INGRID H. SHAFER, Ph. D. 
Professor of Philosophy and Religion
Mary Jo Ragan Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies  

History of OCW/OCLA/USAO  1908-1992
Personal  Reflections on my Life as it intersects with the USAO Mission Team Teaching: Education for the Future
Separation of Church and State: Freedom of Religion
From Crosstimbers (July 2005)
Evolution, Creation, Intelligent Design (October 2005)
The Phenomenon of Faust (Zygon article)
Cyclotrons, Cyberspace, and Teilhard's Vision of Cosmic Love (Zygon article)

PERSONAL 
Multiple Worlds:Images to contemplate
September 11, 2001

IDS 3313 World Thought and Culture to AD 500
IDS 3323 World Thought and Culture AD 500 - AD 1650
IDS 4333 World Thought and Culture AD 1650-Present
IDS 1133 The Individual in Contemporary Society
English 2403 Creative Writing 
IDS 4522 Senior Seminar

Roundhouse Connecting Renewal Sites of World Religions
MADIA (Masyarakat Dialog Antar Agama) SIDA (Society for Inter-Religious Dialogue)
5 June 1998: "As you know, Indonesia now facing a very critical situation, not only in terms of economic but, more importantly, in the basic of our existence itself. In light of that situation, SIDA or MADIA recently  released a statement of concern and an appeal concerning our present situation in Indonesia. We are very concerned with the dangerous situation that can lead to the disintegration process in Indonesia." 
International Conference on Christian-Muslim Relations: Past, Present, and Future, Jakarta, Indonesia, 7-9 August 1997
International Conference on Christian-Muslim Relations: Past, Present, and Future (alternate location). 

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Catholicism and World Religions
"The Latest Vatican Statement on Christianity and Other Religions" by John Hick15 December 1998

Catholics dedicated to Dialogue
In Memoriam Bernard Häring, CSsRCelebrating a Courageous Life dedicated to Love, Faith, Truth, and Human Dignity

Austria
Bishop Reinhold Stecher's November 1997 Letter This is my translation from the original German which was faxed to me within hours after the letter's release on December 12, 1997. 
Bishop Reinhold Stecher's January 1998 response to the reactions to his November 1997 Letter  This is my translation from the German original which Bishop Stecher sent me for distribution on the Internet in English. 
A Visit with Bishop Reinhold Stecher on 20 May 1998 Pictures and text 
Translated excerpts from an interview with  the newly appointed bishop of Innsbruck, Alois Kothgasser:
The importance of dialogue. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's June 1997 Letters to the Austrian Bishops' Conference  German originals and translation of two letters by Cardinal Ratzinger which were received in June 1997 but not released to the public until January 1998. 
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's March 1998 Letter to the Austrian Bishops' Conference German original and translation of a letter sent by Cardinal Ratzinger in which he gives cautious approval to including the Catholic Austrian Reform movement (the Austrian equivalent to the U.S. CTA) in official dialogue with the Church. 
Professor Hans Küng's Comments concerning Cardinal Ratzingers March 1998 Letter  German original and translation of a letter sent by Hans Küng to Christian Weisner with the German "We-are-Church" movement. 

United States
Resources to help investigate the sources of the  pedophile crisis (August 2003)
Archbishop Quinn's June 1996 Oxford lecture
Bishop Matthew Clark's homily for the families of lesbians and gays (1 March 1997)
Always Our Children (September 1997) (A Statement of the Bishops Committee on Marriage and Family of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops) 
Tradition and the Ordination of Women (Working paper for discussion at the 1997 CTSA convention in Minneapolis)
Alternate address of CTSA statement
Reflections on the U.S. Catholic Referendum

Canada
Catholics of Vision: Canada--Canadian Renewal Site
Statement by Some Canadian Catholics to the Canadian Bishops

India
Leobard D'Souza, Archbishop Emeritus of Nagpur, on the Church as communion of faith February 1998) 
Bishop Bhai Org (Archbishop Leobard D'Souza's site) 

Australia
Rev. Dr. Paul Collins' Response to the Observations on his book Papal Power by an anonymous consultor of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (20 April 1998)This is a portion of my website dedicated to history in the making as grassroots reform movements all over the globe are gradually and gently re-shaping the Catholic Church in keeping with the trajectory set by Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council -- a Church open to the world and other denominations and religions, a Church of and for the People of God, lay as well as clergy, a Church of love more than rules: ecclesia semper reformanda.

This Roman Catholic Web Ring site is owned by Ingrid Shafer. Click for the [ Next Page ] [ Random Site ] Want to join the ring? Click here for info.

