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Catholic moral theology based on real life
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CATHOLIC MOREAL THEOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES
By Charles E. Curran
Georgetown University Press, $26.95
Fr. Charles Curran is a priest of the diocese of Rochester, N.Y., who is now a professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. One of the nation's most respected scholars in the field of ethics, Curran is also a Catholic moral theologian.
Curran is unusual. Too many intellectuals serve narrow factional interests, be they national, political, economic or religious, all the while denying that social and political responsibility has anything to do with their pursuit of truth. Scholarship has become highly specialized and professionalized. Questions of social and political responsibility are often relegated to matters of personal preference or, at best, subjects of interdisciplinary dialogue.
Too few Catholic scholars, including theologians, regard the life and work of the church as relevant to their intellectual and cultural work. Curran, in contrast, takes all these responsibilities seriously.
As a young moral theologian trained by some of the best Catholic theologians in the world during the excitement of the Second Vatican Council, Curran quickly won a solid reputation among his peers. Nevertheless, in 1966 he was denied tenure at The Catholic University of America in Washington until public protest by students and faculty forced a reversal of that decision.
Two years later he helped organize public dissent by theologians to the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae and its total ban on contraception. Afterward he was a major target for well-organized conservative factions in the United States and in the Vatican. Bishops succeeded in firing Curran from his tenured post at Catholic University, and that decision was upheld by the civil courts. No Catholic university offered him a post, and since that time Curran has taught at Southern Methodist while continuing his remarkably prolific scholarly and popular writing on moral questions.
In many ways, this history of American Catholic moral theology is a summary of Curran's work. The book provides a reliable introduction to the major figures and central issues in the development of Catholic moral theology in the United States, and Curran always saw his work within a historical framework like this. His chapters on the period of his own work before, during and after Vatican II are an invaluable summary of the intellectual issues that have divided and damaged the church. Curran is scrupulously fair to his critics, so that the reader gets an evenhanded presentation of the questions of method and substance that set his work and that of other reformers like Jesuit Fr. Richard McCormick apart from serious scholarly opponents and the hierarchical leaders who came to dominate Vatican offices.
At least three areas deserve special consideration in the context of current debates within the church. First, Curran's method, which so disturbs his critics, requires attention to experience. This includes personal experience: Before pontificating about sex, it would be a good idea to listen to people's experiences, as the Vatican birth-control commission did, before recommending change in church teaching. But it also includes historical experience, which involves the Vatican II idea of thinking historically and reading the "signs of the times.” Rejecting that approach has serious pastoral and political consequences, as can be seen in the sad story of Catholic treatment of birth control, sex education, homosexuality and even abortion. If experience doesn't count, it is hard to win those debates, even harder to help people find their way in daily life.
Second, in his early career Curran was a very popular speaker at clergy continuing-education sessions. Some bishops worried that he was influencing their priests, but in fact it was a two-way street, and Curran learned from their pastoral experience and tried to find ways to help them bring the Gospel and the wisdom of the Catholic tradition to life in their ministries. It would be hard to count the cost to American Catholic intelligence brought about by severing theology, or at least ecclesiastically acceptable theology, from pastoral practice.
Third, over the course of his career Curran has extended his interest from issues of personal morality to embrace questions of social morality. He captures the intimate relationship between the two. He would admit that his integration of the two usually segregated fields is far from complete, but his achievement is important. In college and university programs as well as in education generally, personal ethics, centered on sexuality, is separate from and generally treated as more important than social ethics. This undoubtedly has something to do with the failure of Catholic social teaching to inspire renewal. Even when one takes a course or attends a workshop on medical ethics, or business ethics or other vocationally oriented areas, the focus is almost always on personal integrity (what must I not do?) rather than on social responsibility (how can I best use my gifts for the building up of God's world and God's people?). Curran is one of the few moral theologians to open up the question of how personal and social morality are connected, and for this it is possible his work will be most influential for years to come.
