Our Mission & Purpose | Board of Directors | Board of Advisors | Staff
Board of Advisors
Fr. Benedict Ashley, OP
Emeritus, Aquinas Institute of Theology
Fr. Benedict Ashley is Professor of Moral Theology, Emeritus at the Thomas Aquinas Institute. He received an MA from the University of Chicago and a PhD from the University of Notre Dame. He also holds an STL and PhD from the Aquinas Institute and an STM, from the Order of Preachers. He was president of the Thomas Aquinas Institute from 1963 to 1969. He continues to teach courses in philosophy and spirituality in St. Louis. He is author of dozens of books and articles, including Theologies of the Body, Living the Truth in Love: A Biblical Introduction to Moral Theology, Thomas Aquinas: Gifts of the Spirit, Spiritual Direction in the Dominican Tradition, and The Dominicans.
Don Briel
University of St. Thomas
Don Briel holds the Koch Chair in Catholic Studies and is the director of the Catholic Studies Program at the University of St. Thomas. His areas of specialization are Newman studies, ecclesiology, and dogmatic theology. He is also a Notre Dame alumnus who has written extensively on the nature and promise of Catholic universities, including his recent "Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas" in Best Practices: Enhancing Religious Identity at Catholic Colleges and Universities and "The Prospects for Catholic Universities in a Secular Age," forthcoming in The Angelicum. Dr. Briel serves on a number of national advisory boards, including the Advisory Council on Justice Education of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
Vincent Carraud
University of Caen
Vincent Carraud is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Caen. He has published numerous articles on the history of modern philosophy and several books, including Causa Sive Ratio: La Raison De La Cause, De Suarez a Leibniz and Pascal et la philosophie. Vincent Carraud is also science editor for the Bulletin cartesien.
Sr. Agnes Cunningham, SSCM
Emerita, Mundelein Seminary
Sr. Agnes Cunningham is a member of the Sisters of the Holy Heart of Mary and is superior of the SSCM Convent in Champaign, Illinois. She is professor emeritus of historical and systematic theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary. Sr. Agnes was the first woman president of the Catholic Theological Association. She holds a doctorate in historical theology from the Institut Catholique de Lyon.
Thomas Dillon 
Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ
Mary Ann Glendon
Harvard Law School
Mary Ann Glendon was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See on December 19, 2007 and sworn in on February 14, 2008. Prior to her appointment, Ambassador Glendon was the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In March 2004, Pope John Paul II named her president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, marking the first time a woman has headed one of the major pontifical academies. She was also the first woman to lead a Vatican delegation to a major U.N. conference; in 1995, Pope John Paul appointed her head of the Vatican delegation to the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing. Ambassador Glendon has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on International Policy. From 2001 to 2004, she served on the President's Council on Bioethics, which advises the U.S. president. In addition to teaching at Harvard, she has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University and the Legionaries of Christ's Regina Apostolorum Athenaeum, both in Rome. Before her appointment to Harvard, she was a law professor at Boston College Law School. Earlier in her career, she was an associate at the Chicago law firm of Mayer, Brown and Platt. Ambassador Glendon earned her bachelor's degree, law degree and a master's degree in comparative law at the University of Chicago. Her research has focused on European civil law, human rights, legal theory and comparative constitutional law. In 2005, she received the National Humanities Medal. She is the author of A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and several other books.
Peter Hodgson
Bernard McGinn
University of Chicago
Bernard McGinn is Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School and the Committees on Medieval Studies and on General Studies. He received his STL from Gregorian University, Rome and his PhD from Brandeis University. Bernard McGinn works in the history of Christianity and the history of Christian thought, primarily in the medieval period. He has written extensively in the areas of the history of apocalyptic thought and, most recently, in the areas of spirituality and mysticism. His current long-range project is a five-volume history of Christian mysticism in the West under the general title The Presence of God, four volumes of which have appeared: The Origins of Mysticism; The Growth of Mysticism; The Flowering of Mysticism; and The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany.
Archabbot Lambert Reilly
St. Meinrad's Abbey
Archabbot Lambert served as the archabbot of Saint Meinrad Archabbey in southern Indiana from June 1995, to December 2004. He was the eighth abbot and fifth archabbot in the monastic community's 150-year history. Following his resignation as archabbot, he has returned to his work of preaching and retreats. For more than 40 years, Archabbot Lambert has distinguished himself as a retreat director and speaker on issues of spirituality and prayer. He has given many retreats to bishops, priests and sisters, and has conducted parish missions throughout the United States. He has been a frequent retreat master for Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in the United States and India. Archabbot Lambert taught Latin and education courses at Saint Meinrad College, Mount Sacred Heart College in Hamden, CT, and Penn State University and served as principal of St. Elizabeth High School, Pittsburgh, from 1976-1978. He also served as a consultant to the Diocese of Peoria’s Office of Education. Archabbot Lambert has held a variety of assignments within the monastery. In addition to his retreat work and teaching, Archabbot Lambert has assisted in parishes, worked in public relations, and served as guest master, assistant oblate director and assistant to the novice master. Archabbot Lambert earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Saint Vincent College, in 1955, and holds master of divinity and master of religious education degrees from Saint Meinrad School of Theology, as well as a master of science in education from Duquesne University. He is the author of Because There Is Jesus (Abbey Press, 1997) a collection of his homilies and conferences and Latin Sayings for Spiritual Growth (Our Sunday Visitor Press, 2001), which offers spiritual reflections on some of Fr. Archabbot's favorite Latin sayings and New Testament quotes.
