The Canton Repository recently profiled Walsh's Rev. Patrick Manning, Ph.D., and asked him to reflect on his 40th Anniversary of the Priesthood. You can access the article in its entirety here:
Repository, August 26: Walsh U's Father Patrick Reflects on Priesthood.
Fr. Manning also delivered the homily during the August 29, Opening Day Mass, where he addressed Walsh students, faculty and staff and reminded them to invite the Holy Spirit into their daily lives.
"As we begin our new school year, we celebrate with the Mass, the Holy Spirit. What we often forget is that when we are tempted to stray from what is right, from what we know that we ought to do, we forget to invite God's Holy Spirit to help us," said Fr. Manning. "God is everywhere and He is with us. All we need to do is invoke that Spirit and indeed that Spirit will help us."
Fr. Manning joined the Walsh community full-time in 2009 and serves as an Associate Professor of Theology. Most recently, he completed a sabbatical at St. Patrick Seminary, Maynooth University, in County Kildare, Ireland (about twelve miles from Dublin). As Scholar in Residence, he taught a graduate class in theology, and completed research on the relationship between the mid-Victorian issues of a Roman Catholic periodical, "The Dublin Review," and Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman. He then went on to teach the May 2018 semester of Walsh's Rome Experience with Dr. Bill Davis in Italy before returning to Walsh's campus this summer.
Fr. Manning earned his B.A. from Athenaeum of Ohio; S.T.B. from Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Urbe; his M.A. from Pontifical Georgian University; a M.Ed from Boston College; and his Ph.D. from Duquesne University
Born the second of 10 children in Youngstown, Ohio, to wonderful Irish-Catholic parents, Fr. Manning attended Catholic grad and high schools, something for which he will always be grateful. In 1970, he entered the seminary to see if he would like it, and it seems so, as he was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, in July, 1978. God has blessed him with the opportunities to be a parochial vicar, high school teacher and administrator, campus minister, pastor, seminary professor and vice-rector, and a professor in a number of settings at the university level. This has brought him to his present position at Walsh University.
In the past, Fr. Manning has taught a variety of courses on the Old and New Testaments, church history, the Gospel of John, Scripture and the Catholic Tradition, Homiltetics, Mariology and, in the graduate school a course on The Development of Doctrine. The aim of his teaching is to engage the students' creative imaginations by challenging them to see that their experience life experience so far has been a "religious" experience. The aim is to assist students, through their experience reading, studying and class discussion, and by reflecting on their life experiences, to see the necessary marriage (and thus compatibility) of faith and reason. More, students are then challenged to see their own personal "stories" in the context of the "big" story", i.e., God's love for them in Jesus, and their call to be with their Creator, face to face, in life eternal.
Fr. Manning's areas of concentration are historical theology and systematic theology. He has a special interest in the confluence of theological anthropology and existential phenomenology, as the marriage of faith and reason, held so dear in our Roman Catholic Tradition, has always been an attraction for him. He has done extensive work in the past in studying the Anabaptist tradition in general and the Old Order Amish in particular, and his area of expertise in his doctoral work (and continued interest), has been the person and work of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman.
Besides offering sacramental assistance at Walsh and in various parishes and institutions in Youngstown and other dioceses, Fr. Manning has been involved in vocations works, countless diocesan and university committees, and fundraising for Catholic Charities. He has also led spiritual pilgrimages, participated in panel discussions, radio and press interviews, Lenten and Advent formation series, and sacramental preparation, and presently teaches at St. Mary Seminary and graduate School of Theology in Cleveland where Youngstown and Cleveland seminarians prepare for the priesthood.