Dawn Eden Thesis Now Available

Here's Dawn Eden's Masters Thesis which she has again made available, this time for free. I had read an earlier edition and blogged about it back in April when she first made it available, before she withdrew it to make some changes. It's worth reading, there are many insights within which shed light on the Christopher West controversy. I found her response to one of the criticisms leveled at her to me very good and enlightening for many discussions, i.e., her response to the question "Isn’t it unfair to criticize West when I have not met him personally?"

People who make this claim are assuming that since I do not mention having had personal contact with West in my thesis, I have not made any attempt to reach him. In fact, I have corresponded privately with him on more than one occasion prior to writing my thesis, offering fraternal correction. I did not mention this correspondence in my thesis because it was private.

This is in fact often the case when academics criticize one another publicly, particularly in the relatively small community of Catholic scholars. They do not mention the personal communication in their critiques, because to do so would violate confidentiality, or it might seem petty (“I told X that he was wrong, but he refused to change his position”). It is wrong to assume that public criticism is for them anything but a last resort.

See, reading this response is a great example of how Ms. Eden is such a class act. I would have merely quoted the famous saying "You know what you do when you assume..."

Hat tip to Mark Shea.

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