Sr. Margaret Farley endores the same things that got the Australian priest excommunicated

Here is your Sr. Margaret Farley update!

Yes, she managed to get back into the news.  Go to the site of the Cardinal Newman Society, whose feed I am delighted to have on my side bar. Check it out.

And check this out.

Disgraced Theologian Sr. Farley Advocates Same-Sex Marriage, Female Ordination

Sister Margaret Farley, RSM, whose book was condemned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and who was once called the “the undisputed matriarch of dissenting U.S. Catholic ethicists,” is at it again. [My post on the CDF and Farley HERE]
At an event at which she endorsed same-sex marriage and women’s ordination, according to the Detroit Free Press, she also said she is delighted by Pope Francis. Why?
“He seems teachable,” she reportedly said. [“teachable”… Okay.  I wonder what Sr. Farley learned about the excommunication of the Australian former priest who, incidently, endores the same things she endorses.]

The shocking comment was made by the former Yale University professor whose book, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, was used as source material in many Catholic college classrooms as recently as this year. [The book is especially vile, btw.]

[…]

Sr. Farley also reportedly spoke about her support for women’s ordination. “I think that women at this juncture are in some way key, because, for example, we do have the problem that there are not enough priests,” she reportedly said. [Using the key image, perhaps Margaret has forgotten that Pope Francis, in Return From Rio’s Lio Interview, said that the door to women’s ordination is closed?  Furthermore, the numbers of priests is a bad foundation for an argument, because the priesthood is not just a job or a set of functions.  It is were reducible to functions, then anyone could do it.  There is more to priesthood than just doing certain jobs in the Church.] “I think that eventually it will be necessary to ordain married men and women, married or not. But how that development will finally take place, what the evolution will be, I don’t know.” [Nor, it seems, does the Lord Himself.]
Sr. Farley, who taught at Yale University for many years, also served on the board of trustees at The University of Detroit-Mercy.

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25 Comments

  1. Jack Hughes says:

    Going misty eyed remembering the scene from “Becket”

  2. Dr. Edward Peters says:

    I wish someone could post the original Decretum excommunicationis from Down Under. I hate replying on secular rprss reports of what (they think) happened.

  3. Every time I see a photo of Sr. Farley, I am reminded of an observation by C.G. Jung that I recall having heard in my latter 20s (which quotation I have been unable to locate via Google), suggesting that by the time we are about 35 (+/-) our physical appearance is the result of our attitudes and outlook on life. In Sr. Farley’s case, this is most definitely NOT a flattering appraisal.

    Pax et bonum,
    Keith Töpfer

  4. Compared to Sr. Farley, many of the faithful, lay and clerical, must be deemed teachable.

  5. av8er says:

    An Austin Powers quote came to my mind….

  6. What an arrogant old bat.

    “He seems teachable”. By whom? A disgraced ‘c’atholic so-called dissident theologian? Nuns on the polluting Bus? The New York Slime? LSDNBC?

    I have to keep praying the the Holy Father is making these statements to flush out the rotten apples (like prairie dogs sticking their heads up in a field so you can whack them with a .22). You keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, perhaps?

    You just want to say “who the …… does she think she is”…but, then realize in her self-worshiping fantasy, she really does thing the world actually revolves around her.

    Wow. Just wow.

  7. Charles E Flynn says:

    I can picture little Maggie sitting on Santa’s knee at the mall, a week or so before Christmas. After she tells Santa what she would like to find under her Holiday Tree, he asks her what she wants to be when she grows up. Maggie replies, “I want to be the undisputed matriarch of dissenting U.S. Catholic ethicists”.

  8. MuchLikeMartha says:

    Apparently I’ve discovered The Nuns on the Bus Diet. If you read about them before a meal, you are sure to lose your appetite.

    Honestly, these women sadden me terribly. Their pride is gargantuan and calls to mind the line in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the guardian of the Grail (or whatever group they were) asked Indiana if he sought the Grail for God’s glory or for his own. Not sure if I want to know the nuns’ answer to that question.

