Richard Rutherford CSC PhD

Holy Cross religious and professor emeritus of liturgical theology Fr. Rutherford taught as member of the theology faculty from 1976 until his retirement in 2012. During that tenure he taught core theology courses, including special courses in the liturgy and theology of death and bereavement, and graduate theology in the various master’s programs initiated by the department. For 12 years he served as departmental chair and in the mid-1970’s-mid-1980’s he was lead university representative to architect Pietro Belluschi for the building of the Chapel of Christ the Teacher.

Having studied the Christian funeral for some 50 years his book The Death of a Christian: The Order of Christian Funerals (1980, 2nd 1990) and occasional monographs, including Honoring the Dead: Catholics and Cremation (revised 2001), have served seminaries and colleges as textbooks and commentaries on the Catholic funeral. His articles appear in Worship, Modern Liturgy, Liturgical Ministry, Pastoral Music and Rite, and in 1997 he prepared a three-video series Understanding the Order of Christian Funerals for Liturgical Press. Fr. Rutherford served as resource to ICEL for the 1989 revision of the Order of Christian Funerals, and his recent contribution to A Commentary of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (Liturgical Press, 2007) addresses Masses for the Dead. Recent publications include an entry on “death and afterlife: Christian” in the Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (2018) and Chapter 9 “Baptisteries in Ancient Rites and Sites” in the Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology (in press; scheduled for January 2019) as well as the Foreword to Baptismal Ecclesiology and the Order of Christian Funerals by Stephen S. Wilbricht, CSC (currently in press with Liturgical Training Publications, Chicago).

In recent years Fr. Rutherford has devoted his research energies to early Christian baptismal liturgy and architecture. Currently he is collaborating as contributor for Baptisteries of the Early Christian World, a catalogue of photos embracing archaeology, art history, liturgy and theology edited by Robin Jensen, PhD, University of Notre Dame. At its 2008 annual meeting the North American Academy of Liturgy elected Fr. Rutherford as its Vice President with responsibility to give the Academy’s 2009 keynote address and succeeded as its President to chair the annual meeting in 2010, with service as past-president until 2012.

He remains active as lecturer and consultant on current issues surrounding the Catholic funeral and enjoys serving a “cruise padre” on small ship voyages in the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, and the Far East. In 2012 he facilitated the creation of and since 2014 he has directed a University of Portland Undergraduate Research Expedition in Spain, collaborating with fellow UP faculty and with archaeologists from the U. of Barcelona in an archaeological excavation of an ancient cemetery in Roman Pollentia, Mallorca’s oldest Roman city.

Education

• Doctorandus Theologiae (Drs. Theol.), Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands
• Sacrae Theologiae Licentiatus (STL), Gregorian University, Rome
• Bachelor of Arts, University of Notre Dame