Austin, Texas, Oct 16, 2007 / 08:41 am
In Austin, Texas Bishop Gregory Aymond has objected to a planned lecture at St. Edward's University to be given by a priest who has previously been disciplined for dissent from Catholic teaching, the Associated Press reports.
The university invited Father Charles Curran, a professor of theology and ethics at Southern Methodist University, to lecture on Blessed Pope John XXIII.
The priest is controversial because in the 1960s he publicly dissented from Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, which upheld Catholic teaching forbidding artificial birth control. He has since questioned church teaching on homosexuality, premarital sex, euthanasia, and in-vitro fertilization.
In 1986 Pope John Paul II removed him from his teaching position at Catholic University in Washington, DC. Fr. Curran has also been prohibited from teaching in Catholic schools or to calling himself a Catholic theologian.