John Courtney Murray

Early life and education

John Courtney Murray was born in New York City on September 12, 1904. In 1920 he entered the New York province of the Society of Jesus. He studied Classics and Philosophy at Boston College, receiving bachelor's and master's degrees in 1926 and 1927 respectively. Following his graduation, he travelled to the Philippines, where he taught Latin and English literature at the Ateneo de Manila.

Career

In 1930, Murray returned to the United States. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1933. He pursued further studies at the Gregorian University in Rome and in 1937, he completed a doctorate in sacred theology.

After his return from Rome to the United States just before the beginning of WWII, he joined the Jesuit theologate in Woodstock, Maryland and taught Catholic trinitarian theology. In 1940, Murray still fully supported the Catholic doctrine that there was no salvation outside the Church.

In 1941, he was named editor of the Jesuit journal Theological Studies. He held both positions until his death.

As representative of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and consultant to the religious affairs section of the Allied High Commission, he helped draft and promote the 1943 Declaration on World Peace,an interfaith statement of principles for post-war reconstruction, and successfully promoted a close constitutional arrangement between the restored German state and the Church, which included sharing of tax revenue with the churches.

By 1944, Murray´s endorsement of full cooperation with other theists led many Catholics to complain that he endangered American Catholic faith, who at the time, recommended minimal cooperation with non-Catholics for fear that lay Catholic faith would be weakened.

Similarly, Murray advocated religious freedom as defined and protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which contradicted Catholic doctrines of church/state relations before Vatican II.

Postwar reconstruction

While his background and training suggest a heavily theoretical bent, Murray became a leading public figure, and his work dealt primarily with the tensions between religion and public life. His best-known book, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (1960) collects a number of his essays on such topics

In 1951–1952, following a lectureship at Yale University, he collaborated on a project with Robert Morrison MacIver of Columbia University to assess academic freedom and religious education in American public universities. Ultimately, the proposal argued for tax aid to private schools and for sympathetic exposure of religious faiths in public schools. The project was both nationally influential and personally formative, as it deepened Murray's understanding of and esteem for American Constitutional law.

In his increasingly public role, several American bishops consulted Murray on legal issues such as censorship and birth control. He argued against what he saw as the reactionary and coercive practices of some Catholic bishops, instead advocating participation in substantive public debate, which he suggested offered a better appeal to public virtue. Instead of civic coercion, he argued, presenting moral opinions in the context of public discourse enabled Americans to both deepen their moral commitments and safeguard the 'genius' of American freedoms.

From 1958 to 1962 he served at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, applying just war criteria to Soviet-U.S. relations.

Tensions with the Vatican, 1954

Murray eventually argued, that Catholic teaching on church/state relations was inadequate to the "moral functioning" of contemporary peoples. The Anglo-American West, he claimed, had developed a fuller truth about human dignity, namely the responsibility of all citizens to assume "moral control" over their own religious beliefs, wresting control from paternalistic states. For Murray this truth was an "intention of nature" or a new dictate of natural law philosophy.

Murray’s claim that a "new moral truth" had emerged outside the church led to conflict with Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, pro-secretary of the Vatican Holy Office. In 1954, the Vatican demanded, that Murray cease writing on religious freedom and stop publication of his two latest articles on the issue.

The Second Vatican Council, 1963

In spite of his silencing, Murray continued to write privately on religious liberties and submitted his works to Rome, all of which were rejected.

In 1963, he was invited to the second (but not the first) session of the Second Vatican Council in which he drafted the third and fourth versions

In 1965 this eventually became the council's endorsement of religious freedom Dignitatis humanae personae. After the council, he continued writing on the issue, claiming that the arguments offered by the final decree were inadequate even if the affirmation of religious freedom was unequivocal.

In 1966, prompted by the Vietnam War, he was appointed to serve on Lyndon Johnson's presidential commission which reviewed Selective Service classifications. He supported the allowance of a classification for those opposed on moral grounds to some (though not all) wars — a recommendation which the Selective Service Administration did not accept.

Murray then turned to questions of how the Church might arrive at new theological doctrines. If Catholics were to arrive at new truths about God, he argued, they would have to do so in conversation "on a footing of equality" with non-Catholics and atheists. He suggested greater reforms, including a restructuring of the Church, which he saw as having overdeveloped its notion of authority and hierarchy at the expense of the bonds of love that had from the start defined the authentically Christian life.

Death

In August 1967, Murray died of a heart attack in Queens, New York, one month before his 63rd birthday.