“‘Father D’ was a dedicated, gregarious teacher renowned for his wit and his sense of joy, as well as an academic adviser and mentor known for the pastoral care and concern he generously gave to so many students,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

Father Denniston was raised in Westbury, New York, and was ordained a priest in 1979. He served at St. Mary’s in Manhasset, St. Anne’s in Garden City, Notre Dame in New Hyde Park, and as pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in Huntington.

He began his teaching career in 1984 as a member of the faculty at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York. In 1991, he earned his Ph.D. in theology at Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences with a dissertation titled “An examination of Calvin’s Theory of Knowledge in His Theology and Exegesis.” He joined the theology department as an adjunct assistant professor in 1996 and was an integral part of the teaching staff until his accident last year. He was the author of Give Them What You Have: Interpreting the New Testament for Today (Ligouri, 2008).

Beloved in the Classroom

Though he was an accomplished scholar and author, Father Denniston was best known for the classes he taught.

Faith and Critical Reason, a required course for all incoming first-year students, was his specialty. He taught three to four classes of 30 students per semester, a course load that never ceased to amaze J. Patrick Hornbeck, Ph.D., who was the chair of the department from 2013 to 2020.

“The amount of energy that he must have had to be able to do a high level of teaching multiple times in a row was always very impressive to me,” he said.

“You couldn’t know John and not know that he was a humorous, tongue-in-cheek, delightful man who really enjoyed life, and I think that he got a tremendous amount of energy out of his interactions with students.”

Brenna Moore, Ph.D., an associate professor of theology who served as associate chair of undergraduate studies in theology, said what was even more remarkable about this workload—he also taught classes about the Book of Revelations and apocalyptic themes in film—was how he managed to pay so much attention to individual students. They were not, he often reminded her, simply passive recipients of theology research.

“It was very transformative and very healing for me to start thinking about what I was doing in a very different way. He helped me just by telling me stories about his students, and asking me about my stories about students,” she said. “He also had hilarious stories about things students would say.”

Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., a professor of theology who was on the faculty when Father Denniston defended his dissertation in 1991, said that calling him the “pied piper” of the department would be no exaggeration.

“His courses, even one as recondite as Eschatology, would fill up minutes after enrollment opened,” he said.

James Burris, a first-year student at Fordham College at Rose Hill who took Faith and Critical Reason with Father Denniston last fall, said even an 8:30 a.m. start time didn’t dull the experience.

“Father D loved to joke around and incorporate a lighthearted environment into his classes but I always walked away feeling like I had learned something from his lectures. He was an example of the Jesuit values of the magis and cura personalis through his devotion to his students and his University,” he said.

Making Connections Around Campus

Father Denniston split his time between residences at the Rose Hill campus and in Long Island, and as such, was a presence in many lives outside of the academic setting.

He served as chaplain for the men’s football team; former coach Joseph Moorhead, FCRH ’96, called him “a tremendous man of God whose intelligence, sense of humor, empathetic nature, and true care for the students of Fordham and Bronx Community will always resonate with me.”

Anne-Marie Sweeney, who was the theology department’s secretary from 2003 to 2020, said one of her fondest memories will always be when Father Denniston presided over her son’s wedding in 2016.

“I told him a few times that he not only taught the students about religious faiths but also gave them the tools that would help them through life’s journey, wherever it would take them. He was kind, humble, and had a great sense of humor and always had a smile on his face,” she said.

He made connections as well with his fellow priests at Rose Hill. He lived at the Salice-Conley residence hall, but Associate Professor of Theology Thomas Scirghi, S.J., said he joined the Jesuit community for dinner once a week.

“He’s a gregarious fellow. He walks into a room, he’s kind of like a Jay Leno smile that lights up a room, and he really enjoys meeting people and being with people,” he said.

“He was just one of the guys. He’s a diocesan priest but he fit in here so well, and so he’s remembered well by the Jesuit community here.”

Father Scirghi concelebrated a wedding in Stony Brook with Father Denniston in late September, and he said Father Denniston was determined to bring joy to the setting, even in the midst of a pandemic.

“The couple originally had a guest list of 250 and now it was whittled down to 50. So it was kind of sad, a little somber, but he helped raise the tone there to help make it a joyful occasion,” he said.

Father Denniston is survived by his nieces Melissa Paladino and Erin Crosby; nephew John Denniston; great-nephews James Wallace, Joseph Wallace, Ethan Paladino, and William Crosby; and great-niece Sophia Paladino.

