His door was always open. Lawrence (known universally as “Larry”) Cunningham, Notre Dame theologian and longtime Commonweal contributor, died on February 20 at the age of eighty-nine. There were few scholars who were either more productive (author or editor of twenty-five books and of hundreds of articles) or more available, but certainly no one was both more productive and more available than he was. Larry always seemed delighted to see you and to have all the time in the world for you. His was a life well lived, full of love for God and neighbor.
Born in Florida in 1935, Larry followed the then-standard course of priestly formation in the United States and in Rome, culminating in ordination for the Diocese of St. Augustine in 1960. He subsequently pursued his doctorate in humanities at Florida State University and was hired by its religious-studies department. While there, he was drawn to marry the artist Cecilia Davis, with whom he had two daughters, Sarah and Julia. He always referred fondly to those three as the “women in my life”—who were joined near the end of his life by a fourth, his beloved granddaughter Mazzy.
In 1987, he left what he called Florida’s “sybaritic pleasures” for the “more austere joys of northern Indiana.” At Notre Dame, he served as theology-department chair, was named the John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology, won the university’s highest teaching and service awards, and received honorary degrees and awards from several universities. In retirement, he continued to follow the Fighting Irish—especially the women’s soccer team—and served as a tour guide at the university’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart.
Larry wrote Commonweal’s “Religion Booknotes” for more than twenty-five years. My friend David Cloutier, who teaches moral theology at Notre Dame, noted just before Larry’s funeral that his capacious learning, sound judgment, and delightful style helped many of us—especially those of us who were younger—discern and appreciate the “Catholic Thing” wherever it appeared. Larry taught us, with genial authority, what it meant to be fully Catholic.
His wife of over fifty years, Cecilia, said that Larry’s nickname among the magazine’s editors was “The Flash,” given his unfailing ability to meet tight deadlines. His final column, written in 2013, was typical: a review of books on mysticism, Francis of Assisi, the Hagia Sophia, and Mary. He closed by acknowledging a “serious addiction to reading” and offering his gratitude to the magazine’s editors, readers, and writers: “May all three tribes flourish!”
Larry became my dissertation director in an unusual way. I knew of him through his writings, especially for Commonweal, but I never had him for class (he was department chair my first year and on sabbatical the next) and he didn’t serve on my comprehensive examination board. I was looking for a guide who would give me space to develop my own thoughts as well as constructive criticism. I was also impressed by his ability to write for broad audiences and to serve Church and society.
When I asked him if he would direct my dissertation, he immediately grasped what I hoped to do and then helped me do it. I can still see the nine-by-twelve-inch manila envelopes that would arrive in my mailbox, containing his marked-up copies of draft chapters that I’d submitted only a week or two before. I finished writing as quickly as I did only because of his efficient, encouraging direction.
I remember two bits of advice above all. First, age quod agis: “Do what you’re doing.” That is, focus on the task at hand, don’t get distracted or discouraged (or fall into a rabbit hole). Second, “Revise your dissertation on someone’s else’s dime!” He had high standards—communicated more by example than exhortation—but he also knew that his job was to help me graduate and get on with my work and life. The enormous respect and goodwill he enjoyed within the academy surely made my own theological vocation possible.
Over more than twenty-five years, Larry became a mentor and a friend. Three characteristics stand out. First, he was a learner, and a teacher because of that. His goal, in words he borrowed from St. Anselm, was “not so much to show you something as to search with you.” He embodied Chaucer’s description in TheCanterbury Tales of the Oxford “clerk” or student: “Gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.”
Larry loved his students, particularly undergraduates, who often receive the short end of the stick at research universities. He wasn’t slumming or being merely dutiful when he taught freshmen; he actually enjoyed it and saw it as a service to God. As he put it, “The pursuit of learning is a spiritual quest and the end of the quest is God.”
Second, Larry was the most Catholic of men, in a completely non-triumphalist way. It is impossible to imagine him being anything other than Catholic. He believed that Catholicism alone—in its sacramentality and universality and broad culture—could embrace the fullness of the human experience from its heights to its depths, and in all its breadth. He was the go-to expert on all things Catholic, from fish-fries to the Filioque. Perhaps my favorite essay of his was “Church as Walmart,” for the now-defunct Church magazine, in which he argued for an expansive sense of the Church’s mission and for hospitable, inviting leadership. Something of the shepherd always remained in him.
Third, Larry was a lover of wisdom. His academic specialization was Christian spirituality, particularly the Franciscan and monastic traditions. He wrote and edited several books on St. Francis of Assisi and Thomas Merton, and was a regular visitor to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where he was beloved among the monks. For Larry, Christian spirituality involved not amorphous New Age self-seeking, but receptivity to the life of the Holy Spirit in each of us.
The late Jesuit historian John O’Malley wrote a wonderful book, Four Cultures of the West, in which he identified four broad trajectories: the prophetic, the analytic, the humanistic, and the artistic. Larry was a humanist to the core: uniting, uplifting, inviting, harmonizing. While a first-rate scholar, he sought not just knowledge of particular facts or ideas but the wisdom that offers a broader view of reality. His instinct was to put things together rather than pull them apart. He knew, with St. Paul, that “all things hold together” in Christ (Colossians 1:17).
Joseph Ratzinger, whom Larry greatly admired, once said, “A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music, and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental: they necessarily are reflected in his theology.” Larry was keenly attuned to the beautiful. He loved music and art—one of his favorite paintings was Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert in the Frick Collection. He loved words and the Word, Jesus Christ, sustaining them all. One saw this in his love for John Henry Newman—a reverence that ran so deep that, according to his colleague and eulogist Cyril O’Regan, to slight the English saint was, in Larry’s view, to sin unforgivably against the Holy Spirit!
Larry’s own writing was graceful and unaffected, utterly devoid of jargon. An academic who didn’t confuse obscurity with depth, he wore his learning lightly. His masterful Thomas Merton & the Monastic Vision has an ample bibliography but not a single footnote. With the confidence and humility of a man who knew his stuff, he once told me, “I hope to practice the ‘hautest’ of haute vulgarisation!”
Larry’s funeral Mass was celebrated at his beloved basilica, where he had faithfully attended Mass and Sunday Vespers for decades. Over twenty-five priests concelebrated, including former Notre Dame president Edward “Monk” Malloy. Burial followed at the campus cemetery, in a simple coffin fittingly made by the Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey in Iowa. Carved into its top were a cross, his name, his dates of birth and death, and “University of Notre Dame.”
His colleague Gary Anderson put it best in his eulogy: “He was deeply shaped by a profound love of God that radiated out to those who came into contact with him.… To know Larry was to love Larry.” May he rest in peace.
