John Cuthbert Ford, SJ: Moral Theologian at the End of the Manualist Era

CHAPTER ONE: The Life and Career of John C. Ford, SJ

equally hard to imagine any senior moralist more influential than Fuchs in galvanizing cardinals and bishops to consider changing the teaching on birth control. In Fuchs’ Rome, Ford won; in Ford’s Weston, Fuchs won. Moreover, had Ford come to Cambridge in 1969 and taught in the Weston classrooms, in all likelihood he would have encountered ETS’s own moral theologian, Joseph Fletcher, the father of situational ethics, whose landmark book on the topic in 1966 eventually sold one million copies. What would Weston and ETS have been like in its first year together , if the “father” of Humanae vitae, who insisted on the absolute universal applicability of Church teaching on birth control, met the “father ” of an ethics that denied the universal and insisted on the radical uniqueness of the particular situation? Though Ford resigned from Weston with considerable anger and resentment , it is noteworthy that this is the first book about the work of a Westonfacultymember.Evenmoreironicisthatitsauthor,EricGenilo,SJ, was once a Weston student mentored by me, Josef Fuchs’s last student. In 1991, I succeeded SME and assumed the very teaching position held by John Ford at Weston. Contradictions and ironies are very much a part of John Ford. On the one hand, he was the most important American Catholic moral theologian to oppose the obliteration bombing of the Allies during World War II, to insist on understanding alcoholism more as a medical condition than a moral one, and to defend Catholics who believed in selective conscientious objection. On the other hand, he practically single-handedly constrained Pope Paul VI from changing Church teaching on birth control, routinely acted as censor of the “new moral theology,” and opposed any real ecumenical venture in theological education. Eventually someone would have to grapple with this legacy. Five years ago Georgetown University Press published Mark Graham ’s splendid account of Josef Fuchs on Natural Law in its Moral Traditions series. With this work, the study of that enormous period of debate and development in the life of the Church becomes certainly more complete and inclusive. It also becomes more reconciled, because Eric Genilo , a Filipino Jesuit, offers a deeply favorable treatment of John Ford. The fact that a Filipino, who very much loves the local context of his own nation replete with its distinctive casuistry, sympathetically captures the intransigent defender of universals should not be missed. x Foreword Ford might look at Weston Jesuit School of Theology today and see exactly what he feared: a mix of clerical and lay students trying to read ecumenically the signs of the times. He may also find in theological ethics today what he feared would happen, that inevitably followers of “the new morality” of Fuchs and others would see a need to find moral truth not only in the universal but also in the personal and the local. Still with Genilo’s work we can see that Ford very much belongs to the tradition, as alive and as diverse as tradition is. Though Ford labored to keep the tradition from becoming what it became, he has today his rightful place in it. With this book his legacy may finally enter more comprehensively into mainline theology. Perhaps in this, a certain reconciliation occurs not only between Ford and Weston but also on a larger scale between those who followed Ford and those who followed Fuchs. And in this, today’s moral tradition offers us much hope. —James F. Keenan, SJ Foreword xi This page intentionally left blank preface John Cuthbert Ford, SJ, was a major figure in the history of moral theology in the United States from the early 1940s up to the late 1960s. Contemporary references to Ford’s work, however, have been limited to his writings on obliteration bombing, contraception, and alcoholism. The absence of any comprehensive examination of his contribution to moral theology provides the rationale for this study of Ford’s writings and method as a moral theologian. The main documentary resource used for this study is Ford’s collection of personal papers. After his death in 1989, Ford’s papers were entered into the Archives of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus, located at Campion Center (formerly Weston College, in the town of Weston, Massachusetts) where Ford lived and taught for many years. In 1997, the New England Province Archives were relocated to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. Ford’s papers were processed...