Fr. David Tracy
University of Chicago
David Tracy is Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies and Professor of Theology and the Philosophy of Religion in the Divinity School. He is also in the Committee on Social Thought. He received his STL and STD from Gregorian University, Rome, and has taught a wide variety of courses in contemporary theology at the University of Chicago. He has offered classes in philosophical, systematic, and constructive theology and hermeneutics, and courses dealing with issues and persons in religion and modern thought. His publications include The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism and On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church. Professor Tracy is currently writing a book on God.
Bishop Allen H. Vigneron
Diocese of Oakland
Bishop Allen Vigneron is Bishop of Oakland. He received an AB in Philosophy and Classical Languages from Sacred Heart Seminary, Detroit, and an STB and later a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. Bishop Vigneron was ordained to the priesthood in the Detroit Presbyterate on July 26, 1975 at St. Clement of Rome Church, by the late Cardinal John Dearden. He earned his MA and PhD in Philosophy in 1983 and 1987, respectively, with a dissertation on the German Philosopher, Edmund Husserl. In 1988 he was appointed dean of that Sacred Heart College Seminary and became a key member of the team working to realize Cardinal Edmund Szoka's vision for the transformation of that institution into a "major seminary" offering graduate theological education. In the fall of 1991 Bishop Vigneron returned to Rome to serve as an official of the Administrative Section of the Vatican Secretariat of State. While there he was an adjunct instructor at the Gregorian University. In spring of 1994, Bishop Vigneron returned to Detroit to become the second Rector/President of the re-founded Sacred Heart Major Seminary. In 1996 Bishop Vigneron was named Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit, and received Episcopal ordination from Cardinal Adam Maida, the Archbishop of Detroit, on July 9 of that year. In 2003 he was named Coadjutor Bishop of Oakland and succeeded to the See of Oakland later that year. In the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Vigneron has served on the Committee for the American College in Louvain, the Committee on the Liturgy and the ad hoc Committee on the Plenary Council Varium. He is currently a member of the Doctrine Committee and the Catechism Committee. Bishop Vigneron is a trustee of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, St. Patrick Seminary (Menlo Park, CA) and the Catholic University of America. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Association of Theological Schools and the board of the Detroit chapter of the National Conference for Community and Justice (formerly "The National Conference of Christians and Jews"), and the board of Ave Maria University.
Carol Zaleski
Smith College
Carol Zaleski is Professor of World Religions at Smith College. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard University, and has been teaching philosophy of religion, world religions and Christian thought at Smith College since 1989. She is the author of Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times, and The Life of the World to Come (both Oxford University Press), and co-author with Philip Zaleski of Prayer: A History (Houghton Mifflin), The Book of Heaven (Oxford), and The Book of Hell (forthcoming, Oxford). She is currently working on a book about monasticism, and collaborating with Philip Zaleski on a study of the Inklings--C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and their circle. She is a columnist and editor-at-large for Christian Century, and has contributed articles and reviews to First Things, The New York Times Book Review, America, Parabola, Second Spring, The Journal of Religion, and The Journal of the History of Ideas. She regularly teaches Philosophy of Religion, The Catholic Philosophical Tradition, Psychology of Religion, The Inklings, William James, Belief in God, and Immortality.
Archbishop Jozef Zycinski
Archdiocese of Lublin
Archbishop Józef Zycinski is a Polish philosopher, publicist, Roman Catholic metropolitan archbishop of Lublin and Grand Chancellor of the Catholic University of Lublin. He is author of several books, including Teizm i filozofia analitycza [Theism and Analytical Philosophy], Jezyk i metoda [Language and Method], Wszechswiat i filozofia [The Universe and Philosophy], Drogi myslacych [The Paths of Those Who Think], Medytacje Sokratejskie [Socratic Meditations], Dylematy ewolucji [The Dilemmas of Evolution], Elementy filozofii nauki [Elements of the Philosophy of Science], and Ziarno samotnosci [The Seed of Loneliness]. Archbishop Zycinski is a member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences; a consultor to the Congregation for Catholic Education in the Vatican; and a member of the Papal Academy of Culture. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, the Committee for Philosophical Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), and PAN's Committee on Evolutionary and Theoretical Biology.