On June 25, a group of Jesuit priests and scholars visited the Home of the Parent. During their four-day stay, the six visitors observed the Monthly Service conducted at Tenrikyo Church Headquarters on June 26, visited Tenri Central Library and Tenri Sankokan Museum, and attended a conference held in Doyusha Hall, where they had an inter-religious dialogue with Tenri University faculty members and a Tenri Seminary scholar.<\/p>\n
The Society of Jesus is one of the largest religious orders in the Catholic Church. Among the visitors was Professor Keith Pecklers of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy, one of the educational institutions of the Society of Jesus. In the past, he participated in both the “Tenrikyo-Christian Dialogue: Symposium and Exhibition,” which was held at the Gregorian University in Rome in March 1998, and the “Tenri International Symposium 2002: Tenrikyo-Christian Dialogue II.” He played a key role in promoting dialogue at each symposium. This was his third visit to Tenri. A specialist in liturgy, he had such a keen interest in the form of Tenrikyo prayer that he even visited the Home of the Parent in the interval between those two symposiums.<\/p>\n
This time, Professor Pecklers organized the trip in order to provide other Jesuit priests with an opportunity to come in contact with the Tenrikyo teachings and church facilities. Those who guided them in observing the Tenrikyo faith were the following four scholars: namely, Dr. Saburo Morishita, Shugo Yamanaka, and Katsumi Shimada from Tenri University and Dr. Ikuo Higashibaba from Tenri Seminary. At the conference, the Tenrikyo history and teachings as well as the implied meanings of prayers and the Service were explained in detail. Later, some commonality between the two religious faiths was acknowledged, and opinions were also exchanged in regard to the differences between the two, thereby enabling both groups to deepen their mutual understanding.<\/p>\n
This time, Professor Pecklers organized the trip in order to provide other Jesuit priests with an opportunity to come in contact with the Tenrikyo teachings and church facilities. Those who guided them in observing the Tenrikyo faith were the following four scholars: namely, Dr. Saburo Morishita, Shugo Yamanaka, and Katsumi Shimada from Tenri University and Dr. Ikuo Higashibaba from Tenri Seminary. At the conference, the Tenrikyo history and teachings as well as the implied meanings of prayers and the Service were explained in detail. Later, some commonality between the two religious faiths was acknowledged, and opinions were also exchanged in regard to the differences between the two, thereby enabling both groups to deepen their mutual understanding.<\/p>\n
Professor John Baldovin of Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was visiting Tenri for the first time, said, “I was very impressed to see a large number of people wholeheartedly praying while facing the Kanrodai as the focal point for worship.”<\/p>\n
Professor Pecklers said: “Now that the world is faced with a wide variety of problems, there is a real need for religions to make cooperative efforts to solve these problems together. In this regard, I think we can cooperate with each other at the moral and ethical level from here on, because I assume that there is something in common between the spirit of hinokishin and the spirit of Christian love.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On June 25, a group of Jesuit priests and scholars visited the Home of the Parent. During their four-day stay, the six visitors observed the Monthly Service conducted at Tenrikyo Church Headquarters on June 26, visited Tenri Central Library and Tenri Sankokan Museum, and attended a conference held in Doyusha\u2026<\/p>\n