Happy Birthday! Avery Cardinal Dulles turns ninety

The City and the World blog, operated by Fr. Joe Koczera, S.J., has photos and a brief account of a birthday celebration for Avery Cardinal Dulles, one of the finest theologians of the last forty years or so in the English-speaking world:

Fordham's own Avery Cardinal Dulles celebrated his ninetieth birthday today in the company of family, friends and brother Jesuits. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had the good fortune of taking part in the final seminar that Cardinal Dulles offered as Fordham's McGinley Professor of Religion and Society; wanting to pay my respects to a great theologian and a fine teacher, I made a point of attending the Mass of Thanksgiving offered today in celebration of the Cardinal's nine decades of life. At an outdoor reception following the Mass, New York Archbishop Edward Cardinal Egan offered tribute to Dulles and led the assembled company in a birthday toast.

Whispers in the Loggia has a bit more:

Confined to his wheelchair, the famed convert -- whose 28th book rolled out earlier this year, with another (on evangelization) said to be on the way -- even got an assist from his classmate at the consistory of 2001 as New York's Cardinal Edward Egan moved onlookers by rolling Dulles to his place for a special Mass, staying at the Jesuit's side in house cassock as opposed to vesting for the altar. At a subsequent reception, the Gotham prelate -- ever more a "Big Daddy"-figure to the New York Jesuits -- led a toast to his Bronx-based confrere before cutting the birthday cake in his stead.

• The History and Purpose of Apologetics | An Interview with Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. (July 2005)
• Foreword to Yves Congar's The Meaning of Tradition | Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.
• The History of Apologetics (revised edition, Ignatius Press) | Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.
• Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith (Sapientia Press, 2007) | Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.

Comments

[Ed Peters]

Ad multos annos.

[Dan]

I'll take this ocassion to recommend highly Cardinal Dulles' spiritual biography, written when he was a young man, "A Testimonial to Grace." It is one of the best spiritual biographies of the 20th Century -- better, in my humble opinion, then The Seven Storey Mountain, which was written around the same time.

http://www.amazon.com/Testimonial-Grace-Reflections-Theological-Journey/dp/1556129041