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Preface to “Dissent In and For the Church“

by CHARLES E. CURRAN, ROBERT E. HUNT and the “Subject Professors” with JOHN F. HUNT and TERRENCE R. CONNELLY

A Search Book published by Sheed & Ward • New York, 1969

Acknowledgments

This volume represents the joint efforts of the twenty Catholic University professors and their legal and academic counsel. The professors collaborated on their theological defense presented to the Board of Inquiry and on all the other aspects involved in the long and tedious process of the Inquiry. Naturally there were some who devoted more of their time to the Inquiry and to the preparation of this volume, but it would be an impossible task to single out particular individuals. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the defense of our declaration and action was the communal and collaborative effort on the part of all involved, and this testifies in an eloquent manner to the basic Christian and academic commitments of the professors themselves.

We, the “subject professors,” will never be able to express adequately our gratitude to the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore of New York City, and in particular to Mr. John F. Hunt, Jr., and Mr. Terrence R. Connelly, his associate. Without legal counsel of such stature and skill, our case could not have been presented so forcibly. Their contributions and their personal interest in “their clients” remain a happy memory for all.

Robert K. Webb, Professor of History at Columbia University and Editor of The American Historical Review, despite an already overcrowded calendar, volunteered to serve as our academic counsel. His competence and help in this role made even more emphatic his commitment to academic life and his willingness to undergo great personal sacrifice for this commitment.

The staff of the National Office of the American Association of University Professors, without making any prejudgments on the case, was always most competent and gracious in furnishing us with authoritative interpretations and directions.

The expert witnesses mentioned by name in the text who willingly testified on our behalf gave to our case the prestige and authority of their own outstanding reputations.

The members of the Inquiry Panel, Dean Donald E. Marlowe, Professor E. Catherine Dunn, Dean Frederick R. McManus, Professor Antanas Suziedelis, Reverend Doctor Eugene I. Van Antwerp and Professor Kenneth L. Schmitz, generously gave many hundreds of hours of their otherwise busy lives in order conscientiously to discharge their responsibilities on behalf of the University in connection with the Inquiry. In their work they exhibited an intellectual honesty and scholarly dedication that enhances the reputation of the University with which they are associated.

Herder & Herder graciously permitted us to use some materials which were originally published in Contraception: Authority and Dissent, ed., C. E.  Curran (New York, 1969)

Preface

During the present decade, it has become increasingly clear that the Roman Catholic Church is not a monolithic structure, secure from the concerns of its constituencies. The debates surrounding the Second Vatican Council sparked ferment and renewal within the Church. As this has become characterized by protest and dissent, the Church has experienced the same phenomenon which has confronted other institutions in our culture. Priests protest against their bishops; laymen form groups independent of ecclesiastical direction; underground movements virtually separate themselves from the institutional church; men and women leave the religious life for secular occupations in greater number than ever before. In the context of this unrest, conflicting forces polarize within the Church; Pope Paul VI has spoken frequently in a fearful, even reactionary, manner about the contemporary tumult in the Church.

The singular event causing the greatest stir and having the most far-reaching effect on the future of the Church is the dissent from Pope Paul’s Encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae. Never before in history has an authoritative papal teaching met such widespread, immediate and public dissent. Most significantly, those who express disagreement with the Pope’s conclusions on artificial contraception do not necessarily consider themselves disloyal Catholics cut off from union with the Church and with the Bishop of Rome.

Dissent from the Encylical was widespread. Theologians and clerics, laymen and laywomen from all over the globe voiced their disagreement. Surprisingly, the most concerted opposition to the absolute condemnation of artificial contraception came from theologians in the United States of America. The Catholic Church in the United States has produced comparatively few theologians who have contributed either to the intellectual life of the Church or of American society. The reaction of American theologians was focused in the statement released in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 1968, in the name of eighty-seven American theologians. That Statement by Catholic Theologians was ultimately endorsed by more than 600 Catholic academicians qualified in the sacred sciences, including moral theologians, canon lawyers, philosophers, biblical scholars and teachers in related specialties.(1)

This response to the Encyclical triggered further reactions. Liberal elements in the Roman Catholic Church applauded; conservative elements labelled the dissent treason; and very many both within and outside the Roman Catholic Church were somewhat confused. The challenges to the loyalty of the “dissenters” posed a central question: Could a Roman Catholic dissent from an authoritative papal teaching and still be loyal to his Church? The Theologians’ Statement had postulated that it is a common teaching in the Church that Catholics may dissent from such papal pronouncements. But many loyal Catholics had never heard of such a common teaching despite their fervent participation in the life of the Church. Thus, for example, one priest of apparent goodwill but trained in the pre-Vatican II theology was “irritated” by the Statement of the Theologians.(2)  Editorials in the Catholic press repeatedly and caustically condemned the dissent of the theologians and characterized it as destructive of the very institution of the Roman Catholic Church. A more perceptive observer recognized the existence of theological opinions in the Church traditionally upholding the right to dissent from authoritative papal teaching; but he added that “it would be preposterous for the theologians to maintain that the authors of such texts ever envisioned or intended to justify a situation like the present public, collective assertion by numerous theologians or similar acts of other groups.”(3)

Such challenges impel subscribers to the Statement to explain not only the fact of their dissent from the absolute ban on contraception contained in Humanae Vitae but also the manner in which they made their dissent public. This volume, which attempts to fulfil that responsibility, has its genesis in the context of the most notorious challenge in the United States to the loyalty of the “dissenters.”

