Where he started & where he stands

...By the time Humanae Vitae was issued in 1968, it seems clear that large numbers of the faithful, led and perhaps encouraged by some moral theologians, rejected the teachings of the church on artificial contraception — and that was especially true of the young, who were ready to reap the benefit of marriages in which the joy of sex could be artificially separated from the responsibilities of sexual restraint...

...Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings, and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation, need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it is easy for them to break the law...

...The concept of solving the problem of expanding populations by self-restraint was considered by many to be unrealistic and, by some, laughable...

...Father Curran concluded that given the proper circumstances, fornication could be-justified...

...to greed...

...free to engage in intercourse with no need for restraint...

...Marriages would be strengthened...

...Thou Shalt Not Kill'' is clear...

...A Vatican review started and a commission was appointed, consisting of clerics, moral theologians, and lay persons, married and unmarried...

...sexual intercourse would be like a handshake among friends, only more powerful in its implications and potentially more pleasurable...

...If, as Father Curran concluded, the sexual act could legitimately have an independent life of its own as an expression of affection, then responsibly exercised homosexual intercourse could be legitimate...

...Science appeared to have produced the perfect solution...

...If Father Curran were right, the benefits would be immense...

...On the contrary, Paul VI's warning of the "consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control" appear each year to have been more profoundly prophetic...

...Not only did Paul VI reject the report, but he used his epistle to carefully document his reasons...

...Sadly, the pope advised the faithful that you can't morally have your cake and eat it...

...All the church would permit was periodic continence as a means of spacing birth within marriage...

...If sexual intercourse, coupled with artificial contraception, had a legitimate, independent status of its own, logically it could be exercised (with restraint to be sure) out30 January 1987: 49 side of marriage...

...For it is your principal duty — We are speaking especially to you who teach moral theology — to spell out clearly and completely the church's teaching on marriage...

...To that majority, the "consequences" of acceptance of artificial birth control, of the separation of the act of sexual intercourse from the process of procreation, only offered potential benefits as young couples could enter into marriage free of the unpleasantness of a surprise pregnancy...

...Father Curran, a long-time faculty member of Catholic University, was clearly willing to take his case to the public contending that the Vatican was attempting to muzzle his search for truth, to stifle his right to dissent on issues on which his church had not spoken infallibly...

...If Father Curran considered that call, directed to himself as a priest and theologian, he rejected it...

...Smaller families were seen as the answer...

...that one cannot morally use artificial means to separate the sexual act from the procreative process which is the essence of the marriage relationship...

...Paul VI cautioned that the acceptance of artificial contraception meant taking sexual intercourse out of the context of the human reproductive process and that to do so had potentially dire implications...

...that persons, gifted with free will, must exercise that will and act with self-restraint within marriage, if sound judgment leads to a conclusion that pregnancy should be avoided...

...to narcotics for the exotic highs...

...The specter of starvation would recede...

...marriages are disintegrating at an ever increasing rate...

...What if the object of your affection was, like yourself, another male...

...If the church were wrong, it would have to be admitted, for to deny to the world what were viewed as the advantages of artificial contraception would be a far greater evil than the embarrassment of revising a long-held church doctrine...

...The commission's report was a blockbuster: the majority said the church's teaching was wrong...

...that it was morally acceptable to use artificial means to separate the performance 48: Commonweal of the sexual act from the risk of conception...

...Starting with his conclusion that artificial contraception was legitimate within marriage, he moved on to conclude that marriage was dissoluble, that fornication was permissible, that abortion could, in some circumstances, be acceptable, and that sodomy was not necessarily wrong...

...But what if you're in an overcrowded lifeboat and one more survivor seeks to climb aboard...

...history of Father Curran's conflict with his church and when one examines more closely the teachings of Father Curran which brought the conflict to a head after some twelve years of patient Vatican negotiation, a sorrowful picture unfolds of a highly intelligent, hard-working, and respected priest who rejected his church's leadership on one issue and then, propelled by his own logic, moved at an ever escalating rate to reject church teaching in almost every aspect of sexual morality...

...the killing of the growing child within the womb has become an acceptable resolution to the inconvenienceof new life...

...He stands defiantly not only against the encyclical of Paul VI in 1968 but indeed of the Epistle of St...

...In the undeveloped or developing nations, runaway population growth would be controlled...

...to laziness...

...To put the Curran affair in focus, one has to start with the early 1960s...

...If Father Curran did not have the vision to see where his reasoning would lead him, Paul VI clearly did...

...and sodomy is being championed as an acceptable alternate lifestyle for the young...

...Family life would prosper...

...free now to plan their families within the confines of sound economics rather than chance...

...Although the issue within the church focused on sexual activity within marriage, many thoughtful people were convinced that acceptance of artificial contraception was bound to have a profound effect on other social problems such as pregnancy outside marriage, and on abortion, which was being vigorously pushed as the solution to unwanted pregnancies, whether within or outside marriage...

...Children could be spaced and be more adequately provided for...

...And it is also clear that science has not found the magic substitute for restraint in the exercise of one's sexual faculties...

...In fact, the chemical and mechanical devices science touted as the instruments of its reform have been found to be the cause of grievous medical complications for many women...

...Of course, if you start with the premise that within marriage sexual intercourse can legitimately be artificially separated from the procreative process...

