Catholic theology owes John Noonan a debt of gratitude
Fr. Charles E. Curran | Apr. 27, 2017
The opening sentence of The New York Times' obituary of Judge John Noonan provides an excellent illustration of what a topic sentence should be. "John T. Noonan Jr., a federal judge and polymath who defied ideological pigeonholing on profound issues like assisted suicide, the death penalty, civil liberties and illegal immigration" died on April 17 at age 90.
As a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for 30 years, Noonan wrote 10,080 opinions. As a polymath, his primary area of academic interest was history, but his subjects included jurisprudence, philosophy, theology and canon law. Few people have ever achieved such academic prominence in so many different fields.
My relationship with Noonan came from his interest in and contributions to moral theology, especially in the beginning with regard to the question of contraception, which was such a burning issue in Catholicism in the mid and late 1960s.
Noonan had graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude at age 19 in 1946. He then studied at Cambridge and spent time in Rome and the rest of Europe, often taking in the Catholic culture of these areas. This experience confirmed his feeling that Catholicism was the largest intellectual force in his life, but that he had never really studied Catholicism and knew very little about it.
https://www.ncronline.org/news/theology/catholic-theology-owes-john-noonan-debt-gratitude
