Charles John Dominic Corcoran died unexpectedly at the Priory of St. Dominic and St. Thomas in River Forest, Illinois, on September 19, 1984, of an apparent heart attack. Following funeral services at the Priory, he was buried in All Saints Cemetery, Des Plaines, Illinois, on September 21.

Born in Philadelphia on October 17, 1918, the second of six sons of Patrick and Mary Corcoran, he was baptized Charles Thomas Aquinas. The family had close ties to the Dominicans of St. Joseph's Province in the person of an uncle, Brother Joseph Corcoran.

After completing his primary and secondary education in Philadelphia, he enrolled at Providence College in 1935. Following graduation, summa cum laude, he entered the Dominican Novitiate at St. Rose Priory in Springfield, Kentucky, in 1939 and received the religious name of John Dominic. He was a member of the last novitiate class before the creation of the new Province of St. Albert the Great. Along with six other members of his class, he joined the new Province and began his philosophical and theological studies at the Dominican House of Studies in River Forest, Illinois.

Father Corcoran was ordained to the priesthood on June 18, 1946. He completed the Lectorate in Theology in 1947 and began studies at Catholic University of America for a doctorate in psychology. His intended dissertation was entitled "The Influence of the Heterogeneity for Sampling upon Factorial Patterns." Because of the immense difficulties of

collection and analyzing the statistical portion of his thesis as well as the departure of his director from the faculty, Father Corcoran asked the Provincial to assign him to the Studium Generale in River Forest even though he had not completed the doctorate.

From 1952 to 1965, he was Professor of Psychology in the Studium of the Province. In addition, he joined the faculty of the Spiritual Institute at River Forest as Professor of Spiritual Theology. This association with the summer program of the Institute continued for more than thirty years.

In 1965, Father Corcoran taught at De Paul University. In 1966, he moved to St. Rose Priory in Dubuque, Iowa, as Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Aquinas Institute.

In 1969, the Diffinitorium of St. Albert's Province assigned him as a member of the Theological and Spiritual Renewal Consultants in Chicago. At this time, he took up his long and fruitful association with Catholic Family Life as a respected authority and speaker in the area of family and morality. A year before his death, he had been proposed by Dr. Herbert Ratner to the Holy See for appointment as a member of the Pontifical Commission on the Family.