George Tyrrell | |
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| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1891 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1861-02-06)6 February 1861 |
| Died | 15 July 1909(1909-07-15) (aged 48) Storrington, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic,Latin Church |
| Occupation |
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George TyrrellSJ (6 February 1861 – 15 July 1909) was anAnglo-IrishCatholic priest and a controversial theologian and scholar. A convert fromAnglicanism, Tyrrell joined theJesuit order in 1880 and wasordained as a priest in 1891. He was a prolific writer whose efforts to adapt and reinterpret Catholic teachings in light of modern science and culture made him a central figure in the controversy overmodernism in the Catholic Church that flared up towards the end of the 19th century. Tyrrell rejected theneo-scholastic thinking then dominant among the Jesuits and in theVatican, insisting that the Church's response to the problems faced by modern believers could not be merely to reiterate the theological doctrines systematized in the 13th century byThomas Aquinas.
Tyrrell enjoyed a high reputation as a liberal Catholic author in the late 1890s, but he then came into conflict with his Jesuit superiors and with the Vatican authorities. The anti-modernist campaign launched byPope Pius X led to Tyrrell's expulsion from the Jesuits in 1906. After Pius condemned modernism in the encyclicalPascendi Dominici gregis (1908), Tyrrell wrote two letters to the LondonTimes rejecting its reasoning and conclusions. Their publication caused him to beexcommunicated by theBishop of Southwark,Peter Amigo. Tyrrell never recanted his modernist opinions, but he received the Catholiclast rites just before his death in 1909.
George Tyrrell was born on 6 February 1861 in the city ofDublin. His father William Tyrrell, a journalist and sub-editor of theDublin Evening Mail, had died shortly before George's birth. The Tyrrells belonged to theProtestant Ascendancy inIreland and were intellectually distinguished. George was a first cousin of the classicistRobert Yelverton Tyrrell, who becameRegius Professor of Greek atTrinity College, in theUniversity of Dublin.[1]: 2
The family had to move repeatedly due to the financial straits in which it fell after the father's death. George's elder brother "Willie", although crippled in infancy by a fracture of the spine and afflicted by persistent ill health, was a brilliant student atRathmines School and went on to an outstanding career as aclassicist at Trinity College, before his early death in 1876.[1]: 8 George himself became deaf in the right ear following a childhood accident.[2]: 33
The headmaster of Rathmines, Dr Benson, agreed to remit George's fees in light of the success of his brother Willie, and George entered the school in 1869. His performance was poor, however, and his mother sent him as a boarder toMidleton College, where he was subjected to a tougher discipline.[1]: 4–5 Due to her difficulties affording the fees, George soon returned to Rathmines, where in 1876 he completed thesixth form at the bottom of his class. He then studied privately in the hopes of earning a scholarship to studyHebrew at Trinity College, but he failed the required examination twice. He gained admission to Trinity in 1878 but, without a scholarship, his mother could not afford to send him there.[1]: 8–9
More interested in religion than in academic work, the young Tyrrell began worshipping atAll Saints Church, Grangegorman, where he was exposed to a moderatehigh churchAnglicanism.[3] Around 1877 he metRobert Dolling, anAnglo-Catholic priest and aChristian socialist who would go one to exert a strong influence on Tyrell.[3] With Dolling's encouragement, Tyrrell began to go to confession at the CatholicSt Mary's Church and to attend mass at theGardiner Street Church, run by theJesuits, while continuing to take Anglican communion at Grangegorman.[1]: 10
In August 1878, Tyrrell took a teaching post atWexford High School, but he was unhappy with the school's uncompromising Protestantism and did not return after the Christmas break.[2]: 135 The rector of Grangegorman, Dr Maturin, confronted Tyrrell about his attendance at Catholic masses, and Tyrrell then decided to accept an invitation from Dolling to join him inLondon, where Dolling was active inSaint Martin's League, an Anglican devotional society that worked with localpostmen.[1]: 10
In London, Tyrrell planned to earn his living by collaborating with the work of the St Martin's League, under the supervision of Dolling and of FatherAlexander Mackonochie, the vicar ofSt Alban's Church, Holborn. Tyrrell, however, was unimpressed by what he saw as the insincere ritualism practiced at St Alban's.[1]: 13 OnPalm Sunday, he wandered intoSt Etheldreda's, a Catholic church onEly Place, and was powerfully struck by the Catholic Mass. Of this experience he later wrote in his autobiography: "Here was the old business, being carried on by the old firm, in the old ways; here was continuity, that took one back to the catacombs."[2]: 153
Tyrrell soon converted and was received into the Catholic Church in 1879. Feeling called to the priesthood and inspired by a recent historical novel by popular French writerPaul Féval that presented theSociety of Jesus (the Jesuits) in a heroic light, Tyrrell applied to join the Society, but theprovincial superior advised him to wait a year. He spent the interim teaching at Jesuit schools inCyprus andMalta.[4] He joined the Jesuits in 1880 and was sent to the novitiate atManresa House, inRoehampton. As early as 1882, his novice master suggested that Tyrrell withdraw from the Jesuits due to "mental indocility" and dissatisfaction with a number of Jesuit customs, approaches, and practices. Tyrrell was, however, allowed to remain. He later stated that he believed he was more inclined to theBenedictine spirituality.
