Charles Curran’s Reality – Based Theology.

While I was searching through the NCR database for a review of “The Sexual Person” (which I did not find), I came across instead a review of Charles Curran’s “Catholic Moral Theology in the United States“. What particularly grabbed my attention was the headline for the review, which is so close to my own strapline. Compare my “towards a reality-based theology” with NCR’s headline “Catholic moral theology based on real life”. The words may differ, but the sense behind this is precisely what I was getting at in choosing my words. Is it too much to expect, that those responsible for formulating ethical principles should pay some attention to real-life experience?

Yet Curran and his methods are controversial. He has been barred from teaching in Catholic theology schools, largely for his outspoken criticism of Humanae Vitae. (Who in their right mind, after paying attention to the views and experience of married couples and the professional experts that Pope Paul simply ignored, would disagree with him?). Instead, he now works at a Methodist institution – is probably a better theologian for his exposure to alternative modes of thinking.