Sean the Baptist

I have just been finishing off the text for the Whitley Lecture that I am due to give on a number of occasions next year - and in the course of writing came across one of those really annoying things that the scholarly world sometimes throws up.

In David Tracey's book, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (London: SCM, 1987) on p.19, there is a lovely quote attributed to Bernard Lonergan: "Be attentive, be intelligent, be responsible, be loving, and, if necessary, change".  Its a nice quotation for an essay on hermeneutics, and Tracy foonotes a reference to Lonergan's Method in Theology, p.231.  Being the nerd I am I went and checked it.  The quotation isn't there.  What we do find there is the standard list of the 4 "transcendental precepts" that shape much of Lonergan's work" be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable/rational, be responsible", but no reference to being loving or to changing.  Only the Tracy version also occurs on this website with the same page reference.

Does Tracy have access to an independent oral tradition (he knew Lonergan well, I think)?  Did he just make it up? Am I going mad?

So the quotation stays out, and my conclusion lacks the rhetorical panache that Tracy's version would have given it.  Oh, and I spent 40 minutes trying to hunt the thing down.