News and Events at DHS (Faculty)

1/28: Faculty member Fr. Stephen Ryan, O.P. presented a lecture about "Praying the Psalms" to the Maryland based TASTE program. Fr. John Baptist Ku, O.P. and Fr. Francis Martin have also participated in the TASTE program in the past.

1/25: Faculty member Fr. Basil Cole, O.P., is giving two conferences a month to the cloistered Dominican Nuns at Linden, VA, on the theology of the consecrated life.

1/19/2010: Faculty members Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. and Dr. Jem Sullivan have recently been published. Fr. White's book Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology considers the merits of St. Thomas Aquinas' arguments for the existance of God and gives special attention to the claims of Modern Philosophy, specifically Heidegger and Kant against a natural theology. Meanwhile, Dr. Sullivan has written The Beauty of Faith: How Christian Art Reveals the Good News shows how Christian art is a "visual Gospel" expressing the truth of Christ's life, and serving as a guide and inspiration for our lives and actions.

12/27: Faculty member Fr. Basil Cole, O.P., gave an eight day retreat to our Vietnamese Dominican Sisters in Houston, TX.

10/30: Fr. John Corbett, O.P. (PFIC faculty) and Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P. (former PFIC Dean) have articles in French in this new book dedicated to the thought of Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P., Renouveler toutes choses en Christ Vers un renouveau thomiste de la théologie morale Academic Press Fribourg 2009

July 11 2009: Ordination of

Archbishop J. Augustine DiNoia, O.P.

8/14: Fr. Francis Martin and Fr. Stephen Ryan, O.P., presented paper at the 72nd International meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association of America held at Creighton University. Fr. Martin spoke about the Glory of God in St. John's Gospel and Fr. Ryan spoke about the ancient translations of the Old Testament and the place of the Septuagint in the Church.

5/26-28: Dr. Gregory LaNave, PFIC adjunct Professor, spoke to the Academy of Catholic Theology, on "Bonaventure and the Spiritual Senses" (Listen to it here). The essay is slated to be included in a book on the Spiritual Senses, under consideration at Cambridge University Press. Dr. Gregory LaNave also had an article entitled “Knowing God through and in All Things: A Proposal for Reading Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum” accepted for publication by Franciscan Studies.

5/14-16: Fr. Stephen Ryan, O.P. contributed a paper entitled "The Ancient Versions of Judith and the Place of the Septuagint in the Church" to the International Conference on the Book of Judith, Sapientia Theological College.

6/4: Fr. Dennis McManus, PFIC adjunct Professor, appeared on Vatican Radio.

5/25: Fr. Dennis McManus, PFIC adjunct Professor, appeared on EWTN. Fr. McManus spoke about Catholic-Jewish relations, Pope Benedict XVI and the recent issues regarding the Society of Saint Pius X.

5/22: Fr. Gabriel Pivarnik, O.P., a graduate of the PFIC, completed the STD degree at The Catholic University of America with a dissertation entitled: "Towards a Trinitarian Theology of Liturgical Participation in the Writings of Cipriano Vagaggini, O.S.B. and Edward Kilmartin, S.J." Fr. Pivarnik is currently assigned to Providence College where he teaches theology.

5/5: PFIC president Very Rev. Steven Boguslawski, OP, assistant professor Dr. Gregory LaNave and instructor Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP were interviewed by Catholic News Service. Fr. White also spoke separately about the strengths of St. Thomas Aquinas' thought today.

4/30 Dr. Jem Sullivan, PFIC adjunct professor, is the coordinator of assessment in the Secretariat for Evangelization and Catechesis in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. She spoke with Vatican Radio today about the church’s response to teen violence. Listen here.

3/6: Fr. Stephen Ryan, O.P., presented a Biblical meditation on Psalm 25 at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Theologians, Princeton Theological Seminary, February 27-28.

2/24: Br. Peter Martyr Yungwirth, OP, one of our PFIC students, has an article on the Catholic Exchange website (here), discussing what a blessing the family rosary is in our Catholic tradition.

2/16: Fr. Stephen Ryan, O.P. presented a paper at the 2009 annual meeting of the Old Testament Colloquium entitled "The Place of the Septuagint in the Church". The colloquium was held at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, MN on February 8th (the date of the International Septuagint Day).

