Charles Curran Makes a Confession
Fr. Charles Curran has failed as a Catholic theologian. He knows he’s failed. And he wants us to know he’s failed. More importantly, he wants us to know that he knows he’s failed.
How does Fr. Curran say he’s failed? Is it by publicly dissenting against Bl. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae in the 1960s with his statement that “spouses may responsibly decide according to their conscience that artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible and indeed necessary to preserve and foster the value and sacredness of marriage”? Well, no.
Is it by insisting in the 1970s that “the official hierarchical Roman Catholic teaching should accept the moral value and goodness” of same-sex relationships and that “homosexual actions between committed partners are in a true sense objectively good”? Sorry, no.
Is it by promoting a host of other “errors and ambiguities,” as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) put it, in the 1980s, such as his rejection of the Church’s judgments on the immorality of masturbation, abortion, homosexual acts, and premarital sex? Or his denial of the Church’s basic competency to teach definitively on moral issues, the existence of intrinsically evil acts, the indissolubility of marriage, the all-male priesthood, and the possibility that any single moral choice can be mortally sinful? Nope.
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