Gifts in honor of Father Denniston may be made to the Rev. John J. Denniston, Ph.D., GSAS ’91 Memorial Fund.

Information on services can be found here.

—Chris Gosier contributed reporting.

Faruque, who was born in Bangladesh and whose interests skewed toward math and science as he was growing up, earned an undergraduate degree in Financial Economics from the University of London in 2011. But he headed back east to Iran shortly afterward, to Tehran University, where he earned an M.A. in Islamic philosophy in 2014. The worldwide financial crash of 2008 had given him pause and spurred him to think about big questions in life.

“The more I was exploring, the more I became convinced that I want to change my field,” he said.

Last year, he earned a Ph.D. in Islamic thought, philosophy, and mysticism (with an emphasis on comparative thought) from the University of California at Berkeley. Since September, he has been the Graduate School of Arts and Science’s (GSAS) first George Ames Postdoctoral Fellow.

A Joint Effort to Expand Recruitment

The fellowship was jointly created by GSAS, the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, and the Office of Research as a way to advance the recruitment of scholars from underrepresented communities and showcase the value of teaching and research at a Jesuit institution.

It is also partially funded by the George Ames Endowment for Junior Faculty at GSAS, which was created by Ames, a 1942 graduate of the School of Law, the Dean of Arts and Sciences Faculty, and the Office of the Provost.

As part of his two-year-long fellowship, Faruque is working on an expanded version of his Ph.D. dissertation that is forthcoming under the title The Labyrinth of Subjectivity: Islam, Modernity, and the Formation of the Self.

“I used to think, when it comes to things that happen in our life, we can very much control them. Not just what happens in the economic and political sphere, but also in your personal life. I was very confident that I could plan and control every single movement of my life, and progress towards achieving what I wanted to achieve,” he said.

“Eventually I came to realize that all of these matters (i.e. the existential questions) hang together on our conception of selfhood or who we are, which as one medieval philosopher rightly pointed out, is the knot of the universe. Unless we know or understand ourselves fully, we will not be able to understand or make sense of all the phenomena that we observe in the external world.”

A New Concept of the Self

In Labyrinth of Subjectivity, Faruque engages thinkers from Islamic and Western philosophies, as well as leading scholars of neuroscience, to ultimately arrive at a multidimensional conception of the self that is comprised of three degrees: bio-physiological, socio-cultural, and ethico-experiential.

In addition to Western philosophers such as Saint Augustine of Hippo, René Descartes, and Michel Foucault, he includes the contributions of Islamic thinkers such as Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi, Avicenna, Mulla Sadra, and Muhammad Iqbal. He tackles the works of neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio, Walter Freeman, and famed DNA researcher Francis Crick as well, to push back against any notion of the self that is reduced to a series of cognitive abilities such as sensory perception.

“That’s a very narrow conception of the self that ignores the moral dimension. This is because to think of myself as an “I” is to already think of others, as there cannot be an “I” without a “you,” he said.

“I put forward this multidimensional conception of the self that I think would bring new options to the table for addressing some of the central concerns in the modern world, such as the nature of happiness and suffering, transhumanism, and especially, the nature of the ethical life.”

Going Beyond Stereotypes of Islam

The Ames fellowship is open to all departments; J. Patrick Hornbeck II, Ph.D., chair of the theology department, said he was honored that his is the first to host it.

“It’s very clear that understanding Islamic thought is a key goal for many of our students. Many of them are Muslim themselves, others are pursuing majors like Middle Eastern studies or political science or international studies, where a knowledge of Islam that goes deeper than just stereotypes is absolutely essential in order to think about how to build a more peaceful and constructive world,” he said.

“What Muhammed is able to do is not just provide excellent teaching in classic Islamic texts, but also to think about ways in which Islam as a tradition has encountered modern thought in all of its complexity.”

After teaching Faith and Critical Reason last semester, Faruque’s teaching Classic Islamic Text: From the Quran to the Islamic Humanities this spring; next fall he’ll be teaching a course titled Religion and the Making of the Self.

“I really enjoyed teaching my first semester. The students were very engaging. It was very much a discussion-oriented class, and I’m someone who always enjoys dialogue rather than just lecturing,” he said.

Fordham’s Jesuit roots were appealing as well, Faruque said, as he had incorporated St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises into his dissertation. He also appreciates that the University’s approach to education is holistic, rather than fragmentary.

