Bernard O'Brien (Jesuit)

Bernard Michael O'Brien SJ (9 December 1907 – 3 January 1982) was a New Zealand Jesuit priest, philosopher, musician (cellist), writer and seminary professor.

He was born in Christchurch, New Zealand and was educated by the Dominican sisters at St Thomas's Academy, Oamaru and at Christ's College. His father was a surgeon. He had a sister (who later became Sister Monica O'Brien RSCJ, of Wellington) and two brothers, Arthur and Michael, who remained in Christchurch.

In January 1924, O'Brien commenced his studies as a Jesuit novice at the Loyola Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Sydney. There and at Riverview College he also advanced his study of Greek. O'Brien obtained his BA at the National University of Ireland where he also studied music. In 1929, O'Brien went to the Jesuit house of Philosophy at Pullach, a village just outside Munich where, after learning German, and with many German, Austrian and other students from many countries, he embarked on three years of laborious philosophic studes. The Philosophy taught was fundamentally medieval scholasticism, as modified by the sixteenth century Jesuit Suárez. O'Brien's "best teacher" was Father Alois Maier who promoted Kant. O'Brien made a special study of Plotinus in relation to the Psychology of art. Karl Rahner was two years ahead of O'Brien but among his companions were Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Alfred Delp. In 1932, at the end of his Philosophy course, O'Brien received minor orders from Cardinal Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich. He then returned to Sydney and was given the job of coaching young novices who were beginning their university studes. In 1935, O'Brien went to the Louvain in Belgium to study Theology. His most important teacher there was Joseph Maréchal who combined the "best insights" of Thomas Aquinas with the transcendental speculations of Kant. "His teaching set flowing one of the principal streams of present-day Catholic Philosophy and Theology, a stream from which André Marc and Karl Rahner, , Emerich Coreth and Bernard Lonergan have all drunk". O'Brien read particularly the German theologian and mystic Matthias Scheeben and wrote a theological dissertation on Friedrich von Hügel. O'Brien was ordained a priest in 1938 at Louvain and after spending the first few years of World War II in Jesuit establishments in England and in Ireland, he returned to Sydney in 1941.

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