A student at Loyola Marymount University, a private Catholic university had her final paper marked down for referring to God as male and had to defend that choice in a revised version of the paper to get full credit.
The private Catholic university theological studies professor Cecilia González-Andrieu cited the “male-gendered language for God repeatedly” as the reason for the docked points, according to a screenshot of the grading rubric obtained by The College Fix.
“Your comment that I referred to God as a male, I should not have gotten any points off for that,” the student argued in her December 19 response. “MULTIPLE times throughout the Bible God is referred to as a ‘he.’ I feel targeted by your comment, as I was raised in the church with the belief that God is a male.”
Professor González-Andrieu responded: “As I indicated to the class community several times, in the footnotes you can have a conversation with other scholars. This gives you a way to highlight and support the reasons for your choices regarding multiple questions. Please resubmit your paper and add a footnote stating your reasons as a scholar to opt to preserve male language for God. I am sure you can do this well. That’s all you need to do and I will then review your paper once more.”
Neither González-Andrieu nor the LMU media affairs department have responded to The College Fix’s requests for comment.
The student asked to remain anonymous while reaching out to The Fix.
Nevertheless, the student “should have never been put in that situation,” stated Will Donahue, chairman of the California College Republicans and Loyola Marymount University College Republicans president, defending their member.
“I am appalled by this blatant heresy coming out of the theology department,” Donahue stated. “This was a personal attack on one of my member’s freedom of religion, at a ‘Catholic’ school no less. This type of compelled speech cannot be tolerated by LMU.”
