Religion: Time for Boy Scouts?

The pontifical commission was not alone in its sharp split over the official Catholic stand on contraception. Students and faculty at Washington's Catholic University of America walked out last week to protest the firing of a popular professor, and once more, not only birth control, but an article in the National Catholic Reporter was involved.

Center of the uproar was a liberal theology professor. Father Charles E. Curran, 33. In an interview published by the N.C.R. last September, Curran was depicted as forecasting that Catholicism's dictation of moral doctrine is doomed, that it will eventually be replaced by a form of ethics based largely on "the experience of Christian people." Contending that current doctrine too often accentuates the negative, the young priest was quoted as saying: "Even the Boy Scout oath sounds more positive than the Ten Commandments." In a subsequent book, Christian Morality Today, he flatly insisted that "I have added my own 'Amen' to those who are asking for a change in the present teaching of the Church" on birth control.

Though he later termed the N.C.R. article "somewhat inaccurate," Curran's views were not taken lightly by Catholic University's board of trustees, which is composed of all five U.S. cardinals, 22 archbishops, six other bishops, eleven laymen, and is chaired by New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman. Last week Curran was advised by C.U.'s rector, Bishop William J. McDonald, that the board had voted to fire him—whereupon virtually the entire 7,200-member faculty and student body walked out on strike. They would not return to classes, they said, until Curran was reinstated. Massing outside the rector's stone residence, priests and nuns stood alongside black-cassocked seminarians and hoisted placards quoting from Scripture—UNLESS YOUR JUSTICE EXCEEDS THAT OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES, YOU SHALL NOT ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. MATT. 5:20.

Decorous though the demonstration was, the protestors left no doubt about their anger over what they saw as the suppression of freedom. Declared the Very Rev. Walter J. Schmitz, dean of the School of Sacred Theology: "No charges have been brought against Father Curran and no reasons have been given for this action. The academic freedom of every professor of this university is jeopardized." Said Curran in a nationally televised speech to the strikers: "The issues involved in this dismissal are greater than any one man. Catholic professional theologians need the opportunity to pursue their science with responsible freedom."

At week's end, Curran's supporters had solicited and received backing from Catholic theologians and seminarians across the U.S. As the pressure intensified, Baltimore's Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, a member of C.U.'s board, declared that Curran should be "restored to his former status." Atlanta's Arch bishop Paul J. Hallinan, another board member, let it be known that he had opposed Curran's ouster. Boston's Richard Cardinal Gushing announced that he would not condemn Curran. "He must teach all sides. It makes no sense to appoint people to a university board who know absolutely nothing about running a university."