A scandal concerning the depraved writings of a professor who portrays Jesus as a feminine figure and possible “drag king” is causing outrage among the faithful who wonder why this professor is holding an endowed chair in New Testament studies at a 175-year-old Jesuit college.
Writing for First Things, Charlotte Allen details the controversy concerning Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The scandal began when the college’s student newspaper, The Fenwick Review, published an article listing some of the blasphemous and perverted statements Liew made about Jesus in some of his writings which read more like a homosexual sex fantasy than scholarly research. Because of the lewd nature of these writings, most Catholic authors will not even repeat what Liew wrote.
But that was just the beginning of the scandal. Holy Cross’s president, Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., further aggravated the situation by defending Liew, claiming that some of the references to Jesus being a “drag king” were from a 2009 book that he co-edited which were not intended for an undergraduate classroom. He doesn’t explain why the same book is currently on display in the Religious Studies Department. Nor does he offer any explanation for later works of Liew, such as a 2016 essay entitled, “The Gospel of Bare Life,” which describes obedience to God as “troubling” and “infantilizing.”
In fact, from what Allen could ascertain, this kind of degenerate material “constitutes nearly the whole of Liew’s published professional output, as far as I can see.” This isn’t scholarship, she says. “It’s sadomasochistic sex-fantasy dressed up in postmodernist jargon.”
And yet this man was hired as a theology professor who is soon to become the chairman of the school’s theology department?
As the affair turned from controversy to firestorm, Boroughs added fuel to the fire by publishing a statement in which he resorted to the typical “academic freedom” excuse, stating that “scholars in all disciplines are free to inquire, critique, comment and push boundaries on widely accepted thought.”
Even when pushing those boundaries amounts to blasphemy?
Not so, says Robert J. McManus, the Catholic bishop of Worcester. The bishop issued a statement in which he called Liew’s theories “blasphemous,” saying that “academic freedom …, particularly in the fields of theology or religious studies, cannot provide cover for blatantly unorthodox teaching.”
The Bishop rightly demanded a public retraction from Liew.
To date, the college is continuing to defend Liew in spite of the fact that nearly 20,000 people have petitioned the school to dismiss him.
“In order fully to understand the absurdity of this defense, one must realize that Liew’s most revolting ideas are the products not of scholarly investigation but of a fevered imagination, obsessed with issues of perverse sexuality,” writes Phil Lawler for Catholic Culture.
“If the Liew essays that have prompted the current controversy qualify as honest theological inquiry, then by the same logic the lewd commentaries scrawled on the walls of bathroom stalls at turnpike rest areas should be regarded as literature.”
Click here to sign the petition.
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