The Vatican has condemned a leading US nun for writing a book in which she praises female masturbation and approves divorce and gay sex and marriage, warning that the book must not be used by Catholic educators.
The Vatican’s criticism of Sister Margaret Farley, a professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Yale University, comes amid escalating tension with US nuns, after the Holy See accused them of preaching “radical feminist” ideas.
In a statement approved by Pope Benedict and issued on Monday, the Vatican’s doctrinal office claims Farley’s book, Just Love, a Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, “ignores the constant teaching of the Magisterium or, where it is occasionally mentioned, treats it as one opinion among others.”
The statement singles out Farley’s claim that many women “have found great good in self-pleasuring — perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure — something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers.”
Masturbation, she wrote, “actually serves relationships rather than hindering them.”
That view, the Vatican said, contradicted the Catholic belief that masturbation is a “gravely disordered action.”
Farley’s approval of gay sex ignored “Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,” while her backing for gay unions was tantamount to “approval of deviant behavior,” the Vatican said.
Her openness to divorce and remarriage was deemed as “contravening God’s law,” it said.
When Just Love was first published in 2006, it was adopted by Catholic educators in the US and won a prestigious religious book prize.
On Monday, senior US Catholics lined up to defend Farley.
“I deeply regret that church officials have failed to appreciate the important contribution Farley has made,” said David Hollenbach, a theologian at Boston College.
Sister Pat McDermott, president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, of which Farley is a member, described “the profound regret” of all members at the Vatican’s report.
Reacting to the report, Farley said in a statement her ideas veered from Catholic teaching, but added: “I have tried to show that they nonetheless reflect a deep coherence with the central aims and insights of these theological and moral traditions.”
That approach runs contrary to Pope Benedict’s firm belief that the Catholic Church will only survive if it clings to its core beliefs without compromise.
“Sister Farley manifests a defective understanding of the objective nature of the natural moral law,” the Vatican said. “This approach is not consistent with authentic Catholic theology.”
The incident is another shot fired in the ongoing battle between US nuns and the Vatican. On Friday, the largest organization of US nuns rejected the Vatican’s claim that it had fallen prey to feminist ideology and was no longer teaching Catholic views on abortion and gay unions.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS