Church in the World

CDF ?not repressive?, says new prefect

Rome

ARCHBISHOP William J. Levada, the new head of the Vatican?s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said this week that while the congregation was sometimes forced to discipline errant theologians its primary work was positive ? safeguarding sound doctrine so that the faith could be shared with the world. That task was something all theologians should share, he said.

Archbishop Levada was visiting the doctrinal congregation?s offices ahead of his planned move to Rome at the end of the summer, once he has wrapped up affairs in his current archdiocese of San Francisco.

Archbishop Levada said the CDF had lost a great theologian when its head, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected Pope Benedict XVI. ?What you get with me is someone who has pastoral experience of dealing with questions of faith as they are lived out in the local Church,? he said. ?I think that?s an important thing for the bishops around the world, to have the sense that when they need to talk to me or to our congregation there is someone here who is sympathetic to their pastoral situation and experience.?

Archbishop Levada, who as a bishop helped write the Catechism of the Catholic Church, said formation in the faith was one area where universal and local Churches could cooperate. In the congregation?s dealings with theologians, the archbishop said, it was important for everyone to understand that theology, properly understood, was simply a way of helping people learn who Christ was and what he did and said.

?I like to think that promoting a sound grasp of doctrine and helping the Church see how beautiful and wonderful God?s love is, as it has been revealed to us, that?s what theology is about. So I think that?s the primary job of this congregation,? he said.

He said one of the ?negative aspects? of the CDF?s work was that it must occasionally intervene and ask theologians how they justified their positions or squared them with the faith. That could be misunderstood as a form of repression, he said. ?I think people have sometimes gotten the idea that if you don?t let every theologian say everything that he or she thinks, or if you challenge them in any way and say, ?that?s not correct?, that somehow you are impeding freedom of conscience or freedom of inquiry,? he said.

?But that?s not the case. We have freedom to inquire. But a theologian himself or herself is called to discriminate between where that inquiry leads and how it corresponds to the faith that the Church continues to receive and to live by. Otherwise they would not be doing true theology, it seems to me,? he said.

?Theology itself is in dialogue with revelation, which has some things to say. And you can?t just say that revelation says anything you want it to say,? he said.
John Thavis, Catholic News Service