Avery Cardinal Dulles 1918-2008
"I think of myself as a moderate trying to make peace between (opposing) schools of thought. While doing so, however, I insist on logical consistency. Unlike certain relativists of our time, I abhor mixtures of contradiction."
Four days ago Avery Dulles, one of the greatest thinkers of the modern Roman Catholic church and perhaps its most distinguished representative in the United States, the "grand old man of North American theology", made his transitus to glory.
Born in New York State into a world of privilege, Protestantism, and stern New England duty; of elite boarding schools, Ivy League universities, weekends on sailboats, grand tours of European capitals, the house on Long Island, the summer place upstate, the Navy, the Government. Dulles's great-grandfather, John Watson Foster, had been President Harrison's secretary of state. His great-uncle, Robert Lansing, was President Wilson's. His father, John Foster Dulles, was President Eisenhower's. His uncle, Allen Dulles, led the CIA from 1953 to 1961. His aunt, Eleanor Dulles, was an influential State Department officer and Washington hostess.
Dulles described himself as an agnostic and materialist when he arrived at Harvard as an undergraduate in 1936. Even among the intellectual conversions of his generation, Dulles' own was curiously cerebral. As an undergraduate, he became increasingly convinced that Catholic philosophy offered more complete accounts of the world than other philosophical systems. Philosophy drew him to Theology, which in turn drew him to the Church. Still, intellectual acceptance is not the same as actually accepting faith.
In 1939, "one grey February afternoon" in Harvard’s Widener Library (according to his memoir, A Testimonial to Grace), "I was irresistibly prompted to go out into the open air ... The slush of melting snow formed a deep mud along the banks of the River Charles, which I followed down toward Boston ... As I wandered aimlessly, something impelled me to look contemplatively at a young tree. On its frail, supple branches were young buds ... While my eye rested on them, the thought came to me suddenly, with all the strength and novelty of a revelation, that these little buds in their innocence and meekness followed a rule, a law of which I as yet knew nothing ... That night, for the first time in years, I prayed."
Dulles died from the effects of polio contracted during the war.
Avery Dulles and our MA Course Director, Fr John Redford, were great friends from their student days in Rome. Fr John often regaled us with stories and said his friend used to delight in the fact that people rarely connected him to the famous family of that name. "Hey, cardinal," a journalist asked once, on his arrival at the Washington airport, "how does it feel to have an airport named after you?" He grinned, "It's named after my dad, actually." Fr John's impersonation of Fr Dulles was something of a John Wayne. Both men were tall (I think, Fr John is massive), and both with those carved, craggy features ... they must have made quite a pair in their heyday.
Fr John got the chance last year to go to the US to say goodbye to his friend. He found the cardinal bedbound and unable to speak, although managing to communicate through a nurse who understood the meaning in the movement of his fingers. At the end of his visit, Fr John requested, and received, the Cardinal's blessing. He was scooping his coat off the back of a chair when the nurse interrupted him with a hand on his arm, "Fr. John," she said, "he's asking for yours."
May he rest in peace.
Thomas
"I think of myself as a moderate trying to make peace between (opposing) schools of thought. While doing so, however, I insist on logical consistency. Unlike certain relativists of our time, I abhor mixtures of contradiction."
Four days ago Avery Dulles, one of the greatest thinkers of the modern Roman Catholic church and perhaps its most distinguished representative in the United States, the "grand old man of North American theology", made his transitus to glory.
Born in New York State into a world of privilege, Protestantism, and stern New England duty; of elite boarding schools, Ivy League universities, weekends on sailboats, grand tours of European capitals, the house on Long Island, the summer place upstate, the Navy, the Government. Dulles's great-grandfather, John Watson Foster, had been President Harrison's secretary of state. His great-uncle, Robert Lansing, was President Wilson's. His father, John Foster Dulles, was President Eisenhower's. His uncle, Allen Dulles, led the CIA from 1953 to 1961. His aunt, Eleanor Dulles, was an influential State Department officer and Washington hostess.
Dulles described himself as an agnostic and materialist when he arrived at Harvard as an undergraduate in 1936. Even among the intellectual conversions of his generation, Dulles' own was curiously cerebral. As an undergraduate, he became increasingly convinced that Catholic philosophy offered more complete accounts of the world than other philosophical systems. Philosophy drew him to Theology, which in turn drew him to the Church. Still, intellectual acceptance is not the same as actually accepting faith.
In 1939, "one grey February afternoon" in Harvard’s Widener Library (according to his memoir, A Testimonial to Grace), "I was irresistibly prompted to go out into the open air ... The slush of melting snow formed a deep mud along the banks of the River Charles, which I followed down toward Boston ... As I wandered aimlessly, something impelled me to look contemplatively at a young tree. On its frail, supple branches were young buds ... While my eye rested on them, the thought came to me suddenly, with all the strength and novelty of a revelation, that these little buds in their innocence and meekness followed a rule, a law of which I as yet knew nothing ... That night, for the first time in years, I prayed."
Dulles died from the effects of polio contracted during the war.
Avery Dulles and our MA Course Director, Fr John Redford, were great friends from their student days in Rome. Fr John often regaled us with stories and said his friend used to delight in the fact that people rarely connected him to the famous family of that name. "Hey, cardinal," a journalist asked once, on his arrival at the Washington airport, "how does it feel to have an airport named after you?" He grinned, "It's named after my dad, actually." Fr John's impersonation of Fr Dulles was something of a John Wayne. Both men were tall (I think, Fr John is massive), and both with those carved, craggy features ... they must have made quite a pair in their heyday.
Fr John got the chance last year to go to the US to say goodbye to his friend. He found the cardinal bedbound and unable to speak, although managing to communicate through a nurse who understood the meaning in the movement of his fingers. At the end of his visit, Fr John requested, and received, the Cardinal's blessing. He was scooping his coat off the back of a chair when the nurse interrupted him with a hand on his arm, "Fr. John," she said, "he's asking for yours."
May he rest in peace.
Thomas
