Xavier Theology Professor's Threefold Denial
Bob Buse speaks on Dr. Paul F. Knitter
from the July-August 1998 issue

In recent decades the concept of the "historical Jesus" has held the attention of not a few Catholic dissenters. A theological posture once assumed only by the most liberal of the Protestant theologians, the "historical Jesus" is now gaining ground in Catholic academia, encouraged by a secular environment hostile to traditional Christianity, yet at the same time welcoming the syncretism of "world religions."

This "historical Jesus" is an emaciated Christ, stripped of any teaching authority. He is an historical character who was not divine, worked no miracles, did not foresee the Passion and crucifixion, and did not rise from the dead. Theologians promoting the "historical Jesus" strip the Gospels of all supernatural interventions. This con-veniently places Jesus on the same level as various historical prophets.

The pluralist theology of world religions, which has been developing progressively since the 1950s in the Catholic Church, affirms that there is no binding and valid truth in the figure of Jesus Christ; and the faith of the Church is reduced to "fundamentalism," which is seen as the leading threat against the supreme good of tolerance and freedom.

Such is the position of Dr. Paul Knitter, professor of theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati. To better understand both his theology and the gospel he introduces to his students—a stone instead of bread—St. Catherine Review interviewed Xavier University graduate student Bob Buse concerning Knitter’s introductory course in Theology:

(Former chairman of the Philosophy department at Edgecliff College in Cincinnati, Bob Buse graduated from Xavier University in 1950 and is a graduate of St. Xavier High School, class of 1946. He completed graduate work in philosophy at Xavier, and received a graduate degree in history from Xavier in 1964.)

St. Catherine Review: Dr. Paul Knitter is a well-respected theologian in certain dissident circles. Indeed, he can claim quite a reputation by the mere fact that he is on Cardinal Ratzinger’s theological radar. Ratzinger, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—what some like to call "Rome’s doctrinal watchdog"— criticized Dr. Knitter’s theology of "methodological doubt" in a speech last year to the presidents of the doctrinal commissions of the Latin American bishops’ conferences.

A few years ago, in 1994, he made news in the Cincinnati area by publicly criticizing the Holy Father. In a television interview Knitter told Cincinnati that "the Pope, like the emperor, has no clothes." Fearing that Pope John Paul II might thwart population control efforts at the United Nation’s population conference in Cairo—which he did—Knitter, along with 3000 other dissenting Catholics, signed a full-page ad published in The New York Times. The ad stated that on the issue of contraception the Pope is "simply wrong."

Despite much evidence to the contrary, Knitter remarked in that interview that "population control is vitally necessary." The population control movement’s "party line," to which Knitter subscribes, not only pushes euthanasia, abortion and contraception, it glorifies them. It is a "kill the poor" mentality passed off as compassionate environmentalism. In fact, Knitter was scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the recent EarthSpirit Rising conference, at which his sister theologian, Rosemary Radford Reuther told her audience that the planet would be a lot better off without us terrible humans [see article p. 6]. In 1990, he was signatory of a similar ad that ran in the Feb. 28, 1990 edition of The New York Times. That ad, entitled "A Call for Reform in the Catholic Church," attacked a wide range of Church teachings and demanded Church-approved abortions, the acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, contraception, women’s ordination, experimental liturgies and so forth.

Bob, what was your experience with Dr. Knitter? What is the theology he puts forth to his students? And perhaps you can tell us what are the ramifications of his theology.

Bob Buse: I enrolled in Dr. Paul Knitter’s section of the basic undergraduate theology course required of every student at Xavier. I left at the intermission of the sixth class and never came back. I’d had enough of the war with the position and mindset of this liberal, dissenting theologian. I cannot even consider him to be "Catholic."

Knitter puts his students in a world of such dissent. In some ways the course is far more insidious than the others I have taken at Xavier. But he can be a soft, mild, gentle, empathetic man, and he treated me with great respect. He knew I was a former philosophy professor. Several times he even asked me if I wouldn’t elaborate on something. So he was giving me certain professional courtesies.

SCR: Did he offer the class any of his background. Knitter is a laicized priest. Laicized priests are normally barred from teaching theology or religion in a Catholic institution, except by a special mandate from the local archbishop.

