Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly IN MEMORIAM President’s Letter: Remembering Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. ...............................................................Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. 31 Remembering Msgr. Michael J. Wrenn ..........................................Catholic New York, Patrick G.D. Riley, Number 4 Kenneth D. Whitehead, Ralph McInerny, and James Hitchcock winter 2008 ARTICLES The Unexpected Fruit of Dissent ................... William L. Saunders Pro-life Voters and the Pro-Choice Candidate ....Gerard V. Bradley American Law and the Commodification of Man ......................... William L. Saunders Tolerance ............................................................Jude P. Dougherty Celebrating the Feminine Genius .....Sr. Renée Mirkes, OSF, Ph.D. Walker Percy the Philosopher ............................ Joseph F. Previtali A Question About Names .............Msgr. Daniel S. Hamilton, Ph.D. BOOK REVIEWS Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature, by Joseph Torchia, O.P. .............................................Dennis McInerny Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, by Margaret A. Farley .............................William E. May Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, by Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., ............William E. May Faith, Reason, and the War against Jihadism: A Call to Action, by George Weigel ............................................ Kenneth D. Whitehead The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians and Courts, by James A. Brundage ............... Jude P. Dougherty The Quantum Ten: The Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition and Science, by Sheilla Jones ...................................... Jude P. Dougherty ISSN 1084-3035 The Temporal and the Eternal: Review Essay Fellowship of Catholic Scholars on Cardinal Giovanni Bona's Guide to Eternity ....Anne Barbeau Gardiner P.O. Box 495 Notre Dame, IN 46556 (574) 631-5825 OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS www.catholicscholars.org J. Brian Benestad, Editor BOOKS RECEIVED [email protected] EX CATHEDRA .....................................................J. Brian Benestad FCS Quarterly • Winter 2008 1 PRESIDENT ’S LETTER n 12 December 2008 we suffered the loss of a saintly priest, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., at ninety years of age. We will sorely miss his wisdom and his wit and his witness. But we can readily hope that we have in him a new Fellowship of Ointercessor in heaven. Catholic Scholars The motto that he chose for his coat-of-arms speaks vol- umes: Scio cui credidi —“I know in whom I have believed” Scholarship Inspired by the Holy Spirit, in Service to the Church (2 tim. 1:12). From the time of his awakening to belief in God during his days at Harvard College and his subsequent conver- sion to Catholicism, through the decades he spent as a Jesuit CONTENTS priest and scholar, this Pauline phrase guided his life. ARTICLES The author of more than eight hundred articles and twen- President’s Letter .......................................... 2 ty-five books, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., has been an inspiring Remembering Msgr. Michael J. Wrenn ...... 5 model for many of us in the Society of Jesus. He was a good The Unexpected Fruit of Dissent .............. 9 and faithful priest, a world-class scholar, and a wonderful friend in the Lord. I count it a great blessing to have known him over Pro-life Voters and the Pro-Choice Candidate ...............................11 the years at Fordham University, where he was the Laurence J. American Law and the McGinley Professor of Religion and Society since 1988. The Commodification.........................................14 complete set of his semestral McGinley Lectures has recently Tolerance .......................................................17 been published by Fordham University Press in a volume en- Celebrating the Feminine Genius ............21 titled Church and Society (2008). In addition to his many public lectures, he used to give an annual set of conferences to our Walker Percy the Philosopher .................26 Jesuit novices on the theme of sentire cum ecclesia as an important A Question About Names ........................31 part of a Jesuit vocation. For him, “to think with the Church” BOOK REVIEWS meant, first of all, to embrace what the Church teaches, but it also entailed the vigorous use of the intellect that God has given Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature ................34 us in and for the Church. What was especially valuable about Just Love: A Framework for Christian these conferences was for our novices to see before them a man Sexual Ethics ..................................................38 who so well practiced what he preached. Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by In his autobiography, A Testimonial to Grace (1946), he re- Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life ... 41 counts the story of the way in which he came to religious faith. Faith, Reason, and the War One day, after leaving Harvard’s Widener Library where he had against Jihadism .............................................42 been reading a part of Augustine’s City of God, he was struck by The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession; the discrepancy between the regularity of order in the universe Canonists, Civilians and Courts .....................44 and the materialist explanations of the universe as the result of The Quantum Ten: The Story of Passion, chance that were being promoted in his classes. “Never, since Tragedy, Ambition and Science ......................45 the eventful day...have I doubted the existence of an all-good REVIEW ESSAY: and omnipotent God.” After two more years of thinking about The Temporal and the Eternal ........................ 46 the matter, he came to accept the divinity of Christ and the OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS ......................50 truth of the Gospels. Where many writers, he tells us, tried to BOOKS RECEIVED .........................................50 present Jesus “as a mild, tolerant, and ever gentle moralist,” the EX CaTHEDRA ...............................................51 Gospels show Jesus as someone “whom one could hate tremen- dously, as most of his contemporaries did hate Him, for what Reminder: Membership dues will be they took to be His bad manners and extravagant ideas.... The mailed out the first of the year and are moralists never seemed to rise above the obvious. Christ never based on a calendar (not academic) year. paused to state the obvious. He told of things no man had seen.” 2 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2008 Mindful of the ways in which these Gospels logical Journey (fiftieth anniversary edition, 1996), The present Christ as founding a Church, the young Priestly Office (1997), The Splendor of Faith: The Theo- Dulles visited various Protestant churches, out of logical Vision of Pope John Paul II (1999, revised and respect for the Presbyterian heritage of his family. updated edition, 2003) The New World of Faith (2000), But, he explains, the preaching that he heard there Newman (2002), and Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian gave the impression of not conveying the fullness of of the Faith (2007). what Christ taught. By contrast, the sermons that Some theologians with less of a taste for sentire he heard at the Catholic churches he visited seemed cum ecclesia have tried to claim the earlier period of more solid but dry. The statues that he saw did not Dulles’s writings for their ranks, but any fair reading strike him as at the same level of artistic quality that of his corpus will show his remarkable consistency he saw elsewhere, and the “elaborate symbolism” of and his abiding quest to understand why the Church the liturgy seemed daunting. The reading of various has made the claims that she has over the centuries. Catholic intellectuals, however, more than compen- In the lengthy postscript that he added to A Testimo- sated. His autobiography mentions by name such nial to Grace for its fiftieth-anniversary edition (1996), figures as Maurice de Wulf, Etienne Gilson, Jacques Dulles begins thus: “In a sense I could say, as did John Maritain, Martin D’Arcy, S.J., and Fulton J. Sheen, Henry Newman in his Apologia pro vita sua that there who seemed to him to have “expressed that boldly is no further history of my religious opinions, since Christian view of man and the modern world for in becoming a Catholic I arrived at my real home.” which I had sought in vain in Protestant churches.” Philosophically, he has always proven to be a care- His reading brought him to accept the claim that the ful Thomist, supplemented by the thought of such Catholic Church made to be the Church that had contemporary figures as Michael Polanyi. Theologi- been founded by Christ: “The more I examined, the cally, he regularly exhibited a deep appreciation for more I was impressed with the consistency and sub- the nouvelle théologie that was championed by the likes limity of Catholic doctrine.” He was received into of Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou, S.J., and Henri de the Church in 1940. Lubac, S.J. After a year at Harvard Law School, service in It is, perhaps, the frequent misinterpretations of the U.S. Navy, and the years of formation within the his book Models of the Church that have given some Society of Jesus, leading to his ordination in 1956, to suggest that there was a time when Dulles thought Avery Dulles took his doctorate in theology at the differently. Oblivious to the framework that he care- Gregorian University