Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar
Runner-up for the 2025 Catholic Media Association (CMA) Book Award for Theological and Philosophical Studies Title
This autobiography traces Francis X. Clooney's intellectual and spiritual journey from middle-class American Catholicism to a lifelong study of Hinduism. It explains how he came to fashion comparative theology as a way of learning interreligiously that is boldly intellectual and deeply personal and practical, lived out in intersections of his roles as theologian and scholar of Hinduism, as professor and Catholic priest, and over the tumultuous decades from the 1960s until now, in his role as Parkman Professor of Divinity, Harvard University.
Clooney sheds fresh and realistic light on the idea and ideal of scholar-practitioner, since his wide learning, Christian and Hindu, is grounded in his Catholic and Jesuit commitments, as well as in a commensurate learning with respect to several Hindu traditions that are most accessible to scholars willing to learn empathetically and in a participatory manner.
What Clooney has learnt and written must be understood in terms of a love of Christ deeply informed by a Hindu instinct for loving God without reserve. A fundamental spiritual disposition — intuitions of God present everywhere — has energized his work over his long career, love giving direction and body to his professional academic work.