Church Should Alter Sexual Views--Curran

Father Charles Curran, in his first public appearance since the Vatican forbade him from teaching as a Catholic theologian, said today that the church--not he--should change its teaching on sexual issues.

Curran, speaking to reporters at Catholic University, where he has taught for the last two decades, said, “I am conscious of my own limitations and my own failures.”

But he added, “I remain convinced that the hierarchical teaching office in the Roman Catholic Church must allow dissent on these issues and ultimately should change its teaching.”

The Vatican action, the first such penalty against an American priest, takes away Curran’s church commission to teach as a Catholic theologian, a verdict that would rule out keeping his job as professor of moral theology at the school, which is the only U.S. university directly controlled by the Vatican.

Points of Contention

Curran has taken issue with church leaders’ strict opposition to all artificial birth control, abortion, divorce and homosexual practices, though he has contended that his dissent is very limited and within bounds for church positions that have not been declared infallibly true by a Pope.

He also contended today, as he has often during his long dispute with top church officials including Pope John Paul II, that many other theologians “and the mainstream of the Catholic theological tradition support my basic approach.”

“In addition, Catholic ethics has insisted on an intrinsic morality,” he said. “Something is commanded because it is good and not the other way around. Authority must conform to the truth.”

Won’t Change Position

He said he could not and would not change his positions, adding, “In my own judgment and in the judgment of the majority of my peers, I have been and am suitable and eligible to exercise the function of a professor of Catholic theology.”

Curran said church officials have given him two weeks to decide whether to appeal the action against him, and he said, “Only after receiving academic and legal counsel on these points can I make a final decision about the process.”

Meanwhile, the chairman of the theology department at Notre Dame University, Father Richard McBrien, called the Vatican’s action “a blow to Catholic higher education.”