Richard mcbrien essays

McBrien's Catholicism sold over 150,000 copies in its original two-volume, 1980 edition. Together with its revised, one-volume edition (1994), Catholicism was a widely used reference text and found in parish libraries throughout the United States.

His father was a police officer, his mother a nurse. McBrien earned his bachelor's degree at St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, Connecticut, in 1956, and a master's at St. John Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts, in 1962. He was ordained as a Catholic priest for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford in 1962.

McBrien served as Chair of the Department of Theology of the University of Notre Dame from 1980 to 1991. Prior to going to Notre Dame, McBrien taught at Boston College, where he was director of the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

Richard Peter McBrien (August 19, 1936 – January 25, 2015) was a Catholic priest and the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, United States. He authored twenty-five books, including the very popular Catholicism, a reference text on the Church after the Second Vatican Council.