“Teaching does not just end in class or with a course that you teach. What’s much more important is the life that is about to come, and the skills that [a student]is supposed to acquire through her time in this kind of institution,” he said.

“You do address enduring questions of human experience, and equip students to think critically, to develop practical skills for constructive intellectual dialogue across religious, cultural, and political divide, and to know one’s place in the wider world, which is essential for engagement in shifting national and global contexts. As a critical educator, I have found that anchoring diverse intellectual thought promotes greater cross-cultural learning and understanding, in addition to helping develop a global consciousness in the classroom.”

Eric Daryl Meyer, GSAS ’14, has been offered a position as an assistant professor of theology at Carroll College in Helena, Montana. Since fall 2015, he’s been working as a post-doctoral fellow at Loyola Marymount University.

Emily Cain, GSAS ’16, has been offered a position as an assistant professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago. For the past year, she has been working as a visiting professor there.

Paul Schutz, who will graduate in August, has been offered a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University.

Department of Theology Chair J. Patrick Hornbeck, D.Phil., said the appointments demonstrate that Fordham is instilling in students the skills that other institutions of higher learning are looking for in their own professors. Cain’s appointment is especially notable, as she is the first theology doctoral student in at least a decade to be invited to join another Ph.D.-granting department.

Although sought-after areas of theology wax and wane over time (scholars of Islam were in demand after 9/11, and recently there was a high demand for scholars of Buddhism), Hornbeck said, the department has deliberately focused its resources on five distinct areas: The Bible, Christianity in antiquity, the history of Christianity, systematic theology, and theological and social ethics.

He said that doctoral students also receive guidance from Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Ph.D., an assistant professor of theology who has served as a jobs placement officer since 2015.

“As someone who is relatively close to the academic job market herself, she brings recent real-world experience and a tremendous amount of infectious enthusiasm for the good of each of our students,” Hornbeck said. “She mentors them individually, from the beginning of the academic year to when they begin applying to academic institutions outside of Fordham, and all the way through the end of the process.”

Finally, Hornbeck noted that national data shows that equal numbers of Ph.D. graduates in theology and religious studies now go from a doctoral program into a post-doctoral fellowship, visiting position, or some other full-time opportunity as move directly into a tenure track position. With that in mind the department has doubled its efforts to track and advertise such openings.

On average, the department confers doctoral degrees on seven students each academic year. In recent years, graduates have received full-time appointments at at Purdue University, Bucknell University, and several small Catholic colleges and seminaries.

That’s the driving force behind a large number of pre-med students and alumni who have made theology a major component of their studies, with some going so far as to major in both theology and biology.

“The cruel reality of medical school admissions is, once you get to the door of your interview, no one wants to talk to you about how you did in biochemistry,” said Ellen M. Watts, assistant dean for pre-health professions advising.

“That’s just your foundation to get in. Then it’s very much a people-person field. The student who has a 4.0 GPA and 120 credits of science, who has never taken their head out of the book, is really not going to be successful going into this profession.”

Psychology and philosophy are also popular choices for students looking for another major to pair with biology, she said. Often, students choose to add another major to their workload after being exposed to it their freshman year.

That was the case for Taylor Jacob, FCRH ’14, who attended Fordham on a full scholarship, majored in biology and theology, and is now working toward a doctorate in Christian bioethics as part of a Fulbright fellowship in Scotland.

A theology course titled Vocation of the Health Care Provider exposed her to the human side of medicine, and inspired her to take a medical ethics class, she said. Her research examines access to womens’ health care in Catholic hospitals, and how it compares to access in other health care systems.

“The trends in medicine today are moving away from just understanding the pure sciences toward trying to understand the person as a whole, which I think a Jesuit education is pretty well suited to do, given the whole message of cura personalis,” said Jacob. She said she plans to enter medical school and work in pediatric medicine.

In his freshman year, Brandon Mogrovejo, FCRH ’15, who is enrolled in Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, likewise found himself enthralled with a subject that he “never in a million years” imagined himself being interested in— African-American studies. He chose it as his major along with biology, and he also minored in theology. He said he was energized by the back and forth among the courses he took.

“I was blown away by how philosophical the theology courses were. They asked questions about why we believe in God, and why certain religions revere a godlike figure at all. I really like asking those questions,” he said.

Although science and religion are often pegged as being at odds with one another, they’re seen as more complementary for students who’ve embraced as their vocation the healing of strangers’ bodies and minds.

