English Faculty Member Finds Closure in Mother’s Last Days

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell hadn’t planned to write a book about the last days of her mother’s life. 

O’Donnell, associate director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies and a member of the English & American Catholic Studies faculty, had already turned to poetry—her field of creative expertise—with Waking My Mother (Wordpress, 2013).

But after an essay that she wrote for Commonweal Magazine received positive feedback, she decided to revisit the topic. The result, Mortal Blessings: A Sacramental Farewell (Ave Maria Press, 2014), is equal parts memoir and meditation about the short but intense time when her mother Marion suffered a fall and died 48 days later.

As she and her sisters tended to her mother in the hospital, O'Donnell began to see connections between the rituals that they practiced every day and the sacraments of her Catholic faith. Going through the motions of helping her mother get around the hospital in her wheelchair, or feeding her a piece of pie, helped ease the trauma, she said--even if the rituals were unspoken at the time.

“I thought I’d meditate on the nature of sacrament and the ways in which human beings, whether they’re Catholic or not, devise rituals to get through difficult situations,” she said. 

“I’d read a lot about sacramentality, and thought I could incorporate all of these elements theoretically. But I realized as I was writing it that it [needed to be] tied to something concrete. Who cares about something abstract and theoretical when you’re talking about the experience of watching someone die?”

In addition to the Catholic Churches’ seven sacraments, O’Donnell created her own, such as the “sacrament of the cell phone.” She also sought and received permission from her sisters to reveal details that would not have otherwise been revealed through poetry. Details like the fact that, her mother was not a, shall we say, an easy-going sort. 

“We didn’t see eye to eye with her on anything,” she said. 

“I felt privileged to be back there in these circumstances, where really there was an unspoken forgiveness of all the years of neglect, and the years of being at odds with each other just sort of disappeared.” 

The chapter that she would call “the sacrament of the beauty” was the breakthrough chapter for her. O’Donnell’s mother was devoted to beauty in her own way, and she said she and her sisters did all they could to help her by decorating her hospital room.

“Saint Augustine was always in my ear at that point—‘Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new; late have I loved you,’” O’Donnell said.

Caring for someone who cared for her when she was a child also made O’Donnell realize that the tables could very well be turned later in life. And although her normal response would be to not make herself too much of a burden, she said her mother’s “spunk” made her rethink this attitude. 

“One of her favorite expressions was, ‘I’m the important person here.’ That used to drive us crazy. But when she was sick and really needed help, I admired that she demanded to get attention. She wasn’t just going to lie there and be neglected,” she said.

“She was terribly diminished by what was happening to her [but] her spirit wasn’t diminished. I admired that in her too, and I hope we all have a little bit of that undiminished spirit in us.”

--Janet Sassi

Faculty Reads: Jonathan Edwards’ Passionate Pursuit of Rational Truth

Think “Jonathan Edwards,” and images such as a zealous preacher at a pulpit or a spider dangling over a fire might come to mind.

But as Kathryn Reklis, Ph.D. reveals in her new book, Theology and the Kinesthetic Imagination: Jonathan Edwards and the Making of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2014), the Jonathan Edwards of the Great Awakening was about much more than fire-and-brimstone.

Reklis, an assistant professor of theology, contends that Edwards is key to a problem plaguing many contemporary theologians: How theology can save itself from irrelevance in the postmodern world.

She explains that by the mid-20th century, many Christian theologians were growing dissatisfied with the way theology had been conducted over the previous two centuries.  The Enlightenment, the “Age of Reason,” prompted theologians to approach their discipline in a rationalistic way, treating Christian doctrines like logical propositions in an attempt to cast theology as a science.

However, this “rational pursuit of ultimate truth” left some concerned that theology had abandoned its true strengths, such as an emphasis on the roles that beauty, bodily experience, desire, and emotions play in Christian life.

Reklis argues that 18th-century American preacher Jonathan Edwards strikes that balance between those domains. A follower of John Locke and Isaac Newton, Edwards strived to pursue truth through a rational, scientific method. And yet, Edwards was also devoted to a more visceral pursuit of truth. He defended the intense religious revivals (passionate preaching experiences that often inspired intense emotional reactions in listeners) of the Great Awakening, and believed people could know God through a “‘spiritual sense’ as true and reliable as one of our five senses.”

