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En-Gendering Creation Anew: Rethinking Ecclesial Statements on Science, Gender, and Sexuality with William R. Stoeger, SJ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2021

Paul J. Schutz
Paul J. Schutz*
Affiliation:
Santa Clara University
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Abstract

Despite Pope John Paul II's call for “intense dialogue” between theology and science that excludes “unreasonable interpretations” of Scripture, ecclesial statements on gender and sexuality—including John Paul II's own works—deploy an interpretation of the literal meaning of Genesis to perpetuate a complementarian anthropology that contradicts scientific insights about the human body. After illustrating the implications of this hermeneutical inconsistency, this article presents Jesuit astronomer William Stoeger's theological method and hermeneutics of the full flourishing of life as an alternative approach, which fulfills John Paul II's vision for dialogue and paves a way toward reimagining church teachings on gender and sexuality.

Keywords

gendersexualitytheologyscienceWilliam R. Stoeger, SJPope John Paul IIcomplementarityLGBTQ+transgendermethodepistemology
Type
Articles
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Horizons , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , June 2021 , pp. 34 - 68
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Copyright © College Theology Society 2021

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References

1 Salzman, Todd A. and Lawler, Michael G., Sexual Ethics: A Theological Introduction (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012), 156Google Scholar.

2 Congregation for Catholic Education (hereafter CCE), “‘Male and Female He Created Them’: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education,” June 10, 2019, §52, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_20190202_maschio-e-femmina_en.pdf.

3 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §45.

4 I have chosen to engage John Paul II because of his writings on gender complementarity and theology-science dialogue; neither Benedict XVI nor Francis engages these issues in the same depth that John Paul II does.

5 Elena Procario-Foley and Susan Abraham, “Preface,” in Frontiers in Catholic Feminist Theology: Shoulder to Shoulder, eds. Susan Abraham and Elena Procario-Foley (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 1.

6 I use these terms, rather than “magisterium” or “magisterial,” in an effort to avoid terminological imprecision. For a comprehensive treatment of the exercise of ecclesial authority and the meaning of the “magisterium,” see Gaillardetz, Richard R., By What Authority?: Foundations for Understanding Authority in the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018), esp. chap. 6 to 9Google Scholar.

7 Pope John Paul II, “Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Reverend George V. Coyne, SJ, Director of the Vatican Observatory,” June 1, 1988, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19880601_padre-coyne.html.

8 Pope John Paul II, “Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Reverend George Coyne.”

9 Pope John Paul II, “Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Reverend George Coyne.” Emphasis mine.

10 Pope John Paul II, “Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Reverend George Coyne.”

11 Wojtyła, Karol, Love and Responsibility, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 56–57Google Scholar; quoted in CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §23. Emphasis mine.

12 Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, November 22, 1981, §5.

13 As Denis Edwards indicates, Augustine articulates a similar view, stating that the truths of faith and truths about the natural world “cannot ultimately be in opposition, because they spring from the one truth of God.” Edwards, Denis, Christian Understandings of Creation: The Historical Trajectory (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Pope John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, October 22, 1996, §3, https://humanorigins.si.edu/sites/default/files/MESSAGE%20TO%20THE%20PONTIFICAL%20ACADEMY%20OF%20SCIENCES%20%28Pope%20John%20Paul%20II%29.pdf. Pope John Paul II is citing Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, November 18, 1893, §23, https://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus.html.

15 Pope John Paul II, Message to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, §3. See Message to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, §5, on dignity and other points of concern, such as the relationship between spirit and matter. As we shall see, these “fixed points” also appear to include the binary, complementarian anthropology found in ecclesial statements on the sexed human person.

16 “Pope Calls for Protection of Environment, Says Creation-Evolution Debate Is ‘Absurdity,’” July 26, 2007, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope_calls_for_protection_of_environment_says_creationevolution_debate_is_absurdity. Likewise, Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ is premised on the possibility of constructive dialogue between science and faith. For an assessment of the treatment of evolution and ecology in Laudato Si,’ see Paul J. Schutz, “Cultivating a ‘Cosmic Perspective’ in Theology: Reading William R. Stoeger with Laudato Si’,” Theological Studies 80, no. 4 (December 2019): 798–821. For a broader assessment of Francis’ engagement with science in Laudato Si,’ see Celia Deane-Drummond, “Laudato Si’ and the Natural Sciences: An Assessment of Possibilities and Limits,” Theological Studies 77 (2016): 392–415.

