The Curran Syndrome

Abstract

From the outset, Rome’s action against Father Charles Curran of the Catholic University of America’s faculty was difficult to fathom. On the human level, the action displayed a sorry, even cruel, insensitivity toward a man of high integrity and great personal loyalty to the church; on the bureaucratic level, it evidenced, at best, a lack of knowledge and, at worse, a contempt for the intellectual and statutory independence of American colleges and universities—particularly those that are Catholic. Curran is a theologian attached to a university with pontifical accreditation; the pontifical association is an impressive Catholic credential. But at the same time, it rendered Curran—as it would almost anyone on the Catholic University faculty—vulnerable to the displeasure of Rome, an open target to anyone with the will and in a position to invoke pontifical authority against him. Through such authority, Cardinal Ratzinger did in Father Charles Curran.