Father Thomas F. Stransky, C.S.P, honored with the Georgetown University President’s Medal
Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia presented the President’s Medal to Father Thomas F. Stransky in honor of the Paulist Priest’s work and legacy in the arena of interfaith relations during a Nov. 2 reception held in Georgetown’s Riggs Library.
The reception followed the conclusion of Father Stransky’s four-part lecture series on Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II document on the relationship between the Catholic Church and non-Christian faiths. Father Stransky, one of the principal drafters of Nostra Aetate, currently lives and ministers at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.
“It is difficult to imagine more important and challenging work – or work more true to the spirit of Nostra Aetate – that facilitating interfaith dialogue in the land that Christian, Muslims and Jews alike call holy,” said Dr. DeGioia, noting that Father’s Stransky’s lectures on Nostra Aetate were having Thomas Jefferson explain the Declaration of Independence. “It is also difficult to imagine anyone better suited to this role than Father Stransky.”
In his talk, Father Stransky said he is “always humbled by the refusal of the victimized to give up” working for peace.
“They refuse to do it,” he said. “In the Holy Land, we are all politicians. You can’t talk about peace between the Muslims and the Jews if you don’t talk about unity among Christians. … The Holy Land is a laboratory of the world – the condensation of good and evil in the world.”
Paulist President Father John F. Duffy, C.S.P., noted Father Stransky was elected the first president of the Paulist Fathers after Vatican II.
“No one represented the vision and challenging changes of the council more,” Father Duffy said. “How paradoxical that Tom, visionary of today’s church, finds his greatest anchor by living and working in Jerusalem, seed of the church’s earliest days. Tom’s depth of knowledge and human engagement ground him in the old and new, the past and future, the obstacles and the possibilities to overcome those obstacles.”
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