Free Public Forum in Australia
This Forum will be offering a space where people of goodwill can meet in faith and scholarship to better understand the communities and the world.
The forum is part of a series being held in various Australian cities to celebrate the centenary of the Catenian Association, an international fraternity of Catholic laymen.
The Forum will be held on Tuesday September 23, 2008 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm at Mercy Lecture Theatre, Australian Catholic University.
Entry to the Forum will be free.
You can send e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for registration by Friday September 19, 2008
Papers will be presented by:
- Rabbi John Levi
- Dr. Maryanne Confoy
- Professor Ismail Albayrak
About the Presenters
Rabbi John Levi
Rabbi Dr John Levi AM is our first Australian born rabbi. He was ordained at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He has a PhD from Monash University (and is also a Doctor of Laws (hons causa) from the same university. He served as rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Melbourne for 37 years. He has published a number of books on Australian Jewish history, edited a set of CDs of the synagogue music of Berlin and produced a popular Australian Passover Eve service book. He is a life member of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. He was a pioneer in the establishment of the Australian Council of Christians and Jews.
Dr. Maryanne Confoy
Dr. Maryanne Confoy is Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Jesuit Theological College and United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College, USA. Graduated BA, University of Melbourne, she pursed post graduate studies at Boston College and Harvard Graduate School of Education and was admitted as PhD in Theology and Education by Boston College in1980. Dr Confoy has been published extensively on topics relating to women as theologians and spirituality.
She is a biographer o f the author Morris West. Her most recent book is Vatican II Revisited: Religious Life and Priesthood, Paulist Press, NY, 2008.
Professor Ismail Albayrak
Professor Ismail Albayrak was born in Ankara in 1968. He graduated from Ankara University School of Divinity in 1991 and completed his MA at the same University in 1995. He received his PhD degree from Leeds University in 2000. He then took up a position at Sakarya University in Turkey, where he taught and wrote on Qur’anic Studies, classical exegesis, contemporary approaches to the Qur’an and orientalism. He also has research interests in the place of Muslim communities and their activites in a globalizing world.
In November 2008 he was appointed to the newly established Fethullah Gülen
Chair in the Study of Islam and Muslim-Catholic Relations at Australian
Catholic University.
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