Collected Essays

From L.A. Schokel, S.J.‘s preface: A professor dead at 58 seems to us a professor manque. His life has been cut off in full flower with senseless finality - a man’s years are seventy. Even though we know that death is the beginning of true life, we miss the life which was his presence among us. But someone who has given himself to teaching can stay alive in his writings. He can live on in the pages which we read, though these pages, like their author’s life, have reached completion. We the colleagues, friends and fellow religious of Dennis McCarthy wish to extend his career by publishing in this volume his collected essays. Some of these essays are rigorously technical, with footnotes; others are a type of personal reflection which some call haute vulgarisation. There are two types of readers then, which are addressed. We tend to think of a professor in terms of his field of specialization, perhaps in terms of his most influential book or most notable success. As though he were a dead butterfly on exhibit or a tree labelled in Latin. The professor usually provides a reason for such simplification. Thus McCarthy evoked the term covenant. This was the subject of his basic work, and this is the subject of eight articles in the present work. But this book does not end with covenant. McCarthy views covenant as the relation between man and God. Connected with covenant are other institutions of the Old Testament world - the Holy War, the rite of installation, leadership, monarchy, the role of blood in sacrifice.