Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ: A Model Theologian, 1918–2008 (review)

Although we scholars live exciting intellectual lives with our research and interaction with students, to the outside observer they look dull as dishwater—reading books, writing books, talking to small coteries of specialists like ourselves. We rarely make a splash in the public fora. In many ways, the life of Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., conformed to that stereotype, which explains why he told Patrick W. Carey that a biography of himself was a strange idea. As is well known, however, Dulles’s life deviated from the stereotype in a number of ways—his prominent family; his conversion; his special prominence in the American theological world where he sometimes lectured on currently controversial issues of general public interest; his much-discussed shift of theological perspective; and, finally, his elevation to the cardinalate as the only American theologian in history to receive that honor.

Thanks to Christopher Bellito of Paulist Press, who promoted the idea of such a biography, and to Carey, who brought the idea to such excellent conclusion, we can follow this unusual career in minute detail. Dulles’s life itself surely justifies a biography, but it is in this case also, as Carey develops it, the vehicle for a review of the American Catholic theological scene for the past half-century. The book has a value, therefore, beyond what its title might suggest.

After the main text, Carey provides an “Essay on the Sources” that runs ten pages. If reading the biography does not impress readers with the care and sheer diligence of the author, this essay will. Carey faced a daunting task for many reasons, but surely tops among them was the tidal wave of sources, written and oral (including interviews with the cardinal himself), that he had to master. There were, of course, sources that he could not examine, usually because of archives’ standard limits on access. He cannot, therefore, provide peeks behind the scenes to explain, for instance, what specifically prompted Pope John Paul II to single out Dulles for the cardinalate.

Dulles, even in his careful and generally understated way, was not an uncontroversial figure, about which Carey is fully aware. The author admits that he is in sympathy with the cardinal’s positions, but, good historian that he is, he proceeds with an even hand and abstains from judgment on the respective merits of Dulles’s positions and those with whom he came into conflict. Carey gives the latter “equal time” in expressing their opinions. He reports and analyzes Dulles’s positions, therefore, but does not subject them to a theological critique.

At the reception in Rome in honor of Dulles after the ceremony in St. Peter’s where he received the red hat, Richard John Neuhaus spoke “on behalf of his [Dulles’s] theological and professional colleagues” (p. 519) and compared him to Cardinal and Saint Robert Bellarmine, S.J., and Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman. Reputable theologians have compared him, more modestly, with Henri de Lubac, Yves-Marie Congar, and similar luminaries of the twentieth century (p. 521). The cardinal himself would have found even the latter comparisons exaggerated. They in fact do a disservice to the memory of a distinguished theologian and fine human being. Dulles is much better served by Carey’s appreciative yet sober biography.