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Odd Man Out: A Modern Morality Play--Andrew Greeley * Joseph Cardinal Bernardin * Eugene Kennedy. This article is part of Andrew Greeley's biography on which I have been working sporadically for about eight years. It is also a response to Eugene Kennedy's book Cardinal Bernardin(1989) which is as much of an assault on Andrew Greeley as it is an accolade to Joseph Cardinal Bernardin.

Greeley Mailing List: Original Announcement. This list has been closed. 

1997 Christmas Card to Father Greeley from the Greeley List. This cybercard includes a selection of letters from list members and can also serve as an introduction to the list community.

Electronic edition of Andrew M. Greeley's The Great Mysteries: An Essential Catechism (San Francisco Harper & Row, 1976).

Cardinal Luis' Speech from White Smoke  with a collage of Greeley images videotaped in 1994. 

RELIGION AND SCIENCE--CONNECTIONS
Religion-Science -Cyberhub
connects sites that link spirit and nature, religion and science in the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin and Belonging to the Universe by Fritjof Capra and David Steindl-Rast.

DIALOGUE: THE PATH TO COMMUNITY 
On Friday, February 21 and Saturday, February 22, 1997 USAO presented and broadcast to a local television audience and two regional universities a two-day seminar Professor Leonard Swidler of Temple University and I had designed for USAO's new interactive classroom. The seminar was defined as:

An interdisciplinary conversation to explore ways in which dialogue can help disparate human groups -- social, economic, ethnic, national, ideological, cultural, and religious -- not only connect but capture, combine, and channel the dynamic energy of diversity into community building and networking -- locally, nationally, and globally. Special emphasis was placed on the role of technology in facilitating dialogue as well as learning to recognize the fundamental interrelatedness of all that is.

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Assorted articles I've written over the past 17 years without bothering to send them off for publication.  Most are based on conference presentations.  More will be added as I discover them among archived files. 

As one of twenty-three invited speakers -- and one of the two representatives from the United States -- I lectured on the topic "Welthethos und wahre Menschlichkeit: Philosophische und theologische Grundlagen und Grundfragen" (A Global Ethic and Genuine Humanity: Philosophical and Theological Foundations and Questions). I videotaped a fair amount of the conference and also interviewed 91 year old Cardinal König, one of the speakers, a scholar of world religions and a pivotal contributor to the Second Vatican Council which opened the Catholic Church up to the contemporary world in the 1960s. Using digitized images from the video tape, I created a personal 1996 Wiener Kulturkongress Collage

NEVER AGAIN! LARGE HOLOCAUST IMAGES
Shoah I  Shoah II  Shoah III

A VISIT TO BUDAPEST to lecture at a conference at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in March 1997: Sunday in Budapest

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Domains in Ecumene.Org

• Asia Peace
• Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church
• Back Home Books
• Beyond Terror:  Toward global peace!
• Center for the Study of Corruption & the Rule of Law
• Global Dialogue Institute
• ihs creations
• Middlebury Holistic Health Center
• Spiritual Wholeness New Age Catholic website
• Toward a Global Ethic
• Vaticanum Secundum -- Vatican II 
• World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality
• Zygon Center for Religion and Science
   

• Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA) -- original site
• "Come my Beloved!" -- from Shoah to Shalom
• Critical Reflections on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ
• Institute of Islamic Studies (IIS) and Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS)
• Journal of Ecumenical Studies
• Masyarakat Dialog Antar Agama (MADIA) -- Society for Interreligious Dialogue (Indonesia) 
• Peaceable Kingdom: dedicated to the natural world 
• TheAgape -- Transcending/Transforming Fear-Intolerance-Hate
• The International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan (INRFVVP) (original site now moved to its own domain -- see below) 
• Turpentine Creek Animal Sanctuary 
   

• Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (original site)
• Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (2003 ARCC Net site)
• Bishop Bhai Org (Archbishop Leobard D'Souza's site)
• Center for Global Ethics
• Global Dialogue Institute (GDI)
• Ingrid Shafer's Ionet Site
• Just Good Company (journal of religion and culture)
• The Pluralist Model of Religion
• Religions in Renewal
• The International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan (INRFVVP)
•  

For me teaching in the USAO IDS program is not only, or even primarily, a job. It is a vocation, a calling, a consuming passion which gives me a chance to challenge and encourage men and women of all ages to discover the life of the mind, and in the process grow in knowledge, discernment, and humaneness. In 1968 I turned down a considerably more lucrative position at West Texas State University in order to come to USAO. I chose USAO because it was a small liberal arts college and I could be part of developing and implementing the new USAO IDS program and especially a 12 credit-hour series of interdisciplinary, team-taught courses dealing with global history of ideas from the beginnings to the present -- the courses now known as the World Thought and Culture sequence. At the time they were called "Principal Ideas" courses and included a 3-hour segment dealing with the Orient which we have now integrated into our 9-hour series of courses.

