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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) April 21, 2024: In my adult life (I recently turned 80), I have devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to writing about the work of my former teacher at Saint Louis University, the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955).
See, for example, my OEN article "Thomas J. Farrell on Thomas J. Farrell" (dated November 17, 2023):
More recently, I highlighted Ong's thought in my OEN article "Pope Francis, David French, and Walter Ong on Gender Differences" (dated March 3, 2024):
Now, the American Jesuit David Toolan published an article about Ong's account of gender differences titled "The Male Agony: According to Walter J. Ong" in the liberal lay Catholic magazine Commonweal, volume CXIX, number 20 (November 20, 1992): pp. 13-18.
Now, as far as I know, Father Ong did not take a stand in any of his 400 or so distinct publications (not counting translations and reprintings as distinct publications) against any of the controversial moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
At the present time, the most controversial moral teachings of the roman Catholic Church are those covered in the Vatican's new 2024 Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith titled "Dignitas Infinita: On Human Dignity" (dated April 8, 2024):
The new 2024 Vatican document is expressly referred to as a Declaration. And it is identified as a Declaration prepared by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez from Argentina is the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. In his presentation of the Declaration, he tells us that it was five years in the making. In other words, the Declaration was already in the works before the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis, also from Argentina, appointed him the new head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. But it fell to Cardinal Fernandez to see its preparation through to its final public presentation, which was approved by the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis.
The main body of the Declaration's text is composed of numbered paragraphs (1 through 66). The main body of the text is followed by 116 numbered endnotes giving the bibliographical references for the sources of quotations in the text. The doctrinally conservative Pope Francis is over-represented as the source of quotations in the text. In short, the Declaration is a compendium of his doctrinally conservative teachings.
I have profiled the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis in my widely read OEN article "Pope Francis on Evil and Satan" (dated March 24, 2019):
However, even though I routinely accurately characterize Pope Francis as doctrinally conservative, certain conservative American Catholics have generated a lot of anti-Francis polemics.
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