VATICAN CITY:Pope Benedict XVI has warned Catholic theologians against becoming arrogant and forgetting God, in a sermon which has followed reports that yet another Catholic theologian is being investigated by the Vatican.
Vatican Radio has reported that, at a private Mass with some of his former doctoral students last Sunday, the pope said theologians could know everything about the history of the scriptures and how to explain them, but know nothing about God.
Last week the US National Catholic Reporter said the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), of which the pope was prefect until April 2005, was investigating leading American theologian, Vietnamese-born Fr Peter Phan, of Georgetown University in Washington, who has said that non-Christian religions have a place in the salvation of mankind.
A 2005 letter from the CDF, following publication of Fr Phan's 2004 book, Being Religious Interreligiously, described it as "notably confused on a number of points of Catholic doctrine and . . . also contains serious ambiguities".
It said the book conflicted with the Vatican's 2000 Dominus Iesus document, which said that non-Christian religions were "in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the church, have the fullness of the means of salvation".
Fr Phan was asked to correct his errors. In a letter to the CDF last April he offered to do so under certain conditions, but has received no response.
He is also being investigated, separately, by the US Bishops' Conference.
Fr Phan left Vietnam in 1975 but continues to have close ties with theologians in Asia, where leading Catholic intellectuals say the Vatican is too Euro-centric and that it should recognise positive aspects in non-Christian religions.
In recent years the CDF has criticised similar ideas in the writings of the deceased Belgian Jesuit Fr Jacques Dupuis, who lived in India for 36 years.
It also barred US Jesuit Fr Roger Haight from teaching theology because of his reinterpretation of Jesus Christ and recently reprimanded the Spanish Jesuit Fr Jon Sobrino for his writings on liberation theology.
In another development yesterday, the Vatican distributed a statement from the Rome headquarters of the Dominican congregation censuring Dutch Dominicans for circulating a booklet in the Netherlands last month which said that unordained ministers, including homosexuals and women, should be allowed celebrate the Eucharist if priests were not available.
"Whether they are women or men, homo or hetero, married or single, makes no difference. What is important is an infectious attitude of faith," the booklet said. The main point was to keep local faith communities together, with or without a priest, it said.
Yesterday's statement from Rome said that "while we share their concern about the availability of the Eucharist and priestly ministry, we believe this concern must be responded to in careful theological and pastoral reflection . . ."