The Rev. Walter Cuenin, new Catholic chaplain at Brandeis, speaks spiritedly of cities and people. He said that his favorite American city is "New York, just because it's the city!" and that his view of God leans more towards spirituality than religiosity. "I feel nearest to God when I'm walking on the seashore, am in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome or am at dinner with good friends, wine and a meal," he said. He jokingly added, "Even once in a while in church!"

Cuenin may be able to find spirituality nearly anywhere, but he says it was his upbringing that led him toward the priesthood. His roots are in Massachusetts, but he also has a background as romantically Eurocentric as any. Born in Malden, Cuenin moved with his family to Paris in high school because his father, a member of the U.S. military, was stationed there. Paris holds a "special place" in his heart, he says, but it was another European city that shaped him into the man he is today.

Cuenin says that in Rome, where he studied theology at Gregorian University, one of Europe's premiere Catholic seminaries, he had his greatest religious experience. There, he says, he evolved as a Catholic to become more devoted but more liberal in his views as well.

"Growing up, my family went to mass on Sundays and attended holiday services, but we weren't particularly active church-goers," he says. "But when I went to Rome to study, and I started meeting students from all over the world with different views from those I knew as an American Catholic, I started to question tradition a bit more."

His tendency to question tradition is also rooted, he says, in being raised during the 1960s, an era in which it became common to civic-mindedly challenge authority.

"It was the era of the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement, and a backlash against the government, and I think that time has influenced me," he says.

His mention of the 1960s thrust for progress resonates today, for Cuenin is perhaps best known for his vigorous decrying of Cardinal Bernard Law, who was blamed for turning a blind eye to charges against Boston-area priests for child sexual abuse.

Cuenin says he also sees Catholics as having a decided role in the history of the United States, a country usually better known for its Protestant origins. He says that "the U.S. labor movement and many programs instituted to aid the needy" are evidence of a Catholic influence on America and that many "contemporary opponents of the Iraq war and capital punishment draw their beliefs from Catholic teachings."

Cuenin is also particularly excited to be at Brandeis, saying that he is a proponent of Jewish-Catholic dialogue.

"We are in an interesting era right now, because Catholics and Jews both have to ask themselves a question," he says.

"Catholics have to ask themselves, 'As devotees to the ways of Christ, a truly Jewish figure, what can we glean from Judaism?'" he says. "And Jews, for the first extended period in their history as a people no longer plagued by anti-Semitism, can now ask themselves about Christianity, 'How can we study this as a faith of understanding, and we how can we study it without hostility?"

Cuenin says he is even optimistic about Pope Benedict XVI, who is considered conservative. "There is progress, it seems, in the Catholic Church," he says. "The fact that a German was elected to the papacy after World War II is a step in the right direction, and he has proven to be cordial and quite open to dialogue." Always for progress and reconciliation, an American raised in Europe and a Catholic unafraid to challenge the hierarchy, Cuenin tries to exemplify how Christianity can be what he calls a "manifestation of love.