After his "Outing" as a Homosexual and his denial of Church teaching on Homosexuality a letter of the Academy President followed: "With deep pain" and horror to review Professor Berger's past "opinions".
Rome (Kath.net) The theologian David Berger (42) was dismissed from the faculty of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Any further activity there at the institution would be denied, in the view of "some points of Church teaching" which he does not assent to. This was reported by Frankfurter Rundshau. The certified theologian and special expert on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas is primarily employed as a Gymnasium (College Preparatory School) teacher in Germany.
Berger is thought to be a "conservative" theologian and was also the Publisher and Chief Director of a Theological Periodical. He has resigned from this office already, which he made known earlier in the last April in the Frankfurter Rundschau as a homosexual. In the article he spoke of "laughably, bigoted" position in the Catholic Church toward Homosexuality and that his opinions on the theology of Thomas allowed a positive appraisal of homosexuality.
"With deep regret" and horror, the transformation and the past "opinions" of Professor Berger had to be examined, wrote Academy President Lluis Clavell, who belongs to Opus Dei, in a letter to Berger.
For the Frankfurter Rundschau, criticized Berger, that before his termination no one responsible for the Thomas-Akademie had inquired of him, if he also practiced homosexuality. Actually, this is specifically condemned by Church teaching. Berger himself had taken no position on this for the Frankfurter Rundschau.
Over to the original...
8 comments:
Another of the species of "queer Thomists."
The German version of the American Mark Jordan, who originally moved in neo-Catholic circles such as Communio, Ignatius Press, and their various joint enterprises. He tarught philosophy at the University of Dallas and later was in the Program of Liberal Studies and then the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame, where he "came out." He resigned in protest when Notre Dame would not grant "official" recognition to a homosexual advocacy group--to a cushy job at the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion at Emory University. He currently holds the multi-milliion dollar endowed Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Chair at the Harvard Divinity School. He has attacked the Church's teaching on marriage and homosexuality in works such as The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (1997), winner of the 1999 John Boswell Prize for lesbian and gay history. Nonetheless, he still teaches courses in Thomistic philosophy and theology to earn part of his "bread and butter."
You have mistaken the institution in Rome. David Berger has never taught at The Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome, commonly known as "The Angelicum" run by the Dominicans. Luis Clavell is the former rector of Santa Croce, the pontifical university of Opus Dei in Rome. There is no St. Thomas Aquinas Academy in Rome.
Ale
@ Angelicum: No St. Thomas Aquinas Academy in Rome? The Webside of Vatican says otherthings:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/san-tommaso/past.html
But perhabs the distance between Angelicum and Casina Pio IV is too long :)
You don't have your facts straight. This is not referring to the Angelicum in Rome. Please correct this post.
That's what Kreuz wrote. I thought it was odd when I read about an Opus Dei director handing Berger the letter of dismissal, since the article mentions St. Thomas Aquinas.
Kreuznet usually doesn't make bonehead mistakes like that, but will correct when there is more information.
Berger may actually teach there, considering that he is an authority on St. Thomas Aquinas.
I'm sorry, the above story was x-lated from kath.net and not kreuznet.
Here's the clarification. David Berger doesn't teach at the Angelicum and he doesn't teach at Holy Cross, but he does work at an Opus Dei school of theology. Here tis:
http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2010/07/clarification-disgraced-david-berger.html
That he teaches at an Opus Dei School is also wrong ... He was member of the Pontifical Academy of Thomas Aquinas (an Academy which his sead is directly part of Vatican!)Look to the Annuario or the link of anonymous
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