Thursday, February 26, 2009

R.I.P. Francis Canavan S.J.

[UPDATE, 2/27: Since writing the post below, I have posted a personal recollection of Father Canavan.]

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Father Francis Canavan S.J., who died this morning at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx at the age of 91. He was admitted there on Saturday with a broken hip.

I loved Father Canavan very much and will have more to say about him in the coming days.

Father James V. Schall S.J. wrote a lovely tribute to Father Canavan a few years ago. Also online is Dr. Kenneth Grasso's introduction to the Society of Catholic Social Scientists' 1997 symposium on Father Canavan's work.

UPDATE: Yuval Levin remembers Father Canavan on National Review Online.

I'll post some of my own memories of Father Canavan tomorrow. In the meantime, for a look at his prophetic understanding of how cultural relativism would play itself out in 21st-century American life, see his 2000 Human Life Review essay "The Dying of the Mind."