by Stefani Manowski
June 6, 2011

The 2011 Living Faith Award recipients are Cantor Jack Chomsky spiritual director of Congregation Tifereth Israel (top row left); honorary chairman Bishop Bruce Ough of the Ohio West Area of the United Methodist Church; Father Vinny McKiernan, CSP, of the St. Thomas More Newman Center at The Ohio State University; Dr. Mark White, of the St. Paul A.M.E. Church; Arlene Reynolds (bottom row left) of The First Congregational Church; and Marilyn Shreffer of the Indianola Presbyterian Church.

Paulist Father Vinny McKiernan was honored with the President’s Award during the 18th Annual Living Faith Awards given by the Columbus Metropolitan Area Church Council in Columbus, Ohio on May 19.

The Living Faith Awards recognize persons of exemplary faith and the influence of their faith within their vocation and larger community. Awardees are nominated by friends, colleagues and parishioners of persons representing one or more of the following endeavors: education, business, public or community service, health, social science, and the arts and humanities.

Father McKiernan has served the Catholic community of The Ohio State University and beyond since 1990, and has been involved in ecumenical and interfaith ministry in the Columbus area for just as long.

Initially asked to deliver the breakfast ceremony’s keynote address, Father McKiernan only had “a little inkling” that he was also to receive an award.

Father McKiernan received the award for being “true to his Paulist vocation,” as stated in the awards program. He “strives to reach those persons who might otherwise be overlooked in the ongoing hustle of today’s society, whether religious or secular.”

The program noted Father McKiernan’s ministry with international students at the university, his involvement with the coordinating council of the Spirituality Network, an ecumenical movement that embraces multiple paths to spiritual life, introducing people to centering prayer and founding The Lenten Journal, in which he solicits and edits writings on Lenten Scripture readings from a variety of religious and lay men and women.

“I just really believe we are all God’s children, made in the image and likeness of God,” said Father McKiernan. “People are finding him in all sorts of ways, and I rejoice in that. People experience God in different ways, and that only reaffirms my own Christian beliefs.”

Those beliefs started early for Father McKiernan, growing up in the Paulist-run Good Shepherd Parish in New York City, he attended the parish school and was a veteran altar server. The future priest left his parents and six siblings at the age of 13 to study at the Paulist Fathers minor seminary in Baltimore.

“My whole life has been Paulist,” Father McKiernan quipped. “They were the only priests I knew, and I felt that is want I wanted to do.”

Ordained at the age of 26, Father McKiernan was assigned to his home parish for one year after ordination before earning a master’s degree in Greek and Latin from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He then taught at the minor seminary in Baltimore for nine years before serving one year as the assistant novice master and seven years as novice master at Mount Paul in Oak Ridge, N.J.

Father McKiernan spent the next two years giving missions and retreats on the East Coast before spending a decade on the staff at the Paulist Center in Boston. After a year on sabbatical, he then gave missions in Reno, Nev., for another year before heading to Columbus and the Paulist-run St. Thomas More Newman Center in 1990.

“As Christians celebrate the Christ in us as the lights of the world, and see the light of God in others,” Father McKiernan said.