I recently came across the following insight into the reasoning behind Fr. Charles Curran’s dissent from so many Church teachings.  It is from Social Ethics in the Making – Interpreting an American Tradition, by Gary Dorrien.  Google Books has it here.

Persistently [Curran] contended that the church had more than one magisterium and that a plurality of magisteria were needed as a brake on the Vatican’s belief in its absolute certainty: “There are many magisteria in the Church – papal and episcopal magisteria, the authentic magisterium of laity and the magisterium of theologians. Each of these has a creative service in the Church.” All faithful Catholics recognized the God-given role of the hierarchical magisterium, but its “teaching on specific moral questions cannot absolutely exclude the possibility of error.” Curran disliked the church’s tone of dogmatic certainty in claiming that human life began at conception (he believed it began at least 14 days after conception) and that euthanasia was always an abhorrent evil. On these subjects he dissented, “but my dissent is not all that great. Others might propose a more radical solution.” In his view premarital sex was usually, but not always, morally wrong; gay and lesbian sexual acts in the context of a committed relationship striving for permanency were objectively good, although short of the ideal; and the church needed to end its prohibition of divorce. Curran wanted to reconcile divorced Catholics to their church and curtail the pain and hypocrisy of the annulment traffic.

To this day Fr. Curran describes himself as “a committed Catholic, a priest in good standing.”

That he can call himself a “committed Catholic” is but a measure of the extent of his self-delusion.  For the fact that he remains a “priest in good standing” we can thank Bishop Clark.

Tags: Fr. Charles Curran

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 6:39 PM . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.