I am very pleased to welcome Dr. William J. Tighe to the staff of The Anglo-Catholic as a regular contributor.  Dr. Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  His papers have been published in numerous scholarly journals and his work has been featured in popular publications such as Touchstone and New Oxford Review.  Dr. Tighe has provided the following biographical sketch for our readers.

I was born May 5, 1952 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and since 1990 have been married to the former Silvija G. Sterns.  We have three children, Augustine Leo Tighe (b. 1992), Kirill Alexander Tighe (b. 1995) and Aija Theodoti Tighe (b. 2001).

I was born and bred a Roman Catholic, but as a graduate student at Yale drifted away and began to attend Episcopalian services.  Had it not been for the decision of the Episcopal Church in 1976 to approve the ordination of women, I would most likely have become an Episcopalian, but that decision gave me pause, although not enough to drive me away from Anglicanism.  When I left Yale (and America) for Cambridge (I lived in the UK from 1978 to 1986), I was able to cultivate an acquaintance with the late Anglo-Catholic theologian Eric Mascall (1905-1993), whose works I had discovered on my own as an undergraduate in the early 1970s and whom I had met in New York City on Good Friday 1977, and as a result of conversations with him, as well as with other new English Christian friends, I came to the conclusion that I could not justify formally becoming an Anglican, but, rather, should return to the practice of the Catholic Faith in the Catholic Church, which I did.  Shortly after taking up my present position at Muhlenberg College in 1986, I began to attend the local Ukrainian Catholic parish, and in 1995 petitioned for, and received, a formal "transfer of rite" to become, with my children, a member of the ecclesia sui juris Ukrainian Catholic Church.  I will acknowledge as well that I have been influenced by the admirable writings of Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, whom I am pleased and honored to count as a friend.

My academic interests include the English Reformation (and its long-term "working out") as well as the Reformation in the Scandinavian realms, and, additionally, the Orthodox Church and its relations with the West.  I teach courses on various aspects of European history between the Renaissance and the French Revolution, as well as one on (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity.

Please welcome Dr. Tighe to the site!

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