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Von Hügel Institute

for Critical Catholic Inquiry
 

Biography

Stephen Chase Pepper, CSC, is a Roman Catholic priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, USA, Fr Chase earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Catholic Studies from Seton Hall University in 2007 and his Master of Divinity degree from the University of Notre Dame in 2014. Ordained to the priesthood in 2015, he ministered for several years in the departments of Campus Ministry, Theology, and Residence Life at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, before beginning his PhD in theology and religious studies as a Gates Cambridge Scholar at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. During his doctoral studies in Cambridge, he lived and served as the assistant priest chaplain at Fisher House, the Catholic chaplaincy to the university, and helped to see that community through the COVID-19 pandemic. He graduated in July 2023, and the newly minted Dr Pepper is now happy to be working as a postdoctoral research associate of the Von Hügel Institute. His great dream in life is to be the first Catholic priest to celebrate Mass in space!

Research

Fr Chase’s research sits at the intersection of Dante studies and Christian theology. He is interested broadly in questions about how Dante can help human beings think and speak meaningfully together about God, revelation, and creation. More specifically, he examines the participatory structures of Dante’s thought and language – the ways, that is, in which Dante treats the relationship of created beings to uncreated being, and the implications that relationship has for how we understand the ways in which created beings may share in the existence, action, and experience of one another. His doctoral research, in particular, focused on how Dante imagines human beings as participating in divine beatitude by way of how they intercede with and for each other (i.e., how they pray for each other’s good). He believes that research conducted in this vein has the potential not only to deepen the ways that theologians and Dante scholars alike understand Dante’s work, building bridges between academic disciplines and methodologies, but also to envision fresh modalities of human community and cooperation within and beyond the academy.

Publications

Key publications: 

Keep checking back here for publication progress! Initial publications and public writing include:

“Cosmic Liturgy in C.S. Lewis’ ‘The Magician’s Nephew’,” Assembly (Sept. 2010): 77-80.

“Uniting the Eyes: From Fixation toward Fascination in the Easter Tuesday Cantos,” in Dante, Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person, edited by Leonard DeLorenzo and Vittorio Montemaggi, 120-37 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017).

“The Consecrated Life in the Light of Dante’s Sun: On the Occasion of Pope Francis’s ‘Candor Lucis Aeternae’,” Review for Religious, https://www.reviewforreligious.com/essays/consecrated-life-dantes-sun/ (6 May 2021).

Review of Dante the Theologian, by Denys Turner, The Heythrop Journal (forthcoming).

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Contact Details

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A unique institute of advanced studies inspired by Catholic thought and culture, focussed on contemporary global realities, and dedicated to encounter, dialogue, and transformation