If the presence of a Roman Catholic priest at a historically Protestant university seems odd, the SMU community has not noticed. The University recruited Curran to campus in 1990 with the offer of a prestigious endowed chair, the Elizabeth Scurlock University Professor of Human Values, which allows Curran to teach across disciplines and gives him wide latitude to travel, lecture, and write. The 66-year-old moral theologian and ethicist, revered on campus for his scholarly reputation, is considered by fellow theologians to be one of the greatest moral theologians of the 20th century.

"Curran is certainly one of the leading teachers and scholars in Christian ethics in North America," says Robin Lovin, dean of SMU's Perkins School of Theology. "Through his many books and his work as a teacher, he has made a whole generation of Protestants more aware of Catholic moral traditions, and he has introduced Catholic scholars to a more ecumenical approach." Curran divides his time between teaching theology students at Perkins and undergraduate students in SMU's Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

In the same way that psychiatrists study human emotions, moral theologians like Curran study morality and ethics.

"There's a distinction between morality and ethics. Morality is what people do, how they live their lives. Ethics is what I call a second order discipline. You stand back to study morality systematically, reflexively, and analytically," he says.

Historically, the role of moral theologians in the Catholic Church since the 16th century was to train priests to hear confessions, to judge the gravity of sins confessed, and to decide whether to give absolution. This role began to change after the Second Vatican Council, a gathering of Catholic bishops that met from 1962 to 1965 to reform many of the church's approaches. By the time of Vatican II, Curran had received doctoral degrees in sacred theology from Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University and the Academic Alfonsiana, where he studied under renowned German scholar and priest Bernard Häring.

"Moral theology was just this narrow thing of preparing confessors for the sacrament of penitence," Curran says. "Häring wanted to make it much broader, to focus not so much on the sins as the fullness and holiness of Christian life. He showed us that there was a lot of tradition within the church for expanding the role of moral theologians."

The author or editor of more than 40 books on contemporary moral theology, Curran's career has paralleled profound social change in America, presenting him with new issues to reflect upon and analyze. Also during this time his dissident status thrust him into a leadership position, placing him squarely in the middle of many controversies that have beset the church.

In 1968, while a young priest teaching at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., he led a group of 600 Catholic theologians in opposition to Pope Paul VI's encyclical rejecting artificial contraception. The Vatican letter created a furor among Catholics and polarized the debate in the American church. According to The New York Times, to this day only 1 in 10 American Catholics agree with the church's ban on contraception.

Catholic theologian Charles Curran has found a home at SMU since 1990.

For his act of dissent, Curran came perilously close to losing his teaching position at Catholic University. Protests broke out across the campus in support of him. He remained under investigation for several years by Vatican officials, but continued to write and teach on contemporary moral theology, often dissenting from church authority on such contentious issues as contraception, divorce, and homosexuality. In 1986 the Vatican relieved Curran of his teaching position at Catholic University after he refused to recant his views on sexual morality.

Curran's approach to these moral questions is to consider them within the Catholic tradition, while taking into account individuals and their particular circumstances when determining the immorality of such acts. For example, Curran says that since homosexuals do not choose their sexual orientation, the church should make exceptions to allow for their desire for permanent and loving same-sex relationships. In the proper context, Curran also believes that divorced Catholics should be allowed to remarry, and he has argued against restrictive abortion laws.

"The biblical metaphor reminds us that the good tree brings forth good fruit while the bad tree brings forth bad fruit. The good person tends to do good actions. The moral person and the person's character and virtue are more significant for morality than the individual particular act," Curran says.

As Curran sees it, the fault lies with the Catholic church hierarchy, which he says has failed to come to terms with the new moral climate.

"Many Catholics have made their own decisions on these issues and I think that is in many ways good, but it still creates this situation where you have an official teaching here and a dissenting practice there, and a growing gap between them," Curran says. "I think it is an important Catholic issue that obviously has to be dealt with sometime."

Curran's latest book, The Catholic Moral Tradition: A Synthesis (Georgetown University Press), is a distillation of his life's work and, as one reviewer wrote, shows that Curran is still "deeply loyal" to a church that has often misunderstood him. The Catholic Moral Tradition explores the agreements, disagreements, and major changes in the faith tradition and contrasts these ideas with other approaches by well-known theologians and philosophers, both Catholic and Protestant.

Curran's new book is the lens through which he views the Catholic moral tradition. He starts with what he calls "stance," or the way in which an individual views all moral reality. To Curran, stance begins from the Christian perspective, or the belief in the mysteries of creation, sin, incarnation, redemption, and resurrection. Next is his "relationship-responsibility" model for morality, which sees the person "in multiple relationships with God, neighbor, world, and self." Finally, Curran discusses the norms and principles universal to morality, and gives special attention to the virtues that characterize Christians.

"I don't pretend I'm giving a complete catalog or explanation of these things, but I touch on the more fundamental and primary virtues that guide these different relationships," he says.

In addition to teaching and writing, Curran has served as president of three national professional societies: the American Theological Society, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Society of Christian Ethics. He also has taught at Cornell University, the University of Southern California, and Auburn University. Among his many honors and awards, Curran is the first recipient of the John Courtney Murray Award for Distinguished Achievement in Theology from the Catholic Theological Society of America, honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Charleston and Concordia University, and was the ABC News "Person of the Week" in August 1986.

Ethics professor William F. May, who served on the search committee that recruited Curran to SMU, says Curran is a "model University citizen," who always is willing to serve on committees and completes his work on time. Most impressive to May, however, is how unaffected Curran is by his fame.

"Charlie has an off-hand, matter-of-fact manner to him. He does not trail his impressive résumé behind him or push it in a wheelbarrow before him," says May, who also is an ethicist of national repute and the Cary M. Maguire Professor of Ethics, the other universitywide distinguished position at SMU.

In the classroom, Curran dresses in lay clothes and is addressed as "Professor Curran" by his students, not "Father Curran." Last year a University committee recognized Curran's contributions to SMU when it awarded him the annual Phi Beta Kappa Perrine Prize for Teaching and Scholarship.

"He embodies the ideal of the excellent teacher and the excellent scholar," says Bonnie Wheeler, associate professor of English and director of SMU's Medieval Studies Program.