John C. Ford

John Cuthbert Ford (December 20, 1902 - January 14, 1989) was an American Catholic moral theologian. His work was widely relied upon by Catholics in the twentieth century for guidance on a wide range of moral questions. He was a professor of moral theology at Weston College in Massachusetts for much of his career, but also taught at Boston College, the Gregorian University in Rome and Catholic University of America. He is best remembered for his role in the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Birth Rate during the 1960s; he helped draft a minority report for this commission which stayed closer to traditional Catholic teaching than the majority report, and Pope Paul VI mostly relied on the minority report when he issued the encyclical Humanae vitae in 1968. Ford also is well known for condemning Allied "obliteration" bombing against Germany a year before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for his support for Alcoholics Anonymous. especially since the same moral debate became more intense when nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just a year after Ford's article was published.

Alcoholics Anonymous Ford personally struggled with alcoholism early in his life, and his recovery, helped by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), led to his attending the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies in 1948.