James Martin – Fordham Now

Ignatian Q Conference Advances LGBTQ Inclusion and Equality

Chris Gosier — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 18:56:17 +0000

It was an event that fostered connection and hope—and moved some student to tears. On the weekend of April 21 to 23, students from 14 Jesuit colleges and universities came to Fordham for Ignatian Q, a conference emphasizing community, spirituality, and ways of achieving full inclusion and belonging for LGBTQ+ students on their campuses. The conference has been hosted at various schools in the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) since it was founded at Fordham in 2014.

The messages conveyed during keynote speeches, breakout sessions, a Mass, and other events made for a conference that was, in the words of one organizer, “amazing.”

“I don’t even know how to describe it. Everyone was crying. It was more than I could have ever hoped for,” said Ben Reilly, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill and chair of the Ignatian Q Planning Committee. “It seems to have breathed life into the conversation around LGBT life on campus and LGBT student community, and the importance of community both at Fordham and across our AJCU family.”

Speakers were unsparing in describing the obstacles to LGBTQ+ equality. The weekend began with a keynote at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, next to the Lincoln Center campus, by Bryan Massingale, S.T.D., a gay Catholic priest and the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham.

He spoke of the necessity of dreaming as a step toward creating a just society in which people no longer face intolerance and violence because of gender identity or gender expression.

“That dream is under attack—blatant attack, disturbing attack,” he said, citing laws against “life-saving, gender-affirming medical care” and discussion of LGBTQ topics in schools, among other things. “There are serious efforts underway,” he said, “to create a world in which we don’t exist.”

He decried the idea that “God does not love us and we are not worthy,” saying “we have to dream of a world and a church where that lie is put to rest.” During his address, he prompted everyone in the pews to turn to one another and give affirmations including “you are loved” and “you are sacred.”

Visibility, Understanding, Acceptance

Saturday’s keynote was delivered at the Rose Hill campus by Joan Garry, FCRH ’79, a nationally recognized LGBTQ activist and former executive director of the gay rights organization GLAAD.

“The LGBTQ movement for equality needs all of you—badly,” said Garry, who serves on the executive committee of the President’s Council at Fordham. She urged the students to be activists who foster greater inclusivity at their colleges and universities and provide a model for other LGBTQ students who may be struggling.

“Visibility drives understanding, and understanding drives acceptance,” she said. “When you are ‘out,’ you model authenticity and honesty, and you show people the way. We illustrate that one does not have to be controlled by the expectations of others, and do you know how big that is? That’s a superpower.”

The event was supported by Campus Ministry and the Office of Mission Integration and Ministry. Father Massingale celebrated Mass at the Lincoln Center campus on Sunday, and for some students, it was their first time attending Mass since coming out, Reilly said.

Also on Sunday, in a keynote at the Lincoln Center campus, James Martin, S.J., the prominent author and editor at large at America magazine, said the openness of more and more LGBTQ people in parishes and dioceses ensures that the Catholic Church will continue to become more open to them.

“As more and more people are coming out, more and more bishops have nieces and nephews who are openly gay. That just changes them,” he said. “And that’s not going to stop.”

Scholarship Fund Extends the Legacy of Acclaimed Feminist Theologian

Chris Gosier — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 16:45:36 +0000

In April 2018, when a beloved Fordham theologian appeared before a standing-room-only crowd for her final public event before retiring from the faculty, a collection was underway—one that would help other women advance in an academic field that has long been the province of men.

The event at the Lincoln Center campus brought Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., distinguished professor of theology, together in conversation with the prominent author James Martin, S.J.

During the buoyant conversation focused on her then-new book, Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril (her 11th), Father Martin credited her writings with changing his life. “Thank you,” he said, “for doing so much for making contemporary theology, feminist theology, and especially Christology so accessible to the general reader.”

Admission to the event was free, but attendees were asked to consider donating to a fund for women following in Sister Johnson’s footsteps.

