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.

Blasphemy at Holy Cross College in Worcester...

A Holy Cross professor is suggesting that, "Jesus was a ‘Drag King’ with ‘Queer Desires’."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2148, teaches that, "Blasphemy is directly opposed to the second commandment. It consists in uttering against God - inwardly or outwardly - words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill of God; in failing in respect toward him in one's speech; in misusing God's name. St. James condemns those 'who blaspheme that honorable name [of Jesus] by which you are called.' The prohibition of blasphemy extends to language against Christ's Church, the saints, and sacred things. It is also blasphemous to make use of God's name to cover up criminal practices, to reduce peoples to servitude, to torture persons or put them to death. The misuse of God's name to commit a crime can provoke others to repudiate religion.
Blasphemy is contrary to the respect due God and his holy name. It is in itself a grave sin."

Holy Cross College has long been a hotbed of dissent from Catholic teaching where a distorted notion of academic freedom has been advanced. See here.

The Worcester Diocese welcomes Cathleen Kaveny

Tom, a faithful Catholic of the Worcester Diocese and a contributor to this Blog, writes: "The February 10, 2014, Diocesan Dispatch publicizes the following upcoming pro-abortion speaker at Holy Cross College:

'TALK ABOUT PROPHETIC SPEECH AT HOLY CROSS
Legal scholar and moral theologian M. Cathleen Kaveny, the newly named Darald and Juliet Libby Professor at Boston College, will give a lecture titled “Prophetic Rhetoric in the Public Square” at the College of the Holy Cross on Thursday, Feb. 13 ...'

The Irish Rover, an alternate student newspaper at the University of Notre Dame (where she formerly taught) and the Sycamore Trust, a group of faithfully Catholic Notre Dame alumni have written of her pro-abortion views and of how Notre Dame has lionized its former professor:
Cathleen Kaveny, a Catholic professor of law and of theology, is listed on the Notre Dame News website as an expert in the ethical aspects of assisted suicide, bioethics, biomedical ethics, cloning, death and dying, the pope, and the papacy.

Kaveny expressed pro-choice beliefs during a Princeton University conference on abortion in the fall of 2010: 'I do not believe [the mother] has an obligation to provide life support to the unborn if pregnancy imposes a significant burden on her health or if she was raped,' said Kaveny.  'Under those circumstances I think those actions are describable as intentionally ending the burden of the pregnancy and can be described differently than intentional killing.'

Kaveny also said the unborn have no moral rights until 14 days after conception, a stance that could permit embryonic stem cell research."

This is a clear rejection of Catholic moral teaching. In his Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, No. 57, Pope John Paul II writes, "..by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end. It is in fact a grave act of disobedience to the moral law, and indeed to God himself, the author and guarantor of that law; it contradicts the fundamental virtues of justice and charity. 'Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action'"

It was Father Thomas Euteneuer who correctly observed that, "Abortion is blood sacrifice of innocent blood to the devil. The clinics are like temples, the doctors are like priests, the medical table is like their altar. It’s a ritualized sacrifice. They have a dogma called choice, a hierarchy called Planned Parenthood, and guardian angels in the form of police guards that will arrest you if you try to stop them."

In the New Order, man has no special value. Human beings will be subject to the tyranny of technological impersonalism in the service of devils. Many have grown weary because they have lost their faith. And barbarism will follow. As men move away from the Church and her sacraments, the world continues to degenerate into madness, or as Fr. Miceli put it: "..a weird brew of sex, flowers, drugs, incense, tear gas, acid rock, rhetoric, bombs and blood. Enter the Antichrist, ruler of the Moloch World?"

The question has to be asked: Why does Bishop McManus tolerate (and at times even approve of) speakers who dissent from revealed Catholic teaching - even on the subject of abortion?

Kristine Maloney, Spokeswoman for Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts: Advancing a false understanding of academic freedom

In a Catholic News Service article entitled "Catholic identity debate*," Kristine Maloney, spokeswoman for the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, advances a false understanding of academic freedom. Responding to criticisms over some of the speakers who have appeared at that institution and whose positions and views have been contrary to Catholic teaching, Ms. Maloney was quoted as having said, "We really don’t think these criticisms are fair, especially when they come from special interest groups...that try to force everyone into a very narrow version of Catholic teaching that doesn’t always fit within the depth of the Catholic traditions...We don’t see a conflict with our Catholic identity if we have a speaker on campus who may have views that are in conflict with Catholic teachings....We’re committed to a Jesuit tradition which doesn’t suppress educational issues and intellectual debate."

Nice try Kristine. But your argument doesn’t wash. The late Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, who was a classically-educated Jesuit scholar and a brilliant philosopher, 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).