“He was committed to ‘the new science’ of his day—meaning, truth arrived at through experience and deduction, or what we might think of as the scientific method,” Reklis said. “At the same time, he was a strict Calvinist […] To defend his understanding of Christianity, he turned to concepts of human desire, emotion, and bodily experience as proof of first-hand experience of the divine.

“So he was this strange figure who was embracing modernity—science, rationality, etc.—and who was also using those new tools to defend a very ‘old-fashioned’ view of Christianity.”

Herself a blend of historical and contemporary theological training, Reklis aims to use Edwards’ “alternative modern” approach to explore the question of contemporary theology’s relevance and how concepts such as beauty, body, and desire might serve to revive contemporary Christian theology.

“In [Edwards’] day, evangelical Christians split from ‘rational’ Christians, or what we came to call the mainline Protestant denominations in the United States,” she said. “I try to show that the same concepts many mainline academic Protestant theologians want to rescue now—such as the importance of beauty, bodily experience, and desire—are the ones Edwards used.”

— Joanna Klimaski Mercuri

Media Spotlight: Patrick Hornbeck Weighs in on Vatican Strengthening its Financial Oversight

It’s not every day that publications focusing on corporate compliance and governance feature pieces about Pope Francis. But on May 21st, the Wall Street Journal’s “Risk and Compliance Journal” did just that, and featured a Fordham faculty member’s quote with it.

Journal columnist Gregory Millman says Pope Francis “appears to be taking a leaf from the corporate compliance playbook with major reforms of the Vatican’s governance and finances, aimed at guarding the Holy See’s reputation and making its dealings more transparent.”

The Vatican’s anti-money-laundering unit, the Financial Information Authority, on May 20 released its first annual report, and Millman reports that compliance changes at the Vatican go much further, and include establishing three new bodies with jurisdiction over finance and administration.

The essentials of the new governance structure were sketched out by Pope Francis in a February document called a Motu Proprio.

The objective is to bring 21st-century governance to an ancient organization whose traditional administration was inadequate to prevent the well-publicized scandals of recent years, Millman says:

“The first of the new Vatican organizations is a Council on the Economy, whose membership includes eight cardinals and seven lay experts. The second new unit, a Secretariat for the Economy, is equal in rank to the Vatican Secretariat of State. It reports directly to the Pope, and has jurisdiction over operational matters including controls, policies and procedures, purchasing and human resources. The third element of the new governance structure is an independent auditor general.”

Millman also says “Pope Francis’s governance changes also strike a blow against one of his bête noires: clericalism, or excessive deference to the clergy even in areas where clerical status is irrelevant.” And this is where a Fordham theology expert weighs in:

Patrick Hornbeck, professor and chair of the theology department at Fordham University in New York, said that the new structure’s provision for sharing of power between clergy and laity is “a significant and a distinctive feature of the emerging style of Francis’s papacy,” explaining, “I think that Pope Francis is recognizing that, with respect to issues like the economy, lay experts who deal in matters of finance and governance and compliance for a living might be better positioned to advise him on these issues than members of the clergy might.”

Read the whole piece here (subscription required).

-Gina Vergel

Media spotlight: Fordham professors discuss Jesus’ wife, gender pay gap on TV

Michael Peppard, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology at Fordham, got to flex his Coptic papyrologist expertise on national television this past weekend in an interview about on PBS’ NewsHour Weekend.

Michael Peppard on PBS NewsHour Weekend.

The segment, which aired on April 13, centered around a faded fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” Unveiled by a Harvard Divinity School historian in 2012, it was then tested by scientists who concluded in an April 10 journal article that the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery.

Peppard told host Hari Sreenivasan that scholars, such as himself, that study early Christianity are “still kind of in this middle ground of mysteriousness about the text.

“That being said, some of the critics on the forgery side argue that there is bad grammar, that there are other indicators, bad penmanship and that kind of stuff. But papyrologists — that is nerds like us that study ancient papyri — we see bad handwriting all the time. The apostle Paul himself in the New Testament talks about his bad handwriting. So handwriting it’s a techne in Greek, it’s a skill, it’s acquired.”