Many were happy to oblige. Their gifts helped to grow the Elizabeth A. Johnson Endowed Scholarship Fund, which helps to bring more women’s voices and experiences into theological teaching and scholarship. With the field of theology—and particularly Catholic theology—dominated by men for so long, “having women involved in the whole field of thinking about religion is a great benefit,” said Christine Firer Hinze, Ph.D., theology department chair at the University.

Every year, the scholarship financially supports a woman who is finishing her doctoral dissertation, allowing her to focus full-time on her research. “When a student has a concentrated period of time to really dig in and get the dissertation done, not only does that produce a better dissertation, but it also produces more professional opportunities for the student,” said Patrick Hornbeck, D.Phil., theology professor and interim dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Providing such academic support is one goal of the University’s current fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student. Recent gifts have moved the scholarship toward providing a full year of financial support, but fundraising continues.

A Pathbreaking Career

Fordham’s graduate program in theology is highly selective, admitting only a few students per year and providing each with five years’ worth of financial support, Firer Hinze said. Students often need a sixth year to complete their dissertations, though, which is where the Elizabeth Johnson Scholarship comes in.

The scholarship was established in 2007 with a gift from Valerie Vincent, GSAS ’99, whom Sister Johnson had mentored. More than 100 other donors have contributed to it since then, often out of deep respect for her gifts as a teacher and her pathbreaking career.

A 27-year member of the Fordham faculty, Professor Johnson is internationally known for her work in Catholic systematic theology, feminist theology, ecological theology, and other fields. One of the most influential Catholic theologians in the world, she has received 15 honorary doctorates, many book prizes, and thousands of messages of thanks from believers inspired and heartened by her work.

In her particularly influential 2007 book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, she examined how God is understood differently by men, women, the poor and oppressed, Holocaust victims, and people of a variety of faiths. Writing in The American Catholic, Joseph Cunneen called it “one of the most important and provocative books on theology to have appeared in the U.S. since Vatican II,” and religion students at universities everywhere commonly find it on the syllabus.

Her career has inspired women everywhere, Hornbeck said. In the decades following the Second Vatican Council, Sister Johnson and some of her colleagues “were the first women who really established themselves in the Catholic theological academy,” he said. “Beth, being one of the first women in that group, made it a special point throughout her career to nurture and to mentor and invest in the women theologians who were coming along behind her.”

He noted that she was the first woman to achieve tenure in the theology department at the Catholic University of America and one of the first women to serve as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America.

Inspired Teaching

Among those who attended Sister Johnson’s public talk in 2018 were Thomas M. Lamberti, FCRH ’52, and his wife, Eileen Lamberti, a former member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph who met Sister Johnson in 1959, just after they both joined the religious order.

After getting reacquainted with Sister Johnson at a Fordham event a few decades ago, she and Thomas started attending more of her appearances. “My husband and I are great believers in her role in theology and promoting women, so Tom and I were very interested in supporting her,” she said.

Sister Johnson has won praise for presenting complex ideas in an engaging way and stimulating students’ interest and interaction in class. Eileen Lamberti sat in on one of Sister Johnson’s courses and saw that when a question was posed, “many, many hands went up”—the kind of strong response that shows a great teacher at work, she said.

Another supporter of the scholarship fund, Margaret Sharkey, PCS ’15, a former student of Sister Johnson’s, found her to be a “a natural storyteller” and a thoughtful listener.

Thomas Lamberti noted that as a retired labor lawyer, he found the scholarship’s equity aspect appealing. “Women theologians play a particular role, I think, of importance to the church, as they have a different view than men about many things,” he said.

In an interview, Sister Johnson said “it’s a whole new thing” to have women coming into the theology profession after nearly 2,000 years of men’s predominance.

“Those who contribute to this scholarship are supporting that—that women’s voice be heard in religious matters,” she said.

She said that St. Thomas Aquinas’ definition of women as “deficient men,” the governing idea in Catholicism and other traditions for centuries, needs to be countered with an “anthropology of equal giftedness” that opens theology to the experiences of women of color, the LGBTQ+ community, the poor, and others.

