Thirty Fourth Annual Thomas Verner Moore Lecture

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.

 

Development in Catholic Social Teaching (video)

(text: coming soon)

Saturday, September 24, 2005, 8:00-9:00 P.M.

 

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University, is unquestionably one of the most important and influential theologians of our time.  Born in 1918, the son of John Foster Dulles and Janet Pomeroy Avery Dulles, he received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1940 and served in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean areas as an officer in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II.  Having been received into the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1940s, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1946.  After philosophical and theological studies at Woodstock College in Maryland, he was sent by his religious superiors to the Gregorian University in Rome, where he received his doctorate in theology in 1960.  Since that time, Cardinal Dulles has had appointments as a professor of theology at Woodstock College (1960-74), The Catholic University of America (1974-88), and Fordham (since 1988).  He has also been a visiting professor at numerous institutions both in the United States and abroad, including Oxford, Yale, Union Theological Seminary (NYC), and Boston College.  Pope John Paul II named him a Cardinal of the Catholic Church in 2001.

Cardinal Dulles has been a prolific author of important works in theology, including twenty-six books (a number of them having been translated into other languages) and more than 750 articles and book reviews.  Among his best known works are Models of the Church, Models of Revelation, The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System, and The Splendor of Faith:  The Theological Vision of Pope John Paul II.   He served as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America in 1975-76, was a member of the International Theological Commission from 1992-97, and for twenty years participated in the United States Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue.  Among Cardinal Dulles’s numerous awards and honors have been the Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam Award of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus, the Gold Medal Award of the National Institute of Social Sciences, and honorary degrees from thirty-six colleges and universities.

For a brief vita of Thomas Verner Moore, O.S.B., M.D. Ph.D.