A Question of Perspective: Who Gets Fired and Why?

It has been ranked “as among the most significant developments in moral theology in the past fifty years.”

This was how the late Fr. Richard McCormick described Catholic University of America’s decision in 1988 to fire Fr. Charles Curran from his position in the Department of Theology under order from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Curran case

It is unnecessary to rehearse the entire saga. The basic details can be found in an article by Paul C. Saunders in a 2004 article in Commonweal titled “A Cautionary Tale: Academic Freedom, ‘Ex Corde,’ & the Curran Case.” It might be worth noting, however, that the author of the article was Curran’s lawyer in Curran v. The Catholic University of America. I could not find any corresponding articles in Commonweal defending the university.

Curran was hired at CUA in 1965. Even then, his appointment was controversial. In 1967, the board, led by Cardinal Archbishop Krol, sought to fire him, but relented after a campus outcry and amid threats to its accreditation by its principal accrediting agency, the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. In 1968, on the very morning that Humanae vitae was released to the public, Curran called a press conference to show a letter he had written, signed by 77 other theologians, challenging Pope Paul VI’s reaffirmation of the ban on artificial contraception. Before the faithful had even had a chance to read the encyclical, they were confronted with public dissent from it.

In a letter, dated July 25, 1986, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reported the Congregation had concluded that “one who dissents from the magisterium as you do is not suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology” or to “exercise the function of a professor of Catholic theology.” The letter indicated that it had been approved by the Congregation for Catholic Education and that it had been presented to the pope, who “approved both its content and the procedure followed.”

The investigation that led to this letter began seven years earlier, but Curran’s writing and teaching had been in question since the year he was hired. After the decision by the Vatican, the university made various offers to permit Curran to teach in other departments, each of which was rejected. His final termination was made official in 1988. Thus, one could say that the “investigation” took from roughly 1966, the year after he was hired, until the Vatican’s letter arrived in 1986, so roughly twenty years.

Both Frs. McCormick and Curran claimed that this disciplinary action had a tragic “chilling” effect on the freedom of speech and thought among U.S. theologians. According to Curran: “This was the strongest disciplinary action ever taken against a U.S. Catholic moral theologian.”

Abp.  Weisenburger ‘s firing of three professors

That was then; this is now. Whether this was “the strongest disciplinary action ever taken” against a moral theologian, it pales in comparison to Archbishop Edward Weisenburger’s abrupt firing of three theologians at Sacred Heart Seminary several weeks before the start of the 2025 fall semester for having expressed mild criticisms of Pope Francis.

The “investigation” into the works and teaching of these three did not take twenty years. It took one meeting with the archbishop. These professors were all laymen with families and time left on their multi-year contracts. There was no hearing, as specified by the seminary bylaws. They were simply dismissed without cause or explanation, other than that the archbishop was “uncomfortable” with their theology. There was, said the archbishop, no need to go into specifics.

Commonweal published an article after these men were fired, titled “Coalition of the Disaffected: A new chronicle of Catholic fundamentalism in America”. Far from bemoaning the firing of these men as a symbol of oppression and the silencing of legitimate theological dissent, as the magazine had done when Fr. Curran was fired, the author, Daniel Rober, associate professor and chair of the Department of Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University, celebrated the terminations. He wrote that the seminary “has long been described as a Francis-free zone’”—which, it seems, is simply impermissible among contemporary theologians (disagreement with the Pope!)—and “is known for its theologically conservative curriculum (also verboten), which includes some fairly fringe ideas,” although perhaps not as “fringe” as Fr. Curran’s ideas were, which did not seem to Commonweal a good reason to fire him.

Far from complaining that the termination of these three men might cause a “chilling” of the freedom of speech and thought in the academy, Rober bemoans the fact that “the firings have generated wide and predictable criticism from conservative Catholics.” Perhaps Commonweal should have run an earlier article by someone bemoaning that CUA’s firing of Charles Curran had “generated wide and predictable criticism from liberal Catholics.” But they didn’t.

Not only is Rober not concerned that these more recent firings might chill theological discourse, he is hoping it will and fearful that it won’t. “Bishop Weisenburger’s move may have pleasantly surprised observers,” he writes, “who’ve watched with concern as American bishops cultivated such elements even as they maintained their distance.” The ChurchMilitant website “was able to do what it did for a long time before facing discipline.” A long time? Not twenty years. Some have “watched with concern” the direction of Commonweal for many years, but it has been allowed to do what it does for a long time without “facing discipline.” Should that change?

Who else is being “watched with concern”? Rober mentions EWTN and First Things, venues “that play a key role in right-leaning American Catholic discourse, which “are skilled at turning teapot tempests (like Weisenburger’s seminary firings) into culture-war flashpoints that fire up Catholics around the country.” So not only is the termination of these three theologians—simply for being perceived as not sufficiently pro-Francis enough—not a tragic event according to this author, he is rooting for more of the same.

He writes: “Coming early in the Pope Leo era, from a bishop he had a hand in appointing, it may signal a gradual shift in the approach taken by American Catholic bishops to the culture wars,” a shift he clearly welcomes. Pope Leo, he says, “is someone whose formation and ministry unfolded in ‘mainstream’ postconciliar Church institutions.” In other words, don’t worry; he is one of us. He’ll help the bishops do the necessary work to deal with them. Fortunately, Prof. Rober may end up disappointed.

