Jesuit brings moral theology up front and personal - Catholic Colleges And Universities - Weston Jesuit School of Theology's Fr. James F. Keenan

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 25, 2002 by Chuck Colbert

Dan Harrington remarked upon the effect of these life events on Keenan. "He entered into those things in a very profound way, letting them influence him as a person and moral theologian," Harrington said.

Keenan graduated from Fordham University in 1976. He briefly taught high school, before earning a master of divinity degree (with honors) at Weston.

During his second year at Weston, he was told to earn a doctorate. "I went to Rome's Gregorian University to study with two people, Klaus Demmer and Josef Fuchs." Under Fuchs, Keenan wrote his doctoral dissertation, "Being Good and Doing the Right in Saint Thomas' Summa Theologiae." Before joining the faculty at Weston, Keenan taught moral theology at Fordham.

Because of his European theological training, Keenan saw the potential for more international students at Weston Jesuit. "When I came here there were only eight people in our licentiate program and no doctoral students. Now we have 40 to 45 students pursuing the [licentiate in sacred theology], many of whom are from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. There are 18 students enrolled in the doctoral program," which Keenan also directs.

"Our students really love theology," he explained. "There's a certain honesty about the students, lay students, Jesuits, other religious, African priests. People are pretty humble about where they are. They'll acknowledge quite quickly what they need to learn."

Over the years, he said, "I learned a lot about the Catholic moral tradition, and I felt it was important to teach it to graduate students. Too many conservatives--or reactionaries--teach it. More people could be teaching the tradition the way, for instance, Charlie Curran teaches it," Keenan said.

"I found in lecturing that students liked using the tradition of making moral distinctions. They also liked that they were not only getting the history and tradition, but also getting it very positively, as opposed to a restrained way. It was urging them to become better people," he said.

That observation cuts to the core of Keenan's emphasis on virtue ethics. It's more than problem solving or simply doing good deeds. "It's the life of the whole person," explained Harrington, "Jim's always building from that life, the life of Christian spirituality, and how the Christ event informs a person's life." It's ethics from the inside out.

Perhaps no other event has shaken the faithful in the Boston archdiocese as much as the sex abuse scandal. Yet in the wake of this tragedy, Keenan sees all kinds of good people, speaking out in positive ways in churches and in the media.

`A great time to be a priest'

"It's a great time to be a priest," he said, "and to be a layperson today. There's never been more of a need for active laypeople or for caring, active clergy," he said. "When have we ever seen so many of our faculty involved with the media and speaking up? And it's not like people are knocking on the door, saying, `I've got something to say. I've got something to do.' People are making real linkages between theology and church history, biblical studies, systematic theology, and ethics and the life of the church. It's just great, this type of response that is emerging--most of it from laypeople. That's how I got involved. Parishioners at St. Peter's in Cambridge asked, `Are you going to say anything in your sermons about the crisis?'"