Anthony Halko, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior majoring in theology and integrative neuroscience, said his studies have given him the ability to critically compare Christianity’s creation story and Darwin’s theory of evolution. He can understand the ways in which the former is useful, even if not interpreted literally. A volunteer fire fighter and a member of Fordham University EMS, Halko hopes that a theology background will allow him consider how best to treat patients in a way that benefits their psyche as well as their body.

Alyssa Ammazzalorso, FCRH’ 15, a Presidential scholar who is in her second year at Albert Einstein Medical College after majoring in biology and theology, is well acquainted with how the two fields complement each other—her father chose the same path and became a doctor.

“I’m very interested in biology and the mechanisms of life, and theology gives a meaning to life beyond those mechanisms. It’s two ways of looking at life, and you can’t just focus on one or the other in order to have a full appreciation of what life is,” she said.

In fact, Watts said the medical field has been pushing schools to teach pre-med students to excel in humanities for the last decade. In 2015, the MCAT exam even included sections on sociology and psychology. Medical schools want students who are able to deal with patients of different races, religions, cultural backgrounds, and emotional states of mind ethically, and can respect their experiences and their sense of self.

Theology department chair J. Patrick Hornbeck, D. Phil., noted that when the department redesigned the major in 2010, it created a specialization in the relationship between faith and culture. It now offers courses with potential pre-med students in mind such as Introduction to Bioethics, Vocation of the Healthcare Provider, and Moral Aspects of Medicine, Death and Dying.

“Theology courses provide students with the opportunities to ask questions about the ethics of medical care, the relationship between medical care and spiritual and religious beliefs, and about what it means to be human in some of life’s most defining moments,” he said.

“Future physicians and other health professionals who have a grounding in theological disciplines will be able to be more compassionate, more thoughtful and more empathetic towards those they care for.”

Jacob said that theology helped her to pay attention to what people believe at the highest level, and how important it becomes in creating a plan for the health of an individual.

“You have to take [what people believe]into account. If you tell them something that conflicts with their deepest beliefs, it’s going to be wasted time,” she said.

The 14th-century English theologian and professor was a major inspiration for Christians who, in the years leading up to the Protestant Reformation, began to question the need for a pope and the doctrine of transubstantiation.

He was not alone in his questioning; Christians in England who longed for a simpler, more biblical religion embraced him. They were all subsequently branded Lollards, a catchphrase for heretics.

Wyclif’s influence extended beyond England into Bohemia (currently the Czech Republic), thanks to cultural and trade links that were established by the king of England’s marriage to a Bohemian princess in 1382. Until recently, this cross-continental exchange of ideas has warranted little attention from historians and scholars of religion.

Europe After Wyclif a new book published by Fordham University Press, seeks to remedy this, via a compilation of new research presented at a three-day conference that Fordham’s Center for Medieval Studies hosted in June 2014.

J. Patrick Hornbeck II, D.Phil., chair of the Department of Theology, one of the book’s editors, said the idea behind the conference and resulting book was to make Fordham a meeting place where English-speaking scholars and Eastern European scholars could interact in ways they never had before.

He cited Jan Hus, a reformer from Bohemia who was influenced by Wyclif and who was burned at the stake in 1415 for his heresies. Hus is as well-known a figure to Czech citizens as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are to Americans. Only recently has the relationships among Wyclif, Hus, and their respective reform movements been studied in great detail, though.

“Up until a few years after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the people who were studying Jan Hus were mostly Czech speakers and the people who were studying Wyclif were mostly English speakers,” he said. “They rarely got to talk to each other.”

“Often, both groups were making assumptions about the other that were based on out-of-date material. We wanted to bring together the cream of the crop of scholars in both geographical areas, and to do so across the academic disciplines as well.”

Hornbeck pointed to a chapter by Pavel Soukup, Ph.D., associate director of the Center for Medieval Studies at the Czech Academy of Sciences, as an example of how regional controversies are inseparable from broader cultural and religious developments.

Soukup examined the ways in which bishops reported incidents of heresy, and the Vatican recorded them, over time, paying special attention to the descriptors that church officials used. For a long time, English heretics were referred to as Wycliffites, due to their association with Wyclif. When similar heretics showed up in Bohemia, they too were dubbed Wycliffites—but it was erroneous to group them together in spite of similarities.

