Justice for Father Curran: Part 1

The Catholic theologian Charles E. Curran, a priest of the Diocese of Rochester, New York, came into my life at a time when I needed direction. I was a college seminary freshman during the 1966-1967 school year, a time of immense turmoil across the Church in the United States. Vatican II [1962-1965] was just completed, and to be frank, few people in church authority anywhere had a clear picture or plan of how to adjust the catechesis and practices of the Church to the new mentality of the Council. My freshman year of college seminary religion was, truthfully, a mishmash from a professor who knew in his heart that the ecclesiastical times were a ‘Changin”, as Bob Dylan was singing at the time, but he was not either comfortable with or significantly read in the “new morality” as it emanated from Catholic academia in Europe or the United States.

I knew something was wrong or different, that I was changing at 18, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I stopped going to confession as a college freshman. A cluster of us classmates talked about it one time, and we had lost our reason[s] for going to confession. To use a phrase common at the time, “I didn’t get anything out of it anymore.” I was in grad school some years later, and I came to realize that the 2-week confessional practice was a holdover from the old school manualist approach to the Sacrament of Penance.

When I returned to my seminary in the fall of 1967 as a college sophomore, I was surprised to discover that there had been a major turnover in the faculty; four newly ordained friar priests arrived who were well-versed in advances of the post-Conciliar Church, particularly in theology and liturgy. One of them, Father Adrian Porter, became our theology professor and walked us through the development of twentieth century Catholic theology in many of its subdisciplines—among them Scripture, Liturgy, and of considerable interest, moral theology. Before I went home for Thanksgiving, I scheduled an appointment with him to help me wrap my head around the “changes in the Church.” I come from a large family which in the late sixties was all over the map on the Catholic situation. Father Adrian and I spent two hours together, and he helped me to reset my moral compass and reasoning, so to speak. And one name from that conversation remains with me to this day: Charles Curran.

WHO IS FATHER CHARLES CURRAN?

As of this writing Father Curran is 93 years old and is listed as Elizabeth Scurlock University Chair emeritus of Human Values at Southern Methodist University. I am presently reviewing Father Curran’s autobiography, Loyal Dissent [2006], which outlines a rather remarkable personal and professor life as one of American Catholicism’s most visible, if not always welcome, priest, teacher, researcher, and author throughout the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Young Charles progressed through the seminary system of the Diocese of Rochester until his bishop, in 1955, assigned him to study at the North American College in Rome. This was not uncommon, as bishops needed priests with Roman pedigree to teach in their diocesan seminaries and serve as canonists in Diocesan marriage tribunals, etc.

In his autobiography Curran writes that “I went to Rome in September 1955 and returned for good in 1961. I left Rochester a very convinced, happy, and traditional pre-Vatican II Catholic. I came back, even before Vatican II, recognizing the need for a change and reform in the church. What transpired in Rome? Looking back on it, there were no lightning strikes, but some significant events and people there changed my understanding. [p. 7] It should be noted here that Curran’s classes in Rome were taught in Latin, the custom of the time. He observes in an aside that “the notes of the professor became notes of the pupil without passing through the minds of either!” [p. 7] Absenteeism was something of a European student fixture.

Curran, at this juncture, had no intention of specializing in moral theology, but he was, in fact, ordered to stay in Rome by his Rochester bishop to complete his doctorate in that field. He began to rub elbows with moralists in Rome, including the Jesuit Franz Hurth, the reputed ghostwriter for Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, which forbade artificial birth control, and similarly ghosted Pius XII’s moral teachings. Hurth and Curran frequently conversed on moral questions, and in one such instance Curran asked why the Church forbade artificial insemination even when the sperm was the husband’s and the instrument was the Doyle cervical spoon, a device invented in the late 1940’s to ensure better passage of sperm to the cervix. Curran observed that the Doyle device, as he understood it then, increased the odds of a successful conception in a couple that clearly embraced a sacramental end [then the sacramental end!] of marriage, i.e., creating new life. “A few years later I came to the conclusion that [Hurth’s] approach was a good example of the problem of physicalism, whereby one ‘absolutized’ the physical act of marriage.” [p. 9] As it turned out, Hurth told Curran that the Doyle aid was “an American issue and I’m not going to get involved in it.” The Vatican has never commented on the Doyle device, which can be purchased today on Amazon Prime well over a half century after the young Curran inquired about it.

