Father Thomas Reese, a widely known Catholic writer and pundit, has resigned as editor of the Jesuit magazine America under pressure from a Vatican congregation once headed by Pope Benedict XVI.
Reese's decisions to publish articles that at times challenged the church's official views brought Vatican criticism.
His resignation followed several years of exchanges among the magazine, Reese's superiors in the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits, and the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who last month was elected to lead the 1.1-billion member Roman Catholic Church and chose the name Benedict XVI, headed the congregation during its battles with the magazine. The congregation under Ratzinger had repeatedly reined in and disciplined dissident Catholic theologians, priests and women in religious orders.
Reese, 60, has been widely quoted over the years by secular media seeking comment on church developments. He was in Rome last month before and during the papal election.
Two sources familiar with the magazine, and who asked to remain anonymous, said Friday that the congregation sent a critical letter about Reese two weeks before the death of Pope John Paul II. These sources said the letter was addressed to Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the Jesuit order's superior general in Rome. Kolvenbach relayed the contents of the letter to the president of the Jesuit conference in the U.S., Father Brad Schaeffer, who then informed Reese.
"What it [the letter] amounted to is that it wasn't going to do any good to fight this. The sense was that Reese had to go," one source told The Times. Word that Reese had been forced out was first published by the National Catholic Reporter on its website Friday afternoon.
Among the articles that upset the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were an essay regarding homosexual priests, and another written by U.S. Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) challenging Ratzinger's view that the church should refuse Communion to Catholic politicians who failed to follow church teachings.
The magazine also had examined the moral arguments for using condoms to prevent AIDS and published several critical analyses of the Vatican's September 2000 document on religious pluralism, Dominus Iesus, which held that the Roman Catholic Church alone, unlike Protestant denominations, embraced the fullness of the Christian Gospel and the means of salvation.
