Meet Catholic Thinkers
John Hittinger, Ph.D. Chair
Dr. John Hittinger serves as a full professor in the department of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, and he is a member of the Center for Thomistic Studies. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame (1974). He enrolled in the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America where he completed a master's thesis on "Reason and Intellect in Two Texts of Thomas Aquinas," and a doctoral dissertation on “Natural Law in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” He has held faculty positions at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, the College of St Francis in Joliet, Illinois; the United States Air Force Academy, St. Mary’s College of Ave Maria University in Orchard Lake, Michigan, and Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan. From 2006 to 2008 Dr. Hittinger served as the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of St Thomas, Houston. John has published four books, as the editor of the recently published The Vocation of the Catholic Philosopher: from Maritain to Wojtyla, Washington, Catholic University of America Press, 2010, and as co-editor of Liberalism at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Contemporary Liberal Theory and its Critics (Rowman and Littlefield, 1994) and Reassessing the Liberal State: Reading Maritain’s Man and the State, (Catholic University of America Press, 2001). His collection of essays is entitled Liberty, Wisdom and Grace: Thomism and Modern Democratic Theory. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Press, 2002. John has published articles and presented papers on a variety of topics including John Locke, Jacques Maritain, military ethics, liberal education, political philosophy, and the thought of John Paul II. In 2008, Dr. Hittinger founded the Pope John Paul II Forum for the Church in the Modern World (www.JP2Forum.org).
Thomas Cavanaugh, Ph.D. Vice Chair
A member of the University of San Francisco’s Philosophy Department, Professor Cavanaugh's research and teaching interests concern ethics as found in everyday life as well as in the medical and military arenas. An allied area of research and teaching concerns the catholic intellectual tradition. At USF, he teaches medical ethics, ethics, and general philosophy, introducing his students to, amongst others, Socrates, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Kant, Newman, Mill, and Simone Weil. In 2020 he served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. In 2014, he received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for his course entitled “What is Wisdom?” In 2018, Oxford University Press published his book entitled: Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession. In 2006, the Clarendon Press of Oxford University published his book entitled Double-Effect Reasoning: Doing Good and Avoiding Evil (Clarendon Press: Oxford). He received the Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame writing under the renowned Thomist and International Catholic University founder, Ralph McInerny. Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA. awarded him the A.B.
Christopher Kaczor, Ph.D. Secretary
Dr. Christopher Kaczor (rhymes with razor) is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He graduated from the Honors Program of Boston College and earned a Ph.D. four years later from the University of Notre Dame. A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Kaczor did post-doctoral work as a Federal Chancellor Fellow at the University of Cologne and as William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He was appointed a Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life of Vatican City, a fellow of the Word on Fire Institute, and winner of a Templeton Grant. He has written more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters. An award winning author, his fifteen books include Disputes in Bioethics, Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues, Abortion Rights: For and Against, 365 Days to Deeper Faith, The Gospel of Happiness, The Seven Big Myths about Marriage, A Defense of Dignity, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, The Ethics of Abortion, O Rare Ralph McInerny: Stories and Reflections on a Legendary Notre Dame Professor, Life Issues-Medical Choices, Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love, The Edge of Life, and Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Dr. Kaczor’s views have been in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, National Review, NPR, BBC, EWTN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, TEDx, and The Today Show.
Robert Fastiggi, Ph.D.
Robert Fastiggi, Ph.D. is the Bishop Kevin M. Britt Chair of Dogmatic Theology and Christology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, MI where he’s been since 1999. From 1985–1999, he taught at St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX. He holds an A.B. from Dartmouth College, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Theology from Fordham University. He is the co-editor of the 2012 English edition of the Denzinger-Hünermann Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals (Ignatius Press) and the translation reviser of the 2018 edition of Fr. Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Baronius Press). He also served as the Executive Editor of the 2009–2013 supplements to the New Catholic Encyclopedia (Gale Cengage Learning and Catholic University of America Press). His publications include The Natural Theology of Yves de Paris (Scholars Press, 1991); The Mystical Theology of the Catholic Reformation [co-author] (University Press of America [UPA], 2006); Called to Holiness and Communion: Vatican II on the Church [co-editor] (University of Scranton Press, 2009); The Sacrament of Reconciliation: An Anthropological and Scriptural Understanding (Hillenbrand Books, 2017); Catholic Sexual Morality (Wipf and Stock, 2018); and Virgin, Mother, Queen: Encountering Mary in Time and Tradition [co-author] (Ave Maria Press, 2019). Dr. Fastiggi and his wife, Kathy, are parents of three adult children.
Fr. Anthony E. Giampietro, CSB, Ph.D.
A member of the Congregation of Saint Basil, Father Giampietro is the Director of Advancement for the School of Philosophy at Catholic University of America. Previous positions he has held include Director of Development for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Executive Vice President and Academic Dean at Saint Patrick’s Seminary & University in Menlo Park, CA, and Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston, where he was also a member of the University's Board of Directors. Father Giampietro received his Ph.D. from Fordham University in 2003. He grew up in Washington, D.C., where his late father was a professor of sculpture and ceramics at The Catholic University of America.
Fr. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.
Rev. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., teaches Philosophy at Fordham University and is the Editor-in-Chief of International Philosophical Quarterly. He has served as the President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and has produced video lecture-courses Aristotle’s Ethics, Natural Law and Human Nature, and most recently Biblical Wisdom Literature for The Great Courses, and The Spiritual Life and On Veritatis Splendor for the International Catholic University. He is the author of An Introduction to Medieval Philosophy: Basic Concepts (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) and co-edited Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy (Cengage, 2019).
John O’Callaghan, Ph.D.
John O’Callaghan is the director of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame. He is a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas and was President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (2012-2013). He holds a BS in Physics (St. Norbert College, 1984), MS in Mathematics (University of Notre Dame, 1986), and a PhD in Philosophy (University of Notre Dame, 1996). His areas of scholarly interest include Medieval Philosophy, the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and Thomistic Metaphysics and Ethics.
Randall Smith, Ph.D. President
Prof. Randall B. Smith is a full professor in the Department of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He did his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame under the direction of Ralph McInerny. His books include Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (Emmaus Academic, 2016) and Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture at Paris (Cambridge University Press, 2020). From Here to Eternity: Reflections on Death, Immortality, and the Resurrection of the Body is in press. He writes regularly for “Catholic Word Report,” “Public Discourse,” and “The Catholic Thing,” He is at work on an introductory text on moral theology titled Christ and the Moral Life. Most of his publications can be found on his web site: http://t4.stthom.edu/users/smith/portfolio.