We are looking for subscribers who are interested in respectful dialogue and are comfortable in an ecumenical environment.  This is no list for triumphalism of any kind. We are all pilgrims together on a journey that transcends any single claim to the whole truth. Personal attacks (flaming) are unacceptable.

If you want to know more about my religious and ideological commitments, please visit my domain  and look at the links to the various websites I maintain (including my USAO faculty homepage).  Precisely because I love my Catholic heritage, I cannot imagine not granting others the same right.

If you are intersted in joining this group, please try to subscribe and send an e-mail with your full name and telephone number to the following address: ihs@ionet.net. Please, also tell me why you want to join the ecumene list and make sure you are using the same address as the one under which you are trying to subscribe. It is not necessary to include names on the public membership roster, and I am happy to help maintain your privacy. However, as list owner I need to know the identity and motivation of of applicants.  I will not approve pending subscriptions until I know who you are and feel confident that you will be comfortable in our little cyberparish.

Ingrid Shafer

11 September 2000
Revised 27 September 2000
Revised 4 March 2001

A new mailing list dedicated to the work of Father Andrew Greeley in his tripartite identity as priest/sociologist/story-teller is available as of 11 July, 1996. Listowners are Ingrid Shafer, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma (who will do the actual running of the list) and Leonard Swidler, Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University (who has arranged for the location of the list in the Temple computer system). In this list we want to give Greeley's global audience a chance to share their reading of Greeley's work, connect his stories to their own lives, meet one another, and build on Greeley's fundamental vision as starting point for imaging the Catholic Church for the next millennium--in the words of super sleuth Father Blackie (long before his promotion to bishop), "in communities that support instead of control, that fight envy instead of institutionalizing it, communities in which power is in the service of love" (Virgin and Martyr). More recently, in White Smoke; a Novel About the Next Papal Conclave one of the fictional contenders for the papacy, Don Luis says in a public speech:

Above all we must not be afraid. . . . We must change in order to remain the same. We must not confuse what is essential in the Church with that which is mutable, no matter how ancient it may be. . . . No custom and no tradition which is not of the essence of our message, no matter how old, should escape reexamination. And no custom and no tradition, no matter how new, should be abandoned until we carefully consider the costs of doing so. We must be willing to experiment, to modify, to refine before we change.

We must be open, sensitive, and above all hopeful. We must be ready to dialogue with everyone. . . . While we must certainly recognize the presence of evil in the world and the threats to human dignity and freedom that evil poses, we must also recognize the goodness and good will in the world and become partisans of goodness and good will.

... So many of our lay people believe that ours is a Church of rules, that being Catholic consists of keeping rules. They do not find an institution which is like that very appealing. Nor should they.

In fact, we are a Church of love. Our message from the Lord himself even today is the message that God is Love and that we are those who are trying, however badly, to reflect that love in the world. . . .

More important for us today, however, is the reaffirmation that we exist to preach a God of love, we try to be people of love, and we want our church to be, insofar as we poor humans can make it, a Church of radiant love.

Does such a Church have a future?

How could it not?

While nuanced, scholarly discussion is encouraged (I've published three academic books dealing with Greeley and scads of articles), this list is as much an extension of Father Greeley's mailbox parish as it is a seminar in story theology or the sociology of religion.

GREELEY@LISTSERV.TEMPLE.EDU is an on-line community for Greeley's parishioners all over the world. Objective, respectful criticism supported by evidence is acceptable. Flaming will not be tolerated. Offenders will be warned, and any repetition will result in immediate suspension.

To subscribe, please send the command SUBSCRIBE GREELEY YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.TEMPLE.EDU. You may be able to sign on by clicking on the following link and typing the subscribe command into the blank message screen. If you are successful, you will receive a notice from Temple University in your mailbox asking you to confirm your subscription. Please confirm by replying to that form notice with the letters "ok" (minus the quotation marks). This confirm option has been set up to filter out potential spammers and people who deliberately or accidentally sign up with an invalid address. If you have problems subscribing, you may contact me at ihs@ionet.net . Please, introduce yourself to the group shortly after subscribing, and tell us why you have joined.

Excuse duplications of this message, since I will send this out to several lists with partially overlapping subscriber rosters. Feel free to forward this announcement to others, but be sure to send it only to serious prospects and to people who you are fairly certain haven't received it already.

Yours for a passionately loving God and a church in Her image and His name,

Ingrid Shafer

Last revised 4 March 2001