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Two European Catholic intellectuals face separate Vatican heresy probes, according to recent Italian news accounts.
Belgian Jesuit Fr. Jacques Dupuis is on leave from his teaching position at the Pontifical Gregorian University while he responds to Vatican objections to his book on religious pluralism, while law professor Luigi Lombardi Vallauri has been suspended from Milan's University of the Sacred Heart for questioning the reality of Hell, the extent of papal authority and the doctrine of original sin.
The 74-year-old Dupuis, who spent 36 years teaching theology in India before joining the faculty at the Gregorian in Rome, told the Italian news service ANSA Nov. 7 that he had received an interrogative survey from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church's doctrinal watchdog agency, about his book Towards a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Orbis Books, 1997). The book draws on Eastern religions to argue that salvation may be found outside the Catholic church.
The survey is the first step in a heresy investigation. Dupuis said he had three months to respond.
Reached at his university office in Rome, Dupuis told NCR that he could not reveal the specific grounds for the Vatican action. "The contents of the survey are strictly reserved," he said. "I cannot enter into the details without making the case worse.
"I cannot discuss the matter even with my colleagues or my students," Dupuis said. "The only thing I am...