Lisa Sowle Cahill is an American ethicist, and J. Donald Monan Professor at Boston College. [1] She first became known in the 1980s with her studies on gender and sexual ethics, but now she has extended her work to social and global ethics. Lisa Sowle Cahill's work focuses on an attempt to discuss the complexity of moral issues while lowering tensions about theological disagreements between the Church and society. [2]
In 1970, Cahill received a B.A. in theology from Santa Clara University. She then went on to receive her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She completed her dissertation in 1976 under the guidance of James Gustafson. James Gustafson introduced her to Richard McCormick SJ and Father Charles Curran, both of whom have influenced her own career in moral theology. She has taught at Boston College since 1976 and has been a visiting scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, and a visiting professor of Catholic theology at Yale University. [3]
Sometimes called a feminist theologian and sometimes a bioethicist, Cahill has published over two hundred articles and has worked on as many as fifteen books. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2008 she was awarded the John Courtney Murray Award by the Catholic Theological Society of America. [4]
Lisa Sowle Cahill.
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.
Christian ethics, also known as moral theology, is a multi-faceted ethical system. It is a virtue ethic, which focuses on building moral character, and a deontological ethic which emphasizes duty. It also incorporates natural law ethics, which is built on the belief that it is the very nature of humans – created in the image of God and capable of morality, cooperation, rationality, discernment and so on – that informs how life should be lived, and that awareness of sin does not require special revelation. Other aspects of Christian ethics, represented by movements such as the social Gospel and liberation theology, may be combined into a fourth area sometimes called prophetic ethics.
Janet Elizabeth Smith is an American classicist and philosopher, and former professor of moral theology at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan.
Nancey Murphy is an American philosopher and theologian who is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University in 1973, the Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1980, and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (theology) in 1987.
In religion and ethics, the sanctity of life, sometimes described as the inviolability of life, is a principle of implied protection regarding aspects of sentient life that are said to be holy, sacred, or otherwise of such value that they are not to be violated. This can be applied to humans, animals or micro-organisms; for instance, in religions that practice Ahimsa, both are seen as holy and worthy of life. Sanctity of life sits at the centre of debate over abortion and euthanasia.
William E. May was an American theologian who was the Michael J. McGivney Emeritus Professor of Moral Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC where he taught from 1991 to 2008.
Kevin T. Kelly was a British Roman Catholic priest and moral theologian.
Catholic moral theology is a major category of doctrine in the Catholic Church, equivalent to a religious ethics. Moral theology encompasses Catholic social teaching, Catholic medical ethics, sexual ethics, and various doctrines on individual moral virtue and moral theory. It can be distinguished as dealing with "how one is to act", in contrast to dogmatic theology which proposes "what one is to believe".
Richard A. McCormick was a leading liberal Catholic moral theologian who reshaped Catholic thought in the United States. He wrote many journal articles on Catholic social teachings and moral theory. He was an expert in Catholic medical ethics and for many years wrote the "Notes on Moral Theology" column in Theological Studies. He was "particularly articulate" among the five moral theologians who in 1964 at the Kennedy Compound crafted a political position for the Kennedy clan that would permit abortion in law.
Margaret A. Farley is an American religious sister and a member of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy. She was Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale University Divinity School, where she taught Christian ethics from 1971 to 2007. Farley is the first woman appointed to serve full-time on the Yale School board, along with Henri Nouwen as its first Catholic faculty members. She is a past president of Catholic Theological Society of America.
Robert Ellsberg is an American religious publisher and author who is the editor-in-chief and publisher of Orbis Books, the publishing arm of Maryknoll.
Georges Henri Tavard, AA was an ordained member of the Augustinians of the Assumption. He lectured extensively in the areas of historical theology, ecumenism, and spirituality.
Bernard Häring, CSsR was a German moral theologian and a Redemptorist priest in the Catholic Church.
James M. Gustafson was an American theological ethicist. He received an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Theology at Uppsala University in 1985. He has held teaching posts at Yale Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies (1955–1972), the University of Chicago as professor of theological ethics in the Divinity School (1972–1988), and Emory University as the Henry R. Luce Professor of Humanities and Comparative Studies. He retired in 1998 after 43 years of teaching and research, after being Woodruff Professor of Comparative Studies and of Religion in the Emory College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award for "creative and lasting contributions to the field of Christian ethics" on January 7, 2011, at the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics in New Orleans.
Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J. is a Jesuit priest, professor, author, and moral theologian currently serving as the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is a consultant to the Jesuit Refugee Service and is the recipient of the John Courtney Murray Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America in 1998.
James F. Keenan is a moral theologian, bioethicist, writer, and the Canisius Professor of theology at Boston College.
Kenneth R. Himes is an American Roman Catholic theologian, currently teaching at Boston College. His most recent book is the coedited work, with Conor M. Kelly, Poverty: Responding Like Jesus.
Margaret Urban Walker is an American philosopher and academic who is the Donald J. Schuenke Chair Emerita in Philosophy at Marquette University. Before her appointment at Marquette, she was the Lincoln Professor of Ethics at Arizona State University, and before that she was at Fordham University. She has also previously held visiting appointments at Washington University in St. Louis, University of South Florida, and Catholic University of Leuven.
Rudolf Allers was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and academic.
Mary Shawn Copeland, known professionally as M. Shawn Copeland, is a retired American womanist and Black Catholic theologian, and a former religious sister. She is professor emerita of systematic theology at Boston College and is known for her work in theological anthropology, political theology, and African American Catholicism.