If Msgr. John Tracy Ellis was “the dean of American Catholic historians,” as he was called in his day, Martin E. Marty was for decades “the dean of American religious historians”—not least, historians of U.S. Catholicism. The story of Catholicism was interwoven in many of Marty’s historical works, including his major survey, Pilgrims in their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America, and the three-volume interpretive history Modern American Religion. Dozens of Catholics were among his 115 doctoral students, including the first two directors of the Cushwa Center and luminaries such as Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., the longtime president of Fordham University. Author of An Invitation to American Catholic History, Marty, a devout Lutheran all his life, was the first non-Catholic elected as president of the American Catholic Historical Association.
When a woefully naive 1978 graduate of Notre Dame approached Marty that fall to ask him to mentor him at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, the great man asked genially what this 20-year-old might be interested in studying. In response, the young man mumbled, “Well, I am interested in modern Catholicism, I guess, and particularly the Second Vatican Council. Would you know much about that?” Marty, an official Protestant observer at the Council, did not answer this silly, uninformed question. He simply said. “Mr. Appleby, here are a few titles you might read. Let’s talk more when you’ve done so.”
That was the first of roughly 200 meetings with Marty over the next 20 years, most running a crisp 10 minutes (9 minutes, 59 seconds, to be Marty-esque). Why did he agree even to see me again after that first awkward encounter? I’ve learned—from Marty, no doubt—to accept certain historical events as beyond simple explanation. “The mysterious workings of grace” is how I’ve come to understand this one.
Scott Appleby is the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. He previously directed the Cushwa Center (1994–2002) and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (2000–2014). From 2014 to 2024, he served as the inaugural Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School.
This tribute appears in the spring 2025 issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter.