Faculty

Jack Downey is the John Henry Newman Chair in Roman Catholic Studies. He teaches courses on contemporary justice movements, liberation theologies, North American religious history, Christianity, Buddhism, and contemplative traditions. Dr. Downey arrived at the University of Rochester from Philadelphia, where he was Associate Professor of Religion and Theology at La Salle University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Theology at Fordham University, and is the author of The Bread of the Strong, a study of contemplative influences on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. His current research projects examine self-immolation, forms of protest, violence, Roman Catholicism in Alaska and Québec, and asceticism.

Selected Publications

Books

• Co-authored with Matthew Jonathan Cressler, Kathleen Holscher, and Michael Pasquier, Body and Blood: Catholic Horror in America. NYU Press, 2026.
• Co-authored with John T. Downey and Thomas J. Christensen, Lost in the Cold War: The Story of Jack Downey, America's Longest-Held POW. Columbia University Press, 2022.
• The Bread of the Strong: Lacouturisme and the Folly of the Cross, 1910-1985. Fordham University Press, 2015.

Articles

• “Pazuzu or the Pentagon: Who’s the Real Demon?,” The Journal of Gods and Monsters, 21 June 2025.
• “Catholic Monstrosities, Priests, and Supernatural Dread, ” The Revealer (NYU), 7 April 2022.
• “Moscow Mary: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Surveillance Ecosystem,” Political Theology (Villanova University), 4 March 2022.
• "Bring Out Your Dead: Finding Hope at the End of the World,” Berkley Forum (Georgetown University), 26 October 2020.
• “Colonialism Is Abuse: Reconsidering Triumphalist Narratives in Catholic Studies,” American Catholic Studies (Villanova University), Vol. 130, Issue 2, Summer 2019.
• Co-authored with Kathleen Holscher, “What the U.S. Catholic Church Gets Wrong about Native dispossession,” Religion & Politics (John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis), 29 January 2019.
• “In Coelestibus: The Spiritual Combat of Onésime Lacouture, SJ,” The Journal of Jesuit Studies (Boston College), November, 2018.
• “A Metaphor for the Planet: David Buckel, Civil Rights Attorney and Environmental Activist, Ended His Life,” The Baffler, 19 April 2018.
• “Critical Self-Reflection and Social Justice as Lasallian Mission,” Axis: Journal of Lasallian Higher Education, Winter, 2018.
• “‘We Drank Many Gin and Tonics’: Desire and Enchantment in Thomas Merton’s Buddhist Pilgrimage,” Journal of Buddhist-Christian Studies (University of Hawai’i), Fall, 2017.
• “Dying They Live: Suicide Protesting and Martyrdom,” The Journal of Religion and Violence (Academic Publishing), Vol. 3, No. 2: Pain, Politics, and the Monstrous Other, Fall, 2015.
• “Making All Things New: The Mystical Anti-Modernism of Lacouturisme in Québec,” Arc (McGill University Faculty of Religious Studies), Vol. 41: Essays on Liberty and Liberation, Summer, 2014.
• “Tiny Drops: Henri de Lubac, Dorothy Day, and Anti-Triumphalism as Radical Praxis,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review (Union Theological Seminary), Vol. 64, No. 2-3,Winter, 2013.
• “The Strong Meat of the Gospel: ‘Lacouturisme’ and the Revival of Asceticism in North America,” American Catholic Studies (Villanova University), Vol. 122, No. 4, Winter, 2012.

Teaching

• RELC 104: History of Christianity
• RELC 155: Religion in America
• RELC 158: American Spiritual Autobiography
• RELC 178: Beam Me Up!: Aliens and the American Imagination
• RELC 233: Catholicism and the Abuse Crisis
• RELC 234: Cry Freedom
• RELC 236: Catholicism in American Life
• RELC 269: Tibetan Buddhism
• RELC 284: Civil Disobedience
• RELC 289: Visionaries, Mystics, and Saints
• RELC 292: Fairies and Fenians: Religion in Ireland