Inaugural Paul Wattson Lecture at Fordham University
The Faith of Others: The Inspiration of Interreligious Dialogue in Light of Nostra Aetate
The Paul Wattson Lectures honor the memory of Servant of God Father Paul of Graymoor (1863–1940), founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement and pioneer for the cause of Christian unity. These annual lectures, hosted at distinguished universities in the US and internationally, feature national and international leaders in the fields of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue to speak on urgent contemporary questions. The 2025 Paul Wattson Lecture, the first to be offered at Fordham, also honors and builds upon the legacy of the “Nostra Aetate Dialogues” organized at Fordham since the early 1990s to address compelling, and sometimes controversial, topics at the core of Jewish-Catholic dialogue.
Monday, October 20, 2025
6:00-7:30 PM, with reception to follow
In October 2025 we commemorate the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, which attended to the history of Catholic misrepresentation and mistreatment of Jews and provided a baseline for Catholic interreligious engagement in the contemporary world. Our interfaith era of these past sixty years is indeed a remarkable moment in history, given the two thousand years of tensions, often violent and horrific, between Christians and Jews. What has brought us to the present moment and what is our path going forward? Since the end of World War II, historians and theologians, Jewish and Christian, have focused enormous attention on the history of Christian views of Judaism, sometimes called Christian anti-Judaism. We have examined the links between theological criticisms of Judaism and modern antisemitism and questioned the responsibility of Christian teachings for the Holocaust. In her lecture, Professor Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College) will propose new ways to conceptualize the relationship between the two religions that will move us toward more positive, productive relations. Having grown up in a home in which ecumenical discussions were vital, Prof. Heschel will recount personal memories of her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and of the many Christian theologians and clergy who came to their home. Taking up the theological as well as the historical trajectory that led to Nostra Aetate, she will give particular attention to the relationship between Rabbi Heschel and Augustin Cardinal Bea, charting the new theological directions they represented regarding divine inspiration and prophecy.
Responding to Prof. Heschel will be Heather Miller Rubens, Executive Director of the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (Baltimore), who will look from this history into the present and future—reflecting on the powers and limits of Nostra Aetate in our own time, as well as on its significance beyond the Catholic-Jewish relationship (not least in terms of contemporary Islam).
Learn more and register here.
McNally Amphitheatre & Atrium
Fordham University at Lincoln Center
140 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023
Free and open to the public; also livestreamed
