Category: Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the Jesuit Avery Robert Cardinal Dulles‘ entrance into life eternal. I pray for a friend’s solicitude but now from a different perch.

Yesterday, about 50 friends of Avery Cardinal Dulles met at
Fordham University Church to remember him before God on the occasion of his first anniversary of death.

Sister Anne-Marie Kirmse,
O.P., the Cardinal’s friend and administrative assistant, gathered us for Mass
celebrated by Jesuit Father Joseph McShane with the homily delivered by Jesuit
Father Joseph Leinhard. There were 17 concelebrants; three of whom were secular
priests (friends of Dulles’) and the balance were old Jesuits. Five of the
Cardinal’s Fairfield County Communio group (myself included) were present as the faithful remnant. As
was recognized, we all miss the Cardinal’s wisdom, affection and much
understated humor.

In his homily Father Leinhard focused our attention on the
moment by recalling Saint Augustine’s 9^th book of the Confessions where Augustine tells us of his mother’s passing
unto eternal life. In between her various states of consciousness and
unconsciousness Monica came to a see life anew. She called her sons together
telling them when she died to bury her body anywhere but to remember her before the Lord, wherever they may be.
As for Monica, so for Avery.

Why remember? Our thinking of Cardinal Dulles
is, as Fr. Leinhard said, wholly different than what went before. Remembering
Avery before God is not quite the same as reminding God who Avery was, just in
case God may have forgotten. What is important about Avery is not his
prestigious family, his education, his conversion to Catholicism, his entrance
into the Society of Jesus nor his ordination to the priesthood, not even his
ministry as a theologian nor his acceptance of the dignity of the Cardinalate.
What is important about Avery is encapsulated in the motto he assumed with the
coat of arms when given the cardinal’s hat by Pope John Paul II, Scio
Cui Credidi, I know whom I have believed.

The
reading from 2 Timothy 1 can be taken as Saint Paul’s last will and testament
as it is his answer to a question of belief: Christ has resurrected from the
dead and I have preached his gospel. For both Saint Paul and Cardinal Dulles
their lives deeply changed in making an act of faith in Christ for Christ
became the key to all understanding. 
In Dulles’ Craft of Theology,
the last sentence of chapter 1 speaks to his belief in Christ where he recounts
a vision of Christ in which we look past the “now” and look to Christ as the
center of all things.

At the altar of the Lord we pray for the dead following
the ancient Christian practice. In the Roman Canon of the Mass we pray that the
Lord will remember “those who have gone before us marked with the sign of
faith” granting them the blessedness (happiness) of light and peace. Our
liturgical prayer places hope in our hearts that those who sleep in the Lord
will have the victory over sin and death. Our confidence relies on the sign of
faith received in baptism, that which marks each person not with a pious sign but with indelible mark.

Our remembrance of Avery and of
every one of our beloved dead therefore, is brought home in the consideration
that not to remember is to consign our family and friends to oblivion is awful.
The Christian proposal is lux perpetua: light for the blind, peace for the will.

Eternal rest grant unto
Avery Cardinal Dulles, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his
soul and the souls of the faithful departed rest in rest. Amen.

A sentimental
remembrance of Cardinal Dulles was the hanging of a cardinal’s red hat and
tassels. No longer given by the Pope to cardinals, the red hat is occasionally
made for a cardinal and hung in his church by his family and friends. In New York’s Saint Patrick’s
Cathedral there are 4 cardinal hats hanging (but none since Cardinal Spellmen
are hanging there). The Archdiocese of Chicago did the same for Cardinal Joseph
Bernardin back in 1997. 

O God, Who was pleased to raise They servant Avery Robert Dulles to the dignity of the cardinalate, we beseech Thee, vouchsafe to admit him to the fellowship of Thine Apostles forevermore. Amen.

Recently, Fordham University’s Walsh Library, in collaboration
with one of Cardinal Avery Dulles‘ closest collaborators, Dominican Sister
Ann-Marie Kirmse, displayed many of the cardinal’s possessions. It brings together the many intimate things of Avery Dulles who died 12 December.

Our friend is finally resting in peace.

Avery Cardinal
Dulles, S.J., was buried on June 1 at the Shrine of the
North American Martyrs in Auriesville, NY. He died on December 12^th.
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated December 18^th at the
Cathedral of Saint Patrick by Cardinal Edward Egan.

Cardinal Dulles was the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of
Religion and Society at Fordham University since 1988. He was the first
American to become a cardinal without first becoming a bishop.

