TRANSCRIPT: Craig Morrison CUA Center for Carmelite Studies Chair Interview [edited]

Interviewer [00:00:00] Today we’ll be speaking with Father Craig Morrison O.Carm, who was just recently named the Chair of the Center for Carmelite Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:00:12] It’s good to be with you.

Interviewer [00:00:13] It’s great to get word out a little bit on all of the things that you’ve done and now your new position over at CUA. So maybe we start with a little bit about you and your previous posts and how you’ve served and ended up here.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:00:25] I studied here in Washington for my theology. And then I did a master’s degree in Semitics at Catholic University. Then Quinn Connors was at that point the Provincial and suggested I go to Rome together with Roland Murphy, to acquire a licentiate in Scripture from the Biblical Institute in Rome. When I got to Rome, within a few weeks of my being there, since I had already a master’s degree in Semitic languages with a focus on Hebrew and Aramaic, they asked me if I would teach there.

So, in 1991, I began teaching Hebrew at the Biblical Institute, and in 1994 I began teaching Aramaic. At that point, I defended my dissertation, and I have been teaching in Rome since. So, I spent 34 years teaching at the Biblical Institute. Was a great experience.

Last summer, CUA asked if I was interested in coming to the university. They were going to recruit me to the school, and they were also looking at having me teach Bible and being the Carmelite Chair. And so it was a year of intense discernment and preparation to come to CUA. I’m very happy I made the decision to come here.

Interviewer [00:01:56] Nice. Very nice. So, this has been quite the transition for you back from Rome, back over to the States, and in addition to everything else.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:02:04] I’m still in transition. In fact, everything is still in Rome. I have to go back to Rome to actually move things. My library is still in Rome.

Interviewer [00:02:13] And we should mention that you are currently sitting in Whitefriars Hall in the Carmelitana Collection.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:02:20] I’m in the Carmelite Library here, which is, as Joachim Schmedt [O.Carm.] maintained, this library is one of the best libraries, certainly in the United States, but one of the best libraries in the world, especially for electronic resources.

Interviewer [00:02:33] And I know we’ll be talking to Patricia, but this is a resource that is available. They would go through Patricia [to access the] Carmelitana Collection, particularly at CUA I assume is heavily resourced.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:02:44] Yes you can, but you can [also] access the Carmelite library online. The entire catalog is online. So, you can find books that way.

Interviewer [00:02:54] Excellent. So on to the more specifics about the Carmelite Chair. I guess give us a little history of how it came to be and its mission. Kind of that piece of it, if you can.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:03:08] Yes. I wrote a newsletter. We have a newsletter that comes out each month that would be good to make sure as many people as possible are receiving because we’re sending it out monthly. And for the first newsletter that I wrote, I reviewed the formation of this Carmelite Chair. Really the vision of it came from the recently deceased Father Jack Welch [O.Carm.]. The Washington Theological Union was closing. The Province – Our province had invested a great deal of money in the school. We were going to get a certain amount of money back as the building was sold. And Jack really hoped that this money would be used to invest in a center for Carmelite Studies at CUA.

You know, Catholic University is the university for the United States Council of Catholic Bishops. So, it is a central place. Its campus also has the National shrine of the Immaculate Conception. So it’s a major Catholic center. It’s also an undergraduate school in many ways. They have graduate schools as well, in law, nursing education and also theology. But it’s a really important center for Catholic Studies. So, you know, it was really wonderful that we were at the Washington Theological Union for such a long time, but there we were really with our own family of other religious. Here at Catholic University, it’s a much bigger playing field and other faculties in the humanities, such as history and philosophy. I can work with them as well to bring our Carmelite themes out in these other areas, especially history, and my interest currently is to develop more focus on the saints of the 20th century, Edith Stein and Titus Brandsma.

So to kind of recap, it was, you know, Jack’s vision. But then Father Bill Harry [O.Carm.] was at that time Provincial. He was very much in agreement with this notion. And so he was the one, together with his counsel, who kind of formulated the agreement. The Province then donated a large sum of money to form a chair, which is what’s required by a university to form an academic chair. And then Father Steve Payne [OCD] was the first person to hold the chair. And I really credit him because he took what was just kind of a vision and a hope and turned it into a practical reality. So today the center has a certificate program. We offer one year study program which includes Carmelite history from the very beginning, over an entire year. Simon Nolan [O.Carm.] teaches part of it. Steve Payne teaches another part.

