Roman Distrust, the Conciliar Turning Point, and the Enduring Power of Affirmation

Introduction

The history of Anna Terruwe (1911–2004) and the Roman resistance to her work belongs among the most revealing examples of the tensions between psychology, moral theology, and ecclesial authority in the twentieth century. What in the 1940s and 1950s was perceived as theologically suspect appears, in the light of the Second Vatican Council, not only defensible but even anticipatory of a personalist reorientation of Catholic anthropology. This history unfolds in three decisive moments: condemnation, rehabilitation, and maturation—culminating today in an urgent question concerning renewed reception in the Netherlands.

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 was professor of dogmatic theology and canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University and served as secretary of the Holy Office (later the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) from 1936 to 1967. He also acted as an influential theological adviser to Pope Pius XII.¹

Tromp represented a strictly neo-scholastic and juridical-dogmatic ecclesial outlook in which:

• sin and guilt were approached primarily in normative terms;
• affectivity and emotional life remained theologically underdeveloped or suspect;
• psychological approaches to morality were regarded as risky.²

Within this paradigm, morality was understood chiefly as a matter of will, norm, and obedience, while emotional development and relational receptivity were scarcely acknowledged as independent anthropological categories.

2. Why Tromp Opposed Terruwe

The resistance to Terruwe was not primarily personal but systemic. Tromp embodied a theological climate that struggled with three core intuitions central to Terruwe’s work.

2.1 The Human Person Is Good at the Core

Terruwe began from the conviction that the human person is good in his or her deepest being and matures through affirming love. Tromp feared that such language would (a) relativize the doctrine of original sin and (b) undermine moral responsibility. What remained insufficiently distinguished in this criticism was the difference between the ontological goodness of the human person and moral brokenness as a consequence of original sin. Terruwe did not deny the doctrine of sin; she did, however, reject the assumption that emotional damage automatically implies personal guilt.³

2.2 Psychology as an Anthropological Key

Terruwe frequently interpreted morally problematic behavior as the result of emotional underdevelopment caused by a lack of affirmation. For Tromp, this represented a shift from morality to anthropology, which he interpreted as a psychologization of sin and a threat to asceticism, penance, and discipline. The tension concerned not methodological details but a fundamental divergence in anthropological vision.⁴

2.3 Critique of Repressive Asceticism

Terruwe demonstrated clinically that excessive asceticism, rigid examinations of conscience, and compulsive chastity practices could cause serious psychological harm, including scrupulosity and obsessive–compulsive disorders. Where she approached these phenomena diagnostically and therapeutically, the Roman climate of the time tended to regard them as signs of moral seriousness rather than clinical pathology.⁵

3. The “Terruwe Case”: Disciplinary Intervention Without Doctrinal Condemnation

In 1956, this field of tension led to Roman intervention against Terruwe and her close collaborator Conrad W. Baars. Their therapeutic practice and publications were restricted; effectively, a ban on therapy was imposed.⁶

Decisively important is the fact that this intervention:

• did not constitute a doctrinal condemnation;
• did not establish heresy;
• took the form of a disciplinary precautionary measure.⁷

The issue, therefore, was less an explicit theological debate than an act of mistrust toward a novel anthropological approach, enforced through administrative means.

4. Rehabilitation: Alfrink, Paul VI, and the Conciliar Turn

From the early 1960s onward, the ecclesial climate changed profoundly. Through the efforts of Bernardus Johannes Alfrink, the Terruwe case was brought back into consideration. Alfrink emphasized that Terruwe’s work did not undermine Catholic doctrine but offered a necessary pastoral deepening.⁸

Under Paul VI, the earlier restrictions were effectively lifted. Without public rectification, Terruwe was again given room to publish and to work. This quiet rehabilitation reflects a theological shift more than a merely personal vindication.

5. Intermezzo – What Was Truly at Stake?

Roman resistance to Terruwe cannot be explained by a single motive. It gains clarity only when one considers the convergence of power structures, anthropological conflicts, and disciplinary governance. That Terruwe was a woman was not a marginal factor. Her being a woman—and simultaneously a lay psychiatrist—functioned within a strongly clerical system as a strategic point of vulnerability, precisely because she treated numerous priests, religious, and seminarians.

5.1 The Fastest Administrative Lever: Woman + Clergy

Reconstruction of the affair reveals not an initial doctrinal condemnation but a disciplinary intervention: no referral of clergy to a “female psychiatrist,” no treatment of (semi-)clerics by female psychiatrists or psychotherapists.⁹
This does not say, “the content is refuted,” but rather, “this channel is closed.”

Thus, gender was not a trivial side issue but a concrete vector of power. In a culture where (a) sexuality and confession/pastoral care were hyper-sensitive, and (b) priestly formation was seen as fragile and in need of protection, the phrase “female therapist” functioned as a ready-made alarm signal. The measure was both morally defensible and administratively effective.

