Catherine McCarthy Fellowship

The application deadline for the 2007-08CE McCarthy Fellowship is closed.

Please check back next year, when the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations at Merrimack College, North Andover, Massachusetts, will again invite applications for the Catherine McCarthy Memorial Fellowship in the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations.

The McCarthy Fellowship, named in honor of the late Catherine (Sheehan) McCarthy and in recognition of the Catherine McCarthy Memorial Trust Fund’s generosity to Merrimack College, seeks to generate new knowledge, insight and scholarship into the field of Jewish-Christian Relations. Click the link to the right for information on submitting an application.

Professor Jennifer A. Glancy, Chair of the Religious Studies Department at Le Moyne College, was selected as the Catherine McCarthy Memorial Scholar in the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations for 2006-07CE. Her research proposal, "American Jerusalem: The (Un)Holy Land in Contemporary Christian Discourse," is a study of evolving American Christian attitudes toward the Holy Land. Jerusalem, which haunts Christian imaginations, inspires Christian worship, and fuels Christian politics, is one of the most controversial subjects in American churches today.  The book will trace the twentieth-century evolution of Catholic, mainstream Protestant, and evangelical Holy Land theologies and devotional practices as well as political implications of those religious commitments. Establishment of the modern state of Israel altered Christian perceptions of the Holy Land. Because the state of Israel is central to the identity of many contemporary Jews, her research addresses some of the most pressing and sensitive topics in present-day Jewish-Christian relations.

Prof. Glancy is the author of "Slavery in Early Christianity" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002; paperback edition Fortress Press 2006), a History Book Club selection. She was the 2004 Catholic Biblical Association Visiting Professor at L’Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem. During her time in Jerusalem she conceived her current book project, "American Jerusalem: The (Un)Holy Land in Contemporary Christian Discourse," for which she has previously received a 2005 Summer Stipend from the Louisville Institute. Glancy holds the Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia University. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biblical Literature, Religion Compass, and Biblical Interpretation and as co-chair of the Bible and Cultural Studies section of the Society of Biblical Literature. She completed a three-year term on the National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education. At Le Moyne she has been honored as the Joseph C. Georg Professor.

Catherine (Sheehan) McCarthy, a native of Ireland came to Lawrence in the mid-1880s, and married Jeremiah McCarthy. With faith and a vibrant work ethic, she went from “table girl” to prosper in business and investment. In 1952, five years after her death, McCarthy’s children, Mary Josephine, Helen and John, established The Catherine McCarthy Memorial Trust Fund for the advancement of religion, the promotion of knowledge and science, the relief of distress and the general improvement of the spiritual and material condition of humanity, especially in and surrounding Massachusetts. In recognition of the Trust’s generosity to Merrimack College, the new fellowship is named in McCarthy’s honor.

"All institutions of higher learning need to generate new knowledge and insight to the extent they have the resources," said Padraic O’Hare, the director of Merrimack’s Center for Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, who sees the McCarthy Scholar fellowship as a rich supplement to the Center’s academic and community education.

Attorney Thomas Caffrey of Lawrence, a trustee of the Trust Fund, sums up the spirit of Catherine McCarthy and her children as well as the philanthropic impulse that has benefited so many, saying, “The inner drive of an immigrant farm girl from the west of Ireland has touched and will continue to touch the lives of thousands of deserving beneficiaries because she raised good and generous children, instilling in them a deep sense of charity toward others.”