The Theologians’ Statement had been drafted and disseminated by a group of theologians comprised primarily of professors from The Catholic University of America, the only national pontifical university supported by all the bishops of the United States. Catholic University has been the scene of a number of incidents reflecting the tensions existing within the Roman Catholic Church, such as the banning of four “liberal” theologians from a campus speaking engagement in 1963 and the week-long strike by both faculty and students which forced the Trustees of the University to rescind their decision not to renew the contract of Charles E. Curran, then an Assistant Professor in the School of Theology, who had been unanimously recommended for promotion to Associate Professor by his own school and the Academic Senate of the University. After the “Curran affair” in the Spring of 1967, the Board of Trustees of the University changed its composition: in the summer of 1968, instead of a preponderance of bishops, including ex officio every archbishop in the United States, the Board consisted of 30 members—15 clerics and 15 laymen. This new Board had just come into power under the chairmanship of Dr. Carroll Hochwalt of St. Louis when the storm broke over the papal Encyclical. The unique position of Catholic University, plus the fact that Catholic University theologians spearheaded the theological dissent from the Encyclical, focused attention squarely on the University. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Chancellor of the University is Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle, the Archbishop of Washington, who reacted more strongly than any other American bishop to the dissent from the Encyclical by suspending the priestly faculties of diocesan clergymen who said they would respect the right of dissent the theologians had affirmed.

At a special meeting on September 5, 1968, the Trustees of Catholic University ordered an inquiry in accord with academic norms into the declarations and actions of the Catholic University professors who had publicly expressed dissent from the papal Encyclical. This inquiry was then carried out by a special Board of Inquiry selected by the Academic Senate of the University. The Board of Inquiry, in its five-month labour, heard thirty-eight witnesses and studied more than 3,000 pages of written exhibits and testimony, including over 600 pages of written materials submitted on behalf of the theologians. The Inquiry Board did not conclude its deliberations until April, 1969. At that time it published a detailed report, finding that “the commentary made by the subject professors in their July 30, 1968 statement is adequately supported by theological scholarship, and that their actions in composing, issuing, and disseminating this statement did not violate the professors’ commitments to the University or to the academic or theological communities.” At their April, 1969 meeting, the University Trustees deferred action on the Inquiry Report and appointed a subcommittee of their own membership to study it. As might have been expected, the Report of the Inquiry Board has been highly praised by some and vehemently attacked by others in the Catholic press, including a very critical article by a Trustee of the Catholic University.(4) The conclusion of the Report that the public dissent from the Encyclical is theologically acceptable portended great repercussions with respect to both the theoretical understanding of the Roman Catholic Church and the practical life style of the Church in the future. The vehemence of the various reactions emphasize the importance which the dissent it vindicates will have in the history and life of the Church and reinforces the need to explain and justify such dissent.

At their June, 1969 meeting, the University Trustees accepted the Report so far as its conclusions that the theologians had not violated their academic responsibilities are concerned, specifically refused to accept its theological conclusions and authorized a reference of the theologians’ position to the Bishops’ Commission on Doctrine. Since the Report makes clear that the academic responsibility of Roman Catholic theologians requires that they remain within the boundaries of the Roman Catholic faith commitment, assuming the Trustees understood the Report, the import of their June actions is not immediately obvious. (An explanation is offered in the companion volume to this work.)

This volume is substantially the first part of the prepared testimony submitted to the Inquiry Board by the Catholic University professors and their counsel. The second part of the written testimony presented to the Inquiry Board by counsel on behalf of the professors, which demonstrates the propriety and responsibility of their actions in the light of accepted academic norms, forms the nucleus of a companion volume. The first chapter of this volume gives the proper historical context for evaluating the dissent, and in so doing frequently condenses the facts which were established in the case before the Inquiry Board and the history of the Inquiry itself. Chapter two sets forth preliminary considerations concerning the nature of theology and the role of the theologian, while the third chapter develops preliminary considerations about the nature and function of the magisterium. Chapters four and five discuss dissent in and for the Church, specifically the ecclesiology implied and the methodology used in the declarations and actions of the subject professors (and many other Catholic theologians) in respect of Humanae Vitae. Chapter six deals with the specific questions of responsible dissent from one particular ethical teaching of the encyclical; namely, the absolute prohibition of the use of artificial contraception. We have incorporated some of the expert testimony given on behalf of the subject professors, although in substance chapters two through seven remain the written testimony which the professors submitted to the Inquiry Board. This written testimony was the fruit of collaboration among the subject professors and was written with the aim and purpose of presenting their theological case in the most cogent manner possible to their six academicians, of whom the Board of Inquiry was composed. While the same materials can be structured and written differently, there is a documentary value in preserving the argument as it was proposed by the Catholic University professors which outweighs any problems created by the multiple authorship of the material and its specific purpose of presenting theological reasoning to a group which, while highly educated, included people in the fields of engineering, literature and psychology. Chapter eight, after summarizing other examples of dissent, draws conclusions concerning the theological dissent of the professors and situates such dissent in the ongoing life of the Church. The final chapter sets forth the pertinent conclusions of the Inquiry Board. This volume, like the original Statement by Theologians, defends dissent from Humanae Vitae with the hope that the Roman Catholic Church will thus be able to carry out more faithfully its God-given mission in history.

Notes

  1. Robert G. Hoyt, ed., The Birth Control Debate (Kansas City: National Catholic Reporter, 1968), p. 175.
  2. Robert J. Kritland, “Just One Minute, Father Curran!” in The Catholic World, 208 (January, 1969), pp. 152-154.
  3. Norbert J. Rigali, “Right, Duty, and Dissent,” in The Catholic World, 208 (February, 1969), pp. 214-218.
  4. Robert J. Dwyer, “Under My Hat,” in Twin Circle (May 18, 25, 1969).

The subject professors dedicate this volume to those who joined them in upholding the right of Catholic dissent from Humanae Vitae—especially those unjustly accused of disloyalty without benefit of due process.

Return to Index? or Continue to Chapter 1.