“So Soukup plots carefully over time how church authorities eventually came to separate ‘Wycliffies’ from ‘Hussites’ or even ‘Bohemians’, as they later began to call them, and he argues that these simple changes in name can tell us much about how church leaders saw the relationships among different groups of reformers,” he said.

The conference, which was held in association with the Lollard Society and McGill University, was made possible by a $25,000 grant from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

That was the question posed on Oct. 23 at “Keep Fracturing the Good Order: Daniel Berrigan, the Long Haul, and the Big Heart,” a lecture that celebrated the life of Daniel Berrigan, S.J., and advised on how to survive peacefully in today’s world.

Speaker Anna J. Brown, Ph.D., of St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey, was a friend and colleague of Father Berrigan. She met him through the Kairos Community, a peace community Father Berrigan started in the late 1970s. She described him as a “human being who was deep in prayer, faith, and soul.”

“Dan spent his life fiercely committed to nonviolence, being genuinely loving to all and centered in faith and community,” said Brown. “He constantly worked for peace in the world.”

Father Berrigan is remembered as “sometimes an anarchist, always a pacifist” who spent his life protesting against violence and “American military imperialism.” As one of the Catonsville Nine Catholic activists, he became the first priest to be on the FBI’s most-wanted list, for burning military draft files. With others, he became a symbol of the anti-war movement during the United States’ involvement in Vietnam.

Father Berrigan served as Fordham’s poet-in-residence from 2000 until his death in April of this year, and often spoke to classes, in conjunction with the Peace and Justice Studies Program. He was a peace activist until his death.

“He participated in the Occupy Wall Street Movement when he was 90 years old,” said Brown. “He was so dedicated to peace and fairness, he gave everything he physically could.”

The lecture focused on key events, such as climate change, weapons dealing, war, and mass migration, that hamper the quest for peace. Brown invited those in attendance to join “the tribe of big hearted people” who act as bearers of light for the world.

“We, like Dan, must be the opposite of hyper-individualism,” said Brown. “We must root ourselves in a community that pulsates love and radiates life.”

The event marked the Tenth Annual Julio Burunat, Ph.D., Memorial Lecture. Burunat, a Fordham alumnus who received doctoral degrees in both philosophy and theology from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, lived Murray Weigel Hall on the Rose Hill campus as a Jesuit scholastic. Theology professor J. Patrick Hornbeck II, D.Phil., said the series hosts talks that “advance conversations about theology and religion that are both appreciative and critical.”

“We consider sharing these conversations with the broader world an obligation,” said Hornbeck. “We feel honored to extend these experiences to people who otherwise would not be able to have them.”

–Mary Awad

“I was very saddened to hear about Dr. Tilley’s death,” said Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham. “First and foremost, my heart goes out to Terry [her husband]and to their family. Many people can—and will—speak of Maureen’s exceptional scholarship and service to Fordham, but for my part, I will miss her as a friend, a colleague, and a woman of enormous decency and integrity. I know the University community joins me in keeping the Tilley family in our hearts and prayers today.”

Visitation will be held Monday, April 11 from 4:30 – 8 p.m. at St. Paul the Apostle Church, 405 W 59th St., New York, New York. A funeral mass will be held Tuesday, April 12, at 10 a.m. at St. Paul the Apostle Church.

Tilley came to Fordham in 2006 with her husband Terrence, Fordham’s Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, Professor of Catholic Theology and the former department chair.  She had taught previously at Florida State University (1989-1998) and the University of Dayton (1998-2006). She was an internationally respected scholar of late ancient North African Christianity, between roughly the timespan of 180 A.D. to 700 A.D.

Martyrdom, the roles for women, ecclesiastical art, the veneration of saints, and the reception of biblical texts were all part of her studies. Of particular interest to her was the relationship between two prominent Christian communities of the era, the Catholics and the Donatists.

After a semester away from Fordham as the Thomas F. Martin St. Augustine Fellow at Villanova University, Tilley was promoted to full professor in 2011. In a 2012 profile in Inside Fordham, Tilley explained the significance of St. Augustine of Hippo, who worked to heal the rift between the Donatists, a group that advocated a smaller, purer, holier church.

“What Augustine is famous for is constructing a sacramental theology of baptism and penance that continues to the present,” Tilley said. “[This involves] finding a welcome for repentant sinners—not holding them at arm’s distance, but enfolding them—and having a greater tolerance for evil members of the church.”