  9. jeffreyquick says:

    Mr. Flynn: “I can picture little Maggie sitting on Satan’s knee…” Fixed your typo.

  10. Actually, I doubt that this theological dissents are what got the Australian excommunicated, so the cases are probably not parallel.

    With Prof. Peters I think we need to see the actual document to know what the censure was imposed for.

  11. Charles E Flynn says:

    Jeffrey,

    Thank you. Some errors cannot be detected by mere software.

  12. Moro says:

    “He seems teachable,” a statement that reeks of radical feminist arrogance. This calls for a medicinal remedy.

  13. Tantum Ergo says:

    “the door to women’s ordination is closed”
    Wrong!! There never was a door to women’s ordination.

  14. Johnno says:

    To feminist evolutionists like her, all men are ceatures to be tamed and reshaped. The Pope is therefore no different. And she, idolizing her self as the more evolved being, seeks to dominate and castrate him. CHANGE/EVOLUTION/REVOLUTION and so forth… Someone please inform her that her evolutionary myths are entirely bogus and thus her entire ideological foundation is built on a house of nonsensical randomness and nothing.

  15. Aleta-120 says:

    Father, if it wasn’t for the sisters on the bus all over the internet, I would never have stumbled across youer blog, would not know what a communion rail was, would not know what the TLM or latin mass was, would still be receiving Holy Communion in the hand, and I most certainly would never have driven 18-20 hours (three drivers) from a speck on the map kind of town in northern canada to a massive city centre to attend a high and a low TLM mass. My friend attended with me ( non-religious), and it is a minor miracle that she didn’t walk out, which is what she has done to most religious services since she was capable of doing so. Neither of us is exactly sure if it was because she found latin interesting, or because she loves me dearly, or a combination. So sister does bring people to God, whether or not she intended to; or God brings good out evil, whichever way you look at it. :)

  16. Clinton says:

    Three things:
    #1. Aleta-120, Good for you! The next time I grumble about my drive to Mass, I’ll think of
    you and your friend’s trek.

    #2. I agree with what others have mentioned– if Sr. Margaret Farley really did say “he seems
    teachable” about Pope Francis … wow. ‘Breathtaking condescension’ only begins to cover it.

    #3.“…(Sr. Farley’s) book, ‘Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics’, was used
    as source material in many Catholic college classrooms as recently as this year”.
    How is it
    possible that her tripe was given an Imprimatur? If (please God) it was not, then how
    is it possible that it is being used by ‘catholic’ colleges to teach Christian sexual ethics? How
    did Sr. Farley and those ‘catholic’ colleges justify dodging Canon #827?

  17. Kerry says:

    On one of his yearly holiday broadcasts, perhaps the new year, Hugh Hewitt plays a long interview with Harry Jaffa. At the end Jaffa says the two greatest men of the 20th century were “Winston Churchill, whom everyone has heard of, and Leo Strauss, whom no one has heard of “. I believe in other interviews, either with Jaffa or with Larry Arhn, one of them, also in talking about Leo Strauss, spoke about the fallacy of historicism, (roughly, that the passage of time produces truths) which Strauss called, (if memory serves) on of the great fallacies of the 20th century. What does this have to do with sister(sic.) what’s her name. Look at what she says,” eventually it will be necessary…”, to which I ask, “What does the passage of time have to do with it? And will the passage of time eventually make it necessary to undo what the passage of time has made necessary?” Most commonly we hear, “The time has come for…”. This fallacy is present everywhere. Perhaps someone with more perfect knowledge of Strauss and Marxist historical beliefs could improve on my crude efforts.

  18. george says:

    jeffreyquick: Thank you for starting my day off with a laugh!

