Santa Clara University

Michael C. McCarthy, S.J.

Associate Professor

Fr. McCarthy was born in San Francisco in the 1960s, the youngest of six children in a fairly traditional Irish Catholic family. Since then, he has wrestled with one question that forms the backbone of his academic interests: how does one make sense of commitment to the Catholic-Christian tradition in a world which is dizzyingly complex and richly diverse in cultures? After a year as an undergraduate at Stanford, he entered the Jesuits, and finished his B.A. in Classical Languages at Santa Clara University (1987). Next he went to Oxford University for four years, where he read Literae Humaniores ("Greats," or Philosophy and Classical Literature) and completed the course for a B.A./M.A. (Oxon.). After receiving the M.Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, California in 1997, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in Patristics (the study of theology in the Early Church) from the University of Notre Dame in 2003, where he wrote a dissertation on Augustine's interpretation of the Psalms.

Fr. McCarthy joined the faculty at Santa Clara in 2003, with a joint appointment in the Religious Studies and Classics Departments. In both he pursues his dual interests in the rich cultural world of Greece and Rome and the development of the Christian theological tradition within it. His research interests focus on the imaginative ways early Christians interpreted Scripture, especially the Psalms. He teaches courses in Christian Traditions and Augustine, as well as courses on Homer and Horace for the Classics Department.

Courses

Courses taught at Santa Clara University

		Christian Tradition
		Classical Culture- Gods and Mortals
		Early Christianity
		Religious Disillusionment: Augustine through Freud
		The World of Augustine
		Vergil's Aeneid
		Telling Your Story: Discerning Vocation
		Augustine's Confessions (in Latin)
		Plato's Symposium (in Greek)
		The Odes of Horace (in Latin)
		Homer's Iliad (in Greek)

Academic Appointments

Director, Catholic Studies Program, Santa Clara University	2008-present
Visiting Professor, Department of Theology, Loyola University, Chicago	January-May 2007
Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies and Department of Classics, Santa Clara University	2003-present
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Classics, Santa Clara University	2002, 1996-1997
Adjunct Lecturer, Theology Department, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA	1995-1996
Instructor, Jesuit High School, Sacramento, CA	1991-1994

Research

Research Interests

• Patristic Theology
• History of Exegesis
• Early Christian liturgy
• Augustine
• New Testament
• Greek and Latin Literature

Publications

"Title." In Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium (ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, Gerald O'Collins; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

"Modalities of Belief in Ancient Christian Controversy," Journal of Early Christian Studies 18.1 (Forthcoming, Spring, 2010).

"Augustine’s Mixed Feelings: Vergil’s Aeneid and the Psalms of David in the Confessions," Harvard Theological Review (Forthcoming, 2009).

"Divine Wrath and Human Anger: Embarrassment Ancient and New," Theological Studies (Forthcoming, September, 2009).

"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: Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos, 2008), 15-28.

"Church Fathers," in Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions, ed. Yudit Greenberg (Oxford: ABC-Clio, November, 2007), 115-118.

"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.

Review of To Know God and the Soul: Essays on the Thought of St. Augustine, by Roland J. Teske, S.J., in Theological Studies (Forthcoming, March, 2009).

Review of Fredom and Necessity: St. Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom by Gerald Bonner, in Theological Studies 69:2 (June, 2008): 473.

Review of Foucault and Augustine: Reconsidering Power and Love, by J. Joyce Schuld, in Theological Studies 66:2 (June, 2005): 461-62.

Review of The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography, by Virginia Burrus, in Theological Studies 66:2 (June, 2005): 490-91.

Review of What is Gnosticism? by Karen L. King, in Theological Studies 65 (September, 2004): 639-41.

Academic Presentations

"‘I Lay Down and Slept’ (Ps. 3:6): Patristic Spiritualities of Sleep," Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society. Chicago, IL, May, 2008.

"Pagan and Christian Embarrassment over Divine Wrath," Oxford International Patristics Conference, August 2007.

"Divine Wrath and Human Anger: Embarrassment Ancient and New," Colloquium to the Department of Theology, Loyola University Chicago, May 2007.

"‘Savage Juno" (Aeneid 1.4) and the ‘Fury of the Lord’ (Psalm 2:5)," Colloquium on Emotions in Antiquity, Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, San Diego, CA, January 2007.

"Augustine and the Construction of Christian Europe," LATINEUROPA International Colloquium, Faculty of Letters, University of Coimbra, Portugal, November 2006.

"‘We Are Your Books’ (Sermo 227): Augustine, the Bible, and the Practice of Authority," Conference on Orality and Literacy: Tradition. Regis University, Denver, CO, October 19-22, 2006.

"Beyond Belief? Prospects for ‘Orthodoxy’ in Light of the Case against Pelagius," Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society. Chicago, IL, May, 2006.

"Eschatology in Hilary of Poitier’s Tractatus super Psalmos," Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society. Chicago, IL, June, 2005.

"Augustine’s Sermo 358 in its Donatist Context," Medieval and Renaissance Studies Colloquium, Santa Clara University, May 11, 2005.

"Religious Disillusionment in a Land of Illusions." Rahner at the Pacific Rim: A Conference on Cultural and Religious Pluralism and New Theological Challenges. Santa Clara University, CA, October 9, 2004.

"Augustine’s Ideal Reader: Theory versus Practice." Annual Meeting of the North American Patristics Society. Chicago, IL, May, 2004.

"The Birds and the Bees (and the Serpents and the Stags) in Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos." Paper presented at the North American Patristics Society Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, May 2001.

Awards and Grants

DISCOVER Grant for Course Development 2008

Arthur Vining Davis Junior Faculty Development Grant 2006

Edmund Campion Fellowship, Santa Clara University, 2002-2003.

Presidential Dissertation Fellowship, Santa Clara University, 2001-2002.

Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning Outstanding Graduate Student Teacher Award for Excellence in Teaching, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 2000.

Presidential Fellowship, University of Notre Dame, 1997-2001.

Visting Bannan Lecturer, Santa Clara University, 1997.

First Class Honours Degree, Oxford University, 1991.

B.A. Magna Cum Laude, Santa Clara University, 1987.

Alpha Sigma Nu, National Jesuit Honors Society.

Eta Sigma Phi, National Classics Honors Society.

Activities

Professional Memberships

• American Academy of Religion
• American Philosophical Association
  
• Catholic Theological Society of America
• North American Patristics Society
• Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality

Activities

Participant, Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies at the University of Oxford (August 18-23, 2003).

National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholars' Grant Advisor, 1994.

        Other Services

Chair, Board of Trustees, St. Ignatius College Preparatory, San Francisco, CA, August 2006-May 2008 (Secretary); May 2008-present (Chair).

National Seminar in the Study of Jesuit Spirituality, April 2008-present.

Board of Trustees, Bellarmine College Preparatory, San Jose, CA, May 2008-present.

Steering Committee of the Bannan Institute for Jesuit Educational Mission, Santa Clara University, Fall, 2005-present.