Reverend Thomas V. Berg, Ph. D.
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Director of Seminarian Admissions, Professor of Moral TheologyBiography
Rev. Thomas V. Berg is a Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of New York. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 15, 1965. He was a member of the Legionaries of Christ from 1986 to 2009, and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood on January 1, 2000. He pursued his B.A. in Spanish Language and Literature at Marquette University (1983-86). He received an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Wesleyan University in 1997, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rome’s Pontifical University Regina Apostolorum in 1999. He was incardinated into the Archdiocese of New York in May of 2014. He currently serves as Vice Rector and professor of moral theology. He served as Director of Seminarian Admissions from 2013-2019. In addition to his current focus on fundamental moral theology, his areas of specialization include natural law theory, medical ethics, and philosophical and theological anthropology. In 1998 he founded the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, a Catholic think-tank dedicated to fundamental research on the Western moral tradition. The institute continued under his direction until its eventual dissolution in 2010. He has served by appointment on both the ethics committee of New York’s Empire State Stem Cell Board, and the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law. He has published or been quoted in Crisis Magazine, the National Catholic Register, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post. He has co-edited a volume of essays on the topic of human embryo adoption entitled Human Embryo Adoption: Biotechnology, Marriage, and the Right to Life. Most recently, he has authored his first book titled Hurting in the Church: A Way Forward for Wounded Catholics.
Ph.D., Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, Rome
EducationPh.L., Gregorian University, Rome
M.A., Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
Curriculum Vitae
Most Recent Scholarship
With Kevin Flannery, SJ “Amoris Laeitia, Pastoral Discernment, and Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera, 16: 1 (2018), 81-111.
“A Revised Analysis of the ‘Phoenix Abortion Case’ and a Critique of NNL Intentionality,” Nova et Vetera, 15: 2 (2017), 365-396.
"Amoris Laetitia and 'Pastoral Discernment': Areas of Concern
FCS Quarterly, Spring/Summer 2017.Most Recent Book
Hurting in the Church: A Way Forward for Wounded Catholic. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Vistitor, 2017.
(Click Here for Link to Amazon page)
Recent Conference PresentationsOctober 3, 2019. Scranton, PA. “Prevention, Healing and Reconciliation.” Sponsored by the Healing, Reconciliation, and Hope Task Force of the University of Scranton.
June 4, 2018. New Orleans, LA. “Mercy in Action, Redemptive Suffering.” To participants at the 13th annual Child and Youth Protection Catholic Leadership Conference.
Current Projects and Research Interests
Natural law in Aquinas; ‘New Natural Law Theory’ and its critics; Amoris Laetitia, the indissolubility of marriage & pastoral ministry to the divorced and civilly remarried; pastoral ministry to victims of clergy sexual abuse. I continue to work on a textbook in fundamental moral theology, and on a handbook— vademecum—for confessors.
