October 25, 2022 // National

New York Priest and Longtime Notre Dame Professor, Msgr. John Meier, Dies

Catholic News Service

John P. Meier, a theologian and biblical commentator who wrote the multi-volume “A Marginal Jew,” died Oct. 18, 2022. He was 80 years old. (CNS photo/Barbara Johnston, courtesy University of Notre Dame)

YONKERS, N.Y. (CNS) — A funeral Mass was celebrated on Oct. 22 at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers for Msgr. John P. Meier, a Scripture scholar, professor, and indefatigable writer whose book “A Marginal Jew” hit bestseller lists in the 1990s. Msgr. Meier died on Oct. 18 at the age of 80. He was born in New York City in 1942 and received his undergraduate theological training at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, followed by graduate studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1967. His first assignment was as an associate pastor. By 1972, he had returned to St. Joseph’s Seminary, this time as a professor and soon afterward he returned to Rome to obtain a Doctorate in Sacred Scripture in 1976 from the Pontifical Biblical Institute. He led the seminary’s Scripture Studies Department before taking on a professorship at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. in 1984. He taught there for 14 years before moving on to the University of Notre Dame in 1998. Msgr. Meier retired in 2018 after 20 years in Notre Dame’s Theology Department, but he stayed on campus to take on occasional teaching assignments and to continue his research and writing. Msgr. Meier wrote four additional “A Marginal Jew” books and was at work on a fifth when he died. It is not known whether someone else will complete the work or whether it will remain unfinished.