Native nutmegger, Father David Tracy, 86, died on Tuesday, April 29, the feast of St. Catherine of Siena. He was a priest of the Diocese of Bridgeport, author, and professor. Father David is consider by many –and rightly so– to be an eminent Catholic theologian and distinguished professor at the University of Chicago. One of the groups Father David was a part of was Chicago’s Lumen Christi Institute, which he played a key role in its mission. As the director of the Institute said, “Fr. Tracy shaped the culture of the Institute, as he modeled intellectual friendship and the pursuit of truth across divisions.”
Kenneth Woodward writes:
David Tracy was not just a great theologian, though he was easily the most influential Catholic fundamental theologian of his era. He was that far more capacious figure, a great Christian humanist. The range of his reading matched the range of his thought and interest. He knew classical literature, much of medieval literature and a great deal of modern literature. And sociology. And science. In fact, these insights influenced many of his later essays and led him to the concept of “fragments,” which figures so importantly in his late essays. But he was also and always a priest nourished by both the celebrating and the receiving of the sacraments. He knew the hypocrisies that can infest both the church and the academy but it didn’t matter: he was thoroughly at home in both. Oh, and he wrote some of the longest, fruitful and stand-alone interesting footnotes of any writer I know.
A very interesting 2019 interview can be read here.
Having two graduate degrees in Theology I’ve read Fr David’s writing. I would say without exaggeration that Father David and Cardinal Avery Dulles are considered “deans of Catholic Theology in the USA.”
May Father David Tracy memory be eternal.
St. Augustine, pray for us.