Who can safely be allowed to speak?

[The banning of the former head of the USCCB's secretariat of the diaconate from speaking to deacons in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is drawing a lot of attention since it widens the recent trend of suppression of theologians. ]


Women deacons? Best not to talk about it.
Mollie Wilson O'Reilly
Commonweal
December 11, 2012

The archdiocese of Philadelphia is looking for someone to address its deacons this spring. Former heads of the USCCB’s secretariat for the diaconate need not apply. Not, that is, if they have publicly acknowledged the unsettled question of whether women may be ordained deacons. That might be “doctrinally confusing,” and Catholics these days are just so easy to confuse.

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I knew the paranoia was getting pretty bad out there. Nobody wants to risk running afoul of the orthodoxy police; easier to just preemptively cancel any speakers/visiting professors who might give you trouble, regardless of whether the objections are well founded. But this is the most ridiculous example I’ve heard of yet. This diocese is afraid to allow the former head of the USCCB office for the diaconate to speak to its deacons, because said deacon has demonstrated an awareness of and interest in scholarly study of…the diaconate?

original article at Commonweal



The thought police never sleeps
Meinrad Scherer-Emunds
US Catholic
Dec. 11, 2012

And the crackdown continues. The latest in the continuing saga of speaking bans, censures, and reprimands for theologians comes from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, where a prominent and widely respected deacon theologian, who previously headed the bishops’ secretariat for the diaconate, is no longer allowed to speak.

Deacon William Ditewig has been disinvited from a talk he was scheduled to give to the archdiocese’s deacons in March. The cancellation of this talk comes after the archdiocese’s Speaker Approval Commission recommended that he not be approved to speak in the archdiocese because his appearance would “cause doctrinal confusion.”

So which church teaching has Ditewig dared to question? Actually none. The thought crime he is being accused of committing is entertaining the possibility that women could again be ordained to the diaconate, a practice that was well established in the church for many centuries.

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original article at US Catholic