From Condemnation to Conciliar Affirmation
Anna Terruwe, Sebastian Tromp SJ, and the Path toward a Renewed Fruitfulness of Affirmation
Introduction
The history of Anna Terruwe (1911–2004) and the Roman resistance to her work constitutes one of the most revealing cases of tension between psychology, moral theology, and ecclesial authority in the twentieth century. What was perceived in the 1940s and 1950s as theologically suspect appears, in the light of the Second Vatican Council, not only defensible but even anticipatory of a renewed personalist anthropology. This history unfolds in three decisive moments: condemnation, rehabilitation, and maturation, culminating today in the question of a renewed reception—particularly in the Netherlands—of a tradition that has flourished elsewhere.
1. Sebastian Tromp SJ and the Roman Theological Climate
A key role in the Roman resistance to Terruwe was played by the Jesuit Sebastian Tromp (1889–1975). Tromp served as professor of dogmatic theology and canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University and, from 1936 to 1967, as Secretary of the Holy Office (later the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). He acted as a highly influential theological advisor to Pope Pius XII.¹
Tromp embodied a strict neo-scholastic and juridical-dogmatic ecclesial paradigm, in which:
- sin and guilt were approached primarily in normative terms;
- affectivity and the emotional life were theologically secondary or suspect;
- psychological approaches to moral life were regarded as potentially dangerous.
Within this framework, morality was understood predominantly as a matter of will, law, and obedience, while emotional development and relational receptivity were scarcely acknowledged as autonomous anthropological categories.²
2. Why Tromp Opposed Terruwe
The resistance to Terruwe was not personal, but systemic. Tromp symbolized a theological climate unable to integrate three core intuitions of Terruwe’s work.
2.1 “The human person is good in his or her deepest core”
Terruwe’s anthropology began from the conviction that the human person is fundamentally good and grows toward maturity through affirming love. Tromp feared that such a formulation would:
- relativize the doctrine of original sin;
- undermine moral responsibility.
What remained insufficiently distinguished was the difference between ontological goodness and moral brokenness resulting from original sin. Terruwe did not deny sin; she denied that emotional deprivation necessarily implies personal moral guilt.³
2.2 Psychology as an anthropological key
Terruwe approached much morally problematic behavior as the consequence of emotional underdevelopment, caused by a lack of affirmation. For Tromp, this represented a shift from morality to anthropology, which he interpreted as:
- the psychologization of sin;
- a weakening of asceticism, penance, and discipline.
This conflict concerned not technical methodology but a fundamentally different understanding of the human person.⁴
2.3 Critique of repressive asceticism
Terruwe demonstrated clinically that excessive asceticism, scrupulous examinations of conscience, and compulsive practices of chastity could cause serious psychological harm, including scrupulosity and obsessive neurosis. Where she approached these phenomena diagnostically and therapeutically, the dominant Roman mentality often regarded them as signs of moral seriousness rather than clinical pathology.
3. The “Terruwe Case”: Disciplinary Measures without Doctrinal Condemnation
In 1956, this tension resulted in Roman disciplinary measures against Terruwe and her close collaborator Conrad W. Baars. Their therapeutic practice and publications were restricted, effectively amounting to a prohibition of their work.⁵
Crucially, this intervention:
- did not constitute a doctrinal condemnation;
- did not declare heresy;
- functioned as a precautionary disciplinary measure.
It reflected institutional distrust rather than a substantive theological refutation.
4. Rehabilitation: Alfrink, Paul VI, and the Conciliar Turning Point
From the early 1960s onward, the ecclesial climate changed profoundly. Through the intervention of Bernardus Johannes Alfrink, Archbishop of Utrecht and an influential Council Father, Terruwe’s work was reconsidered in Rome. Alfrink emphasized that her approach did not undermine Catholic doctrine but offered a necessary pastoral and anthropological deepening.⁶
Under Pope Paulus VI, the earlier restrictions were quietly lifted. Without public apology or formal declaration, Terruwe was again permitted to publish and practice freely. This silent rehabilitation reflects a broader theological transition rather than a merely personal vindication.
5. Vatican II as a Hermeneutical Key
Terruwe’s rehabilitation cannot be separated from the anthropological reorientation inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council.
Gaudium et Spes 22 affirms that the human person fully understands himself only in the light of Christ, the new Adam, who reveals humanity to itself rather than condemning it. Gaudium et Spes 24 further articulates this dignity in relational terms: the human person finds himself only through the sincere gift of self.
Likewise, Lumen Gentium 56–63 offers a Marian correction to a voluntaristic anthropology. Mary appears not as a model of moral performance, but as the human being who receives the Word in radical receptivity. Her fiat is grounded in received grace prior to moral action.
In this conciliar light, Terruwe’s theory of affirmation can be understood as an anthropological forerunner of Vatican II.⁷
6. The Mature Period: The Netherlands and Especially the United States
Following her rehabilitation, Terruwe entered a mature and fruitful period. While her work regained recognition in the Netherlands, it was especially in the United States that her thought achieved enduring institutional embodiment. There, her anthropology was not preserved as a historical curiosity, but transmitted as a living clinical and pastoral tradition.
The American continuation demonstrates that affirmation is not a transient theory, but a living tradition, carried forward through institutes, training programs, and therapeutic practices that further developed the personalist anthropology of Terruwe and Baars.
7. From American Vitality to Dutch Renewal: Pro-Life as a Locus
Within this context stands the contemporary theological-pastoral project of Jack Geudens, priest and occupational therapist. His aim is to reconnect the living American tradition of Terruwe and Baars with a renewed reception in the Netherlands, particularly within pro-life theology and pastoral care.
In this vision, pro-life is not reduced to ethical debate, but understood as a relational and healing praxis, affirming wounded life—before and after birth—in its intrinsic dignity. Affirmation is not construed as psychological self-validation, but as participation in the restraining and sustaining love revealed under the sign of the Cross.
Thus, the movement from condemnation to conciliar affirmation is not merely a historical narrative, but an ongoing ecclesial task: the integration of psychology, theology, and pastoral care in service of vulnerable life.
Footnotes
- A. Melloni, Il Sant’Uffizio nella prima metà del Novecento, Bologna 2000, 145–168.
- B. Häring, Das Gesetz Christi, Freiburg im Breisgau 1954, Introduction.
- A. A. Terruwe, De menselijke persoon en zijn gevoelens, Utrecht 1965.
- J. Ratzinger, Theologische Prinzipienlehre, Munich 1982, 389–392.
- C. W. Baars, Born Only Once, New York 1977, ch. 2.
- J. Bank, Katholieken in Nederland 1945–2000, Amsterdam 2002, 112–118.
- Gaudium et Spes 22, 24; Lumen Gentium 56–63.
Fr. Jack Geudens. Smakt (the Netherlands), 1-2-2026
