O’Connell Presents Gonzaga's Flannery Lecture Feb. 28

SPOKANE, Wash. — Maureen H. O’Connell, Ph.D., associate professor of Christian ethics at La Salle University, will present “From the Upper Room to Pentecost: Toward an Ethic of Racial Mercy” at Gonzaga University’s Flannery Lecture at 6 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 28 in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room (429 E. Boone Ave.). The event is free and open to all.

O’Connell will address how the experiences of white Christians in the United States now, when it comes to crises and conflicts around racialized inequality, are akin to that of Jesus’ disciples who locked themselves away in the upper room in the dark days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

“Many of us desire to be followers of Christ, but are trapped by emotions of fear, shame, guilt, frustration, and anger. Like them, if we desire to cross the threshold of that confining space and move toward the empowering — and multicultural — event of Pentecost, we need to be transformed by God’s mercy,” O'Connell noted. 

O’Connell, who also serves as chair of the department of religion and theology at LaSalle, earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Saint Joseph’s University and a Ph.D. in theological ethics from Boston College. She is the author of two books, “Compassion: Loving Our Neighbor in an Age of Globalization” (2009) and “If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice,” which won the College Theology Book of the Year Award in 2012 and the Catholic Press Association’s first place for books in theology in 2012.

The endowed Flannery Chair of Roman Catholic Theology is made possible through a gift of the late Maud and Milo Flannery of Spokane to further the excellence of theological study and teaching at Gonzaga. Gonzaga invites an outstanding theologian twice a year to deliver the Flannery Lecture.

For more information, please contact Gonzaga’s religious studies department at (509) 313-6782.