Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar - by Francis X Clooney S J

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Finalist 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.

Review Quotes

"Comparative religion scholars and comparative theologians will be challenged gently by Clooney's memoir to question the disciplinary boundaries holding their disciplines apart, and general readers will find here a spiritually engaging chronicle of a calling to religious life that plays out in and between two distinctively different religious traditions. One outcome of comparative methodologies is the overcoming of barriers to understanding posed by religious differences, which is a result that this book quietly and effectively achieves." --Reading Religion

"The central theme of the memoir, which Clooney says is the 'inner story' of his life, is God's grace. He writes, 'At every stage of my life, I have received far more than I have given...even in midlife, I could not have imagined ending up where I am today.'" --Global Indian Times

"The extraordinary memoir of Francis X. Clooney, S.J., the Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, Harvard Divinity School, and the foremost Jesuit scholar on Hinduism ... The memoir offers a sweeping account of his life as a Catholic Priest, Hindu Scholar, and a University Teacher for over forty years." --Pippa Rann Books & Media

"Useful for all scholars in reflecting on their work and its potential impact as inseparable from their lived and embodied realities. May we all be inspired by Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story to read and experience deeply across preconceived boundaries and to be open to the transformation of ourselves, and thus the world." --Journal of Interreligious Studies

"[An] engaging, informative, and often uplifting memoir-of an estimable scholar and priest, a committed Catholic, and, perhaps in a looser sense, a Hindu too." --Commonweal Review

"The autobiography is an engaging narrative of the evolution of C.'s [Clooney's] thought, as well as a powerful examination of the ways one's Ignatian Catholic spirituality flows outward to other religious persons and traditions. The book is accessible for a wide audience." --Theological Studies Journal

"Clooney's memoir is much more than personal background to Comparative Theology, the theological practice of reading and writing across religious borders with which he will always be associated. Informative and absorbing, full of insight, wisdom and good humour, Clooney tells his own story of interreligious learning: how a Jesuit priest became a first-rate scholar of Hinduism and how his experience of Ignatian spirituality, coupled with an impish intellectual daring, led him to deepen his Catholic devotion to the person of Jesus, the Christ in whom all truth becomes radiant and alive, wherever it might be found. As he takes us from Chicago and Boston to Kathmandu and Madras, from the American university world to mandirs and ashrams scattered across India, Clooney emerges as an imaginative teacher and faithful pastor, brilliant writer and hardworking academic. Yet this is no elitist self-justification of a life of privilege; it is very much a story about the providential touch of grace, about one person's experience of divine call, about the demand always to make an honest human response, and about the need for academics and intellectuals to acknowledge their own limitations and vulnerabilities. By exploring religious borders through comparative study, Clooney holds together a very Jesuit - and very Hindu - conviction of the presence of God in all things." --Michael Barnes SJ, University of Roehamptom, UK

"Much more than the life story of a distinguished Harvard professor, Francis Clooney's memoir offers us a window into ordinary Catholic life in mid twentieth century America. It shows us how an ordinary life can be transformed by a single profound religious experience, and how a love for other cultures and a passion for deep reading can lead someone to rethink the very nature of theology. A very personal and moving autobiography that charts the intellectual and spiritual journey of one of the most influential comparative theologians of our time, Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar captivates both heart and mind." --José Ignacio Cabezón, University of California, USA

"Clooney's reflective memoir is a gentle, yet powerful recounting of a life that he sees as filled with divine grace. He recounts a life of surrender and commitment; we read about a life of courage, and the quest of a scholar who seeks and recognizes God in the beauty of literature from many parts of the world. Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar is at once a deeply moving yet rigorous book where we are drawn into a journey illumined with the light of vivid and transformative words of poets, devotees, and writers, including those of Frank Clooney." --Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida, USA

About the Author