Owensboro Catholic Radio proudly presents “The Moral Minute” featuring Fr. Thomas Petri, OP, a priest of the Dominican Order of the Province of St Joseph.
In concert with Fr. Petri, a moral theologian with roots in the Diocese of Owensboro, Owensboro Catholic Radio has produced a series of short lessons on Moral Theology. This series of 1 minute lessons will air daily at 5pm.
Fr. Thomas Petri grew up in Madisonville, KY, where he was a parishioner at Christ the King Parish. He became seminarian for the Diocese of Owensboro after graduating from Madisonville-North Hopkins High School in 1996. Fr. Petri spent one year at Saint Meinrad College Seminary before transferring to the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio where he earned a Bachelors in Philosophy. He then went to Mundelein Seminary in Chicago, where he earned a Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology. During his years as a seminarian, Fr. Petri lived and worked at Christ the King Parish in Madisonville, St. Stephen Cathedral and Sts. Joseph and Paul Parish in Owensboro, and Holy Spirit Parish in Bowling Green.
In 2002, Fr. Petri discerned a vocation to the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans). He taught for a semester at Owensboro Catholic High in 2003 before entering the Dominican Order in the Province of St Joseph on August 8, 2003. He made his solemn profession of vows in November of 2007, was ordained a transitional deacon in January of 2008. And thirteen years after entering the seminary, he was ordained a priest in May of 2009.
Fr. Petri has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. as well as a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from The Catholic University of America. His area of expertise is moral theology and ethics with special interests in St. Thomas Aquinas’s moral theory, the thought of Pope John Paul II, and the Theology of the Body. Fr. Petri has been published in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, Inside the Vatican magazine, and has made contributions to the Bioethics page on www.catholicexchange.com.
Currently, Fr. Petri is an assistant professor of theology at Providence College in Rhode Island. Providence College is the only college in the United States staffed by Dominican friars. Over forty Dominican priests live on campus along with 4,000 young men and women pursuing degrees in various disciplines.