Prof Tom Halton – simply "Halton" to partner Stella O'Leary – who has died in Washington DC aged 88, was a much-loved member of the city's Irish expat community and a witty and authoritative teacher and writer on Latin, Greek and the church's early fathers – patristics – at Catholic University of America (CUA).
On retirement in 2000 after 40 years he was named professor emeritus and continued until his death to publish. He was a recipient of the papal Benemerenti medal for outstanding contribution to the Catholic Church.
Perhaps his proudest boast, however, was being named Cavan Man of the Year on his 70th birthday, and he returned often to visit his cherished county. His friend, politician and poet, Eugene McCarthy, in a tribute ode to him, "Tom Halton among the Homoousions", wrote of Halton some day dancing "out of a dry Judean sepulchre" with a scroll
"Revealing that all persons born in County Cavan
Have a head start on the road to Heaven".
Greek philosophers
Speaking to Maynooth graduates in 2011 Cardinal Seán Brady recalled his former school teacher from St Patrick's College in Cavan. Halton had sent him his newly published work on the neo-Platonist philosopher Hermias, "Christian Apology or Skit on School Homework", "a fascinating romp through the ranks of 17 Greek philosophers who lived before Socrates".
“The purpose of the exercise apparently,” Brady noted, “is to reach the conclusion that since one cannot learn any religious truths from these teachers, because none of them agree with each other about anything, it is logical to turn to our Christian ancestors for that truth.
“Prof Halton concludes that showing disarray in the ranks of the philosophers was the necessary clearing ground in apologetics for the presentation of Christian revelations.” It was typical of Halton’s academic erudition, love for ideas and argument, and the always sharp sense of irony with which he observed all of life.
Born in Kilnaleck, Co Cavan, to Patrick Halton and Margaret (Reynolds) Halton, he was a scholarship boy in St Patrick’s where he would in the 1950s return to teach. In 1943 he entered St Patrick’s Maynooth as a seminarian, received a first-class honours degree in ancient classics, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1950. He received a master’s from University College Dublin, and later his doctorate from CUA in 1959.
During the 1950s he wrote for the journals "The Furrow" and "The Irish Ecclesiastical Review" on such themes as "contemporary song", the "Irish priest on the stage" and the "Catholic writer", the latter prompting a polemical exchange in the columns of this paper with Seán O'Casey.
Halton had observed that some Irish writers seemed to write for the tastes of English and US publishers about an Ireland "oversupplied with sex and savagery" and "mawkishly masquerading in shillelaghs and shamrocks". But he acknowledged the inevitability that priests would be writers' targets, albeit caricatures like Don Camillo, and of the need for the Censorship Board to act with a less heavy hand.
Eclectic mix
He joined CUA's department of Greek and Latin as an assistant professor in 1960, became associate professor in 1965, ordinary professor in 1976, and in 1987, Margaret H Gardiner professor of Greek. He was president of the North American Patristic Society in 1975.
He taught an eclectic range of courses from Greek prose composition, to Roman satire, Plato and patristic scholarship, and published widely, particularly on the Greek Fathers. His annotated translation of Theodoret of Cyrus's On Divine Providence reflected the breadth of his philological, theological, philosophical and historical expertise. His Classical Scholarship: An annotated Bibliography was completed in 1978 with partner Stella O'Leary, then a librarian in the university.
A former student , Prof Bill McCarthy fondly recalls his mentoring – “He never attempted to dictate the truth, but was always seeking it with a gentle, mildly ironic rigour.”
In 1987 he became editorial director of the university's Fathers of the Church series, a collection of English translations of early Greek and Latin church literature now running to 100 volumes, and which he continued to edit and contribute to until about four years ago. Colleagues see the work as his crowning academic legacy. His most recent book, Theodoret of Cyrus: A Cure of Pagan Maladies, is due to be published.
His many friends will remember him particularly for his impish humour and boundless hospitality, not least annually on January 6th when they gather again for a joyful ritual of eating, drinking and reciting to celebrate Joyce's The Dead. Halton in his element.
He is survived by loving partner and companion of 36 years, Stella O’Leary, her four children, Maureen, Thomas, Kathleen and Nuala, whom he mentored and supported, and numerous nephews and nieces in Ireland and the US. His four sisters predeceased him. A Mass will be held in Kilnaleck next Saturday.