Twenty-five years ago, one of the 20th centuryâ??s greatest Catholic theologians passed away in the Avenue de Breteuil in Paris in the care of the Little Sisters of the Poor. Born in 1896 as the Dreyfus Affair was tearing France apart, and dying while the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, SJ, participated in some of the most momentous events that shaped the Catholic Church between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Saint John Paul II.
Though well-known for his work in opening up the Churchâ??s rich intellectual patrimony and his influence upon key documents of Vatican II, de Lubac was far from being a reclusive scholar. Coming from a fervently Catholic French aristocratic family, de Lubac could not help but be conscious of the deep fractures between the Church and the forces unleashed by the French Revolution. Nor was he afraid to immerse himself in many of the epoch-making conflicts of his time. Indeed, de Lubac definitely had a mind for politicsâ??but not of the type you might expect.
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