For Ms. Maloney, faithful Catholics who insist with Pope John Paul II that "the right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected" (Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, No. 113), are trying to "force everyone into a very narrow version of Catholic teaching." This charge is particularly ironic since the College of the Holy Cross, like many other Catholic institutions which have devaluated the faith, has 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).

Holy Cross officials, who have succumbed to such contorted rationalization, may believe that there is no conflict between a university’s Catholic identity and having speakers on campus whose views and positions are in conflict with Catholic teaching. But Cardinal Newman would have disagreed:

"It is no sufficient security for the Catholicity of a university, even that the whole of Catholic theology should be professed in it, unless the Church breathes her own pure and unearthly spirit in it, and fashions and moulds its organization, and watches over its teaching, and knits together its pupils, and superintends its actions....It cannot but be that if left to themselves, they will, in spite of their profession of Catholic truth, work out results more or less prejudicial to its interests. Nor is this all: such institutions may become hostile to the revealed truth in consequence of the circumstances of their teaching as well as of their end. They are employed in the pursuit of liberal knowledge, and liberal knowledge has a special tendency, not necessary or rightful, but a tendency in fact, when cultivated by beings such as we are, to impress us with a mere philosophical theory of life and conduct, in the place of Revelation....It is not that you will at once reject Catholicism, but you will measure and proportion it by an earthly standard. You will throw its highest and most momentous disclosures into the background; you will deny its principles [such as the authentic meaning of academic freedom, my note], explain away its doctrines, rearrange its precepts, and make light of its practices, even while you profess it....This intellectualism first and chiefly comes into collision with precept, then with doctrine, then with the very principle of dogmatism.." (John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University, Image Books, N.Y., 1959, pp. 223-225).

How prophetic Cardinal Newman was.

In its Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, No. 40, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith tells us that, "The Church ‘is like a sacrament, a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men’ (LG, 1). Consequently, to pursue concord and communion is to enhance the force of her witness and credibility. To succumb to the temptation of dissent, on the other hand, is to allow the ‘leaven of infidelity to the Holy Spirit’ to start to work." Faithful Catholics understand this. And they understand what Pope John Paul II meant when he said (in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, No. 113) that: "While exchanges and conflicts of opinion may constitute normal expressions of public life in a representative democracy, moral teaching certainly cannot depend simply upon respect for a process: indeed, it is no way established by following the rules and deliberative procedures typical of a democracy. 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. Opposition to the teaching of the Church’s Pastors cannot be seen as a legitimate expression either of Christian freedom or of the diversity of the Spirit’s gifts."

Dissent in the Church leads to polarization and destroys peace within the Church. Faithful Catholics who refuse to accept a dissenting view must resist it for the sake of restoring an authentic peace, a peace which Pope John XXIII taught: "is not completely untroubled and serene; it is active, not calm and motionless. In short, this is a peace that is ever at war. It wars with every sort of error, including that which falsely wears the face of truth; it struggles against the enticements of vice, against those enemies of the soul, of whatever description, who can weaken, blemish, or destroy our innocence or Catholic faith." (Ad Petri cathedram, AAS 51 (1959) 517, PE, 263.93).

In the Catholic News Service article, Chaz Muth describes the Cardinal Newman Society, which works to restore a Catholic identity at many institutions which have become Catholic in name only, as a "self-appointed watchdog group." This is really quite insulting and betrays a profound ignorance of who the lay faithful are. In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, No. 9, Pope John Paul II reminds us that: "Through Baptism the lay faithful are made one body with Christ and are established among the People of God. They are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ. They carry out their own part in the mission of the whole Christian people with respect to the Church and the world." John Paul reminds us in the same document that "Because the lay faithful belong to Christ, Lord and King of the Universe, they share in his kingly mission and are called by him to spread that kingdom in history" (No. 14). The lay faithful who make up the Cardinal Newman Society are not "self-appointed watchdogs." They are members of the Mystical Body of Christ who, individually and collectively, have been called by Christ to promote and defend His kingdom in history. This vocation is not only a right but a duty. Hence we read in canon 212 of the Code of Canon Law that, "In accord with the knowledge, competence and preeminence which they possess, they [the Christian faithful] have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard for the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons."

I call upon the College of the Holy Cross to admit that it has succumbed to a false understanding of academic freedom. Until it does, and until the Church once again "breathes her own pure and unearthly spirit in it," the College of the Holy Cross will never be authentically Catholic. She will only be an earthly counterfeit.

* This article may be found in the April 17, 2009 edition of The Catholic Free Press, p. 5.