Diverse schools of thought, methods, and interpretations are springing up among women who are theologians, “so it’s very, very vibrant and lively,” she said. “It’s very difficult to keep up in the field now, because so much is being done on so many fronts.”

A Young Scholar Strikes Gold

Meg Stapleton Smith, the current recipient of the Elizabeth Johnson Scholarship, is in formation to be an Episcopal priest. She said the scholarship made a pivotal difference in her dissertation research focused on Mary Daly, the self-described “radical lesbian feminist” and key figure in modern feminist theology. It gave her the financial latitude to explore Daly’s archives at Smith College, where she found an unpublished manuscript—“the young scholar’s dream,” she said—that Daly wrote between the publication of her books The Church and the Second Sex in 1968 and Beyond God the Father in 1973.

The unfinished manuscript offers insight into Daly’s seemingly sudden decision to leave the Catholic Church, Smith said, and it also offers insight into other works of someone who is often dismissed by many Catholic thinkers because of her departure, Smith said. She has a contract with Cambridge University Press to publish the manuscript in an edited volume containing several feminist scholars’ reflections on it.

“This is somebody who really knew the tradition, and really knew it well—somebody who went to Switzerland to get a doctoral degree in theology when women weren’t even allowed to get Ph.D.s in theology in the United States,” she said.

“Mary Daly had this very robust understanding of the virtues,” Smith said. “One of the things that she said is the way that virtues operate, at least in Catholic moral theology, they tend to not break open our imagination. So she wanted people to understand the virtues as these tools that can help bring about societal transformation and personal liberation.”

In her dissertation, she draws upon Daly’s ideas in juxtaposing the virtue of courage with Catholic sexual ethics and seeing it as a way to counteract sexual shame. In the dissertation, she said, she argues that “when we act courageously, these are actually actions that bring us closer to God.”

Sister Johnson called it humbling and amazing to see the scholarship’s growth.

“It’s like a gift to your life that says, ‘Something that I was passionate about, and devoted all my energy to, is going to go forward in these students, these women who get the scholarship,’” she said. “It’s wonderful.”

To inquire about giving in support of the Elizabeth A. Johnson Endowed Scholarship Fund or another area of the University, please contact Michael Boyd, senior associate vice president for development and university relations, at 212-636-6525 or [email protected]. Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, our campaign to reinvest in every aspect of the Fordham student experience.

David Gibson Offers Catholic Take on the Met’s Heavenly Bodies

Tom Stoelker — Tue, 08 May 2018 22:31:33 +0000

At a press event preceding the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual spring gala, an odd mix of clergy and fashionistas gathered to launch the Costume Institute exhibition Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination. There were plenty friends of Fordham on hand, including Timothy Cardinal Dolan, archbishop of New York, seated next to Donatella Versace, and James Martin, S.J., who had already given interviews with Women’s Wear Daily and Vanity Fair earlier that morning. David Gibson, the director of Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture, gave Fordham News an informed Catholic perspective on the show.

Donatella Versace and Cardinal Dolan

First stop: The Medieval and Byzantine Art Galleries, where modern couture mingled with the Met’s permanent collection.

So, what do you think?

Wow. I’m really stunned and I didn’t expect to be. Frankly, they’ve just exploded it, and looked at Catholicism with new eyes. It makes you look at the Catholic liturgy and vestments in a new way. I didn’t realize until we got here how much this is really an outreach to Catholics, at whatever level of their participation in the Church, as much as it is to the rest of the world. It’s this great osmosis between the secular and the sacred where it’s taking something sacred, advancing it creatively and artistically, and maybe the sacred could take that and again let it re-inform our own liturgical practices.

Most of these designers grew up in European countries where the church is part of the culture. Would you say it’s just a matter of course that the church is part of their visual language?

Detail, Tiera of Pius IX

Yes, they’re always informed by it. I don’t want to be too tough on Americans, but we tend to reject our traditions and disassemble them. I think Europeans, even Catholics who have a certain distance from the church, are still able to use Catholic culture, which is so dense and pervasive there, and reappropriate it in their art. From Fellini and his film Roma, which they site here in the exhibit, to Paolo Sorrentino, the creator of The Young Pope on HBO, they all draw on Catholicism for inspiration. Some, however, would say it’s not done properly, that it’s not reverent enough.

