The excellent Evangelical Catholicism blog has a couple of posts of note up now – one commenting on R.R. Reno’s post on theology graduate programs discussed here, and another on a Southern Baptist’s reaction to the Christian Century article on 6 recent converts to Catholicsm. It’s good, intelligent stuff.

On the former, blog author Michael comes to the defense of the program at St. Louis U:

I can testify that SLU offers a top-notch program, requiring doctoral students to be proficient in four languages (most doctoral programs only require two) and to be specialists in two historical periods. The faculty is stellar–mostly Catholic–and nearly every member is a practicing Christian. Kenneth Steinhauser is one of the premier Augustine and ancient Latin Christianity scholars in the country. Wayne Hellmann is an expert in Franciscan theology with particular specialty in Bonaventure. Kenneth Parker studied under Eamon Duffy at Cambridge and specializes in Newman and modern English Catholicism. James Voiss and Brian Robinette, both graduates of Notre Dame, are two young, exciting and highly-regarded systematicians who specialize in hermeneutics, fundamental theology and philosophy, not to mention they really know and readily teach the works of Rahner, Balthasar, Tracy and Marion. Expect big things from Robinette.

I came away from SLU a more faithful and historically-aware Catholic. Reno does little justice to my alma mater, which is regrettable since many will take him at his word. Nevertheless, kudos to Reno for even putting together a ranking of theology programs. Nicely done.