Avery Cardinal Dulles, 1918—2008

Word has reached us that Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., died here in New York early this morning.

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.

Among his writings were many works for First Things , including:

The Freedom of Theology

Who Can Be Saved?

Saving Ecumenism from Itself

God and Evolution

Love, the Pope, and C.S. Lewis

From Ratzinger to Benedict

The Covenant With Israel

Mere Apologetics

The Deist Minimum

The Rebirth of Apologetics

The Church in a Postliberal Age

True and False Reform

The Population of Hell

Passionate Uncertainty

Religious Freedom: Innovation and Development

Catholicism & Capital Punishment

The Future of the Papacy

What Price Reform?

Can Philosophy Be Christian?

Two Languages of Salvation

Witness to the Witness

Evangelical and Catholic

Should the Church Repent?

Problems of Ecclesiology

The Ways We Worship

Evangelizing Theology

John Paul II and the Truth about Freedom

The Challenge of the Catechism

Historians and the Reality of Christ

Tradition and Creativity in Theology

Ecumenism Without Illusions: A Catholic Perspective

The Eve of St. Agnes¯Green Bay, 2008

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