Steve Payne also focuses on the Carmelite saints, such as this year, this semester, he’s teaching a class on [it]. I’m really a Bible scholar. I have spoken, as you know, Ken, on different issues with Carmelites, particularly the saints of the 20th century. That does interest me personally very much. Next semester, I’ll be teaching a course on Elijah in the Carmelite tradition. So we will begin with the Bible, look at how Elijah is understood in the New Testament and then the early Christian writers, and then finally how Elijah appears in the Institute of the First Monks, which will be one of the earliest documents that mentions Elijah. And then very briefly at the end of the course, how he has been this biblical prophet.

Interviewer [00:07:08] I know you mentioned the certificate program and the more formal academic aspect of [the Center], but I know the, the [Center] also offers lots of webinars and lectures online to a more general audience. Tell us a little bit about those.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:07:27] Yes. We have to remember that we’re in the context of Catholic University so there’s lots of stuff available, like the land of Carmel, things like that to [which] Jack Welch so much dedicated himself to. Next week we have the annual Carmelite lecture, a professor from Yale will be coming to speak on Teresa of  Avila’s ecstatic experiences at the title of his talk is Saint Teresa’s Troublesome Ecstasies. He’s going to be talking about, according to the abstract, the issues around women having visions in the 15th century 16th century Spain, and how that could be risky for women who were having visions, as we see what happened to Joan of Arc, for example, for her visions.

So it’s really wonderful to get someone of this quality to our school and he’s a historian so it would be a really wonderful lecture. We also do other, as you mentioned, pastoral outreach. So this very day, this evening we’re starting an icon writing, we call it icon painting but in the East it’s referred to as icon writing, workshop. Peter [Pearson] is arriving shortly here at Whitefriars Hall and we will be hosting this through till Sunday.

So on the feast of Therese of Lisieux, it’s been a busy month… on the feast of Therese of Lisieux we had a prayer service in the student center. This was a wonderful experience because it was in the student center where students are coming in for lunch. They’re chatting. They’re heading to Starbucks. They’re going to have a beer. There’s a very busy place. And we did it at 12 noon. And we really stopped the students who were coming through the door just to get a sandwich as we were offering prayers, remembering and singing for the feast day of Therese of Lisieux. We also gave out 300 roses. That’s how many people were stopping by. So we were able to give Roses and the holy card. We had about ten Carmelites there, which gave people an individual experience of both ourselves and Therese of Lisieux. And again, as you said, very pastoral reaching out to undergraduate students, students between the ages of 18 and 22, and telling Theresa’s story to them.

So, yeah, we’ve got a lot going on just in this very month at the center.

Interviewer [00:10:17] And as you mention that, it reminds me that we’ve just had Therese on October 1st, we have Theresa of Avila coming up on the 15^th, and you mentioned Father Steven Payne, who is Discalced, and you, Father Craig, are O.Carm., ancient observance. So this has been a good cooperation between O.Carm. and Discalced.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:10:41] Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we share this rich tradition. There is nothing to do but talk to each other and share our own insights and how we approach the tradition. And Steve Payne has been a wonderful leader. To make the Center go, for this certificate program, we need scholars who are working in these fields. So we need Carmelites who work in the area of church history, spirituality, theology, systematics, but with a special eye on Carmelite themes.

The center also does scholarships. So we have a doctoral student, and she’s also going to help us at the center. Part of the newsletter will be her work on articles that are appearing in academic journals that deal with Carmelite themes. These articles would be unavailable to most people. So in this issue, she’s got two articles. In the next November issue, she’ll have the a short abstract summary of this recent volume from Oxford on John of the cross. December, she’s going to do a series of articles. Or again, she’s looking up these articles on the dialogs of the Carmelites, the opera. The Catholic University will be performing that opera April 22nd to 26th, 2026. And so in the December newsletter, there will be a series of articles. There’s a lot written on this, this opera. And again, it appears in in very rarefied journals, on opera, on music, on art. And our Carmelites, the people who would be interested, don’t even know these journals exist, let alone these articles. So this just opens it up.

