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Cambridge, MA. For readers who want more than the written word: I was honored to give the Loyola Lecture at Le Moyne College in Syracuse last week, on March 14, and it has already been posted at the college website. You can find the video here.

I am introduced by Dr. Fred Glennon, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and the opening prayer is offered by Fr Bill Dolan, Director of Campus Ministry and Rector of the Jesuit Community.

My theme, in brief, is that the great opening of the Church to other religions in the Council remains open, even if many religious and cultural factors have led to hesitation and caution in the Church. It was a fine occasion, and I enjoyed particularly the questions and comments at the end.

 

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David Pasinski
12 years ago
i encourage readers to view the entire lecture. Father Clooney spends a good deal of time explaining his new book on a comparison of the Song of Songs with a Hindu text as an illustration of some converging spiriutal appreciation of human love as a celebration and metaphor for the divine, if I understood him properly.

As I mentioned in another post, I am not sure I would be as sanguine as he appeared to be about how the Vatican reacts to such interreligious comparisons or interactions. I think that that the treatment of his colleague, Jacques Dupuis, SJ, some years ago (also a speaker at this lecture) was more than the Vatican's antithesis to his thesis with with a synthesis yet forming. Likewise for the treatment of Anthony DiMello and Tissa Balasuriya.

I appreciate Father Clooney's scholarsahip and insights, but do not share as much confidence in the statemnts coming from the holy Office.
David Pasinski
12 years ago
RE: comments by FXC

I appreciate the dialogue.
Any comment on my earlier entry? Did I understand you correctly and am I being fair about your "take" on the process? What did you think of the questions about the individuals mentioned? Would you say that the mood interreligiously is growing more positive with the shifting demographics of Catholicism or more wary? The latest consistory did not seem promising, but perhaps I am taking the short view....

Response: Mr Pasinski, I think we need to take a fairly sober and wide-spectrum perspective, and also interpret fairly and charitably what others are saying, as much as possible. Hence my point, in the lecture, that the changes in the Church are real - and irreversible - as the world likewise changes dramatically. Concerns and hesitations are real too, so it is not surprising that some pull back and step away from dialogue, openness, etc., or that some respond with a stiff insistence on the Truth and Doctrine. But it need not be thought that one group in the Church is open and another group concerned - we can be both, and insist that concern for the Church is entirely compatible with more and not less openness. We have to be optimistic in the long run, for God's plans for the world will not be thwarted, and are coming to fruition. FXC
David Pasinski
12 years ago
Thank you, Father Clooney, for your commentary.  that is what I understood you to say, I think. It seems to reflect a Teillardian world-view which I share in my better moments, but often feel discouraged with the apparent parochialism of many pronouncements that seem to emanate from the centers of Christendom (even as they shift East and South) and realize that the "church" of 2050 will be far, far different from today in aspects we can't imagine. Reference Billy Collins poem "Nostalgia").

 Naturally, my own own myopia is most open to critique also.

Thanks again for yourgood scholarship and and a fine lecture and your response.

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