  19. Heather F says:

    I always wonder where people get this notion that having married/female/whatever clergy is the solution to a clergy shortage. The church I grew up in (a liberal mainline protestant denomination that has become so “inclusive” they ran a piece last year in their national magazine about “post-theistic” congregations under their umbrella) doesn’t attract many people to their seminaries either.

  20. vikingjr says:

    What a load! Talk about saying the same thing over and over and over again… isn’t the horse already dead? why continue to beat it?

    I think one of the most annoying parts about this type of rhetoric is the attempt to parallel allowing married men to be priests with women being ordained… what an insult to the Eastern Catholic/Anglo converts/Othodox!

  21. Magash says:

    Unfortunately the headline is misleading (sorry Father.) Greg Reynolds, was dismissed from the clerical state (and incurred latae sententiae excommunication) for violating Canon 1367, which concerns profanation of the Blessed Sacrament. While Reynolds may have held similar views he was not excommunicated for them. He was not actively excommunicated at all. The letter informing him that he had incurred dismissal from the clerical state merely acknowledged that he had by his actions excommunicated himself.
    While I except the premise that Sr. Farley should be excommunicated for her unrepentant heresy, we all know that it is not likely to happen. That her institution, the Sisters of Mercy do not call her to account for her actions, and quite honestly, do not either expel her or require her to go into seclusion for her heresy is also a travesty.
    However we know based on the last five or six decades that neither action is likely to happen. She will potentially die in heresy and so possibly suffer the ultimate punishment for her actions.

  22. As a predicate to what follows, I will stipulate that the cases of Sister Margaret and Father Reynolds may not be parallel.

    That said, has it occurred to anyone else that it would be sexist and patriarchal for women religious to be excused from accountability that is expected of, well, male clerics? And if it’s not about patriarchy, it’s certainly a form of…clericalism…n’est pas?

    Out with the bad old days of patronizing women and the laity! Treat them with the equal, baptismal dignity they deserve!

  23. Kathleen10 says:

    Great comments. These “mature” feminist crones are tickling the ears of other feminist crones. It is astounding.
    Fr. Martin Fox, I totally agree. This is what I never understand. I understand there are heretics who imagine and even TEACH their heresies to the gullible. There are alot of gullible people. What I do NOT understand is how it goes on and on, seemingly unimpeded. The Catholic church, that I love, appears to be the one place in the cosmos where there are virtually no restrictions on departing from the tenets of the organization entirely, and promoting what are clearly not the tenets, to others, while under the supposed auspices of that organization. This is mysterious to me. It’s a complete disservice especially to the young, who are so vulnerable, a very captive audience if they are forced to take these goofy classes in Catholic universities. Their uninformed parents who pay tuition are none the wiser. They wrongly assumed “Catholic” actually meant “Catholic” and are summarily duped. But is there no one at the helm?? If someone is at the helm, why do they not do the job that this travesty calls for? How is it that this nun, or anyone representing Catholic authority, can go about teaching error willy nilly? People’s souls are in peril, really, after listening to the silliness that this woman proposes. I mean, it could cause people to lose their faith and go chasing after errors. Ok, the president of the college is a “progressive/liberal Catholic”. He’s fine with error. But does he have no board, person, Bishop, anyone, to call him to task and expect faithful Catholic thought to be taught?
    The last thing on earth appealing to me would be anybody’s administrator. But if you are an administrator, administrate! There is no explanation that is good enough for why these people frolic through life encouraging lies and heresy under the title “Catholic”. For awhile, maybe, permanently, no.

  24. midwestmom says:

    I know of a priest in a neighboring diocese who apparently supports SSM, according to his FB page. His parish Peace & Justice committee also publicly signed on with a group of mostly lawyers to defend supreme court justices in my state who ruled in favor of SSM, in response to a campaign to oust them at the ballot. The sole lobbyist for our state’s Catholic conference is a parishioner at this same parish. These renegades in the neighboring diocese and their unresponsive bishop undermine my orthodox bishop and Church teaching, in my opinion. Any ideas as to what can be done?

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