Brian W. Harrison OS is an Australian-born Roman Catholic priest and theologian. Harrison is a prolific writer on religious issues and an emeritus professor of theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico. He speaks Spanish fluently. Harrison is also an associate editor of "Living Tradition", a publication of the Roman Theological Forum hosted by the Oblates of Wisdom in St Louis, Missouri, United States, where Harrison currently lives at the order's study center. The forum's website contains many articles by Harrison, including one of the very few serious theological analyses carried out so far regarding biblical and Catholic teaching on torture and corporal punishment.
Background and views
Harrison was baptised in a Methodist church and brought up in Presbyterianism. He spent a few years with a Lutheran mission in New Guinea, where he became a Roman Catholic in 1972. Harrison is doctrinally conservative. While opposing some interpretations of the Second Vatican Council allegedly made by progressive 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, in which he argues for the doctrinal continuity between Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Liberty 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. Harrison is also one of the fewyoung earth creationists among Catholics. However, he does not share the absolute geocentrism of other Catholic creationists such as Robert Sungenis. Harrison is also an 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. The papal legislation declared, in part:
Criticism
Sedevacantists have made rebuttals, claiming to refute the article A Heretical Pope would Govern Validly but Illicitly. Richard Ibranyi wrote against Harrison.
