Timothy Radcliffe | |
---|---|
Master of the Order of Preachers | |
Church | Roman Catholic Church |
In office | 1992–2001 |
Predecessor | Damian Byrne |
Successor | Carlos Azpiroz Costa |
Personal details | |
Born | [1] London, England | 22 August 1945
Nationality | British |
Denomination | Catholic |
Residence | Blackfriars, Oxford |
Occupation | Priest, academic, theologian |
Timothy Peter Joseph Radcliffe, OP (born 22 August 1945) is an English Roman Catholic priest and Dominican friar who served as master of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001. He is the only member of the English Province to hold that office.
Radcliffe served as director of the Las Casas Institute of Blackfriars, Oxford which promotes social justice and human rights. [2] He has been a supporter of outreach to LGBT Catholics.
Timothy Radcliffe was born on 22 August 1945 in London. He studied at Worth Preparatory School (Worth School) in Sussex, Downside School in Somerset and St John's College, Oxford. He entered the Dominican Order in 1965 and was ordained a priest in 1971.
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During the mid-1970s, Radcliffe was based at the West London Catholic Chaplaincy. He taught scriptures at Oxford and was elected provincial of England in 1988. [3] In 1992, he was elected master of the Dominican Order, holding that office until 2001. During his tenure as master, Radcliffe served as ex-officio grand chancellor of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
In 2001, after the expiration of his term as master, Radcliffe took a sabbatical year. In 2002, he became again a simple member of the Dominican community of Oxford. He now preaches and carries out public speaking internationally.
In 2015, Radcliffe was named a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. [4]
Although not a topic Radcliffe has often written on in his numerous publications, he has publicly defended the teaching of the Catholic Church on marriage:
"The Catholic Church does not oppose gay marriage. It considers it to be impossible... Marriage is founded on the glorious fact of sexual difference and its potential fertility. Without this, there would be no life on this planet, no evolution, no human beings, no future. Marriage takes all sorts of forms, from the alliance of clans through bride exchange to modern romantic love. We have come to see that it implies the equal love and dignity of man and woman. But everywhere and always, it remains founded on the union in difference of male and female. Through ceremonies and sacrament this is given a deeper meaning, which for Christians includes the union of God and humanity in Christ." [5]
In 2003, Oxford awarded Radcliffe an honorary Doctor of Divinity. [6] The Chancellor, the Right Honorable Christopher Patten, ended the award citation with the following words:
"I present a man distinguished both for eloquence and for wit, a master theologian who has never disregarded ordinary people, a practical man who believes that religion and the teachings of theology must be constantly applied to the conduct of public life: the Most Reverend Timothy Radcliffe, MA, sometime Master of the Dominican Order and Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, for admission to the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity." [7]
Radcliffe received the 2007 Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing for his book What Is the Point of Being A Christian? Radcliffe is a patron of the International Young Leaders Network and helped launch Las Casas Institute, dealing with issues of ethics, governance and social justice. These are both projects of Blackfriars, Oxford.
Radcliffe is also patron of Catholic AIDS Prevention and Support, Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament, and 'Embrace the Middle East, as well as board member of Fellowship and Aid to the Church in the East.
Albertus Magnus, also known as Saint Albert the Great or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop. Later canonised as a Catholic saint, he was known during his lifetime as Doctor universalis and Doctor expertus and, late in his life, the sobriquet Magnus was appended to his name. Scholars such as James A. Weisheipl and Joachim R. Söder have referred to him as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church distinguishes him as one of the 37 Doctors of the Church.
The Order of Preachers abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by a Spanish priest, saint and mystic, Saint Dominic. It was approved by Pope Honorius III via the papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216. Members of the order, who are referred to as Dominicans, generally carry the letters OP after their names, standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning of the Order of Preachers. Membership in the order includes friars, nuns, active sisters, and lay or secular Dominicans. More recently there has been a growing number of associates of the religious sisters who are unrelated to the tertiaries.
