Cambridge MA Saturday March 13 As you know I generally leave to others the hottest issues of the day preferring to offer for your reflections comments on less noticed topics that captivate me at least most recently the relevance of the medieval Hindu poet saints Antal and Tirumalisai Piran to

Cambridge MA I rsquo ve told you about my seminar on Tamil love poetry most of it religious in south India In my last installment I told you of Tirumalisai Piran whose two great poems are both philosophical and religious This time I will introduce you to Antal the one female poet among the

Cambridge MA At first I was secretly pleased this past week to come across the Newsweek article entitled ldquo Harvard rsquo s Crisis of Faith Can a secular university embrace religion without sacrificing its soul rdquo The article by Lisa Miller religion editor proposed that Harvard rsquo

Cambridge MA One of the benefits of blogging regularly for America is that I can write what I want including pieces under somewhat arcane headings such as the one above a continuation of my series on my seminar this semester on devotional poetry in the south Indian Tamil language nbsp nbsp n

Cambridge MA We just finished the second week of the semester at Harvard and things are settling down I am team-teaching a first year Master of Divinity course ldquo Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion rdquo which raises some interesting questions about whether and where academic s

Cambridge MA I have never had great sympathy for Pat Robertson and his evangelical slant on the Gospel and Christian life In part it is a matter of cultural differences mdash I am a Jesuit in Cambridge at Harvard after all mdash and also a matter of what seems to be a rather different exp

Cambridge MA Many readers will know that Professor Mary Daly pioneering brilliant and controversial feminist theologian died last week at age 81 nbsp See Jim Martin s note on this too Professor Daly taught for some 30 years at Boston College and so she was my colleague there from 1984 whe

Cambridge MA I blog for America under the ldquo In All Things rdquo title not ldquo The Good Word rdquo but since I preach most Sundays I am occasionally tempted to cross the line and comment on the Sunday readings Perhaps it is auspicious to begin 2010 this way so here is a reflection on

Cambridge MA Some of you may remember that I marked the Triduum 2009 by drawing on Paramahamsa Yogananda rsquo s The Second Coming of Christ reflecting on how he explained the meaning of Holy Thursday Good Friday and the Resurrection Take a look My point was in part that we do well to listen

Cambridge MA In November Vincent Nichols the Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops rsquo Conference of England and Wales visited the great Hindu temple in the Neasden section of London As the Westminster website explains ldquo the visit took place on Saturday 21 No