“Father Koterski was a model Jesuit, an exemplary priest, a companion both in the Society of Jesus and in our mission, and a dear friend,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Wonderfully, he had the kind of death every priest prays for: He died while he was speaking from the heart of the Lord whom he loved and served all his life. He is now at home with that same Lord.”

In 1992, Father Koterski joined Fordham’s philosophy department. Over the next three decades, he held many positions, including chair of the philosophy department, director of the master’s program in philosophical resources, and secretary of the Faculty Senate. He taught more than 20 undergraduate and graduate courses in metaphysics, ethics, and the history of medieval philosophy, including two specialized courses for the honors program. He was awarded several honors himself, including a summer faculty fellowship and an undergraduate teaching award. 

“Father McShane would sometimes comment, ‘Koterski never sleeps.’ You just wonder where he got all the time to do all that he’s doing: teaching his classes, living and working at Queen’s Court, and all that he does for his students,” said Thomas Scirghi, S.J., associate professor of theology.  

At the time of his death, Father Koterski served as associate professor of philosophy and editor in chief of International Philosophical Quarterly, a Fordham peer-reviewed philosophy journal. He was also the master of Queen’s Court Residential College, where he served as an academic adviser and counselor for first-year students over the past two decades. 

For as much as he taught his students, he learned much from them as well. Twice a year, he hosted a formal student debate at Queen’s Court. Four nights a week, he hosted “Knight Court,” where students presented any subject of their choice for 10 minutes. One student taught him the rules of rugby; another taught him how to calculate wind chill factor. A third student introduced him to Bollywood and performed a song in a male and falsetto voice. He also accompanied students on Broadway trips, including “Phantom of the Opera” and “How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.” 

“We have oodles of fun together. But the [main]idea is integrating their studies and social life,” Father Koterski said in a 2012 “Jesuits in Conversation” video. 

Father Koterski was an Ohio native who grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in classical languages from Xavier University. He earned three advanced degrees—a master’s in philosophy, a doctor of philosophy, and a master of divinity—from Saint Louis University and the Weston School of Theology, now known as the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. In 1984, he entered the Society of Jesus at age 30. Eight years later, he was ordained a priest. 

“I think of myself as part of the late bloomers’ club,” Father Koterski said in 2012, “and I’d love to encourage anybody else to join the club.” 

In phone interviews, his colleagues described him as a fun-loving fellow with a deeply resonant voice that could have belonged to a radio announcer. He was a reticent man who avoided small talk, said Father Scirghi, but once he started talking about academia or societal issues, conversation easily flowed. He combined faith and fun in his teaching, including one Halloween where students gathered at the Jesuit cemetery on the Rose Hill campus and learned about the holiday’s religious significance while sipping hot apple cider, said Father Scirghi. But what stood out about Father Koterski, said those who knew him, was his generosity. 

“He had an office a few doors down from me. He would be in there for long hours, meeting with students during office hours and outside of office hours, giving spiritual direction to people over the phone or on Zoom,” said Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., professor of philosophy. “He was always willing to help when there were any problems to deal with.” 

In addition, he stayed in touch with prior students and continued to guide them, said an alumnus.  

“A few years after I graduated, I took a more serious approach to my faith, and Father Koterski made himself available. He was willing to talk through difficult issues and approach things with intellectual rigor, but more importantly, a gentle spirit,” said Jared Woodard, GSAS ’13. 

Outside of Fordham, Father Koterski lived a rich academic life that spanned the U.S. and several continents. He traveled to California, Texas, Missouri, Hong Kong, England, and Guam to teach courses on subjects he cared deeply about. He regularly went to Haiti for missionary work, and he often worked with groups of nuns around New York, where he presided at Mass or led retreats. He served in leadership positions for many religious and academic organizations, including a two-term presidency of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. His sixty-page curriculum vitae is a testament to the hundreds of books, articles, homilies, lectures, and conferences that encompassed his life.

“While an outstanding scholar and teacher, Father Joe Koterski was above all else a Jesuit priest. In Psalm 85(86), David prays, ‘Domine…simplex fac cor meum’ (O Lord…make my heart simple): a line that sums up Father Koterski’s life,” his longtime friend John Kezel, retired director of the Campion Institute, wrote in an email. “He was simply always there when you needed him—for advice, for companionship, for prayer. In all my years of friendship, I never heard Father Joseph Koterski say ‘no’ to anyone.”

In a 2015 interview with America Magazine, a reporter asked Father Koterski what he wanted people to take away from his life and work. 

“A greater love for God, a greater desire for union with Jesus Christ, a greater respect for the teachings of the church and a greater ability to reason in a sound way as a grateful response to God’s gift to us of the power of reasoning,” he said. 

Father Koterski’s wake will be held on Tuesday, August 17, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at the University Church, located at 2691 Southern Blvd, Bronx, N.Y., 10458. The funeral will begin at 11 a.m. at the same location. Proof of vaccination must be provided for admittance to campus. Per Fordham University policy, masks must be worn while in the University Church. If driving, please enter through the gate on Southern Boulevard, across from the New York Botanical Garden.

—Chris Gosier contributed reporting to this story.

This more numbers-focused branch of the field, along with an interest in how resources, capital, and labor moved throughout the world economy, led Woodard to spend more time analyzing markets and investments.

“One of the ways that I found my way into finance was through curiosity about political philosophy and issues around global justice,” Woodard says. “One of the things that you talk about if you’re talking about John Rawls or Karl Marx or other political philosophers is questions of justice and distribution. And so I got more and more interested in learning macroeconomics and learning about how global markets worked.”

Woodard, who earned a master’s degree in theology from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland before enrolling at Fordham, believes that the breadth and plurality of Fordham’s philosophy department made this kind of shift in focus possible, noting that its emphasis on history and interdisciplinary thought made it unique among doctoral programs.

