Catholic Scholar ‘Silenced’ After Questioning Stance on Abortion

Her supporters say Jane Via has been “silenced.”

After all, she has been barred from speaking publicly in the Catholic diocese of San Diego. The net effect is silence.

The diocese calls the condition a “postponement.”

All Via has to do is state that she agrees with the church on abortion. Then her speaking engagements will no longer be “postponed.”

Words are at the crux of the case of Jane Via--words that challenge or appease authority. At its heart, say Via’s supporters, is the freedom to speak: What happens to an institution when those trained to speak and teach are silenced?

Jane Via is a 37-year-old Catholic scripture scholar, formerly a tenured professor of religious studies at the University of San Diego, now a practicing lawyer and the mother of a 15-month-old son.

Last fall, she and 96 other prominent Catholics signed a full-page advertisement in The New York Times stating that many Catholics believe abortion “though tragic, can sometimes be a moral choice.” The ad called for “a candid and respectful discussion on this diversity of opinion within the Church.”

In June, Via’s lectures began to be canceled--first, one on modern methods of Biblical interpretation before a group of Catholic lawyers, then one on the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles, and another titled “Earthen Vessels, the Fragility of Ministry.”

Now Via has been told by Bishop Leo T. Maher and other diocese officials that she may not speak in any Catholic forum in the diocese until she signs a “simple statement” declaring that she agrees with church teaching on abortion.

But Via and the diocese have been unable to agree on a statement. Not only does Via admit reservations about the church’s position on abortion, she also resents the request for what the diocese calls “a clarification.”

“As I interpret the request for a statement, it is a request for a loyalty oath,” she said recently. “And I feel loyalty oaths are inappropriate in the context of religion, at least between me and the institution. Between me and the Sacred--perhaps.”

Diocese officials say they can recall no similar cases in San Diego. But in Los Angeles and across the country, other signers of The New York Times ad have encountered retaliation, initiated in at least some cases by the Vatican in Rome.

Two priests and two brothers have issued new statements, which the Vatican accepted as retractions. The 24 nuns who signed have not issued such statements. Vatican officials have said they will be dismissed from their religious communities if they fail to do so.

Lay Catholics, too, have met with reprisals. A tenured professor of theology at Marquette University had four academic engagements at Catholic universities canceled. In Los Angeles, the diocese told social service agencies not to refer clients to a battered women’s shelter that employs one of the signers.

“What we have seen is that whenever a Catholic with status or recognition in the Catholic community speaks out on the subject of abortion, the powers that be mobilize rapidly to discredit and marginalize that person,” said Frances Kissling, whose national organization, Catholics for a Free Choice, is tracking the fate of the letter’s signers.

By silencing different views, “they can then continue to say that no important Catholic disagrees with us on the question of abortion,” Kissling said. “So two years from now, someone will say, ‘Well, Jane Via disagrees.’ And they will say, ‘Who’s Jane Via?’ ”

The loss is not simply Via’s, say Kissling and others.

“I think that what’s lost is vitality,” Kissling said. “Any institution remains alive and active when it is open to a diversity of opinions and views. I think what the church is doing in silencing individuals, particularly on abortion, is losing the full participation and power of women’s voices.”

Via came to San Diego in 1977--a 30-year-old Midwesterner with a doctorate from Marquette who left a teaching job at a small Catholic college in Detroit. She was hired as an assistant professor of religious studies at USD, also a Catholic university.

Raised in St. Louis as a Protestant in a French Huguenot family, Via converted to Catholicism in college. Although she wanted to go to law school while teaching, she says she didn’t intend to be a lawyer and imagined she would spend her career in academics.

“I think religion has always been such a powerful force for good in my own life,” she said. “But it’s often difficult, I think, for people to reconcile religion with culture and intellect. And I think I have the training and expertise to help people do that.”

But Via found herself embroiled in a two-year fight over tenure, which ended in her receiving tenure. She says the fight damaged her health; she ended up taking a leave of absence, then gave up her tenure to teach at USD part time.

It was while she was teaching part time, having completed her law degree and become a lawyer, that Via received a copy of the letter from the Catholic Committee on Pluralism and Abortion. She says she read it to see if she agreed. Then she signed.

The case is straightforward, suggests Father John G. Proctor Jr., the 39-year-old canon lawyer for the diocese of San Diego, who has represented the diocese during much of the matter.

Via took a public position contrary to church teaching in a major, or “substantive,” area. Substantive areas include the articles of faith that make up the body of teaching, Proctor explained recently: For example, killing is wrong and Jesus is God.

For that reason, the diocese wants Via to sign a written statement that she agrees with church teaching in the area of abortion. That way, she will “reconcile herself” to the bishop and the church, Proctor said.

“It’s not what I feel, or even what Bishop Maher feels,” Proctor said. “It is the decision of Rome that by signing the letter the signatories departed from essential Catholic doctrine insofar as they state that one can justify abortion in Catholic teaching. That can never be justified.”

That Via never intended to speak about abortion is irrelevant. “Of course, in Catholicism there is no such thing as an unrelated issue,” Proctor said. “This cannot help but influence the total body of teaching.”

Monsignor William E. Elliott, the vicar for education for the diocese until Sept. 1, who postponed a talk Via was to give in his parish, said, “I simply couldn’t have that example of our parish providing a forum for someone whose orthodoxy was questionable.

“I gave her ample opportunity to say, ‘Lookit, people are misunderstanding what I intended here. What I intended was X, Y, Z,’ ” Elliott said. “She has never done that. I’m in the position of her taking a stand that is widely understood to be taking a position in favor of abortion, and she will not clarify her position.”

Since late spring, Via has met separately with Proctor, Maher and a third diocese official in repeated attempts work out a resolution. So far, they have failed to agree on a statement.

Via describes herself as a feminist, but “very conservative on abortion.”

She says she opposes the idea of abortion as birth control. She says she disagrees with the argument “that because a woman’s body is involved there are no moral issues involved.” She says she is “a long way from saying every abortion is necessarily a moral choice.”

However, she says she believes abortion can be a moral choice, and that the church’s positions on abortion and war or nuclear war are inconsistent: “I find it very difficult to understand how war can be moral and abortion can never be moral.”

Via’s supporters include some who do not share her position on abortion.

“I don’t believe in abortion, and I don’t think there should be abortion. But I do think theologians have to discuss topics,” said Patricia Schmitt, an active Catholic and former student of Via’s who wrote to the bishop expressing her unhappiness.

“I personally believe there has to be dialogue on every moral issue; I wish there were more dialogue on nuclear war,” said Schmitt, who said her husband supports the diocese. “Theologians should discuss (abortion). They still might come up with the answer that abortion is murder.”

Another supporter is Jane Emerson, an active Catholic involved in community work in San Diego for 40 years.

“She is a young woman and the church needs to use these people. I mean, we lose the talent of somebody who has a lot to offer,” she said. “The church needs the kind of information she has. The world needs it. We need to be educated.

“It is just one of those situations where raising the issue is counterproductive but, it’s hypocritical not to. It’s like many things in organizations where you have a different opinion: If you don’t make a fuss, nobody cares. But if you challenge the party line, you are ostracized.”

A second letter is in the works, to be published in The New York Times later this year. According to Kissling, it supports the right of those who signed the first letter, and anyone else, to speak freely on controversial issues without fear of penalty.

She said 700 people, including priests and nuns, have agreed to sign.

“The women who signed the ad will not recant or retract,” Marjorie Tuite, a nationally known Catholic activist who also signed, said in an interview last week. “We’ve been taught within the church to have freedom of conscience, and we’ve learned that as citizens of the United States. So this is ridiculous--in plain English.”