I just learned that Paul Thigpen has passed away. And if you don’t know who he was, let me tell you: you should.

This was a man who went from atheism to the Presbyterian ministry to full communion with the Catholic Church in 1993. Not a casual journey. Not a comfortable one. He once said he came to believe in the devil before he came to believe in God, after encountering what he described as “powerful, malicious nonhuman intelligences.” That experience sent him running back into the arms of Our Lord, and he never looked back.

Summa cum laude from Yale. PhD in historical theology from Emory. Fifty-nine books. Over five hundred articles. Sixteen languages. Appointed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to their National Advisory Council in 2008. Professor, apologist, catechist, musician. The man did not waste a single day.

His Manual for Spiritual Warfare became a modern classic. But what fascinated me most was his later work on extraterrestrial intelligence and the Catholic faith. Twenty-six centuries of theological reflection on whether we are alone in the universe. From St. Albert the Great to modern popes. He called it a “wondrous and noble question,” and the Church, he argued, has left the door wide open.

He was still working the day before he died. He was scheduled to be interviewed by EWTN on that very topic. That tells you everything about the man.

Everyone who knew him talks about the same thing: the kindness, the smile, the generosity. Katie Warner called him “everyone’s godfather, sponsor, mentor, and friend.” Marcus Grodi remembered his “broad smile and contagious laugh.”

Thigpen himself clung to 1 John 3:2: “We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

Rest in peace, Dr. Thigpen. Something tells me you’re finally getting the answers to all those wondrous questions.

🙏✝️