Bartolomé de las Casas, OP was a 16th-century Spanish landowner, friar, priest, and bishop, famed as a historian and social reformer. He arrived in Hispaniola as a layman then became a Dominican friar and priest. He was appointed as the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians". His extensive writings, the most famous being A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and Historia de Las Indias, chronicle the first decades of colonization of the West Indies. He described the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples.
Blackfriars Priory is a Dominican religious community in Oxford, England. It houses two educational institutions: Blackfriars Studium, the centre of theological studies of the English Province of the Dominican Order ; and Blackfriars Hall, a constituent permanent private hall of the University of Oxford. The current prior of Blackfriars is Robert Gay, and the regent of both the hall and the studium is John O'Connor. The name Blackfriars is commonly used in Britain to denote a house of Dominican friars, a reference to their black cappa, which forms part of their habit.
Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny is a British philosopher whose interests lie in the philosophy of mind, ancient and scholastic philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein of whose literary estate he is an executor. With Peter Geach, he has made a significant contribution to analytical Thomism, a movement whose aim is to present the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas in the style of analytic philosophy. He is a former president of the British Academy and the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
Franz König was an Austrian Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as archbishop of Vienna from 1956 to 1985, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958. The last surviving cardinal elevated by Pope John XXIII, he was the second-oldest and longest-serving cardinal worldwide at the time of his death.
Hans Küng was a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author. From 1995 he was president of the Foundation for a Global Ethic.
Rabinal is a small town, with a population of 15,157, located in the Guatemalan department of Baja Verapaz, at 15°5′4.70″N90°29′20.50″W. It serves as the administrative seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name. The municipality covers an area of 336 km² with a population of 40,797. The local people are predominantly Achi Maya Native Americans who speak the Achi Maya language.
Herbert John Ignatius McCabe was a Dominican priest, theologian and philosopher.
The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace was a pontifical council of the Roman Curia dedicated to "action-oriented studies" for the international promotion of justice, peace, and human rights from the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church. To this end, it cooperates with various religious institutes and advocacy groups, as well as scholarly, ecumenical, and international organizations.
John Macquarrie (1919–2007) was a Scottish-born theologian, philosopher and Anglican priest. He was the author of Principles of Christian Theology (1966) and Jesus Christ in Modern Thought (1991). Timothy Bradshaw, writing in the Handbook of Anglican Theologians, described Macquarrie as "unquestionably Anglicanism's most distinguished systematic theologian in the second half of the 20th century."
Dominique Pire, O.P. was a Belgian Dominican friar whose work helping refugees in post-World War II Europe saw him receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1958. Pire delivered his Nobel lecture, entitled Brotherly Love: Foundation of Peace, in December 1958.
Carlos Alfonso Azpiroz Costa, O.P., J.C.D. is an Argentinian friar of the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans, who serves as a prelate of the Catholic Church.
Fergus Gordon Thomson Kerr is a Scottish Roman Catholic priest of the English Dominican province. He has published significantly on a wide range of subjects, but is famous particularly for his work on Ludwig Wittgenstein and Thomas Aquinas.
John Norman Davidson Kelly was a British theologian and academic at the University of Oxford and Principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, between 1951 and 1979, during which the hall transformed into an independent constituent college of the university and later a co-educational establishment.
Jordan of Pisa, also called Jordan of Rivalto, was a Dominican theologian and the first preacher whose vernacular Italian sermons are preserved. His cultus was confirmed on 23 August 1833 by Pope Gregory XVI and he was beatified in 1838; his day is either March 6 or August 19. His relics are in the church of Santa Caterina in Pisa.
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor was a Dominican priest, a leading authority on St. Paul, and a Professor of New Testament at the École Biblique in Jerusalem, a position that he held from 1967 until his death.
Bruno Cadoré OP is a French Catholic priest of the Dominican Order who headed the Order from 2010 to 2019.
Henry Vincent Pope, better known as Fr. Hugh Pope (1869–1946), was an English Dominican biblical scholar, Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome.