Philip Joseph Murnion

Background

Philip Murnion was born on March 1, 1938, in Bronx, New York.

Education

Philip Murnion earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1959 and a Master of Arts in 1963 at Saint Joseph's Seminary and College. He then was educated at Columbia University, where he received a Doctor of Philosophy in 1971.

Career

Philip Murnion was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of New York in 1963. In 1964-1966 he was a Monsignor Farrell High School teacher and pastor in Staten Island, becoming an associate pastor at Saint Gregory the Great Roman Catholic Church in New York City from 1968 to 1974. Murnion started teaching at the university level in 1971 as an adjunct professor at Saint Joseph's, followed by positions at the University of Notre Dame in 1973 and Saint Peter's College. Beginning in 1981, he also taught at Fordham University, and he was also a professor at Boston College for a time.

Murnion had a deep interest in sociology that led him to search for ways of improving relationships between the organized church and its laity, especially as more and more laypeople began to fulfill ministerial duties in the Catholic Church because of a shortage of priests. His work led him to found the National Pastoral Life Center in 1983 and to establish, with Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in 1996, the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, which sought to reconcile differences between liberal and conservative factions in the church. During his career, Murnion was also director of the National Parish Project from 1978 to 1982 and chaired the Senate of Priests.

Philip Murnion was the co-author of two significant sociological studies: New Parish Ministers: Laity and Religion on Parish Staffs and Parishes and Parish Ministers: A Study of Parish Lay Ministry. He also served as editor-in-chief of the National Pastoral Life Center's quarterly Church magazine.

Achievements

• Philip Murnion was well known as a writer, educator, and clergyman. He was a founder of the National Pastoral Life Center in 1983 and a co-founder of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative in 1996. As a writer, his work included two significant sociological studies, New Parish Ministers: Laity and Religion on Parish Staffs and Parishes and Parish Ministers: A Study of Parish Lay Ministry.

Works

More photos

• book

  • New Parish Ministers 1992
  • Parishes and Parish Ministers 1999
  • The Catholic priest and the changing structure of pastoral ministry 1978
  • The Crisis of the Church in the Inner City 1988

Connections

colleague:

Joseph Louis Bernardin

Joseph Bernardin was an American Cardinal of the Catholic Church.