Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew: Holy Cross College's resident clown

Crux Now is reporting that:

"A Massachusetts bishop has called the notions of a New Testament scholar in his diocese “highly offensive and blasphemous,” and has called on his Jesuit college to ask him to publicly disavow his writings on the sexuality of Jesus.

Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew, the chair of New Testament Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, has published articles claiming Jesus was a 'drag king' and said the relationship between the Father and Son was homosexual and masochistic in nature.

In one article, Liew said the centurion who approaches Jesus to heal his servant was actually speaking about his lover and described the relationship as 'pederastic.' Liew said the biblical author affirmed the relationship, adding this 'may also be consistent with Matthew’s affirmation of many sexual dissidents in her Gospel.'

Bishop Robert J. McManus of Worchester said he was 'deeply troubled and concerned' that someone who authored such things holds an endowed chair at the Catholic institution.

After the professor’s controversial writings - published a decade ago - were highlighted in a March 26 article in The Fenwick Review, an independent opinion journal based at the College of the Holy Cross, an online petition calling for Liew’s ouster gained over 10,000 signatures."

Sign this petition here.

Pope Saint John Paul II, in his Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, had this to say:

§ 3. "In ways appropriate to the different academic disciplines, all Catholic teachers are to be faithful to, and all other teachers are to respect, Catholic doctrine and morals in their research and teaching. In particular, Catholic theologians, aware that they fulfil a mandate received from the Church, are to be faithful to the Magisterium of the Church as the authentic interpreter of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition."

If one is to be faithful to Christ and His Church, one cannot assert that what the Magisterium teaches is false and that the faithful may reject Magisterial teaching and replace it with their own opinions or those of theologians. In his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II explains that, "Dissent, in the form of carefully orchestrated protests and polemics carried on in the media, is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the People of God." (No. 113).

When a Catholic dissents from Church teaching, he is not in living communion with the mind of Christ, which is made known to us through His Church's Magisterium. Such a person is not, therefore, in a proper condition to receive the sacraments. Pope John Paul II has stated this clearly: "It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium is compatible with being a 'good Catholic' and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments. This is a grave error." (Address to the U.S. Bishops, Los Angeles, September 16, 1987). See also Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1395).

Some erroneously hold that, "No school that regulates ideas can justly call itself a university."


The late Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, who was a classically-educated Jesuit scholar and a brilliant philosopher, would have disagreed. For he explained that, "The trouble with this understanding of academic freedom is that it takes for granted as a truth what is a falsity, indeed a complete illusion, namely, that academic freedom is absolutely immune from any reasonable bounds, limitations or restrictions. No human freedom is absolutely immune to restriction. Freedom is no longer freedom when it is reduced to being the unhindered pursuit of one’s whims and desires. This is especially true of freedom exercised in the field of philosophy where conflict with the authentic and infallible teachings of the Church is foreseeable. A true understanding of academic freedom, therefore, is in order so as to distinguish it clearly from academic license.

Academic freedom derives from the rational nature of man. It is rooted in the intellectual activity of man whereby he is called to a dominion and stewardship of the universe through a conquest of truth. Positively, then, academic freedom is a generous guarantee to the unimpeded access to the evidence of truth in any given science. Thus, academic freedom is always bounded by the canons and axiomatic truths of each discipline of learning. Thus, again positively, academic freedom is both purposive and responsible. It has its own built-in rules; its requirements are conditioned by pre-defined directions towards the truth of its particular science. The moral right to academic freedom arises from the inviolability of the proper action necessary to its scientific achievements of truth, founded on man’s connatural inner dynamism of the human intelligence’s hunger for truth. Negatively, academic freedom means at the very least the immunity from unreasonable restrictions, both from within and from outside the academic community, of the right to communicate the results of one’s researches through lectures and publications, and the right to be immune from unreasonable restriction in the pursuit of the teaching profession.

We are now in the position to ask, ‘How is academic freedom violated?’ Scholars, scientists and philosophers hold that whenever one of their members ventures consciously and freely to teach as truths doctrines that contradict the clearly established dogmas or unconditional truths of their disciplines, then such a member of the university is abusing his academic freedom, putting it at the service of stupidities or known falsehoods instead of using it to advance the horizons of truth. Now every science has its dogmas, theology, philosophy and all the natural sciences. Dogmas are not only the ultimate answers to some fundamental questions; they also prompt further questioning and research, leading thus to enlarged, more profound truth....a Catholic university that allows professors and lecturers to attack the authentic teachings of the Church, whether they are infallibly defined or not, is not faithful to the best canons of scholarship, nor to the Church or its own students who have a right in justice to receive the divinely revealed truths in their pristine purity." (The Antichrist, pp. 166-167).

Many Catholic institutions have devaluated the faith and have become enslaved to a narrow (and conceptually flawed) notion of academic freedom. And why have these institutions sold out to secularism? Again, Fr. Miceli, S.J., explains: "Gradually, over the years the essential purpose of the Catholic university has been radically changed. Lusting after secular academic excellence, huge student bodies, expensive science complexes, notoriety, publicity, political clout and financial power, the leaders of Catholic universities somehow lost sight of the unearthly purpose and spirit of the Catholic university. Thus, in today’s Catholic university, intellectualism is preferred to Catholicism; scientism to faith, relativism to truth, immanentism to transcendence, subjectivism to reality, situationism to moral integrity and anarchism to authority. The essential purpose of the Catholic university has de facto been changed, despite the lip service that is still paid to the original Catholic ideal. Conduct flows from convictions and when the conduct is consistently depraved [Such as allowing controversial plays like the Vagina Monologues, my note] it is because the convictions have been corrupted. For example, Judas, forerunner of the Antichrist, had radically changed his deepest convictions about the person and mission of Christ before he sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver. No virtuosity at contorted rationalization can mask the massive turning away from the Catholic ideal that has taken place in the Catholic universities of the United States. The light and love of the world have made tragic advances against the light and love of Christ." (The Antichrist, p. 161).

Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew is a clown offering not the fine wheat of Catholic truth but rather asinine opinions which were hatched in a warped mind.

Sign the petition to have this fool removed from his teaching position at Holy Cross.