Father Bryan Massingale in an undated photo. Credit: America Media.

Conference season is upon us, which for academics means either no rest for the weary—if you’re presenting—or a chance to reconnect with colleagues and old friends if you’re not, among myriad other concerns: new books, new scholars, new trends; a new pope. Academic conferences also offer their guilds a moment to honor members for their contributions to the field and new scholarly achievements. For Catholic theologians in the United States, both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the College Theology Society did just that in recent weeks.

With the theme “Theology in a Synodal Church,” the C.T.S.A. held its 80th annual convention in St. Louis, Mo., from June 11-14. On Saturday night, the society honored Father Bryan N. Massingale of Fordham University with the John Courtney Murray Award, its highest honor. Named for the American Jesuit theologian whose important contributions to the Second Vatican Council were paralleled by a profound influence on American Catholic theology, the award is given annually by the theological society to a member who has shown a “lifetime of distinguished theological achievement.”

Father Massingale holds the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham. He is a former president of the C.T.S.A. as well as of the Society of Christian Ethics, and is the author of Racial Justice and the Catholic Church, a book first published in 2010 that became all the more relevant in recent years with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and an increasing awareness inside the Catholic Church and out of the precarity of Black lives in contemporary America. 

A priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Father Massingale earned a master of divinity degree from St. Francis Seminary in Wisconsin, a licentiate in sacred theology from the Catholic University of America and a doctorate from the Alphonsianum in Rome. Before coming to Fordham, he was a longtime professor of theology at Marquette University, his undergraduate alma mater, among other academic appointments.

In his acceptance speech for the John Courtney Murray Award, Father Massingale noted that because of his own personal history and advocacy, this year’s award recognized more than him: It also honored the presence and accomplishments of Black Catholics and of L.G.B.T. Catholics in the church. As an openly gay Black Catholic priest, he said, he felt like he was also a representative of the long struggle in the Catholic academy and church of these marginalized groups. “Tonight, we have a visibility, acknowledgment and recognition never before given,” he said. “In a sense, tonight, Catholic theology comes out of the closet.”

Also at C.T.S.A., the Women’s Consultation on Constructive Theology honored Christina Astorga of the University of Portland with the Ann O’Hara Graff Memorial Award. Bestowed yearly on a woman scholar of the C.T.S.A., the award is given in memory of Dr. Graff, who taught theology and history for many years at the University of Seattle and Loyola University Chicago and died in 1996. The C.T.S.A. also honored Laurel Marshall Potter of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., with the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award, given “to new scholars for the best academic essay in the field of theology within the Roman Catholic tradition.” The award is given in memory of Dr. LaCugna, a pioneering feminist theologian and the author of God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. Dr. Potter’s article, “Comparative Theology as Fundamental Theology,” recently appeared in Theological Studies. 

The guild also honored Peter C. Phan of Georgetown University with the C.U.E.R.G. Distinguished Scholar-Leader Award, given by the Committee for Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Groups to honor a member “whose work as a scholar-leader has carried forward the theologizing of underrepresented and underrecognized communities in the academy, Church, and/or wider society.” 

At the end of May, the College Theology Society also held its annual convention, this year at Villanova University from May 28-31, with the theme of “Reclaiming Faith Amid Christian Nationalism.” At the meeting, Elena G. Procario-Foley of Iona University was honored with the Presidential Award, while Meghan Clark of St. John’s University was recognized with the Monika Hellwig Award for Excellence in Teaching.

In addition, Julie Hanlon Rubio of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University was recognized with the society’s Best Article award for her “Room for Vulnerability: Contributions of Sarah Coakley and M. Shawn Copeland to Christian Feminism,” which appeared in Studies in Christian Ethics. Finally, Noah Karger of the University of Notre Dame was honored with the Susan G. Perry Award for Best Graduate Student Essay for his “Cruciform Teleology: A Christological Synthesis of Aquinas and Rahner on Death,” and Peter C. Phan was honored for Best Book for Christianity and Migration: A Christian Theology of Migration for Our Age. 

Many awardees for both guilds have long written for America. Father Massingale has been of course a regular contributor in recent years on multiple subjects, and Father Phan’s most recent contribution was an essay on migration and racism in 2024. So too are Christina Astorga and Julie Hanlon Rubio familiar to our readers, and Noah Karger made his debut in our pages in 2023 with a review of J. Matthew Ashley’s Renewing Theology.

P.S. Speaking of writers, including ones with some experience of being banned: Happy Bloomsday! Here’s America’s review of James Joyce’s Ulysses, published more than a decade after the book was released and, well, rather spicy. 🌶️

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Our poetry selection for this week is “Bad Timing,” by Scott McConnaha. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.

Other recent Catholic Book Club columns:

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.