Francis X. Clooney

This autobiography traces Francis X. Clooney's intellectual and spiritual journey from middle-class American Catholicism to a lifelong study of Hinduism. It explains how he came to fashion comparative theology as a way of learning interreligiously that is boldly intellectual and deeply personal and practical, lived out in intersections of his roles as theologian and scholar of Hinduism, as professor and Catholic priest, and over the tumultuous decades from the 1960s until now, in his role as Parkman Professor of Divinity, Harvard University.Clooney sheds fresh and realistic light on the idea and ideal of scholar-practitioner, since his wide learning, Christian and Hindu, is grounded in his Catholic and Jesuit commitments, as well as in a commensurate learning with respect to several Hindu traditions that are most accessible to scholars willing to learn empathetically and in a participatory manner.What Clooney has learnt and written must be understood in terms of a love of Christ deeply informed by a Hindu instinct for loving God without reserve. A fundamental spiritual disposition — intuitions of God present everywhere — has energized his work over his long career, love giving direction and body to his professional academic work.

This autobiography traces Francis X. Clooney's intellectual and spiritual journey from middle-class American Catholicism to a lifelong study of Hinduism. It explains how he came to fashion comparative theology as a way of learning interreligiously that is boldly intellectual and deeply personal and practical, lived out in intersections of his roles as theologian and scholar of Hinduism, as professor and Catholic priest, and over the tumultuous decades from the 1960s until now, in his role as Parkman Professor of Divinity, Harvard University.Clooney sheds fresh and realistic light on the idea and ideal of scholar-practitioner, since his wide learning, Christian and Hindu, is grounded in his Catholic and Jesuit commitments, as well as in a commensurate learning with respect to several Hindu traditions that are most accessible to scholars willing to learn empathetically and in a participatory manner.What Clooney has learnt and written must be understood in terms of a love of Christ deeply informed by a Hindu instinct for loving God without reserve. A fundamental spiritual disposition — intuitions of God present everywhere — has energized his work over his long career, love giving direction and body to his professional academic work.

We live in an era of unprecedented growth in knowledge. Never before has there been so great an availability of and access to information in both print and online. Yet as opportunities to educate ourselves have greatly increased, our time for reading has significantly diminished. And when we do read, we rarely have the patience to read in the slow, sustained fashion that great books require if we are to be truly transformed by them. In Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics, renowned Harvard Divinity School professor Francis Clooney argues that our increasing inability to read in a concerted manner is particularly notable in the realm of religion, where the proliferation of information detracts from the learning of practices that require slow and patient reading. Although awareness of the world’s many religions is at an all-time high, deep knowledge of the various traditions has suffered. Clooney challenges this trend by considering six classic Hindu and Christian texts dealing with ritual and law, catechesis and doctrine, and devotion and religious participation, showing how, in distinctive ways, such texts instruct, teach truth, and draw willing readers to participate in the realities they are learning. Through readings of these seminal scriptural and theological texts, he reveals the rewards of a more spiritually transformative mode of reading—and how individuals and communities can achieve it.

In Divine Mother, Blessed Mother, Francis X. Clooney, S.J., a scholar of Hinduism as well as a Catholic priest and theologian, offers the first full-length comparative study of Hindu goddesses and the Virgin Mary. Clooney begins by looking at three specific goddesses as they are presented and addressed in religiously and theologically rich hymns from the Sanskrit and Tamil traditions: Nullri Laksmi, the eternal consort of Lord Visnu and life-giver to Him and all the world; the great Goddess Devi, in whom the world and gods too exist and flourish; and the lovely Tamil Goddess Apirnullami, who illumines the inmost mind and heart. Clooney then shows how Goddess traditions can be drawn into fruitful conversation with Christian tradition, taking a fresh look at the veneration and theology of Mary, the Mother of Jesus and Mother of God, as displayed in three famous Marian hymns from the Greek, Latin, and Tamil traditions. The book is enriched by the inclusion of fresh and full translations of all of the hymns, including two translated here for the first time. Analyzing these six Hindu and Christian hymns, Clooney examines such questions as: How have Hindu theologians made room for a feminine divine alongside the masculine--and why? How has Christian thinking about divine gender differed from Hindu thinking? What might contemporary feminists learn from the goddess traditions of India? How might the study of Hindu goddesses affect Christian thinking about God and Mary? This is a book to read for its insights into the nature of gender and the divine, for the power of the hymns themselves, and for the sake of a religious adventure, an encounter with three Goddess traditions and Mary seen in a new light.

