One of the great ones

When I saw this post headline on First Things Friday night, I think my jaw dropped and I whispered under my breath “Cardinal Avery Dulles?!”

He was so there, so ever present. As he was at the Second Vatican Council, one of the gems the Church still had from that historic event, along with the current Pope. Which is why my producer and I invited Cardinal Dulles to be a guest on my former radio show to discuss that Council and its impact, on the 40th anniversy of its closing. It was an honor to have that conversation with him.

His impact on the Church and the world of thinking men and women has been great. And it will live on.

However…

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.