I was delighted by the material to be covered--not merely the standard canned menu of Western thought from Socrates to Sartre but ideas potentially representative of the non-Western world. I was equally pleased with the instructional method: team teaching, which would not only manifest the diverse ways the same "fact" (issue, event, idea) can be illuminated and interpreted by different observers but allow faculty to demonstrate that individuals from seemingly totally unrelated academic disciplines can enter into fruitful dialogue and learn from and with one another. In addition, team teaching encourages spontaneity and discussion (even in large classes) and discourages the tendency to equate learning with memorizing textbook passages and expecting simplistic black-and-white answers to complex issues. Team teaching also challenges both faculty and students to think and makes it difficult for professors to use the same old lecture notes year after year. Finally, and most importantly, team teaching cannot even exist without people's willingness to understand each other and build bridges between academic disciplines and world views.

You see, in the sixties I was already deeply concerned about the post-Enlightenment tendency among intellectuals in the West to shatter and compartmentalize knowledge with the practical result of turning higher education into a loose confederation of separate departments designed to produce (much like factory assembly lines) graduates who knew a great deal about certain carefully circumscribed areas and practically nothing about anything that was not directly relevant to their major. This seemed at best unfortunate and at worst tragic, especially for undergraduate education which should encourage intellectual flexibility and build a broad foundation for subsequent specialization, training, and the possibility of changing careers several times before retiring, in addition to helping people develop the mental and cultural resources to enjoy those portions of their lives which were spent neither at work nor asleep. At the Oklahoma College of Liberal Arts (now USAO) I saw the possibility of pursuing the patterns that connect, of crossing over from the sciences to the humanities, from the arts and philosophy to technology, from economics to the religious traditions of the world. In other words: I fell in love with this college and its potential. And as soon as I started teaching, I fell in love all over again -- with all of those long-haired, bright-eyed, barefoot, beaded (these were the sixties, after all!) eager, irreverent, questioning, creative students, many of whom were suddenly discovering that they had independent minds. How quickly time passes: once there was Hardy Calaway, and then there was a whole crop of Hardy's top students from Del City High, and now there is Shawn, Hardy's son . . .

The years have done nothing to reduce my enthusiasm. I still believe in the USAO mission. I still share the USAO dream. Whenever I teach one of the World Thought and Culture courses with my colleagues Cecil Lee (an art historian and artist) and Larry Magrath (a biologist and orchid specialist) I realize that we are doing education for the future -- that right here in Chickasha, Oklahoma we are developing ways of healing the disease of intellectual fragmentation and tunnel vision through interdisciplinary dialogue. But now I also follow my dream beyond the borders of Oklahoma, both physically and in cyberspace.

As my resume shows, almost everything I think and do and teach and write and lecture, at USAO and elsewhere, somehow relates back to this passion for discovering or building links and finding ways of softening the artificial boundaries between disciplines, ideologies, nations, language groups, and individuals. Hence, I see the USAO mission, our dedication to an interdisciplinary core-curriculum, not in terms of Chickasha, or Oklahoma, or even the United States. I see it as the beginning of what could (and I argue, should) be a model for higher education in the 21st century, a model that can be translated into alternate modes of teaching, such as using the Internet and other forms of distance learning.

In this way we are preparing for the future. The most crucial issue of the 21st century will involve developing patterns of knowing, acting, and being OTHER than the traditionally dominant (at least in the Judeo - Christian - Islamic context) patriarchal - authoritarian - dogmatic "either/or" approach which fears and shuns genuine dialogue (which listens and learns) and seeks to impose its TRUTH. For the first time in human history we have the power to destroy the world. We can do it with a nuclear bang or an ecological whimper. Never before has it been so critical that human beings learn to live in peace. The poet W.H. Auden writes that we "must love another or die." For Christians this should be easy. After all at the very core of the Christian message lies the challenge to love one's enemies: In other words, to have no enemies (tell that to the victims of assorted crusades and pogroms)! Other religions and secular ideologies share similar ideals, especially in various forms of the "Golden Rule." This shows that there have always been visionaries to point the way. Humanity has just been slow to follow. Ironically, the very religions that should have brought peace all too often precipitated wars or could at least be used to rationalize aggression and violence. Look at Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. However, we have run out of options. The future is now, and the people of the world simply must find a way of agreeing on certain fundamental minimal codes of mutual respect and cooperation. This is why I am so delighted to be involved with the Center for Global Ethics at Temple University and its European counterpart in Tübingen, Germany.