Sreenivasan also asked Peppard what the religious ramifications are if Jesus did have a wife. 

“… this papyrus gives us another window into what were some live debates in early Christianity. Debates such as: is procreation a vehicle for holiness or is celibacy — voluntary celibacy– a vehicle for holiness. A second debate that it clearly was engaging was the worthiness of women as disciples, especially Mary the mother and Mary Magdalen, two of the main figures that were discussed,” Peppard said.

Watch the whole interview here via PBS NewsHour's website.

Fordham’s Christina Greer was also on television over the weekend. An assistant professor of political science, Greer joined a panel at MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show on April 12 to discuss a variety of topics, including the politics of the gender pay gap.

Christina Greer on MSNBC

In this segment, Greer says historical context should always be taken into consideration in the debate over equal pay.

“We constantly throw around that .77-to-a-dollar [figure], but we do also know that there is a very real racial divide within this. If white women are making .77 on the dollar, we know that black and Latina women are making much less than that,” she said.

Greer also discussed the downside of the bickering between the GOP and Democrats on such debates, and how there isn’t going to be a magic bullet to solve inequality.

Watch the whole episode here via the Melissa Harris-Perry Show website.

-- Gina Vergel

Theology Student Wins Prestigious Lilly Fellowship

Jennifer Illig
Contributed photo

For her theology dissertation, Fordham doctoral candidate Jennifer Illig's research took her all the way back to 14th-century England to study the sermons of John Wycliffe, who was branded a heretic. 

And now that she has earned her degree, Illig, a native of Long Island who also earned her master's at Rose Hill, will strike out for the plains of the Midwest.

Illig was awarded one of three prestigious Lilly Fellowships in Humanities, and will teach and do research for two years at Valparaiso University, a Lutheran university in northern Indiana.

J. Patrick Hornbeck II, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the theology department and Illig's mentor, said the Lilly fellowship gives space to young scholars who want a career that blends academic success and rigor with commitment to faith and spirituality.

“The great thing about this is its mentorship not just in ones’ own career field, but it’s also mentorship in a particular way of doing higher education,” he said. 

“In the Jesuit world, that’s about things like cura personalis."

For Illig, who earned her undergraduate degree at Malloy College in Rockville Centre, N.Y., it’s a big leap geographically, as it’ll be her first foray out of New York State. At the same time, she said the eight years she’s spent at Fordham have given her a lot of experience with faith in an academic setting.

“My faith is very important to me, and it’s very important to bring that out in my teaching, as well as to reflect on how that influences the work that I do as a theologian and a scholar of medieval history and medieval theology,” she said.

The fellowship will consist of teaching two classes at Valparaiso, including a high level seminar class on dissent and heresy in the early church, for which she’ll be able to rely on her dissertation “Through a Lens of Likeness: Reading English Wycliffite Sermons in Light of Contemporary Sermon Texts.”

She’ll also have time to develop of a database of the 269 sermons that Wycliffe delivered and that have thus far only been studied for their non-orthodox theological content. In fact, Illig discovered that the aspects of Wycliffe’s sermons that challenged the concept of Transubstantiation and Papal authority, were not the dominant content. For the most part, they lay out a program for how the hearers of the sermons can live a better and more authentic Christian life. 

“As a sort of methodological move, Jennifer is saying that when we look at materials that have been looked at traditionally as heterodox or heretical, that there’s actually much more to them than just the particular places where they deny established doctrine,” Hornbeck said.

Illig will join Franklin Harkins, Ph.D., an associate professor of theology, as Fordham’s second Lilly fellow, although she’ll always be the University’s lone "home grown" one though. Harkins, who came to Fordham in 2007, studied at Valparaiso upon graduation from Notre Dame. As chance would have it, he was one of Illig’s readers, along with Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Ph.D., professor and Mullarkey Chair in the Department of English.

—Patrick Verel

New Book Explores Ethical and Religious Implications of a World with Less Water

Water, that most essential building block of life, forms the basis of a new book by Christiana Peppard, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology. 

Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis (Orbis, 2014), was published on January 14. 

Geared toward educated non-specialists and scholars alike, Just Water aims to explore important aspects of the global fresh water crisis while also providing ethical analysis and principled recommendations about fresh water use and scarcity in the twenty-first century. 

