Jeremy Lott reviews Fr. Charles Curran’s autobiography:

Read it – (the review, that is). Good stuff, and one pities Lott for having to take on the book. What’s interesting is Curran admitting that he and his supporters worked very hard to keep procedural, rather than substantive issues at the fore in regard to his position at Catholic University and as a Catholic theologian:

After the CDF contacted Curran in 1979, he stalled and tried again to play the procedural card. The initial letter was accompanied by 16 pages documenting the “errors and ambiguities” in his writing and a request that he reply to them in the next month. When he did get around to responding, Curran again “pointed out the serious flaws in the [CDF’s examination] process,” claiming that the “procedure violates the basic principles of justice in that it does not recognize the right of the accused to hear specific charges, to know who are the accusers, to have a copy of all the files against one, and to have representation of one’s own choice.”

The exchange continued in the same vein, with the CDF trying to wring answers out of Curran, and with the professor continuing to lecture them about the unfairness of the process. At one point, an officer of the CDF wrote to Chancellor Hickey to ask if he could please find some way to hurry Fr. Curran along. I don’t know how to adequately convey to readers how tedious the back-and-forth is except to say that reading about this episode made me pine for martial law.

And although the review frames the story in terms of the "decline of liberal Catholicism" – one can’t help but wonder , considering the little nugget at the end of the review –  what helped set the stage in the first place.