A student at a private Catholic university recently had her final paper marked down for referring to God as male and had to defend that choice in a revised version of the paper to get full credit.
Cecilia González-Andrieu, a professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, cited the “male-gendered language for God repeatedly” as the reason for the docked points, according to a screenshot of the grading rubric obtained by The College Fix.
The student, who asks to remain anonymous, had emailed a response to her professor Dec. 19 voicing concern over the docked points.
“Your comment that I referred to God as a male, I should not have gotten any points off for that,” the student argued. “MULTIPLE times throughout the Bible God is referred to as a ‘he.’ I feel targeted by your comment, as I was raised in the church with the belief that God is a male.”
Professor González-Andrieu responded: “As I indicated to the class community several times, in the footnotes you can have a conversation with other scholars. This gives you a way to highlight and support the reasons for your choices regarding multiple questions. Please resubmit your paper and add a footnote stating your reasons as a scholar to opt to preserve male language for God. I am sure you can do this well. That’s all you need to do and I will then review your paper once more.”
Full story at The College Fix.
God is neither male nor female. “He” is used as a convenient convention (as opposed to ‘she’) because of God’s generative (from nothing) aspect as creator of the physical universe and not as gestational (as a result of something) as would be appropriate for a ‘feminine’ creator.
So the professor wasn’t wrong, All the student needs to do is cite Thomas Aquinas and the CCC and she should be good to go.
God isn’t male since the divine nature is pure spirit, although it is traditional, appropriate and biblical to use masculine pronouns and metaphors in reference to God. At the same time, it is untraditional, inappropriate and unbiblical to use feminine pronouns in reference to God, although sometimes a feminine simile could be appropriate. Deliberately avoiding masculine references to God for ideological reasons is a distortion of the biblical tradition. Feminist “theologians” are often guilty of that.
“I recommend that my relatives send their college-bound children to secular colleges where they will have to fight for their faith, rather than to Catholic colleges where it will be stolen from them”. This quote is attributed to Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen by Monsignor G. Kelly.
This site has helpfully disclosed enough about LMU to conclude it is a “woke” ANTI-Catholic college. $63,000 annual tuition for a mediocre (at best) institution. If possible, potential students should save money and go to UCLA: the profs there are much more distinguished and don’t pretend to teach strictly Catholic values. So students are forewarned, and look elsewhere for that. Perhaps the Archdiocese of Los Angeles should also refrain offering LMU even token recognition by its bishops’ attending LMU events such as graduations, etc.
It sounds as if Professor Gonzalez-Andrieu is not qualified for her position as a Catholic professor. Although it can be said that God the father has no sex, he chose to present himself in the Old and New Testament as a fatherly figure and the Groom of the people of Israel, the Bride. The Lord Jesus Christ chose to be incarnated as a man and referred to God with the male term “father”. He also refers to himself as the Groom and the Church as the Bride. Why is this professor not teaching this? It seems as if her student should be the professor and she the student.
The professor in question is more or less a feminist Marxist. Anytime you write a book with the word “praxis” in the title, you are a Marxist, or an Marxist apologist. Being a Cuban refugee, one would think she would know better.
Praxis, it is difficult to understand how you equate praxis with marxism. Praxis is just another word for practice, for how we do things.
Bob: No offense, but you might want to study up on Hegel and Marx. “Praxis”, as employed by this philosophical school of Hegelian dialectics – and, as it utilized by those who write on political theory – is a little bit more nuanced and loaded than simply serving as a synonym for practice, or, as you say… “how we do things.” It has to do with overhauling societal norms, destroying religion and convention, and replacing it with Marxist and communistic principles.
What does this Radical Leftist Professor of Feminism do, if she ever goes to church–Catholic or Protestant? Does she have a fit every time a cleric reads from Sacred Scripture, at Mass, or at a Protestant service? What does she do, if a priest or minister reads the famous passage from the Book of Genesis 1:27– “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.” This professor won’t be able to get beyond the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, if she goes crazy over traditional masculine pronouns used for God.
Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Genesis 1:26
notarguing.. Your Scripture quote is from the English translation of the 1986 Revised New American Bible, currently in official use by the Church. But many people also have different copies of the Bible, approved for Catholics. The use of the term “human beings” instead of the traditional term, “man,” is very new, and is obviously a contemporary usage. Glad the Church decided against political, unscholarly, inclusive language.
It’s fairly easy to perceive God as male, the patriarch of all things, especially when you’re either a male (and therefore gain the “superior” position over females, or females who were rather indoctrinated into the patriarchy to which they must be submissive. Not all are comfortable with a paradigm that results in such disparities. That said, the article does not elucidate if the student’s paper went from a high grade to a lower grade, or how points were deducted. Was the paper a high 98% and dropped to a 95%, or a 95% down to an 89$, and thus to a “B”. Was this student singled out, the only one to be so graded? Was there some kind of Rubric for the paper that might have hinted that calling a deity by a gender specific term not allowed? Is it do important that God have a gender?
By your own quotation Gods image is both male and female.
The Hebrew word for “God” implies a masculine connotation. The Jews, however, did not believe that God had any gender. And they believed that His Name was too holy to speak, and have used substitutes to refer to God.
I don’t think using the pronoun “he” describes God as male. It is just traditional language used in the Bible and in the Church’s own liturgy. This requirement “as a scholar” sounds pompous and designed to intimidate. Well, it’s Loyola Marymount, a Jesuit school, and I fear that explains a lot. IMO, if the Jesuits really want to keep young people in the faith, they should calm this feminist down, as her students will hear “he” in the liturgy and this should not be accompanied by woke hysterics and quick exits.
God is above sex with the ability to create from nothing only by will. Sex of male and female is a created characteristic of being by God in part for procreation, male (he) female (she). A male pronoun is fine to use to describe God since Jesus took flesh as male and referred to God as the Father. Unless the student is insisting God is of a created male gender, the correction appears petty.
Pettiness is characteristic of feminists and other leftists. That’s how they attempt to gain control. Remember microagressions? There were no real racist aggressions so they had to invent them and called them microaggressions. That’s their way of trying to control those who disagree with them. This leftist feminist professor is trying to intimidate and control her students; she’s trying to brainwash them into not relating to God as Father.
And yet Padre. And yet. Didnt Jesus call out Abba many times. Daddy = Abba Right?
Seems like He would know right?
Feminists are a blight a on the human race
Our Cousin who art in heaven. . . . There, I fixed it, Jesuit style. A+.
No, Cousin would say that there is a generation older than God. Which would be heresy.
Maybe this is how the ancient Greeks got so many false gods.
Why is God a Father? One obvious answer is that He expect the very best of us. Humans often must face terrifying dangers, which result in death or horrifying suffering. It may mean sending a person into war, or expect them to experience the suffering of a disease, or a heart attack, or enduring going blind, or worse, watching a child die of cancer. So as humans, we often think, “How could God do that to us?” And “Why does God make me suffer so badly?’ God has to be one tough person, to allow us to suffer like this. We do not usually associate such suffering as being caused by a woman. Rather, as Catholics, we often seek the arms of Our Lady, for help and consolation, when we are stricken with disaster. So that is why God is definitely a Father figure. He is aware of the challenges and human suffering we must endure, and He knows it is these challenges which we experience and overcome, which give our souls courage and strength.
In the Creed, we profess our belief in one God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, three divine persons in undivided Unity.
Since Jesus Christ – the Second Person of the Holy Trinity – is male, not female – then God is male.
The Incarnation proved Who He is in His humanity.
Seems pretty simple to me.
If your faith is important to you, schools like LMU should be avoided like the plague.