The book is part of a research agenda that seeks to challenge traditional norms concerning the value of natural resources. 

“In an era of economic globalization, the default language for speaking about the value of something is its price,” Peppard said in a 2012 interview with Inside Fordham.

“When we talk about worth, as a theologian or philosopher, there’s an enormous apparatus for dealing with that question. But in contemporary parlance, value equals price. This project brings in an ethical perspective in order to broaden the conversation.”

Peppard says the goal of Just Water is to expand global discourse about the value of a fresh unique, and non-substitutable substance that serves as a baseline for human existence . She also hopes to offer tools for understanding and appreciating contemporary ethical problems posed by looming fresh water scarcity in the twenty first century. 

Follow Peppard on Twitter at @profpeppard or via her website.

—Patrick Verel

Fordham Theology Professor Lauded with Award for First Book

Michael Peppard, Ph.D., an assistant professor of theology at Fordham, has won the prestigious Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise.

Peppard is one of ten junior scholars of theology and religion from around the world to win the award, which is administered by the University of Heidelberg in Heidelberg, Germany.

The award, which had previously been funded by the Templeton Foundation but was renamed this year in honor of its new benefactor, is based on a scholar’s first book and other application materials, including detailed evaluations by two full professors of an applicant’s choosing and an international committee of evaluators. 

Peppard’s book, In The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in Its Social and Political Context (Oxford University Press, 2011), examined in detail the term “Son of God” and the concept of divine sonship as it appeared in Christian theology during the Roman Empire.

The award comes with a $10,000 prize and an all-expenses-paid trip to Heidelberg from May 30 to June 4, 2013. 

In addition to a reception, Peppard will meet with the other winners to form proposals for collaborative colloquia. Two of these proposals will then be funded by the foundation.

—Patrick Verel

Panel: Christians and Other Animals

Christians and Other Animals: Moving the Conversation Forward

Friday, 16 November | 4 to 6 p.m.

12th-floor Lounge | Lowenstein Center

Fordham College at Lincoln Center

Panelists

Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University

David Clough, Professor of Theological Ethics and Department Chair, University of Chester

Eric Meyer, Fordham Doctoral Candidate in Theology

R.R. Reno, Professor of Theological Ethics, Creighton University, editor of First Things

Moderator

Charles Camosy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics, Fordham University

This panel, conducted with non-specialists in mind, will provoke Christians to think about other animals in new ways. Currently a very hot topic in academic theology and philosophy, concern for non-human animals is gaining traction in the broader culture, and our panel will try to connect academic and popular themes, in language that is accessible to a broad audience.

Peter Singer—in addition to being the most influential philosopher alive today—was the intellectual heft behind the beginning of the animal rights movement in the 1970s. David Clough is one of the leading voices in defense of animals in the contemporary Christian conversation, and Eric Meyer’s research has mined the Christian tradition in ways that turn the current debate about animals on its head. We are also fortunate to have R.R. Reno play the all-important role of ‘sympathetic skeptic’ in our discussion. The conversation will be accessible to non-specialists.

Space is limited. RSVP to christiansandotheranimals@gmail.com. 

Download the flyer as a PDF here.

Co-Sponsors: Department of Theology, Center for Religion and Culture, Office of the Provost, Dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, Dean of Fordham University Faculty

Theologians Weigh In on Newly Revealed Papyrus

 

(Photo via CBS News)

It has been an exciting week for theology professor Michael Peppard.

When news broke on Sept. 18 that Harvard professor Karen King revealed an ancient scrap of papyrus that claims Jesus Christ had a wife, Peppard, as he wrote in this blog post at Commonweal, was “giddy like a child.”

As a reader/teacher of Coptic and trained papyrologist, Peppard settled in to assess the newly revealed papyrus.

“After scrutinizing the wonderfully high-resolution photograph offered in Laurie Goodstein’s New York Times piece, I would like first to commend Karen King of Harvard for the ways in which she has presented this fragment to the world,” he wrote in the blog. “Nowhere in her quotations or the manuscript of her forthcoming article does she engage in the kind of grandstanding that would be so tempting in her situation.”

Peppard was interviewed by a few media outlets. He told the Catholic News Service that a belief in asceticism saw rapid development in the second to fourth centuries, especially in Egypt where Christian monasticism was born.

