John Allen has many reports on the annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America.

There’s a lot there…

From the group’s outgoing president: (after the jump)

Public statements by the Catholic Theological Society of America criticizing the Vatican and the bishops “have done us damage,” the body’s outgoing president said today, concluding that the prerequisite to fostering dialogue is “making fewer public statements defending ourselves against ecclesiastical power.”

“The price has been too high compared to what we have gained,” said Daniel Finn of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. “I wish we were not facing this trade-off, but I believe we are.”

Finn made clear that he was not trying to stifle criticism, but said that in the future, such statements should come from individual theologians, perhaps with others signing on, but not in the name of the CTSA.

The comments by Finn came in his “Presidential Address” at the conclusion of the annual conference of the Catholic Theological Society of America in Los Angeles, California.

Over the years, the CTSA has issued a number of critical statements on official church teaching or disciplinary interventions against theologians. In 1997, for example, the CTSA issued a statement on the ban on women’s ordination, concluding that there are “serious doubts regarding the nature of the authority of this teaching and its grounds in tradition.” More recently, the CTSA board issued a statement in 2005 defending American Jesuit Fr. Roger Haight after he was censured by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Those statements have produced backlash, including Cardinal Bernard Law’s famous declaration that the CTSA has become a theological “wasteland.” Also in 1997, then-Fr. Avery Dulles, now a cardinal, said that the CTSA “constitutes a kind of alternative magisterium for dissatisfied Catholics.”

In his address, Finn made clear that he was not questioning the content of the CTSA statements, but their impact.

First, he said, they have produced a distorted image of the society.

“They have become the public face of CTSA for nearly everyone who does not attend our conventions,” he said. “They present us as individuals who gather to defend ourselves against hierarchical authority, but that’s only a small part of what we’re up to.” In the end, he said, the statements give “a false impression to outsiders.”

This is a special risk, Finn argued, in an era of “ideological splintering of news outlets,” so that statements which appear to challenge church authorities will be “spun” according to the agendas of different groups.

The risk of misleading impressions of the CTSA is true not just of the general public, he said, but also among the hierarchy.

“Many bishops form their view of us on the basis of our public statements, often influenced by advisors who are conservative theologians who don’t attend our meetings,” Finn said.

Second, Finn argued, the public statements have exacted a steep internal cost in the CTSA by driving conservative theologians away.

“They felt no longer welcome, out of a sense that they’re on the margins of a group that pokes funs at Vatican shortcomings and puts the CTSA name on statements they do not endorse. They feel it’s not their group,” he said.

“I don’t know that we’ll ever get those folks back, but there is a long future of others to come,” Finn said.

Instead, Finn argued, the CTSA “should be the place where Catholic theologians of all perspectives come to do their theology.”

“Our church is wracked by divisions caused by ideological simplicities on all sides, and we need broader dialogue in the church than we have today,” Finn said. “In the CTSA, all theologians should feel respected, and a majority should not employ the mechanics of majoritarian democracy to produce statements that the minority would find offensive and leave.”