McNally, Vincent J. 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born February 6, 1943, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Joseph Edward (an electrical engineer) and Dorothy Elizabeth (a legal secretary) McNally. Ethnicity: "European American." Education: Villanova University, M.A., 1971; Trinity College, Dublin, Ph.D., 1977; Catholic University of America, M.Div., 1982. Politics: "Liberal-progressive." Hobbies and other interests: Drawing, painting, playing the harpsichord.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Milwaukee, WI. Office—Sacred Heart School of Theology, P.O. Box 429, Hales Corners, WI 53130-0429. E-mail—[email protected];[email protected].

CAREER:

Roman Catholic priest; Seattle University, Seattle, WA, lecturer in history, 1982-83; pastor of Roman Catholic church in Sooke, British Columbia, Canada, 1987-92; Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corners, WI, professor of church history, 1992—. Simon Fraser University, adjunct professor, 1989-92. William Head Institution, prison chaplain, 1987-92; theological consultant to the archbishop of Milwaukee, WI.

MEMBER:

American Catholic Historical Association, American Historical Association, Canadian Catholic Historical Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grant from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 1987-92; Lilly-Wabash fellow, 1998-99; fellow of Pew Charitable Trust, 2000; fellow of National Endowment for the Humanities, 2004-05; Lilly theological grant, Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada.

WRITINGS:

A History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria, CANAAP Press (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), 1990.

Reform, Revolution, and Reaction: Archbishop John Thomas Troy and the Catholic Church in Ireland, 1787-1817, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1995.

The Lord's Distant Vineyard: A History of the Oblates and the Catholic Community in British Columbia, University of Alberta Press (Edmonton Alberta, Canada), 2000.

Contributor to books, including Forward in the Spirit: Challenge of the People's Synod, Hignell Press (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 1991; and Christianity and Native Cultures: Perspectives from Different Regions of the World, Cross Cultural Publications (Notre Dame, IN), 2004. Contributor to periodicals, including Catholic Historical Review, Journal of Church and State, Historical Studies, Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society, Teaching Theology and Religion, and Western Oblate Studies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Vincent J. McNally once told CA: "I can think of no better motivation for my writing and what influences my work as a scholar and teacher than in the context of the great and present demand upon religious people of all faith traditions to answer the call to mutual tolerance, acceptance, and reconciliation with other traditions, especially Christians. For, paraphrasing André Malraux, if we as religious people fail to meet this crucial demand for a new global spiritual awareness, we will bear a major burden of the responsibility of helping to promote a worldwide pessimism and hopelessness. This in turn may lead to apocalyptic imagery that fosters and may well bring about the end of life on our planet before the end of the twenty-first century. I believe, as a Christian historian, cleric, scholar, and teacher, that no religion or faith tradition (or the societies and cultures it represents, no matter the theological presumptions) can continue to live in a kind of splendid isolation from other religious traditions. There is real hope for the future, but only if there is a willingness to take action, and now.

"My teaching has much to do with promoting my research and writing. I teach church history, patristics, and world religions. In this context, I find my writing is a force that both promotes what I teach and corrects what I teach and write. One method that I have developed to challenge students and myself to think ecumenically and globally is the ‘artifact paper,’ in which they are required to use their imaginations to break down the barriers, the moral dualisms, the internal walls that we all use to divide ourselves from others and from ourselves, for whatever reasons (but especially religion, race, gender, class, and sexual orientation). I see the development and use of a healthy imagination as crucial in the task of being a successful teacher, and certainly a successful writer. For imagination, I believe, has two essential objectives. The first is to help in healing ourselves and those we come in contact with, or with whom we are in a relationship of any kind, to find ways through fantasy (lies, or the opposite of imagination) and toward the pursuit of facts (truth) and the discovery of reality. The second is to create viewpoints for the discovered facts that do not leave them as scattered absolutes that frighten or preoccupy people (mistaking the part for the whole). Therefore, as the essential core of critical thinking, imagination will always assume that there are facts that have not yet been discovered. Thus the healthy imagination will always be an enemy to ‘absolutizing’ of any kind, to challenging moral dualism, especially in theology, and a friend to unity, compassion, and hope.

"This commitment to the centrality of imagination has powered my teaching, research, and writing. A central objective of this is to help myself and those with whom I work and those who read what I write to question the assumptions and beliefs that we have in order to be open to other possibilities. This seems especially important in a world that is increasingly globalized. We can no longer pretend, despite the great importance of western civilization, that we have little or nothing to learn from other traditions or peoples. I believe that, in striving for such an objective in my writing, my imagination is absolutely central.

"I continue to take part each summer (since 1999) in a project, Growing beyond Prejudice, which is an attempt to develop theological methods that will encourage the divided society of Northern Irish education, especially primary and secondary education in the public schools that are primarily Protestant, and the separate schools, which are Roman Catholic, to examine ways by which students in both traditions can learn to appreciate the other, the ‘out group,’ as valuable to themselves and to their understanding of God. How, in other words, can the Christian gospel be used as a guide in finding new ways to stress an optimism that will lead us out of the present situation in Northern Ireland, which continues to be marked by pessimism, indifference, and often institutional arrogance? How can this approach also be applied to similar circumstances in other parts of the world?"