John Paul II Institute Is Being Destroyed, Says Friend of Late Pope, by Edward Pentin

Professor Stanislaw Grygiel warns that the institute is forsaking moral theology and John Paul II’s anthropology for ‘opinion polls’ and ‘sociological and psychological meanderings.’

By Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register, 8/30/19

A close friend of the late Pope St. John Paul II has firmly criticized recent changes at the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, saying they are not about renewal, expansion or even change but rather about its dissolution and destruction.

Professor Stanislaw Grygiel, who was dismissed last month as a lecturer at the institute along with ten other academics, said he was “surprised by such words as the ‘renewal, expansion and deepening’ of this Institute, which are uttered by those who are destroying it together with its foundation.

“Destruction doesn’t equate with renewal,” he said.

The Polish-born philosophy professor was speaking to Polish journal Teologia Polityczna Aug. 18 in light of new statutes published at the end of July which followed Pope Francis’ “refounding” of the institute in 2017 with his motu proprio Summa Familiae Cura.

The new statutes led to the suspension of five master’s degree programs and the dismissal of Grygiel and others’ teaching positions. In particular, two leading professors were removed from tenured positions: Msgr. Livio Melina, a former president of the institute, whose chair of fundamental moral theology was abolished, and Father José Noriega, a moral theologian who was removed on grounds that being a superior general of a religious congregation was incompatible with being a tenured professor in the new institute. ….

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