LifeSite reports that Prof. John Rist, one of the signatories of the recent open letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy, has abruptly been banned from all pontifical universities – which he learned one day by finding himself suddenly denied permission to park his car at the Augustinianum, where he had been doing research. Read the whole thing for the sorry details of the episode.
I have been critical of the open letter, but this strikes me as undeservedly shabby treatment. Whatever one thinks of his views, Rist is not some hotheaded pamphleteer or hack blogger. He is a serious thinker, an eminent scholar of classical and early Christian philosophy, the author of many important books, a longtime professor at the Catholic University of America, and a loyal and orthodox son of the Church. It seems to me not irrelevant to point out that he is also 83 years old.
When Vatican officials persistently refuse to address the actual substance of the arguments of critics – and indeed, refuse even just to answer straightforward questions like the dubia – and when heterodox Catholic academics and public intellectuals are largely allowed free rein, this sort of action seems extremely petty, to say the very least. Even dissidents like Hans Küng and Charles Curran, who were disciplined by the Church under Pope St. John Paul II, were first given due process and the opportunity to defend themselves.
There is, to my knowledge, no evidence that Pope Francis himself had anything to do with what has happened. One hopes that, should he learn of it, he will urge the relevant officials to show to Prof. Rist the mercy that the pope has so heavily emphasized during his pontificate.
At Twitter, Matthew Schmitz calls attention to the contrast between the treatment afforded Rist and the way Cardinal Avery Dulles recommended dealing with dissidents. In an earlier post, I discussed Pope Benedict XVI’s manner of dealing with criticism.