Charlie Curran and I have been good friends for many years. Hence my use of the familiar name, Charlie, in what follows. All who know him well are used to calling him ‘Charlie’. Even though friends, we have had our disagreements. For instance, I have never been keen on his insistence on using the word ‘dissent’ with regard to our reaction to erroneous or inadequate official Catholic teachings. I have always preferred to speak of ‘disagreement’. To me ‘dissent’ can sound too confrontational and does not give sufficient status to the alternative view being proposed. I elaborated on that point in two articles in The Tablet articles under the overall heading of ‘Obedience and Dissent’ (14 & 21 June 1986, pp. 619-629 & pp. 647-649). The article printed below is an unpublished tribute to Curran which I was invited to deliver at the Cincinnati Convention of the Catholic Theological Association, 5-8 June 2003.
I see being a moral theologian as a particular vocation. In this short piece all I intend to do – and all I feel competent to do – is to describe briefly under eight headings how Charles Curran has influenced me through the way he has lived out his vocation as a moral theologian. To me the best way to learn about the ‘vocation’ of a moral theologian is through the lives of dedicated and outstanding moral theologians like Bernard Häring and Charles Curran. In a sense, this gathering is a living Festschrift to Charlie – we all have our own readings of his life as a moral theologian. a magnificent volume. And since the rest of his life is still to be written by him – and read by us – we are still at the stage of work in progress! Let me move on to my eight headings.
1. Vocation
The title of this session refers to the ‘vocation’ of the moral theologian. That is a very rich word. I believe that our primary vocation is to be ourselves. And that is true of Charlie. His vocation is to be himself, Charles Curran. Being a Catholic Christian, priest and moral theologian all flow from responding to his personal vocation. Charlie throws his own unique light on the vocation of a moral theologian precisely because he is such a sensitive, loving, warm human person; because his Christian faith reflects so deeply the love, compassion and burning zeal for justice in Christ; because Charlie has such a belief in and commitment to the Catholic Church and its Spirit-inspired mission, despite all its sinfulness and dysfunctionality; and because he is such an outstanding scholar, teacher, practitioner and guide in the field of moral theology.
I think Charlie is showing us that the more integrated we are as persons, the more richly will we be able to follow our vocation as moral theologians. That does not mean that moral theologians need to be exceptionally wellrounded human persons in every possible way. But it does mean that we need to be able to live with ourselves and other people, as well as with the mystery of our multi-faith world, our divided Christian Church and our beloved but very sin-infected Catholic Church.
2. Ecclesial Vocation
In its 1990 Instruction, the CDF adds the adjective ‘ecclesial’ to ‘vocation’ as applied to theologians. Again Charlie’s life has helped me to understand much more deeply how a moral theologian’s vocation is ‘ecclesial’. In 1986 the CDF ruled that Charlie could no longer be recognized as a Catholic theologian. Implicitly it was saying that Charlie had not been true to his ecclesial vocation. I suspect that most people who know Charlie and are familiar with his writings and teaching cannot accept that. I certainly cannot. I believe that in his dispute with the CDF Charlie was being very true to his ecclesial vocation. However, I have never been completely convinced by Charlie’s use of the term ‘dissent’ to describe his position. As he sees it, being true to his vocation as a moral theologian means that he should be prepared to ‘dissent’ from the non-infallible teaching of the Church when convinced it is not true.
To my mind, the word ‘dissent’ gives away too much. After all, the ‘ecclesial vocation’ of the theologian resonates with the deeper tradition of the Church which speaks of the theological magisterium as well as the hierarchical magisterium. Yves Congar reawakened the Church to this rich vein of our tradition. In his dispute with the CDF I believe that Charlie was fulfilling his role as a member of the theological magisterium. To speak of such a positive action in terms of ‘dissent’ does not, to my mind, do justice to the positive contribution he is making. He is implicitly saying: ‘The Catholic Church has much richer teaching to offer than is contained in this official statement. We must not sell people short.’
