Josef Fuchs SJ (1912–2005) was a German Roman Catholic theologian and Jesuit priest of the 20th century.
Born 5 July 1912, Josef Fuchs was a German Jesuit priest, who taught at the Gregorian University in Rome for almost thirty years.
[citation needed] 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.
[citation needed] Fuchs chaired a theological commission on contraception, the majority report of which was rejected by Pope Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae vitae.
[1] Deacon James Keating, conversely, sees Fuchs's views as conflicting with key points of Pope John Paul II's moral theology, and Keating stated in 2004 that he expected Fuchs's influence on future moral theologians to be minor.