14 Facts About Edward Schillebeeckx

Edward Cornelis Florentius Alfonsus Schillebeeckx was a Belgian Catholic theologian born in Antwerp.

Edward Schillebeeckx was born in Antwerp on 12 November 1914, the sixth of 14 children in a middle-class family.

Edward Schillebeeckx studied theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven.

Edward Schillebeeckx then entered the Dominican study house at Leuven, where he stayed until 1945.

Edward Schillebeeckx saw neo-scholastic theology that reacted against modern ideas as poorly founded in Aquinas's writings or their medieval context.

Edward Schillebeeckx portrayed sacraments less abstractly, like the personal encounters Jesus had with his followers, rather than as mechanisms for the distribution of grace.

Precisely on this matter, Edward Schillebeeckx played an influential role during the National Pastoral Council held at Noordwijkerhout from 1968 to 1970.

Edward Schillebeeckx, well known in the Netherlands and Belgium through his many interventions in the media, was by then known as the leading Dutch-speaking contemporary theologian.

Edward Schillebeeckx's christology was criticized by Cardinal Franjo Seper and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whom Schillebeeckx already knew at the Second Vatican Council and who was later elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Edward Schillebeeckx's oeuvre, surveyed in several bibliographies, has been the subject of many studies and controversies.

Edward Schillebeeckx was awarded the Erasmus Prize in 1982, and the Gouden Ganzenveer in 1989.

The Edward Schillebeeckx Foundation, led by Erik Borgman, was founded at Nijmegen in 1989.

The personal papers of Edward Schillebeeckx are being conserved in two archive centers.

The largest part of the collection of Edward Schillebeeckx' writings are kept at the Katholiek Documentatie Centrum of the Radboud University at Nijmegen.