A Visit to Israel During the Peace Process

From August 20 to 29 Carla Mae Streeter was in Israel as the Peace Process was taking place. Asked to do a paper for the Fourth International Lonergan Conference being held in Jerusalem at Ratisbonne Monastery, Carla Mae joined twelve other scholars in sharing their work. Woven among their presentations were daily site visits accompanied by a Salesian scripture scholar well versed in Israel archeology. Carla Mae and Maurice Schepers, OP from Nairobi, Kenya made it a point to visit the Ecole Biblique, the Dominican scriptural center in Jerusalem. "Although it was the conference that brought me to Jerusalem," Carla Mae says, "it was the Peace Process that was on my mind and made the trip a real pilgrimage."

Carla Mae's paper was entitled "Religious Love in Bernard Lonergan as Hermeneutical and Transcultural." The paper explained how religious love in Lonergan's writings springs from Romans 5:5, "...the love of God poured forth into our hearts by the Holy Spirit," and that this love has no restrictions. When grasped by religious love, a person is able to interpret (hermeneutics) another's religious literature because one's cognition is changed by that love. Thus, although the belief system differs, at the level of love the reader becomes open to the religious experience of the "other." This insight was the basis for Carla Mae's doctoral thesis in 1986, and has been the operative principle for her ministry in interfaith dialogue.

The paper will be posted soon.