...Instead, Father Curran moved farther away from his church as he followed the path of his own compelling logic, building always on the concept that science had at last enabled sexual intercourse to be given a life of its own, freed of the context of procreation within marriage...

...And then strange things started to happen...

...In the developed countries, at least, science 30 January 1987: 47 had also made great strides in reducing infant mortality and in prolonging the average life...

...There was a new awareness of hunger in large sections of the undeveloped world as rising populations canceled economic gains...

...Seemingly convinced that his own intellectual gifts were superior to that of the wisdom of his church, he instead proceeded to develop his own new morality...

...that within marriage one could morally use chemical or mechanical means to separate the marital act from procreation, using responsibly the latest scientific advances to savor the joy of sex while avoiding pregnancy...

...Science had made what appeared at the time to be great progress in the development of safe mechanical and chemical means to prevent conception...

...Father Curran concluded that the church's teaching on artificial contraception was wrong...

...indeed, in the United States, polls quickly showed that the majority of the married laity rejected the pope's conclusions...

...If he did, he read this admonition: Let them [who would reject the church's teaching on artificial contraception] first consider how this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards...

...He said: "Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the church on this issue, if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control...

...It soon became clear that the church's teaching had to be reviewed...

...But what of the super handshake of sexual intercourse...

...In the performance of your ministry you must be the first to give an example of that sincere obedience, inward as well as outward, which is due to the magisterium of the church...

...For theologians like Father Curran, once you gave sexual intercourse an independent life of its own, it would follow that it was not only within marriage that one had occasion or a need to express affection...

...If sexual intercourse were essentially an expression of affection like a powerful handshake, it would be beyond argument that one could have affection for someone other than one's spouse...

...When one looks more closely, however, at the JOHN P. hale is a Manhattan-based trial lawyer who regularly advises and represents the Archdiocese of New York City on public policy questions...

...We can assume that Father Curran carefully read Paul VI's encyclical...

...In his encyclical, Paul VI had made a special humble, but most pointed appeal to priests as he said: We turn to you [priests] filled with great confidence...

...If a large part of the Catholic world was thrilled by the commission's report, it was stunned by the response of Pope Paul VI who, on July 25, 1968, issued his encylical, Humanae Vitae, rejecting the majority report of the scholars, the moral theologians, and the lay people on the commission...

...What stood in the way, at least in part, was the teaching of the Catholic church on the immorality of artificial contraception...

...While common sense would preclude laying the blame for all of these unhappy social developments solely at the doorstep of Father Curran's dissent, one thing is clear beyond argument: Paul VI had a clearer vision of where the acceptance of artifical contraception would logically lead then did Father Curran...

...The Vatican felt pressure from some of the church's own moral theologians who focused on the complexities of applying broad principles of moral conduct to the frequently tangled thicket of real life...

...To many it appeared that the benefits to be gained from taking advantage of scientific advance in the area of population control was of such immensity that the church must be wrong...

...If one were to test the question as to who won, Father Curran or the pope, on the basis of popular support for artificial 50: Commonweal...

...Father Curran's posture has struck a responsive chord among many American Catholics respectful of academic freedom and reared in the tradition of free speech...

...If Father Curran reflected, and we assume he did, he concluded that the pope's position was unsound and mounted a fight against it...

...The issue was artificial contraception...

...Humanae Vitae is poignant...

...more and more children are being raised in homes with only one parent...

...And so Father Curran moved down what he perceived as a logical line to arrive at the legitimacy of masturbation, fornication, and sodomy...

...If the social benefits of more stable, joyous marriages, an end to out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and a disappearance of abortion as a means of ending unwanted pregnancies were to come about, they have not surfaced in the years since Humanae Vitae was issued...

...CATHOLIC THEOLOGY, CATHOLIC IDENTITY WHERE HE STARTED & WHERE HE STANDS A CASE AGAINST CHARLES CURRAN JOHN P. HALE Over the past half year, the press and TV have elevated to national prominence what would in the past have been a matter of internal church discipline, of interest only to a few, as the Vatican set about to revoke the license of Father Charles E. Curran to teach as a Catholic theologian...

...Like a loving and gentle parent, the Vatican has, over the intervening years, sought to encourage Father Curran, as a loyal priest and respected intellectual theologian, to reappraise his conclusions...

...By allowing husband and wife to have sexual relations when they chose —free of the risk of pregnancies — tensions would be lessened within the family...

...One gets the sense of a pope acutely conscious of the social impact of his message: that all of the apparent benefits of artificial contraception are morally beyond the reach of the world...

...Father Curran found many followers...

...He stands today an advocate of the legitimacy not only of artificial birth control within marriage, but of divorce, masturbation, fornication, homosexual acts, and even abortion...

...Logical...

...attractions to liquor for the pleasure it gives...

...In highly advanced countries, the desire to limit family size was heightened as parents sought to provide increased economic opportunity for their children...

...But certainly, it would not be wrong for one male to express his affection for another male by a handshake...

...Nearly nineteen years after Humanae Vitae, we look upon a society in which teenage pregnancy and venereal disease are at an epidemic level...

...But another step was waiting...

...And he expanded his conclusions to the legitimacy of divorce, and even to the legitimacy, under vaguely defined criteria, of abortion...

...Human nature is such that attractions are without limit...

...Sexual intercourse could now be an expression of love and affection unrelated to procreation, freed by science to have a life and meaning of its own...

...Paul to the Romans of nineteen-hundred years earlier...