I should also mention that the center has just published with CUA Paul Chandler’s book on Titus Brandsma. I’ll be mentioning that in one of the newsletters as well. I’ve read the book. It is absolutely excellent. It’s not long, and it really is a must read for Carmelites today, since he is publishing the testimony of the nurse who killed Titus. That testimony is now public, and Carmelites can read what testimony she gave in the process of Titus’ canonization. It is extremely moving.

Interviewer [00:13:14] Excellent, excellent. I guess the next biggest question for you stepping into this role is where do you see [the] CUA [Center for Carmelite Studies] going, [moving] forward? As far as are there any things you would like to see it step into that it’s not into yet or grow in particular ways.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:13:32] Yes. That’s right. I’m very new at this and very new at CUA. I can just say, as I mentioned earlier, to just expand on the fact that I would like to see the Carmelite Center, at least for the next few years, take a very close look at Titus Brandsma and Edith Stein. I have a vision, a hope, that, with some funding, we can do a major international conference on these two saints and on… I’m still not sure of the title, so I’m just running up a few trial balloons… But something on religious hatred during Second World War. Something on how it could have happened that a Christian continent like Europe could have murdered 6 million Jews. What was going on? There’s much more [that] needs to be done in this area. And there is a lot coming out. And I’m also hoping to… I’ve got a contact at the Holocaust Museum here in Washington. They do a great deal of education. And this, uh, Rebecca Schade has written her dissertation on the Salvation Army in Germany, under Nazi rule. That’s her book. And Susan Brown as well is at the Holocaust Museum. She also does outreach and education. She’s a good friend. Very profound Catholic who works on promoting among Catholics a greater knowledge of the Holocaust.

You know, there are other communities, Maximillian Colby, other communities who have saints of the Holocaust but the Carmelites have two, and the two saints are very different. Titus is a political prisoner. So as horrific as his murder is, what happens to him is somewhat typical of empires who wish to wipe out enemy voices. So he’s very important as a political prisoner who spoke out and was executed because he spoke against Nazism.

Stein is the other kind. She’s not a political prisoner. She’s taken just because she’s a Jew. And so we really have, as the Carmelites, I think, an opportunity, but also a mission, especially right now in our world today, a particular mission to look at these warriors, to look at the hatred, and how this very shocking event could have taken place. So that’s kind of what I want to do over the next few years. God, give me strength because I would really like to do it. And again, going back to what I said earlier, it’s a very interdisciplinary area, and I’ve already spoken with the history department at CUA. They have a professor who works on Second World War so he would be very important to some background. We might get bring in a journalist and talk about journalism and the struggle with journalism today, when they’re dealing with governments and how to deal with governments. You see, these two saints, you know, are Carmelite, but they touch broad areas. It’s something I think the Carmelites have to offer both to the Academy and to our world and our society. So I’m just arrived here, but that’s part of my hope to be able to create a major international conference where we bring in different scholars from different disciplines. And then they, these scholars from different disciplines, will learn about our two saints and bring that back into their disciplines. And of course, my hope would also be to publish the proceedings of the conference. So there you have it. Now that I’ve said it publicly, I know I’ve really got to get knuckled down.

Interviewer [00:17:46] And you’ve now committed yourself. Right.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:17:50] CUA is very supportive. All of the things I’ve mentioned to you, I’ve brought to the attention of the leadership at Catholic U and they’re very excited that I would take the initiative because I’ve organized other international conferences. They are a massive amount of work, but I’m very interested in doing this to promote these two saints. And so what I’m doing right now is I am moving on it. In a sense. I’m forming a committee of people who can assist with who to invite. Because again, again, across the disciplines.

Interviewer [00:18:23] Excellent. Well, thank you for your time. We appreciate it.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:18:25] Thank you, thank you, thank you both to Nancy as Doug as well suggested. It’s a great idea.

Interviewer [00:18:29] Yes.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:18:29] Yeah I really appreciate it okay.

Interviewer [00:18:31] All right. Best of luck with the program.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:18:33] Yes. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for all your work – I appreciate it.

Interviewer [00:18:36] Thank you. Bye bye.

Fr. Craig Morrison, O.Carm. [00:18:38] Bye bye.