The Annual McMahon Aquinas Lecture

"How Christianity Made Mercy Compassionate"

John O'Callaghan, PhD

7:00 p.m., Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Rice Commons (Student Center)

In the classical Greek and Roman world, mercy was thought of as the prerogative of power and authority exercised in mitigating punishment.  In this lecture, John O’Callaghan will explain how it was in and through the life of the early Church that mercy became compassionate care for those whom one conceives of as “friends by nature”—any human being whom one encounters as suffering—and consider ways in which our society has returned to the pre-Christian pagan model.

John O'Callaghan is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to authoring Thomistic Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence, he is a past president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association and was appointed a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas by Pope Benedict XVI. 

Originally posted on St. Mary's Philosophy Dept. Website.