Essay Article On Stylistics

Authors respond to 'Theological Studies' report

To publish the rebuttal essay on marriage, unedited and without undergoing normal peer review. That essay was a response to one published in the journal in 2004 in which the authors challenged official church teachings on the indissolubility of marriage.

The authors of the rebuttal article, Jesuit Fr. Peter F. Ryan and Germain Grisez issued a statement saying that Theological Studies , submitting to higher authority, agreed to publish the complete and final version of the Ryan-Grisez article making the case for the absolute indissolubility of covenantal marriage, the editor requested and we provided the abstract that usually appears just before the beginning of the text. The page proofs we received, however, replaced our abstract with an unusual editor’s note: ‘The article is a reply to one by Kenneth Himes and James Coriden published in our September 2004 issue. Except for minor stylistic changes, the article is published as it was received.’

“In our next note to the editor, we said: ‘We’re concerned that the second sentence of what appears instead is misleading, for we did a great deal of work to respond to the criticisms proposed by the first group of readers assigned by TS , and we thank them in the final note of our article. If the reason for the change is to suggest that the article is being published under duress, we think it would be well to say that straightforwardly.’ The editor replied: ‘As to the abstract, I decided on this briefer form because what you said in your abstract is repeated at the beginning of article, and I wanted to save space. I don’t think the abstract as it stands is at all misleading.’

“What concerned us was that the editor’s rejection of the first draft of the article, in May 2009, was accompanied by his ‘lightly edited summary of the [three] referees’ reports.