Josef Fuchs (theologian)

Born 5 July 1912, Josef Fuchs was a German Jesuit priest, who taught at the Gregorian University in Rome for almost thirty years. In the 1950s, Fuchs's Natural Law and De Castitate were the standard texts for moral theology courses.[1]

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 was one of those who provided the foundations for the moral theology of the Second Vatican Council.[1] He 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.

Fuchs died in Cologne on 9 March 2005.[1]

• Christian Morality: The Word Becomes Flesh
• Moral Demands and Personal Obligations
• Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality

• Graham, Mark E., Josef Fuchs on Natural Law
• Traina, Cristina L. H., Feminist Ethics and Natural Law: The End of the Anathemas