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David O’Brien, Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies in the College’s history department, has been selected to receive the University of Dayton 2005 Marianist Award. The award is presented annually to “a Roman Catholic who has made an outstanding contribution to scholarship and intellectual life,” according to University of Dayton officials.
A historian of American Catholicism, O’Brien has been a faculty member at Holy Cross since 1969. A graduate of Notre Dame, he earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Rochester in New York. Past president of the American Catholic Historical Association, O’Brien is the recipient of the Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for distinguished service to Catholic higher education from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. He was the founding director of the College’s Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at Holy Cross.
“We asked David O’Brien to accept the award because of his achievements as a historian of U.S. Catholicism, especially of U.S. Catholic higher education,” says Una Cadegan, associate professor of history at the University of Dayton and chair of the forum that nominated O’Brien. “I don’t know of anyone who has been more faithful in insisting that American Catholics, especially lay people, keep thinking about how to keep the church alive and lively in the post-Vatican-II era.”
O’Brien is the author of several books, including The Renewal of American Catholicism; Public Catholicism: The American Church and Public Life, 1789-1989; Isaac Hecker an American Catholic; and From the Heart of the American Church: Catholic Higher Education and American Culture.
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