OSV STORY FOR MAY 25

A moderate in a disputatious age

In a time of confusion, even crisis in the Church, Jesuit Father Avery Dulles remains a loyal voice of calm and candor

By William Bole

It was the 1930s. America was mired in the Great Depression. And the good times were rolling for Avery Dulles and his peers at Harvard University.

There were the long drinking sessions in shoddy bars and late-night adventures that required the attention of the Boston police, as Dulles recalls of his early undergraduate days. It was nothing, though, compared to what was going through the mind of this young agnostic.

"I had a relativistic, materialist view of things. Everything resulted by chance and collision with molecules that accidentally resulted in the production of life. So there we were, strangers in a meaningless universe," explained Dulles, who had lost even the nominal faith of his father, the late statesman John Foster Dulles.

"The only thing that made sense was to get some pleasure and advantage out of it, for as long as you lived. And it was all over when you died."

As for many others who have roamed this avenue, hedonism proved simply too dreary a worldview and life prospect for Dulles. By the time he graduated in 1940, the young Dulles had made his decision to become a Catholic — to the shock of his mainline Presbyterian family.

Today, Jesuit Father Dulles — the ordination followed the conversion by 14 years — is widely recognized as one of the Church’s preeminent theologians.

He still entertains the questions about what makes life worth living that attracted a generation of converts such as Thomas Merton (who made his spiritual journey to Rome, from Columbia University, around the same time as Father Dulles).

Yet he wonders if many today can easily find the answers in a consumerist culture that exalts the pleasure principle and puts a low price on dedication and sacrifice.

As a priest and theologian, Father Dulles wonders even more if the message of truth and moral goodness can always be heard loudly and clearly in a Church that is often beset by division and polarization.

He sees a danger in the recent growth of ideological wings of the Church that fly off to extreme points of the theological spectrum.

Characteristic of the new alignments is a "certain amount of defamation. People try to destroy the credibility of their adversaries. So you have some nasty language, and a tendency to misquote or quote out of context. And they don’t talk to each other — they only talk to people in their own party," said Father Dulles, a lanky man who was dressed in his scholar’s garb of a blue suit and tie during a recent interview in his office at Fordham University in New York.

"That makes the Church much less attractive. Nobody wants to come into a community whose members are at war with each other. After all, Christ is supposed to be a sign of reconciliation and unity," he emphasized.

During a theological ministry that has produced 20 books and more than 600 scholarly articles, Father Dulles has become known for steering a middle course through the turbulent waters of Catholic disputation.

His conception of religious truth is layered and complex. He holds that the truth about faith and life can be culled from the various contending parties — or in ecclesiological language, the distinct "Models of the Church," which is the title of his most celebrated work.

Further, he views the Church’s magisterium as not simply another wing, but as a singularly authentic interpreter of Gospel truth.

"One of the characteristics I find admirable in Avery’s work is his fairness to others, and his attempt to truly understand others’ positions and to report them accurately," said George Weigel, a Catholic commentator and scholar at the neoconservative Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

"Another is the fact that he writes in such a clear prose. That’s a rare gift in the theological guild. He’s a real craftsman of prose," added Weigel.

Father Charles Curran, who taught at The Catholic University of America in Washington when Father Dulles was there, said theological style helps explain "why Avery is read not only by academics but by people who are simply interested in Church things."

In the late 1980s, Father Curran’s name became synonymous with debates over dissent after the Vatican declared him ineligible to teach Catholic theology, due to his writings on sexual ethics. He was suspended from the theology department of Catholic University, a Vatican-chartered institution.

Father Dulles agreed with the measure, but also endorsed a compromise that would have allowed Father Curran to teach in another department of the university. After long negotiations that broke down, Father Curran fought a losing battle in civil court to keep his tenured post.

Now teaching at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Father Curran said of his former colleague: "Avery is a gentleman. He’s a scholar. He’s a fine Christian — and also he can laugh at himself."

Sitting at the computer in Father Dulles’ office on a late Friday afternoon, Sister Ann-Marie Kirmse told of when she defended her doctoral dissertation at Fordham. Her subject was Father Dulles and his writings on ecumenical dialogue.

The priest had to be in Rome for a session of the 30-member International Theological Commission (which opens with a papal Mass and audience). But he dropped her a postcard with the words, "Good luck defending the indefensible."

Sister Kirmse added on the title of "Dr.", and became Father Dulles’s full-time assistant. Both she and her mentor have stayed busy.

In the two weeks before the interview with Our Sunday Visitor in late April, he gave four public lectures: three in his native New York and one in Cleveland.

In between engagements, he taught his classes at Fordham and plowed through a 700-page manuscript by German Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg (whose publisher asked Father Dulles for a prepublication comment).

Both the style and substance of Father Dulles’ systematic theology came to light during the recent debate over the Catholic Common Ground Project, a dialogue initiative launched by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago. Still going, the project aims to promote civility and understanding among Catholics who clash in their thinking about the Church.

Last August, the statement of principles released by Cardinal Bernardin, titled "Called To Be Catholic: Church in a Time of Peril," triggered a flood of spontaneous reactions, pro and con. Father Dulles, however, did not leap out of the box with statements to the press. He sat out the early exchange of cross fire, looked at the question from several angles, and then spoke last November.

In a public lecture at Fordham University, Father Dulles made clear his feeling that dialogue is a good thing. But he criticized the Common Ground statement for language that could leave the impression that the Church’s constant teachings are negotiable.

