Rev. David B. Burrell, C.S.C., Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame, received the 2009 John Courtney Murray Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) at its annual meeting June 6 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The award, which is the CTSA’s highest honor, memorializes the most prominent American Catholic theologian at the Second Vatican Council, and a principal author of the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitate Humanae), one of the council’s most important teaching documents.
The CTSA praised Father Burrell for “truly significant contributions in philosophical theology, philosophy of religion, Islamic philosophy, and comparative theology” and described his theological work as “a major contribution to interfaith understanding.”
A 1954 Notre Dame alumnus, Father Burrell studied at the Gregorian University in Rome and earned a doctoral degree from Yale University in 1965. A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1964, he is the author of nine books on philosophy and theology and has translated Islamic classics from Arabic to English. At present he is teaching as a professor of ethics and development at Uganda Martyrs University in Nkozi, Uganda.