Catholic theologian who promoted more progressive sexual ethics

Born: June 20, 1923;

Died: October 18, 2017

GREGORY Baum, who has died aged 94, was one of the most influential, and sometimes controversial, Catholic theologians of the 20th century. A former Augustinian priest, he was a participant in the Second Vatican Council and as a theologian, sociologist, professor, author and journalist, he promoted inter-religious dialogue and more progressive sexual ethics in the Church.

He later embraced many social movements supporting the marginalised, including people of colour, Palestinians and French-speaking Canadians. However, his progressive views on contraception, celibacy, same-sex marriage and other issues also prompted criticism within the Church, as did his disclosure of his first homosexual experience at the age of 40 in his 2016 autobiography, The Oil Has Not Run Dry.

In the book, Baum reveals that he was 40 years old when he had his first sexual encounter with a man. "I met him in a restaurant in London," he wrote. "This was exciting and at the same time disappointing, for I knew what love was and what I really wanted was to share my life with a partner.”

He wrote that he considered resigning from the priesthood but did not go through with the formality. He later married a divorced ex-nun who he says “did not mind that, when we moved to Montreal in 1986, I met Normand, a former priest, with whom I fell in love.” Normand, he wrote, “is gay and welcomed my sexual embrace.”

Born to a Jewish mother and Protestant father in 1923 in Berlin, Baum was a passenger on the kindertransport to Canada to escape the Nazis at the age of 17.

Inspired by St Augustine's Confessions, Baum became a Catholic in 1946, joined the Augustinians in 1947 and was ordained a priest in 1954. Before his theological studies, he had earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from McMaster University in Canada in 1946 and a master's in mathematics at Ohio State University in 1947.

He taught theology and sociology at St Michael's College at the University of Toronto until 1995. He then studied sociology at the New School for Social Theory in New York and joined the religious studies faculty at McGill University in Montreal. After his retirement from teaching, he joined the Jesuit Centre Justice et Foi (Centre of Justice and Faith) in Montreal, where he served as an associate researcher and contributor to its magazine, Relation. "He was very sensitive to all kinds of injustice," said Élisabeth Garant, director of the centre. "He always thought that his life ought to be dedicated to those who were suffering."

He came to Scotland in 1974 at the invitation of James Armstrong, of the Scottish Catholic Renewal Movement, and spoke at meetings in Glasgow and Stirling. He took part in debates with Professor William Barclay, the noted Church of Scotland theologian, and Professor Enda McDonagh from Ireland. He wrote a column for the Scottish ecumenical magazine Open House. Baum went on to speak in Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol as part of a programme of events in which Europe’s most distinguished theologians, including Karl Rahner, Hans Hung and Edward Schillebeeckx, took part.

Baum maintained that the Council was the most powerful spiritual experience of his life and that bishops and theologians "were open to new ideas, and that people were anxious to make Christianity and the Gospel understandable to people today. Great things happened. The whole Catholic community was in dialogue with another. Therefore, there was a kind of openness."

Baum was the author of more than 20 books, including That They May Be One (1958), Religion and Alienation (1975), Theology and Society (1986) and Signs of the Times: Religious Pluralism and Economic Injustice (2008). In 1962, he founded the journal The Ecumenist; he edited it until 2004.

Baum once described the post-Vatican II years as a "kairos time" full of optimism. "But this period seems to be over," he said at a talk in 1992 in which he opposed the Gulf War. "I argue we no longer live in this kairos; we live in the wilderness — a time of moaning and sadness yet hope that God has not deserted us."

By 2011, Baum said he was worried that Vatican II had been put in a deep freeze, having written a paper in 2010 titled, The Forgotten Promises of Vatican II. He had called for a "rethinking of the role of sexuality and the role of sex in the context of marriage" by the church in a talk to New Ways Ministry in 2002.

Baum had been a supporter of Pope John II's social justice teaching, including his concept of "structural sin," but was ambivalent about other aspects of his papacy, including his leadership style. He disagreed with Pope Benedict XVI on many issues but still praised him as "a great theologian with imagination."

Baum was said to have been optimistic about Pope Francis. "The church has to first of all preach the good news, this is at the core," he said. "The other issues, though they may be important, have to be secondary."

BILL HEANEY