Our Speakers

Today, we meet Dr. Robert Marko.  The Aquinas College website provides a pretty extensive biography of Dr. Marko, so I won't waste any of your time with my own words.

Background

Dr. Robert Marko, Professor and Chair of the Department of Theology, has been at Aquinas College since 1989 teaching primarily in the areas of Catholicism, moral theology, social ethics and ecclesiology. Trained as a systematic theologian beginning at age six by the Dominican Sisters of St. Mary's of the Springs, Ohio, he has memorized all the answers of the systematic theology of the Council of Trent articulated in the Baltimore Catechism. Dr. Marko hails from the Western Pennsylvania steel town of Braddock. He, his wife Faith and their children, Jonathan, Joshua and Hannah are all die hard Pittsburgh Steelers' fans.

Research Interests

Professor Marko, somewhat eclectic in interests yet always grounded in the Catholic Tradition, has primarily studied history and theology while having been a National Science Foundation Fellow in urban studies, a Center for Learning Writing Fellow in moral education, a Scaife-Mellon Fellow in international studies and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in justified war and nonviolence.  During the fall of 2008 he served as a Fulbright Scholar in religious studies in Ukraine.  Here Dr. Marko researched the relationship of religion, ethics and society while he taught Catholic Social Teaching: Eastern Christian Perspective for the Licentiate of Sacred Theology degree at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. A 2004 Metropolitan Sheptytsky summer sessional lecturer at St. Paul's University in Ottawa in Eastern Christian Ethics, Professor Marko has been a passionate advocate for a deeper understanding of the riches of the Christian East by those in the West. Moreover, his study and experience of the prayer tradition of Eastern Christianity has affirmed his plea to students to not splinter spirituality, doctrine, liturgy and ethics.

Professional Work

Dr. Marko has published articles and book reviews in various scholarly and popular journals including The Josephinum Journal of Theology, Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society, Bohoslovia (The Journal of the Ukrainian Theological Academic Society) and Spirituality Today. A regular commentator on Catholicism and Eastern Christianity in the media,. Dr. Marko has presented at conferences of the College Theology Society, Dominican Colloquium on Higher Education, American Academy of Religion, National Association of Pastoral Musicians, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Ukrainian Theological Scientific Society. Professor Marko's greatest work, however, has been with the countless students he has been privileged to teach and advise.