Pope francis and interreligious dialogue: religious thinkers engage with recent papal initiatives ha
Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue: Religious Thinkers Engage with Recent Papal Initiatives Harold Kasimow
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The past, present, and future of theologies of interreligious dialogue 1st Edition Friday
Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue Religious Thinkers Engage with Recent Papal Initiatives
Edited by Harold Kasimow · Alan Race
Foreword by Rabbi Abraham Skorka
Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue
Series Editors
Gerard Mannion Department of Theology
Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA
Mark D. Chapman
Ripon College
University of Oxford Oxford, UK
Building on the important work of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network to promote ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue, the Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue series publishes scholarship on interreligious encounters and dialogue in relation to the past, present, and future. It gathers together a richly diverse array of voices in monographs and edited collections that speak to the challenges, aspirations, and elements of interreligious conversation. Through its publications, the series allows for the exploration of new ways, means, and methods of advancing the wider ecumenical cause with renewed energy for the twenty-first century.
More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14561
Harold Kasimow • Alan Race Editors
Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue
Religious Thinkers Engage with Recent Papal Initiatives
Editors Harold Kasimow Grinnell College Grinnell, IA,
USA
Alan
Race World Congress of Faiths London, UK
Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue
ISBN 978-3-319-96094-4 ISBN 978-3-319-96095-1 (eBook)
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This book is dedicated to our friends and colleagues across the world committed to interreligious dialogue and collaboration for a better future and in particular to those involved with the interreligious and intercultural organizations committed to inquiry and learning across boundaries—the World Congress of Faiths (London), Common Ground (Deerfield, Illinois), and the Parliament of the World’s Religions.
Foreword: who Is Jorge BergoglIo?
I have been very kindly invited by Harold Kasimow and Alan Race to write a Foreword to a collection of chapters contributed to this book by members of major world religious traditions regarding their responses to Pope Francis and his views on interreligious dialogue. In writing this Foreword, my first idea was to summarize the different chapters in some way, emphasizing what I understood to be the core of each of them and concluding with my own perspective on the theme. This would have been a purely intellectual approach.
Then the memory of a particular moment suddenly came to my mind. During one of our meetings in his office in the archdiocesan building in Buenos Aires, I said to my friend Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, “I am considering the idea of writing a book about God.” I asked for his partnership on the project. He was not enthusiastic about the idea. One month later he called me and said, “Let us write a book of dialogues, you and I, about the burning themes that matter to ordinary people.” This was the beginning of the book of dialogues that we wrote together, On Heaven and Earth. We began speaking about God, the devil, and atheists and continued with fundamentalism, death, globalization, politics and power, money, poverty, the Holocaust, socialism, Peronism, and so on. He encouraged me to assume a prophetic attitude, to express deep concepts through simple words and phrases, to put aside all intellectual sophistications, and to speak to everyone.
Therefore, I have decided in this Foreword to describe some moments that I have shared with him and my feelings about them. I do this to transmit who this person, my friend, is. We address each other in our correspondence
as “my dear brother,” not as a mere formality, but in order to express the deep feeling we have for each other. The chapters of this book analyze with great wisdom different aspects of the preaching and religious leadership of Pope Francis. This Foreword tries to describe some intimate aspects of the person, the core of his preaching and leadership.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope—the 266th after Peter—on 13 March 2013. I watched the direct television broadcast in my house in Buenos Aires when Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran proclaimed that my friend was the new head of the Catholic Church, which includes 1.3 billion people. During the previous three years, we had worked together on the preparation of the book of dialogues I mentioned earlier. We presented it at the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary on 1 December 2010 and went on to record 31 television programs in which we continued dialoguing about pressing themes of our time. During those years, we used to meet two or more times each month in very creative dialogical encounters. The dialogues were spontaneous, which posed a special challenge for the recording of the programs. Despite that, it was very seldom that we were asked to modify something we had recorded. At the end of each session we decided upon the topics to discuss at the next meeting, and after the moderator, Marcelo Figueroa’s introduction, we expressed our ideas through an extemporaneous back-and-forth. Each meeting was a great spiritual experience for us. During our conversations, so as not to speak on top of my friend’s words, and to respond to them promptly with my own ideas, I used to look with great attention into his face as he spoke.
Years later, when Cardinal Tauran announced the identity of the new pope, my friend’s face appeared in my mind’s eye a few seconds before he actually came into view on the television screen.
