Christopher F. Mooney, S.J., Lecture: Christian ethics in response to the horror of our times | Press Releases

Dr. Paula Cooey, the Margaret Weyerhaeuser Harmon Professor of Religion at Macalester College in Minnesota, will be the 14th annual Christopher F. Mooney, S.J., Lecturer on Church, Religion and Society at Fairfield University, on Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 8 p.m. in the Dolan School of Business Dining Room. She will speak on "Christian Ethics: Desiring Deeply Enough and Dissenting Clearly Enough in Response to the Horror of Our Times." The event, sponsored by the Center for Catholic Studies, is free and the public is welcome.

Dr. Cooey's research specializes in what it means to understand religion by examining religious life and practice in contexts of conflict, disruption, and assimilation, comparatively with other religious traditions and with secularism; her major project on this subject is tentatively titled "Getting Religion."

She has written several books and articles; her latest book "Willing the Good: Jesus, Dissent, & Desire," published by Augsburg Fortress Press, was released summer, 2006. Her other writings include "Religious Imagination and the Body," "Fiddling while Rome burns: The place of academic theology in the study of religion," and "Women's Religious Conversions on Death Row: Theorizing Religion and State"

Dr. Cooey teaches courses in the history of Christian traditions, Christianity and Culture, and theory of religion, including "Jesus, Dissent, & Desire," "Love & Death," "Work & Ethics Across Traditions," "The Sacred & the Sword," "Dissent, Reform, & Expansion in the Sixteenth Century," and "Contemporary Christian Thought."

The Christopher F. Mooney, S.J. lecture is an annual event honoring Fr. Mooney, a former Fairfield University academic vice president who died in 1993. He was the author of eight books, including "Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ," which received the National Catholic Book Award in 1966, and "Public Virtue: Law and the Social Character of Religion," which won the 1987 national award of Alpha Sigma Nu. Before joining the Fairfield faculty, he was assistant dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the president of Woodstock College.

For more information, please contact Jocelyn Collen, (203) 254-4000 ext. 3415 or jcollen@mail.fairfield.edu