Learning this new mode of being will not be easy. We need to overcome deeply entrenched habits of absolutism, dualism, and rigidity, and we must do so without sinking into the morass of lazy "everything - goes" totally relativistic rejection of all standards. We must find our way away from proscriptive legalism toward accepting (albeit value conscious) respect for those who live in different worlds, whether intellectual, economic, social, or political, and we must be willing to admit that we ourselves might suffer from prejudice and provincialism. In addition, we must grow up and learn that genuine success involves leaving the world a better place than we found it -- for all creatures great and small. We need to take the responsibility for assuring that there will even be a world for our children and grandchildren. This definition of success does not exclude the pursuit of affluence but certainly cannot be defined in terms of material wealth, especially stagnant wealth that is not re-invested in socially and ecologically responsible projects. Hence my ongoing participation in the Global Ethic Roundtables for Business Leaders at various locations in Pennsylvania with representatives from Business for Social Responsibility and The World Business Academy. The first week of May, 1997, we are sponsoring a major invitational conference for CEOs, academics, and spiritual leaders at La Casa de Maria near Santa Barbara, CA (Note: this was written in 1996).

It is essential that we explore precisely those modes of knowing / being / acting which push beyond the dichotomies toward a NEW mode of knowing / being / acting appropriate to the intersecting "worlds" of the inevitable global civilization of the next century. Here in the United States we are in a perfect position to serve as testing ground for such a development, especially since so much of our success was purchased with the suffering of native peoples, enslaved Africans, and other hated minorities. We cannot undo the past, but at least we can do out utmost to ensure that the future will be brighter. The United States IS (not are!) a mini-globe, a "mini-United Nations." Pluralism is the "American Way," and we have learned (on a relatively small scale, often unwittingly, unwillingly, and with mixed success) to balance creativity and order, the claims of the individual and the community, the One and the Many. At their best, cities such as Chicago have demonstrated that neighborhoods can work, that it is possible for people from widely divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds not only to live together in peace but to enrich each others' lives by sharing their unique gifts -- as long as fear and prejudice are held at bay. And that is largely a matter of education.

My passion for making inter-, intra-, and cross - disciplinary connections is at least in part the result of my childhood. In a sense I am trying to atone and pay a tiny sliver of a monstrous debt. I was born in Austria just before the beginning of World War II. I remember the war years well, but more importantly, I remember what I learned a few years after the war.

When I was around eight or nine (and already a voracious reader) I discovered that my people had slaughtered millions of human beings simply because they were Jewish or otherwise "different." Many Germans and Austrians (such as my parents) who were not personally responsible for the atrocities had remained silent to protect themselves and their children. It seemed that my life, and that of my generation, had been bought with the blood of the victims and the permanent non-existence of their potential descendants.

As I grew older I became convinced that I owed a debt to the dead and those who would never be. By the time I was eighteen I had carefully studied a few dozen crusades, pogroms, religious persecutions, and wars. It seemed there was no limit to the capacity of human beings to torture their fellows. And yet throughout history there were men and women who exemplified pursuit of knowledge and non-judgmental love. In terms of the Holocaust, we call them the Righteous among Nations. In their vision and courage I found hope. They should be our heroes.

This is why I have dedicated my life to building bridges between people, ethnic groups, religions, denominations, philosophies, and academic disciplines. I am convinced that the future of humanity depends on several crucial attitudes:

• Maintaining faith that our lives are grounded in a center of meaning and point towards a transcendent focus.
• Behaving like guests in the universe instead of parasites.
• Being willing to explore disagreements and grow in understanding through dialogue.
• Showing respect for the "other" without rejecting our own roots.
• Basing human relationships less on visceral reactions than informed, nuanced thinking.
• HAVING THE COURAGE TO LOVE.
   

We can do it! I was born one month before World War II began. Stalingrad, London, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki . . . at least 30 million victims of the Holocaust and Stalin's purges . . . the bomb . . . the Cultural Revolution . . . . And yet, more than half a century after the end of World War II this Austrian is a U.S. citizen who teaches in the United States, writes this introduction on a computer with parts manufactured in Japan, and has students from all over the world, including Russia, China, and Japan. If this can happen at USAO, it can happen elsewhere. And that makes all the difference.