This book and Curran's work generally deserve the attention of all those Catholics who believe that history matters, and that the church finds its mission in that essential framework given its best expression in Vatican II's "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.” As many have turned away from the promise of the council, Curran has done as much as any American Catholic to keep hope alive.
(David O'Brien is founding director of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass.)
Section:
I. Book Reviews 
Excellent Review of Fr.
Excellent Review of Fr. Curran's book.
I would like to add what will probably be a provocative observation.
When I was studying “de Sexto” way back in 1952, there was not quite all the current obsession with abortion. True, it was listed as one of the possible sins. But the current obsession about it seems to have been growing with increasing intensity since “ Roe vs. Wade”
I increasingly think that moral theology concerning abortion should take into account the rather high percentage of “miscarriages”. Everything we say about abortion also applies to those — except for the fact that one “just happens“ while the other is “chosen."
I have read that the percentage of natural miscarriage could be as high as 40%. In a sense those might be considered “nature’s abortions" — or for those who consider God to be the main cause of everything, even “God’s abortions.” The fact that we use a different word for it does not make the ultimate effect different.
"When I was studying “de
"When I was studying “de Sexto” way back in 1952, there was not quite all the current obsession with abortion. True, it was listed as one of the possible sins. But the current obsession about it seems to have been growing with increasing intensity since “ Roe vs. Wade”"
I believe that this current obsession with abortion has to do with church leaders using it as a "rallying cry", i.e. a sensitive and rather emotional issue that can easily be used by certain church leaders to allow their followers to identify themselves with as catholics. It's a form of manipulation of peoples' consciences. Just look at the gruesome pictures used by so-called pro-lifers to remind us of the ugliness of abortion, as if it is the ugliness that makes it bad, wrong.
Yes, abortion is wrong, but we do need a whole new nuanced language and nuanced approach to educate people and convince them that abortion is wrong and why it is so. It isn't wrong because it is ugly!
My friend: using your logic,
My friend: using your logic, that because natural death approaches 100% and has the same ultimate effect as murder should be a consideration when exploring (or determining) the moral gravity of murder. While it is true that "natural abortion" occurs, the difference between a misfortune to a person (or couple) and a premeditated act will always carry weight.
My friend: using your logic,
My friend: using your logic, that because natural death approaches 100% and has the same ultimate effect as murder should be a consideration when exploring (or determining) the moral gravity of murder. While it is true that "natural abortion" occurs, the difference between a misfortune to a person (or couple) and a premeditated act will always carry weight.
Dear Anonymous, You said, "I
Dear Anonymous,
You said, "I have read that the percentage of natural miscarriage could be as high as 40%. In a sense those might be considered “nature’s abortions" — or for those who consider God to be the main cause of everything, even “God’s abortions.” The fact that we use a different word for it does not make the ultimate effect different."
Let us remember that the possibility of MIscarriage at 40% is not in half the point that you might be making. More than 60% of blastocysts simply do not implant, this increases the the equation a lot.
Here is a quote from a Yale epidemiological study.
When considering the fact that in any given menstrual cycle, healthy couples who have intercourse regularly without the use of contraception only have a 25 to 30 percent chance of beginning a pregnancy [1], that only 70 to 75 percent of blastocysts created are able to implant and that only 58 percent of the blastocysts that implant survive past the second week of gestation [2], one comes to understand the miracle of reproduction. Even after these hurtles are overcome, there are still many variables that can affect the likelihood of a successful pregnancy and delivery.
Here is the internet page for this article:
http://www.med.yale.edu/obgyn/kliman/placenta/articles/UpToDate.html
So we must consider that the some recent vociferous teaching from the Vatican first against the BC pill and other forms of contraception then against embryonic stem cells call these procedures not only abortions but also murder. If that were true then nature would be murdering more than 75% of fertilized Embryos. The Church clearly should listen to scientists in the field and come up with much better and well thought out ideas about ensoulment, and personhood. The real problem is that there can be no concrete answers and this some how causes fear in a leadership that wishes to always posses concrete answers. As finite beings trying to use our talents to understand the Holy Spirit, perhaps we should realize that we as humans can never understand the mind of God, we can only keep trying. By trying to come to concrete answers the leadership fight experience with authoritarianism.
