area of false teaching.”

The committee said it “considers it important to offer a public correction” of the pamphlets’ “erroneous views.”

According to the bishops, Maguire says the Church holds “’no one position on contraception and abortion’ that can be called Catholic” and “no one position that can be called ‘Catholic’ concerning the morality of homosexual acts and same-sex ‘marriages.’" Maguire, said the bishops, asserts “three sources of truth” or “magisteria” in the Church: the hierarchy, theologians, and the “experience of the laity.”

The bishops called it “a serious error ... to claim that the teaching of the Pope and the bishops represents merely one voice among many legitimate voices within the Catholic Church, all of which are vying to be heard and accepted. The bishops are the successors of the apostles, who were given the authority to proclaim the teaching of Jesus Christ.” When the bishops with the pope “invoke the authority given to them by Christ to proclaim that one moral position is correct and another erroneous, this teaching is binding in conscience on all who hold the Catholic faith. It is not one of many possible ‘Catholic’ positions proposed by and debated among various theologians.”

The committee gave “a brief account” of the Church’s teaching on the issues Maguire raised. Pope Paul VI, the committee said, “upheld the teaching, consistently taught within the Christian tradition, that contraception is intrinsically wrong, for it is not in accord with the purposes of marital sexual intercourse, that is, to express and foster love in a manner that is open to new life” --- a teaching “strongly and repeatedly reaffirmed” by Pope John Paul II.

“Contrary to what Professor Maguire asserts, the Catholic tradition has never supported abortion,” said the bishops. Regarding Maguire’s assertion, "who could imagine God creating people who are gay and then denying them the right to express their sincere and honest love in the holy sacrament of matrimony!" the bishops said the Church’s teaching as to the “proper use of sexuality within marriage” forbids same-sex “marriage.” “God created men and women for one another, that, in marriage, they might sexually give themselves to one another for the procreation of children,” said the committee.

Though, said the bishops, homosexuality is not a sin, homosexual acts are “because such acts do not result in the loving union of a man and a woman nor are they ordered to the procreation of children they are intrinsically disordered.”

© California Catholic Daily 2007. All Rights Reserved.