Today the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced that Peter Ryan, SJ, will succeed Thomas Wienandy, OFM Cap, as executive director of the Committee on Doctrine. From the press release: "Fr. Ryan has been director of spiritual formation and professor of moral theology at Kenrick-Gennon Seminary in St. Louis since January 2012. Prior to that he was professor of moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland, 2001-2011, and assistant professor of theology at Loyola College in Maryland, 1994-2001." He is a member of the Catholic Fellowship of Scholars, a theologically conservative group, and has served three times on its executive board. (Weinandy is also a member of the Fellowship, as well as the Catholic Theological Society of America.) Ryan's scholarly work has been published in the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, the National Catholic Bioethical Quarterly, and Theological Studies. (You can read his argument for adopting abandoned embryos here [.pdf]).
In 2011, Ryan co-authored a controversial article in Theological Studies designed to rebut a 2004 essay calling for a re-evaluation of the church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. The Vatican reportedly pressured the journal to publish Ryan's article unedited and without standard peer review. Its authors denied the latter claim, even though the article appeared with an editors note that read, "Except for minor stylistic changes, the article is published as it was received.”
