America loses two courageous Catholic leaders

Cardinal Dulles, Father Neuhaus mourned worldwide

The Catholic Church in America recently lost two of its most prominent theologians. Cardinal Avery Dulles, 90, died on Dec. 12 in New York. Three weeks later, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, 72, died on Jan. 8 after a brief battle with cancer.

Pope Benedict XVI expressed his condolences at the death of Cardinal Dulles. In a telegram to New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan, the Pope said he commended his “noble soul to God, the Father of mercies.”

Avery Dulles was the son of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. He embraced Catholicism as an adult and was made a cardinal without episcopal ordination.

In the last months of his life, Cardinal Dulles suffered a progressive paralysis, which prevented him from speaking. Cardinal Dulles gave his last McGinley Lecture at Fordham University last spring. He could not speak but was present in a wheelchair while his lecture was read for him.

“Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils, but are normal ingredients in life, especially in old age,” he wrote. “They are to be accepted as elements of a full human existence.”

Father Neuhaus

President George Bush called Fr. Neuhaus an “inspirational leader” and a “dear friend.” Bush said that he was “saddened” by the priest’s death. The president called him “an inspirational leader, admired theologian and accomplished author who devoted his life to the service of the Almighty and to the betterment of our world.”

Richard John Neuhaus was born in Pembroke, Ontario. He was one of eight children, and his father was a Lutheran minister. Neuhaus himself was ordained a minister around 1960. Later, he moved to the United States where he became a naturalized citizen.

In 1990, he founded First Things, a journal published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life. He was received into the Catholic Church on Sept. 8, 1990. Cardinal John O’Connor ordained him as a priest a year later.

Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, called Fr. Neuhaus “a passionate and effective advocate for preserving an honored place for religion in the life of the nation, and one of the most accomplished Catholic intellectuals of our time.”

Source: Zenit