Sept. 16, 2013 - Theologian Dr. Kathryn Getek Soltis will deliver the Peace and Justice Center’s Annual Barbara Sabol Memorial Lecture at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 26, in the Burke Auditorium at King’s College. Titled "Visiting the Prisoner: Theological-Ethical Reflections on a Forgotten Place,” the lecture will be open to the public free of charge. The program is co-sponsored by the McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility and Peace and Justice Center of Wilkes-Barre.

Drawing on varying conceptions of justice and personal experience of teaching and ministering in prisons, Getek Soltis’s lecture will identify a need for conversion in how society perceives and relates to the incarcerated and former prisoners.

Engaging the parable of the Good Samaritan, she calls for a shift in how a person defines goodness and offers a new vision of how the prison serves justice, while questioning when the public uses incarceration, why, and upon whom.

Getek Soltis is assistant professor of Christian ethics and Director of the Center for Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University.  She earned her doctorate at Boston College in theological ethics, and served as Catholic Chaplain at Suffolk County House of Correction in Boston from 2006-2008.

Getek Soltis’s research interests involve various issues within the fields of theological ethics, Catholic social teaching, and Catholic moral theology.  In particular, her work pursues questions of virtue ethics as it applies to justice, punishment, and prisons.

The Barbara Sabol Memorial Lecture is named for a founding member of the Peace and Justice Center who died in 1997. The Peace and Justice Center is Northeastern Pennsylvania’s interfaith resource center for issues of peace and justice.

The Burke Auditorium is located in the William G. McGowan School of Business on North River Street. Parking will be available in on-campus lots. Additional information is available at the websites www.peaceandjusticecenter.com and  http://departments.kings.edu/mcgowanethicscenter/. For more information, please contact Dr. Bernard Prusak, director, McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, at 208-5900, ext. 5689.

King’s College is a Catholic College sponsored by the Congregation of Holy Cross.

Dr. Kathryn Getek Soltis

Dr. Kathryn Getek Soltis