Jim's mother Helen and Father Sullivan attempted to run away together to raise baby Jim.
Their plans were thwarted, however, and Jim was surrendered to an orphanage in New York City. I'm thankful I can't recall the day my mother left me with the Sisters of Charity at the Foundling Hospital orphanage. The emotional pain must have been excruciating for us both. During his research, Graham also worked with Coping International, a group based in Ireland that provides support to those who are fathered by members of the clergy. The organization was founded by Vincent Doyle who was also fathered by a priest.
Doyle said that the Catholic Church in the U. This year, Graham, now 73 years old, was finally granted permission to exhume Father Thomas Sullivan from his grave in Massachusetts, on the condition that Graham would cover the costs. It is thought to be the first time a priest has been exhumed in order to trace DNA.
Ann Marie Mires, a forensic anthropologist, delivered the long-awaited news to Graham. In interviews, Graham made it clear that he did not seek compensation from the Catholic Church for the nearly year cover up, but instead sought acknowledgment and perhaps emotional support. Further, he hopes his case sets a precedent for others who may have been fathered by Catholic priests. Stay tuned and happy hunting. Do you have a story?
Fr John Sullivan
What reparations, if any, should the Catholic Church offer to Jim Graham? Share in the comments below. Irish American father shoots and kills one son to save the other. Irish Film Institute wins prestigious digital preservation award. What can Donald Trump and Brexit teach Ireland in ?
National Family History Month: Catholic priest fathered a son, DNA test reveals
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For his dissertation, Sullivan did not find a subject in the field of Fundamental Theology that caught his attention at the time, and so he drew on his already-existing interest in Patristics. He focused on Theodore of Mopsuestia's Christology , since it was sufficient that Sullivan had prepared in his coursework to be able to teach Fundamental Theology upon his return to Weston: Discovering that professors at either the Biblical Institute or the Oriental Institute could direct dissertations at the Gregorian, Sullivan wrote under the direction of Fr.
Having finished the work for the S. He was taking some of the summer to see more of Europe, as he did not have to be in Boston until August , when he would also profess his Final Vows as a Jesuit. He was at the Jesuit house in Barcelona when an American friend arrived who surprised Sullivan with the news that Sullivan's assignment had changed: Sullivan wrote to his Superior, Fr.
Spirituality in the City
Fitzgerald and discovered that he had been tapped to teach Ecclesiology back at the Gregorian. Zapelena was approaching the mandatory retirement age of 75 and his health was declining. Afraid of a sudden gap in their faculty, the combination of Sullivan's availability and education was seized upon by the Gregorian University to guarantee that their program could continue uninterrupted.
After a visit home, and feeling more than a little exiled, Sullivan returned to Rome to teach Ecclesiology at the Gregorian University, an academic ministry in which he would serve for the next 36 years, until his own mandatory retirement at the age of 70 in From until , Sullivan was professor of ecclesiology at the Gregorian University , serving as dean from to Having been assigned to Rome unexpectedly, he received permission to take the fall semester of off, finishing work for the publication of his doctoral dissertation in Boston, and remaining close to his father, who was dying of lung cancer.
Fr. Sullivan Preaching Apostolate : theranchhands.com
Timothy Zapelena's role as professor of Ecclesiology. Zapelena did not end up leaving the Gregorian immediately, and the two of them were both present during the —56 school year. Sullivan began his work still using the book Zapelena had already prepared for his own Ecclesiology course.
Zapelena had been teaching a two-semester course for many years, and since he was healthy enough to continue teaching for a little while longer, over the next two years, —58, he and Sullivan split the course as it had been structured, with Sullivan teaching the first semester material and Zapelena teaching the second semester material. Sullivan assumed the full responsibility for the subject in and the first book derived from the course, De Ecclesia , was published in This was intended to be the first part of a two-volume work on the Church, but the advent of the Second Vatican Council disrupted those plans.
The Second Vatican Council re-articulated the theology of the Church so that the subject as Sullivan had been teaching it, largely based on Mystici corporis , was no longer adequate to the subject. Nor were professors any longer expected simply to publish Latin versions of their class notes as books.
Sullivan had not been called to the Council as a peritus , which was not surprising given that he was still quite a junior faculty member. Information as to the Council's proceedings were kept quiet until published. However, much rumor had to say. Nevertheless, Sullivan was given access to one critical Vatican II document, the draft form of Lumen gentium , the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.
This happened when he was asked to address the American bishops on the topic of charisms , a concept found in Saint Paul , particularly in his descriptions of the Church in the First Epistle to the Corinthians , but which had fallen out of use in Catholic theological circles. Sullivan's research on this idea, as given in his presentation, was then offered to the Council as a correction and advance upon the draft version by Sullivan's former Superior, John J. McEleney , who was now Archbishop of Kingston, Jamaica. This theological preparation would have significant impact later in Sullivan's thought when he encountered the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.
Sullivan was named dean of the Faculty of Theology at the Gregorian University from to , and it fell to him to revise the statutes of the university according to the norms put forward by the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities now the Congregation for Catholic Education.
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A number of prominent Catholic ecclesiologists have worked with or studied under Sullivan. Sullivan was on the dissertation committee of Avery Cardinal Dulles. Joseph Komonchak and Richard McBrien were also his students. William Cardinal Levada , formerly the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith , received his doctorate under Sullivan in From , Sullivan continued to teach graduate students as a professor of theology at Boston College.
Only after the spring semester of , when he turned 87, did Sullivan finally retire from teaching. As an actively researching theologian, Sullivan has been a participant in a number of ongoing discussions and investigations of matters in dispute in the theological world. An Inquiry , Sullivan was provoked into thinking through a defense of the idea of the magisterium — the teaching authority in the Church — which eventually became his book Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church , published in In December , he questioned the assertion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that the teaching reiterated in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis regarding women's ordination had been infallibly taught.
Sullivan wrote that "The question that remains is whether it is a clearly established fact that the bishops of the Catholic Church are as convinced by those reasons [against women priests] as Pope John Paul evidently is, and that, in exercising their proper role as judges and teachers of the faith, they have been unanimous in teaching that the exclusion of women from ordination to the priesthood is a divinely revealed truth to which all Catholics are obliged to give a definitive assent of faith. Unless this is manifestly the case, I do not see how it can be certain that this doctrine is taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium.
Sullivan also has engaged in a number of long-running discussions over disputed questions, which have extended across several years of Sullivan's retirement. With Germain Grisez he discussed the question of the infallibility of the Catholic Church's teaching on artificial contraception ; [19] with Adrian Gariuit, O. Welch, he engaged in a long conversation in theological journals about consensus among theologians as a criterion by which it could be determined whether a doctrine was taught universally by the Church; [21] and with Karl Becker, S.