Discrimination is not a four-letter word

Catholic News Service offers these words from Archbishop Levada, the new prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

"I think people have sometimes gotten the idea that if you don't let every theologian say everything that he or she thinks, or if you challenge them in any way and say, 'That's not correct,' that somehow you are impeding freedom of conscience or freedom of inquiry," he said.

"But that's not the case. We have freedom to inquire. But a theologian himself or herself is called to discriminate between where that inquiry leads and how it corresponds to the faith that the church continues to receive and to live by. Otherwise they would not be doing true theology, it seems to me," he said.

Discrimination is an effective tool for the critical thinker. And for the critical thinker following Christ, it becomes a moral imperative.