by Lew Harris

J. Patout Burns brings Catholicism, with a Cajun spice, to the Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

The Edward A. Malloy Professor of Catholic Studies since August 1999, Burns grew up in New Iberia, La., where about two-thirds of the population of 35,000 was Catholic. Located in subtropical south Louisiana, Iberia Parish is a land of vast coastal salt marshes populated by egrets and alligators, of lush gardens and elegant plantation homes. Gumbo, etouffee, bisque and boudin are favorite foods in this land of Cajuns and Creoles, with their distinctive folk cultures.

Photo by Phonethip M. Liu Patout Burns

"I started life in a small town in south Louisiana, heavily Catholic, where the monsignor rather than the mayor decided the placement of the new bridge over the Bayou Teche," Burns said. "He picked that location so that you could see the Mount Carmel Convent from it.

"I went to Catholic parochial schools, applied to Catholic universities, entered a Catholic religious order and studied and taught in Catholic schools until I was 30 years old."

Scion of a family that owns a plantation that is the largest processor of sugar cane in Louisiana, Burns' father also owned and operated an independent Firestone tire and battery dealership in New Iberia.

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After graduation from high school, Burns pursued a career in the priesthood. He entered the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, a religious order founded by Ignatius of Loyola during the Reformation. After four years in a seminary, he enrolled in Mobile's Spring Hill College, also a Catholic institution, earning a B.A. degree in Latin in 1963 and a master's in philosophy a year later.

He spent two years as a math teacher at Jesuit High School in Shreveport, La., and taught philosophy for a year at Spring Hill.

Burns earned a master of divinity degree during an additional three years at Regis College, a seminary in Toronto, and was ordained as a Jesuit priest in June 1970. He then earned a master of theology degree at St. Michael's College in Toronto.

"I was set to do a Catholic school doctorate and teach in a Catholic school of theology," Burns said. "Then an adviser at St. Michael's urged me to go to Yale. Yale was my first experience outside a Catholic institution."

Burns earned a Ph.D. at Yale in 1974, writing his dissertation on "The Development of Augustine's Doctrine of Operative Grace."

He was then assigned by his order to teach at the Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago. Concurrently, he taught at two other theological schools in Chicago until 1980, one of which was Lutheran Theological School. Five years after that, while serving as an associate professor at Loyola University of Chicago, he was faced with a momentous decision.

"In 1985, I resigned from the ministry and resigned from the Jesuits," Burns said. "That was the most difficult decision of my life. I had struggled with it for about 10 years. I loved the work I was doing as a scholar, a teacher and a priest. I enjoyed the companionship of good and holy men. I found satisfaction in sharing a mission spread over the world and continued through the centuries. I was increasingly unable, however, to choose or accept the restrictions of the celibate lifestyle. In the conversations with my father during his final illness, I finally came to realize that God was offering and requiring that I act with greater freedom and responsibility."

After a transitional year in which he did an internship in educational administration, Burns accepted a position as professor of religion at the University of Florida in 1986. He then moved to Washington University in St. Louis in 1990 as the Thomas and Alberta White Professor of Christian Thought. He was also chair of the Religious Studies program and a member of the Holocaust Memorial Lecture Committee during his tenure at Washington University.

During that time, Burns developed a great interest in the history of Christianity in Roman Africa (principally North Africa). He serves on a six-person team that received a National Endowment for the Humanities Research grant for 1996-1998. The team, which continues to work together, includes archeologists and people skilled in reading ancient text and inscriptions. Burns spent three weeks in North Africa in June 1996 and will go back for an additional three weeks this coming August.

"We are trying to put together the literary and archeological evidence to figure out how people practiced their Christianity in North Africa during the first five or six centuries A.D.," Burns said. "We see this as new, but we are standing on the shoulders of the work done by a lot of people who have worked in this area for years."

Latin Christianity began in Africa, according to Burns. He said the Bible was first translated into Latin in Africa from a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures and from the original Greek of the New Testament. Most of the theology that came out of North Africa was practical in nature. It included the organization of the church, the role of clergy, the efficacy of rituals such as baptism and communion, and the requirements of Christian moral life.

"In general, Roman ruins in North Africa still exist because the towns were not destroyed by war," Burns said. "The Arabs were not good at siege warfare and tended to pass by fortified cities when they invaded the area. Nor were the cities built over." Mosaic was a primary art form of the culture, and a fair amount of it remains today.

Burns said while Christian texts can be dated as early as A.D. 170 in North Africa, almost no archeological evidence exists prior to the fourth century. The last of the Roman persecutions was aimed at destroying the Christian infrastructure -- books, churches, sacred vessels.

"It was pretty efficient," he said.

Burns decided to accept the Malloy Professorship at Vanderbilt last year because it offered him access to colleagues he values. Paramount among these colleagues was Gene TeSelle.

"The first thing I asked Gene was whether he planned to stay in Nashville," Burns said. "His positive answer to that question was very important to me because I wanted to work with him. I came here for colleagues, and I have been more than satisfied. At Vanderbilt we also have the opportunity to educate professional and doctoral students for the ministry of Christian churches and for university teaching.

"Of the places I've studied and worked, the ones I've found most interesting are the secular, private universities like Yale, Washington University and Vanderbilt. The other thing that was important to me is that Vanderbilt is committed to study Catholicism, and I thought my background could help this University.

"Fifteen years ago when I resigned from the Society of Jesus and was released from the priesthood, I could not have hoped to serve both the Catholic Church and the academy in this way. I'm profoundly grateful for the privilege and opportunity."

Burns still gets back to New Iberia four or five times a year. This summer the Patout family will celebrate 175 years in Louisiana.

"We have 11,000 acres of sugar cane in cultivation," Burns said. "During the three-month grinding season, we make four million pounds of sugar per day, but the profit is less than a penny per pound. I continue an involvement with the industry, serving on the board of Sterling Sugars. When I left the priesthood, I entertained the idea of moving back to Louisiana and working for the company, but I was fortunate to be able to find another appointment in the academy. I'm more than happy with the way things have turned out."

 

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