Josef Fuchs

Who was Josef Fuchs?

Josef Fuchs S.J. was one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century. A German Jesuit priest, he taught at the Gregorian University in Rome for almost thirty years. While serving on the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Birth from 1963 to 1966, Fuchs experienced an intellectual conversion on two levels: his understanding on the issue of artificial means of birth control within marriage and his understanding of natural law, appropriating the theological anthropology of fellow Jesuit Karl Rahner. This set the stage for Fuchs' work to achieve in moral theology what Rahner had accomplished in systematic theology. Fuchs chaired the Commission's majority report, only to have it rejected by Pope Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae Vitae. Fuchs' theology focuses mostly on moral objectivity.