J. Patrick Hornbeck II, DPhil, chair of the theology department, said that by illuminating the world of Augustine, Tilley helped people understand better what it meant for an early Christian to be called a saint, and what it means when people, especially women, are called saints today.

“She brought to her scholarship a tremendous care for detail and accuracy, an eagerness to delve into challenging texts, and a desire to leave scholarly tools for generations of church historians to come,” he said.

“Maureen was a distinguished colleague, a fellow student of the history of Christianity, but most of all, an exceptional and fiercely loyal friend.  I will miss her wry sense of humor and her knack for not allowing our department or any of us to settle for second best,” Hornbeck said.

Tilley’s colleague, Distinguished Professor of Theology Elizabeth Johnson, PhD, said Tilley was part of the first generation of women scholars who brought a contemporary perspective to issues of systematic theology.

Sister Johnson said she uses Tilley’s “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity,” from Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Commentary, Vol. 2, (Crossroad Pub, 1994), in her classes to illustrate that women who were martyred for their refusal to marry wealthy men were not, as had been widely believed, concerned with preserving their virginity.

“What Maureen figured out from reading the texts was, they were rejecting patriarchal marriage; they wanted to have a life of their own, and Christ gave them that possibility,” she said.

Sister Johnson noted that even though Tilley was ill, she finished one last paper, “Class Conflict in the Convent: St. Caesarius of Arles and Unruly Nuns,” the subject of one of her earlier lectures. The paper details how Caesarius, a sixth-century bishop, dealt with a conflict between rich and poor nuns by issuing elaborate rules for stitching; the rule was designed to restrict the wealthier nuns’ ability to flaunt their class privilege. Sister Johnson said it exemplifies how Tilley saw value in areas that others might pass over.

“She had an eye for what doesn’t fit the standard judgment of what’s important or not important, and by pursuing those little ideas that are in the texts but overlooked by virtually everyone, she shed new light on the spirituality, theology, and the actual practiced religious life of people long gone,” she said.

Tilley was born in 1948 to Joe and Betty Molloy and raised in California, where she attended Catholic grammar and high schools in San Pedro. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco in 1970, a master’s degree from St. Michael’s College in Vermont in 1985, and a doctorate degree in the history of Christianity from Duke University in 1989. She wrote more than 70 articles, 50 reviews, an influential monograph, The Bible in Christian North Africa (1997), two books of translations, and co-edited a volume of essays. She served on the editorial boards of Theological Studies and Horizons. She served as president of the North American Patristics Society (2005-06). She also had an interest in needlework; one of her projects hangs in the Holy Cross Church sanctuary in Durham, North Carolina.

Tilley is survived by her husband Terrence, daughters Elena DeStefano and Christine Dyer, granddaughter Jacqueline Dyer, and sisters Noelle Gervais and Josette Molloy.

In lieu of flowers, a donation to Mary’s Pence or a “peace and justice” charity is encouraged.

Father Massingale comes to Fordham from Marquette University, where in 2009 he received that institution’s highest award for excellence in teaching.

He has served as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and convener of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium, and holds two honorary doctorates.

He has written over 80 articles, book chapters, and book reviews for publications, including Theological Studies, New Theology Review, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Philosophy and Theology, Journal of Religion and Society, The National Catholic Reporter, and Catholic Peace Voice. His book, Racial Justice and the Catholic Church (Orbis Books, 2010) won a first place book award from the Catholic Press Association.

J. Patrick Hornbeck, PhD, chair of Fordham’s theology department, said it’s difficult to move around the realm of progressive Catholic theology without coming across Father Massingale’s contributions.

“His work on advocacy for both racial justice and justice in the realm of sexual ethics is incredibly well known all around the country. Many Fordham colleagues assign his work in their classes, and several Fordham doctoral students draw heavily on his work in their dissertations,” he said.

Hornbeck noted that Racial Justice, which challenged and encouraged the Catholic Church to welcome people of all different racial and ethnic identities, epitomizes the kind of scholarship that the department promotes today. Ethics, justice, and social change have been paramount in faculty scholarship.

“It became clear to us in the theology department that what we were lacking was someone who could speak both out of deep experience and out of deep scholarship about the experience of racial justice in the United States,” he said.

“There really is no person in the Catholic theological academy who excels at doing such work in a creative and intersectional way than Father Massingale.”

Father Massingale will present “Beyond ‘Authentically Black and Truly Catholic’: Black Catholic Identity for a New Time” on Monday, Feb. 22 at 6 p.m. at the Lincoln Center campus. For more information, visit the Curran Center event page.

