The Passing of Cardinal Dulles

Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe, in his article "Cardinal Avery Dulles dies at 90" (Articles of Faith, December 12, 2008), writes:

Cardinal Avery Dulles, who grew up in a famous American family (Dulles Airport is named for his father), converted to Catholicism while at Harvard, and went on to become the most honored Catholic theologian in U.S. history, died today at age 90.

I had a chance to interview Cardinal Dulles back in 2001. Here's what I wrote at the time, including a partial transcript of our conversation:

Avery Dulles, the scion of a wealthy and prominent Presbyterian family, arrived at Harvard in 1936 as an agnostic, but found God in the buds of a tree by the banks of the Charles River one rainy February afternoon two years later.

"How could it be . . . that this delicate tree sprang up and developed and that all the enormous complexity of its cellular operations combined together to make it grow erectly and bring forth leaves and blossoms?" he asked himself. And the answer, he later wrote, was "Him who moved the stars, and made the lilacs bloom."

Dulles, a brilliant student passionate about learning, found himself ravenously consuming the new works of French Catholic theologians, and one day he marched into a Catholic bookstore and asked, "How do I get into your church?"

He had never even met a priest, but he decided to become one, figuring, "I guess I wanted to go the whole way."

Today, Dulles, whose great-grandfather, great-uncle, and father (John Foster Dulles) all served as US secretaries of state, and whose grandfather was a distinguished Presbyterian theologian, is now the most prominent Catholic theologian in America.

His accomplishments are many - 21 books, more than 650 articles, and a long career teaching thousands of students, for the last 13 years at Fordham University in New York, where he is still a professor at age 83.

And in February, he became the first American Jesuit and the first American theologian to be named a cardinal.

Last week, Dulles visited Boston to receive an award at a fund-raising dinner for the New England Jesuits. In an interview with the Globe at the Jesuits' humble provincial headquarters in the South End, Dulles talked about his journey to faith and his career since.

Read the interview here (scroll down).

[Hat tip to E.E.]