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Published: August 14, 2008

The usual suspects

Petition signers want University of San Diego to reverse course, re-invite “feminist theologian” to honorary professorship

An online petition signed by thousands is asking the University of San Diego to again change its position and re-invite “feminist theologian” Rosemary Radford Ruether to take an honorary, yearlong professorship at the Catholic school.

Ruether, a supporter of abortion rights, contraception and the renaming of God, had been invited to hold the Monsignor John R. Portman Chair in Roman Catholic Theology at USD for the academic year 2009-2010, a decision that prompted a flood of complaints after California Catholic Daily first reported news of the appointment on July 9. On July 18, Pamela Gray Payton, assistant vice president for public affairs at USD, issued the following statement: “Upon review of the specific purpose of the Monsignor John R. Portman Chair in Roman Catholic Theology, the University of San Diego is no longer considering the appointment of Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether as the 2009-2010 Chair holder.”

A dissident-backed petition under the title “Support Rosemary Radford Ruether and Academic Freedom!” on the web site iPetitions.com has drawn more than 2100 signatures in support of reinstating Ruether to the Portman professorship. (iPetitions.com allows backers of various causes to create their own petitions and gather signatures via the Internet, and claims it reaches up to 250 million users.) A check of the web site yesterday revealed that the Ruether petition had been “closed” after a total of 2102 signatures were obtained – though some of the signatures appear to be duplicates.

The petition in support of Ruether was sponsored by the Women’s Ordination Conference, “a national organization that works for Catholic women to be priests and for a more inclusive Roman Catholic Church,” and by the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, "a feminist educational center.”

Aisha Taylor, the new executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, is a 2003 graduate of USD, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities, “with an emphasis on feminist liberation religious studies.” While at USD, she was reportedly heavily involved in the activities of the pro-homosexual campus group PRIDE. Taylor also serves on the “anti-racism team” of the dissident group Call to Action.

Many of those signing the petition said that USD had lost status in the academic world by dis-inviting Ruether because it signified a violation of academic freedom, or worse, gender discrimination. Other signers are well known dissidents, including Frances Kissling, founder of Catholics for a Free Choice, the pro-abortion group repeatedly denounced by U.S. bishops and now going by the name Catholics for Choice.

Some of the signers identified themselves as faculty members at USD. Patricia A. Plovanich wrote, “I am a member of the department in question. The administration made an end run around the faculty, half of whom are out of the city, and simply made a decision without consultation with the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. It is a first in the long history of administrators working with our department.”

Several signers of the petition said that Ruether now does not want to be reinstated to the Portman Chair, but that the university nonetheless should pay her for the year under the terms of the original offer.

Ruether has said she thinks that God can be called “Gaia,” after the Greek mother-earth goddess, has been a longtime supporter of women’s ordination, and since 1985 has served on the board of Catholics for Choice, described by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as “an arm of the abortion lobby in the United States and throughout the world.” In 2005, Ruether told an audience at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles that “Christianity is not necessarily worse than other religions, but it is the vehicle of Western Civilization,” which, she said, is riddled with hierarchy and patriarchy. Christianity, she said, presents an image of a tribal war god instead of “wisdom pervading the universe.”

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