I’m not sure how I missed this, though part of it is that I had gone a week or two without checking the First Things website; his death last Friday wasn’t surprising, given that he was 90 years old and in poor health, but it’s still a loss for the church. As Joseph Bottum summarized his career,
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.
Bottum’s obituary of Cardinal Dulles expands this, and tells in brief the story of a remarkable life. It is a strange thing that the great-grandson of one Secretary of State (John Watson Foster), great-nephew of a second (Robert Lansing), son of a third (John Foster Dulles), and nephew of a Director of Central Intelligence (Allen Dulles) should become known not as a government official but as a Catholic theologian, but such was the mystery of God. A profound thinker and a man of grace both in his theology and in his life, he, like the pope who ordained him cardinal, represented the Roman church at its very best. Requiescat in pace, Avery Robert Dulles.
I hadn’t heard of Avery Dulles, but I recognize some of those family names. Not from any knowledge of the government officials you mentioned, but because I knew someone also connected with those families. I don’t remember the exact relationships, but the minister of the church I grew up in, Robert Lansing Edwards, was the son of Margaret Josephine Dulles – and on his father’s side was descended from Jonathan Edwards, as I remember. He wrote a book about his life (as well as a fascinating biography of Horace Bushnell, who had been a previous minister of the church), and told somewhat about those family connections.
Growing up, of course, I just knew him as Mr. Edwards.
That’s quite interesting. I may have to look that up.