"This will not help faith thrive." editorial

This will not help faith to thrive
Editorial from the International Tablet

“The internationally renowned Jesuit magazine, America, bears the name of a country that has traditionally regarded freedom of speech as one of its core values. The resignation of its editor-in-chief, Fr Thomas Reese SJ, as a result of prolonged pressure from the hierarchy, dramatises the way American Catholicism is being pulled between two cultural norms. One stresses the importance of open and honest debate and the other expects deference to church authority and those who wield it. These norms are inevitably in tension, but they are not, with goodwill on all sides, mutually incompatible. . . .

Concluding paragraph

“The underlying issue is of concern throughout the Church: that debate and discussion are necessary parts of the process by which the Catholic faith develops. The action of the CDF against Fr Reese is bound to have a chilling effect, drawing the permissible limits of criticism and dissent ever more narrowly. This is a risk-averse philosophy which is of no benefit to the faith and intelligence of the Catholic laity in particular, and betrays a certain lack of confidence in the Holy Spirit. It is not disloyalty but honesty to acknowledge that there are usually two sides to an argument. As Cardinal Newman said in his seminal essay “On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine”, to cut the laity off from participation in the Church’s thinking “in the educated classes will terminate in indifference, and in the poorer in superstition.”

For rest see
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/register.cgi/tablet-01024