L'Osservatore Romano published this English translation of the presentation of the Ratzinger Prize by Pope Benedict XVI to an old friend of mine from my Notre Dame days, Jesuit Patristics scholar Brian Daley, S.J., earlier this week, whose book on eschatology (The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology) in the first several ( Read more... )

Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, S.J., Emeritus Archbishop of Milan - one of the truly notable successors of the mighty Ambrose of Milan - died yesterday, I just read. It's one of those pieces of bad news I've expected for some time. I was familiar with Martini from my the time of my Master's studies, where it became obvious that he was the great ( Read more... )

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An absolutely awesome story from Notre Dame Magazine in an article about long-time professor Emil Hofman:Hofman, now 90, exemplifies that rare combination found in all the great teachers. He was a lion on the stage who commanded a crowded auditorium without a microphone, yet he somehow conveyed a hint of his sly sense of humor and joy in teaching. ( Read more... )

It was interesting the other day to trip across this brief essay in the ranking of the best graduate Theology programs in the United States. This wasn't just because both of my degrees are held to come from top-five programs, although that was pleasant to read. The task of ranking college programs is notoriously difficult, but I couldn't help but ( Read more... )

Damn. For a year or two, I've been trying to remember the name of a professor I had in English at NIU, who had made a strong impression on me, and who had particularly given me some words of encouragement at a critical point that turned me toward graduate school instead of the "safer" option of starting to work right out of undergraduate in being ( Read more... )

The start-up to the new academic year has really begun. The President's Convocation of the Faculty and Staff was Monday, which was entertaining in a new-of-the-university kind of way, but more interesting for just the social conviviality during and afterward at the reception. I met a young ancient history professor who studied with a grad school ( Read more... )

I actually remember having the thought. It was the spring of 1994 and I was taking Richard McBrien's Ecclesiology course at Notre Dame, which was hugely significant for me in connecting Vatican II and the contemporary Catholic Church with the patristic roots of the Church - all the ancient sources of Christianity that I had been reading and ( Read more... )

Along with reading Tom O'Meara in book form the last few weeks, as I've mentioned earlier, I also recalled having stashed this list of quotations in an earlier Mac of mine. O'Meara, having a droll, deadpan kind of Irish wit, would say the mostly hilariously random things in class. Hilarious, at least, in a theological context: some of these being ( Read more... )

was pleased just now, reading a bit before bed after an evening out with Sr. Terri to see The Adjustment Bureau (more on that and the theology of grace later), with the concise elegance of Tom O'Meara's summary of his time studying with Karl Rahner in Munich in the 1960s, as he relates it in A Theologian's Journey. Rahner, for those who don't ( Read more... )