Professor Seth Cherney was born and raised in a nominally Jewish family in California. In 1993, at the age of eighteen, he travelled to Rome to study philosophy at the Angelicum (Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas). After meeting John Paul II in the Hall of Paul VI during one of the Pope's monthly Rosaries, Prof. Cherney was baptised at midnight, only feet from the Vatican walls.

Prof. Cherney spent five years with the Communauté Saint Jean in France, longer than that studying philosophy and systematic theology with Opus Dei at Santa Croce (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross) in Rome, and a year in Jerusalem studying bible and archeology at the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem.

Seth briefly taught systematics and moral theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, and continues to work on CatholicLibrary.org amongst other endeavors while raising his family.