Emmanuel Magazine January/February 2015 | Page 7

affiliated with Trinity College Dublin. Following his undergraduate studies in classics at University College Dublin and the study of Scholastic philosophy in the Jesuit program of formation, Hurley proceeded to Louvain in Belgium for his theology. He found there a genuinely ecumenical approach to theology, not least in bibliographical references in the various theology courses to Protestant and Orthodox authors. This was especially the case with one of his professors, George Dejaifve, SJ, who was very sympathetic to the growing ecumenical movement. In 1954, Hurley was ordained a priest by Léon-Joseph Suenens, later to be the cardinal-archbishop of Malines and one of the leaders of the Second Vatican Council. His ecumenical appetite had been whetted and he went on to study for a doctorate in theology, awarded by Rome’s Gregorian University in 1961. During his time at the Gregorian, he attended a lecture by the famous Anglican ecumenist Bishop George Bell. Bell had been for many years one of the leading advocates of the ecumenical movement which, of course, had been greatly energized after the inception of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948. Hurley’s doctoral thesis was on “Sola Scriptura and John Wyclif.”3 Hurley returned to Ireland to teach at the Jesuit theology faculty of Milltown Park, Dublin. In 1959, the faculty made the decision to hold public lectures in theology, something rather unusual at the time. Hurley suggested as one of the topics “Christian unity.” Since no one on the faculty appeared to have any expertise in this area, it fell to him. From that time, he says, “I was never allowed to look back.”4 The lecture was delivered on March 9, 1960, and the title was “The Ecumenical Movement.”5 His first “outside” ecumenical invitation came from th