Father Jason Charles LaLonde, S.J., joins Rockhurst from the University of Notre Dame, where he is completing a doctorate in systematic theology, with a minor concentration in historical theology, under the direction of Francesca Aran Murphy. 

His dissertation, "The Combat of Faith: Henri de Lubac Engages Atheism," traces how the twentieth-century French Jesuit confronted the atheist humanisms of his own moment and asks what that confrontation still offers to ours. The idea of catholicity — Christian faith understood not as a confined outlook but as a disposition that leaves nothing out — is the lodestar of his research, which ranges from Maximus the Confessor and the Greek Fathers to thinkers of the Russian Religious Renaissance. 

Before beginning doctoral studies, he taught Latin, Greek, and English at Jesuit High School of New Orleans, and he later served as parochial vicar at Immaculate Conception Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also has extensive experience with the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, having directed many individuals on eight-day and 19th Annotation retreats.