17 Simon Conway Morris offers a tour of the evolutionary terrain and the philosophical and theological implications of various accounts of evolution in Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). To be clear, however, with Ernan McMullin, William Stoeger, Elizabeth Johnson, and Dennis Edwards, I tend away from the more convergence-oriented views of evolution espoused by Conway Morris and those who follow in legacy of Teilhard de Chardin, preferring accounts of evolution that emphasize chance and contingency. In my opinion, Conway Morris’ position, which as McMullin notes is characterized by the “progressivist” or “necessaritarian” idea that under the right conditions, “biological evolution will necessarily occur, and that in the course of time this evolution will necessarily progress towards higher and higher levels of intelligence,” makes claims that exceed what scientific accounts of evolution may tell us (note the word “inevitable” in Conway Morris’ title). For treatments of evolutionary theory more focused on contingency, see Francisco Ayala, “Darwin's Devolution: Design without Designer,” in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology, eds. Robert John Russell, William R. Stoeger, SJ, and Francisco J. Ayala (Vatican Observatory and Berkeley: Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, 1998), 107–16; William R. Stoeger, SJ, “The Immanent Directionality of the Evolutionary Process, and Its Relationship to Teleology,” 163–90, also in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology; see also Johnson, Elizabeth A., Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)Google Scholar. For more on these debates, see McMullin, Ernan, “Cosmic Purpose and the Contingency of Human Evolution,” Theology Today 55, no. 3 (1998): 389–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stoeger, William R., “Ernan McMullin, Cosmic Purpose, and Divine Timelessness,” Zygon 48, no. 2 (June 2013): 329–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Johnson, Elizabeth A., “Does God Play Dice? Divine Providence and Chance,” Theological Studies 57, no. 1 (January 1996): 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. With Conway Morris, Christian de Duve has been an influential proponent of more convergence-oriented philosophical views. See de Duve, Christian, Vital Dust: The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth (New York: Basic Books, 1995)Google Scholar.

18 Cavadini, John, “From Letter to Spirit: The Multiple Senses of Scripture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, eds. Blowers, Paul M. and Martens, Peter W. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 128, 144Google Scholar.

19 Joseph Fitzmyer, SJ, “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church Today,” Irish Theological Quarterly 62, no. 2–3 (1996): 91. The Pontifical Biblical Commission's 1993 instruction, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, explores these matters in greater depth: https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/texts/cjrelations/resources/documents/catholic/pbcinterpretation.htm.

20 William R. Stoeger, SJ, “Biblical Creation Literature.” Unpublished manuscript.

21 For Gould's original articulation of this position, see Gould, Stephen Jay, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (March 1997): 16–22Google Scholar.

22 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (hereafter CDF), Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, §3, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia//congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19861001_homosexual-persons_en.html; on transgender experience, see CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them.’”

23 Michele Saracino, “Moving Beyond the ‘One True Story,’” in Frontiers in Catholic Feminist Theology: Shoulder to Shoulder, eds. Susan Abraham and Elena Procario-Foley (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 12.

24 Pope John Paul II, The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), 26.

25 Pope John Paul II, The Theology of the Body, 43–45. On “mutual subjection,” see Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, August 15, 1988, §24, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1988/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19880815_mulieris-dignitatem.html.

26 Pope John Paul II, “Letter to Women,” June 29, 1995, §9, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_29061995_women.html. Emphasis original.

27 On “masculinization,” see Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §10.

28 Pope John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §29; on Mary, see §3–5.

29 Katie M. Grimes, “Theology of Whose Body? Sexual Complementarity, Intersex Conditions, and La Virgen de Guadalupe,” in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 32, no. 1 (2016): 80.

30 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Cincinnati, OH: Benziger, 1947), I.92.a.1c. Hereafter ST.

31 Aquinas, ST, I.91.1.1. Although he is defensive of Aquinas, Michael Nolan offers extensive summaries of Thomas’ position. For an additional commentary on Thomas’ view of gender, see Michael Nolan, “The Aristotelian Background to Aquinas's Denial that ‘Woman Is a Defective Male,’” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 64, no. 1 (January 2000): 21–69; and Michael Nolan, “The Defective Male: What Aquinas Really Said,” New Blackfriars 75, no. 880 (1994): 156–66.

32 The complementarian dynamic also informs statements on women's ordination. For a summary analysis of this topic, see Kessia Reyne Bennett, “Divided Anthropology: An Ontological Look at the Vatican's Rejection of Women's Ordination,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 52, no. 1 (2014): 101–15.