Us and Them

This odd contradiction in Commonweal’s attitude and approach to these two events is perhaps best explained as the result of accepting a meta-narrative of progress and a set of disempowering binaries between us and them, the “reasonable” versus the “unreasonable,” the “mainstream” vs. “fringe elements,” those standing in the way of post-conciliar “progress” and those attempting to liberate the Church from the shackles of the pre-conciliar authoritarian Church.

The failure to engage in any serious investigation of the reasonable arguments in the writings of the three men before being summarily dismissed (let alone after a seven-year investigation at the highest levels of the Vatican) and the authoritarian nature of the terminations merely for intimating disagreement with Pope Francis does nothing to disturb the insistence that they are unreasonable and we are reasonable, they are authoritarian and we are liberators, they are fringe and we are mainstream.

This meta-narrative of historical progress and its accompanying binaries can be traced back to a 1966 talk by Bernard Lonergan titled “The Transition from a Classicist Worldview to Historical Mindedness”. One can hardly do justice in a brief space to how influential this little article has been, but echoes of it can be found in the work of nearly every major “revisionist” moral theologian in the late twentieth century. As Catholic theologian William Portier reports about his education: “When we finally got to theology in 1968, our professors were all keen on what Germa philosophers called ‘historicity.’ In a seminal essay written at this time, Bernard Lonergan called it ‘historical-mindedness’ and contrasted it with ‘the classical world-view.’”

The “classicist, conservative, traditional” approach to moral theology, claimed Lonergan, was based on abstraction, was unbiblical, and those who hold it are not open to “changing forms, structures, and methods. Moreover—and this is the really damning detail, according to Lonergan—it is “no longer the commonly received conception.” “No longer commonly received” by whom is not clear. The pope? Bishops? Lay men and women in the pew? None of those appear likely. No, it was “no longer the commonly received conception” among his colleagues: academic theologians at elite universities.

Having characterized “classicism” in these perhaps less than glowing terms, Lonergan affirms that there is another approach, which he describes this way:

On the other hand, one can apprehend mankind as a concrete aggregate developing over time, where the locus of development and, so to speak, the synthetic bond is the emergence, expansion, differentiation, dialectic of meaning and of meaningful performance. On this view intentionality, meaning, is a constitutive component of human living; moreover, this component is not fixed, static, immutable, but shifting, developing, going astray, capable of redemption; on this view there is in the historicity which results from human nature an exigence for changing forms, structures, methods; and it is on this level and through this medium of changing meaning that divine revelation has entered the world and that the church’s witness is given to it.

Given these two descriptions, it is hard to imagine a bright young graduate student in theology proudly announcing: “I want to be a classicist!”

If post-modern thinkers should have taught us anything, it would be that we should be wary of all such meta-narratives and binaries when they are employed, as they are here, to dominate and disempower others. One would have thought that thinkers who pride themselves on their “historical consciousness” would have made themselves aware of these developments and been especially careful not to make those mistakes. Is it “progressive” not to be aware of the advancements in post-modern thought, stuck in a paradigm of “development” abandoned long ago by most historians and philosophers?

Time-tested principles versus the latest fads

The arguments of these “revisionist” moral theologians should be given a fair hearing and an honest analysis, apart from their claims to greater historical consciousness. Neither their views nor the views of their opponents should be dismissed solely or primarily based on an “us” vs. “them” dichotomy. We are progressive, open to the future”; they are “not open and stuck in the past.” One could just as easily claim that they are not “progressive,” they are simply repeating classic mistakes of the past that have been refuted time and again, whereas we have the support of centuries’ worth of testing of our basic principles and ideas.

But that would be as false a characterization as the ones proposed by self-styled “progressives.” Dismissal based on false characterization or by setting up self-justifying narratives of “progress” or by constructing disempowering binaries should have no place in serious scholarly dialogue. Nothing I have said would serve as a reasonable critique of the moral theology affirmed by the “revisionists.” My sole objection is to what I take to be a false “historical consciousness.”

But it was this same self-justifying meta-narrative of history and the attendant binaries of “post-conciliar“ versus “pre-conciliar,” “progressive” versus “static,” “serious scholarship open to the future” versus “dreary scholarship stuck in the dead past,” that allowed “progressive” scholars at major universities to justify denying jobs and promotions to more “classical, conservative” scholars, to deny entry to graduate students without the right views, and to keep certain seminarians from becoming priests.

“Oppressing scholars” and “crushing dissent” were always something the other side does because they have “authoritarian” views, whereas we have (by definition) progressive views. We liberate; they oppress. The problem, however, is that many of these thinkers mistake “historical consciousness” with buying into a self-justifying meta-narrative of history. The first step in any attempt at achieving “historical consciousness,” one would have thought, would be to become aware of one’s own meta-narratives with which one interprets events.

Fr. Curran and other revisionists often make clear their rejection of the settled principles of natural law. In the Middle Ages, the most basic principles were these: “Do unto others as you would wish done unto you,” and “Don’t do to others what you would not wish done to you.” From these, one could easily conclude: “Don’t do to others what you wish hadn’t been done to you.” These, along with the admonition to “love your neighbor as yourself,” were understood by Thomas Aquinas and everyone else in the Middle Ages to be the heart of the natural law.

It is always sad to find thinkers who think they can dispense with these time-tested principles in favor of the latest philosophical fad among one’s colleagues—especially when “the latest fad” is something from fifty years ago.