Is the Vatican’s loan of objects from the sacristy of the Sistine Chapel a kind of proselytization?

I wouldn’t call it proselytizing. Pope Francis says you should be drawn to faith by attraction. We do not proselytize. We draw by attraction, so in that sense the exhibit, so far, it’s pretty successful—at least for me!

Father Martin and David Gibson

Downstairs, in the Anna Wintour Costume Center, papal vestments and jewel encrusted crowns, on loan from the Vatican, are reverentially separated from the couture pieces.

There will likely be a lot of commentary about the riches of the church on view here and whether the church should just sell it all off and give to the poor. Why does the church hold on to such valuable treasures?

I think that’s one of the weaker, even lazier arguments, that you often hear and this exhibit is a powerful refutation of that. The Catholic Church has these treasures which celebrate a broader tradition rather than just Catholic tradition. It’s also a Christian and Western tradition. By lending these items out and collaborating as the church does, and the Vatican museums do, it shows why it’s critical to keep this sort of thing together in a collection that’s accessible and open to people. But not just people who can afford to go to Rome, or afford to pay for the museum. It is our patrimony, and we’re sharing this with the wider world. I mean, do you want to go sell the Vatican’s great works of art and have them sit in private collections where nobody will ever see them again? No, you want to keep them and you want to lend them out.

Dior by Galliano

Pope Francis has eschewed the grand style we see on display here, right down to the simple wooden cross that he wears. Is there a contradicting message with the Vatican’s loan?

It is odd to see this at a time when we’re celebrating this very dressed-down Pope Francis. This exhibit celebrates an old-fashioned high church style, and one that opens up a lot of other questions: Where does this exhibit connect? Is it terribly, wonderfully, European? I traveled with John Paul II and in Swaziland I saw him wearing a leopard skin pelt, literally a real fur, as a vestment over a chasuble as he came out to celebrate an outdoor Mass. You don’t see anything like that here.

They have a vestment by Matisse on loan from MoMA, which seems to be the one of the few modernist pieces of from the Church side of the show. Most look like they are from the 19^th century.

Anna Wintour

There’s a timelessness to those. Those 19th-century mitres and tiaras could have been worn a thousand years earlier, and fit right in. But, if you were to wear them today, people would say, like they did with Benedict XVI, what the heck are you doing?

So, is it true that the clothes make the man, even for the pope?

I mean, that’s part of the genius of Catholicism – that you can elect an austere, simple-living cardinal from behind the Iron Curtain, who becomes the first Polish pope. He puts on the white soutane, and he becomes Christ’s vicar on Earth. He becomes the pope. Same with John XXIII. He described himself as an Italian peasant, and he loved to eat. He was so overweight they didn’t even have a white soutane big enough for him when he was elected. But again, he puts that cassock on, and all of a sudden, this heavyset old fellow from a small village in northern Italy, becomes the pope. That says a lot about the power of classic, timeless clothing and the power of Catholic traditions and the Catholic sensibility. Any man who becomes pope becomes a kind of a noblility, at least spiritually speaking, in part because of the uniform he wears.

Mugler by Thierry Mugler

Father James Martin on St. Ignatius and Making U-Turns

Tom Stoelker — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 18:42:23 +0000

On Aug. 29, noted Jesuit James Martin, S.J., welcomed incoming freshmen with a message familiar to anyone with a Jesuit education—an introduction to the concept of cura personalis, Latin for “care for the whole person.”

“Jesuit schools care not just for the mind, not just the body, but for the soul, too,” said Father Martin, speaking at a Fordham College at Rose Hill Academic Orientation at Fordham Prep.

The talk culminated a required summertime reading of Father Martin’s book,The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (HarperCollins, 2010), and began with a welcome message that embraced a diversity of backgrounds and orientations.

