A former student of the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., has been appointed auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Long Island.

Rev. Msgr. Robert J. Brennan will be ordained along with bishop-elect Rev. Msgr. Nelson J. Perez by the Most Rev. Bishop William Murphy on July 25 at Saint Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre.

“I am honored and humbled that the Holy Father extended this call to serve the Lord in a new way,” Bishop-elect Brennan said. “I have learned so much from Bishop Murphy and I can never thank him enough for his kindness to me.”

Born in the Bronx and raised in Lindenhurst, Msgr. Brennan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Saint John’s University and was a doctoral student in Fordham’s Theology Department in the early 1990s, before he was named secretary to the late Bishop John R. McGann in 1994.

Msgr. Brennan has served as vicar general of the Rockville Centre diocese for the last decade, and since 2010 has been pastor of Saint Mary of the Isle parish in Long Beach. In addition, he regularly celebrates the Spanish-language Mass at the Nassau County Correctional Facility.

He was named Honorary Prelate and given the title monsignor by Pope John Paul II in 1996.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre, which Msgr. Brennan will serve as bishop, covers 1,198 square miles in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and serves approximately 1.7 million Catholics.

Cardinal Dulles was Fordham’s Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society from 1988 until his death in 2008. In addition to holding this post, Cardinal Dulles was an internationally known author and lecturer, past president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the American Theological Society, and a professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America.

Several members of the University community were on hand for the Cardinal’s elevation, including trustees, faculty and administrators.

(L to R) John N. Tognino (FCLS ’75), chairman, Fordham University Board of Trustees; Cardinal Designate Timothy M. Dolan; Norma Tognino; Barbara Costantino; and John R. Costantino (FCRH ’67, LAW ’70), Fordham trustee emeritus.

Monsignor Joseph G. Quinn, vice president for University mission and ministry, and Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., the Laurence J. McGinley, S.J. Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham, both in Rome for Cardinal Dolan’s elevation, and were an on-air expert for WABC and other news outlets.

(L to R) Henry Schwalbenbeg, Ph. D., director of Fordham’s graduate program in International Political Economy and Development; the newly-elevated Timothy Cardinal Dolan; and Alma Schwalbenberg (GSAS ’93)

In New York, Terrence Tilley, Ph.D., the Avery Cardinal Dulles Professor of Theology and chair of the Department of Theology at Fordham, said “[Cardinal Dolan] smiles, he laughs, he has a good time. He will present being a Catholic as being simply joyous. As someone who is a sinner who is a redeemed sinner, like a recovering alcoholic who is enjoying the new status.”

Maureen A. Tilley, Ph.D., professor of theology at Fordham, said the Cardinal’s impact could be considerable. “Between his personality and his record, he has the potential…and I say the potential, to be the most influential Cardinal from New York since Cardinal Spellman.”

‘Rock Star’ Dolan Embraces Bully Pulpit

Photos Courtesy of Henry Schwalbenberg

Over the years, many Nigerians have studied at Fordham, most notably in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, but also in nearly every other School as well. What few people now realize is the connection between Fordham and the original coming of Jesuits to Nigeria.

The Catholic Bishops of Nigeria asked for Jesuit professors to help in the foundation of the state-run University of Lagos at its inception in 1962. UNESCO asked NYU and Fordham for academic staff as well. The first Jesuit to come, who had a Ph.D. from Fordham in biology but was teaching at St Peter’s College in Jersey City, was Father Joseph Schuh. A year later two other Jesuits came: Father Joseph Schuyler, who had a Fordham Ph.D. in sociology and was teaching atFordham’s seminary campus in Shrub Oak, N.Y.; and Father JosephMcKenna, who had a Ph.D. From Yale and was the head of the political science department at Fordham.

Schuh returned to St. Peter’s in 1965 but Schuyler remained atUnilag, as it is called, until his retirement in 1986. He stayed another nine years beyond that in pastoral work in Lagos until health reasons mandated his return to the U.S. in 1995. McKenna never actually taught at Unilag –many Nigerians have Ph.D.s in political science–but fulfilled many roles for the bishops and the Jesuits in Nigeriauntil 1984, when he retired back to other Jesuit assignments aroundFordham. In 1997, Fordham University Press published a study he did on varieties of Marxism in Africa and the response of the Catholic Church to that phase in recent African history.

All three Joes did Fordham proud over the years. McKenna’s 1969essay in Foreign Affairs on prospects for peace after the Nigerian civil war, published when the war was still ongoing, drew praise from the federal government of Nigeria at the time.

I arrived in Nigeria with three other Jesuits in 1964, just after I had finished an M.A. in English at Fordham; the degree was awarded in February 1965 while I was in Nigeria. I taught English in a Catholic but non-Jesuit high school in Nigeria in 1964-65. On this trip, I found myself sleeping on Christmas Eve in the same house where I slept on Christmas Eve of 1964. On Christmas Day, I had lunch in a Chinese restaurant with the best student I taught back then, AnthonyAkingbade, now a 61-year-old medical doctor who eventually did his undergraduate studies at Harvard and his medical formation atAlbert Einstein College of Medicine, our Bronx neighbor.

“The religious life and the priesthood, both of which I celebrate today as my twofold calling, ought never to be seen in isolation,” Cardinal Dulles said during the homily. “Every vocation in the church, as Paul reminds us in Ephesians, is for the sake of the whole body, so that all God’s people together may attain to the fullness of Christ, each contributing in his or her own way.”

Cardinal Dulles was joined by seven principal concelebrants at the Mass: Edward Cardinal Egan, archbishop of New York; Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, former archbishop of Philadelphia; Peter L. Gerety, former archbishop of Newark; Daniel A. Hart, former bishop of Norwich; Frank J. Rodimer, former bishop of Paterson; Josu Iriondo, auxiliary bishop of New York; and Abbot Gabriel Gibbs of St. Benedict Abbey in Still River, Mass.

Cardinal Dulles is the author of more than 750 articles interpreting church doctrine and the papacy. He has published 22 books, including A Testimonial to Grace (Sheed and Ward, 1946, 1996), a memoir of his conversion to Catholicism. He is presently at work on two more books.

The son of former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Cardinal Dulles is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Croix de Guerre for his liaison work with the French navy during World War II, the Cardinal Spellman Award for distinguished achievement in theology and 38 honorary doctorates. He is past president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the American Theological Society. He will celebrate his 88th birthday on Aug. 24.

Read the related Summer 2001 FORDHAM magazine article: “Avery Dulles, S.J. American Theologian and Cardinal”