Human Flourishing And Disability: A Thomistic Approach | Prof. Matthew Shea

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Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given on September 21st, 2023, at Saint Vincent College. For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events About the Speaker: Matthew Shea is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He specializes in moral philosophy and bioethics, with additional interests in philosophy of religion and epistemology. Prior to joining Franciscan, he did his undergraduate studies at Boston College, received a PhD in philosophy from Saint Louis University, completed a fellowship in clinical health care ethics at UCLA, and taught at the University of Scranton.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Thomistic Institute podcast.
0:05.9	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.2	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:18.2	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.6	Thomisticinstitute.org. All right. Thank you, Sophie. I want to start by thanking the
0:29.2	students of the Ti chapter here at St. Vincent's for the invitation to be here with you today.
0:34.4	Everybody can hear me? Okay, great. The title of my talk tonight is human flourishing and
0:40.0	disability, a tommistic approach. I'm going to start with a story which comes to us from the well-known
0:46.2	20th century priest and theologian Henry Nowan. During the last decade of his life, Nowan lived at the L Larsh Daybreak community in Canada, where he was the pastor.
0:57.8	If you haven't heard of Larsh, it's an international organization that exists to welcome, serve, and empower those with disabilities
1:04.6	by forming communities where disabled and non-disabled persons share a home in a common life.
1:12.6	In Nauan's beautiful and moving book, Adam, God's Beloved, which was the last book he wrote in the last year of his life,
1:17.8	he tells the tale of Adam, a disabled man with whom he lived at Larch. Adam was severely, cognitively,
1:25.0	and physically disabled. He was never able to speak and never
1:28.7	said a word his whole life. He was an epileptic who had daily seizures and was confined to a wheelchair
1:35.3	most of the time. He was completely dependent on others and needed assistance with all of his day-to-day
1:40.5	activities. When Adam was institutionalized in his early adulthood, he struggled
1:45.8	and suffered greatly. But when he moved into the Larsh home, he thrived. He was accompanied by
1:51.9	others in all of his daily activities, in part because there are very few things he could do himself,
1:57.2	and in part because community is what Lars is all about.
2:01.6	In the book, Nowin describes how Adam had a transformative effect on the people who knew him,
2:07.6	especially the way he broke down their internal barriers to love, self-acceptance, and inner peace.
	...

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