After the first wave of emotion passed, the next sensation I had took the form of a question: How is our friendship going to continue? How are we going to be able to work together with an ocean separating us?
On the Buenos Aires afternoon of 18 March 2013, the eve of the day when Francis would be inaugurated in the Vatican as pope, I received a call on my cell phone. To my “Hello,” I heard in reply a very familiar voice, “Hello,” says Bergoglio, “they’ve caught me here and are not letting me back.” The purpose of the call was to speak with his friend after the revolutionary event that transformed his life and to let me know very clearly that, in a new way, we were going to continue to be in contact. We spoke about several subjects and when the conversation came to its end he told me, “Write down the email address which I am spelling to you now, so we can continue to be in touch.”
FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO?
Thus, began a new time in our friendship.
We had begun to get to know each other in the Cathedral of Buenos Aires, to which—by invitation of the President of Argentina—I represented the Jewish community at the special mass in honor of the national Independence Day. At first, Bergoglio was one of the auxiliary bishops under Cardinal Antonio Quarracino. Afterward, he became his coadjutor bishop and finally he succeeded him as archbishop of the city in 1998.
When I heard Bergoglio’s homilies on those occasions, they reminded me of the style of criticism used by the prophets which has resonances with Jesus’s preaching as well. In front of the president of the nation and his cabinet and many other governmental authorities, he championed the rights of the poor and of all the abandoned people in Argentinean society.
I used to tell him that his way of speaking seemed to be very much inspired by the prophets.
Through frequent football jokes, Bergoglio narrowed the gap that I felt was between us. He is older than me by 14 years (I was then in my late 40s and he in his early 60s), and he was the archbishop of one of the most important Catholic cities in the world. I was then the Rector of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano, an important position but very far from the political, religious, and social influence that he carried then. Years after he used to insist that we had been standing on the same level.
I never asked him why he sought me out. I guess he was sympathetic to the articles I wrote in La Nación—the newspaper he used to read daily— about the importance of interreligious dialogue or condemnation of terrorist acts and movements in the world or demanding the judicial prosecution of the attackers of the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. And then we began walking side by side together.
I invited him twice to give a message to my congregation during the service of Selihot; he invited me to deliver a lesson to the seminarians in the Facultad de Teología of the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. I wrote a book about different aspects of religiosity and the existential experience of faith in the twentieth century. I asked him to write the Foreword of the book. And he did. In the presentation ceremony for the book, I said that it must be the first time in history that an archbishop provided a Foreword to a book written by a rabbi.
When Sergio Rubin (together with Francesca Ambrogetti) finished writing the authorized biography of then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, he asked whom to invite to write the Foreword; his immediate answer was Rabbi Abraham Skorka. When Rubin asked me whether I would agree to
write the Foreword, I felt much emotion. An authorized biography is not a simple text but a special document that summarizes many particular aspects of the life story of a person. His choosing me to write introductory words to this special text had great impact on me. I asked myself why he did this. An archbishop, a cardinal, chose a Jew, a rabbi, to write the prologue of his biography! Years after, I suddenly asked him: Why did you choose me to write the introduction of El Jesuita?1 His instant answer was, “It came from out of my heart.”
The history of the Argentinean Catholic Church has had both shadows and lights concerning the Jews. During the 1930s and 1940s in the twentieth century, there were priests who sympathized with the anti-Semitic ideas propagated by the dictatorial European movements. Decades later, when the Argentinean Church organized a special ceremony in the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening sessions of the Second Vatican Council, one of its key moments was the bestowment of an honorary Ph.D. for my contributions to the culture of Buenos Aires. Bergoglio was then the grand chancellor of the university and, undoubtedly, he was the promoter of the idea, although he denied it in a private conversation with me.
Thousands gathered in the university auditorium and many others viewed the ceremony on the giant screen that was installed in a large adjacent room. Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the Preacher to the Papal Household, was specially invited to speak about the historical importance of the Council. The bestowing of the honorary degree was one of the high points of the event, signifying the transformation in Catholic attitudes toward Jews that the Second Vatican Council brought about. Bergoglio had worked hard to achieve this turning point in Argentinean Catholic Church history. The message of the Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate was thereby emphasized and enhanced.
When we stood one in front of the other without microphones between us, and holding the honorary medal fastened with a ribbon bearing the colors of the Argentinean flag in his hands, before putting it around my neck, he said to me, “You can’t imagine how long I have dreamt of this moment.”
