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20 兩 L O YA L D I S S E N T the Roman Curia, the papal bureaucracy. I was quite pleasantly surprised by John XXIII’s opening address on October 11, 1962, which set a progressive tone by calling for an updating of the church, insisting that the council make no condemnations (previous councils and recent papal documents had been full of condemnations), and by disagreeing with the prophets of doom even among his own advisors. Yes, I am most grateful for and a strong admirer of Pope John XXIII. But, in a lecture after he died in 1963, I pointed out that the greatness of John XXIII was his openness and his growth. Frankly, I do not think he had a clear vision of what he expected from the council. Before his papacy and even during the papacy itself, he had shown many signs of a very conservative mentality. Vatican II rightly attacked the triumphalism in the church according to which the Catholic Church was holy, without spot, and in no need of reform . Ironically, it seems to me that to this day many liberal Catholics still suffer from a form of triumphalism. They want their heroines and heroes to be perfect, holy, and without spot. I thank God for John XXIII, but it is also much easier to inspire and start something than it is to complete it and put it into practice. In some ways, triumphalistic Catholics have tended to romanticize the papacy of John XXIII just as they have the presidency of John F. Kennedy. The seminary faculty of about fifteen priests was most hospitable to me, the youngest among them. A few even encouraged me in my own newer approach. I was invited to join a group of five to seven that regularly got together for a drink before the main meal at noon. The rector Msgr. Wilfred T. Craugh was not too happy with us, but I found this a most congenial and convivial occasion. In fact, I brought this good custom with me when I went to Catholic University. Despite the busy schedule, I began to write a bit. Father Robert McNamara , the professor of church history at St. Bernard’s, who was himself on the conservative side, also encouraged me to write, and in fact read and helped me with most of the things I wrote during my time at St. Bernard ’s. In November 1961 Father Godfrey Diekmann, the editor of Worship , solicited a long letter from me in defense of Häring’s Law of Christ. The reviewer in Worship had been quite negative about it, and Diekmann Beginnings 兩 21 wanted the readers to have a more positive impression of the book. In the spring of 1962 I wrote a twenty-three-page pamphlet, ‘‘Morality and the Love of God,’’ for the Paulist Press’s doctrinal pamphlet series. In the fall of 1962 Professor G. Ernest Wright of Harvard invited me to present a paper on conscience at the Roman Catholic–Protestant Colloquium to be sponsored by Harvard in the spring of 1963. This groundbreaking and historical conference was the first, and to this day probably the largest, ecumenical theological gathering of Protestants and Catholics in the United States. Cardinal Augustin Bea, the president of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, gave three plenary addresses. My first reaction to the invitation was negative. How could I, less than two years after receiving my doctorate, present a paper at such an august intellectual gathering? Professor Wright and Professor Frank Cross dismissed my hesitation. They definitely wanted someone to present a newer approach to moral theology, they said. They could get a good number of people to represent the older school, but they wanted someone representing the newer approach. They were convinced that I was the best person to do it. And so, on my twenty-ninth birthday, shaking with fear and trepidation , I gave my paper, ‘‘The Problem of Conscience and the TwentiethCentury Christian.’’2 Paul Lehmann, the noted Protestant ethicist, then at Princeton Seminary, gave the Protestant paper. My older peers were very supportive and did not try to take advantage of my lack of depth. Here for the first time I met many of the leading figures in Catholic intellectual life. About fifteen years later, the take-home exam for one of my courses in moral theology at CUA asked graduate students to write a ten-page critique of this paper. They never realized that the...

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