Avery Dulles: Friend, Hero, Christian
Avery Cardinal Dulles's earthly life, which ended last week, was like something out of a Henry James novel. The scion of a fabled family--his father, John Foster Dulles, was Secretary of State under President Eisenhower--and educated at élite schools, he left his Presbyterian roots for the Roman church and, worse, the Jesuits. (Newsreels covered his 1956 ordination; the footage is now on Youtube.) During World War II, the young man joined the Navy, and won the French Croix de Guerre.
Dulles's conversion from agnosticism came during his undergraduate years at Harvard. As described in his autobiography, his turn to God was half in response to philosophical inquiry, half in response to noticing a tree in springtime, its little buds "in all innocence and meekness" following an unseen law that called to the student. His subsequent career as a Jesuit priest and theologian was, by all accounts, extraordinary. By the time of his death, he had written roughly 800 scholarly articles and 23 books; was considered the dean of American Catholic theologians; and was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II--the only American Jesuit ever to receive that honor.
Over the last ten years of his life, I was fortunate to come to know a serious scholar who did not take himself too seriously. In October 2001, I was asked to accompany the great man to Boston, where he would receive one of his many awards, at a fundraising dinner. Before we boarded the train near Fordham University in New York, where Avery taught theology, I asked how he felt about the accolade. "I haven't really done anything to deserve it," he said. What about the books, the articles, the lectures? "I suppose," he said, "But I still feel awkward."
We arrived in Boston with barely enough time to dress in the Jesuit community where we were lodging. "Come by my room when you're ready," he said. An hour later, I knocked on his door. When he opened the door he was resplendent in his cardinal's black cassock with red piping, and the grand ferraiolo, or scarlet cape. At age 82, Cardinal Dulles couldn't reach the lowest buttons of his cassock so I knelt down to help. "How do I look?" he said with a sly smile. "As my mother would say," I told him, "you look very handsome." His patrician bearing was evident no matter what he wore; that night, the lanky Jesuit looked like Cardinal Abe Lincoln.
The next morning we caught the 8 a.m. train back to New York. (His Protestant work ethic, undimmed by his Catholicism, opted for the earliest train we could make.) Back at Fordham, a few Jesuits asked how things were in Boston; the country was still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks. "People in Boston were upset that two of the planes that hit the World Trade Center came from Logan airport," I explained, relating what I heard the night before. Avery said, "How do you think I feel? One of them came from Dulles!"
That was one of the rare times he referred to that place, out of humility. Once, during a stay in Washington, D.C., a young Jesuit was assigned to drive Avery to the airport. He asked, "Which airport are we going to, Father? National or...?" Father Dulles said, "The other one!"
Given his lightheartedness, it seemed appropriate that, in 2001, during the Vatican ceremony when he was made a cardinal, Pope John Paul II placed the customary red biretta on Avery's head, and it toppled into the pope's lap. No one enjoyed telling that story more than the new cardinal. And he enjoyed recounting a tale from his Navy days, when as officer of the watch, he ordered his ship to fire on a German U-Boat in the Caribbean. When dawn came, Ensign Dulles realized that had bombarded a coral reef.
Avery was quietly generous to me, as to so many others. When I wrote about a topic I thought might prove controversial, Cardinal Dulles, in his late 80s, patiently read through a 400-page manuscript. He didn't have to tackle the whole thing, I explained, worried about the demands on his time. If he wanted, he could read only the part in question. "Of course I want to read the whole thing," he said. "How else will I understand it in its full context?" A few weeks later he sent a gracious note saying that all was in accord with "faith and morals." Later, in a phone call, he said the old teacher couldn't resist making a few minor corrections: Was I sure about the spelling of the name of St. Thomas Aquinas's mother? He signed off his calls with Naval precision: "Over and out!"
Avery was a model Jesuit. During a 2001 interview for America, he told me the he felt being a cardinal betokened a responsibility to accept more speaking engagements, even at his advanced age. The son of John Foster Dulles taught his friends what it means to be, in Jesuit lingo, a "man for others." Or, to use two old-fashioned words, what it means to be humble and kind. Or, in more common parlance, what it means to be a Christian.
James Martin, a Jesuit priest, is associate editor of America magazine and author of "My Life with the Saints."
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Cardinal Dulles could be the last of his kind
Earlier this month, Cardinal Avery Dulles died in New York. Dulles was one of the world’s pre-eminent theologians and intellectuals. His absence will be noticed in the public square.
His passing also marks the end of a very particular kind of American life. The Dulles clan was never quite royalty, but it was, in its way, an American version of the British nobility. Three of Avery Dulles’ forebears were secretaries of state. His father had an airport named after him, and his uncle was director of the CIA.
