OUTLINE - Notre Dame University

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL STUDIES
As stated in our last issue, this year’s Millennial Lectures have as their theme “Cultural Vistas
and the 21st Century” – Paradoxes and Challenges. To the announcement made in our last
issue we would add that the subject of Mr. George Hajjar’s talk (5 p.m. 19/6/03) is to be A Crisis
of Cultural Identity Consensus and that the last lecture (midday 10/7/03) is to be given by Ms.
Candace Putnam, on the subject of The Media’s Role in Foreign Policy.
This year’s series opened
on January 20 with a talk
given by Father George
McLean, about whom
more information is given
in the article in this issue
concerning the NDU-LAU
Joint Seminar. Presiding
were the NDU Provost Dr.
George Eid, Dean of
Humanities Dr. Boulos
Sarru’ and Department
Chairman Dr. Doumit
Salameh. After an introductory
word by the last
named concerning the
higher aims of Notre
Dame University, Dr.
Boulos Sarru outlined the
aims of the series. He
remarked that the world
MILLENNIAL
LECTURE SERIES
was shaken by Truth
divided, spawning divergent
truths that had created
a pandemonium of
convictions. There had to
be a dialogue of truths in
the face of materialism.
Father McLean opened his
talk on “Relations between
the Islamic and Christian
Cultures” by remarking
that we were living in
what the Chinese with
masterly understatement
called “interesting times”,
the recent and present
crises having followed
close on World War II and
the Cold War. Relations
could be discussed in
terms of convergence and
divergence. The speaker
saw two planes, a horizontal
one of economic and
political concerns leading
to competition and conflict,
and a vertical one of
values which could be
shared and could lead to
cooperation.
After the Cold War, he
remarked, spiritual concerns
had come to the
forefront. Cultures had
become the new language
of international relations,
opening the way to a sharing
of cultural values and
an end to conflict. But
there was also danger of a
2002
2003
RELATIONS BETWEEN ISLAMIC
AND CHRISTIAN
CULTURES
By Father George Mc Lean
confusion of the horizontal
and vertical planes. The
world could be divided
between two kinds of fundamentalism,
a materialist
one and a religious one
which was forgetful of
man.
After the first fifteen hundred
years of Christianity,
belief came to depend on
Revelation alone, and the
secular world became
closed off by itself so that
human life was lived as it
were protected from religious
influence. Now religious
fundamentalism
was faced by another fundamentalism
trying to
8 NNU SPIRIT