Fraser Centre of Practical Theology

Abrahamic Lecture Series (Postponed to a later date.)
2019-10-29 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Regis College, 100 Wellesley St W, Toronto, ON, M5S 2Z5, Canada
Faith and Community: How Can Interfaith Dialogue Build Bridges Between the Individual and the Collective?
This event is in collaboration with the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto (CJDT)
A moderated discussion on issues of concern for faith communities and their members, featuring speakers of the three Abrahamic traditions

The Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre for Practical Theology, in collaboration with the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto, presents the third annual Abrahamic Talks Series. This event is an opportunity for members of various religious traditions, as well as other members of the local community, to dialogue around the ways in which faith communities can respond to pressing issues. Topics such as social and environmental justice, truth and reconciliation, and multiculturalism will be central to our conversations.

Through a moderated discussion amongst a group of community leaders, academics, and practitioners from different faith backgrounds, the series aims to facilitate and promote further cooperation between members of diverse religious communities.

In this edition of the Abrahamic Series, we will explore the rapidly changing interaction between individuals and their communities in a secularized world. The series will create a space for deep dialogue about the tools that inter-religious initiatives can offer to the complex, multi-layered challenges that continue to arise globally as radically diverse individuals encounter each other in today’s multicultural communities.

Fraser Lecture: Early Jesuit Engagement with the Qur’an: Questions, Answers, and a Few Puzzles
2019-05-30 16:30 - 18:00
On February 11 at 4:30 p.m., the Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre for Practical Theology will host a public lecture in the Regis College St. Joseph Chapel. Guest-speaker Dr. Paul Shore will deliver a lecture “Early Jesuit Engagement with the Qur’an: Questions, Answers, and a Few Puzzles.”

Among the representatives of seventeenth-century Catholicism to engage with the Qur’an were four Jesuits: Stephanus Arator (1541-1612), Peter Pázmány (1570-1637), Ignazio Lomellini (c. 1565-1645), and Michael Nau (1633-1683). Arator and Pázmány relied on translations and transliterations of the text of the Qur’an to construct their arguments, which were driven as much by deep divisions within the Christian world as they were by knowledge of Islam, and which were shaped by anxiety over the spread of Unitarianism in Eastern Europe. Lomellini completed the first Latin translation of the Qur’an to include the entire Arabic text, although he never traveled to an Arabic-speaking region. The commentaries he wrote suggest that his intended audience was Christian, but his manuscript languished for centuries, ignored by scholars. Nau spent many years in the Levant, working in Aleppo and Damascus, and wrote in Arabic, as well as rendering translations into Latin of passage of the Qur’an. As a representative of the “Golden Age” of Jesuit travel literature, Nau introduced European audiences to some of the mores of Levantine Muslim cultures. Taken together, the lives of men illustrate the diversity and complexity of Jesuit engagement with the Qur’an during the first century of the Society of Jesus.

Paul Shore has held teaching and research posts at Saint Louis University, Harvard Divinity School, Oxford University, the University of Wrocław, the University of Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin, and Charles University Prague, and in 2013 was the Alan Richardson Fellow in Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada and during autumn of 2018 was Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University. Shore’s publications include The Eagle and the Cross: Jesuits in Late Baroque Prague and Narratives of Adversity: Jesuits on the Eastern Peripheries of the Habsburg Realms (1640-1773), and a volume of poetry, Encounters, Estrangements, Connections. Environment Matters, written with Lynn Whidden, is forthcoming from Peter Lang. Shore lives in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada where he is a deacon at St Matthew’s Anglican Cathedral.

Scarboro Missions Lecture in Inter-religious Dialogue & Official Opening of the Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre for Practical Theology
2019-05-24 17:30 - 21:00
On Wednesday, February 13, the Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre for Practical Theology invites you to attend the Official Opening of the Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre for Practical Theology at 5:30 pm followed by the Scarboro Missions Lecture in Inter-religious Dialogue at 7:30 pm.
The lecture is entitled “Lakota and Christian Interreligious Dialogue: Questions Surrounding the Life, Teachings, and Influence of Nick Black Elk,” presented by Dr. Michael Stoeber, Scarboro Missions Chair in Interreligious Dialogue, Regis College. The Respondents will be Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo, Director of Indigenous Initiatives, University of Toronto, and Dr. John Dadosky, Regis College. The Moderator for the lecture will be Dr. Pamela Couture, Jane and Geoffrey Martin Chair in Church and Community, Emmanuel College.
Description: The story about the influential Lakota healer and holy man—Black Elk Speaks (1932)—has become widely popular and an authoritative guide for North American indigenous spirituality. However, given Nick Black Elk’s conversion to Roman Catholicism some twenty-five years prior to its publication, and his work as a Roman Catholic catechist, controversy surrounds this book. This lecture will explore various related questions: How does Nick Black Elk’s Roman Catholicism colour the dynamics of the indigenous spirituality in the book? How much does the narrator of the story, John Niehardt, positively influence or distort the dynamics of the spirituality? How might this account of indigenous spirituality have actually influenced 20th century developments in Roman Catholic spirituality? These questions have been further complicated by the recent initiation of the cause for the sainthood of Nick Black Elk in the Roman Catholic Church. How might this process towards canonization function to continue the Roman Catholic Church’s role in colonialism? How might it actually work to support the indigenous spirituality that Black Elk articulated so influentially?
The evening’s schedule is as follows:
5:30: Opening Remarks
5:45: Website Launch
6:15: Reception
7:30: Lecture

Abrahamic Talks Series: Charity without Justice Is Not Charity–Justice without Charity Is Not Just
2019-04-19
The Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre for Practical Theology at Regis College, in collaboration with the Christian-Jewish Dialogue of Toronto, presents the “Abrahamic Talks Series.” The series is an opportunity for members of diverse religious traditions, as well as members of the local community, to discuss how faith communities can respond to contemporary social issues and concerns. Through this initiative, we aim to facilitate and promote further cooperation between religious communities and their members.
Join us on Wednesday, April 3, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Regis College, for “Charity without Justice Is Not Charity–Justice without Charity Is Not Just,” the next edition of the Abrahamic Talks Series. This time, our discussion will surround the diverse Abrahamic understandings of the concepts of “justice” and “charity,” and we will be under the leadership of three wonderful panelists: Cari Kozierok (Ve’ahavta), Mohammad Abdul Wadud (ICNA Canada), and Kevin Moore (Regent Park Community Ministry, United Church of Canada). Please fill out the registration link below.

Serpents and Dragons: Mary and Her Enemies in Mexican and Indian Art
2019-04-16
Please join the Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 4 p.m. in Classroom A of Regis College (100 Wellesley St. W.) as Dr. Patrizia Granziera presents a lecture entitled “Serpents and Dragons: Mary and Her Enemies in Mexican and Indian Art.”
Patrizia Granziera is Professor of Art History at the University of Morelos, Cuernavaca, Mexico. She has a Ph.D. in Art History from University of Warwick. Her research focuses on the iconography of gardens and landscapes and on the image and symbolism of the divine feminine. Along with many published articles, she co-authored Image of the Divine Feminine in Mexico: Aztec Goddesses and Christian Madonnas (Ashgate 2012). In her presentation, “Serpents and Dragons: Mary and Her Enemies in Mexican and Indian Art,” Dr. Granziera will explore how Marian images in colonial Mexico and India represented the idea of the divine feminine and how European missionaries responded to the popularity of the goddesses in these newly conquered lands.
This event, sponsored by the Msrgr. John Mary Fraser Centre, is offered with the support of the TST Comparative Theology Group, Regis College, Trinity College, and Emmanuel College. Please be sure to register.
