NEWS STORY: Vatican, fearing”relativism,“acts more harshly on dissent

c. 1997 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ The Rev. Tissa Balasuriya is not a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church’s definition, but the recently excommunicated Sri Lankan priest says he is a victim of the church whose teachings he has spent a lifetime following and promoting.”I act according to my conscience,”Balasuriya said in an […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ The Rev. Tissa Balasuriya is not a martyr by the Roman Catholic Church’s definition, but the recently excommunicated Sri Lankan priest says he is a victim of the church whose teachings he has spent a lifetime following and promoting.”I act according to my conscience,”Balasuriya said in an interview from Colombo, Sri Lanka.”I am ready to be a victim. That’s how I continue. For the sake of human rights, justice and understanding Jesus.” Last week, the Vatican said that the 72-year-old priest, author and theologian had”deviated from the integrity of the truth of the Catholic faith”and formally expelled him from the church.

In the aftermath of the Vatican’s extraordinary move _ the first time since 1988 that a priest has been excommunicated _ Balasuriya says he has received an”outpouring of support”from Third World clergy and theologians who agree with his views and think he has been treated shabbily by the church.”I don’t believe that this man is the radical person that is being depicted,”said Sister Mary John Mananzan, secretary general of the Manila, Philippines-based Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, which Balasuriya helped found in 1976.”There are some people saying the most outrageous things about him.” The association consists of about 200 theologians from mostly poor countries who”speak of theology from the point of view of the poor,”Mananzan said.


Balasuriya, a sociologist by training, got himself into trouble with the increasingly conservative Vatican arbiters of Catholic theology for expressing views that officials said clashed with the basic Roman Catholic tenets of original sin, the Immaculate Conception, and baptism, the sacrament marking a Catholic’s formal entrance into the church.

Balasuriya expressed his views in a 1990 book,”Mary and Human Liberation,”and has expounded on those ideas since then in speeches and forums.

But the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, the Pontifical Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has been scrutinizing his ideas since 1994, said in its binding excommunication decision last week that Balasuriya”arrives at the formulation of principles and theological explanations which contain a series of grave errors and which, to different degrees, are distortions of the truths of dogma and are, therefore, incompatible with the faith.” The congregation said that because the priest had refused to sign a”profession of faith”recanting his views that it had drafted and that was approved by Pope John Paul II, Balasuriya”cannot be considered a Catholic theologian; moreover, he has incurred excommunication.” While the Vatican has acted to strip other Catholic theologians such as American ethicist Charles Curran and Swiss academic Hans Kung of their standing as official teachers of the church, the further step of excommunication is unusual.

Balasuriya said he had been aware that the Vatican was leaning toward the excommunication decree since last May, when he refused to sign the profession of faith. He said that signing the profession would cheapen the oath he took upon becoming a priest in 1952, adding that”you don’t get faith out of a government of profession.” The Vatican, however, is intent on reigning in wayward clergy whose views are contrary to the doctrines currently promoted by the church. The harsh punishment given Balasuriya is meant as much as a warning to others as it is to discipline him.”He has kind of a network of support for friends throughout the world, and his ideas were being spread that way, so the Doctrine of the Faith thought it important to intervene,”said the Rev. Alexandre Tache, procurator general of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the missionary order to which Balasuriya has belonged for 51 years.

In fact, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who heads the doctrinal congregation, has in recent months pointedly made clear his distaste for what he calls the”religious relativism”that officials say Balasuriya is preaching.

In remarks last September to 80 bishops from the Third World, Ratzinger appeared to signal the outcome of the Balasuriya case when he singled out”religious institutions of Asia especially, and surprisingly …those of the Indian subcontinent”that espouse a”relativism”that is”the central problem for the faith at the present time.” Ratzinger said the notions of relativism, in which no single faith can lay claim to the truth, is rooted in the Marxist-inspired liberation theology of Central and South America that the church bitterly opposed during the 1970s and 80s.

Liberation theology, like the association that Balasuriya founded, is a moral reaction to widespread suffering of the poor. It rejects the notion that suffering is God’s will and emphasizes the political power of the Bible to fight social injustice.


Ratzinger said these ideas do not properly conform to Scripture and subvert the faith to”ultimately democratize the church in a decisive way.” He said such notions of”majority”rule frequently shift and have no basis in the truths of Catholic teachings.”Will there be a majority tomorrow like the one today?”he asks.

Balasuriya acknowledged he had become a symbol within the church for what it considers unorthodox ideas. But he accused Ratzinger of”distorting”his views and refusing to give him a fair hearing.

Though he risks losing his priestly privileges and a discharge from his order should he persist, Balasuriya said he has no intention of recanting.

The elderly priest, who’s direct appeal to the pope failed to bring a positive result, said he will seek a hearing from a Vatican tribunal on the congregation’s decision.

The theology association has also launched a letter-writing campaign to the pope on Balasuriya’s behalf.”We are writing a letter to the holy father, asking that (Balasuriya) be given due process because we believe some of the things they said he said are not true,”Mananzan said.

Ultimately, Balasuriya said,”reaction to my case is so great now that I think the church will learn a lesson.”


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