After taking his first vows, Tyrrell was sent toStonyhurst College to study philosophy as the first stage in hisJesuit formation. He then returned to the Jesuit school in Malta, where he spent three years teaching, before being sent toSt Beuno's College, in Wales, to take up his theological studies. He wasordained to the priesthood in 1891. After a brief period of pastoral work inLancashire, Tyrrell returned to Roehampton for hisTertianship. In 1893, he lived briefly at the Jesuit mission house inOxford, before taking up pastoral work atSt Helens, Merseyside, where he was reportedly happiest during his time as a Jesuit. A little over a year later, he was sent to teach philosophy at Stonyhurst. Tyrrell then began to have conflicts with his superiors over the traditional Jesuit approach to teaching philosophy.[4]
Pope Leo XIII's 1879 encyclicalAeterni Patris had promoted the teaching of aScholastic philosophy, based on the works of SaintThomas Aquinas, in Catholic schools and seminaries. Tyrrell admired Aquinas, but he rejected the Scholastic approach as inadequate. He became convinced that the Jesuits were not teaching the philosophy of Aquinas himself, but rather the narrow interpretation of it introduced centuries later by Jesuit theologianFrancisco Suárez (seeNeo-scholasticism).[1]: 44
In 1896, Tyrrell was transferred to the Jesuit house onFarm Street, in London.[5] There Tyrrell discovered the work ofMaurice Blondel. He was also influenced byAlfred Loisy's biblical scholarship. Tyrrell first metFriedrich von Hügel in October 1897 and they became close friends. Part of Tyrrell's work while at Farm Street was writing articles for the Jesuit periodicalThe Month. He had the occasion to review some works byWilfrid Ward, and for a time, came to share Ward's views of a moderate Catholic liberalism. Tyrrell's gifts of literary expression were showcased in two collections of religious meditations,Nova et vetera (1897) andHard Sayings (1898). That work earned him a wide readership and a reputation as a liberal Catholic thinker in the mould ofJohn Henry Newman.[3]
In 1899, Ward invited Tyrrell to join the "Synthetic Society", which counted among its members several of the leading religious and philosophical thinkers in Britain, including Friedrich von Hügel,Arthur Balfour,Charles Gore,Edward Talbot,Richard Haldane, andHenry Sidgwick. The Society met every month at theCarlton Club. His participation in it reinforced Tyrrell's confidence that Catholics should participate in the debates of the broader intellectual community.[1]: 69–70
Between 1891 and 1906, Tyrrell published more than twenty articles in Catholic periodicals, many of them in the United States.[6] In "The relation of theology to devotion", which appeared inThe Month in 1899, Tyrrell argued for the primacy of devotion over the intellectual abstractions of philosophy and theology.[3] He insisted that philosophy and theology may clarify the misunderstandings that arise from a naïve devotion, but that
God has revealed himself [...] not to the theologian or the philosopher, but to babes, to fishermen, to peasants [...] and therefore He has spoken their language, leaving it to the others to translate it (at their own risk) into forms more aceptable to their taste.[3]
InExternal Religion (1899), Tyrrell argued that all of the structures and sacraments of the Church exist only to help reproduce the life of Jesus in the lives of his followers.[3] Tyrrell was critical both of Catholic neo-Scholasticism and of theliberal Protestant scholarship of the day. In an often quoted attack onAdolf von Harnack's approach toBiblical criticism, Tyrrell wrote that "the Christ that Harnack sees, looking back through nineteen centuries of 'Catholic darkness', is only the reflection of a Liberal Protestant face, seen at the bottom of a deep well."[7] On the other hand, Tyrrell advocated "the right of each age to adjust the historico-philosophical expression of Christianity to contemporary certainties, and thus to put an end to this utterly needless conflict between faith and science which is a mere theological bogey."[8]: 185 In Tyrrell's view, the pope should not act as an autocrat but a "spokesman for the mind of theHoly Spirit in the Church".[9] Tyrrell befriended other Catholic intellectuals who shared his concerns about reconciling Church doctrine with modern thought, including the English nunMaude Petre and the French Jesuit priestHenri Brémond.[3]
Tyrrell's open conflict with the Catholic authorities was triggered by his article "A Perverted Devotion", published in theWeekly Register in 1899, in which he criticized the literalistic preachings onhell by twoRedemptorist authors.[3] Given "the essential incapacity of finite mind to seize the absolute end which governs and moves everything towards itself",[8]: 118 Tyrrell recognized that some subjects were matters of "faith and mystery". He "preferred to admit that the Christian doctrine of hell as simply a very great mystery, one difficult to reconcile with any just appreciation of the concept of an all-loving God".[10] The English JesuitHerbert Thurston had reviewed and authorized the article for publication, but it aroused controversy in Rome and was later found to be "offensive to pious ears" by Father GeneralLuis Martín. Tyrrell was then assigned to a small Jesuit residence inRichmond, North Yorkshire, which he jokingly calleddomus impossibilium nostrorum ("the house of our impossibles"). There Tyrrell enjoyed the peace and quiet afforded by his lack of responsibilities, the distance from London, and the policy of the Jesuit in charge of the residence, Fr. Farmer, of not interfering with Tyrrell's personal activities.[1]: 147
