A Parody of Modern Subjectivism

In the latest issue of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly , Father Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. dissects a feeble effusion of what passes for theological progressivism these days from the pen of Terrance Tilley.

Tilley is a professor of theology at Fordham and an old warhorse of the American Catholic theological establishment. He used his recent
presidential address to the Catholic Theological Society of America to retail some of the usual platitudes and complaints we’ve come to expect from the CTSA.

I’ve observed on many occasions that the American Catholic theological establishment has run out of intellectual gas. Take a look at Tilley’s address. All the energy and purpose in the prose comes from an inwardly-turned effort to justify and defend the old agenda of post-Vatican II theological liberalism. As Weinandy points out, Tilley’s doctrinal relativism ends up “almost a parody of modern subjectivism.”

By my reading, Weinandy is too generous. Tilley’s address is a parody of a parody of many things—and definitely not almost.