John C. Ford, S.J.

August 9, 2017 marks the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki:

• "From 1937–45 [Father John C.] Ford [S.J.] was Professor of Moral Theology at his alma mater, Weston College ....In 1944 he published a forty-nine page article cogently arguing that the rights of the innocent were being violated by the obliteration bombing which the United States and the United Kingdom were even then conducting. In 1945, having mentioned in 'Notes on Moral Theology' the atrocities committed by the Soviets, Nazis, and Japanese, Ford spoke bluntly of 'the greatest and most extensive single atrocity in the history of all this period, our atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki'" (http://www.twotlj.org/Ford.html)

As per a 1996 article by Robert Aufill in This Rock magazine,

• Father Ford was "one of the earliest Catholic proponents of addressing alcoholism as a problem having spiritual, physiological, and psychological, dimensions. Ford said that alcohol addiction is a pathology which is not consciously chosen, but he rejected the deterministic idea that alcoholism is solely a disease without any moral component....Ford's contribution to AA was therefore twofold: He drew on both religion and psychology to show alcoholism as a synthetic problem requiring a synthetic remedy, and he took seriously the quasi-compulsive nature of addiction while rejecting both absolute determinism and the attendant pitfalls of a purely therapeutic approach....In so many ways, Ford's approach to addiction and recovery remains a model of spiritual discernment for our own time."

Dr. Germain Grisez collaborated closely with Father Ford, in defense of the Church's constant teaching on marriage and sexuality, including the absolutee exclusion of contraceptives. Grisez's position on contraception was explained by Russell Shaw in a 1996 Catholic World Report article:

• "In much over-simplified terms, the argument is this: The choice to contracept is a choice against the human good of procreation and as such can never be justified, since it is never morally right to turn one's will against a good of the person, not even for the sake of some other good...
• "From June 1965, on, Grisez collaborated closely with Ford on [so-called papal birth control] commission-related work....[After Humanae Vitae,] The Archdiocese of Washington, DC rapidly became a center and focal point for...dissent....Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle....called in John Ford to help, and Ford called in Grisez."

"the history of the way in which the Church has proposed the teaching on contraception clearly shows that the criteria for infallibility have been met" (John Ford, SJ and German Grisez, 1978)