Wisdom and Learning.

Inspired by this motto, Patrick J. Ryan, S.J, Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, made it the central focus of this fall’s McGinley Lecture, which took place Nov. 15 at the Lincoln Center campus and Nov. 16 at the Rose Hill campus.

The lecture, “Wisdom and Learning: Higher Education in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Traditions,” acted as a conversation between the traditions of the People of the Book, with Magda Teter, Ph.D., Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies, representing Judaism, and Ebru Turan, Ph.D., assistant professor of history, representing Islam.

Father Ryan noted that the notion of wisdom is prevalent in all three religious traditions because it “enables us to attain to an overarching moral and spiritual perspective on our world.”

“It prompts us to discern how learning or knowledge should be used and how to live as perceptive and virtuous citizens of our world,” he said.

Just as the three traditions share spiritual roots, they also share educational ones; some of their structures of higher learning all come from the ancient Greeks. However, as the religions began to develop and change, so did their educational structures.

“The Jewish and Christian and Muslim traditions of education have diverged greatly on the detailed contents of their curricula,” said Father Ryan.

In the Jewish tradition, education is an important aspect of the faith’s identity, said Teter, who talked about the difficulties Jews faced in the modern era when entering institutions of higher education.

“Jews were excluded from education until the 19th century,” said Teter, “and even when they were accepted, many schools did not support Jewish studies—or forced the students to learn from the Christian perspective. They lost their identity in their own story.”

The Jewish response was to create its own educational institutions, which began to thrive in the early 1900s, she said. It allowed Jewish populations to continue spiritual instruction outside the synagogue and the home, creating the chance to integrate into society.

Islamic instruction, which is heavily based on the memorization of the Qur’an, embraced higher education because it standardized Muslim beliefs, said Turan.

“Higher education provided a cohesiveness and unity to medieval Islam,” she said. “It gave Islam a global identity.”

Muslim schools called madrasas, derived from the Arabic word “to learn,” focused on law, theology and logic in their earliest iterations. Now, there are Muslim universities around the world that provide a diverse selection of study. Turan said that the translation of the Qur’an into other languages allowed Islam to be studied by a greater population.

“The translation . . . empowered Islamic education and opened it up to the rest of the world.”

In the Catholic tradition, Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, complimented university education with humanistic studies. By drawing from his own experiences at the University of Paris, Ignatius wanted to ensure that his students “went through systematic humanistic training in grammar, literature, and rhetoric.”

Jesuit education evolved around this foundation and now includes a diverse selection of fields of study. Father Ryan stressed that Ignatius’ humanistic training is ingrained in Jesuit education’s infrastructure.

“No one finishes any undergraduate college at Fordham without some exposure to philosophy, theology, literature, the natural and social sciences,” he said.

A Q&A segment following the lectures raised the question “Will the three faiths ever agree on the definition of wisdom?”

In response, the panelists laughed.

“We are all conscious that wisdom is important to our faiths and recognize it is something worth pursuing,” said Turan. “But besides that, I think we are fine agreeing to disagree.”

–Mary Awad

Father Ryan and Rabbi Daniel Polish, Ph.D., adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, will team-teach a new course this spring that aims to create a literal as well as scholarly conversation between Judaism and Christianity.

The course, “Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” will examine the historical contexts of the two faiths to uncover areas of overlap and sources of difference.

“This course is good for Fordham students because it will help them reflect on the links that bind Jews and Christians in one of the major urban centers in the United States, where so many Jews and Christians live and work together,” Father Ryan said.

The course stands as part of Father Ryan’s larger mission to develop what he calls a “trialogue” among the three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Father Ryan was appointed the McGinley Professor in 2009 after serving as Fordham’s vice president for University Mission and Ministry since 2005. For nearly half of his life as a priest, he held academic and administrative positions in Nigeria and Ghana.

Rabbi Polish is the spiritual leader of Congregation Shir Chadash of the Hudson Valley in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. An eminent scholar in interreligious affairs, Rabbi Polish has published widely in the field and served as director of education for Inter-Met, an interfaith seminary in Washington D.C.

— Joanna Klimaski

I went by air from Lagos in Nigeria to Accra in Ghana on the night of Dec. 28. The plane, only one-third full, left two and a half hours late but the flight only took 35 minutes. In its flight path we flew over two other countries, the republics of Benin and Togo. The map is rather crowded in this part of coastal West Africa.