When the ceremony finished, a Catholic professor of the university, the former National Secretary of Cults, said to me, “This would have been impossible to realize ten years ago.” A member of my congregation, born in Germany, approached me and said, “I saw how the Nazis took my teachers to the concentration camps and from there they never came back. During my whole life [he was then 90], I looked for some kind of answer for that pain. This evening I got a little one.”
One day as we sat in his little office in Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio and I spoke about leadership and the multiple conflicts in many places around the world. We discussed the attitudes that a real leader has to have in order to implant in people the values of peace, justice, and spirituality. When he was elected pope, I knew that a great opportunity was beginning for the Church to renew itself and to give a special message, not only for its own worshippers but for the whole of humankind.
My first wish was to accompany him in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to share with him the moment in which he would pray in front of the Kotel (Western Wall), and to embrace each other there in order to visually declare that 2000 years of conflict and hate are beginning to come to an end. We did this with our mutual friend, the Muslim leader Omar Abboud, extending the message to all the Abrahamic religions which consider that place holy and especially important. To impart a message of peace was our obsession and constant prayer in the Holy Land.
I was part of the official Vatican delegation that accompanied Pope Francis on this trip. The late Israeli president, Shimon Peres, worked very hard to enable it to occur. Peres was one of the first world leaders to be received by Francis in the Vatican, and a special, true, deep, and sincere relationship bound them after that initial meeting. Since Peres knew about our friendship, he contacted me and expressed to me his profound desire to receive the pope during his presidency. They recognized in each other partners who shared the same dream.
Before the journey, I published several articles about the meaning and importance of Zionism in the Vatican newspaper L´Osservatore Romano. La Civiltà Cattolica published a long interview with me in which there were many questions about the meaning of Zionism and its spiritual importance for the Jewish people2; undoubtedly it was Francis’s initiative that made that occur. He was the first pope to visit the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement. He also visited the Palestinian refugee camp of Dheisheh, where he exhorted to abandon the past and to build a future of peace and brotherhood.
During his pilgrimage, he balanced in a very careful way the rights of the Palestinians and the Israelis and expressed his personal support for the two-state solution. Peace in the Holy Land continues to be a special challenge and subject in our lives.
When we worked together on our book, he decided that our encounters should take place in his office in the archdiocesan building and in my synagogue. He used to take the subway whenever we met in my synagogue.
His habits are of great humility and great sensitivity toward suffering people. Very close to his room in Domus Santa Marta in the Vatican, he hosted a German priest who was recovering from a broken hip. The poor, the displaced of any society, the forced emigrants, and the exploited are his constant concern.
There is an inner dimension to his being, a mystical dimension, of which I saw several signs. His books and encyclicals deal with human behavioral problems: poverty, ecology, slavery, and so on, and his pronouncements are direct and very clear. Rarely does he adopt an intellectual attitude using cerebral sophistications, because he has an internal world which is far from a purely intellectual formalism, a mystical world which can only be expressed in the very special language of simple words, silences, and many gestures. When I used to be asked, in the first months of his papacy, what is Bergoglio’s way of thinking and acting, I used to answer that his model in life and priesthood is Jesus, as described in the synoptic Gospels. There are many convergences between the synoptic Gospels and the books of the prophets, from the generation of Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and Micah onward. This is one of the religious elements that immediately fostered deep dialogue between us. On certain occasions, I gave him several books by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great prophetical master of the twentieth century, and Heschel’s name frequently came up in our conversations. During the night, when all around me is silence and the voice of conscience can be heard clearly, I sometimes hear the voice of my friend saying, “Pray for me.” And as I begin praying, I feel that he is doing the same for all of us.
St. Joseph’s University Philadelphia, PA, USA
Notes
Rabbi Abraham Skorka
1. Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin, Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio: His Life in His Own Words (New York City: Penguin Group, 2014).
2. Omar Abboud, Abraham Skorka, and Antonio Spadoro, “Nessuna religione e un’isola. Converzsazione con Abraham Skorka” in Oltre il muro: Dialogo tra un musulmano, un rabbino e un Cristiano, Italian ed. (New York City: Rizzoli, 2014), 63–141.
AckNowledgmeNts
This book is the product of a 20-year friendship between an Anglican priest-theologian from the UK, author of the classic work Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (1983, enlarged 1993), and a Polish-born Jewish academic from the USA, a Holocaust survivor, and author of Interfaith Activism: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Religious Diversity (2015), his most recent book.
