Wednesday October 27, 2010
Dallas Bishop Condemns Pro-Abortion Priest Lecture
By Kathleen Gilbert
DALLAS, Texas, October 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Catholic bishop of Dallas has preemptively condemned a lecture by a dissident professor and priest who is scheduled to criticize the U.S. bishops’ unequivocal stance against the killing of unborn children.
Rev. Charles E. Curran, the Elizabeth Scurlock Professor of Human Values at Southern Methodist University (SMU), is planning to deliver an on-campus lecture noon Thursday entitled “The U.S. Catholic Bishops and Abortion Legislation: A Critique from Within the Church.”
“Curran’s lecture will examine how U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have made opposition to legal abortion their primary social issue, and will challenge the bishops from a theological perspective for claiming too much certitude in their position,” states an SMU press release. In the release, Curran states that, “There should be room in the Catholic Church for different positions on this issue.”
Dallas bishop Kevin J. Farrell released a statement published by SMU Catholic Campus Ministry online expressing his regret over Curran’s thesis.
“I wish to point out that the Bishops of the US have never changed their position on the question of abortion,” wrote Farrell. “The act of directly taking an unborn life is wrong and has always been wrong. This has been the constant teaching of the Church.”
While “there is room in the Catholic Church for different positions on many issues,” said Farrell, “on the taking of innocent human life there is no room for ambiguity.” The bishop cited John Paul II’s authoritative condemnation of abortion in the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae.
“I regret that Father Curran has chosen to criticize the position of the Bishops of the United States on this matter,” the Dallas bishop concluded.
The priest responded to the bishop’s statement indignantly, claiming that the lecture does not dispute the Catholic teaching on abortion but only “argues that one who holds the Catholic moral teaching can come to different conclusions about what the law should be.” “The bishop’s false public statement is a gross injustice to me and my good name,” said Curran.
Richard P. McBrien, the Crowley-O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, gave a preview of Curran’s ideas on the subject in his online review of Curran’s upcoming book, The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective. According to McBrien, Curran criticizes the U.S. bishops for being too certain about their position on abortion law, despite a lack of conclusive knowledge about the exact point at which a soul is infused in a growing human embryo.
Curran also argues that “a Catholic could support the present abortion law” by adhering to a “religious freedom approach” which prioritizes the individual conscience, according to the Notre Dame professor.
Curran was a member of the faculty at the Catholic University of America until 1986 when Joseph Ratzinger, as head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, forbade him from teaching theology at a Catholic school based on his dissent from Catholic moral teaching on sexuality. Curran is known to have criticized the Church’s teaching on abortion, euthanasia, masturbation, homosexuality, fornication, and divorce.
In addition, the priest has been identified as one of a group of dissident theologians who notoriously coached the Kennedys about abortion in a 1964 meeting at Hyannis Port, helping spark the onset of Catholic politicians publicly supporting abortion in subsequent decades as a “lesser evil.”
In a move similar to Farrell’s, three years ago Bishop Gregory Aymond of Austin directed diocesan priests not to publicize a lecture by Curran at St. Edward’s University.