Buse: I specifically questioned him in class about his background. He said in 1962 he went to Rome. He translated the Latin documents coming out of Vatican II for a number of the American bishops. He said he was totally imbued with the spirit of Vatican II. When he finished his study in Rome—four years—he was a member of the Divine Word Missionaries and was ordained in 1966. So he was in Rome from 1962-66, during the years of the Second Vatican Council. Then he went north to Germany, to attend the University of Marburg to earn an advanced degree in Theology. It was a Protestant theology center. And I asked him if that’s where he got the mindset that he has, and he said, "well, yes."

This is where he encountered Karl Rahner and Hans Kung—that group of notorious dissident Catholic theologians who made so much noise during the turbulent years that followed the Council. He said he left the priesthood a few years later in 1975.

SCR: Did you get the impression that most students in the course had very little religion or theology background?

Buse: Very little. The students were almost all freshmen or sophomores. They said that in high school they had enough religion and they sure don’t need any more.

SCR: What is your opinion of the text (Faith, Religion & Theology: A Contemporary Introduction) used in the course?

Buse: The text used in his course undercuts the faith life of a student on every page of the book. It is written by three Xavier theology professors: William Madges, Paul Knitter and Brennan R. Hill, who is now chairman of the theology department. There is a constant slap at the authority of the Church.

Defined Catholic faith holds that Jesus Christ is the Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who became man, died on the Cross, rose for us and redeemed us. The book in question presents Christ, the Trinity and Redemption in terms which cannot be reconciled with the doctrine of the Church.

SCR: The text begins with an outline of "Faith." What did Dr. Knitter have to say about faith in the course? How did he define that incredible theological concept?

Buse: Knitter said in the very first class, "Don’t use the word God. If you use the word God in this course you must apologize for it. We’re not using God here. Use something more! Because the object of religion is that which transcends. It could be an aesthetic, whatever. God is not what we’re talking about here."

I then asked, "do you mean by ‘faith’ the belief, that which you hold without full understanding, but that you accept on another authority?"

"No," he responded. "Faith and belief are not the same thing. Belief is not a characteristic of faith." Notice what Knitter is saying: We now have faith with no belief and faith with no God. It’s like Christianity without Christ. It is religion without a God.

SCR: Did he ever explain better what he meant by faith?

Buse: I told him that’s no definition. He said just give it a couple more class periods. He said, "faith is your interior experience, Bob. Religion is merely the externalization of that internal experience that transcends, but it is not God." You’ve now got faith and you’ve got religion, but no belief. In his theology, no creed is necessary.

SCR: Cardinal Ratzinger criticized Dr. Knitter on that point in his Latin American speech last year. He spoke of the concept of an ‘orthopraxis’ (right action) that is independent of an ‘orthodoxy’ (right belief), where no creed is necessary. Ratzinger claimed that Knitter and other so-called liberation theologians believe that the absolute cannot be known but it can be made. Ratzinger, however, asked the logical question: Where do I find a just action if I cannot know what is just in an absolute way?

Buse: That line of thought was readily apparent when we discussed the issue of ‘myth’ and truth. I taught epistemology (the study of the origins of knowledge) for years, so this topic was particular close to home for me. When he got onto the subject of myth, I told him, "you’re coming very negatively at traditional Catholic theology. Let me give you a point of view from a conservative Catholic. We are suspicious of the notion of myth. I have asked many times in my graduate courses at Xavier and I have asked you, but I never get a definition of myth. Myth is never distinguished from sign or symbol or fiction. To the average layman, myth is a synonym for fiction, or at least a type of fiction. Myth is therefore conventional; it is manmade." But he did not respond.

I told him he needs to give these students some clear definitions—the definition of truth, of sign and of fiction. He needs to make distinctions because at present he is undercutting their faith and with the lack of distinctions, they have no certitude, no clarity. He’s turning their intellectual and spiritual life to mush. He is damaging them. He’s failing them.

Before I took Knitter’s course I saw very clearly from Professors Madges, Dewey and Bracken that their methodology derives from the empirical studies of psychology, sociology and history. After the first class I asked Knitter about this and he admitted that much. Then listening to Prof. Arthur Dewey I learned there is a fourth empirical study involved, that is literary criticism.

In addition to his course last semester I was taking a course in Postmodern Literature. My professor launched into deconstructivism, which is a major part of the postmodern mind. This mode of thought holds that all reality and all truths are conventional, manmade products. And theologians have been buying into this novelty.

