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Apr 19, 2024
Loyal Dissent
Memoir of a Catholic Theologian
Summary
Over the course of our 60th anniversary in 2024, we'll be revisiting some classic Georgetown books. First up is Loyal Dissent by Charles E. Curran.
Loyal Dissent: Memoir of a Catholic Theologian (Georgetown UP, 2006) 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.
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. 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 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.
Al Bertrand is the director of Georgetown University Press.