I was expecting heightened security at the Lagos airport, but found it efficient but relaxed. My baggage was not opened. At Accra, however, a large plane coming from Amsterdam arrived at the same time and some of its passengers had their luggage inspected on arrival.

Many people greeted me as “Pastor”–my black clerical shirt and collar are still regarded as more Protestant than Catholic here in West Africa.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon visiting old friends, including a 95-year-old man, Dominic Attigah, and his wife Anna, 88 (“Pa Dominic” and “Maame Anna”), whom I have known since 1974. He is fairly deaf now and she is blind.

They were finally married “in Church” (actually, the priest celebrated the wedding for them at home) last August. Togolese by origin, the Attigahs came to Ghana in 1951. Pa Dominic remembers it was the year that Kwame Nkrumah was transformed from independence agitator to leader of government business in the colonial regime.

At night I met and had supper with George Atta-Boateng (FCLS ’07, GSAS ‘09), who is now a key figure in the computerization of the Ministry of Education.

A good friend of mine, Nicholas Ojehomon, was married on Saturday, Dec. 19 to a young woman, Amaka, whom I only knew slightly when I was president of Loyola Jesuit College from 1999 to 2005.

Like all church services in West Africa, the wedding ceremony was long–about two hours. Father Gerald W. Aman, S.J (FCRH ’69), the executive assistant to the Jesuit Provincial here, presided and preached.

He made a great deal in his homily about a passage from the Epistle to the Ephesians that doesn’t go over very weill in America:: “Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord” (Eph 5:22). Then the couple acted it out: she gathered her wedding dress around her and knelt before her seated husband, placing her hands between his and promised due submission.

I was feeling uncomfortable about this (I was concelebrating) when suddenly Fr. Aman dramatically reversed the situation. The Epistle goes on to say, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water and the word” (Eph 5:25-26). Fr. Aman seated Amaka and Nicholas knelt before her, removed one of her shoes, and washed her foot as Christ did at the Last Supper (John 13).

Somehow it transformed my understanding of that scriptural passage. I thought partucularly of a good friend in America who has recently lost his wife to cancer, and how he cared for her so tenderly to the end. Marriage, as the same Epistle says, “is a great mystery.”

I would like to send some pictures of this wedding taken by another friend who works at Loyola Jesuit College, but I don’t have them to forward just yet.

It is hot and dry in Abuja while it has been snowing in New York.

When I arrived in Abuja, Emmanuel Dyeltong, a driver for Loyola Jesuit College, remarked that “NEPA is really trying these days.” That sentence, not perhaps immediately intelligible to the stranger, means that, in his opinion, the Nigerian Electric Power Authority is delivering the goods more regularly in Abuja lately.

Thursday night, I found this generalization somewhat challenged. During supper with the Jesuit community, NEPA went off three times. Michael, the man in charge of the 500 kV generator for the school compound, can be heard on his motor scooter heading for the generator. The roar of the generator begins. Then NEPA returns, and the roar stops. Five minutes later the same scenario is repeated. And again, ten minutes later.

Cell phones prove very useful at these sudden onsets of darkness. Several of the Jesuits at table use them for illumination as supper continues. Much easier to find the salt and pepper.

“Let there be light.” I felt I was back in Nigeria last summer at Rose Hill when part of the campus was without power for a few days. What struck me at the time was how quiet the much larger generators hired in at Fordham were.

I arrived in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, at noon today, Dec. 17, after a 12-hour journey on Delta that included a 90-minute stopover in Dakar, Senegal. Many Nigerians and Senegalese on the flight were traveling with young children. I had forgotten how hard it is for the ears of small children to take the process of landing.

I arrived at our Jesuit high school, Loyola Jesuit College, where I was president from 1999 to 2005, an hour or so later, after dropping off Tony Akande (FCRH ’07) who is visiting family at Christmas.

The students have gone home for Christmas since last Saturday. The nearby village is now electrified, which means there are competing charismatic churches making a joyful noise to the Lord. I hope they won’t go all night.

Karl Marx wrote that religion “is the opium of the people,” but more interestingly, just before that, wrote that religion “is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” I feel that the people of Gidan Mangoro –“home of mangoes” — are finding the heart of a heartless world tonight, even if I am jet-lagged and would like to go to bed.

I offered mass this evening for legendary Graduate School of Social Service Dean Mary-Ann Quaranta. May she receive the reward of her labors!