Remembering Avery Dulles, S.J.

It was my privilege to count the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, as a friend, and to do so for almost a quarter of a century. Truth to tell, though, I had “known” Avery long before I met him; I had begun reading him when two of his books, Apologetics and the Biblical Christ and Models of the Church, had been assigned in my sophomore college theology classes, back in the (gasp!) first Nixon Administration. When we first met in Washington, somewhere around 1985, Avery’s reputation as Catholic America’s unique theological reference point was well-established; what was immediately evident about the man himself was his unaffected naturalness, his preternatural calm, and his good humor. Read more