Another Catholic university professor problem

This time, it’s a dissident who is blasting the bishops and muddling Church teaching in his rants. In the New York Times, by the way.

In a letter to the New York Times on Monday, Daniel C. Maguire, a professor of moral theology at Marquette University and prominent Catholic dissident, stated that bishops should stop “harassing” Catholic politicians who vote in favor of abortion.

Maguire drew on St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas who both thought that to allow certain moral evils would prevent “greater evils.” He further cited Aquinas, who said that the “wise legislator” imitates God, who “tolerates certain evils lest greater evils ensue.”

He’s using a confused and tortured logic oft repeated these days by dissidents.

Maguire’s theology, however, is condemned by the Church. The notion of promoting the “lesser of two evils” is condemned as the error of “proportionalism,” while the attempt to draw such a position from the works of Augustine and Aquinas is condemned by orthodox academics as gravely erroneous.

Maguire has had a record of dissent from Catholic Church teaching ever since the sexual revolution in 1960’s. This March the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) condemned Maguire’s views (published in certain pamphlets) on same-sex “marriage”, contraception and abortion as being “contrary to the Church’s faith”. The USCCB further declared, “We deplore as irresponsible his public advocacy of his views as authentic Catholic teaching”…

LifeSite has a bunch of links there for more information and clarity on this moral equivalency.