Margaret Farley

"Forgiveness in the Service of Justice"
Lecture by Margaret Farley
Wednesday, September 11, 7:30 p.m.
Gorecki 204, College of Saint Benedict

This lecture addressed key societal and interpersonal issues regarding the meaning and appropriateness of "forgiving" and "being-forgiven." Against backgrounds of violence, oppression, fractured relationships, the 21^st century has seen unprecedented concern for these issues. They have been analyzed by philosophers and theologians, political theorists and psychologists. This lecture will focus on the relation between forgiveness and justice, resistance, and love. Taking into account both secular and religious understandings, Dr. Farley probed these questions as they emerge in particular within a Christian perspective.

Margaret Farley is Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale University Divinity School. She is the author or co-editor of seven books, including a new revised edition of Personal Commitments: Beginning, Keeping, Changing; but also Compassionate Respect; and Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. She has published more than 100 articles and chapters of books on topics of ethical methodology, medical ethics, sexual ethics, social ethics, historical theological ethics, ethics and spirituality, and HIV/AIDS. She is currently also Co-director of the All-Africa Conference: Sister to Sister, an organization that facilitates the work of women in sub-Saharan Africa responding to the AIDS Pandemic. She has lectured widely not only in the U.S. but in Southeast Asia, Western Europe, and Africa.

Professor Farley is the recipient of twelve honorary degrees and a variety of fellowships and awards, including the 1992 John Courtney Murray Award for Excellence in Theology, and the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for her book, Just Love. She has served on numerous editorial and advisory boards and national ethics committees. She was a founding member of Yale-New Haven Hospital's Bioethics Committee; and she served for eight years as Co-director of the Yale University Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center. She is past president of both the Society of Christian Ethics and the Catholic Theological Society of America.

Margaret Farley is a member of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.

View her lecture.