His Hiding Place is Darkness explores the uncertainties of faith and love in a pluralistic age. In keeping with his conviction that studying multiple religious traditions intensifies rather than attenuates religious devotion, Francis Clooney's latest work of comparative theology seeks a way beyond today's religious and interreligious uncertainty by pairing a fresh reading of the absence of the beloved in the Biblical Song of Songs with a pioneering study of the same theme in the Holy Word of Mouth (9th century CE), a classic of Hindu mystical poetry rarely studied in the West. Remarkably, the pairing of these texts is grounded not in a general theory of religion, but in an engagement with two unexpected sources: the theopoetics, theodramatics, and theology of the 20th-century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the intensely perceived and written poetry of Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham. How we read and write on religious matters is transformed by this rare combination of voices in what is surely a unique and important contribution to comparative studies and religious hermeneutics.

His Hiding Place is Darkness explores the uncertainties of faith and love in a pluralistic age. In keeping with his conviction that studying multiple religious traditions intensifies rather than attenuates religious devotion, Francis Clooney's latest work of comparative theology seeks a way beyond today's religious and interreligious uncertainty by pairing a fresh reading of the absence of the beloved in the Biblical Song of Songs with a pioneering study of the same theme in the Holy Word of Mouth (9th century CE), a classic of Hindu mystical poetry rarely studied in the West. Remarkably, the pairing of these texts is grounded not in a general theory of religion, but in an engagement with two unexpected sources: the theopoetics, theodramatics, and theology of the 20th-century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the intensely perceived and written poetry of Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham. How we read and write on religious matters is transformed by this rare combination of voices in what is surely a unique and important contribution to comparative studies and religious hermeneutics.

Drawing upon the author’s three decades of work in comparative theology, this is a pertinent and comprehensive introduction to the field, which offers a clear guide to the reader, enabling them to engage in comparative study. The author has three decades of experience of work in the field of comparative theology and is ideally placed to write this bookToday’s increasing religious diversity makes this a pertinent and timely publicationUnique in the depth of its introduction and explanation of the discipline of ‘comparative theology’Provides examples of how comparative theology works in the new global context of human religiosityDraws on examples specific to Hindu-Christian studies to show how it is possible to understand more deeply the wider diversity around us.Clearly guides the reader, enabling them to engage in comparative study

Drawing upon the author’s three decades of work in comparative theology, this is a pertinent and comprehensive introduction to the field, which offers a clear guide to the reader, enabling them to engage in comparative study. The author has three decades of experience of work in the field of comparative theology and is ideally placed to write this bookToday’s increasing religious diversity makes this a pertinent and timely publicationUnique in the depth of its introduction and explanation of the discipline of ‘comparative theology’Provides examples of how comparative theology works in the new global context of human religiosityDraws on examples specific to Hindu-Christian studies to show how it is possible to understand more deeply the wider diversity around us.Clearly guides the reader, enabling them to engage in comparative study

Beyond Compare is a remarkable work that offers a commentary on spiritual learning for the twenty-first century rooted in two classic texts from the Hindu and Christian traditions: the Essence of the Three Auspicious Mysteries by r Ved nta De ika and Treatise on the Love of God by St. Francis de Sales. In his commentary, Clooney achieves multiple goals-the book is a contribution to Christian spiritual theology, highlighting for today the beautiful insights into love by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1623), Doctor of the Church. At the same time it points out how even in our world of many religious paths, we can recover and deepen the ancient tradition of loving surrender into God's hands by opening ourselves to the wisdom of India and one of Hindu India's most famous traditions of loving God, explained to us by the south Indian Hindu theologian r Ved nta De ika (1268-1369). Clooney goes further, offering a comparative study of these classic works in which he self-consciously writes about the process of reading the two works and the impact this approach has on the reader. The good advice found through this deep engagement with these texts offers a deeper insight into how we can most fruitfully and spiritually think about religious pluralism in the 21st century, remaining open in heart and mind while loyal still to our own tradition. Not merely a book about loving surrender to God, Beyond Compare offers us the opportunity to advance along that path ourselves, learning from the wisdom of St. Francis de Sales and r Ved nta De ika, meditating on their two paths together, deepening our own love and willingness to surrender in love to God.

The Virgin Mary has long been the object of both devotional and scholarly interest, and recent years have seen a proliferation of studies on Hindu goddess-worship traditions. Despite the parallels between the two, however, no one has yet undertaken a book-length comparison of these traditions. In Divine Mother, Blessed Mother, Francis Clooney offers the first extended comparative study of Hindu goddesses and the Virgin Mary. Clooney is almost unique in the field of Hindu studies as a Christian theologian with the linguistic and philosophical expertise necessary to produce sophisticated comparative analyses. Building on his previous work in comparative theology, he sheds new light not only on these individual traditions but also on the nature of gender and the divine.

Hindu God, Christian God offers an in-depth study of key themes common to the Hindu and Christian religious traditions. It redefines how we think about Hinduism, comparative study, and Christian theology. This book offers a bold new look at how the two traditions encounter one another, and how comparisons can be made between the two. Redefining theology as an interreligious, comparative, dialogical, and confessional practice open to people of all traditions, it invites not only Hindus and Christians, but also theologians from all religious traditions, to enter into conversation with one another.