Knitter then added a fifth empirical study, that of archeology. Knitter mentions archeology quite a lot. But this is a far cry from the traditional methodology of using philosophy, which is able to transcend the material. I told Knitter if he relies totally on the empirical sciences he can never get to the supernatural concepts of miracles or grace. He can never get to the supernatural intervention of any event on the face of the earth.

So during that sixth class period I asked him if Christ’s life was a myth. He said, oh no Bob, that’s the "historic Jesus." That’s not a myth. Was Christ’s death a myth? I asked. Oh no, he said, that too goes along with the historic Jesus. The next question was: Is the Resurrection of Jesus a myth or is it historic? "Now there we have some difficulties," Knitter replied. "There are some very sincere, dedicated and committed theologians that find the Resurrection problematic," he said. I said they would necessarily have problems with the Resurrection because it is a miraculous event. It is a supernatural intervention in the course of human events.

"Do you, Dr. Knitter, personally find the Resurrection to be problematic?" I asked. I had to ask him three times before he would answer. He finally said, "Yes. I am having lots of difficulty with it."

And that is precisely what is emerging here in this classroom, I said.

Contending with Knitter’s theology is like nailing jelly to the wall: it is hard to know where to start. That is what I was contending with. I waited until the appropriate time, and then asked about another matter: What about the Real Presence in the Eucharist? Is it a myth or not? Knitter said, "well I don’t know if you know this Bob, but there are a lot of very dedicated, sincere theologians and philosophers who are reworking this whole notion of transubstantiation as you would hold." I told him I knew as much and then asked him if he is one of those theologians. He just said, "we theologians don’t look at it the same way any more."

Finally, I said, what about the matter of faith that says that Jesus is true God? This is the third big question as far as I am concerned. This time he responded with some bite. He said, "let me point this out to you: that is only mentioned in the Bible three times and the passages are very obscure and very controversial."

With his whole methodology of empirical sciences he can’t possibly accept the divinity of Christ, the Real Presence or the Resurrection. When he talks about the ‘critical mind,’ he is basically speaking of the Cartesian method: we level doubt at everything that is said in order to better understand it, and if the mind can’t hold it we reject it. The mind then becomes the measure of what you believe. This is the technique of ‘methodological doubt.’

SCR: That’s interesting, because Archbishop [Daniel E.] Pilarczyk recently stated during a lecture on Church authority that his specific authority over a Catholic university in his diocese—and that would include Xavier— is "after appropriate reflection and consultation and judgment, to say: ‘if this is what you are teaching at this university, I am saying this is not Catholic.’ That’s my right. I have the right to judge the Catholicity of what is taught.’"

Moreover, Canon 812 states that "it is necessary that those who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher studies have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority. Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the Vatican’s Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities, affirms that Canon, stating that "Catholic theologians, aware that they fulfill 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."

Buse: Authority is an issue. But consider who truly controls the university. Who do you think owns Xavier University?

SCR: The Jesuits?

Buse: No. They do not. Not the Jesuits, not the archdiocese, no Catholic entity. The "corporation" owns Xavier. The Board of Trustees represents the corporation, and I am told that nobody can touch them. Not the president, not the archbishop. Nobody. When it comes to questioning ownership, ask, who can sell it. Could the Jesuits sell Xavier? No. Could the archdiocese sell Xavier? No. Only the board could.

SCR: But according to the archbishop, even if he does not have the authority to sell the university, he has the authority to say that the institution is no longer a Catholic one.

Buse: Exactly. That responsibility rests on the archbishop. He can declare—it is his duty—for the spiritual and theological safety of those in his flock, that Xavier University is a non-Catholic institution. That is his responsibility.

SCR: Did Dr. Knitter have any more to say about myth?

Buse: At one point in our class discussion on myth he said to me, Bob, I’m going to ask you this question. I want it answered in just one word, yes or no? This is a question which goes to the core of your being, Bob. This is an existential question, Bob: If I could absolutely prove to you that Jesus is not God would you still hold his message and be willing to die for it?

I said, absolutely not. I might find the great poet Emily Dickinson far more attractive. I know she lived, and I can wrestle with her thought much easier, and I might just find it more appealing. Why would I? What would make me any different than a follower of Jim Jones down in Jonesboro? He said, I thought you would answer that way. But notice the other part of the question: "would you die for it?"

