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A
Seminary's Retreat from Heterodoxy?
One heretic-prof fired, another demoted
from the May-June 1998 issue
According to a May 1, 1998 article in
the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), Sr.
Barbara Fiand, professor of theology and spirituality at
the Athenaeum of Ohio, will be removed as of September
from teaching in the school’s seminary division,
Mount St. Mary’s of the West. According to the NCR,
Athenaeum administration has also rescinded Fiand’s
"rolling contract," which provided a degree of
job security in lieu of tenure, automatically renewing
itself every two years.
Fiand, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur,
has taught future priests and deacons for the past 18
years, serving on the school’s seminary formation
team. In recent years she has taught four required
courses to seminarians, as well as several other courses
in feminist studies in the school’s Special Studies
division and the Lay Pastoral Ministry Program.
Fiand told NCR that she had received
notice of her demotion from the new rector of the
seminary, Fr. Gerald Haemmerle. She said Haemmerle told
her that "the change was based on problems in her
seminary courses, including accusations from unnamed
sources that she does not support vocations to ordained
ministry as practiced in today’s church."
Fiand, however, denied the accusation
that she is not supportive of priests. She told NCR she
is "a strong defender of the priesthood." In
contrast to her denial though, Fiand recently made
several derogatory remarks to a California audience of
religious educators concerning the Church’s
understanding of the ordained priesthood.
At the Archdiocese of Los
Angeles’s Religious Education Congress earlier this
year Fiand asserted that the "fact" that young
men will no longer embrace celibacy "for no
discernible reason except church discipline" is a
contingency that should lead the Church to form a
"creative response," presumably the the option
for priests to marry and/or the ordination of women.
Further, in her 1987 book Releasement
Fiand is forthright about her support for the ordination
of women. Fiand writes that the "stubborn resistance
to the ordination of women which uses nothing less than
Scripture and tradition (misinterpreted though they may
be) to justify itself, is probably the clearest example
of the repressed feminine now turned sour."
Elsewhere in the same book, which has been used as a
textbook in her courses for the past ten years, she
writes, "When women in our churches… will be
allowed to do what men have been doing for centuries,
justice will have been served, without a doubt."
Fiand told NCR that she believes the
Athenaeum will not choose to renew her contract when it
expires in two years.
Emancipated laymen expose a heretic
We need to continue the "emancipation of the
laity" brought about by Vatican II, Fiand told her
LA audience. She said that she believes the Church’s
traditional notion of obedience is problematic.
"Catholics at the end of the 20th century
have come of age," she claimed. "We are a
church of adults who have the rights and responsibility
to ask ‘why’ when decisions are made and
declarations pronounced. ‘Why’ indicates that
you have a mind, and that you’re using it."
In the Fall of 1996, Fiand was
challenged in class by a lay student who asked
‘why.’ Robert Franer, who had enrolled in her
course, "Faith, Source of Ministry," (reviewed
in SCR’s April-May 1997 issue) asked why she was
teaching heresy to her students. After writing a letter
to Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk, chancellor of the
Athenaeum, objecting to Fiand’s advocacy of dissent
from Church practice and doctrine, Franer was expelled
from the course.
A second student, Dr. Thomas
Lustenberger, D.D.S.—as well as others critical of
Fiand—remained in the course. He chose not to
challenge Fiand in class. Instead, he directed his
"ask-why" to Rome. Lustenberger told NCR that
he sent two of Fiand’s books, neither of which
carries an imprimatur, to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith.
In two 1997 articles St. Catherine Review also asked why Sr.
Barbara was allowed to continue teaching dissent and
undermining Church teaching in her courses at the
Athenaeum. Fiand told NCR that these articles were
"filled with misquotes, distortions and
untruths," although she failed to name even one. The
two SCR articles were reviews of her five published books
via key themes of her dissent from Church teaching. Her
books, which are used in her courses, illumine her
dissent.
SCR asked questions about: why Fiand
refers to God as Him/Her throughout her books; why she
supports the ordination of women even after the Holy
Father has been very clear about the fact that the Church
cannot ordain women; why she judges the Church’s
interpretation of Scripture to be erroneous; why the
Church’s concept of sin is "one-sided and
rigid"; why she believes that confessing one’s
sins, begging for forgiveness, and penance are not
authentic; why she believes there can be no right and
wrong, no good and evil, no light and dark, no masculine
and feminine; why she promotes sodomistic "genital
relations."