The Sacrifice of Mass celebrated by Bishop Howard Hubbard
for the soul of Cardinal Dulles at the Coliseum Church on the grounds of the shine. The
Cardinal received an escort by a pair of Naval officers, in recognition of
Cardinal Dulles’ military service during Second World War.

The Shrine of the North American Martyrs is the only one of its kind in the USA. There rests the Jesuit martyrs Saints Rene Goupil (1642), Isaac Jogues (1646), John Laland (1646) and others. New York Province Jesuits are buried in the cemetery at the Shrine.

Nearly 2 months after Cardinal Dulles’ death, the formal announcement of the endowed chair that honors the Cardinal is made at Fordham University. University President Father Joseph McShane made the “unofficial” announcement at the first Mass at which we prayed for the peaceful repose of the Cardinal.

It is hoped that a professor will be identified soon to hold the Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Chair in Catholic Theology.

Catholics and other members of the Christian community gathered at the Cathedral of
Saint Patrick to pray the Mass of Christian Burial for Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. with Edward Michael Cardinal Egan as principal celebrant and homilist. Cardinal Dulles was buried in the Jesuit cemetery in Auriesville, NY. Cardinal Dulles died at 90 years old on Friday, 12 December 2008.

Those in attendance at the Mass included the children of his eldest brother, John W. F. Dulles, and sister-in-law, Eleanor Dulles: John Foster Dulles II, Edith Dulles Lawlis, Ellen Coelho and Robert Avery Dulles. Likewise, longtime friends John Murphy and his longtime assistant, Sister Anne-Marie Kirmse, O.P., both of whom read the Scriptures.

Cardinals Maida, Keeler, George, McCarrick and O’Malley along with the Nuncios to the USA and the UN and scores of bishops and priests concelebrated the Mass; Benedictine Abbot and longtime friend Gabriel Gibbs also concelebrated the Mass. The Jesuits littered the crowd.

In his homily, Cardinal Egan recalled a crucifix he prayed in front of 50 years ago in a small rural church outside of Orvieto, Italy, while on retreat with seminarians studying in Rome. Egan connected a suffering and triumphant vision of Christ’s face. For him, and thus for us, the crucified Christ is a potent reality of our Christian life’s journey. The motif of the cross was apropos when considering the life of Avery Dulles who suffered at various times in his life (in health, in his early relationships with family & friends over his conversion to Catholicism) but he also experienced a sense of Christian hope in his relationships, academic endeavors and service and in his life as a priest. In terms of worldly success, tt was noted that Dulles published 24 books, soon to be 25 and nearly 800 published papers and talks; this after physicians told him that he would never write again. Cardinal Dulles “proved them monumentally wrong.” In Egan’s judgment: “You have the example of a triumphant life story, never matched, to my knowledge, by any other American Catholic.”

Avery Cardinal Dulles was 62 years a Jesuit, nearly 53 years a priest and nearly 8 years a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. He was the first American priest to become a cardinal but was not ordained a bishop. (In recent years new cardinals of advanced age have asked to be dispensed from the obligation to be ordained a bishop, at least this is true for Jesuits.) Dulles held The Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham since 1988.

Even in his infirmity Cardinal Dulles published his McGinley lectures in a volume edited with Fr. Robert Imbelli called Church and Society. Stay tuned, his last manuscript was sent Paulist Press and will be published under the title of Evangelization for the Third Millennium (Spring 2009).

On Wednesday, the president of Fordham University, Jesuit Father Joesph McShane, announced the creation of the new chair of theology honoring Cardinal Dulles.

See the NYTimes article.

May the angels lead you into paradise; May the martyrs welcome you upon your arrival, and lead you into the holy city of Jerusalem. May a choir of angels welcome you, and with poor Lazarus of old, may you have eternal rest.

Avery Robert Cardinal Dulles, S.J.

(1918-2008)

Requiescat in pace

Cardinal Deacon of the Church of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary on via Lata

In his own words, a small portion of Cardinal Dulles’ legacy is found here.

An extensive archive of Dulles’ thinking can be read at First Things, his journal of choice.

An appreciative essay by George Weigel.

The Fordham University tribute.

Fr. James Martin of America magazine has an essay about his friendship with the Cardinal.

The NY Times obit.

The Wiki article on the Cardinal.

Funeral plans:

In accordance with the traditions of the Church, the Cardinal’s death will be marked by the celebration of three Masses:

Tuesday evening 16 December at 7:30 p.m. in the University Church
Wednesday evening 17 December at 7:30 p.m. in the University Church
Thursday afternoon 18 December at 2 p.m. at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

The members of the University family are invited to join the Jesuit Community at each of these Masses.

In addition, the Cardinal’s family will receive visitors in the University Church on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m.