Aloys Grillmeier
editAlois Grillmeier, Cardinal Deacon (St. Nicola in Carcere) Born January 1st, 1910 in Pechbrunn, (Bavaria) Germany Ordained to the priesthood on June 24th, 1937, for the Jesuits. Created a cardinal-deacon on November 26th, by Pope John Paul II. Grillmeier entered the Jesuit order in April 1929 after completing grammar school in Regensburg. He studied philosophy in Munich and theology in Valkenburg in the Netherlands. He was ordained priest in June 1937 in the middle of further theological studies in Frankfurt. He gained his doctorate in February 1942 in Freiburg after studying in Rome. Two days after the graduation ceremony he was conscripted into the army and trained as a medical orderly in Ulm. He was then sent to the Eastern Front where he treated the casualties of the bitter fighting against Soviet forces. He was released from further military service in April 1944 as a member of the Jesuits. Grillmeier then began a long teaching career in fundamental and dogmatic theology, most of which was spent as Professor of Dogmatics at the Sankt Georgen college in Frankfurt am Main, where the German Jesuits received their theological education. He became known at the Second Vatican Council, where he acted as theological adviser to Bishop Wilhelm Kempf of Limburg. From 1963 to 1965 he was also on the theology commission of the Council itself. He had a particular input into the drafting of the document Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. It was here that he first met Cardinal Woytyla and worked with him in writing various works, papers and documents including Gaudium et Spes, Lumen gentium, Dei verbum and Digitatis humanae. He retired in 1978 on his 68th birthday, but continued to write and lecture. Grillmeier was committed to ecumenism. In the 1970s he became an adviser to the Pro Oriente Institute in Vienna, which promoted contact with other Christian Churches, especially in the East, and he took part in several unofficial theological dialogues with the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Grillmeier's written output - 12 major books and several hundred academic articles - is a part of his legacy. Christ in Christian Tradition, his magnum opus, looked at the development of Christology from early Christian times to the ninth century, drawing particularly on the traditions of the Eastern Christian Church. Volume one was published in 1965 (with a revised version in 1975) and volume two in 1987. In a rare event, the work was published in English before the original German. Grillmeier published expanded versions of the second volume in the 1990s in collaboration with Theresia Hainthaler. He died on September 13th, 1998.
Sources:
1. Obituary on Aloys Grillmeier, in "The Independent" http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-cardinal-alois-grillmeier-1176420.html
2. http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/archives/1999May/88may5,vol.10,no.88txt/may5col.htm
3. "Catholic Hierarchy.com", "Aloys Grillmeier" http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bgril.html
4. For bibliography see, http://www.sankt-georgen.de/lehrende/grillmeier.html.