Word: rome
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pope John Paul II's determined campaign to enforce orthodoxy, the Vatican has taken action against a number of nonconformist theologians. First it ruled that Hans Küng of West Germany could no longer call himself a Catholic theologian; next Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx of the Netherlands was summoned to Rome for an inquiry into his theological writings; and Brazilian Franciscan Leonardo Boff is undergoing enforced silence for advocating Marxist-tinged liberation theology...
...turn of the Rev. Charles Curran, 51, a moral theologian at the Catholic University of America in Washington. Last week, after meeting in Rome with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Curran told a press conference that the Vatican has judged his views on sexual ethics unacceptable. That could lead to his dismissal from the university and widen a growing rift between Rome and the Americans...
Other differences abound. The church vehemently opposes all abortions; Curran argues that they might be justifiable in extreme cases. Rome rejects sterilization on any grounds; Curran does not. The Vatican insists that "every genital act must be within the framework of marriage"; Curran thinks that premarital sex is acceptable under some circumstances and that loving homosexual acts can be morally licit in the context of a permanent commitment. He believes that the church should alter its ban on remarriage after divorce...
Curran contends that none of these traditional teachings on sexual morality have been defined infallibly, and that theologians are thus free to dissent from them. But Rome reads canon law differently. Says one official at the Vatican: "It is valid to withhold assent [privately] in certain circumstances, but it is not valid to teach dissent." Curran protests that he is not alone, characterizing his views as "mainstream" and "accepted by the majority of Catholic theologians today." Nine former presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America agree, and are circulating a pro-Curran petition...
...theology chairman at the University of Notre Dame, Father Richard McBrien, considers the Curran case "the biggest blunder the Vatican has committed with the American church" in two decades. But to a more conservative theologian in Rome "the question is, Why did the Vatican wait so long?" --By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Rome and Jim Castelli/Washington