Searching for God #77

 From The National Catholic Reporter

byJustin McLellan Vatican Correspondent jmclellan@ncronline.org Vatican City...January 28, 2026

The Vatican's doctrine chief warned that blogs and online commentators increasingly claim a theological authority they do not possess, narrowing the church's ability to holistically engage faith and reality. 

Opening the plenary assembly of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on Jan. 27, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, dicastery prefect, said theologians risk "losing the breath of our perspective" when their work becomes narrowly focused on isolated topics.

"But the issue is even more serious since today, on any blog, anyone — even without having studied much theology — can express his or her opinion and condemn others as if speaking ex cathedra," or with infallibility, he said. 

Fernández framed the problem as a failure to recognize the limits of human knowledge.

"The more science and technology advance, the more we must keep alive the awareness of our limits and our need for God, so as not to fall into a terrible deception," he said. "Indeed, the very same one that led to the excesses of the Inquisition, the world wars, the Shoah, and the massacres in Gaza: all of which rely on fallacious arguments for their justification."

Fernández, who has often been a target of Catholic blogs since his appointment as prefect in 2023, urged dicastery members to acknowledge those limits, invoke God's guidance in illuminating them and remain open to the perspectives of others.

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"The more science and technology advance, the more we must keep alive the awareness of our limits and our need for God, so as not to fall into a terrible deception," he said. "Indeed, the very same one that led to the excesses of the Inquisition, the world wars, the Shoah, and the massacres in Gaza: all of which rely on fallacious arguments for their justification."

Fear of bloggers like this one, is analogous to fearing a mosquito on the shoulder. We can agree that a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. And this scribe is, has been and will continue to remind both myself and the reader that my thoughts, opinions, observations and even suggestions come as ‘speculative, tentative, reflective, and I can only hope, provocative. Repeatedly the church’s rejection of many of the discoveries of science have left the church having to acknowledge that its resistance was either ill-founded, in-error, or completely fear-driven. God’s omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence cannot and will not be threatened by his ‘children’s’ probing, questioning, speculating, and even imagining. Nor can or will God’s unconditional love be abrogated by any ramblings on a personal, thoughtful, reflective and humble, soul-searching blog.

Indeed, it is precisely the church’s claim to infallibility, as the one and only voice credentialed and qualified to utter the details of the mind of God that is so troublesome.

Here are a few words from now deceased Bishop Desmond Tutu from a piece in The Roys Report, entitled, Desmond Tutu, Archbishop, Activist and Apartheid Foe, is Dead at 90, by Adele Banks and B. Denise Hawkins, December 26, 2021:

‘All, all are God’s children and none, none is ever to be dismissed as rubbish,; he said in 1999 to the ‘God and Us’ class he taught as a visiting professor at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. ‘And that’s why you have to be so passionate to injustice of any kind.’…. ‘What kind of God could endure the sight of God’s own children screaming in eternal pain?’ Tutu wrote in his book, ‘Made for Goodness.’ ‘If we believe in the good God, we must believe that we are all made to inhabit heaven. We are made for goodness.’ In a 2013 interview when the Desmond Tutu Center at Butler University and Christian Theological Seminary was announced, Tutu blamed God for his views on controversial issues. ‘I don’t think, ‘What do I want to do today? I want to speak up on gay rights,; he said. ‘No. It’s God catching me by the neck. I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of Palestinians. I can’t! The God who was there and showed that we should become free is the God described in the Scriptures as the same yesterday, today and forever…..If you are doing God’s work, it’s his job. He will jolly well have to look after you. And no one is indispensable.

This blogger identifies with many, if not all, of the positions taken by Archbishop Tutu as echoes of God's voice among us.

If Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, as part of his job as dicastery prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, wishes or even demands that a halo of religious purity, perfection and absolutism by hung around the words of the church, any church, as the only words, ideas, principles, and dogma with which God concurs, there is a world out there of ‘others’ who might have some trouble with that vision. It is not that such a vision, hope and even belief is necessarily evil; doubtless, it is conceived and held in the greatest sincerity, integrity and sacredness. That such a metaphoric halo could be created as a moat both to protect the inner-truths and beliefs from invasion and to elevate those inner-truths and beliefs above all others seems beyond the need, requirements or demands of God. The church’s position on LGBTQ+ persons, for example, has a had time qualifying as “God’s incontrovertible view, in the mind, heart and soul of millions of others, including this scribe. Similarly, the church’s adamantine position on a woman’s right to choose also struggles to represent an unconditionally loving, caring, compassionate and holy God. The status, role and both respect and dignity of women as full participants in the Mass, the Penitential, the Last Rights, the Funeral Requiem as priests, Bishops, Archbishops and even Pope remains outside the legitimacy, tolerance and even the imagination of the Decastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. That too remains in question as to whether such a hardline position is congruent with the mind, and the will of God.

And then there is the matter of Saint Augustine’s perception, and strongly held view by the church, that sin is perpetrated in and through human sexuality, that  has for centuries held millions hostage to an ecclesial stance  that forcibly removed them from sharing in the liturgies, and the various activities in the sanctuary of the church. For smaller minds, like mine, some of us are unable to reconcile this view with the indisputable view, perception and belief that sexuality is one of, if not the most natural human act, and we struggle to grasp why God would even wish to put constrictions and judgements on its availability, accessibility and profound and life-giving gift.

Celibate clergy, too, as is the church’s requirement, is doubtless part of the root cause of so many sexual abuse cases within the institution. These celibate men cannot be considered ‘closer to God’ or even ‘more holy and sacrificial’ than clergy who have chosen to marry, whether their marriages are to members of the opposite gender, or of the same gender.

It is not in dispute, however, that there appears to be a surge in the number of catechumens seeking baptism and full membership in the Roman Catholic church in several locations, especially noted in France. The ‘structure and discipline’ apparently appeals to many in the Gen Z demographic, and one has to wonder if the spectre of Sharia Law from Islam, whereby church and state are considered joined as one place where the faith can be and must be practiced is not another of the multiple motivations for this surge.

The basic patriarchal institutional foundation, and the church’s adamantine intention to continue to operate in this ancient and long-ago outlived organizational model, prompts some of us to ask how this rigidity is justified as God’s will and plan for the people of the world.

While the various ‘arguments’ posed here that question the church’s theology, ethics, morality and justification are ‘merely misguided protestantisms,’ perhaps for many, there remains, however, the question for all faith communities.  In a time when the public order is crumbling, the cause of human rights is being ignored, the protection of the environment is left unattended, and  militarism and military production in the face of serious wars continues to spike unimpeded by governments, is it not far more important for all faith communities to unite in solidarity to oppose the abuse of power in all of its many iterations, to take up the cause of the refugee, the migrant, the dispossessed, the starving, the homeless and the millions suffering from diseases, some self-inflicted in what to them seems like hopeless and uncaring world, while some may be biologically induced.

There is a mountain of injustices to which everyone is witness. God weeps as there is such division among and between the various faith communities when there could be at least energized concurrence and a commitment to join together to begin to work together to alleviate these injustices. We have been reminded that the poor will always be with us. We have not, however, had to envisage a world in which some 250,000,000 are exiting on the edge of death. (Figure from David Millband, Chair of the Internation Rescue Committee).

It seems that the common unifying commitment of Christians is not that different from the common humanity shared by most faith communities, if not all. And if this is not a time of such cancerous influences about which everyone can agree, and if this is not a time to put aside the differences that separate and divide people of good will, and of authentic faith, then what will it take?

Dismiss this ‘dangerous blogger’ if you will. I will neither desist or discontinue to ponder, to reflect, to question and to provoke others to examine my own faith and perhaps others to examine their own as well.