Sometimes theologians like Charlie are not supported as they should by many of their colleagues, by theological institutions and even by the theological establishment itself. If we do this from a fear of institutional reprisal, it is we, not Charlie, who are not being true to our ecclesial vocation. That is another reason why I do not like the word ‘dissent’. ‘Not dissenting’ can give a respectable aura to not supporting someone like Charlie, when, in fact, we are failing in our corporate responsibility as members of the theological magisterium.
3. Pastoral Vocation
In 1973 Charlie wrote a two-part article, Divorce: Catholic Theory and Practice in the United States, in the American Ecclesiastical Review. Not long after reading this article, I moved from teaching in the seminary to establishing a centre for Clergy In-Service Training and Adult Formation in the North of England. This exposed me to the human pain and tragedy of marriage breakdown – and the anguish of priests who felt unable to respond positively to what they saw was clearly the healing power of some second marriages. As a result of this experience I wrote Divorce and Second Marriage: Facing the Challenge (London, Collins, 1982) a book which many lay people and priests in the UK seemed to find pastorally helpful. I can honestly say that I would never have written that book, had it not been for the pastoral example and inspiration of Charlie.
On the issue of Humanae Vitae, I found Charlie very challenging. Prior to Humanae Vitae, I had helped my own Archbishop offer pastoral guidelines to priests based on the assumption that a change of teaching was coming. Humanae Vitae was a great shock to me. It was something I had not expected. When it was published, I had to sort out where I stood myself. After a period of prayer and reflection, I argued publicly that we needed time to reflect on its teaching. Perhaps the Holy Spirit was speaking to us through this disconcerting letter from the Pope. With hindsight I feel that I failed people pastorally, not so much through a lack of courage (though that may have played a part) but through a defective ecclesiology. Here again Charlie taught me another important lesson – you cannot be true to your ecclesial vocation as a moral theologian unless you have a sound ecclesiology. I love Bryan Massingdale’s comment in the Black Theology workshop: ‘We must be the Church we believe in.’ Our ecclesial vocation must not hide the real Church, but reveal it.
4. Healing and Growth-Encouraging
I once prepared a talk on Adult Christian Education by simply reflecting on my work as a moral theologian with priests and lay people over many years. That process made me aware that what I had been involved in was a process of remedial Christian Education – for myself as much as for others. Very misguided views of sin were at the root of some of the harmful attitudes needing such remedial treatment. Charlie’s early writings on sin were particularly helpful at that stage. He helped me to appreciate more deeply the healing dimension of the vocation of a moral theologian.
Although I never warmed to Charlie’s theory of ‘compromise’, what he wrote on that theme made me more aware that the vocation of the moral theologian involves being sensitive to where people are, their strengths and weaknesses and the difficult and ambiguous situations in which they have to live their lives.
5. Public
I am a naturally shy and retiring person. I dislike media attention and am horrified when it comes my way. So I admire Charlie’s willingness to appear on the public stage, when appropriate, and can recognise that it is not motivated by ambition or desire for self-glory. It probably goes against the grain for him as a person. But he sees it as being bound up with his vocation as a moral theologian in this day and age.
Even though I did not realise it at the time, looking back I can see that the way Charlie lived out the public dimension of his vocation as a moral theologian inspired me to write the following passage in one of my books:
If moral theology is to be in tune with the spirit of our modern age, it can no longer confine its discussions behind closed doors or to the privileged pages of some inaccessible theological journal. Moral questions are the constant topic of open debate in the media. Moral theologians today have to make a choice. They can refuse to play any part in this public debate. That might give them a quiet life and avoid any tension with the Vatican or their local hierarchy. However, it would be an evasion of their ministry as moral theologians in the Church and the world.
Or they can involve themselves in the thick of the debate. That means that they must be prepared to say what they honestly believe. Obviously, they can, and usually should, report the authentic teaching of the Church – that is part of the contribution they are expected to make. However, they must also be prepared to be critical of that teaching to the extent that it is open to serious theological questioning. To evade such a critical stance when demanded by sound theological scholarship would be to surrender their credibility in the dialogue. Moreover, it would also harm the credibility of the Church’s commitment to truth (From a Parish Base: Essays in Moral and Pastoral Theology, DLT, London, 1999, pp. 126-127).
