Ecclesiam Suam and its Legacy

Venue: St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London
Date: Monday 16th – Wednesday 18th June 2014

FULL DETAILS HERE

In Collaboration with Leeds Trinity University and Newman University, Birmingham

Pope Paul VI’s debut encyclical Ecclesiam Suam affirmed that ‘The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives’ (#65), and that‘the dialogue which the Church of today must take up with a great renewal of fervour […] must be readily conducted with all men of good will both inside and outside the Church’ (#93). It marks the true beginning of the past five decades of fruitful and challenging dialogue undertaken by the Catholic Church.

This major international conference marks this this anniversary, looking back at the past fifty years, and re-evaluating both the theory and practice of dialogue in the light of contemporary realities.

Speakers Include:

• Dr Ivana Noble is a professor of Ecumenical Theology at the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. For over 20 years she has served as a priest in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. She did her doctoral studies at Heythrop College, was the co-foundress and the first director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies in Prague, former president of Societas Oecumenica, and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Baptist Seminary. Currently she is in charge of a research project on Western Orthodoxy.

• Professor Gavin D’Costa undertook his doctoral work on John Hick’s theology of religions (Cambridge University) which led him into work with the Church of England and Roman Catholic Committees on Other Faiths. In 1998 he was visiting Professor at the Gregorian University, Rome. His recent publications are: Christianity and the World Religions. Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions, 2009; Co-authored with Paul Knitter and Daniel Strange, Only One Way? Three Christian Response on the Uniqueness of Christ in a Religiously Pluralist World, 2011; and Vatican II’s teachings on Judaism and Islam, Oxford University Press, 2014.

• Dr Sara Sviri has been affiliated as a distinguished visiting professor to the Department of Arabic and the Department of Comparative Religions at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2003. Formerly, while residing in England, she was teaching at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London and at the University of Oxford. Her fields of study are Islamic mysticism, mystical philosophy, Judaeo-Arabic mystical writings, comparative and phenomenological aspects of Islam, the formative period of Islamic mysticism, and related topics. Papers on the above-mentioned topics have been published in many academic publications. Her book The Taste of Hidden Things: Images on the Sufi Path was published in 1997 in the USA. In 2008 her Sufi Anthology was published in Hebrew by the Tel-Aviv University Press. She is currently preparing a monograph on Aspects of the Formative Period of Islamic Mysticism.

Draft Programme

Download a copy of the Ecclesiam Suam And Its Legacy programme.