Providence, RI--Rev. Thomas F. O'Meara, O.P., a scholar on St. Thomas Aquinas and in the history of modern German Catholic theology, will present the annual St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture on Thursday, January 31, 2008at 3:30 p.m. in Aquinas Lounge at Providence College.

His lecture, "New Planets, Extraterrestrials, and Thomas Aquinas' Theology," will be followed by a response from College President Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P.

All members of the College community and the public are invited to attend the program, which will conclude with light refreshments in the adjacent Center for Catholic and Dominican Studies. The center is sponsoring the lecture in honor of the feast day of Aquinas, which is January 28.

A Dominican Friar, priest, philosopher, and theologian, Aquinas lived from 1225-1274. The patron of Catholic schools, he is hailed as the Angelic Doctor of the Church.

Father O'Meara, a member of the Central Dominican Province of St. Albert the Great in Chicago, is the Joseph McCarthy Professor at Boston College. He is the William K. Warren Professor Emeritus of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, where he taught for more than 20 years. He also has taught at the Aquinas Institute, St. Joseph's Institute of Theology in South Africa, Loyola University in Chicago, and the University of San Diego.

Father O'Meara is the author of several books, including Thomas Aquinas, Theologian (University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), The Theology of Ministry (Paulist Press, 1999), and God in the World: A Guide to Karl Rahner's Theology (Michael Glazier, 2007). He has studied with renowned theologian Rev. Karl Rahner, S.J., at the University of Munich.

--30--