The majority of Catholics shun both the far left and the far right positions in the church today.

Along the middle path, they seek leaders whom they can trust to guide and inspire them. Such a leader was the late redemptorist scholar, Fr. Bernard Haring, one of the preeminent moral theologians of this century.

In a book-length interview, "My Witness for the Church," readers will discover they've found more than a scholar; they've found a friend, both wise and compassionate. (Paulist Press, $14.95, 236 pp.) Haring was born on Nov. 12, 1912, the 11th of 12 children, 10 of whom survived childhood and were living when the book was published in 1992.

Haring says that his mother was an excellent housewife and wise educator, besides being generous with the poor.

His father was equally generous, but not as even-tempered as his wife, who advised him one day: "Johannes, your hand is too heavy. Leave the punishment to me, if any is needed." Johannes did just that.

After receiving his diploma in 1933, young Haring decided to join the Redemptorist Order, rather than become a diocesan priest, for he felt he would have need of the support and encouragement of the community in his ministry.

Shortly after ordination, Haring was asked to prepare to teach moral theology, not a subject to his liking, for he found it to be "an absolute crashing bore."

His professor told him, "We are asking you to prepare yourself for this task with a doctorate from a German university precisely so that it can be different in the future."

However, in September, 1940, Haring was drafted into the German army for medical service in France, where he celebrated Mass every Sunday, though pastoral work was forbidden to medics under threat of imprisonment.

It was in May, 1941, that Haring's division was deployed to Poland on the Russian border, where he began to hold Bible classes for Catholic and Protestant soldiers, as well as Polish citizens.

He was called to headquarters to answer for including the Polish people in the program, and he replied to his interrogators that what he was doing was no worse than the soldiers who were dancing with Polish women.

When the war with Russia broke out, Haring cared for the soldiers, as well as for the people in the village, and baptized the Russian babies in the Russian language.

He was able to persuade some German soldiers to help free Russian prisoners of war and to save many Jews, particularly Jewish women.

After Haring was taken into a Russian prison camp, a group of Poles freed him and made him their pastor.

The diabolical actions of German Christian soldiers during the war in the name of obedience forever affected Haring's thinking as a moral theologian.

He was determined that the core concept in his moral theology courses would not be obedience, but responsibility, the courage to be responsible, which is true obedience.

From 1947 to 1953, after completing his doctoral studies, Haring, with his teacher Viktor Schurz, spent his holidays with Catholic refugees.

Upon concluding that the people should be deciding the topics that flowed from their real life problems, fears, hopes and needs, Haring threw away the outlines of his first 15 sermons, so convinced had he become that "a responsorial pastoral work went hand-in-hand with a responsorial moral theology." 

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