Dr. John Lamont, a Catholic academic with a canonical mandate to teach theology, has written an account of how a scholarly paper he wrote was refused publication in a “conservative” academic journal. It is not only traditional Catholic priests and religious who are institutionally marginalized, but laymen as well, even when they and their work are deserving of merit, and that merit is acknowledged by those who do the marginalizing.
I recently had an experience that is very informative about the current status of tradition in the Church, and that deserves to be made public. Its importance lies in its revelation of the practice of silencing traditionalist theological positions, a practice that is usually carried out in private, but that is adhered to even by the most allegedly ‘conservative’ theological venues.
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The great interest of the Nova et Vetera episode described above is that it lifts the veil on the process by which this anti-traditionalist academic consensus is produced, and shows that it has nothing to do with scholarly merit. A journal in a ‘Thomistic perspective’, whose editor-in-chief is the former papal theologian for John Paul II, can refuse to publish a paper arguing for a traditionalist conclusion not on the grounds of its scholarly quality – which it acknowledges to be excellent – but purely because the author’s connections are thought to be suspect. This approach, rather than the intellectual merits of the traditionalist case, is what explains the absence of traditionalist scholarship in academic venues. It is my hope that by exposing one instance of this approach I may contribute to its being discredited.
