What Sacred Heart’ s students encounter in course after course are highly skilled, enthusiastic teachers who encourage personal holiness in their students and in themselves, foremost. Reason and faith do not clash in a Sacred Heart classroom; instead they work in unison.
Jesuit theologian Fr. Peter Ryan brings to the faculty dual expertise in teaching and seminarian formation.
MORAL
THEOLOGY
Is Specialty of New Faculty Member
What Sacred Heart’ s students encounter in course after course are highly skilled, enthusiastic teachers who encourage personal holiness in their students and in themselves, foremost. Reason and faith do not clash in a Sacred Heart classroom; instead they work in unison.
To teach according to the mind of the Church— while encouraging the highest standards of academic excellence— is asked of each of Sacred Heart’ s professors, and they joyfully respond. Maintaining a faculty of the highest caliber is one of the foremost components in forming the highest caliber of ordained and lay leaders for your parish.
The seminary’ s most recent faculty member exemplifies this attractive combination of academic expertise, love of Catholic truth, and commitment to personal holiness.
Fr. Peter Ryan, SJ, comes to Sacred Heart from the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus by way of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Since 2013, he has been serving the U. S. bishops as the executive director of their Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs. Previously, he was director of spiritual formation and professor of moral theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in Missouri. Before that, he was professor of moral theology for a decade at Mount St. Mary’ s Seminary in Maryland.
Among his many academic degrees, Father Ryan holds a doctorate in theology from the Gregorian University in Rome. He excels in the area of bioethics— he was once senior fellow at the Westchester
Institute for Ethics and the Human Person— and he is expert on the work of the renowned moral theologian Germain Grisez, with whom he has collaborated on various publishing projects. Father will reside at Sacred Heart, teach in the Graduate School of Theology, and assist in the spiritual formation of seminarians.
Father Ryan and his Jesuit brother, Fr. Michael McDermott, professor of theology at Sacred Heart, have a longstanding friendship. Father Ryan was once a student of Father McDermott’ s in Rome,“ and despite or perhaps because of my course,” Father McDermott says,“ Father decided to major in moral theology and he has not looked back.
“ We even butted bodies on the basketball court at the time,” laughs Father McDermott, who for years coached the Sacred Heart Lions basketball team.“ Jesuit confraternity does not hinder sharp elbows on the court!”
“ We are delighted that the Maryland Province released Father Ryan for service at Sacred Heart,” says Msgr. Todd Lajiness,“ and we welcome him warmly.”
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