The Very Reverend Timothy Radcliffe | |
---|---|
Master Emeritus of the Order of Preachers | |
Church | Roman Catholic Church |
In office | 1992–2001 |
Predecessor | Damian Byrne |
Successor | Carlos Azpiroz Costa |
Personal details | |
Born | Timothy Peter Joseph Radcliffe 22 August 1945 [1] London, England |
Nationality | British |
Denomination | Catholic |
Residence | Blackfriars, Oxford |
Occupation | Priest, academic, theologian |
Timothy Peter Joseph Radcliffe, OP (born 22 August 1945) is an English 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 order's 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. [3]
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. [4]
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. [5] In 1992, he was elected master of the Dominican Order, holding that office until 2001. [4] During his tenure as master, Radcliffe served as ex-officio grand chancellor of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. [6]
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 previously led the Las Casas Institute, dealing which leads with issues of ethics, governance and social justice at Blackfriars, Oxford. [7] He now preaches and carries out public speaking internationally.
In 2015, Radcliffe was named a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. [8] [9] [lower-alpha 1]
Although not a topic Radcliffe has often written on in his numerous publications, he has publicly defended the teaching of the Catholic Church on same-sex marriage: [11]
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.
In January 2023, Pope Francis named Radcliffe to lead a three-day preparatory retreat for participants in the synod on synodality in October 2023. [12]
In 2003, Oxford awarded Radcliffe an honorary Doctor of Divinity. [13] The Chancellor, the Right Honorable Christopher Patten, ended the award citation with the following words: [14]
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.
Radcliffe received the 2007 Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing for his book What Is the Point of Being A Christian? [15]
Radcliffe is also patron of Positive Faith, the main ministry of Catholic AIDS Prevention and Support, [16] sits on the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament, [17] and is a patron of Embrace the Middle East. [18]
In 2024, Liverpool Hope University, awarded an Honorary Doctorate to Radcliffe. [19]
The Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominican Order, is a Catholic mendicant order of pontifical right that was founded in France by a Castilian priest named Dominic de Guzmán. 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 display 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.
Blackfriars Priory is a Dominican religious community in Oxford, England. Its primary work is the administration of two educational institutions: Blackfriars Studium, a centre of theological studies in the Roman Catholic tradition; and Blackfriars Hall, a constituent permanent private hall of the University of Oxford. The current prior of Blackfriars is Nicholas Crowe. 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.
Herbert John Ignatius McCabe was a Dominican priest, theologian and philosopher.
Vincent McNabb, O.P. was an Irish Catholic scholar and Dominican priest based in London, active in evangelisation and apologetics.
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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."
John Christopher "Aidan" Nichols is an English academic and Catholic priest.
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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.
Richard Damian Finn, O.P. is presently Director of the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, at Blackfriars, Oxford, and a member of the Theology Faculty and the Classics Faculty at the University of Oxford. He has previously served as Regent of Blackfriars, as well as Novice Master for the English Province of the Order of Preachers.
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.
The Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America is a satellite session of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences. Prior to September 2017, it was a satellite session of the central session at the Lateran University in Rome. The institute is devoted to the study of the truth about the human person in all of its dimensions: theological, philosophical, anthropological, and cosmological-scientific. The institute views that it centers its study of the person in the community that is the original cell of human society: marriage and family.
The Church of the Friars Preachers of Blessed Virgin and Saint Dominic at Perth, commonly called "Blackfriars", was a mendicant friary of the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church founded in the 13th century at Perth, Scotland. The Dominicans were said by Walter Bower to have been brought to Scotland in 1230 by King Alexander II of Scotland, while John Spottiswood held that they were brought to Scotland by William de Malveisin, Bishop of St Andrews. Later tradition held that the Perth Dominican friary was founded by King Alexander II.
Blackfriars Hall is a permanent private hall of the University of Oxford. Unlike a college, a Hall is owned and governed by an outside institution and not by its fellows. Although historically a centre for the study of theology and philosophy informed by the intellectual tradition of St Thomas Aquinas, it now admits men and women of any faith to a wide range of postgraduate degree programmes in the humanities and social sciences. The current Regent of Blackfriars is Fr. John O'Connor, O.P..
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor was an Irish 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.
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.
Bede Jarrett OP was an English Dominican friar and Catholic priest who was also a noted historian and author. Known for works including Mediæval Socialism and The Emperor Charles IV, Jarrett also founded Blackfriars Priory at the University of Oxford in 1921, formally reinstating the Dominican Order at that university for the first time since the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII.
Helen Mary Josephine Alford is an economist and dean of social sciences at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, Italy. April 1, 2023, was appointed president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.