The Curran crisis.

THE CURRAN CRISIS

PITY CHARLIE CURRAN. There is hardly a better-liked priest among the whole body of Catholic theologians in the United States. He works hard, is conscientious, shows intellectual courage, and is open and friendly even with those with whom he is in disagreement. He has made many sacrifices in his life, including years of celibacy. Father Curran loves the Church.

Even so, the Vatican office charged with watching over the integrity of the faith has questioned some of Father Curran's findings on sterilization, euthanasia, homosexuality, abortion, contraception, masturbation, premarital sex, and divorce. The issue seems to be Curran's method, even more than his particular findings. The Vatican has reason to note Father Curran's good will and seriousness of purpose.

The Catholic Church, however, has no strength at all except its fidelity to God's Word, as it has been received and passed down from generation to generation. Keeping that stream pure is its link to God.

Catholic theologians are necessarily on the "cutting edge" of the Church's intellectual life. For the Faith is passed on in words, but, through casual usage, words often lose (or change) their meanings. To keep the original intentions behind the words alive, poets--and theologians--must approach them with ever fresh minds. This is tricky business.

Theologians need room in which to work. To employ Cardinal Newman's metaphor, they make the ascent of mountains only by a zigzag course. Sometimes they zig or zag too far. Theology is as hazardous as mountain-climbing. For the Christian church does not live by dazzling personal opinions alone (although the visions theologians gain often do take the breath away). It lives by fidelity to the received Word of God.

The theologian, therefore, has a double task: both to proceed with unimpeachable intellectual integrity and also to be faithful to the Word committed to the care of the Church. Two authorities move the theologian: the authority of conscientious intellect and the authority of the Church. But the theologian is often called to work in grey areas, out in the no-man's-land of unsettled questions. Looking for guides, often he finds few. This is why intellectual bravery is required.

Still, theologians are not usually giants. Is it surprising that in a no-man's-land some will be wounded, lost, or confused, and some will send back faulty signals? If the job were easy, bravery would not be required. Nor is one safe in agreement with one's peers. Even if "everyone" is speeding on the highway, the state police may halt only one auto in a hundred--honoring the law, but not with "equal justice."

In theology, the ones most vulnerable are those who work in pontifical institutions chartered to speak with unusual authority in the name of the Pope, such as Father Curran in the theology department of Catholic University, or Father Hans Kung in the Pontifical Chair at Tubingen. Is the Pope to lend this unusual authority--the task of presenting authoritative Catholic teaching on the issues involved--to one who, in his theological work, proposes, however respectfully, views at variance with that teaching?

Father Curran's own intention, stated at a press conference March 11, is to act as a kind of avant garde for the Church at a time of great turbulence, hoping to light the way to new positions for the Church, in a way that he believes will best protect her fidelity to her own tradition. He puts his work, in effect, at the disposition of Church authorities, offering them (in his view) a better way into the future. He himself notes ambiguities and dangers to be faced, if his views were to be accepted.

After due study, in a process that began in 1979, Pope John Paul II has decided that the Catholic Church should not follow the trails blazed by Father Curran and a great number of other Catholic theologians. Such a decision constitutes a "crisis"--a turning point. Those on the wrong side of that new turn feel the pain.

Including me. On the matter of birth control, I find the single issue on which my own reflections as a philosopher and theologian do not come out in accordance with Catholic teaching. I have stated the reasons why this is so; a philosopher/theologian is in the business of articulating arguments and reasons. Pope John Paul II is ruling against these. Of course, he has the right to pass such judgment. Theologians propose; the Pope disposes. His responsibilities are for the whole Church, future as well as present.

THE TASK of theologians is to make the best arguments we can, but not to fall in love with these arguments. Theologians of one generation have often been thought by those of the next to have erred; error is our daily bread. It sometimes happens, though, that what a theologian writes does hit the truth, even though the Church at the time does not recognize it. In that sense, we too write not solely for present judgment but for the judgment of the future. In God's own time, these things straighten out.

The life of a community, such as a church spanning the generations, has its own rhythms, longer than those of an individual lifetime. And theology is more like medicine than physics; even great discoveries need a period of probation. Whether in error or in truth, Father Curran has served the Church well. Time will winnow his work, and the good grain therein will remain. Meanwhile, the winnowing, necessary as it is for the community of faith, causes pain.