He told students that if they were ever troubled, worried, or upset, “there are people who are here for you.” Everyone at Fordham—from the faculty to the staff to the administration—is “devoted” to cura personalis.

Father Martin told students to have “reverence” for themselves and to take care of their bodies. That meant not partying too much, he said. He also warned students of “presenting a false self” to impress others, which includes trying to do too much good (or bad) for show.

He said it’s OK to not know what your major will be or what you want to do in life or who will become your friends.

“Believe it or not, some of the people in this room may become friends you’ll have for your whole life,” he said.

He noted that the founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius Loyola, created a tradition that includes “healthy and life-giving decisions” that began with his own life’s path, which often took unexpected turns.

But he wasn’t always that way, Father Martin said. At one time, the young aristocrat had a hot temper, was vain, and was more interested in impressing women than he was in spirituality. He wanted to become a knight, but after a cannonball shattered his leg, the future saint retreated to the comforts of his family’s castle to recover. There, the only literature available to him was about the lives of the saints. Soon, he began to feel hopeful about his predicament and started to follow their example. He retreated to a cave where he fasted, at the expense of his health, said Father Martin.

“He realized he had to take care of himself physically instead, and that gives us some insight into Ignatian spirituality: Sometimes going ahead means making a U-turn,” he said.

He said that, like St. Ignatius, paying attention to one’s interior life helps in making good decisions.

“That’s called discernment,” he said. “God wants you to make good decisions.”

“And don’t rush the process. Let God work on God’s timetable. He is with you.”

Instagram 2015: Fordham Staff’s Top Pics for the Year

Patrick Verel — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 10:00:29 +0000

This year, we shared nearly 400 pictures and videos on the Fordham Instagram account, and we could have easily shared double that, what with the number of picture-worthy locales and events that take place throughout the Fordham community.

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

Patrick Verel

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.

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.

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

Rachel Roman

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

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 =(

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

Tom Stoelker

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Joanna Mercuri

Because can we ever get enough of fall beauty shots?

Fordham students abroad at our London Centre campus.

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

Gina Vergel

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.

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.

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

Jesuit James Martin Answers Your Questions

Fordham News — Wed, 07 May 2014 16:47:03 +0000

On April 22, noted Jesuit writer James Martin, S.J., and distinguished Fordham University theologian Sister Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., engaged a group of alumni in an inspiring conversation to mark the publication of Father Martin’s new book,Jesus: A Pilgrimage (HarperOne, 2014). For the event, members of the audience submitted questions, but due to the great number of questions, not all of them could be answered that evening. Father Martin has kindly answered some of those questions for us:

You and Sr. Johnson spoke about how the Church is the reliquary of Christ and how we are to be the light of Christ today, but my question is: How are scientists, or college-level biology students, able to embody the light of Christ wherever we go?
First of all, it’s important to remember, as almost everyone knows by now, that faith and reason are not inconsistent, and nor are science and religion. (In fact one of the great definitions of theology is St. Anselm’s “Faith seeking understanding.”) Scientists, and college-level biology students, can embody light of Christ much as anyone can–that is, by being good Christians.

But, more specifically, they might advance the message of Christ by reminding people, through their words and works, that the scientist can be a believer. Here I think of friends like Guy Consolmagno, S.J., and George Coyne, S.J., both astrophysicists who have worked at the Vatican Observatory. In their work, these two Jesuits often try to explain things like the Big Bang, creation, and astronomy from the vantage point of a believer. So anything one can do to rebut these notions that you cannot be a believer in the sciences is helpful.

In your historical scholarship do you believe that Jesus had brothers and sisters?
That’s a good question! During my theology studies and graduate school, Father Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., was once asked whether that really meant “cousins.” No, said Father Harrington, there is a perfectly good Greek word in the New Testament for “cousins,” and the Gospels do not use it here. Catholic belief of course is that Mary was a perpetual virgin, and therefore had no other children after Jesus. For other denominations her having other children does not prove as much of a theological problem.

