MEDIA RELEASES

Dominican University’s Siena Center will continue its spring series on The Common Good with a lecture by Kristin Heyer titled “Pursuing the Good We Share in Common” on Thursday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Priory Campus, 7200 W. Division Street, River Forest.

Heyer will offer concrete guidelines for participation in the public domain and explore what constitutes faithful and responsible Christian public witness, citing case studies of social justice enterprises and social service activities.

An assistant professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, Heyer specializes in moral theology. Her work is more than academic; she and her family are active members of Dolores Mission Parish in East Los Angeles, a Jesuit parish nationally recognized for its work on issues ranging from gang violence to justice for immigrants. She is the author of Prophetic and Public: The Social Witness of U.S. Catholicism (2006), which won a best book award from the College Theology Society, and a forthcoming work co-authored with political scientists titled Catholics and Politics: Dynamic Tensions between Faith and Power.

The Siena Center will conclude its examination of The Common Good with a lecture by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne on April 15 at 7:30 p.m. in Lund Auditorium. Dionne, a Georgetown University professor, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, and frequent television commentator, will cover the national political scene with a lecture titled “The Common Good: Will We Ever Hear About It in a Campaign?”

Admission for the April 3 lecture is $10. For more information on Dominican’s Siena Center, please call (708) 714-9105 or visit www.siena.dom.edu.

Dominican University established the Siena Center to engage the critical issues of church and society in the light of faith and scholarship. The center was named for St. Catherine of Siena, a 14th century laywoman who worked for the reform of the church and justice in the world. Her passionate devotion to the central issues of church and society inspires the work of the center in its schedule of lectures, symposia, workshops, retreats, research and seminars.