SCR asked why the Archdiocese of
Cincinnati continues to fund the moral, intellectual and
spiritual fraud offered to seminarians and lay students.
Are our priests better priests for having been exposed to
Fiand year after year as seminarians? The Athenaeum
seemed to think so for 18 years. According to the NCR,
Fiand was promoted twice by the Athenaeum and has twice
received the school’s Excellence in Teaching Award
based on student evaluations.
Readers asked Archbishop Pilarczyk,
chancellor of the Athenaeum, why he allowed her to
continue fomenting dissent as a paid official of his
seminary and school. NCR reported that at
Pilarczyk’s request, Fiand wrote a response to the
complaints. Dean of the school, Terrence Callan, told NCR
that Fiand’s response had been "entirely
satisfactory." Fiand described the SCR article as
"tendentious, misfocused" and disrespectful of
the context of the book. There is no evidence to suggest
that either Pilarczyk or Callan themselves examined the
complaints raised in the article.
Pilarczyk addressed all complaints from
readers in a form letter which stated, in part, "As
far as I am concerned, this is not worthy of further
notice by me or Sister Barbara Fiand."
NCR reported that after the second wave
of complaints from SCR readers, prompted by a second,
more extensive review of Fiand’s questionable
teaching (May-June 1997), Fiand told Pilarczyk that she
was unable to respond "to every accusation."
According to NCR, Pilarczyk advised her not to be
concerned. "The best response to such attacks, he
wrote, is no response."
Why the contract changes?
Fiand told NCR that "the situation last spring had
been much easier to deal with than the present one.
‘I knew what I was being accused of. I could defend
myself,’ she said. ‘In this situation I
don’t have the slightest idea what I did. I
don’t know who made these accusations.’"
She told NCR that the Athenaeum’s
faculty affairs committee had recently completed her
three-year review. Callan, said Fiand, wrote to tell her
that she had been highly recommended for contract
renewal. Fiand told the NCR that she cannot understand
why Haemmerle is now rejecting the faculty’s
recommendation that her contract be renewed.
Cincinnati attorney, Thomas J. Ruwe,
who was expelled from the Athenaeum in 1995 after
challenging another professor at the school, believes
that Vatican officials are behind recent changes at the
Athenaeum. "Lay students, priests and seminarians
have been disgruntled with Fiand’s teaching for
years. I can only assume that appeals to Rome have now
been heard," he told St. Catherine Review.
Callan, however, said he is unaware of
any pressures from Rome and even discounts the role of
student complaints. But, he told NCR, the school is
concerned about perceptions of the Athenaeum’s Mount
St. Mary’s of the West Seminary—it was
described by NCR last year as one of the most
"progressive," i.e., dissident (heterodox),
seminaries in the country. Even so, said Callan in the
NCR report, "We are not engaged in any kind of
concerted effort to change our image." He did admit
though that the school does not want to be perceived as
"indifferent to orthodoxy."
Mount St. Mary’s of the West has
at present 25 seminarians, all but one of them from the
Archdiocese of Cincinnati. The NCR reported that in
recent years, several other dioceses that had previously
sent seminarians to the Athenaeum are choosing other
schools. Two of those dioceses, Lansing and Youngstown,
have had new bishops named in the last two years, and
have since chosen other, more reputable seminaries.
The Athenaeum phobia
"There’s a phobia at the Athenaeum," Fiand
told NCR. "People are wondering who’s
next." Callan acknowledged that Fiand’s
demotion and the 1996 firing of another
professor-heretic, Aaron Milavec, have affected the
atmosphere at the school. "Certainly people are more
cautious… than they would have been a few years
ago," he told NCR. "It’s not a comfortable
thing to think students believe they can monitor a
teacher’s orthodoxy."
According to some lay students who have
contacted St. Catherine Review, a handful of
students at the school not only believe they can monitor
certain teachers’ orthodoxy, they believe it is
imperative they do so. "Pilarczyk has shown, with
his performance over the past sixteen years, that he is
incapable of doing so himself," said one former
Athenaeum student. Several lay students continue to
document dissent from Church teachings at the Athenaeum
from various professors. Generally, however, there exists
little resistance to dissident teaching from students.