One way I like to think about it that these children (indeed “brothers” and “sisters” in Greek, not cousins) were children from a prior marriage of Joseph. At the time, it was probably more likely that Joseph was older than Mary, and so he could have been married before. To me it’s more important to remember that Jesus had close relations with his extended family. We often think of Jesus as living almost in a vacuum, or interacting simply with Mary and Joseph. So the emphasis on “brothers and sisters” while hard to grasp, is nonetheless important.

If it is true that the Catholic Church is not gaining members, how do books like your Jesus and Sister Beth’s books get to folks who need them or could help them understand that Jesus was a really great man who was raised up and needs them to stay and fight for their Church—stay and reform?
Actually, the Catholic Church is gaining members. Overall the numbers are down but each year at the Easter Vigil people are baptized! My hope is that my book on Jesus will introduce people to the Son of God in a way that this is inviting and accessible, and in a way that shows that he wasn’t just a really great man, as you rightly say, but also desires a personal relationship with them. That’s part of what I try to remind people of by combining “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith.” The “Jesus of history” is indeed a really great man, as anyone can see. But it’s more than that. Because the “Christ of faith” is the one who, risen and alive, invites them into their church. And desires a relationship with them.

Elizabeth Johnson’s books, by the way, are also written at an inviting and accessible way. She’s helped countless people find their way to God, understand Jesus and appreciate Mary—including me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recommended Consider Jesus or Truly Our Sister.

When Jesus answers Mary, he says “my time has not come yet.” Doesn’t that show he knows his identity/mission?
That’s an excellent point. I hadn’t thought about it quite in that way before. But you could also make the counterargument that his time has in fact come, because afterwards he performs a miracle. So if you raise the question about whether or not his time has come or not, it seems the Mary may know before he does. My sense, and this is purely speculative, is that Mary may have had more time is meditate on his unique identity and mission than he did. So at the Wedding Feast of Cana, in the Gospel of John, Mary is inviting him to embrace his identity, fully, perhaps earlier than he had planned to.

How can we reconcile the time frame of the Gospels with accuracy? Have you read the book that treats Jesus as a zealot?
The timetable for the Gospels is sometimes difficult to pin down. For example, the Gospel of John shows Jesus making at least three pilgrimages to Jerusalem, whereas the Synoptics have him going once. And the Infancy Narratives in Luke and Matthew also diverge. In some Gospels, stories happen at different places in Jesus’s life. But, for the most part, the Gospels agree on the basic sequence of Jesus’s life, and in fact there are “Gospel Parallel” books that try to harmonize the timetable.

And yes, I’ve read most of the book that treats Jesus is a zealot, and it was an interesting book in its own right (though I doubt he was, technically, a “zealot”) but of course left out “Christ of faith,” which is a pretty big omission.

How would you interpret the post-resurrected Jesus in the historical and spiritual context that you describe?
This is what I try to do the book at length. The Risen Christ is sometimes described as “trans-historical” or “non-historical” by theologians, but it’s important to remember that he appeared to people in history. That is, he appeared to people in a particular time and in a particular place. So the risen Christ is in fact an historical reality.

Did Judas betray Jesus in the sense that Judas believed in Jesus as the political Messiah and believed that he would lead a revolt after the altercation in the Garden of Gethsemane?
The explanation you suggest is the one that makes the most sense to me. In my book, I sift through some of the proposed reasons for Judas’s betrayal. First, he was greedy — which doesn’t make a lot of sense if he’s traipsing around Judea and Galilee for all those years. Why would he lead such an itinerant, poor, mendicant life if he wanted to get rich fast? Second, “Satan entered into him.” That’s of course true, but what does that mean? One Scripture scholar told me it explains “either everything or nothing.” Third, Judas was just a terrible guy. But that makes little sense: Jesus was a good judge of character; presumably he wouldn’t have chosen someone who was irredeemably bad.

But the idea that Judas may have wanted Jesus to be the kind of Messiah that Judas expected makes sense to me. That is, only that particular explanation explains why Judas felt so dejected that he hung himself. Judas wanted to create God in his image rather than to allow God to create Judas in his image.

