Catholic-Muslim dialogue looks at U.S. interreligious education

Published: 2008-05-13

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Interreligious education was the focus of the Mid-Atlantic Muslim Catholic Dialogue conducted April 23-24 in Washington. The meeting explored teaching about different religions in private and public institutions. According to a May 9 news release, it was a follow-up to a 2007 meeting during which a speaker described the development of a Muslim-Catholic educational exchange between the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Council of Islamic Societies of Greater Chicago. In the April meeting, Father Gregory Fairbanks, a faculty member at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., and director of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's Office for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, presented a curriculum for ecumenical and interreligious training required by Catholic seminaries and recommended for clergy and lay leaders. Father Fairbanks cited documents of the Second Vatican Council and other, more recent church documents. He highlighted U.S. Catholic pastoral concerns, including interreligious marriages, social justice cooperation or tensions, and the education of non-Catholic children in Catholic schools.

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