Fr. Roger David Haight, SJ, was born to Charles and Julia (O’Keefe) Haight in Glen Ridge, NJ, on April 30, 1936. He attended St. Aloysius parochial school in Caldwell, NJ, and then commuted to Xavier High School in Manhattan where he achieved the rank of private. He said that he was surprised to have been accepted into the Society of Jesus, which he entered at St. Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY, on July 30, 1954. After four years (1954-58) at St. Andrew’s, Roger was assigned to the Philippines, where he did his philosophy studies at Berchmans College, Cebu City (1958-61), and then regency at the Ateneo de Davao (1961-64).
In 1964 Roger headed back to the U.S. for theology studies at Woodstock College, Maryland (1964-67). He was ordained a priest at the Fordham University Church in June of 1967. After ordination came doctoral studies at the prestigious Divinity School of the University of Chicago (1967-73) where he was awarded a Ph.D. in systematic theology in 1973. Later, in 2005, he was the recipient of that Divinity School’s Alumnus of the Year Award. In 1973 he began a fifty-year teaching and writing career as a distinguished and well-respected theologian.
Roger taught for extended periods of time at graduate schools of theology: The Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago (1975-81), Regis College in Toronto (1981-90), Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Cambridge, MA (1990-2003) and, since 2004, at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where, until recently, he was Theologian in Residence. During these years, he took time out for visiting professorships at Loyola House of Studies and the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines (1973-75); at DeNobili College in Pune, India (1977) where, coincidentally, he took his final vows as a Jesuit; at Hekima College, Nairobi, Kenya (1991); at the Centre Sèvres, Paris (1996), and in Lima, Peru.
In his long theological career, Roger, very much an original thinker, published countless articles and more than a dozen books in various areas of systematic theology, spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Although Roger himself referred to it as “a dust-up with Rome,” his perhaps best-known book, on Christology, caused the Roman doctrinal authorities to restrict his ability to teach Catholic theology. Ironically, that very same book was awarded the Catholic Press Association top prize for theology in 1999.
Not surprisingly, Roger was a longstanding member of the Catholic Theological Society of America. He served a term on its Board of Directors (1986-88) and was its President in 1994-95. In 2023, the CTSA awarded Roger its John Courtney Murray Award for Distinguished Theological Achievement. The citation is glowing with praise for Roger and his accomplishments, and rightly so, but it doesn’t tell us what an unassuming, humble and overall nice person he was.
For 20 years Roger was happy to be a member of the America House Jesuit Community in Manhattan. Then, in the summer of 2024, he moved to Murray-Weigel Hall, the Jesuit health center in the Bronx, to spend more time attending to his declining health. It wasn’t too late to receive copies of his most recent book, Facing Race: The Gospel in an Ignatian Key (2024). Roger died peacefully, and aptly perhaps, on Juneteenth, 2025. Throughout his life he tried to live the Gospel in an Ignatian key. May he now live forever with the Christ he learned to know, to follow, and to love in the Ignatian way.
A month before his passing, Fr. Haight discussed his most recent book, Facing Race: The Gospel in an Ignatian Key:
Click here to light a Virtual Candle in memoriam of the life and legacy of Fr. Roger Haight, SJ.
