Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story

This is a love story, but an unusual one in that it charts a Jesuit priest's love for a tradition and process of theologizing across the boundaries of his own religion. It is also the story of the love of a man for a God, hidden in darkness, of whom glimpses are caught in disparate sets of sacred texts. The texts are those, on the one hand, of the Sanskrit and Tamil literature of Hinduism, both philosophy and poetry, and, on the other hand, of Christian, mostly Catholic, literature. In Clooney's autobiography, we learn about his becoming a Jesuit, about his attraction to India and the Hindu tradition, and about his developing a major legacy in the discipline of comparative theology by trying to understand those two magnetic pulls on his intelligence and spirit. While we may all be constrained by the histories, cultures, and religions into which we are born, Clooney argues that we need not be confined by those constraints. He narrates his engagement with Tamil religious poetry and analyzes the way in which close reading and patient struggle can form and change us in significant ways for the good. This is a book about growing into a fuller humanity by transgressing the bounds between one another that religions set, hallow, and defend.