“We are grateful to Archbishop Curtiss for severing ties with the Center, and especially for making the action public and thereby warning good Catholics away from serious scandal,” said CNS President Patrick J. Reilly.  “Hopefully Creighton University will take this opportunity to put the Center on the path to serious, faithful scholarship.”  

Last week Archbishop Curtiss ended the Omaha Archdiocese’s longstanding relationship with the Creighton Center because director Michael Lawler, also Professor Emeritus of Catholic Theology at the Jesuit university, co-authored an article in the June issue of U.S. Catholic magazine endorsing premarital sex and cohabitation for couples who plan to marry.  

But it was not the first time Lawler had been criticized as an advocate for Church recognition of divorce and premarital cohabitation.  Lawler also opposed Catholic teaching in April 2006 when he and Todd Salzman, a Creighton theology professor, wrote in The Heythrop Journal that “homosexual couples can engage in sexual acts that are natural, reasonable and therefore moral.”  

That article and complaints from CNS members prompted an October 2006 letter from CNS to Creighton President Rev. John Schlegel, S.J., with a copy sent to Archbishop Curtiss.  

Creighton University cannot be “taken seriously as a university committed to its Catholic mission when it allows students to be led away from the faith by dissident theologians,” CNS complained.  “Such outrageous activity is opposite to what a Catholic university should expect from genuine Catholic theologians, notwithstanding academic freedom.  Lawler and Salzman are responsible for their actions, but Creighton is responsible for presenting them as genuine theologians.”  

Last month CNS announced the hiring of celebrated author Dawn Eden to direct its Love and Responsibility Program, an effort to restore chastity as the cornerstone of campus life at Catholic colleges.