 Fr. John Edward Louis Sullivan, OP
Although a son of St. Albert’s Province, this meticulous scholar, indefatigable
Thomist and gentle man spent his last years in the West and remains at rest among brethren
in Benicia, California.
John Louis Edward Sullivan was
born in Dubuque, Iowa, on September 15, 1922. Graduating
from Loras Academy High School in 1939, he enrolled at Loras College, but interrupted his
education to serve in the Marines during World War II, where he saw action at Iwo Jima and
Guam and then served in the occupation forces in Japan.
Mustering out of the service
as a First Lieutenant, he resumed his studies at Loras as a seminarian for the Archdiocese
of Dubuque. Friendship with Dominican students
eventually resulted in his entry into the Order at the novitiate in Winona in 1952 and his
profession on August 31 of the following year. Completing
his basic philosophical course at River Forest and theology studies at Dubuque, Edward was
ordained a priest in the latter city on May 23, 1959.
Following ordination, he was sent to Washington for graduate studies leading
to a doctorate in theology.
In 1961, he was
assigned to St. Rose Priory in Dubuque and there and at St. Bernard Seminary taught
Patrology and Historical Theology. He also
served the community as Sub-Prior, Master of Cooperator Brothers, Assistant Dean of
Studies and Secretary of Studies.
In order to
pursue his interests in teaching, research and writing in a more pastoral setting, Fr.
Sullivan accepted assignment to St. Thomas More Newman Center in Tucson to serve as
Co-Director with Fr. Richard Butler, while lecturing in philosophy at the University of
Arizona. Increasing cardiac problems, however,
interrupted his work the following year when he underwent surgery for an arterial bypass.
In 1971 he was assigned to our Province and to the
theological faculty at St. Albert’s College. Close association with Mortimer Adler at the
Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago led to the publication of his research on
nature of religion in the 1976 and 1977 issues of The Great Ideas Today.
In order to aid his sisters in caring for his aging
parents in Anaheim, Fr. Sullivan transferred in 1975 to the faculty of St. John’s
College Seminary in Camarillo, where he demonstrated his outstanding charism as a teacher
to a half-decade of young seminarians of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. It was here that he completed and published his
book, Ideas on Religion: A Prologomenon to the Philosophy of Religion, in 1979.
On March 26, 1981, having just completed an address
on the importance of philosophy to seminarians before an accreditation committee at St.
John’s, Fr. Sullivan suffered a fatal heart attack and died a short time later at
Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo. News of
his sudden passing shocked the clergy of Los Angeles as well as his Dominican brethren. Following funeral services at his family’s
parish church of St. Justin the Martyr in Anaheim, which was attended by members of the
hierarchy, many diocesan priests, religious and seminarians, he was buried from the chapel
at St. Albert’s in Oakland on March 31, 1981 and rests in Benicia.
-- Albert Buckley, 0.P. |
