Throughout the year, the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture brings in renowned scholars and thought leaders from around the globe for lectures and programs that explore issues of meaning, morality and mutual obligation. Students, faculty and staff, alumni and the broader community are encouraged to attend these events to glean knowledge and enrich the exchange of ideas. But when it’s not possible to get to Holy Cross, you often can find audio and video recordings of the lectures online.
A robust Listen and Learn audio archive dates back to 2008 — featuring provocative and timely talks on climate change, health care, theology, war, the recession and more — but now the McFarland Center invites you to “watch and learn,” too. Last fall, the McFarland Center’s events were video recorded and made available, for free, on its website and on iTunes U.
“Getting our lectures online has been integral to advancing the McFarland Center as a resource for expanding intercultural and interreligious dialogue,” said Thomas M. Landy, director of the McFarland Center. “We have hosted some stellar talks that appeal to a wide range of people. The online archive not only helps our faculty and students enhance their classroom learning, but also it enables us to reach a worldwide audience who can then further the discussion.”
Featured video now online includes four sessions of the McFarland Center’s inaugural colloquium on Catholics and Cultures called “Contours of Catholic Life and Practice Today.” The colloquium, held December 9, 2011, introduced a global initiative to study the diverse beliefs and practices of Catholics around the globe. Landy, who first envisioned the Catholics and Cultures project, explained in his talk that American Catholics account for only 6 percent of Catholics worldwide, and thus, their perspective on the Church may differ from those of the majority of Catholics worldwide.
“Cultures bundle and prioritize beliefs differently than one another, and generally not along the lines the American culture wars expect,” Landy said. “[American] Catholics need to be aware of the priorities that the other 94 percent bring to the table.”
Distinguished international scholars of cultural Catholicism were invited to speak at the colloquium and will serve as advisors to the Catholics and Cultures initiative moving forward. Viewers can watch the talks by Rowena Robinson, of the Indian Institute of Technology, on Indian Catholicism and Rev. Thomas G. Casey, S.J., dean of the faculty of missiology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, on Catholic theology in a global context.
A highlight of the colloquium, a panel of Holy Cross seniors shared their personal encounters with diverse Catholic cultures, through study abroad, immersion programs and other lived experience — in Spain, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Peru, South Africa, El Salvador and Ireland. As Andrew DeVivo ’12 opened the session, he said, “The College of the Holy Cross is living proof that faith is transnational.”
Video Highlights from Fall 2011:
- Media executive Maria Eugenia Ferré Rangel ’89 shares how her family-owned newspaper, El Nuevo Dia, has overcome industry challenges by engaging readers and empowering them to become better informed, involved citizens on the island of Puerto Rico. more »
- Investigative journalist E. Benjamin Skinner exposes the global scale of modern-day slavery with incidents of human trafficking and bondage he witnessed in Haiti, South Africa and other parts of the world. more »
- MIT economist Esther Duflo explains how randomized trials of measures to address poverty — distributing bed nets to prevent malaria, setting up inoculation camps, and tracking students by academic progress — yield proven outcomes that sometimes contradict anti-poverty policy and popular thinking. more »
- Author Paula Fredriksen describes Christian and Jewish relations in antiquity, sheds light on the origins of Christian anti-Semitism, and tells how she happened upon texts by Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century that provide a singular and rigorous defense of Jews. more »
The semester ahead promises even more enlightening lectures and discussions, on the cradle of Christianity and Islam, the ethics of health care, poetry from the Holocaust, and an in-depth look at poverty in the United States, 50 years ago and today. As always, the McFarland Center encourages your participation in these events at Holy Cross. But if you can’t be here, you may always Listen — or watch — and Learn online. 