That gives a very true description of how Charlie has lived his vocation as a moral theologian. Bryan Massingdale made the same point in different words earlier in this meeting: ‘We have been given a shared obligation to speak the truth.’
Readers might be interested to know that, on my personal odyssey, only on two occasions have I had something published in the UK national press. One of them was a piece in The Times, ‘Sexual Ethics and the Vatican’ (30 August 1986), supporting Charlie when the CDF were conducting their proceedings against him.
6. Ecumenical
I suspect that Charlie, after holding his Professorship in the illustrious Southern Methodist University since 1991, might feel it somewhat unnatural, to return to teaching moral theology in an academic setting which was exclusively Roman Catholic. He is a witness to us all that the vocation of a Roman Catholic moral theologian today must be solidly ecumenical. By ecumenical, I mean recognising our fundamental solidarity with other Christian theologians, respecting the riches of our specific ecclesial traditions and being open to learn from theirs, even to the extent of modifying our Catholic teaching or, in some instances perhaps, acknowledging that we have got it wrong. If we believe that God’s Spirit is at work in other Christian Churches, this implies that, when there are particular issues of moral disagreement between the major Christian Churches, the current Catholic teaching should not be presumed to be the definitive Christian position on this topic.
As mentioned in the previous piece, Charlie’s close friend, mentor, great admirer and support, Bernard Häring, wrote a book entitled My Witness for the
Church. That beautiful title could be applied to Charlie’s years at the Southern Methodist University. It was very wrong and sad that Charlie was removed from his post at the Catholic University of America and that other Catholic universities could not see their way to offering him an appropriate post. Nevertheless, I suggest that we should not see those years as a period of exile for Charlie; rather they are his witness to the Church that, in our ecumenical age, perhaps the most appropriate setting for living out one’s vocation as a Catholic moral theologian is not one which is an exclusively Catholic setting. As Jill Raite said in her plenary lecture: ‘Ecumenism is not a choice, but a necessity.’
7. Conversation
We often apply the term ‘conversation’ to theology. A friend of Charlie and myself, the late Austin Smith CP, has often pointed out that the words, ‘conversation’ and ‘conversion’ have the same root. To be true to our vocation as moral theologians we need a listening spirit, open to be challenged and converted to a richer understanding of the truth. This ties in with Margaret Farley’s ‘grace of self doubt’. It reminds me of a remark of Jack Mahoney’s: ‘I would love to hear a pastoral letter beginning with the phrase, “I may be wrong but …!”’
In the seventies I once shared running a Summer School in the UK with Charlie. On every topic he painstakingly laid out the pre-Vatican II Catholic position of the manuals. Then, at the end of each such presentation he very respectfully added what he called ‘some critical comments’, pointing out its weaknesses in the light of new empirical knowledge, or a deeper understanding of the Church’s tradition, or a richer paradigm of interpretation. Looking back, I can see that Charlie was actually engaging in a respectful conversation with the tradition he had inherited. He was modelling for the rest of us the kind of mindset needed to be true to our vocation as moral theologians.
8. Women Sharing in the Vocation of the Moral Theologian
I am told that Charlie played a large part in opening the Catholic Theological Association to women theologians – and he was there on hand to welcome and support the first female members. I do not claim that it was Charlie who broke through the wall of my own sexual prejudice. I have to thank my many women students, friends and colleagues for that ongoing grace of conversion. Since then I have grown more and more convinced that the health and integrated development of Catholic moral theology is largely dependent on Catholic women being given an equal opportunity to pursue the vocation of a moral theologian and on their special contribution being recognized and given its full status and authority in the Church. I have argued that point strongly in a number of my books and I feel affirmed in this by the fine example of Charlie himself. I know that Charlie has left no stone unturned to ensure that women are given full recognition and equal status in the theological enterprise.