Shea, Joseph Eugene, 1904-1979

Joseph E. Shea, SJ, was born on December 6, 1904, to Sarah Ann (Mahoney) Shea (1872-1949) and Eugene Thomas Shea (1864-1929). He attended St. Margaret’s School in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He entered the Jesuit order at Shadowbrook, Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1923. After graduating from Boston College in 1926, he entered the seminary at Weston College, where he was ordained a priest in 1935. He continued at Weston College as a professor of philosophy from 1936 to 1958, with some time off to obtain his doctor of philosophy degree in psychology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1946. In 1958, he left Weston to join the theology faculty at Boston College, where he remained until retiring in 1970. Joseph E. Shea died on January 29, 1979.