Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984)
Bernard Lonergan was born in 1904 in Buckingham, Quebec to Josephine Wood and Gerald Lonergan. He spent 4 years at Loyola College, a Jesuit institution in Montreal, before entering the Society of Jesus in 1922. A man of insatiable curiosity, Lonergan spent the following decade occupied in various academic pursuits. From 1924 to 1926, he studied philosophy at Heythrop College, England, while taking extra classes in mathematics and classics at the University of London. In 1933, he moved to Rome to study theology and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1936. In 1940, his doctoral studies in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome were interrupted with the outbreak of the Second World War. After having settled in Montreal, he eventually obtained his PhD in theology in 1946 from a special board of examiners from Collège de l’immaculée conception, the Jesuit theology faculty in Montreal. A theologian of international renown, he taught at the University of Toronto’s Regis College from 1947 to 1953 and again from 1965 to 1975, at Pontifical Gregorian University from 1953 to 1964, at Harvard University from 1971 to 1972, and was visiting professor at Boston College from 1975 to 1983.
A great friend of Father O’Connor’s from their days teaching at Loyola College, Lonergan nurtured an lifelong collaboration with the Thomas More Institute. His first course given at the Institute in 1945, titled “Thought and Reality” inspired the publication of his first book, “Insight: A Study of Human Understanding,” in 1957. “Insight" introduced Institute members to the notion of persistent and deliberate questioning. Lonergan's philosophy as captured in "Insight" would become a cornerstone of the Thomas More Institute’s approach toward instruction, and his lectures at the Institute became foundational to their understanding of learning and knowing. In an 1985 article published in Compass, Charlotte Tansey spoke to the importance of Lonergan’s influence: “Lonergan shows us the steps, the stages, the patterning that curiosity needs to take so that the explorations can be respectful and, begun in common sense, move delightedly beyond it.”
The courses offered by Lonergan at the Thomas More Institute include “Thought and Reality” (1948), “Theology of the Blessed Eucharist” (1949) and “Intelligence and Reality’ (1951).
A renowned author, his seminal works include "Insight: A Study of Human Understanding" (1957), "The Triune God: Doctrines" (1961), and "Method in Theology" (1972).
Due to his failing health, Lonergan was forced to abandon his teaching commitments at Boston College and retire to the Jesuit Infirmary in Pickering, Ontario where he died on November 26, 1984.