33 Brianne Jacobs, “An Alternative to Gender Complementarity: The Body as Existential Category in the Catholic Tradition,” Theological Studies 80, no. 2 (June 2019): 330.

34 Tina Beattie, New Catholic Feminism: Theology and Theory (London: Routledge, 2006), 92.

35 Elisabeth Vasko, “The Difference Gender Makes: Nuptiality, Analogy, and the Limits of Appropriating Hans Urs von Balthasar's Theology in the Context of Sexual Violence,” The Journal of Religion 94, no. 4 (October 2014): 512.

36 Natalia Imperatori-Lee, “Father Knows Best: Theological ‘Mansplaining’ and the Ecclesial War on Women,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 31, no. 2 (2015): 102.

37 Aquinas, ST I.93.4. This passage also follows the logic of 1 Corinthians 11, which states that although men are in the image of God, women are in the image of man and created for men (1 Cor 11:7–10). Indeed, Inter Insigniores, the CDF declaration on women's inadmissibility to the priesthood, links this passage from 1 Corinthians 11 with the “divine plan of creation” found in Genesis 2 to argue that women cannot be priests. See CDF, “Declaration Inter Insigniores: On the Question of Admission of Women to Ministerial Priesthood, October 15, 1976, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19761015_inter-insigniores_en.html.

38 Aquinas, ST 2.2.164.2 ad. 1. Emphasis mine.

39 Vasko likewise observes a strong parallel between Balthasar's theological anthropology and sexual violence.

40 Phyllis Trible, “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41, no. 1 (March 1973), 41. Commenting on the threefold punishment of Genesis 3, Trible writes, “They show how terrible human life has become as it stands between creation and grace. We misread if we assume that these judgments are mandates. They describe; they do not prescribe. They protest; they do not condone. Of special concern are the words telling the woman that her husband shall rule over her (3:16). This statement is not license for male supremacy, but rather it is condemnation of that very pattern. Subjugation and supremacy are perversions of creation.” See also Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978).

41 These biological phenomena are widely attested in scientific literature. See, for example, Ferris Jabr, “How Human Eggs Woo Sperm,” March 16, 2011, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928043-400-how-human-eggs-woo-sperm/. Drawing on the work of Emily Martin, Grimes makes a similar case in “Theology of Whose Body?” See Emily Martin, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” Signs 16, no. 3 (April 1, 1991): 485–501.

42 Grimes, “Theology of Whose Body?” 81.

43 Compare Imperatori-Lee, “Father Knows Best,” 93–96.

44 Gwen Sayler, “Adam and Eve/Adam and Steve? A Challenge to the Hermeneutical ‘Complementarity’ Argument,” Currents in Theology and Mission 33, no. 5 (October 2006): 410.

45 See Aquinas, ST Suppl. 39.a. Following the logic of his Aristotelian anthropology, Thomas invokes 1 Timothy 2:12 to conclude that “since it is not possible in the female sex to signify eminence of degree, for a woman is in the state of subjection, it follows that she cannot receive the sacrament of Order.” Although the absence of a connection with science places the topic of women's ordination outside the bounds of this article, there are ample hermeneutical reasons to question the CDF's claim that the inadmissibility of women to the priesthood is “bound up with the divine plan of creation.” I will pursue this topic in future work.

46 CDF, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, §6.

47 Jacobs, “An Alternative to Gender Complementarity,” 331.

48 CDF, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, §3.

49 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (Vatican City: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 2016), §25; CDF, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, §9.

50 Margaret Fraser, “Language for God, Gender, and Authority,” in Authority in the Roman Catholic Church: Theory and Practice, ed. Bernard Hoose (Burlington, VT: 2002), 194.

51 Salzman and Lawler, Sexual Ethics, 171. For a summary of the social contributions of homosexual couples and their contributions to child-raising, see Fraser, “Language for God, Gender, and Authority,” 172–75. Margaret Farley makes a similar case for “fruitfulness” in Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (New York: Continuum, 2006).

52 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §11.

53 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §§11, 19.

54 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §2.

55 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §24.

56 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §25.

57 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §25.

58 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §5.

59 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §6. Emphasis mine.

60 For one application of this development, see the APA guidance, “Help with Gender Dysphoria,” https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria.

61 American Psychiatric Association, “What Is Gender Dysphoria?,” https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria.

