Word: vatican
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...Vatican first contacted Curran in 1979, sending a 16-page list of the "principal errors and ambiguities" in his writings. After several exchanges, Ratzinger last year wrote Curran that he must recant (which he refuses to do) or no longer be deemed a teacher of Catholic theology. A formal Vatican statement to that effect would end Curran's post at the university, where theologians work under church mandate because graduate religion degrees are granted under a papal charter...
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...
Curran is willing to bend somewhat; he has offered not to teach sexual-ethics classes if the Vatican will settle for issuing a statement detailing his errors, but allow him to continue as a theology teacher. Mindful of the potential donnybrook if Curran is dismissed, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, head of Catholic University's board of trustees, has lobbied with the Pope and Ratzinger to accept such a compromise, so far to no avail...