A "final disposition. .. one way or another": The Real End of the First Curran Affair

Abstract

In 2003, as United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) opened its June meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, clergy sexual abuse scandal was obviously at top of list of continuing concerns. The President of Conference, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, musing, perhaps lamenting, his leadership role at such a uniquely difficult time, told a Washington Post reporter that he wished his mentor, late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, late John Cardinal Dearden were around to help guide church.1 Gregory might as easily have added one more name to his wish list: Alexander Zaleski, Bishop of Lansing from 1965 to 1975, confidant of Dearden and admirer of Bernardin. For four crucial years (1966-1970), he was also first chairman of singularly important Bishops' Committee on Doctrine (COD), one of busiest and most essential of some two dozen standing committees for what was then National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). As chairman, Zaleski was an insightful and highly respected leader of American hierarchy. He was also an effective conciliator between bishops' conference and American Catholic Theological Society. Together with bishops like Dearden and Bernardin, he was a moderate and cautiously optimistic proponent of aggiornamento (renewal or updating) and principles of collegiality and subsidiarity endorsed by Vatican Council II (1962-1965). In cases of internal dissent from church doctrine, he proved a staunch supporter of due process during heady and critical half-decade that followed Council. Zaleski was a highly competent, fair-minded, and collegial chair of an extremely active committee that confronted and worked through a myriad of often daunting internal controversies and crises that shook American church in late 1960's.2 Among those controversies, several reflected era's preoccupation with limits of authority and dissent. Most significant were challenges to nature and scope of Magisterium, Church's teaching authority on matters of faith and morals. Two episodes, in particular, had lasting consequences for study of theology and for Catholic higher education. In both instances key protagonist was Father Charles E. Curran, a young moral theologian at The Catholic University of America. He is best remembered for lead role he played in second controversy that began at a press conference in late July, 1968. There, on behalf of eighty-seven theologians, he read a statement of dissent from Pope Paul VTs encyclical, Humanae Vitae (On Proper Regulation of Propagation of Offspring), in which pontiff reaffirmed Church's proscription of artificial contraception. Within weeks, more than six hundred individuals qualified in sacred sciences had personally endorsed dissent. Curran's leadership role in asserting that a Catholic theologian had a right to disagree with Church's non-infallible teachings helped lay groundwork for decades of controversy over moral authority of Magisterium.3 Eighteen years later, during summer of 1986, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of Vatican's Congregation for Doctrine of Faith (CDF), sent Curran a letter that would end his career at Catholic University of America. After at least seven years of investigating his teaching and writing, and after failing to get Curran to agree to change his stance on contraception and other issues related to sexual morality, CDF declared that he was longer . . . suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology. Ratzinger mailed a similarly worded directive to Chancellor of university and Archbishop of Washington, James Hickey. Hickey wasted no time initiating the withdrawal of [his] . . . ecclesiastical license, but it was not until winter of 1987 that he was able to suspend Curran.4 A year later, in spring of 1988, Board of Trustees formally withdrew Curran's canonical mission. …