Hellwig, Monika Konrad Hildegard 1929–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born December 10, 1929, in Breslau, Germany; died of a cerebral hemorrhage, September 30, 2005, in Washington, DC. Religious scholar, educator, and author. Hellwig was a prominent figure among Roman Catholic intellectuals who resisted some of the Church's efforts to control religious scholarship and opinion in the United States. A descendant of German Jews, she fled Germany with her family in 1935, settling in Scotland and becoming a British citizen. An extremely bright student, she enrolled at the University of Liverpool when she was only fifteen years old and completed a law degree there in 1949. She then earned a social science degree two years later. After moving to America, she became a nun with the Medical Mission Sisters and earned a master's degree from the Catholic University of America in 1956. As a nun, she was invited to go to Rome in 1963 to attend the Second Vatican Council where she also served as a ghost writer for a Vatican official. Upon returning to America, she completed a Ph.D. at the Catholic University of America in 1968. Having already worked as a professor of theology at St. Therese Junior College in Philadelphia from 1956 to 1962, Hellwig wished to further pursue an intellectual course. She was released from her vows and hired to the faculty at Georgetown University in 1967. Rising to full professor of theology in 1977, she retired from teaching in 1996, and headed the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities until shortly before her death. During this later period, she was also a senior research fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. Despite being a faithful Catholic who believed in the Church's official positions on moral issues, Hellwig became well known for her willingness to defend those in the Church who held differing views. Her basic argument was that Catholics should be allowed to debate such issues as abortion and sexual orientation without having to blindly follow Church edicts under threat of punishment by the religious hierarchy. In 1986, for example, she defended Catholic University professor and reverend Charles E. Curran, whose views on abortion, contraception, and gay rights differed from those of the Church. She also defended actions within the U.S. Catholic Church hierarchy that sometimes ran contrary to Vatican proscriptions, saying that the pope and his cardinals in Europe would be best advised not to try to control religious leaders across the Atlantic. Over the years, Hellwig received numerous awards and other recognition for her service to the Church and for her intellectual integrity. Among her honors were the 1984 John Courtney Murray Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America, the 1986 Catholic University of America Alumni Association award, and the 1994 Theodore M. Hesburgh award from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities; she also received thirty-two honorary doctorates from colleges and universities across the United States. To add to her accomplishments, Hellwig was the author of numerous popular and scholarly books on religion, including Christian Creeds: A Faith to Live By (1973), Understanding Catholicism (1981), The Role of the Theologian in Today's Church (1987), and Guests of God: Stewards of Divine Creation (1999).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2005, p. B11.

National Catholic Reporter, October 14, 2005, p. 11.

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), October 7, 2005, p. 39.

Washington Post, October 6, 2005, p. B6.