Introduction

This lecture was given on March 18th, 2023, at "The Passion & the Sacred Wounds: An Intellectual Retreat" at the Dominican House of Studies. For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website: thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events Speaker Bio: Fr. Michael O'Connor, O.P.(Dominican House of Studies) was raised in Illinois and did his undergraduate studies at St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota, where he earned a B.A. in music performance and philosophy. He worked as a church musician and as an editor of the St. Michael Hymnal for a few years before entering the Dominican Province of St. Joseph in 2006. He was ordained a priest in 2012 and completed the S.T.L. at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in 2013. Fr. O’Connor was then assigned to Providence College, where he taught courses in Theology and the Development of Western Civilization for three years. In 2016, he moved to Rome to begin doctoral studies (S.T.D.) in moral theology at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, where he completed a dissertation on a Thomistic understanding of the orientation of human sexuality.