On Thursday, March 31, Father J. Bryan Hehir will present his lecture "The Iraq Debate: A Religious Moral Perspective" as part of The Most Reverend Bishop John McCarthy Lecture Series on the Catholic Church in the 21st Century. Drawing on his personal and professional experience — including 19 years assigned to the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, D.C., where he held key positions involving issues of peace, war, military ethics and social justice — Hehir has stated that conflicts in Kosovo and Afghanistan qualify as "just wars." He is expected to discuss his view, expressed in a 2002 paper entitled "The Unnecessary War," that the war in Iraq fails a moral test of necessity. As a result, it does not meet the "last available resort criterion" of the just war position. Previously, Hehir led Catholic Charities USA and was the first Roman Catholic to serve as dean of the Harvard Divinity School.



• Who: Father J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the

Practice of Religion and Public Life, Harvard University

• What: "The Iraq Debate: A Religious Moral Perspective"

• When: 5–6:30 p.m., Thursday, March 31

• Where: Jones Auditorium, Robert & Pearle Ragsdale Center

Reception immediately following.