Newman Studies Journal

In 1905 it was published in the New York Review that "since John Henry Newman laid down his pen, we have had no Catholic writer in English superior to Father Tyrrell in originality of thought, fertility of expression, and all pervading sense of religion."¹ George Tyrrell, who was often compared to Newman, was also an expert on Newman's thought, though his excurses on doctrinal development strayed from Newman's later in his life. Tyrrell, however, is hardly known today outside of a small set of academics who study the modernist controversies. This is primarily because of his excommunication in 1908 for his public criticism of Pascendi dominici gregis, the year before his death in 1909. [End Page 128]

Maher sets out in his book, The Forgotten Jesuit of Catholic Modernism: George Tyrrell's Prophetic Theology, to demonstrate that "Tyrrell's pastoral theology represents a dedicated attempt to articulate a sense of faith seeking understanding, an understanding that by definition should resonate with the concrete reality of the ordinary lived life of faith" (xxvi). Likewise, Maher is particularly interested in "draw[ing] attention to an injustice and to see[ing] the rightful recognition for a Jesuit pastoral theologian who attempted to journey with the 'people of God', as he found them," and to "support those who labour daily in word and deed, to bridge the divide between faith, theology, and life—those unsung heroes who through Christian witness in ordinary life—reincarnate the narratives of Christ" (xxvi).

Maher's reappraisal of Tyrrell's theological voice occurs in three parts. Part one, entitled, "Tyrrell's life," "chronicles the 'fall-out'" from "six publications that" Maher argues, "form the backdrop to the last ten years of Tyrrell's traumatic life" (xxvii). The publications are: the English Joint Pastoral Letter (1900); Pius X's, Pascendi dominici gregis (1907); and the Lenten Pastoral Letter of Cardinal Mercier (1908), all of which, as Maher notes, were "inspired or directed by Cardinal Merry del Val." These documents are viewed in conjunction with Tyrrell's "three polemical responses": A Letter to a University Professor (1906); his "The Pope and Modernism" (1907); and Tyrrell's monograph, Medievalism (1908). Parts two and three investigate exactly what the titles suggest. Part two, entitled, "Tyrrell's Theology," looks deeply at Tyrrell's theological vision, and part three, entitled, "Tyrrell's Legacy," looks at the historical scholarship about Tyrrell and attempts to "ensure that Tyrrell's work is not forgotten" (xxix).

One of Maher's primary goals is to historically situate Tyrrell's theological voice within its Irish-English context. Maher argues that Tyrrell's theological tradition is "located within the Irish-English theological-ecclesial caldron of his day" (6). Maher likens Tyrrell to C. S. Lewis. He writes, "Tyrrell was as English as C.S. Lewis," and continues that "They [both Lewis and Tyrrell] wrote to share their belief that Christianity has the capacity to widen our vision of reality beyond that set forth by doctrine of Neo-Scholastic philosophy" (6). Part of Maher's goal of contextualizing Tyrrell is to describe Tyrrell's location within his English context as a way to demonstrate his pastoral nature. While Maher's description of Tyrrell's English context is primarily sequestered to part one, where he describes the tumultuous relationship between Tyrrell and Cardinal Merry del Val, parts two and three would have also benefitted from a more robust situating of Tyrrell's theological voice within the Anglo context, as well as the Anglo reception of Tyrrell's pastoral teaching. By contrast, Maher explains Tyrrell's theology by comparing it to the likes of Karl Marx, Walter Kasper, and Karl Rahner, all of whom are German. While this is an admirable task and brings Tyrrell into more contemporary theological discussion, it at times confuses the reader as to the nature of the Anglo context of Tyrrell's turn-of-the-twentieth-century theology. [End...