Peace and understanding,
R. Dennis Porch, MD
I agree so many people die by
I agree so many people die by accident each year, God must have wanted them home early.
It makes sense for us to take the decision of life away from God and take it upon ourselves.
Thus, if you are not healthy at the age of 70 you should be
terminated because you will be a drain on the economy and your family.
I don't think this will ever happen but maybe it should.
We must preserve the good life!
Dear Confused, Seems to me
Dear Confused,
Seems to me that you give more dignity to a blastocyst than to a 70 yr old or even a 1 year old! Seems kind of strange and confused to me.
It seems to me evident in
It seems to me evident in itself that morality, authenticity, flows from the people to the institution, not the other way around. When individual consciences are authentically informed, and followed, so will the institutions to which conscionable people belong. It isn't an accident that the "sensus fidelium" is recognized as the arbiter of institutional conscience, the root source of moral sensitivity. VOX POPULI, VOX DEI.
Institutional self-interest prejudices institutional conscience. Absolute institutional self-interest prejudices institutional conscience absolutely.
The way to personal/ institutional conscience is the way of word, light, love — what is "trimorphic resonance". Catholic moral theology [like universal morality] is based on real life.
When will the Reverend Father
When will the Reverend Father Charles Curran (and so many other excellent and well-trained Roman Catholic priests such as the Reverend Father Miguel D'Escoto, MM) find the same Vatican "charity" so recently embracing holocaust denying false "bishops" of the schismatic radically far right wing Pius X Society? Or does charity only fall from the right hand while the left knows not what that side does . . .
The following notions are
The following notions are incorrect:
"Catholic moral theology [like universal morality] is based on real life"
"Catholic moral theology based on real life"
Morality is based on God's will. Regardless of how anyone "chooses to experience" things, Morality, Truth and Beauty are dictated top down from Christ, through His Body and Bride the Church (Romans 12:5,1 Corinthians 12:12-27, Ephesians 3:6 and 5:23, Colossians 1:18). That Church is nurtured and taught through the Apostles and their Successors (Luke 10:16). Please let God be God (Exodus 20:2-3) and seek a morality that is given from Him through the vessel he chooses: the Church (1 Timothy 3:15), and not ambiguous "real life".
This lent turn from sin, repent and believe in the Gospel.
AMDG
Amen to this comment! Being
Amen to this comment! Being new to NCR, I am really beginning to see why NCR has as it's sub-heading - "The Independent News Source".....Independent of Rome News Source more like it! It seems like those who are columnists - at least some of them are at such odds with Rome on many things. Why don't they become members of some other church and go write for some liberal Protestant online mag? They'd even be at odds with most other denominations with the way they think.
Amen to your comment as
Amen to your comment as well!
I have recently started working at a catholic news agency in Peru, and I find myself both blessed and terrible troubled at the fact that there is so much evil mining and under-mining the way of the Lord in the communications area. Indeed, I wish not to resort to hatred or rude comments, so i totally agree with you. There are other hundred of options of faiths or churches that would probably receive with arms wide open such men and women not willing to be faithful to the Truth. It hurts me deeply that such distortions exist, but moreover that such distortions wish to be called "catholic". Please, if you are willing to walk away from the true faith, that is given and taught by God through his vicar the Pope, do so on your terms and way. Do not poison the good name of our Mother the Catholic Church and its holy teachings, which will not change its grounds and beliefs simply cause a few so-called catholics who wish to do their own will and prosecute their own agenda. I truly hope that more of us real catholics pray for such great and intelligent men, who blinded by idolizing science and intelligence, do not realize that they are being vain and shallow. Like a good friend of mine says, I prefer the enemy when it calls itself evil, rather than when the enemy chooses to call itself good and right (let's remember that the Devil never shows itself as he is (hideous), nor does he makes us believe sin is bad). Let's all be wary of all this false prophets and false catholics. Let's not forget Jesus has asked us to be wise as foxes, as to not be deceived by the Devil's doing.