We all have had moments where insights or experiences have altered our life direction to some degree. Curran did not embrace an academic career when he began his studies, but his immersion in moral theology, as in his lessons from Hurth and other professionals in the moral field, later coupled with Vatican II’s teachings on spiritual renewal and engagement with the other disciplines, focused him on the need for a revision of the principles of moral theology. After his ordination in 1958, he had the good fortune of taking courses and other opportunities at the Pontifical Alphonsian Academy, founded by the Redemptorists to nurture the spirituality and moral outlook of the Order’s founder, St. Alphonsus Ligouri.

One of the pivotal works on the renewal of Catholic moral theology in the twentieth century was written in 1954, the three-volume The Law of Christ, by the Redemptorist Father Bernard Haring. [I reviewed Father Haring’s 1998 autobiography and his book makes a good companion piece to Father Curran’s autobiography.] Of Father Haring, Curran has this to say: “Bernard Haring had the most significant influence on my thought…Haring’s holistic approach brought together morality, spirituality, scripture, and the sacraments.” [p. 14] There is a story that when Haring was a young priest in the 1930’s, his superiors ordered him to seek a doctorate in moral theology. Haring protested on the grounds that moral theology, as taught and enforced by the Church then, was too legal and stale. He asked to be sent to the foreign missions! His superior replied, “If you feel this way about Catholic morality, then stay and fix it.”

Curran completed his own graduate studies and authored his dissertation on “The Concept of Invincible Ignorance in Alphonsus Ligouri.” The topic was reflective of the time [1960], bringing back memories of the late medieval preoccupation of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Curran writes that the biggest lesson of the dissertation was the intense animosity between the new school moralists and the traditional moralists in Rome; during his oral defense, two of his judges got into a heated argument and consumed nearly all of Curran’s time. An interesting sidebar: Curran’s opponent in the dissertation defense later took him out to lunch and counseled him on how to teach in his home diocesan seminary, St. Bernard’s in Rochester, a school with a very conservative reputation in the United States. His advice: “teach in Latin. That’s all anyone will talk about.” The ploy worked…for a while.

THE PILL:

Curran returned to the United States and began teaching seminarians in the fall of 1961. He taught a wide range of courses, integrating into his work the trends in theology he had absorbed in Rome. His students were divided in their reception of his teaching, falling along progressive/conservative lines. Some of the St. Bernard faculty welcomed his novel [to them] theological content.

Much was transpiring beyond the gates of St. Bernard’s, however. In 1960 the United States FDA approved the oral contraceptive Enovid for general use. “The pill” posed a challenge for Church teaching, as it was the first contraceptive which did not act as an overt barrier to intercourse nor did it intrude upon natural male-female intercourse. Curran had found, in his Roman research, that the Church’s present-day understanding of science was weak, in some cases resting upon principles from the medieval era. He was not the first theologian to call for a change in the Church’s contraceptive ban; Father Louis Janssens of Louvain argued for acceptance of the pill but not other forms of contraception.

Curran had begun writing for Catholic publications—this was a heyday era for the Catholic press—and then, consequently, to receive speaking invitations. Most notable was an invitation from Harvard to speak on the role of conscience; the school was looking for a Catholic scholar to present a newer approach to moral theology. It speaks volumes that Harvard turned to a 29-year-old seminary professor from Rochester to learn how Catholic theologians were facing the challenges of the future. After some anguish of decision, Curran agreed, and presented “The Problem of Conscience and the Twentieth Century Christian.”

Curran had wisely, in my view, not imitated Janssens in defending the pill on a technicality. Rather, he laid out a broader series of questions that thoughtful Catholics—not just academics and cardinals but certainly including them—would all need to address going into the future

[1] The lived experience of Catholics—in this context, married Catholics—needed to be considered and taken seriously in authoritative Catholic moral teaching. To say, on record, that laity belonged in the discernment of Church teaching was stunning to hear. Many Catholics at the time thought this was precisely the Lutheran heresy. We were now in unfamiliar territory that went far beyond the pill, though Enovid lit the fuse.
[2] Going back to his dissertation experience, Curran highlighted how present-day Church moralists in Rome labored under woefully inadequate understandings of science in formulating moral principles.
[3] “Moral judgement is the ultimate human judgment, bringing together all the partial aspects—be they sociological, psychological, eugenic, hygienic, and so on.” [p. 22]
[4] …” Church teaching had changed on some issues in the past and could change here as well.” [p. 22]

The content of this presentation seemed to capture the imagination and affirmation of many priests and academics, not to mention even some bishops. Notably, Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston invited Curran to give eight lectures to all the priests in his diocese. He received invitations to speak at or even to teach at the Catholic University of America, my alma mater. Curran’s bishop, James E. Kearney, would not release him from St. Bernard’s, however.