SCR: Why do you think he asked the question?

Buse: He expected me to say no, but I don’t really know what point he was trying to make. I surmise that what he is committed to is not Christ as the one, true Messiah who sacrificed himself to redeem the sins of man. He is committed simply to the "message of Christ" as an ideological point of view. His messiah could be Buddha or Zoroaster, anyone really. He could, based on his theological orientation, accept multiple messiahs. No problem there. Judging from the textbook used in his course, there is no real difference between his Jesus, Buddha or Zoroaster.

SCR: It sounds then as if the "historical Jesus" is a character of history who was one of many great prophets; he had a nice message, as did Buddha, Zoroaster, but he was not God.

Knitter and his theological brethren are mixed up in a conglomeration of beliefs. It is a religious, spiritual, and moral relativism that comes together under the pluriform denomination of "New Age." This does not augur well for the theology department at Xavier University. What would you recommend to parents who are planning to send their children to Xavier University?

Buse: At a funeral over in northern Kentucky, I met a former Edgecliff College student of mine. She’s in her mid to late 40s. She has three or four children, and her second oldest just started her studies at Xavier last Fall. This mother called her husband over and told him, I want you to meet Bob Buse, a former teacher of mine. And I told them that I was taking courses at Xavier in the theology department.

They told me that they send their daughter to Xavier to protect her faith because they know that some other universities are hostile to Catholicism. And I told them not to fall under the delusion that she is safe there. Her faith is in much more jeopardy there than if she were to attend the public University of Cincinnati.

I began to tick out the reasons, and I said to her, do me one favor, when your daughter comes home from class ask her about her theology course and if you hear things from her that don’t sound quite right, phone me. Your daughter’s faith life is not safe there. She is in jeopardy. Please tell your friends that. I mean that in all sincerity.

Selected quotes from "Faith, Religion & Theology," the text used in Dr. Knitter’s Theology 111 course at Xavier:

Population control: "I’ve heard complaints... about ‘strict Catholics’ and the way they believe that everything the pope says is God’s truth. One of the issues that has especially alienated many adults from the Catholic religion is the way the pope has settled questions of population control. With arguments that don’t seem to make a lot of sense to the majority of Catholics in the United States, he has simply ruled out any form of artificial birth control. It seems that Catholics aren’t being allowed to think for themselves, to weigh the evidence concerning the need to control the earth’s population and the various ways of doing so. They are simply being told what to do" (p.139).

Papal authority: "[P]apal power is being used today to take advantage of women, to exclude them from the priesthood and positions of authority in the church. For ages, women have accepted this because they were told that God speaks through the pope. Today, however, many women and men look upon the religious teaching that ‘women cannot be ordained priests’ not as God’s will but as another example of how religion is used as an ideology" (p.141-42).

Belief and faith: "[B]elief may be adjusted or even thrown out, without faith necessarily having to suffer. Just because some Catholics no longer hold to belief in purgatory doesn’t mean that their ‘faith’ has diminished. Or just because some Christians now address God as Mother (and not only Father), doesn’t mean that their faith has been destroyed (indeed, it has probably grown)" (p.176).

Is Jesus unique?: "The traditional understanding of how to understand [sic] the uniqueness of Jesus in relation to other faiths can be called the exclusivist model. This attitude characterized most of the history of the church, roughly from the fourth to seventeenth centuries. It viewed Jesus as the one and only Savior and the Christian church as the one and only true religion... Since Jesus is the only Savior and since he is to be found only in the church, everyone outside the church was going to have a rough time knowing God and making it to heaven... It provided the motivation for great missionaries, such as Francis Xavier, who traveled to foreign lands in order to baptize as many souls as possible to save them from hell" (p.210).

Truth: "[T]ruth is a multilayered and ambiguous reality. Truth is often not a matter of black and white. There seem to be degrees, levels, and kinds of truth. Many theologians today would argue that foundational stories are true if they illuminate significant dimensions of our world... In the story of Jesus, we find revealed the nearness of God and the saving power of love. The story can empower us to change the world for the better. When Christ’s presence is experienced in community and in the celebration of the Eucharist, when acts of love and justice in service of God and neighbor are seen to heal divisions and reconcile people with one another, then Christians have evidence of the truth of their foundational story" (p.353).

RELATED ARTICLE: New Age Theology at Xavier University

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