Seminarians over the past ten years—at
least—have felt particularly vulnerable about
speaking out against abuses.
"We have received several
promising signs from Rome," said one lay student
from the Athenaeum. "Not only in regard to
professors at the Athenaeum, but also in the theology
department at Xavier University [in Cincinnati]."
Recent history of the lay fight
The Fiand demotion follows the "firing" of Dr.
Aaron Milavec, former professor of historical theology,
whose contract was canceled in June of 1996.
A week before the Fiand story appeared
in the NCR, the same newspaper reported on his case,
which Milavec evidently still feels was an unjust
dismissal from the school at which he had been teaching
for 12 years. He, like Fiand, taught in the seminary
division at the Athenaeum. According to the April 24,
1998 article in the NCR, Milavec’s troubles began in
the Fall of 1995 when Thomas Ruwe enrolled in
Milavec’s course, "The Church."
Ruwe challenged Milavec’s stark
departure from Catholic doctrine, complaining that
Milavec’s book, a series of scriptural "case
studies" called Exploring Scriptural Sources,
was misleading and deficient in recognizing the authority
of Church tradition. When NCR reporter Pamela Schaeffer
asked Ruwe why he, a student with no formal training in
theology, felt he could question Milavec who has two
advanced degrees in theology, Ruwe answered,
"Milavec’s errors were so fundamental that any
Catholic with a high school education would recognize
them."
After two classes, NCR reported,
Milavec wrote Ruwe a letter concerning his objections in
the class. "Any further attempts on your part to
erode my authority or to impose your agenda on the class
will not be tolerated," wrote Milavec. Ruwe’s
interventions, Milavec told NCR, reflected "the
Catholic stance which prevailed up until the ‘50s
but which is no longer seen as credible or serviceable
for the future direction of the church."
Ruwe, according to the NCR, wrote to
then-seminary rector Fr. Robert J. Mooney (a priest who
has since left the priesthood to marry) and Pilarczyk,
advising them of Milavec’s defective teaching. He
also requested an investigation of Milavec’s book.
Mooney responded by expelling Ruwe from
the school but told him he was launching the requested
investigation. Mooney told NCR that Ruwe was expelled on
the basis of his "harshly judgmental attitude"
toward Milavec.
On December 8, 1995, Ruwe wrote to
Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, asking him also to investigate
Milavec’s teaching. Ruwe told NCR that he believes
that letter was instrumental in getting Milavec fired,
but he admitted that could not be confirmed.
Milavec’s Athenaeum colleagues,
Fr. Richard A. Marzheuser and Dean Callan were requested
to investigate the book. Callan’s report concluded
that "the book implies something opposed to Catholic
doctrine or even states it explicitly." Marzheuser,
according to NCR, concluded that Milavec had failed to
balance the historical-critical method with the
Church’s interpretation of Scripture, and had failed
to represent Catholic teaching "on several key
issues."
NCR writes that Mooney responded,
"I cannot help but have some misgivings about what
you are teaching." Subsequently Milavec’s
contract was not renewed. According to NCR, Mooney’s
formal basis for dismissing Milavec was his "failure
to present the tradition of the Roman Catholic church
accurately and respectfully" in his book. "I
further believe that the publication of this book and
your use of passages from it in class has been gravely
detrimental to both the academic and community life of
the Athenaeum."
Milavec is still crying foul over his
dismissal. He told NCR that he "wondered whether his
troubles were related to a decision by his wife of 21
years to leave the Catholic church and pursue ordination
as an Episcopal priest." Linda Milavec was ordained
in February—a decision, said Milavec, that he fully
supports, although he and his wife have been separated
and are pursuing a divorce.
Callan and Mooney told NCR that Linda
Milavec’s ordination was unrelated to Aaron
Milavec’s dismissal from the school.
The Athenaeum recently paid Milavec
$72,000 to settle out of court a breach-of-contract
lawsuit which he had recently brought against the school.
—Michael S. Rose
RELATED ARTICLE: Cincinnati's
Seminary: A Syllabus of Errors
[ St. Catherine Review ]
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