[Message from our Executive Director, Daniel Wasserman-Soler]
Dear friends of the Lumen Christi Institute,
I write to share with you that Fr. David Tracy, the eminent Catholic theologian and distinguished professor at the University of Chicago, died on Tuesday, April 29, the feast of St. Catherine of Siena. He was 86. At the University, he served as the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies. He also played a seminal role in the history of the Lumen Christi Institute. As a member of our board of advisers, Fr. Tracy shaped the culture of the Institute, as he modeled intellectual friendship and the pursuit of truth across divisions.
Yesterday, when I learned about Fr. Tracy’s death, I asked Kenneth Woodward, our writer in residence and former religion editor of Newsweek, to share his thoughts:
David Tracy was not just a great theologian, though he was easily the most influential Catholic fundamental theologian of his era. He was that far more capacious figure, a great Christian humanist. The range of his reading matched the range of his thought and interest. He knew classical literature, much of medieval literature and a great deal of modern literature. And sociology. And science. In fact, these insights influenced many of his later essays and led him to the concept of “fragments,” which figures so importantly in his late essays. But he was also and always a priest nourished by both the celebrating and the receiving of the sacraments. He knew the hypocrisies that can infest both the church and the academy but it didn’t matter: he was thoroughly at home in both. Oh, and he wrote some of the longest, fruitful and stand-alone interesting footnotes of any writer I know.
Ken’s comments attest to Fr. Tracy’s extraordinarily wide-ranging interests as a scholar and his deep love of God. He inspired students in an unusually broad set of fields, and he also inspired students at Calvert House as a celebrant of the Mass. His personal warmth was evident even to someone who met him just once.
You can read Ken’s 2019 interview with Fr. Tracy here.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace.
Yours in Christ,
Daniel Wasserman-Soler
Executive Director
Lumen Christi Institute