St. Bernard’s, however, was growing more troubled about Curran’s theological orientation. He was advised to “tone it down.” His bishop allowed him to write for academic journals but not for popular Catholic reading by the faithful. Finally, in the summer of 1965 Curran was released [ecclesiastical firing] from his teaching at St. Bernard and then quickly hired by Catholic University. What made the Rochester bishop change his mind? The author is not totally certain, but from his account I have to wonder [1] if the neighboring Bishop of Syracuse—whose seminarians attended St. Bernard’s—threatened to pull his future priests from St. Bernard’s, or [2] the Rochester Bishop wanted Curran out of his diocese, period. Washington, D.C., was far enough away. Curran, incidentally, offered to remain in Rochester as a parish priest, but the bishop was adamant he report to CUA and move to the nation’s capital..

Equally intriguing is Curran’s rapid hiring at Catholic University. CUA is a Pontifical University—an extension of the Church’s universal teaching authority, so to speak. Its board of directors is the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. On the face of it, Curran would not have been a good fit at CUA, any more than he was for the Bishop of Rochester.

But there were other considerations, The 1960’s were not kind to CUA—my own religious order joined with about six others in D.C. to form the Washington Theological Coalition in 1968, my future graduate alma mater [1971-1974], a free standing, chartered and accredited theology school which offered master’s degrees in theology by pulling together the best scholars in each order. As a later student myself, I was much happier studying theology at the WTC [later WTU], having previously graduated from CUA’s School of Philosophy. CUA, in my time, could not decide whether to cling to the past or explore the future, academically speaking. The WTC had set its face for Jerusalem, so to speak, and prepared us as best it could for the priesthood that would be needed in the generations ahead. At the WTC we read Curran’s books—he was a prolific author by then—and at least once in my tenure he came to the Franciscan house of studies, Holy Name, and lead us in an evening of prayer and recollection.

Once established at CUA in the fall of 1965, Curran taught a modest classroom schedule and directed dissertations. In 1966 he used the research of one such dissertation as the basis for an address to the Catholic Theological Society of America: on the question of whether masturbation, in and of itself, constituted objectively grave matter, i.e., mortal sin. Curran believed it did not. The topic itself could have been treated in 1856 as well as 1966, a relic of the old manual style moral theology. Interestingly, proving Curran’s point about development in moral theology, I myself would disagree with Curran’s 1966 judgment. Masturbation brought on by fantasies of child abuse or the degradation of women or vulnerable individuals I would consider grave matter…and matters of mental health concern as well as religious morality. For contrasts in theological generations, I am including a link to the 2026 CTSA Convention, sixty years after Curran’s paper at the same convention. Talk about culture shock.

In his autobiography Curran takes time to explain to readers his theories and structures of the discipline of moral theology. If you never had a college level course in Catholic morality---which is, sadly, very possible today--it is an opportunity to understand the theological evolution of the post-Vatican II years. Every theological discipline in the Church, from Liturgy to Law, has advanced, certainly not without objection or mistakes, nor without suffering, which would find Father Curran soon enough.

Catholic University, located in Washington, is situated in the Archdiocese of Washington. In 1966 the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle, received information about, and I am not kidding, “the masturbation lecture” cited above. A letter to O’Boyle from an influential priest stated that “this paper, without doubt, will induce thousands of young persons to masturbate without any qualm of conscience. Among these will be priests and clerics and nuns. And, of course, Father Curran will appear to be backed up by the Catholic University of America.” [p. 35] There is an amusing element to the correspondent’s line of reasoning about teens exhausting themselves after a CTSA academic paper, a society that admits only Ph.D.’s. [I applied, once, and was sent a list of the prerequisites.]

But O’Boyle brought the matter to the Board of Trustees and Curran’s work came under scrutiny. Or, perhaps more accurately, the discussion centered on how to dismiss him. Curran did not have tenure at the time and had applied for renewal of his contract. On April 10, 1967, the board of trustees voted against renewing Curran’s contract. Curran was informed a week later of his dismissal, but he responded that the procedure was secretive and dishonest, that there was no due process, and that he was prepared to go public with his case.
Within several days, the Case of Father Charles Curran and the Catholic University of America would become national news.
To be continued….February 16