Brian Harrison (theologian)

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Father Brian Harrison OS, MA, STD, (born 1945) is an Australian Catholic theologian and a prolific writer on religious issues. He is an emeritus professor of theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico (1989-2007) and also an associate editor of "Living Tradition", a publication of the Roman Theological Forum hosted by the Oblates of Wisdom in St Louis, Missouri, where Fr Harrison currently lives at the Oblates' Study Center. The Forum's website contains many articles by Fr Harrison, including one of the very few serious theological analyses carried out so far regarding biblical and Catholic teaching on torture and corporal punishment. (Go to www.rtforum.org)

Harrison is doctrinally conservative. While opposing the incorrect interpretations of the Second Vatican Council allegedly made by Progressivists and Modernists, he also opposes what he considers excessive criticism of the actual texts of that council by some Traditionalist Catholics. His main published work is "Religious Liberty and Contraception" (Melbourne: John XXIII Fellowship, 1988), in which he argues for the doctrinal continuity (non-contradiction) between Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Liberty, "Dignitatis Humanae", and the earlier papal encyclicals on church, state and religious tolerance. He concludes that the kind of doctrinal development represented by "Dignitatis Humanae" does not, as some have claimed, set a magisterial precedent for more radical changes such as a hypothetical future papal reversal or mitigation of Catholic teaching against contraception.

He is also a forthright opponent of Sedevacantism and, in 2000, authored a tract entitled A Heretical Pope would Govern Validly but Illicitly. In this tract he based his argument on the 1945 legislation of Pope Pius XII concerning a papal election, Vacantis Apostolicæ Sedis [1]. The papal legislation declared, in part:

"None of the Cardinals may in any way, or by pretext or reason of any excommunication, suspension, or interdict whatsoever, or of any other ecclesiastical impediment, be excluded from the active and passive election of the Supreme Pontiff. We hereby suspend such censures solely for the purposes of the said election; at other times they are to remain in vigor."