Curran on the Carpet

By Richard N. Ostling

As part of Pope John Paul II's determined campaign to enforce orthodoxy, the Vatican has taken action against a number of nonconformist theologians. First it ruled that Hans Kueng of West Germany could no longer call himself a Catholic theologian; next Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx of the Netherlands was summoned to Rome for an inquiry into his theological writings; and Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff is undergoing enforced silence for advocating Marxist-tinged liberation theology.

Now it is the turn of the Rev. Charles Curran, 51, a moral theologian at the Catholic University of America in Washington. Last week, after meeting in Rome with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Curran told a press conference that the Vatican has judged his views on sexual ethics unacceptable. That could lead to his dismissal from the university and widen a growing rift between Rome and the Americans.

The Vatican first contacted Curran in 1979, sending a 16-page list of the "principal errors and ambiguities" in his writings. After several exchanges, Ratzinger last year wrote Curran that he must recant (which he refuses to do) or no longer be deemed a teacher of Catholic theology. A formal Vatican statement to that effect would end Curran's post at the university, where theologians work under church mandate because graduate religion degrees are granted under a papal charter.

A popular teacher who normally forgoes clerical garb, Curran was fired by Catholic University's bishop-dominated board in 1967 because of his liberal views, but was reinstated following a campus-wide faculty and student strike. After Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the traditional ban on artificial birth control in a 1968 encyclical, Curran rallied 600 Catholic academics and church professionals to endorse a statement that couples were justified in following their own conscience.

Other differences abound. The church vehemently opposes all abortions; Curran argues that they might be justifiable in extreme cases. Rome rejects sterilization on any grounds; Curran does not. The Vatican insists that "every genital act must be within the framework of marriage"; Curran thinks that premarital sex is acceptable under some circumstances and that loving homosexual acts can be morally licit in the context of a permanent commitment. He believes that the church should alter its ban on remarriage after divorce.

Curran contends that none of these traditional teachings on sexual morality have been defined infallibly, and that theologians are thus free to dissent from them. But Rome reads canon law differently. Says one official at the Vatican: "It is valid to withhold assent [privately] in certain circumstances, but it is not valid to teach dissent." Curran protests that he is not alone, characterizing his views as "mainstream" and "accepted by the majority of Catholic theologians today." Nine former presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America agree, and are circulating a pro-Curran petition.

Curran is willing to bend somewhat; he has offered not to teach sexual-ethics classes if the Vatican will settle for issuing a statement detailing his errors, but allow him to continue as a theology teacher. Mindful of the potential donnybrook if Curran is dismissed, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, head of Catholic University's board of trustees, has lobbied with the Pope and Ratzinger to accept such a compromise, so far to no avail.

The theology chairman at the University of Notre Dame, Father Richard McBrien, considers the Curran case "the biggest blunder the Vatican has committed with the American church" in two decades. But to a more conservative theologian in Rome "the question is, Why did the Vatican wait so long?" --By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Rome and Jim Castelli/Washington

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof/Rome, Jim Castelli/Washington