Link: http://www.diocesephoenix.org/parish/st_marymagdalene/whoweare.htm
Father Cunningham was born in Phoenix in 1949 and grew up in the shadow of the State Capital, the sixth child of Irish immigrants. He attended St. Meinard Seminary in Indiana, where he earned his B.A. in Philosophy and Masters in Divinity. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Phoenix in 1974 and served in two urban parishes before become pastor in Tolleson, Arizona.
He was diocesan vocation director for six years.
An innovator who enjoys a new challenge, Fr. John founded St. Bridget Parish in 1985.
While still a pastor, Fr. John enrolled at ASU where he received an M.A. in Religious Studies in 1997. His thesis was entitled: Gender, Authority and the Gospel of Mary: A Feminist Critique.
Our pastor has taught World Religions and other classes at Mesa and Scottsdale Community Colleges and ASU East.
He also has an extensive background in Jungian psychology, having done a sabbatical at the Jung Institute in Zurich, and been actively involved for years with the Phoenix Friends of Jung.
He is ready and eager to start Gilbert's second Catholic parish. He named it after St. Mary Magdalene in tribute to the devoted friend of Jesus, the first witness to the resurrection, the first evangelist, a perennially illustrious symbol of spiritual illumination, and, in our time, a popular icon of women's empowerment.
Fr. John is an avid reader. He plays guitar and sings Irish songs and, now and then, hammers out a jig. He enjoys snow skiing, animals, and most of all, his mini-daschund, Bailey. His travels have taken him to Israel, Russia, Japan, China, India, Nepal, Mexico and Brazil, all over Europe, and annually, to a cozy cottage in the West of Ireland that he calls his second home.
Our founding pastor is a friendly, outgoing man who stresses hospitality, loves a party and a lively intellectual discussion. He accepts people where they are, but strives to enlarge horizons of mind and heart with a vision of what we can yet become as individuals and as a church.
His motto is: "This day will never come again."
By Rev. John Cunningham
CLERGY CORNER -- Feb 07, 2004 -- Link to Article
The Rev. John Cunningham is pastor of St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Higley.
I was 16 when I was introduced to the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). He was a Jesuit paleontologist who created a synthesis of science and faith.
Teilhard's big idea was the spiritual heart of evolution - the rise of consciousness. Over the next few years, I devoured many of his books.
It was as if, for the first time, someone had put into words my budding fascination with the world. Teilhard provided a lens for me to see the grand scheme of things and an evolutionary perspective with which to understand the universe and my place in it.
His Law of Complexity-Consciousness stated,
"The more complex a physical organism is, correspondingly, the more consciousness it manifests."
At 19, I first stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon, like a dwarf before a giant. Then I thought of Teilhard, and I realized that this geological spectacle had never thought a thought, registered a sensation or begun to feel wonder and gratitude as I did at that moment.
The difference was consciousness, that rare, precious, fragile light - our supreme value. Teilhard taught me that we are evolution that has become conscious of itself. He reasoned that if this is so, then consciousness must be present in varying degrees in all things, as an innate property of matter in process of organization. Cosmic evolution is a tremendous enterprise giving birth to reflection.
Teilhard studied the past to grasp what lies ahead. He came to perceive the universe as a single emergent process.
"Someday," he writes, "after we have mastered the tides, the winds and the gravity, we will harness, for God, the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, the human will have discovered fire."
This incomparable teacher lit a fire in me, with its light of understanding and glowing hope in the future and the warmth of a holistic, evolutionary spirituality.
When I gaze up at the starry night sky, I thank God for the consciousness that my body sustains. I have learned that through you and me, the universe looks back on itself, creates its future and is drawn to adore the mystery.