Fr. Michael Dodds, OP, is completing a sabbatical year, which included visits to the Dominicans at Blessed Sacrament Priory in Seattle; Blackfriars Hall in Oxford, England; the Albertinum in Fribourg, Switzerland, and San Esteban Priory in Salamanca, Spain.
Though Seattle was having one of its snowiest winters in many years, he braved the blizzards to visit family and give three lectures. He spoke to the G. K. Chesterton Society on "Evolution's Causal Chain: Could Chesterton Be the Missing Link?" At Blessed Sacrament Parish, he talked on "Minds, Brains, and Human Wholeness," and at St. Joseph's Parish in Issaquah, he gave an evening reflection on "Finding Christ in Advent." A version of the Blessed Sacrament talk was published as "Hylomorphism and Human Wholeness: Perspectives on the Mind-Brain Problem" (Theology and Science 7 (2009): 141-62).
The snows continued at Oxford, but didn't keep him and his sister, Teresa, from seeing the sites of the city. He stayed there from January to April and was invited to give two lectures, titled "Aquinas, God and Time," and "Unlocking Divine Causality: Aquinas, Contemporary Science, and Divine Action." The latter was published in Angelicum 86 (2009): 67-87.
In Fribourg and Salamanca (where all was sunny and mild), he continued working on his basic academic project for the year, a book tentatively titled, "Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas," which he hopes to have ready for publication by the fall.
