Marvin R. O'Connell

Marvin R. O’Connell was a premier Catholic historian whose life as a priest, scholar, author and teacher made him a formidable force in the lives of countless individuals. He studied under Church historian Phillip Hughes in the mid-1950s, which led to a career as both historian and professor first at the University of Saint Thomas in St. Paul and then at the University of Notre Dame. From 1974 to 1980 O’Connell chaired the history department at the University of Notre Dame and was responsible for the flourishing of this faculty, which remains strong to this day. His histories include The Oxford Conspirators (1969), The Counter Reformation: 1559–1610 (1974), John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (1988), Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis (1994), Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart (1997), and Sorin (2001).