Due to the recent Charles Curran controversy in Texas and the inability of some to distinguish between authentic freedom and truth and misguided license, it seems reasonable to present some additional thoughts. From Homiletic and Pastoral Review, January 1981, by Fr. Vincent Miceli:
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The Holy Father, as successor of St. Peter, has been given by Christ the solemn mandate to confirm his brethren in the faith. He must at times use disciplinary measures to fulfill this obligation. Pope John Paul II, besides publishing Sapientia Christiana, has also, through local bishops and official organs of the Church, exercised his authority to discipline wayward Catholic professors.
French radical Dominican Fr. Jacques Pohier has been forbidden to exercise his priestly functions for his contumacious heretical teachings and publications. Swiss theologian Fr. Bernhard Hasler has been laicized for his book which calumniates Pope Pius IX on, How The Pope Became Infallible. Dutch scholar Dominican Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx has been called to Rome for questioning on his ambiguous theological views. Brazilian Franciscan Fr. Leonard Boff has had some of his writings, interpreting Christ in a Marxist mode, condemned. And Swiss theologian Fr. Hans Kung has been stripped of his mission to teach as a Catholic theologian because of his heresies denying the divinity of Christ and the infallibility of the Church, among many other errors.
The church is founded, must survive and advance on the rock of truth. The truths contained in the deposit of the faith create and strengthen her essential unity. Peter and his successors are endowed with divine authority and infallibility to teach that truth accurately and coherently. Pope John Paul II, by his writings and actions, has demonstrated that he will not tolerate a nest of theologians, enamoured by their own reckless originality of thought and sparkling plausibility, to turn the Catholic Church into a new Tower of Babel in which the cacophony of contradictory voices scatters the flock to the four ends of an earth sinking in spiritual darkness.
Fr. Curran and his revolutionary confreres condemn the pope unjustly because he is courageously living up to the mandate given him by Christ. These dissidents foolishly introduce a non-existent opposition between freedom to teach and authority to maintain truth. The antinomy is not between freedom to teach and that authority, but between freedom to teach error - actually a perverted use of freedom - and the authority to maintain truth. The rebels are claiming a freedom to speak, teach and think on matters of faith and morals as they wish. Pope John Paul II rejects this spurious freedom and uses his authority wisely and firmly to discipline contumacious rebels.
The pope knows that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." True, all Christians are called to love and pray for their enemies, especially for formal heretics. But the pope knows too that the faithful cannot live in community with heretics. Not even love can bring this about by itself.
For the absolutely essential basis for community is unity in the faith, in the same beliefs, a truth demonstrated in the Gospel. Many of Christ's followers "walked no more with him" because they could not accept his "hard saying" about the need of eating his flesh and drinking his blood in order to attain eternal life. When Christ testified to the logic of their leaving by asking his Apostles, "Will you also go away?" Peter replied for the group: "To whom shall we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life."
Here is the correct answer for the Catholic university. It must go with Christ, with the Vicar of Christ, with Pope John Paul II, if it hopes to bear honorably the title of Catholic, to continue alive, and to enjoy vigorous academic freedom in the pursuit and certain attainment of truth. Unlike Fr. Curran, the Catholic university must not exhibit a simplistic naivete about the trustworthiness and integrity of scholars, simply because they are academic intellectuals, to guarantee truth and academic freedom.
Perhaps there exists in society today no more biased group against the ancient Christian wisdom than the modern, secularized scholars who despise permanent religious doctrines and established, tried and true traditions. For such religiously uprooted intellectuals are obsessed with novelty, with change, with the lust for revolution and notoriety.
Christ is not reported to have said: "He who hears you scholars, you theologians, you journalists, hears me." But, "He who hears you - Peter, the Apostles and their episcopal successors teaching in union with the Vicar of Christ - hears me."
It is quite evident that Fr. Curran and his Catholic rebel confreres in the Catholic academic world are listening to strange voices and sounding off as uncertain trumpets.
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