62 Robert Nagler Miller, “AMA Takes Several Actions Supporting Transgender Patients,” June 12, 2017, https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/population-care/ama-takes-several-actions-supporting-transgender-patients.

63 Patricia Beattie Jung and Anna Marie Vigen, “Introduction,” in God, Science, and Sex: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 7–8.

64 Jonathan Heaps and Neil Ormerod, “Statistically Ordered: Gender, Sexual Identity, and the Metaphysics of ‘Normal,’” Theological Studies 80, no. 2 (June 2019): 356. This article applies the writings of Bernard Lonergan to propose an interdisciplinary metaphysics for interpreting the “normal” in discussions of sexual identity. For a recent engagement with scientific perspectives on the statistical distribution of sexual identities, see the articles in Jung and Vigen, God, Science, and Sex.

65 Heaps and Ormerod, “Statistically Ordered,” 359.

66 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §15.

67 CCE, “‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” §16.

68 Paul J. Schutz, “A Response to the Vatican Document ‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” National Catholic Reporter, June 24, 2019, https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/response-vatican-document-male-and-female-he-created-them.

69 Neela Ghoshal and Kyle Knight, “Rights in Transition: Making Legal Recognition for Transgender People a Global Reality,” https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/rights-in-transition. Also see “Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2018 Press Release,” https://transrespect.org/en/tmm-update-trans-day-of-remembrance-2018/.

70 “Violence Against the Transgender Community in 2019,” https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-transgender-community-in-2019; Rokia Hassanein, “New Study Reveals Shocking Rates of Attempted Suicide among Trans Adolescents,” September 12, 2018, https://www.hrc.org/news/new-study-reveals-shocking-rates-of-attempted-suicide-among-trans-adolescen.

71 Craig A. Ford Jr., “LGBT Catholics Are a Reality,” Commonweal (December 19, 2018). Compare Luke Timothy Johnson, The Revelatory Body: Theology as Inductive Art (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2015).

72 Many ecclesial documents, including Fides et Ratio, leverage “truth” in this way.

73 William R. Stoeger, SJ, “Reductionism and Emergence: Implications for the Interaction of Theology and the Natural Sciences,” in Evolution and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons, eds. Nancey Murphy and William R. Stoeger, SJ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 231. For an excellent treatment of how the concept of truth functions in science and theology, see Mary Hesse, “Cosmology as Myth,” Concilium 166 (June 1983): 49–54. Stoeger's multidimensional conception of truth parallels Hesse's notion of “non-objective” truth.

74 See William R. Stoeger, SJ, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” in The Laws of Nature, the Range of Human Knowledge, and Divine Action (Tarnow, Poland: Biblos, 1996). This article contains Stoeger's most detailed statement on epistemology. For an analysis of Stoeger's epistemology, see Schutz, “Cultivating a ‘Cosmic Perspective’ in Theology.”

75 William R. Stoeger, SJ, “Contemporary Cosmology and Its Implications for the Contemporary Science-Religion Dialogue,” in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory, 1988), 233.

76 Stoeger, “Contemporary Cosmology and Its Implications for the Contemporary Science-Religion Dialogue,” 234.

77 William R. Stoeger, SJ, “Theology and the Contemporary Challenge of the Natural Sciences,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 46 (1991): 29.

78 “Interview with William Stoeger,” Revista de Etudos da Religiao 1 (2003): 95. See also Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 4–8.

79 William R. Stoeger, SJ, “Relating the Natural Sciences to Theology: Levels of Creative Mutual Interaction,” in God's Action in Nature's World: Essays in Honour of Robert John Russell, eds. Ted Peters and Nathan Hallanger (Vermont: Ashgate, 2006), 33. Emphasis mine.

80 William R. Stoeger, SJ, “Reflections on the Interaction of My Knowledge of Cosmology and My Christian Belief,” CTNS Bulletin 21, no. 2 (March 1, 2001): 13.

81 Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 4.