 “The new text published by King may be a sign of early Christians ‘pushing back’ against asceticism and moving closer to mainstream Jewish attitudes ‘of blessing sex and procreation,’” Peppard said.

And in this interview that aired on CBS 2 New York, he said “It has the appearance of a middleman who had one papyrus, wanted money, chopped it up, chopped up to get higher value for resale,”

The interview also featured McGinley Chair Father Patrick Ryan, S.J., who said the papyrus does not prove Jesus had a wife.

”Well, the trouble is that’s all there is,” he told CBS 2’s John Slattery. “’My wife the Church’ could be the next word. We don’t have the next word.  We just have ‘Jesus my wife.’” 

-Gina Vergel

Theology Scholars to Assess Avery Cardinal Dulles’ Legacy

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Fordham’s former Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, published 750 articles and 23 books on theological topics, including Models of the Church (Doubleday, 1974), Models of Revelation (Doubleday, 1983), The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985) and The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System (Crossroads, 1992).

On Tuesday, Dec. 14, his vast catalogue of scholarship will be the focus of a panel discussion at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus.

Avery Dulles and the Future of Theology will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Pope Auditorium. The publication of Avery Cardinal Dulles: A Model Theologian (Paulist Press, 2010) by Patrick W. Carey will be the point of departure for a panel of theologians to discuss and debate the future of theology in light of Cardinal Dulles’s work.

They will look at both questions that Dulles asked and didn't ask, the answers he gave as a potential foundation for future Catholic theology, and the significance of his method and style for addressing pressing theological issues.

The discussion, which is sponsored by the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture, will be moderated by Aristotle Papanikolaou, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Theology and Co-Founding Director of Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Program.

The panel will feature:
Terrence W. Tilley, Ph.D., Chair, Fordham Theology Department and Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Professor of Catholic Theology;

Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate-in-Residence and Adjunct Professor of Religion at Hofstra University;

Robert P. Imbelli, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Theology, Boston College and a priest of the Archdiocese of New York;

Patrick W. Carey, Ph.D., Professor of Theology, Marquette University, and author, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.: A Model Theologian (Paulist Press, 2010);

Miroslav Volf, Ph.D., Director, Yale Center for Faith and Culture, and Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale University

The event is free and open to the public. RSVP at CRCevent@fordham.edu or (212) 636-7347

—Patrick Verel

Hinze becomes president of CTS

Bradford E. Hinze, PhD, professor of theology, was elected to the presidency of the College Theology Society at its annual convention in June.

“First of all, the CTS is hospitable and promotes collegiality,” said Hinze. “It has been fostering great intergenerational collegiality among theology and religious studies faculty members who teach in colleges and university. They have a friendly, perhaps laid back style. They meet annually in the spring at Catholic Universities and colleges, stay in the dorms, eat meals together in the cafeteria, and socialize in the evenings. Everyone comments on the hospitality of this group and the friendships they have formed there.

“Second, this group sponsors the journal Horizon, which publishes essays and book reviews in theology and religious studies. In addition, they publish a volume of essays annually based on the theme of the yearly conventions. These two publications provide important venues for established scholars to published materials, but also it is very important that they provide new scholars, both newly minted Ph.Ds, and also those who are finishing up their degree programs, with respected places to get their work in print. These two publications give scholars traditional blind reviews of their submissions. The CTS may be friendly, but it promotes the highest level of scholarship, without being snooty.

“Third, besides promoting the highest level of scholarly achievement through publications, the CTS also emphasizes the importance of solid and innovative pedagogies in the classroom. The CTS sees both scholarship and pedagogy as vitally important, but also as mutually related. They yearly devote sessions to pedagogy.”

Hinze’s statement to the Society on the occasion of his nomination is available on the website.

Theology Chair Feted by Alma Mater

Terrence W. Tilley, Ph.D., professor of theology at Fordham and chair of the department, was named Alumnus of the Year by the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley). Tilley, president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, was presented with a plaque by James Donohue, Ph.D., president of the Graduate Theological Union, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion on Saturday, November 1, in Chicago. Tilley is pictured flanked by Donohue (left) and Rev. Arthur Holder, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate Theological Union.