Jesus talked about “the Kingdom of God”—how do you understand the Kingdom of God?
That’s another significant part of my book. The kingdom of God, or reign of God (which is the better translation of the Greek, because it’s freed more from the confines of place), is difficult to understand. In effect Jesus made use of many parables and many stories to help people begin to understand what the reign was. But for the most part I think the reign of God is the world as God wants it to be, the world as it will be in the fullness of time, and the world as it is embodied in Jesus.

One of the best ways of understanding it is to see how the world was when Jesus was there. That is, when Jesus is in the world and encountering people, the sick are healed, storms are still, and the dead are raised. So I see the kingdom of God very much as embodied in Christ.

Which chapter was the hardest to write?
Actually, they were all enjoyable to write, but the one that perhaps took the most research was “Golgotha,” the chapter on Jesus’s death. I wanted to get that timetable precisely right, and also be careful to remind people that it was the Romans who killed him, not the Jews. Only Pontius Pilate, as the procurator of Judea, had the power to condemn someone to death. It was also difficult to write because of the subject material—it was hard not to be sad when writing it.

The most enjoyable chapter to write, though, was “Nazareth” where I try to re-create the world of first century Galilee. I could’ve written that forever — though I doubt anyone would’ve wanted to read a 300-page chapter!

Fordham Mourns the Loss of John W. Donohue, S.J.

Janet Sassi — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:44:57 +0000

Fordham University mourns the death of John W. Donohue, S.J. (FCRH ’39), a longtime member of the Fordham community who served as a trustee, professor of history and philosophy in the Graduate School of Education, and as the first dean of Thomas More College.

Father Donohue died on Feb. 17 at Murray-Weigel Hall in the Bronx, N.Y., at age 92. A Mass of Christian Burial was held for Father Donohue on Feb. 22 in the University Church.

“Father Donohue was a Fordham institution,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University. “He served, and served brilliantly, as a trustee, as the first dean of Thomas More College, and as much-loved faculty member. In his long career he has done as much to shape the character of the University as any single person. Father Donohue will be greatly missed by Fordham, by his Jesuit brothers, and by generations of grateful students.”

Known to friends as “José,” Father Donohue entered the Society of Jesus in 1939. He earned a doctoral degree in education from Yale University and taught for 13 years in GSE before being chosen as the first dean of Fordham’s women’s college, Thomas More, where he served from 1963 to 1966. He received an honorary doctor of letters from Fordham in 1997.

In Fordham’s sesquicentennial oral history project, As I Remember Fordham (FU Press, 1991), Father Donohue lightheartedly recalled his time as dean at Thomas More, saying that he was chosen for his looks rather than his qualifications.

“They chose as the first dean somebody who looked like Cardinal Spellman, and thereby could reassure the parents and project a kind of sound image,” he wrote in the memoir.

Father Donohue worked on the staff of America magazine for 35 years, writing on a wide array of topics that included everything from the lives of the saints to the ethics of stem cell research. He retired as an associate editor in June 2007. James Martin, S.J., culture editor for the magazine, recalled Father Donohue as a “wonderful man, priest, colleague, confessor and Jesuit.

“He was among the best of writers here, always elegant, witty, concise,” wrote Father Martin. “All of us here loved John not so much for his lucid writing, but for him. Unfailingly polite, refreshingly mild, hard-working into his 90s, ever ready with an encouraging word, frequently very, very, very funny . . . and, most of all, to use a simple word, kind.”

Father Donohue also served three terms on the University’s Board of Trustees between 1969 and 1989, and that year was elected trustee emeritus. During his board service, he was chair of the academic affairs committee and was secretary of the board on several occasions.

The author of several books, including St. Thomas Aquinas and Education (Random House, 1968), Father Donohue wrote many articles and editorials for America and other publications.

The burial will be held in the Jesuit Cemetery, in Auriesville, N.Y. Notes of condolence may be sent to Father Donohue’s sister:

Mrs. William J. McCarren
62 Parkview Drive
Bronxville, N.Y. 10708