In its recent letter of support to embattled Catholic nun and theologian Elizabeth Johnson, the professors of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary waded into a longstanding tension in the Roman Catholic Church. It’s a tension between bishops who exercise the role of teaching authority and theologians whose job is to research, write and, ultimately, to teach.

As noted in today’s story, the Committee on Doctrine for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a report saying that Johnson’s recent book, “Quest for the Living God,” has “misrepresentations, ambiguities and errors” about church doctrine.

Johnson, a feminist theologian from Fordham University, in particular challenged the use of language for God that’s exclusively male, authoritarian and aloof from human suffering.

Since the reformist Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, much of the groundbreaking Catholic theological work has been done in universities rather than seminarians, and increasingly by laymen — and laywomen — instead of priests.

That has brought “both gains and losses,” said the Rev. Robert Imbelli, who teaches theology at Boston College.

The diversity of voices is a gain, but “one of the losses is the tendency to take academic criteria as your governing criteria,” rather than doctrinal soundness, he said:

“The tension within the Catholic view of church is one of fidelity and creativity. The role of the bishop is to safeguard the apostolic doctrine, and therefore the content of the faith. The role of the theologian is to push the boundaries to seek further understanding depending upon the context … whether it’s Augustine or Aquinas or Elizabeth Johnson.”

Johnson herself might smile at being included in such company; she herself cites Thomas Aquinas in making her own case for using multiple names, including feminine ones, to get at the richness of God’s identity.

Journalist John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter wrote that Johnson’s book is not alone in receiving formal criticism from bishops.

They previously cited such books as “The Sexual Person,” by Todd Salzman and Michael Lawler; “Being Religious Interreligiously,” by Peter Phan; and two 2006 writings about contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage by Daniel Maguire.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Catholic priest and author of three books on the Catholic hierarchy, says American Catholic bishops and theologians are deeply distrustful of each other.

“We’re in serious difficulty because of this split between theologians and bishops,” said Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center. “… This is absolutely disastrous for the Catholic Church.”

He noted that no one would want to invest in a company in which “management and research aren’t on speaking terms.”

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