An Update on Fr. Timothy Radcliffe
In our New Oxford Note “Noblesse Oblige” (Sept. 2006), we noted that Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, the Master General of the Dominican Order from 1992 to 2001, was talking out of both sides of his mouth or just uttering gobbledygook when he gave a talk on “Overcoming Discord in the Church” at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress on April 1. His talk was printed in the National Catholic Reporter (May 5, 2006), but it had been edited.
We received a letter from our friend Erven Park, who supplied an article from the Los Angeles Mission, which contained the same speech given by the National Catholic Reporter (obviously heavily edited). The Los Angeles Mission quoted Radcliffe as saying: “We begin by standing beside gay people…. And this means letting our imaginations be stretched open to watching Brokeback Mountain [a homosexual propaganda movie], reading gay novels, having gay friends…[and] listening with them as they listen to the Lord.” (This was also reported in the National Catholic Reporter by John L. Allen Jr., but we missed it.)
Park also supplied an article from LifeSiteNews.com, which quotes Radcliffe as saying in November 2005: “Any deep-rooted prejudice against others, such as homophobia or misogyny, would be grounds for rejecting a candidate for the priesthood, but not their sexual orientation.”
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