RELIGION : Actions Assured Academic Freedom, Curran Testifies

WASHINGTON — Father Charles Curran, testifying in his breach-of-contract suit against the Catholic University of America, said he was given what amounted to an assurance of full academic freedom in the years before he was barred from teaching theology because of his dissent from church teachings.

Taking the witness stand for the first time Wednesday, the theologian--who is a visiting professor at USC during the current academic year--said Catholic University’s responses to controversies surrounding him in the 1960s amounted to a guarantee of academic freedom.

During those years, Curran was vindicated after attempts to fire him as a professor of moral theology at the Vatican-related university.

Experiences Cited

“I always felt that the best living proof I had of my academic freedom rights were my experiences at Catholic University,” said Curran, a leading figure in American moral theology.

The question of whether Curran had prior assurances of academic freedom has emerged as a key issue in the trial under way in the District of Columbia’s Superior Court. The case has pitted Curran’s claims to academic freedom against the university’s claims to religious freedom.

In September of 1986, the university removed the priest from his teaching post after the Vatican declared that he was “neither suitable nor eligible” to teach as a Catholic theologian. The Vatican had condemned Curran’s liberal writings on issues of sexual ethics such as artificial contraception and homosexuality.

According to Curran, the university’s action removing him violated his contract as a tenured professor. But in testimony before the court, school officials said there was never any guarantee of unlimited academic freedom at the church university.

The case is complicated by the fact that there is no single document constituting Curran’s contract, and so his lawyers have built his legal claim to academic freedom on university policies, statements by school officials and past disputes involving the priest.

In one such dispute, the students and faculty at the university went on strike in 1967 to protest a vote by the board of trustees to fire Curran. The strike forced the trustees to reverse its action, in what Curran described as an affirmation of his right to dissent.

“It’s obvious that the strikes changed in many ways the attitudes and understandings” of the university in regard to academic freedom, Curran testified here.

A year later, Curran was the chief spokesman for more than 600 theologians who issued a statement opposing Pope Paul VI’s encyclical against birth control. The signers, including 21 theologians from Catholic University, declared that a person can use contraceptives and still be a loyal Catholic.

In the face of pressures by church authorities to discipline the signers, a faculty committee drafted a report supporting the right of the theologians to state their views. Curran called the report a “landmark admission that academic freedom existed at Catholic University.”

He said he believed the board of trustees “not only received it but approved it.” However, the university’s lawyers presented evidence indicating that the board agreed with parts of the report but did not adopt or accept it.

Of those incidents during the 1960s, Curran said: “I thought that academic freedom was a core and essential part of my contract and that it had been proved to the rest of the world.”

Another proof cited by the 54-year-old priest for his view that “there was academic freedom and I could dissent from church teaching” was the fact that his liberal views on sexual ethics were already well known when the university hired him in 1965.

“I have a right and obligation to teach, do research and communicate the the fruits of that teaching and research in accord with my competence in moral theology,” Curran argued.

However, preceding Curran on the witness stand, the president of Catholic University said academic freedom is respected by the school but is not considered absolute. For theologians, academic freedom has “ecclesial limits” including the need for “fidelity to and respect for the teaching authority of the church,” Father William Byron testified.

“Ultimately, it’s not a question of academic freedom. It’s a question of the free exercise of a religious community,” Byron added. He said the limits placed by the university on academic freedom “amount to an exercise of religious freedom.”

Later, Curran was asked by Judge Frederick Weisberg if he believed theologians are “required to give due weight to the Catholic magisterium,” which is the church’s teaching authority. Curran responded that he believes they are, but that ultimate judgment on a theologian’s competence rests with his or her academic peers, not with church authorities from the “outside.”

During the trial, which began Dec. 14, witnesses for the university have included Cardinal James Hickey of Washington, who serves as the university’s chancellor, and Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, chairman of its board of trustees.