"I can enter into dialogue with anybody, no matter what their point of view," Father Dulles explained in the interview, distinguishing himself from critics who rejected the Common Ground idea out of hand. "I can handle dialogue with an atheist, so I could certainly have dialogue with Catholics who dissent."

The Jesuit added, however, that the whole notion of dialogue in modern liberal society has drifted far from its classical roots, from that of a Socratic discourse on truth, to what it is today: a relativist conversation that puts all propositions on the same plane. In other words, today, all opinions and claims are treated as equal — neither true nor false.

He said the Common Ground initiative was bound to be interpreted at least by some in light of the relativist creed. That, plus what he describes as the statement’s "ambiguities" about Church doctrine and hierarchical authority, formed Father Dulles’ judgment on the matter.

His survey of dialogue and its travails drew careful notice in Catholic circles — and, at least among some, enhanced his reputation as a moderate with clear convictions about hierarchical authority and the Church’s teaching mission.

Weigel, though, dismisses any labeling of Dulles. "You don’t describe Ken Griffey Jr. as a liberal or a conservative hitter. He’s just good. And that’s Avery. He is just a good theologian," he said, referring to the Seattle Mariners slugger.

"This is a guy who became a Catholic not because this was more comfortable or more aesthetically pleasing or more adventuresome. He became a Catholic because he thought it was true — that this is the way the world is. That commitment to the truth and to the exploration of that truth has been the touchstone of his life and career as a theologian."

Father Dulles himself likes being called a moderate, though some theologians argue he has lately wandered from the middle ground.

"There is no doubt that, on certain issues, he has been less open than he was in the past," Father Curran said, citing matters such as women’s ordination and papal authority. "He’s even pulled back a little on the possibility of dissent."

In his 1977 book "The Resilient Church," Father Dulles wrote that the hierarchy should generally not speak in a binding way unless a relatively wide consensus exists among Catholics, and should acknowledge that good Catholics can disagree with certain non-infallible teachings of the Church.

He also wrote: "Provided that they speak with evident loyalty and respect for authority, dissenters should not be silenced."

Father Dulles does not think his position has changed substantially. He claims he still believes that theological dissent can be legitimate, even necessary on rare occasions.

Yet he thinks theologians should be discreet about it, and voice their contrary opinions in Catholic theological journals, for example, rather than opinion columns in The New York Times.

What the Church cannot abide is "organized opposition or the setting up of an alternative magisterium. That needs to be emphasized more now than it did 20 or 30 years ago," Father Dulles said, noting a tendency among some theologians to criticize virtually every communication from Rome.

Defending the dogmas of Catholicism is not exactly what the Dulles family had in mind when Avery sailed off to boarding school in Switzerland and later settled at secular Harvard.

It’s about as unlikely a fate as could have been imagined for the son of John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower; nephew of Allen Dulles, CIA director in the same administration; and great-grandson of John Watson Foster, secretary of state under President Benjamin Harrison.

There were clergymen as well as statesmen in the Dulles dynasty.

"The family had a long Protestant tradition," noted Father Dulles, whose grandfather, Allen Macy Dulles, wore the Presbyterian cloth as a professor of theology.

That tradition, however, faded in the Dulles household, along with his memories of Sunday school and bedtime prayer. Still, the Dulleses weren’t prepared for a Catholic in the family.

"There was a certain latent . . ." he interrupted himself. "Anti-Catholicism would be too strong a word, but they didn’t think the Catholic Church was quite respectable. They were brought up in a Protestant culture in which Catholics, on the whole, were people at a lower social and intellectual level."

The family got over it, and John Foster Dulles actually found his son’s priesthood to be of some utility when meeting with Catholic heads of state such as Konrad Adenauer of West Germany.

"He would say, ‘You know, one of my sons is a Jesuit.’ And they would feel more at home with him," Father Dulles related.

Hanging on a wall in his small room in the Jesuit residence at Fordham is a photograph of Pope Pius XII greeting John Foster Dulles, who personified America’s Cold War policies in the 1950s. He died in 1959.

For all his stature and achievements, the 78-year-old theologian still ranks his discovery of faith while at Harvard as the highpoint of his life.

Father Dulles recounted that event in his 1946 book "A Testimonial to Grace," which he composed aboard the Navy cruiser Philadelphia while awaiting official orders to join the Eighth Fleet in the Mediterranean. The war had interrupted his studies at Harvard Law School, to which he never returned.

From the U.S. Navy he went straight into the Jesuit novitiate.

A 50th anniversary edition of "A Testimonial to Grace" was issued last year by Sheed & Ward, the original publisher of the work, with two new chapters by Father Dulles. In the memoir, he narrates how classical thinkers from Plato to St. Thomas Aquinas became the evangelists of his conversion — first, to the notion of transcendent truth, then to Catholicism.

He believes that now, especially in the Western cultures of consumption, the Church must return to first principles. It must proclaim the Gospel truth about life’s meaning and purpose, the truth that set him free more than 50 years ago.

"We’re made to love, serve and reverence. If you don’t have anything to love, serve and reverence, you’re basically going to be unhappy," he said. "I think the human heart is looking for something worth making sacrifices for."

 Copyright Our Sunday Visitor, 1997; from the 5-25-97 edition

HEADLINES FOR MAY 25

 A job description for theologians (editorial)

 Preaching peace to Beirut’s wounded in spirit

 Czarina of heaven

 Believing Matthew 25 when nobody else does

 Everything that rose did not converge

 U.S. bishops doubt their political clout