Like Soul to Body?: The Church's Developing Understanding of Her Relation to the State – Fr. Brad Elliott, O.P.
Fr. Brad Elliott traces the Church's evolving use of the soul-body metaphor for her relation to the state, purifying it in modern social teaching to affirm the Church as a distinct perfect society ordered to supernatural ends while leavening the temporal order.
This lecture was given on March 24th, 2026, at Cornell University.
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About the Speakers:
Fr. Brad Elliott was raised in Dayton Ohio and studied Jazz percussion at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. After being raised as a Missouri Synod Lutheran he entered the Catholic Church in 2002.
After moving to California, Fr. Brad became an active, performing musician, with a reputation as a highly sought after drummer on the international scene. Working in Los Angeles, CA, he performed and recorded various styles of modern music from Rock to jazz and big band. During his time in Los Angeles he performed and toured extensively with artists such as Annie Stela and Brie Larson.
After ten years as a professional drum set player and feeling a call to commit himself entirely to Jesus Christ, Fr. Brad chose to leave the music industry and become a Dominican friar within Western Dominican Province. After completing theological studies, he was ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ on June, 22nd 2018 at St. Dominic’s Church in San Francisco, CA.
In 2014 Fr. Brad received an MA in philosophy from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley CA. In 2021 he received a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC. In 2025 he completed a Doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC focusing on the role of human craft and participatory governance in the social doctrine of the Church. He is currently a professor of Moral Theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California. He authored the book The Shape of the Artistic Mind published by Pontifex University Press in 2023.
Keywords: Bellarmine, Catholic Social Teaching, Common Good, Giles of Rome, Leo XIII, Perfect Society, Pius XI, Societas Perfecta, Soul-Body Metaphor, Two Swords