“I think they were one of the relatively few philosophy departments that still had their students take comprehensive exams covering the whole history of philosophy, from the ancients all the way through to the modern time,” Woodard recalls. “The requirement to be familiar with ancient philosophy and medieval philosophy, as well as modern and contemporary periods, meant that we were able to understand the common threads and through lines that have driven human inquiry throughout the ages,” a skill that plays out in his analysis of market trends and their context.

Building a Career, Finding Optimism

While pursuing his doctorate and with his growing interest in global markets, Woodard founded both Condor Options, a firm where he tested investment strategies on large data sets, as well as the publication Expiring Monthly, where he wrote about research into options and volatility trading strategies. This experience led him to post-Ph.D. jobs as a senior equity derivatives strategist at BGC Partners and a global investment strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. His current role, which he began in October 2019, is as head of the research investment committee at Bank of America.

“My task is to help investors think about where to allocate their investments toward different asset classes, like stocks or bonds,” Woodard explains. “And to do that, a big part of my job is to try to make sense of what’s happening in the global economy and in the global market.”

While 2020 has presented challenges, including economic volatility, in the U.S. and throughout the world, Woodard says that there is reason for optimism when it comes to financial markets.

“There are so many people who are eager to make a contribution,” he says. “And if you get help to the people who need it, if you get resources to the students who want to learn, and training to the workers who want to work, I’m incredibly optimistic about the potential of the United States as an economy and as a culture.

“One of our big themes in our department is on the shift from globalization to more local and regional forms of production,” he adds, “being more thoughtful about where we produce things and how we produce them and who produces them. And if those trends continue and you start to see this more thoughtful shift … they can have some really positive implications for markets and investments.”

Maintaining Connections and Offering Help

Woodard has stayed involved with Fordham as a member of the Dean’s Leadership Committee at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and he has come back to campus to speak to students about postgraduate career paths beyond academia. He has also stayed in touch with a number of his professors and friends made through the program, including Joseph Koterski, S.J., associate professor of philosophy and editor in chief of International Philosophical Quarterly.

“Whether it’s the priests on campus or the faculty, I think that there are some connections that were deep enough that I’ve been really fortunate to maintain,” Woodard says. “Current students will reach out from time to time, whether for advice or connections, and I’m always happy to help in that way when I can.”

Ronald Rychlak, associate dean at the University of Mississippi School of Law, spoke on March 21 at the Lincoln Center campus. He said the communists besmirched the Pope to sow division between Jews and Catholics.

Working from the research he conducted for his book Hitler, the War, and the Pope (Our Sunday Visitor, 2000), he told an audience in the 12th-Floor Lounge that Pope Pius XII was rightly lauded in the days after World War II for his efforts to save Jews from extermination.

Many Jews, including the city of Rome’s chief rabbi, took refuge at the Vatican as the war raged around it, said Rychlak, who is an adviser to the Holy See’s delegation to the United Nations.

In addition, Pope Pius XII passed along messages to the British on behalf of Nazi officers contemplating the overthrow of Hitler, as depicted in the 2008 film Valkyrie.

“Pinchas Lipade, the Israeli consul in Italy, said, ‘The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations put together,’” he said. “[Lipade] put the number at 850,000.”

It was only after the 1963 publication of the play The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth that questions about the Pope began to surface.

Rychlak noted that this was also a time of serious tension between the Catholic Church and the Soviet Union, and that Hochhuth and many of his associates had ties to the Communist Party.

“Hochhuth said he went to Rome and got secrets from a cardinal at the Vatican. He would never give the name of the cardinal at the Vatican,” he said. “I’ve been at the Vatican, I know some cardinals—none have ever given me any secrets.”

The publication of John Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking, 1999), has kept the story alive. Rychlak called it academic fraud for its use of mistranslations, quotes taken out of context and misrepresentations.

For example, the cover photo was misdated as 1939 instead of 1927 for the United Kingdom edition and cropped and darkened for the United States edition. The effect makes the Pope look as if he is being saluted by Nazi soldiers, which he is not.

“We see people who are misusing the history of the Holocaust to advance their agenda,” he said. “They’re making stuff up about—of all things—the Holocaust. I just think it’s outrageous.”

Joseph Koterski, S.J., associate professor of philosophy at Fordham and editor in chief of theInternational Philosophy Quarterly, hosted the event. He addressed the issue of suspicion as it relates to the present.

In the 2006 encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI provided a model for refuting what he termed the three masters of suspicion: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, Father Koterski said.

A key technique of discrediting others is to question their motives instead of their actual arguments, he said. This works because if the accused responds in too measured a tone, he may come across as unsure of himself. Respond too vigorously though, and he comes across as if he is overcompensating and hiding something.

In Deus Caritas Est, Father Koterski noted that the Pope Benedict responds to Marx’s contention that the Catholic Church is not sufficiently concerned with the economic plight of people by acknowledging part of Marx’s argument. But he added that the church’s teaching on social justice encompass more than just economics.

“The problem with most of our teaching of the Catholic social tradition is that we tend to silo these matters. So you get some people who prefer just the economics, and treat life issues as if they didn’t matter as much. Similarly, you sometimes find people who think only of political matters and changes in the political agenda. And, sadly, you find people who deal only with cultural issues,” he said.

“Part of Pope Benedict’s clear insistence, both here and in Caritas In Veritate, has been to say we may not silo these issues; the only way we’ll teach them authentically is if we teach them together.”

“Suspicion and Conspiracy: Defending the Reputation of Noble Individuals” was sponsored by Fordham, the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and the Path to Peace Foundation. His Excellency, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, introduced the speakers.