Professor John P. O’Callaghan from the University of Notre Dame is a world expert on Thomas Aquinas. As part of events to celebrate the Jubilee Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis he will speak at the Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin on Aquinas’s perspective on mercy.
“Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.” Thomas Aquinas, Super Matthaeum, Cap. V, l. 2
Aquinas may have lived more than 700 years ago, but according to Professor O’Callaghan: “We Thomists don’t study Aquinas merely because we find his thought historically interesting, although it is. We study it because we think lasting truth is to be found there.”
John O’Callaghan is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and the director of the Jacques Maritain Center. He is a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas. O’Callaghan is the author of the frequently cited article on Thomas Aquinas found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.