Renowned theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx, died on the 23rd. Although I never finished one of his books, I was always impressed by their “freshness” and vitality. I remember reading bits of Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God. I wasn’t at that time prepared to understand fully what I was reading, but I could sense that his thought was important. Benjamin Myers recently cele-blogged Schillebeeckx’s birthday with this post. Well worth reading.

My other Schillebeeckx connection comes from my dear friend, Fr. Joe Powers, S.J., who did his dissertation under Schillebeeckx. I couldn’t believe it when Fr. Joe told me that! To me Schillebeeckx had been this remote, almost Biblical prophet and here was someone who actually knew the man. I was impressed! I realized years later that Schillebeeckx wasn’t a name to trot out in every Catholic setting. He and Hans Kung had been grilled by the Vatican. Kung was “disciplined”, read “muzzled”, by the church for his views; Schillebeeckx escaped condemnation. The Language of Dissent: Edward Schillebeeckx on the Crisis of Authority in the Catholic Church gives an good overview of Schillebeeckx’s views on dissent within the Church.

This excerpt  from the National Catholic Observer:

The Belgian-born Dutch Dominican theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx, died Dec. 23 at the age of 95 in Nijmegen, where he lived and taught for more than five decades. He wrote well into his nineties.

He died of natural causes.

Fr. Robert Schreiter of the Congregation of the Precious Blood, considered the leading U.S. expert on Schillebeeckx, said his legacy will live on, principally for several major contributions. He was the first Catholic scholar to take seriously all the historical research on Jesus that had been done in the 19th and 20th centuries and present it in an intelligible way.

“Anyone who ignores that will not be taken seriously today,” said Schreiter, a professor of theology at the Chicago theological union. Schillebeeckx also pioneered the idea of examining “the historical backgrounds of what seemed to be infallible truths and relating their real meaning” in an intelligible way, he said. “He insisted that normal people ought to be able to see a measure of reasonableness in Catholic teaching and be able to link their experiences with the revelation traditions of the Christian faith.”