MILWAUKEE--Nine members of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) who died in the past year were remembered in an opening prayer service at the annual meeting Thursday evening.
They included powerhouses such as Richard McBrien of the University of Notre Dame and Cyprian Davis, OSB, known as the “father of black Catholic history.”
Also honored was Elizabeth Farians, a co-founder of the National Organization for Women and a feminist scholar. Father Charles Curran remembered Farians as one of the first women to earn a doctorate in theology and the first woman, in 1966, to attend the meeting of the CTSA. “Officials refused to allow her to enter,” Curran recalled, so he escorted her into the banquet hall.
Other deceased members remembered included:
- Lukas (Yiu Sing Luke) Chan, SJ, of Marquette University, a pioneering Asian theologian in biblical ethics;
- Joseph W. Devlin of LaSalle University in Philadelphia, known for her work in interreligious dialogue;
- Edmund J. Dobbin, OSA, a past president of Villanova University in Pennsylvania;
- Eugene Gorski, CSC, of the University of Notre Dame, where he also served as a rector;
- Bernard Marthaler, OFM.Conv., of The Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he had served as chair of the Department of Religion and Religious Education;
- and David Power, OMI, a liturgist from The Catholic University in Washington, D.C., who received CTSA’s John Courtney Murray Award in 1996.
The 70th annual convention of the CTSA is being held in Milwaukee June 11-14. The theme of the conference is “Sensus Fidelium.”