Annual Moreau Lecture
The Annual Moreau Lecture has welcomed leading theological voices to speak at the King's College campus since 1979. Sponsored by the priests and brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross at King's College, the lecture animates theological thought among college faculty, staff, and students.
Past Moreau Lectures
2024: Edward Hahnenberg, Ph.D. "Christian Community in a Fractured World: What We Can Learn from the Synod"
Dr. Edward Hahnenberg is the Breen Chair of Systematic Catholic Theology and the Chair of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the John Carroll University, near Cleveland, OH.
He is the author or co-editor of seven books—including Theodore Hesburgh, CSC: Bridge Builder; Theology for Ministry: An Introduction for Lay Ministers; Awakening Vocation: A Theology of Christian Call; and A Concise Guide to the Documents of Vatican II. Dr. Hahnenberg is a past delegate to the U.S. Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue and former theological consultant to the U.S. Bishops’ Subcommittee on Lay Ministry in its preparation of the document "Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord".
2023: Jean Porter, Ph.D., "Natural Law and Natural Rights: The Medieval Origins of a Modern Idea"
Dr. Jean Porter is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame where she has taught since 1990. Dr. Porter is the author of numerous articles and six books on the history of the Christian moral tradition and its contemporary relevance, including The Perfection of Desire: Habit, Reason, and Virtue in Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (Marquette University Press, 2018), Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective (Eerdmans, 2016), and Ministers of the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority (Eerdmans, 2011), which won a Catholic Press Association Book Award in 2011.
Dr. Porter studied philosophy at the University of Texas, theology at the Weston School of Theology at Boston College, and earned her doctoral degree in theology at Yale University. In 2012, Dr. Porter was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She holds expertise in the moral theology of Aquinas and his scholastic predecessors and contemporaries.
Watch the 2023 Moreau Lecture here.
2022: Nicole Flores, Ph.D., "Somos Familia: Family as a Metaphor for the Common Good"
Dr. Nichole M. Flores is an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia. She researches the constructive contributions of Catholic and Latinx theologies to notions of justice and aesthetics in public life. Her research in practical ethics addresses issues of politics, migration, family, gender, economics (labor and consumption), race, ethnicity, and ecology. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Latinx religion, Catholic theology and ethics, religion and democracy, and bioethics.
Flores is author of The Aesthetics of Solidarity: Our Lady of Guadalupe and American Democracy (Georgetown University Press, 2021). She has also published essays in the Journal of Religious Ethics, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and Modern Theology among other academic journals and edited book volumes. She is a contributing author on the masthead at America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture.
In 2015, Dr. Flores was honored with the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award for best essay in academic theology by a junior scholar from the Catholic Theological Society of America. A native of Denver, Colorado, Flores earned an A.B. in government from Smith College, an M.Div. from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in theological ethics from Boston College.
