Paul E. Dinter

Paul E. Dinter served as Catholic Chaplain at Columbia University from 1973 – 1988 during which he received his Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Union Theological Seminary.

Engaging in an activist ministry, he recruited students and graduates in efforts at the common life, culminating in the work of the intentional Cor Jesu community. Coordinating Pax Christi on campus and in the Metro New York area, he promoted anti-nuclear organizing as an co-chair of United Campuses againt Nuclear War. Much of this work grew out of his immersion in the life and work of Thomas Merton (Columbia College, 1938) and led to his staging the 1978 Merton Commemoration at Columbia and establishing both the Merton Lecture and the Merton Center which briefly housed the collection of Mertoniana assembled by Sr. Therese Lentfoehr.

Joining with students committed to relieving poverty and homelessness, he founded Commmunity Impact which grew out of the campus ministry’s Diakonia ministry and which continues to challenge the campus’ isolation from its neighbors by fielding hundreds of students in service work in Morningside Heights and West Harlem.

In the years since, he has taught at Fordham University, Mt. St. Mary’s College, the Maryknoll School of Theology, Marymount Manhattan College (where he also directed the privately funded college program at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility), Mercy College (at Sing Sing Correctional Facility) and Manhattan College where he taught as both an Adjunct and Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies (1991-2017).

The author of Beyond Naïve Belief (Crossroads, 1994), The Changing Priesthood (Thomas More, 1996) and The Other Side of the Altar (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), he has written for Cross Currents, Commonweal, and America as well as on the subject “The Evolution of the Soul: A Thought Experiment” in The Global Spiral (April 2008), the on-line publication of The Metanexus Institute. He continues to coordinate the Pre-College Program of Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, NY where he resides with his wife Marilyn.