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John T. Pawlikowski, OSM - d. Saturday, June 26

06/29/2026 12:51 PM | Anonymous

The CTSA remembers and prays for longstanding member John T. Pawlikowski, OSM who died on Saturday, June 26th.  


Photo from the Catholic Theological Union faculty website page

Eternal rest grant unto John, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May John’s soul and the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

2014 Recipient of the CTSA’s John Courtney Murray Award for Theology At the CTSA's annual convention, the Society honors one of its members for a lifetime of distinguished theological achievement through the conferral of the John Courtney Murray Award, named for one of its early Board members who was a major theologian in the American Catholic Church.  Nominations can be made by CTSA members each fall for the award to be given at the next convention.
 

John T. Pawlikowski, OSM, Biography and Achievements, Catholic Theological Union faculty website page.

Wecker, Menachem, “Fr. John Pawlikowski, ‘giant’ of Christian-Jewish relations who taught Pope Leo XIV, dies at 86,”  Cleveland Jewish News, June 28, 2026.

Contributions to the CTSA Proceedings:

Obituary and Funeral Arrangement are not yet posted on the internet.

Donations in memory of a deceased member are gratefully received. 


Comments

  • 06/29/2026 3:03 PM | Eugene Finnegan
    I remember John as a skinny freshman at St. Philips. He seemed more intelligent than most people. He loved the Cubs and baseball. His love of Jewish-Christian relations and the importance of social ethics in the Christian life was part of who he was. He helped establish CTU and loved his Servites. He was an optimist about everything even life itself. The world is a little less because of his death.
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  • 06/29/2026 7:36 PM | Dawn M Nothwehr, OSF, PhD
    John was a wise and beloved colleague at CTU. I will always remember my first meeting with John when interviewing for a position on the CTU ethics faculty. He clearly had read my resume, but what was more - he knew my prior work and people at every place I had studied and worked. It was as if he was testing not so much my ethics expertise - but whether my value judgments matched his! After I was hired - I could not have had a more gracious and supportive friend and colleague! Rest now in God's peace, dear John!
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  • 06/30/2026 10:27 AM | Edmund Kee-Fook Chia
    I, too, was privileged to have had John as my colleague at CTU. He literally spent his entire career there, and was there from the founding years. He sometimes talks about those tumultuous years of the 1960s when the new faculty was trying to read the signs of the times to establish a totally new way of teaching theology. John shared that at the end of the first year a group of the founding members, including his own Servite confrere Dominic Crossan, announced that they were leaving CTU and religious life. He said they all thought that was the end of CTU. But CTU weathered that storm and went on to grow from strength to strength. Most of us know John as a great scholar. But he is an equally great teacher as well, very systematic in his presentation. Like all of us, there are students who love him, but some not so much. John told us about a student who would send him an email the day after each ethics class to list all the heresies he uttered the previous night! Another student went to the dean to complain that John assigned alternative work to students, such as group work and library research, on days he was out of town to speak at conferences. She said she had come to CTU and paid big money to listen to John and so demanded a refund for days she didn't get to learn from him! Rest in Peace, my good friend John.
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