As the year comes to a close, here are a few of our favorites, in no particular order.

Patrick Verel

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 I have no idea why I thought it’d be fun to make Edwards’ Parade look like Hoth. I guess I was thinking about Stars Wars even back in February.

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Crocuses are far and away my favorite flower, because they show up way before anything else is hardy enough to make a go of it.

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I just love this kids’ attitude. She’s got future Ram written all over her.

Rachel Roman

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Okay, technically NOT a picture, but the drone footage was awesome.

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Everything about this photo is beautiful. The fog, the snow, even the bare tree branches. And I usually hate bare tree branches, because they look sad =(

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Because who doesn’t love a Pope doll in a Fordham jacket. Can I get one of these for my desk?

Tom Stoelker

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I love this shot from Mission and Ministry’s John Gownley. At 1600 likes it was one of the most popular posts of the year and reminded us that Keating isn’t Rose Hill’s only iconic tower.

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This shot by Patick Verel is a stunner of Duane Library. We’ve all seen the light stream like this and it never fails to impress.

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Love, love, love the pizza nuns shot! Joanna Mercuri tells us that the nuns were singing while waiting in line to see the pope at Madison Square Garden, but when they finally paused for a bite to eat Joanna captured a moment of community both large and small.

Chris Gosier

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Somehow, the Ram seems to be standing a little taller for his usual backdrop being blotted out by a snowstorm.

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I like this cool angle; you can almost see the flowers pushing upward because of the odd angle with the statue of Dagger John.

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Love this shot of Cunniffe House. The photographer seems to have caught it at just the right time of day.

Joanna Mercuri

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Because can we ever get enough of fall beauty shots?

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Fordham students abroad at our London Centre campus.

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Our new home in Martino Hall gives us some pretty awesome views of the Lincoln Center campus.

Gina Vergel

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Father Joseph M. McShane, S.J., our president, is a tremendous speaker – in public or in casual conversation. Joanna Mercuri caught him during Move-in Day 2015 and it was great.

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This beautiful shot of the candle-lighting ceremony on Edwards Parade during orientation/Move-In weekend garnered more than 800 likes, and shows the sense of community welcome new students receive.

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A beautiful shot of a commute so many in the Fordham family know so well.

In “Pope Francis Goes to Washington… and Philadelphia… and New York,” theology professor Patrick Hornbeck, PhD, asked author James Martin, SJ, to weigh in on Pope Francis’ meeting with Kim Davis, the county clerk who refused to issue same sex marriage licenses.

“I was really upset,” said Father Martin, sitting in front of a split-screen image of the pope and Davis. “It made it difficult for people to reflect on the visit.”

Father Martin refused to join the growing chorus of blame aimed at Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States who is reported to have permitted the encounter in the Washington D.C. Vatican mission. However, he criticized Davis’ lawyer, Mat Staver, for turning a private meeting into a “publicity stunt.”

“That’s the thing I found very craven,” he said.

The Davis distraction shifted the focus from other issues and from the pope’s values, which Father Martin said were on display from the moment he got into his tiny Fiat at the airport and not a limousine.

A frequent guest commentator in the media, Father Martin was on hand to do commentary for TV during the pope’s speech to the U.S. Congress. He said he received an embargoed copy of the papal speech, and was moved by what he found.

“It was four words: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton,” he said. “I started to cry when I saw their names.”

Catholic Church hierarchy, he said, had shabbily treated the two. He noted that Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman once told Dorothy Day that she couldn’t use the word “Catholic” in her Catholic Worker organization. And the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had excised the writings of Thomas Merton from the Adult Catechism, he said.

“I was moved to see these two people raised up and rehabilitated in front of Congress and the whole country,” he said. “He reminded us of our heritage by saying, ‘Look at who you are and look at who you can be,’” said Father Martin.

Pope Francis showed up at Fordham tonight, wearing his Fordham gear. He told me to tell everyone, “Don’t forget to pray for me…And go Rams!” #Repost @mtrer @jamesmartinsj says hi, @jakebraith and Jonathan! #Fordham4Francis #jesuiteducated #blessed   A photo posted by James Martin SJ (@jamesmartinsj) on Oct 6, 2015 at 6:05pm PDT

He said that church leadership here in the United States generally fell in to three camps: the group that supported the pope from the beginning, a group that doesn’t understand him but is open minded, and a third group that does not care for his message.

“The buzzword among Catholic critics is that he’s ‘confusing’ people,” he said. “But whenever you have a new boss in any organization it takes a while to get used to them, so for the some of the [resistant]bishops you can’t blame them.”

Father Martin noted that Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict appointed many of the bishops. They were encouraged to administer in a certain way, so its not surprising that they would chafe at new directives, he said.

However, now that many had met the pope in person during his visit, a new trust might develop.

Even though there was a “shocking lack of women in his visit,” Father Martin said the pope went out of his way to praise women religious.

“Women may not have been present on the altar, but they were certainly present in his mind.”

Hornbeck also shared a series of projected images that prompted a variety of responses from Father Martin, including  an image of an inmate’s tattooed hand shaking the pope’s hand.

“Saints are real people,” he said. “I think we have a saint alive and among us. He has an unerring pastoral sense, because he’s been a pastor. You can’t fake that stuff.”

The event was sponsored by the Department of Theology. 

In gatherings held at each of the Rose Hill and the Lincoln Center campus, Father McShane formally unveiled Continuous University Strategic Planning (CUSP), which follows Toward 2016, the 10-year comprehensive strategic plan the University created in December 2005.

But before that, he addressed serious racial and anti-Semitic incidents that took place at the Rose Hill campus last week. He speculated that the perpetrator of the first incident, in which a racial slur was found on the door of an African-American student’s room, was a freshman who “has not had enough time in our midst to absorb and be positively infected with the spirit of our University.”

The incidents are shocking, disturbing, disheartening, disorienting, and makes him furious and very depressed, he said, because they illustrate how the University was not able to protect a vulnerable member of the community.

“Please, faculty members who are here, I’m asking you to address these matters—the incident, the causes of racism, and what we can do to get a healed campus back,” he said in an afternoon address at the law school.

“We have a lot of work to do. And as we go forward, I ask you please, let us draw together, let us come together, let us knit ourselves together as a community which will make clear to every student, and everyone here that this kind of behavior—hatred, violence, and intolerance—has no place here at Fordham, period. There is no excuse for it. Ever.”

Father McShane also formally welcomed several new senior members of the administration: Martha Hirst, Fordham’s senior vice president for finance and chief financial officer; Elaine Crosson, new general counsel; Maura Mast, the new dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill; Eva Badowska, the new dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Virginia Roach, the new dean of the Graduate School of Education; and Matthew Diller, the new dean of the School of Law.

Higher Ed in Transition

In embracing CUSP, which is being overseen by a 22-member committee from various University departments, Father McShane noted that the world of higher education is changing at an extraordinary rate, and as such, traditional strategic plans are of little use now.

“What we have to do is move away from an exercise which would create a document that we are supposed to live with for 5, 7 or 10 years, and move toward a process of continuous strategic planning, which will enable us to be far more agile in reacting or responding to what is going on, and plotting a course that will differentiate us from others,” he said.
The guiding principle going forward, he said, lies on key aspects to achieve greatness “on Fordham’s own terms.”

“[It] means making Fordham the model—‘the,’ not ‘a’ model—urban Jesuit university for the 21st century,” he said.

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to a question and answer session with CUSP co-chairs Patrick Hornbeck, PhD, associate professor of theology and chair of the department; Debra McPhee, dean of the Graduate School of Social Service; and Peter Stace, vice president for enrollment.

Hornbeck noted that although Toward 2016 had merit, it failed to anticipate such developments as the financial crisis of 2008 or the drops in demand for legal education and graduate studies in the arts and sciences.  He made a distinction between strategic planning and operational planning.

“Strategic questions are the ones that ask us to step back and take the sort of 30,000 foot view of the institution. What is Fordham, and why are we here?” he said, noting that for him, CUSP can be summarized by the phrase, ‘This is not business as usual.’

“I think very often here at Fordham we’re used to thinking, acting, or perceiving in certain terms. We’ve gotten used to the way that we do our business, and part of this planning is disrupting and figuring out how we can be ourselves in a better, more effective way,” he said.

Hornbeck emphasized that although there are 22 members of the committee, the process, which is expected to go through three-year-long cycles, will be inclusive of all members of the University community—from faculty, staff, and students, to alumni and University neighbors. Contributions can already be made at http://www.fordham.edu/cusp.

“We’re going to be creating a culture of planning here at Fordham. We want to build planning and planning-related thinking into the work that we do on an ongoing basis,” he said.