The Legacy of Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.: His Words and His Witness
Kirmse
In his nearly 50-year career teaching philosophy and theology at Fordham and other distinguished universities, Avery Cardinal Dulles wrote and traveled extensively, writing 25 books and more than 800 articles, book reviews, forewords, introductions, and letters to the editor, translated into at least 14 languages and distributed worldwide. This work serves as a companion to the previous volume of McGinley Lectures, published as Church and Society (Fordham, 2008), and also provides an independent research guide for scholars, theologians, and anyone interested in American Catholicism in the decades immediately before and following the Second Vatican Council.
From his poems and reflections composed in prep school, where he first crossed paths with John Fitzgerald Kennedy (with whom he would graduate from Harvard in 1940), to a private meeting in his last days arranged at Pope Benedict XVI’s personal request, the book explores a theological topography that includes truly monumental figures and events of the modern era. As the product of perhaps the most influential American Catholic theologian in history, Dulles’s writings continue to inspire and shape the way theology has been studied and practiced in academic institutions throughout the United States and the world.
Having worked closely with Cardinal Dulles, the editors have compiled an exhaustive bibliography of his works and have included a series of essays that shed light on the twilight of his life, one that intersects with ecclesiastical, theological, philosophical, and political leaders of every stripe and worldview. Contributions include Dulles’s farewell lecture as McGinley Professor of Religion and Society with a stirring response by Robert Imbelli; a reflection on the cardinal’s last days by longtime research assistant Anne-Marie Kirmse, O.P.; and the moving homily given at his funeral by Edward Cardinal Egan. The book also chronicles Cardinal Dulles’s relationship with Fordham University, where he began his academic career as a Jesuit regent, teaching philosophy (1951–53), and where, for the last twenty years of his life, he held an endowed chair named in honor of a former president of Fordham, Laurence J. McGinley, S.J. This text will serve as a liminal passageway into the splendid mansion of Dulles’s thought for theologians, scholars, believers, and all thinking men and women of goodwill.
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Reviews for The Legacy of Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.: His Words and His Witness
-Father Leo J. O'Donovan, S.J. President Emeritus, Georgetown University "In this companion volume to Church and Society, the editors have provided the great service of presenting the most comprehensive bibliographical guide available to the breadth and richness of the thought of Avery Cardinal Dulles. What is more, the volume offers indispensible sources of insight into his final days, bearing witness to a man whose thinking bore fruit in life and in death, a very good fruit born of a lifelong unity of purpose and desire to be conformed to Life Itself given in the Person of Christ, the True Head of the Church, and the whole of the human family. One could not imagine a more fitting memorial to the life of this exemplary Jesuit priest and traveler on the Way charted for us by the Lord Jesus."
-Gary Culpepper Providence College "This collection of bibliography, homilies, and reflections on Avery Dulles fills out the extraordinary legacy of American Catholicism's most accomplished theologian. It also reminds admirers of the Cardinal's work that the vocation of theology can be a path of holiness and highest intellectual rigor."
-Father James Massa United States Conference of Catholic Bishops "Like the work of Dulles himself, this volume's primary appeal may not be as much in its purely original content as in the way it creatively organizes, edits, and presents material that can be difficult to grasp at first." -First Thoughts "... A fitting memorial to this great man..." -The Chesterton Review "This work serves as a companion to the previous volume of McGinley Lectures, published as Church and Society (Fordham 2008), and also provides an independent research guide for scholars, theologians, and anyone interested in American Catholicism in the decades immediately before and following the Second Vatican Council." -American Catholic Studies Newsletter