2/13: Fr. Giles Dimock, O.P. has published an article in Sacred Architecture 14 (2008): "The Living Heart of our Churches, The Placement of the Tabernacle."

2/3: Fr. Timothy Bellamah, OP, delivered a paper entitled “L’Exégèse de Guillaume d’Alton” at the colloquium Journées d’Études en Hommage à Gilbert Dahan: Exégèse et Herméneutique Bibliques, at the Centre d’Études du Saulchoir, Paris.

2/9: Br. Bruno Shah, O.P. has published an article in New Blackfriars 90 (2009) 38-49: "The Sin of Ian McEwan's Fictive Atonement: Reading his Later Novels."

1/16: The Catholic Biblical Association will hold its regional meeting at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception on January 29, 2009 from 2:45-7:00.

Fr. Joseph Torchia, O.P., the editor-in-chief of the Pontifical Faculty's journal, The Thomist, has published a new book entitled Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). The book explores philosophical anthropology on its most foundational level, with a focus on the basic constituents of the unified self. The coverage of the work is broad in scope, moving from the Pre-Socratics to Postmodernism, with special attentiveness to the contributions of the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition of inquiry

Biblical Theology

Fr. Stephen D. Ryan, O.P. worked with Ignatius Press to publish a new edition of a popular work on Biblical Theology by Fr. Dominique Barthélemy, O.P. entitled God and His Image: An Outline of Biblical Theology (2007).

The Syriac Bible

Fr. Ryan, O.P. presented a paper on the Syriac text of Ben Sira at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting and published an article on the Psalms in Syriac in a volume entitled The Peshitta: Its Use in Literature and Liturgy (Brill, 2006). His article on Psalm 22 in Syriac tradition was published by Gorgias Press in 2007. He is presently collaborating with The Rev. Dr. Robert J. Owens on a new translation of the Syriac version of the Book of Numbers for the international New Annotated English Translation of the Syriac Bible, which will be published by Brill (2010).

Tübingen University

In July of 2007, at a conference at the Ebhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Fr. Ryan presented a paper on the Hebrew speaking Assyrian official mentioned in the books of Isaiah and Ben Sira known as "the Rabshakeh." The conference, held in a former Augustinian Priory that has served since the Reformation as the site of the renowned Evangelisches Stift, focused on Biblical Figures in the Deuterocanonical Books of the Old Testament.

Revisiting the Rosary
by Br. Augustine Reisenauer, O.P.

The Prophet Isaiah
Professor Robert Louis Wilken, the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia, gave a guest lecture at the Pontifical Faculty on the Prophet Isaiah in the Church Fathers on September 24, 2007. The complete lecture is available in audio format

Fr. Joseph Alobaidi, O.P. His text, The Book of Daniel – The Commentary of R. Saadia Gaon: Edition and Translation was critically reviewed in Mitteilungen der St. Tikon Universitat in 2007. As noted earlier, The Messiah in Isaiah 53: The Commentaries of Saadia Gaon, Salmon ben Yeruham, and Yefet ben Eli on Is. 52:13-53:12 was critically reviewed in 2005.

Dr. Gregory LaNave - “What Is Theology About?
A Bonaventurean View.” October 20, 2007
32^nd Annual Patristic, Medieval, Renaissance Conference (PMR) at Villanova.

Br. Ezra Sullivan, O.P.
Exalting the Cross of Contradiction

Fr. Jordan Kelly, O.P.
A graduate of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception has been appointed to the Office of Evangelization in Chicago

Fr. Basil Cole, O.P.
"The Hidden Enemies of the Priesthood: The Contribution of St. Thomas Aquinas"

Study Guide to the US Adult Catholic Catechism
recently published from Our Sunday Visitor
by: Dr. Jem Sullivan

Fr. Joseph Alobaidi, O.P. His book, The Messiah in Isaiah 53: The Commentaries of Saadia Gaon, Salmon ben Yeruham, and Yefet ben Eli on Is. 52:13-53:12 was critically reviewed by Meira Polliack, University of Tel Aviv in the Journal of Theological Studies, April 2005.