January 20, 2026 // Diocese

St. Pius X Pastor Receives Biblical Scholar Award

Kasia Balsbaugh

When Monsignor Michael Heintz was sent to continue his scholarly studies as a younger priest, he remembers then-Bishop John M. D’Arcy telling him, “It’s not for you, it’s for the Church.”

Monsignor Heintz took this to heart. In fact, his deep service to the Church through his studies and priesthood was recognized on Saturday, January 17, with the Letter and Spirit Award, the highest honor given by the St. Paul Center, which is led by lay theologian and author Scott Hahn. The award is given to biblical scholars who “renew the Church through biblical scholarship that is both rigorously academic and ardently pastoral,” according to the online statement about the award.

Monsignor Heintz, now pastor of St. Pius X Parish in Granger, has built a formidable scholarly career, with a focus on patristics studies. He has translated many of early Christian thinker Origen’s works, particularly those on the psalms, and has studied the Ressourcement, a movement in Catholic theology that advocates a “return to the source” for Scripture and early Christian studies. Monsignor Heintz previously served as a teacher and dean at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland and now serves as visiting director of the University of Notre Dame’s Marten Program in Homiletics and Liturgics.

Scott Hahn emphasized the integrated work of Monsignor Heintz, calling him a man “who refuses to separate the academy from the ambo, who reads the Fathers not as museum pieces but as living mentors, as spiritual guides.”

While accepting the award, Monsignor Heintz reiterated his gratitude for his parishioners and students – and also his devotion to his priestly vocation.

“The center of gravity of my life is this altar and that ambo at St. Pius,” Monsignor Heintz said. “That is the center of my life.”

Lisa Marino went to grade school with Monsignor Heintz, worked with him for years at St. Matthew Cathedral, and now works with him at St. Pius X Catholic Church as the parish’s director of evangelization. She said she would never leave a job where she works alongside him, as she learns so much by watching him. She praised the pastor’s humility and priorities.

“When people meet Monsignor, they don’t always realize everything he’s involved in, because he doesn’t care about all that; he’s concerned about the person in front of him,” Marino told Today’s Catholic. “He’s concerned about, how am I going to get that person in front of me to Jesus? How am I going to be Jesus for him or her?”

Marino gave examples of Monsignor Heintz’s care for his parishioners, such as how he expanded Mass and confession times to better serve the parish, or when he mailed one of Marino’s kids a handwritten note congratulating them for winning an award. “This is how he operates,” Marino said.

“The people who know him from important circles might be surprised that so many regular people know him, because he’s regular with us,” Marino said. “He’s literally a pastor with us. He’s totally one of us.”

Monsignor Michael Heintz expresses his gratitude while accepting the St. Paul Center’s Letter and Spirit Award.

Many more parishioners and friends of Monsignor Heintz attended the awards ceremony as well as Scott Hahn’s subsequent reflection on the transformative power of Scripture.

“The word of God accomplishes whatever it conveys,” Hahn said during the event at St. Pius. “It doesn’t just signify; it describes reality, but it also changes it.” As he further explained later in the lecture, “The word of God is not like our words. Our words generally describe reality, but more often than not, they describe our moods, our responses to the experiences we have, whereas God’s word creates reality and redeems it as well.”

Hahn also spoke about particular ways in which this happens and how the Old and New Testaments inform each other – how, for example, the Passover was transformed by Christ in the Eucharist.

The St. Paul Center’s primary mission is to provide opportunity for such transformation through Scripture encounter, to promote “biblical literacy and fluency,” especially for clergy. One practical way it achieves this is through annual conferences for priests. In addition, its publishing house, Emmaus Publishing, offers many informative books, including the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, a project that took Hahn and his co-workers almost 30 years to complete.

Hahn gave a recent statistic that 42 percent of Catholics didn’t know what the first book of the Bible was. It is this sort of ignorance he said that Catholics need to remedy. “This is our history, this is our story,” Hahn said of the Bible.

“We are the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and that road is longer than seven miles – it represents a lifetime,” Hahn said. “And may the same thing happen to us that happened to them. May our hearts burn within us more and more as we hear the word of God, and may our eyes be opened to see Him, to receive Him, to celebrate Him, and to go forth and share Him as missionary disciples, as faithful lay apostles. This is the Gospel according to the Catholic Church. This is the Eucharist.”