John
Courtney Murray: Theologian in ConflictJohn
Courtney Murray: Theologian in ConflictBy Donald E. Pelotte, S.S.S.
(New York: Paulist Press, 1975)
This book can be ordered from the Woodstock Theological Center.
From cover:
John Courtney Murray, S.J., has been called the most important theologian ever produced by the American Catholic Church. Yet during the decade after his death, there was no single work published that attempted to weigh Murray's contributions to Catholic theology and to American political philosophy.
With this book, Donald E. Pelotte has set out to remedy that omission. What he has given us is a work that reveals Murray's ideas as they evolved against the background of the 1950s and 1960s -- in a precarious balance with the twin forces of American freedom and Catholic tradition.
Indeed, Pelotte's book is really two stories in one, the first ideological and the second personal. On one level this book records the tumultuous culmination of an epic struggle within Catholicism, as the Church came gradually to the admission that individual freedom is an unalienable right, not to be overridden by the demands of any one religious system. This affirmation -- the crowning achievement of the Second Vatican Council -- owed its acceptance to the tireless efforts of Murray during council sessions, and even more during the decade which preceded the council.
On a second level, this book tells the personal story of John Courtney Murray. Although it makes no claims to full-scale biography, it does document those "years of conflict" which saw Murray in full battle against his opponents. It offers the most complete account of Murray's "silencing" by Rome, and it tells of his long struggles with Joseph Fenton and Francis Connell, editors of the American Ecclesiastical Review. He was, in turn, anguished, politic, forebearing, prophetic, despairing, exultant. But in all cases, Murray emerges as a complete gentleman, loyal, obedient, and a son of the Church.
In its root meaning, "conflict" means to "strike together," as one would strike two objects against each other. John Courtney Murray was indeed a "theologian in conflict" --a flinty intellectual whose sparks grew into flames still burning long after his death.
The author, Donald E. Pelotte, S.S.S., was born in Waterville, Maine, attended John Carroll University, and took his doctorate degree at Fordham University. He is a Catholic priest, a member of the congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, and is currently superior of the Blessed Sacrament Community in Highland Heights, Ohio.
