Seton Hall’s Dr. Travaline Honored Nationally

Seton Hall University’s Catholic Studies Program is proud to celebrate John M. Travaline, M.D., an adjunct faculty member, Temple University physician and professor, and permanent deacon, who was honored this September with the Catholic Medical Association’s Distinguished Guardian of the Faith award. The national recognition cites his exemplary integration of Catholic ethics and compassionate care in clinical practice, the same integration that animates his classroom and mentoring of Seton Hall students.

“The award recognizes faith in action, blending the Gospel with my everyday work as a physician,” Dr. Travaline said. “In the diaconal vocation there is something inherently public and prominent about witness. This honor simply heightens my responsibility to live the Gospel faithfully—in clinic, classroom and parish—with greater zeal and courage.”

Beyond the clinic, Dr. Travaline’s most significant contribution to Seton Hall—and to Catholic Studies nationally—is an innovative undergraduate course, "Catholicism, Healthcare, and the Human Condition" (Catholic Studies home course cross-listed with CORE 3). Designed expressly for Catholic Studies and healthcare students but open to students across majors, the course places undergraduates at the intersection of healthcare, moral theology and culture, inviting them to wrestle with questions most students encounter only in medical school or clinical training: conscience and cooperation, end-of-life decision-making, suffering, the dignity of the human person and the social mission of healthcare. It is, to our knowledge, the only undergraduate course of its kind nationwide—a distinctive contribution that aligns perfectly with the Catholic intellectual tradition’s call to integrate faith and reason for the sake of the common good and integral human development.

For Dr. Travaline, the bedrock of Catholic medical ethics—and of his teaching—begins with an unwavering claim about the human person. “Human dignity is real,” he noted, “arguably the most real of all realities, rooted in our being created in the image of God—whether one believes in God or not.” In the classroom, that conviction becomes a formative pedagogy. He urges students to slow down and think (slow thinking), to consider who we are and what our choices mean, to look for answers in the relationships and experiences that make up our lives. “Life is the open book,” he tells them, often returning to a line from Saint John Paul II said in his homily during his apostolic journey to the U.S. in October 1995: “Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life.”

Ines Murzaku, Ph.D., professor and director of Catholic Studies, emphasized how Dr. Travaline’s teaching advances the program’s mission and the University’s Catholic mission. “Travaline embodies the heart of Catholic Studies,” she said. “He brings clinical excellence, pastoral wisdom and intellectual rigor into one conversation, and he invites undergraduates—future physicians, nurses, scientists, educators and leaders—to think clearly and act compassionately. His course is not only academically rigorous; it is nationally distinctive. We are grateful for his witness and thrilled that Seton Hall students can learn with a physician-deacon who unites the best of faith and reason.”

The significance of the Catholic Medical Association’s award extends beyond personal recognition. It signals that rigorous, tradition-grounded ethics can guide real-world practice in ways that serve patients and families at the most vulnerable moments of life. That, in turn, models for students the kind of intellectual and moral formation envisioned by Gravissimum educationis and Ex corde Ecclesiae: a university where freedom is ordered to truth, scholarship is accountable to charity and professional preparation is inseparable from the common good.

Travaline will teach Catholicism, Healthcare, and the Human Condition again in Spring 2026. As Seton Hall marks a season that celebrates excellence in teaching and the integration of faith and reason, Catholic Studies salutes Travaline—physician, deacon and teacher—whose work unites clinic and classroom in service to the Church and the wider community.

Categories: Faith and Service, Health and Medicine