I will now seek to give an answer to the question of whether Elizabeth Johnson’s book She Who Is (see publication info above) is ressourcement or aggiornamiento according to a Catholic model of authority. For the sake of my present thoughts I will also assume aggiornamiento to be less threatening to the “old” way of interpreting the tradition by understanding it more like a further enlightenment of the implications of the old. For the sake of my present thoughts, however, I will assume that ressourcement involves-at least to some degree-the replacement of the “old” interpretation with a “new” one, in which case the old paradigm must be undermined to give way to the new. Perhaps because I am not cognizant of the technical ways in which these terms are understood by Catholic theologians, ressourcement and aggiornamiento appear to me to be greatly overlapping categories. NOTE: F rom here on out I will not capitalize “tradition,” but I mean to refer to the broad theological tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. We must remember that for the Catholics this includes Scripture because it was the Tradition-not scripture itself-that delineated and codified the canon. feminism), Roman Catholics like to ask the question whether such new ideology is ressourcement or aggiornamiento with respect to the Tradition (Catholics like to use big Latin words to describe relatively easy concepts, and I explain my understanding of them below). given a chance to promote her theology).Īpparently, whenever there is a new reform ideology floating around “out there” in the Catholic world of theology (especially those seen as having an influence-i.e. In fact, she was invited recently to The University of Dayton (a Catholic school that I presently attend) to give talks on her classic book (i.e. Her ideas have had plenty of time to percolate the church and the Catholic authorities have not taken any disciplinary action against her. Compared to other feminist reform proposals, her project is very modest.

Although Johnson’s book was written a long time ago, her arguments for a feminist reform have been well received over the years and still stand as perhaps the most reasonably argued feminist position available for Catholics. New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing, 1999.įeminist theology is not dead. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse.

She who is elizabeth johnson