The investigation that culminated last July in a letter from the Vatican to Professor Curran, criticising the distinction made by him and many others between ‘infallible’ and ‘non-infallible’ Church teaching and initiating his removal from his post at the Catholic University of America, has been one of the most hotly discussed events to have happened in the modern American Catholic Church, has been written about throughout the Catholic world, and has troubled many theologians. We are publishing this translation of an article by Bernhard Haring, ‘Moral zwischen gesetz und Lebensnot’ (which appeared in the German Church magazine Christ in der Gegenwart in August), because its author, who taught Curran in Rome and in March accompanied him to the Vatican for ‘informal dialogue’, has such a close knowledge of this theologian’s thinking, which in some places has been misrepresented. The text has been updated where essential.

Who is Charles Curran? And what was the ‘Curran affair’ about? Curran is a diocesan priest from the diocese of Rochester in the State of New York. He gained his Licentiate in Theology in Rome, at the Gregorian University, and took his Doctorate in Moral Theology in Rome, at the Academia Alfonsiana, where I taught for many years. I was one of his teachers but not his moderator. He wrote his doctoral thesis about Conscience and Intelligence according to Saint Alphonsus of Liguori (1696—1787). Like Alphonsus, but paying special attention to the human sciences, Curran set out to study conscience as challenged by the call to discipleship but as also influenced by clearly perceived values.