5.2 The Deeper Conflict: Moral Theology versus Psychological Causality

Beneath this administrative layer lay a more fundamental conflict. The sharpest suspicion did not concern “affirmation” as such, but fear of situation ethics and the psychologization of sin. When, in cases of neurosis, scrupulosity, or compulsive disorders, strict application of moral norms is temporarily suspended in order to dismantle fear and guilt and restore inner freedom, guardians of the norm easily perceive a threat to the universal validity of morality.⁶
Rumors of “immoral advice” functioned in this climate as moral detonators—even when they were more fuel than evidence.

Here lies the nerve center: Terruwe relabeled certain “sinful” behaviors not primarily as moral failure but as symptoms of fear, emotional underdevelopment, and lack of affirmation. Healing meant the restoration of inner freedom so that reason and will could once again truly govern. For a strictly voluntarist and juridical moral framework, this constituted a threat, because it shifted priority from norm enforcement to anthropology and healing.⁴

5.3 What Battle Was Tromp Fighting?

On the basis of publicly available sources, a threefold struggle emerges:

• Anti-relativism / anti–“situation ethics”: biographical reconstructions report that Tromp assessed Terruwe and Baars as covertly Freudian and proponents of situation ethics—precisely the labels the Holy Office used at the time to police boundaries.⁶
• Curial authority struggle: control of renewal: Tromp served as consultor and qualificator of the Holy Office and was closely associated with Alfredo Ottaviani; during Vatican II he played a central role in preparatory schemas and commission work.¹⁰ This reflects a habitus of distrust toward “new languages” (psychology, clinical causality, pastoral casuistry) when not tightly controlled doctrinally.
• Formation and sexuality anxiety in priestly contexts: the case involved priests, religious, and seminarians; thus, for Rome it was not merely psychotherapy but priestly identity + celibacy + confessional culture + scandal risk. In such a field, banning female therapists was both morally plausible and administratively efficient.⁹

5.4 So: “Because She Was a Woman”?

Partly: yes—but as a means, not as the full cause.

• As a means, the motif of the “female psychiatrist” is demonstrably present in language and measures.⁹
• As a cause, the driving force remains the anthropological conflict: sin and norm versus fear and healing, combined with fear that pastoral flexibility would lead to erosion of norms.⁴

The sharpest formulation, without caricature, is therefore:
The system could act against her because she was a woman; the system wanted to act against her because her therapy reordered power over guilt, asceticism, and conscience.

5.5 Disciplinary, Not Doctrinal—and Therefore Conciliairly Readable

That no doctrinal condemnation but a disciplinary precautionary measure was taken confirms this analysis: monitum, warning, and closure of channels rather than formal declaration of “heresy.”⁷ This is precisely what makes a conciliar rereading persuasive: Vatican II reveals that the conflict was essentially about which anthropology undergirds morality—and who holds primacy therein.

6. Vatican II as the Key to Rereading

Terruwe’s rehabilitation cannot be separated from the anthropological reorientation of Vatican II. Gaudium et Spes 22 states that the human person fully understands himself only in the light of Christ, the new Adam, who does not condemn humanity but reveals humanity to itself. Gaudium et Spes 24 deepens this dignity relationally: the human person finds himself through the sincere gift of self.

Lumen Gentium 56–63 likewise offers a Mariological correction to a voluntarist anthropology. Mary appears not as a model of moral performance but as the human being who, in radical receptivity, receives the Word: her fiat is 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.¹¹

7. The Mature Period: The Netherlands and Especially the United States

After her rehabilitation, Terruwe entered a mature and fruitful period in which her work regained appreciation in the Netherlands and Belgium but found lasting institutional anchoring above all in the United States. There, her thought was not preserved as a museum piece but transmitted practically in clinical and pastoral contexts. This continuation demonstrates that affirmation is not a passing theory but a living tradition, sustained by training programs and practices that further developed the personalist anthropology of Terruwe and Baars.¹²

8. From American Vitality to Dutch Reappropriation: Pro-Life as Locus

Against this background stands the contemporary theological-pastoral project of Jack Geudens, priest and occupational therapist: consciously linking the living American tradition of Terruwe and Baars with a renewed reception of their thought in the Netherlands, particularly within pro-life reflection and pastoral practice. In this approach, pro-life is not reduced to ethical debate but understood as a relational and healing praxis, in which wounded life—before and after birth—is reaffirmed in its intrinsic dignity. Affirmation thus appears not as psychological self-validation but as participation in restraining and sustaining love under the sign of the Cross.

Thus, the movement from condemnation to conciliar affirmation marks not only a historical trajectory but a contemporary task: the integration of psychology, theology, and pastoral practice in service of vulnerable life.