Faculty Directory

Michael C. McCarthy, S.J.

Dean and Professor

Photo of Michael C. McCarthy, S.J.

Michael C. McCarthy, S.J.

Ph.D.

Contact

Simboli Hall 230

Telephone: 617-552-6509

Education

  • B.A., Santa Clara University
  • M.A. (Oxon.) Oxford University
  • M.Div. Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley
  • Ph.D. University of Notre Dame
  • S.T.L. Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University

Research Interests

Jesuit Higher Education in the United States, Augustine, The Intellectual and Cultural Context of Early Christianity, Religious Belief, Patristic Exegesis, Early Asceticism and Spirituality

Expertise

  • Historical Theology and Church History

Profile

Michael C. McCarthy, S.J., a native of San Francisco, CA, entered the Society of Jesus in 1983 after a year as an undergraduate at Stanford University. He completed his Bachelor of Arts in Classical Languages from Santa Clara University in 1987 before spending four years at Oxford University, where he earned an M.A. (Oxon.) in Literae Humaniores ("Greats") in 1991. After finishing an M.Div. at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1997, he received his Ph.D. in Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, with an emphasis in Patristic Theology, from the University of Notre Dame in 2003. Beginning in 2003 he served on the faculty of Santa Clara University, with a joint appointment in the religious studies and classics departments, where he also held the Edmund Campion University Professorship. In 2011 he became the Executive Director of the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education at Santa Clara. In 2016 he moved to New York to take up the position of Vice President for Mission Integration and Planning at Fordham University, where he held a faculty appointment in the Theology Department. In June, 2022 he was appointed as Dean of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry.

Selected Publications

“‘Consciente, comprometido, y responsible’: Futuros profesionales, educación superior, y valores sociales,’” Razon y fe (Madrid) 280:1441 (2019): 155-164.

“Liberté académique et identité religieuse aux États-Unis,” Études: Revue de Culture Contemporaine (Janvier, 2018): 7-18. [English Version: “Education and Liberty: Jesuit Higher Education in the United States.”]

“Reading Ignatius in Dystopia: Jesuit Universities in an Age of Anxiety,” America Magazine (October 1, 2018): 20-27.

“On the Augustinian Roots of The Spirit of the Liturgy,” Nova et Vetera 15:3 (Summer, 2017): 795-816.

“A Jesuit Inspiration,” New York Times (November 15, 2014). http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/a-jesuit-inspiration.html?_r=0

“A University is a Social Force,” Chronicle of Higher Education (November 7, 2014). http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/11/07/a-university-is-a-social-force/

“Interpreting Augustine: Mirrors, Models, and the Middle Voice,” Augustinian Studies 43:1/2 (2012): 65-76.

“‘Let me love more passionately.’ (Aug. Conf. 13): Religious Celibacy in a Secular Age, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 43/2 (Summer, 2011).

“The Psalms of Ascent as Word of God in Augustine’s Enarrationes in psalmos,” Augustinian Studies 41:1 (2010): 109-120.

“Why I Stay,” in “The Kolvenbach Generation,” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits (Spring, 2010): 1-12.

“Augustine’s Mixed Feelings: Vergil’s Aeneid and the Psalms of David in the Confessions,” Harvard Theological Review 102:4 (2009): 453-479.

“Modalities of Belief in Ancient Christian Controversy,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 17:4 (2009): 605-634.

“Divine Wrath and Human Anger: Embarrassment Ancient and New,” Theological Studies 70:4 (2009): 845-874.

“Expectatio Beatitudinis: The Eschatological Frame of Hilary of Poitier’s Tractatus super Psalmos,” in In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church, ed. Peter Martens, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, November, 2008), 50-70.

“Augustine and the Construction of Christian Europe,” in Latineuropa. Latim e cultura neolatina no processo de construção da identidade europeia, eds. Nair Castro Soares, Margarida Miranda, Carlota M. Urbano, (Coimbra, Portugal: Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos, 2008), 15-28.

“Religious Disillusionment and the Cross: An Augustinian Reflection,” Heythrop Journal 48:4 (July, 2007): 577-592.

“‘We Are Your Books’ (Sermo 227): Augustine, the Bible, and the Practice of Authority,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75:2 (June, 2007): 324-352.

“Creation through the Psalms in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos,” Augustinian Studies 37:2 (2006): 191-218.

“Religious Disillusionment in a Land of Illusions,” in Rahner Beyond Rahner: A Great Theologian Encounters the Pacific Rim, ed. Paul Crowley (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 101-111.

“An Ecclesiology of Groaning: Augustine, the Psalms, and the Making of Church,” Theological Studies 66:1 (March, 2005): 23-48.

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