Faculty & Research

Our faculty are scholars, mentors, and ministers, helping students transform into leaders of communities around the world. Through sincere interactions and enduring relationships, faculty members help students flourish academically, in ministerial work, and in exploring their own spiritual expression.

The nation’s largest theological faculty

Together with the Boston College Theology Department, our 71 faculty members comprise the largest theology faculty in the country.

Meet Our Faculty

Utilizing participative pedagogical processes and analogical imagination, our faculty prepares students to be leaders of intellectual strength and integrity, who are able to respond in theologically substantive ways to the pressing issues of our time.

Research Projects

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Measuring Meaning-Making: BC-LAMP-C

BC-LAMP-C is a quantitative instrument that measures the capacity for meaning-making among college students. It draws on constructive-developmental theory, which recognizes the expanding cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal capacities, by which individuals interpret and make meaning of the world and their place in it (Kegan 1982; Kegan, 1994; Baxter-Magolda, 2007; Parks, 2011). Growth in meaning-making capacity is marked by individuals’ increasing ability to see themselves as distinct, but connected in myriad ways to the world around them.

Project Description
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Sense of the Possible: An Introduction to Theology and Imagination

Callid Keefe-Perry

Sense of the Possible is for those interested in learning about the intersection of Christian theology and imagination. Written from the assumption that imagination is deeply connected to the Christian work for liberation and human flourishing, this book is an energizing introduction to the ways in which theologians have thought about the powerful human capacity to envision a future that has not yet come.

Project Description
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Ritual Mourning in the Second Temple Period

Angela Kim Harkins

The project on ritual mourning in the Second Temple period produced a number of studies of ancient Jewish and Christian Prayers. 

Project Description
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A Theology of Pilgrimage

André Brouillette

The phenomenon of pilgrimage is important in the lived experience of Christianity throughout history, and historians, anthropologists, and sociologists have studied it, but it has rarely explored theologically. This project to reconnect aspects of pilgrimage that have a theological import—historical narratives, devotional practices, Biblical sources—to explore the meaning of a pilgrim paradigm in the Church and understand its continued relevance.

Project Description
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Disability Ethic/Preferential Justice: A Catholic Perspective

Mary Jo Iozzio

This book introduces disability basics, realities, and etiquette; reviews landmark contributions of the United Nations and World Health Organization; and utilizes theological traditions on the Trinitarian basis of the imago Dei, natural law, Catholic social teaching on the option for the poor and marginalized, and the imperatives of disability inclusion for the Church and the world.

Project Description
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Social History of U.S. Franciscan Missionaries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa (1879–2019)

Margaret Eletta Guider, O.S.F.

The project provides an overview of the missionary activities, locations, and legacies of U.S. Franciscans from 1879–2019. Sr. Guider's research draws on resources including archival records, missionary narratives, interviews, and statistical data, as well as additional materials relevant to particular orders, provinces, and congregations. 

Project Description

Faculty in the News

We try to teach academic courses in ways that are eminently pastoral and applicable. Our practical courses are very academic. We try to teach them both in ways that nurture people's own spiritual growth. The academic, the pastoral, and the spiritual – letting all three suffuse each other and inform and color each other. We don't see these as a triangle. We see them as integrated.
Thomas H. Groome, Professor, Theology and Religious Education

Faculty Publications

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Synodality: A New Way of Proceeding in the Church

Rafael Luciani

Paulist Press, 2022

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What Does the Bible Say About Animals?

Jaime Waters

New City Press, 2022

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The Pilgrim Paradigm: Faith and Motion

André Brouillette

Paulist Press, 2022

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Tilling the Church: Theology for an Unfinished Project

Richard Lennan

Liturgical Press, 2022

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The Structures of Virtue and Vice (Moral Traditions)

Daniel J. Daly

Georgetown University Press, 2021

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What Makes Education Catholic

Thomas Groome

Orbis, 2021

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Hope: Promise, Possibility, Fulfillment

17 STM Faculty

Paulist Press, 2013

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The Holy Spirit: Setting the World on Fire

17 STM Faculty

Paulist Press, 2017

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Sense of the Possible: An Introduction to Theology and Imagination

L. Callid Keefe-Perry

Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2023

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Unparalleled Access to Expertise

Students also form relationships with stellar faculty in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences Theology Department, whose primary research areas include biblical studies, historical theology/history of Christianity, comparative theology, systematic theology, and theological ethics.

BC Theology Department

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