Bernard Michael O'Brien SJ (9 December 1907 – 3 January 1982[1]) was a Jesuit priest, philosopher, musician (cellist),[2] writer and seminary professor from New Zealand.
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.
[1] In January 1924, O'Brien commenced his studies as a Jesuit novice at the Loyola Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Sydney, Australia.
Karl Rahner was two years ahead of O'Brien but among his companions were Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Neuner and Alfred Delp.
In 1932, at the end of his philosophy course, O'Brien received minor orders from Cardinal Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich.
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.
In 1943 he was appointed to Corpus Christi College, Werribee (a seminary for the training of secular priests) near Melbourne to lecture in theology.
[12] O'Brien, with his broad interests and education, and his colleagues initiated great changes and he gave Philosophy studies at Holy Name Seminary some standing and "twenty years of clergy owe, if not an appreciation for scholarship at least an acceptance of it to him."