Between 1900 and 1904, Tyrrell published several pseudonymous works that emphasized the primacy of the human will over the intellect in matters of religion. Tyrrell saw the capacity of the will to be united with God as the center of the religious life, and expressed concern that the rationalistic approach to religious questions favored by the neo-Scholastics did not meet the pastoral needs of modern Catholics. In those works, Tyrrell also described the Catholic Church as fallible, but also as a vehicle to the immanent Spirit.[3]
Tyrrel's Jesuit superiors ordered him in 1906 to repudiate his modernist theses. Tyrrell refused to do so and was consequently dismissed from the Jesuits by Father General Martín, acting under the instructions ofPope Pius X. Tyrrell hoped that he might still be allowed to act as asecular priest, but his position became untenable after the explicit condemnations of modernism by Pius X in the decreeLamentabili sane exitu of July 1907 and in the encyclicalPascendi Dominici gregis of September 1907. Tyrrell wrote two letters toThe Times in which he strongly criticized that encyclical.[5] According to Tyrrell,
The whole of this vast controversial structure is poised by a most ingenious, logicaltour de force on the apex of ascience-theory andpsychology that are as strange asastrology to the modern mind, and are practically unknown outside Seminary walls, save to thehistorian of philosophy. Touch this science-theory, and the whole argument is in ruins.[11]
Tyrrell argued thatPascendi illegitimately equated Catholic doctrine with a specific reading ofScholasticism, thus reflecting a wholly naïve view of the historical development of the Church. Thus, whilePascendi intended to show that the "modernist" is not a Catholic, it succeeded only in showing that he is not a Scholastic.[4] For this public rejection ofPascendi, Tyrrell was deprived of the sacraments in whatPeter Amigo, theBishop of Southwark, characterized as "a minorexcommunication".[12] Unlike his contemporary the French modernist theologianAlfred Loisy, Tyrrell was never tried by theCongregation of Index or by theHoly Office. His case was always in the hands of theCardinal Secretary of State,Rafael Merry del Val, who worked closely with Bishop Amigo.[13]
InThe Program of Modernism (1907), Tyrrell embraced the label of "modernist" and argued that, far from being a straightforward deduction from revelation and primitive Christianity, the scholasticism upheld by Pius X had been a synthesis of the Christian faith with the culture of the lateMiddle Ages, and therefore a sort of "modernism" of the 13th century.[1]: 231 In 1908, CardinalDésiré-Joseph Mercier, theArchbishop of Mechelen inBelgium, published aLenten pastoral letter in which he explained and defended the papal condemnations of modernism, while alleging that those errors had not penetrated the Belgian church. The only individual whom Mercier named as an exponent of the condemned doctrines was Tyrrell.[1]: 237–238 This motivated Tyrrell to respond to Mercier in a long public letter that appeared under the titleMedievalism, in which he again argued that the Catholic authorities were ignoring the historical development of the Catholic church and its doctrines, reducing the Catholic faith to a rigid system of neo-scholastic theology and philosophy that many modern believers could not assent to in good conscience.[1]: 239–240
Tyrrell's last two years were spent mainly inStorrington. He suffered from chronicnephritis (known by physicians at the time as "Bright's disease") and became increasingly ill. He was givenextreme unction on his deathbed in 1909, but as he refused to abjure his modernist views he was denied burial in a Catholic cemetery.[14] A priest, his friendHenri Brémond, was present at the burial and made asign of the cross over Tyrrell's grave, which resulted in Bishop Amigo temporarily suspending Fr. Brémonda divinis.[15]
In a letter to Arthur Boutwood, Tyrrell had said shortly before his death that "my own work —which I regard as done— has been to raise a question which I have failed to answer", namely the meaning of Christianity in the modern world.[3] Tyrrell was convinced that Christianity had to face up to the challenges of biblical criticism and natural science, but he was personally ill-equipped to deal with them at a deep intellectual level. His biographer Nicholas Sagovsky considers that Tyrrell's talents lay primarily in the "literary communication of religious ideas".[3] According to Sagovsky, many of the reforms that Tyrrell advocated were eventually adopted by the Catholic Church in the years following theSecond Vatican Council (1962–1965), but "it is doubtful whether the institutional Roman Catholic church in any age could have contained a spiritual writer so gifted, so reckless, and so provocative".[3]
Articles
