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Memoir of a Catholic Theologian
Georgetown University Press
May 2006
297 pages ISBN: 1589010876 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Religion | Non-Fiction Memoir
Loyal Dissent is the candid and inspiring story of a
Catholic priest and theologian who, despite being stripped
of his right to teach as a Catholic theologian by the
Vatican, remains committed to the Catholic Church. Over a
nearly fifty-year career, Charles E. Curran has
distinguished himself as the most well-known and the most
controversial Catholic moral theologian in the United
States. On occasion, he has disagreed with official church
teachings on subjects such as contraception, homosexuality,
divorce, abortion, moral norms, and the role played by the
hierarchical teaching office in moral matters. Throughout,
however, Curran has remained a committed Catholic, a priest
working for the reform of a pilgrim church. His positions,
he insists, are always in accord with the best understanding
of Catholic theology and always dedicated to the good of the
church. In 1986, years of clashes with church authorities finally
culminated in a decision by the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, headed by then-Cardinal Josef
Ratzinger, that Curran was neither suitable nor eligible to
be a professor of Catholic theology. As a result of that
Vatican condemnation, he was fired from his teaching
position at Catholic University of America and, since then,
no Catholic university has been willing to hire him. Yet
Curran continues to defend the possibility of legitimate
dissent from those teachings of the Catholic faith—not core
or central to it—that are outside the realm of
infallibility. In word and deed, he has worked in support of
more academic freedom in Catholic higher education and for a
structural change in the church that would increase the role
of the Catholic community—from local churches and parishes
to all the baptized people of God. In this poignant and passionate memoir, Curran recounts his
remarkable story from his early years as a compliant,
pre-Vatican II Catholic through decades of teaching and
writing and a transformation that has brought him today to
be recognized as a leader of progressive Catholicism
throughout the world.
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