May our Holy Mother hear our prayers and grant men like him with the true humbleness of heart to come back to the Truth.
JS
Does morality flow from human
Does morality flow from human experience or from some being on high through the pope and bishops? I wonder if maybe that is a false question. If the creator did make human nature in such a way that living in certain ways leads to fulfillment and happiness and living in other ways leads to destruction and unhappiness then it seems that the plan of the creator for humans can be found in human experience. So morality is implanted in human nature. Isn't that what Natural Law is all about?
I have thought for years that there is a difference between authoritarianism and authenticity. Authoritarianism is based on some powerful figure telling subjects what to do. "I don't care what you think, I know what is best for you, do it my way!" But authority figures don't always know what is best for their subjects. Authenticity comes from reality. When Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict have stressed over and over again that birth control using condoms, pills, and other "artificial" methods is immoral, the majority of Catholic couples ended up either rejecting or simply ignoring them. Was that because the majority of Catholic couples were hard-hearted and sinful? Or was it that the popes were speaking without regard to the morality written into human nature - the morality that couples had to discern for themselves?
And when John Paul II and Benedict have railed against gay relationships, calling them sinful, unloving, destructive to the children whom lesbian and gay couples raise - thus disregarding the experiences of gay couples and their children and the research about the value of such relationships - what can we say of the authenticity of the moral teachings of these popes? Are we to say that their authoritarian teaching is the will and judgement of the creator when the experience of gay couples proves otherwise? Or are we to realize that these popes were mistaken and did not know what they were talking about - that they were teaching as authoritarians, not as authentic teachers.
I sometimes think the RC Church has leaders who act like alcoholic fathers. They disregard and demean what their spouses and children think or feel. They demand obedience to their commands, no matter how unreasonable they may seem to others. They punish their families for speaking up and challenging them. They demand that family members not speak openly about certain issues. They use secrecy and threats of expulsion. They act as though they know what is right no matter how wrong they are. And they behave in the most narcissistic way, insisting that they have been appointed by the creator to determine and teach truth and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong and outside the pale.
Well said, all of or at
Well said, all of or at least the highest level of learning is experiential, and to be authentic is the goal. There is a distinct difference between authenticity and authoritarianism. Our lessons should follow the way of Jesus and seek to empower not to dominate, and embrace a radical justice and equality.
Well said Father
Well said Father Robert!
Peace and understanding,
R. Dennis Porch, MD
Curran may be a
Curran may be a well-intentioned and careful scholar, but a Catholic theologian he definitely is not.
It comes down to truth in advertising.
Curran may be "in dialogue" with the Catholic tradition, but he lost his license to teach as a Catholic theologian when he stopped presenting the Church's teaching on moral issues and began to present his own.
If he wanted to demonstrate the falsity of Catholic moral teaching, he should have simply switched disciplines, earned a Ph.D. in philosophy -- because, let's face it, no moral theologian is on the same level intellectually as a philosopher -- and then railed against the Church from the confines of a secular philosophy department.
Problem solved... and we wouldn't have had to listen to him WHINE for the past 30 years.
Anonymous, Your words sound
Anonymous,
Your words sound good, they just have very little to do with reality!
Curran has been heroic. John
Curran has been heroic. John Patrick says it all. Those with God in a Catholic Truth Box are doing the best they can. The indoctrination worked. Sad for education and for the Church. I believe the Spirit is equally in those who speak with their feet and walk away from the One True Truth Club.
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