In Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story, Francis X. Clooney, SJ, states, “My curriculum vitae, the course of my life in writing, really does tell the story of my soul” (100). Accordingly, he comments upon his personal correspondence, undergraduate essays, reflections on the Catholic-Jesuit mission, scholarly treatments of Hindu wisdom, experiments in Catholic-Hindu comparative theology, major academic addresses, and more. What emerges is a fresh, concentrated illumination of the two creative tensions alluded to in the memoir’s title.
Hindu and Catholic: From teaching in Kathmandu, through doctoral work in South Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago, and professorships at Boston College and Harvard, Clooney has been immersed in the study of Indian-Hindu texts for more than fifty years. He immediately felt at “home” when visiting Madras (79) and Tiruchendur, where he went “most native” (96). Hindu influence runs so deep that at times he thinks and writes “like a Mimamsaka …; like an Advaitan …; like a Srivaisnava” (122). Indeed, Mimamsa has shaped his mind; Alvar poetry mirrors his heart (90, 100). Through the comparative theology for which he is renowned, Clooney brings his double formations, Hindu and Catholic, into explicit conversation. Ever-experimental and resistant to overly theorized approaches, Clooney’s motto remains: “Let us plunge in and see what happens!” (132). Comparative theology is not about “grasping for large claims about how religions relate to one another,” but about “doing things small and intense … in a way that will cross religious borders without certainty, without fear” (175). Interreligious reading is a “risk” (121), even “dangerous” (101), but trusting that “Deep calls out to Deep” (108), he promises “intensification” of understanding in two traditions (159).
Priest and Scholar: While visiting Mother Teresa’s Calcutta home for the dying, the question emerged: “Which did I want more—to be a servant of the poorest, or a scholar immersed in interreligious learning?” (52). Although Clooney reflects positively upon his parish ministry (137–42), he remains single-mindedly committed to his scholarly vocation, learning for learning’s sake, but that commitment requires a certain asceticism. Although some academics do their work while “living with the poor,” Clooney does “not have that gift” (19). Thus, in various contexts over the years—Bronx, NY (34), Cambridge, MA (65), Charlottesville, VA (164)—Clooney has resisted internal pulls and external pressures to apply himself more tangibly and immediately to care for vulnerable populations. One detects here a hint of self-criticism but also the conviction, as a Fordham mentor once advised: “If you really want to change the world, then study as hard as you can, and you will still be changing things when you are old” (35).
A Love Story: As a fifteen-year-old boy, Clooney underwent “the defining religious experience of [his] life, a single instance of God-touch” (9), which he compares to St. Ignatius’s “Cardoner moment” (26). During a later period of discernment, while on retreat in Gloucester, MA, Clooney again “was flooded as if by beams of God’s warming radiance … ‘You are in the right place; stay where you are,’” confirming his 1966 experience: “I was there again” (63). Clooney prayerfully experiences “God looking at me: so much more fundamental than me looking at God” (27), and that divine love story anchors his comparative theology: “Openness to God is an openness to everyone and everything around us” (49). In Catholic-Ignatian-Jesuit terms, comparative theology can be understood as exercises in finding God in all things (123) and caring for the whole person (131). It cannot be “reduced to … cognitive conclusions,” for “affective connections” are essential and often surpass discursive wisdom (128). Personally, Clooney has long recited a Srivaishnava mantra along with his Catholic practice (146).
At times Clooney can be self-conscious, uncertain, even doubtful. As a child he was “puzzled by how easily other people made friends,” taking more solace in books than in relationships (4). He wonders about the reception of his work. “Was anyone provoked,” for example, by his essay about love of God and neighbor among Hindus? (119). “How can those who do not practice comparative theological learning really understand it?” (122). Did his Harvard colleagues “understand what they were getting when they hired [him]?” (129). Were his CTSA (Catholic Theological Society of America; 144–45) and CSWR (Center for the Study of World Religions; 161) addresses successful? Such are, of course, ordinary ponderings, but sharing them is a vulnerable act. His many students and colleagues will take comfort in seeing their own hesitations reflected in his. Uncertainty, however, never paralyzes Clooney, nor should it paralyze us. Rather, with comparative theology or any other worthwhile endeavor, “In the end, we just have to do the work that is possible and necessary and see what happens” (128).
