Catholics in America – Perhaps America’s most influential theologian

To close out this series on Catholics in America, I think it appropriate to focus on perhaps the most influential theologian in American history, although in doing so, I feel a bit like the disciples arguing over who is the greatest among them — a discussion for which Jesus admonished the group severely. But I’m certainly not including myself in the running, so it’s a different intellectual enterprise.

To my mind there are really only three candidates for the most influential American theologian in history: First, Avery Dulles, who would probably get my vote, but I’m biased as he was my boss, dissertation director, and friend until his death in 2008. Second, 18th century preacher Jonathon Edwards, but he’s not Catholic, so he’s disqualified from the running I’m glad for that because his most famous work “Sinners in the Hands of Angry God” is a bit pessimistic to focus on in such a setting, although my students are often taken with the fire and brimstone visions in it. (I suppose Joseph Smith could also be included, but this raises some other theological and trinitarian questions about how Mormons define their religious identity. I’m also not sure Smith would call himself a theologian).

I think it likely that, if pressed, most Catholic theologians would agree that the third candidate, John Courtney Murray, has had perhaps the most significant impact of any American scholar in their field.

Murray spent time at Boston College, the Ateneo de Manila in the Philippines, the Gregorian in Rome, and Woodstock Jesuit College. He penned groundbreaking reflections involving religious pluralism, human freedom, and especially church relations with the public square. His famous book “We Hold These Truths,” is on nearly every theology Ph.D. comprehensive exam booklist in this country as required reading. It was published, not coincidentally, about the same time that Americans were seriously considering electing a Catholic to the nation’s presidency for the first time. These two events were celebrated by a Time magazine cover story in 1960 exploring Murray’s influential views and the shifting attitudes toward Catholics in politics.

Murray advised not only bishops and Catholic thinkers, but even President Lyndon Johnson’s Selective Service commission.

His lasting influence can be experienced in the documents of Vatican II, especially Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae. Murray not only helped shaped the texts themselves, thus having his thought validated by the highest authorities in the church after years of being eyed by them with suspicion, but also indirectly affected the way in which they were interpreted in the decades that followed. His collaborative friendship with Karol Wojtyla during the council would take on even greater impact after 1978 when the archbishop became Pope John Paul II, despite the fact that Murray did not live to see it.

Author Francis Canavan comments on Murray’s opinions concerning church-state relations: “The basic question [for Murray] is this: is the government of the world divided between two authorities, the temporal and the spiritual, each supreme in its own sphere, or is there ultimately only one supreme authority, that of the sovereign political state, within which religious bodies exist only as associations of private right? The Christian tradition insists that there are two, with the result that the freedom of the church is the bulwark of the freedom of all else in a society in which the state is confined to its own limited sphere of jurisdiction and of action.”

As editor of two primary Catholic periodicals still in existence, Theological Studies and the Jesuit weekly America, Murray kept his finger on the pulse of Catholic thought in our nation, and often contributed to it. Today, the Catholic Theological Society of America annually gives its highest honor, the John Courtney Murray Award, to a distinguished scholar exhibiting “extraordinary gifts, a record of theological accomplishment, and dedicated service.” He is justly honored, for Murray is representative of the literally millions of Catholics in America who have impacted this country and the world for the better.

Michael M. Canaris is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.