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The Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics 2022 Lecture Is December 2

11/15/2022

The Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics will host 2022 Distinguished Lecturer Miguel J. Romero, Th.D., on Friday, Dec. 2. Romero will present, "Disability, Beauty, and Health Care Ethics: An Impractical Theological Proposal?" 

The lecture is scheduled for 3 p.m. in Adorjan Hall, room 142.

During his lecture, Romero will ask: Is there a properly Christian and distinctively Catholic way of thinking, speaking, and arguing about “disability”? Could an answer to that question help us think about the ministry of Catholic health care and the work of Catholic health care ethicists?

In this presentation Romero (1) discusses the concept ‘disability’ in relation to the discursive mores of biomedical ethics; (2) he introduces Aquinas’s way of thinking about the ‘fittingness’ of our natural vulnerability to impairment, illness, and injury amid the unfolding drama of the history of grace; and (3) he concludes with a question, followed by a modest proposal. Does the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ make any practical difference in the way Catholic Christians perform the work of mercy called ‘health care’? If so, what is that difference? 

Romero is associate professor of Religious & Theological Studies at Salve Regina University (Newport, RI). He serves on the board of New Wine, New Wineskins (a forum for early career Catholic moral theologians) and he recently completed his second term on the board of directors for the National Catholic Partnership on Disability.

Romero works in the areas of Catholic moral theology, theological method, and the thought of Thomas Aquinas—focusing on disability, Catholic social teaching, and liberation theology. His writing has appeared in journals like The Thomist, Nova et Vetera, The Journal of Moral Theology, and National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. Romero's forthcoming book is titled Destiny of the Wounded Creature: St. Thomas Aquinas on Disability. 

Additional details and Zoom information can be found on the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics website.