Vatican censures nun’s book on sexual ethics

A long-simmering conflict between the Vatican and American nuns has erupted again with the Vatican’s doctrinal office issuing a scathing critique of a popular book on sexual ethics by Sister Margaret A. Farley, one of the first Catholics to teach at Yale Divinity School.

After two years of study, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published on June 4 a “notification” on Farley’s Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, saying it contradicts Catholic doctrine on key issues such as gay marriage, homosexuality and divorce.

Farley, who retired from YDS in 2007 as a professor emerita, had maintained that her book was not intended to state official Catholic teaching but rather to give readers her personal ideas that might help them “think through their questions about human sexuality.” Past president of both the Society of Christian Ethics and the Catholic Theological Society, Farley won the prestigious Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion in 2008 for Just Love.