This webinar, Ecumenical Movement and Reconciliation in Ireland and Beyond is part of the webinar series to celebrate Irish School of Ecumenics – ISE at 50. The School was founded in 1970 by Fr. Michael Hurley SJ. Inspired by the ground-breaking ecumenical vision of the Second Vatican Council (1962), he opened a new window of ecumenical understanding, overcoming prevailing suspicion of ecumenism in Ireland, and other wider challenges, to see that ISE was established as a graduate institute of ecumenical teaching and scholarship, as well as dialogue and service in society. Fr. Hurley’s vision was of a place where people from diverse backgrounds and disciplinary perspectives could explore the meaning and possibilities of peace and reconciliation together.
From seeds sown and nurtured in times of challenge and change, ISE has spread in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and beyond, shaping initiatives of reconciliation and partnerships for transformation throughout the period of violent conflict and in the making of peace through research and teaching programmes at every level, and community-based projects of intercultural and ecumenical understanding, interreligious encounter and engagement in peacebuilding. Living up to its founding motto, ISE has flourished, now recognised nationally and globally through the work of its staff, students and graduates. Within the School of Religion in Trinity College Dublin, ISE continues to make its mark in research collaboration and in ecumenical and social renewal worldwide: ‘Like wheat that springs up green.’
As Michael Hurley observed in 2008, “All the institutions of the ecumenical movement are not only born to die” but “they live to die as soon as ever possible, as soon as the task is completed.” Although now 10 years since Michael Hurley passed away, challenges remain soul-sized in multiple and resurgent divisions not alone in Ireland, but geopolitically, and across the planet earth, demonstrating that the ecumenical task is not yet complete. ISE continues to reflect, theologically, politically, and socially, on the role of the ecumenical movement for reconciliation within the wider Oikumene (the whole inhabited earth), engaging in inter-Church reconciliation, inter-religious dialogue and partnership, and promoting justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.
