James F. Keenan, S.J., is the Canisius Chair, Director of the Jesuit Institute and Vice Provost of Global Engagement at Boston College. A Jesuit priest since 1982, he received a licentiate and a doctorate from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He has edited or written over 25 books and published over 400 essays, articles, and reviews worldwide. In 2003 he founded Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church (CTEWC) an international network of ethicists and subsequently hosted three international and six regional conferences. Today CTEWC has its own book series and is a live network of over 1000 Catholic ethicists (www.catholicethics.com). In 2015, he wrote University Ethics: How Colleges Can Build and Benefit from a Culture of Ethics (Rowman and Littlefield) and in 2022, A History of Catholic Theological Ethics (Paulist Press). In 2023 Georgetown University Press, will publish Preparing for the Moral Life: The Martin D’Arcy Memorial Lectures. In 2019 he received the John Courtney Murray Lifetime Achievement Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America and from 2020-2021, he was President of the Society of Christian Ethics.
I think that right now in the United States, our biggest problem is we keep asking ourselves the same question. What should I do? What should I do? What should I do? And we’re doing it in our rooms by ourselves. And enough of that. We should be talking to one another. It’s not what will I do, or should do, but what should we