Charles Curran Views

Books

Charles Curran was ordained in Rome in 1958 for the Diocese of Rochester, New York. As a young priest, he was a peritus at the Second Vatican Council. Curran was previously removed from his tenured faculty position at Catholic University of America (CUA) in 1967 for his views on birth control, but was reinstated after a five-day faculty-led strike.[1] Curran then returned to prominence, however, in 1968 when he, along with a group of some 600 theologians, authored a response to Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's encyclical affirming the traditional ban on artificial contraception. Curran continued to teach and write on the Church's teaching in various moral issues, including premarital sex, masturbation, contraception, abortion, homosexual acts, divorce, euthanasia, and in vitro fertilization throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Fr. Charles Curran is an easy target. To those who readily dismiss him as a dissenter from official teaching, he wears a large bull’s eye on his chest. There’s no need to discuss what he’s writing or saying first. Just take aim and shoot. For others he remains one of the few, in a church in which theological speculation has become an exercise to avoid if you want to stay out of Rome’s sights, willing to ask and explore difficult questions.

Charles Curran is a thinking man's theologian, by definition, that puts him at odds with the hierarchy. This quotation from the Bishop says it all: Bishop Kevin Farrell reacted immediately, reciting the “constant teaching of the church” and expressing his regrets that “Father Curran has chosen to criticize the position of the bishops of the United States on this matter.”

First and foremost, Fr. Charles Curran is, in many ways, an exceptionally gifted and highly spiritual priest. During Vatican II, he was a significant expert, or peritus, as was Fr. Joseph Ratzinger. Human nature is always driven by pendula (swings). Currently, there is a post-Vatican II backlash. This could have been forecast to eventually occur even as the council closed in its triumph in the 1960's. Fr. Ratzinger ultimately chose to go in one direction with the pendulum (conservative) while Fr. Curran chose the opposite. At the present, the neo-conservatives hold most leadership power and positions in the Church. These conservatives will be uncomfortable with true Vatican II proponents. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit is actually in final charge. S/he (not the liberals or conservatives) will ultimately lead the Church into the coming centuries. Veni Sancti Spiritus!