Dulles himself left Harvard Law School to serve in the Navy, where he was distinguished with the Croix de Guerre and also contracted polio. His early life looked something like the traditional upbringing of a young British gentleman. Yet Dulles took a couple of unexpected turns. A Presbyterian by birth, he was fashionably agnostic by the time he reached Harvard. In 1940, he converted to Catholicism. One must understand how radical this was at the time. The Dulles family was the epitome of elite, respectable Protestantism. Catholics were immigrants and laborers, viewed as suspect and perhaps un-American.
But Dulles eventually became a Jesuit and in 1956 was ordained a priest. That event made the front page of The New York Times.
Over the course of his time in the priesthood, Dulles often taught, and he wrote 23 books and more than 700 articles — products of a mind engaged with the world right up until the end. His last book was released in April.
Dulles’ body of work demonstrates an astonishingly lucid mind, linked to a gentle, charitable soul. He explored theological subjects, such as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, with the same careful inquisitiveness he brought to discussions of societal topics, such as human rights.
Dulles’ most lasting work involved the Second Vatican Council, of which he was an important interpreter and reconciler. It was a task he was born for. “I think of myself as a moderate trying to make peace between opposed schools of thought,” he explained.
Dulles’ particular gifts were grounded in a kind of intellectual modesty that barely exists anymore. He knew what he did not (and could not) know, and he placed enormous value in the sum of human philosophical achievement. “I do not particularly strive for originality,” he remarked toward the end of his life. “If I conceived a theological idea that had never occurred to anyone in the past, I would have every reason to think myself mistaken.”
This humble man became the most important American theologian of the 20th century, and in 2001 Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal — a rare elevation, since Dulles was not a bishop.
Into his 90th year, Dulles continued to inspire, even as his physical condition suddenly deteriorated.
The aftereffects of polio robbed him of his voice and began to paralyze him, forcing him to abandon his teaching duties.
In April, Pope Benedict XVI met privately with him to bless him and say goodbye.
Two weeks earlier, Dulles had delivered his farewell lecture at Fordham.
“Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils, but are normal ingredients in life, especially in old age,” the cardinal said. “If the Lord now calls me to a period of weakness, I know well that his power can be made perfect in infirmity.”
Faith and reason were never better met.
E-mail Jonathan Last at jlast@phillynews.com.
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From First Things
Avery Cardinal Dulles, 1918–2008
Friday, December 12, 2008, 10:58 AMWord has reached us that Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., died here in New York early this morning.
Created cardinal for his theological work by John Paul II, Avery Dulles was one of the great figures of the twentieth century: a theologian, an intellectual, a teacher, a writer, a lecturer, and a kind and gentle man.
In his long life, he wrote more than 700 articles and twenty-two books, and it is hard to imagine how anyone today can fill the roles he played in the Catholic world and American public life. As the disease that took his life progressed, his final months were a trial that took away his powers to speak, write, and move. But he seemed, in those months, to live even more serenely, more spiritually, and more beautifully. May God welcome him home.
Among his writings were many works for First Things, including:
Love, the Pope, and C.S. Lewis
The Church in a Postliberal Age
Religious Freedom: Innovation and Development
Catholicism & Capital Punishment
John Paul II and the Truth about Freedom
The Challenge of the Catechism
Historians and the Reality of Christ
Tradition and Creativity in Theology
Ecumenism Without Illusions: A Catholic Perspective
The Eve of St. Agnes—Green Bay, 2008
Avery Dulles, S.J.
August 24, 1918 – December 12, 2008
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Also recently departed: Bernardin Cardinal Gantin the dean-emeritus of the College of Cardinals -- the highest-ranking African prelate in the church's modern history - in Paris at 86.
From Rocco Palmo:
Yesterday was a national holiday in Benin, as thousands converged on a Cotonou stadium to attend the funeral liturgy for Cardinal Bernardin Gantin.
...
In Rome, the cardinal was mourned at a Memorial Mass held this morning at the Altar of the Chair in St Peter's. While the current Cardinal-Dean Angelo Sodano celebrated the liturgy, Pope Benedict emerged at its close to deliver the homily.
Remembering his close ally as a "friend and brother," the pontiff said that Gantin was "permeated with love for Christ," with a "typical humble, simple style" that made him "affable and ready to listen and talk to everyone."
A railway worker's son, Benedict said that "his personality, human and priestly, made for a magnificent synthesis of the qualities of the African soul with those of the Christian spirit, of the culture and identity of Africa and the values of the Gospel." Despite being, at age 38, the first native-born African archbishop and the continent's first son to assume a top role in the Roman Curia, the Pope said that Gantin never let the accolades get to his head, adding that the "secret" to his humility likely lay in "the wise words that his mother repeated when he became a cardinal... 'Never forget the little faraway village from which you came.'"
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