82 Stoeger, “Reflections on the Interaction of My Knowledge of Cosmology and My Christian Belief,” 11fn1.

83 Stoeger, “Theology and the Contemporary Challenge of the Natural Sciences,” 32.

84 Stoeger, “Theology and the Contemporary Challenge of the Natural Sciences,” 41.

85 For one treatment of how the work of theologians interfaces with the magisterium's responsibility for adjudicating the meaning of theological claims, see Terrence W. Tilley, “Academic Freedom, Divine Revelation and Catholic Universities,” Fidelity & Freedom: “Ex Corde Ecclesiae” at Twenty-Five, eds. Stephen M. Hildebrand and Sean O. Sheridan, TOR (Steubenville, OH: Franciscan University Press, 2018): 96–113, esp. 104–08. Tilley writes, “Such explorations require that theologians distinguish between what makes a claim true, how we recognize the truth of claims, how we appraise claims, and how claims are to be adjudicated. What makes a revelatory symbol true is that it expresses the self-manifestation of God. We recognize a revelatory symbol because it is reliably produced and received as properly expressing God's self-revelation in and for a community of faith. But once we recognize that (1) what constitutes revelation differs from (2) how we recognize revelatory symbols, we still need to (3) appraise those symbols or sentences in the context of mutable human languages, we can see that debates about the formulations of revelation in doctrinal proposals and counter-proposals are proper subjects of truly free and faithful academic inquiry in Catholic theology. To be clear, when those symbols or sentences pertain to matters essential to the faith, the magisterium properly comes into play. Theologians may and must appraise symbols, propositions, and practices. Such appraisals may be diverse. The bishops (themselves theologians, as at Nicea, or in response to sophisticated theological disputations, as at the Council of Trent [1545–63]) have the responsibility of adjudicating theological appraisals.”

86 William R. Stoeger, “Is There Common Ground in Practice and Experience of Science and Religion?” panel presentation, Science and the Spiritual Quest (Berkeley, CA: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, June 7–10, 1998), 2. I am working from Stoeger's original manuscript.

87 Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 16. Making this same point with respect to the sciences, Stoeger writes, “There are inadequacies and failures, as there are in other areas of human endeavor, including the sciences (there is good theology and bad theology, just as there is good science and bad science) … The complication can often be that religion is often coopted to serve other interests—political, economic, institutional. But that is not peculiar to them. Science is often similarly enslaved.”

88 William R. Stoeger, “God and Time: The Action and Life of the Triune God in the World,” Theology Today 55, no. 3 (October 1998): 367; Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 13.

89 William R. Stoeger, “Relating the Natural Sciences to Theology: Levels of Creative Mutual Interaction,” in God's Action in Nature's World, 24.

90 William R. Stoeger, “Reflections on the Interaction of My Knowledge of Cosmology and My Christian Belief,” 14. This model of theology corresponds with Gaillardetz's analysis of the early Christian view of authority, wherein “active discernment by the Churches regarding the authenticity of what was being ‘received’” provided the principal measure of doctrinal authority, in Richard Gaillardetz, Teaching with Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium in the Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 228.

91 Stoeger, ““Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 4.

92 Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Turn to the Heavens and the Earth: Retrieval of the Cosmos in Theology,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 51 (1996): 9.

93 Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 15.

94 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles 3.16.3; 3.17.3.

95 William R. Stoeger, SJ, “The Big Bang, Quantum Cosmology, and Creatio Ex Nihilo,” in Creation and the God of Abraham, eds. David B. Burrell, CSC, Janet M. Soskice, and William R. Stoeger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 173.

96 Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 10. Emphasis original.

97 Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 10.

98 Stoeger, “Is There Common Ground in Practice and Experience of Science and Religion?” 3. Emphasis mine.

99 Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 11.

100 Stoeger, “Reflections on the Interaction of My Knowledge of Cosmology and My Christian Belief,” 14.

101 Procario-Foley and Abraham, “Preface,” 3.

102 William R. Stoeger, SJ, “Rationality and Wonder: From Scientific Cosmology to Philosophy and Theology,” in Astronomy and Civilization in the New Enlightenment: Passions of the Skies: Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, vol. CVII, eds. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and Attila Grandpierre (New York: Springer, 2011), 260.

103 Craig A. Ford Jr., “Transgender Bodies, Catholic Schools, and a Queer Natural Law Theology of Exploration,” The Journal of Moral Theology 7, no. 1 (2018): 94.

104 Herbert Vorgrimler, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. V, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, trans. Walter Abbott (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 134.

105 Saracino, “Moving Beyond the ‘One True Story,’” 17.

106 Lightsey, Pamela R., Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2015), 67–68Google Scholar.

107 Lightsey, Our Lives Matter, 48.

108 Lightsey, Our Lives Matter, 73.

109 Lightsey, Our Lives Matter, 69.

110 Stoeger, “Our Experience of Knowing in Science and in Spirituality,” 17.

111 Stoeger, “Contemporary Cosmology and Its Implications for the Contemporary Science-Religion Dialogue,” 242.