We wish to express our deepest gratitude to the religious leaders and eminent scholars from different parts of the world who have contributed to this book. We are particularly honored that Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a great friend of Pope Francis and one of the most distinguished rabbis in Argentina, agreed to write the Foreword to this book. His personal testimony is a perfect window on the spiritual humanity which informs all of the pope’s writings. We also express our most heartfelt thanks to Father Leo Lefebure, Matteo Ricci Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, for writing the final assessment, for encouraging us from the very start, and for introducing us to Gerard Mannion, who also saw the unique nature of this book and led us to working with Palgrave Macmillan. A further word of gratitude goes to Palgrave Macmillan for publishing this book and a special thanks to Phil Getz and Amy Invernizzi for their guidance through the processes of preparation and submission of the final manuscript.
hArold kAsImow’s specIAl AckNowledgmeNts
Abraham Joshua Heschel often spoke of the centrality of gratitude as a basic response to the wonder of human life. In this spirit, I would like to express my own deepest thanks to my co-editor Alan Race, a creative pioneer in interreligious dialogue and theology of religions. Alan has modeled the critical necessity of being open to other traditions while remaining loyal to his own. His friendship over the years has been very precious to me.
I also want to express my profound gratitude to my dear friend Angela Winburn, who is always a great joy to work with and was involved in every aspect of this book from the very beginning. I am very grateful for her patience and good humor. I am also indebted to Russell Tabbert for reading and providing feedback on a majority of the chapters. Very important to me also has been the friendship and tremendous support over the years of William Burrows, Zev Garber, Leonya Ivanov, John Keenan, Linda Keenan, Kenneth Kramer, Beverly Lanzetta, John Merkle, and Stanislaw Obirek. I am thankful to George A. Drake, former president of Grinnell College, for his interest in my work and his ongoing encouragement. I also want to thank my family for their love. Most of all, I am deeply grateful to Professors Bernard Phillips, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Byron Sherwin, who truly touched my life and changed my world. May their memory be blessed.
AlAN rAce’s specIAl AckNowledgmeNts
When I first met Harold Kasimow, I knew instantly that I had met a kindred spirit, a person of integrity and openness to others and the world. We met at the Parliament of the World’s Religions at Cape Town, South Africa, in 1999, and it is this which informs our part enlisting of the Parliament in the Dedication of the book. We have remained friends on the interfaith journey ever since and I am deeply grateful for his insights and wisdom. Echoing Harold’s gratitude both to those who have contributed to this book’s contents and to those who have helped it come to birth, I also add my own gratitude for the loving support of my wife, Sonya, who has been a constant encouragement throughout the whole process and whose commitment to the acceptance of religious pluralism has long been second nature to her.
retrospectIve AckNowledgmeNt
We would like to express grateful thanks to Pope John XXIII, the Good Pope, who ushered in the Second Vatican Council (11 October 1962) which gave new life to the interfaith movement that treasures and celebrates religious diversity and thereby prepared the way for this book whose subject places himself firmly in the tradition of that groundbreaking Council.
6 Is the Pope Catholic? A Question of Identity in Pope Francis’s Practical Theology of Interreligious Dialogue 129
Stephen B. Roberts
7 Pope Francis’s Compassion 145
Amineh A. Hoti
8 Pope Francis, Islam, and Dialogue 169
Ataullah Siddiqui
9 Cautious Hope: Hindu Reflections on Pope Francis 183
Jeffer y D. Long
10 Do We Have a Religious Need for Each Other? Pope
Francis and Interreligious Dialogue 199
Anantanand Rambachan
11 A Sikh in Dialogue with Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
Gaudium 219
Dharam Singh
12 Let’s Get Off Our Cell Phones and Hear a Sikh Maxim from Pope Francis 235
Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh
13 Toward Dialogue with Pope Francis: A Japanese Buddhist Perspective 259
Dennis Hirota
14 What Do We Share? A Secular-Humanist Response 279
Shoshana Ronen
Leo D. Lefebure
ABout the edItors
Harold Kasimow is George Drake Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Grinnell College, Iowa, USA, where for more than three decades he taught courses on Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism as well as on interreligious dialogue and relations. He is the author and co-editor of six books including Divine-Human Encounter: A Study of Abraham Joshua
Heschel (1979); No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue (1991); John Paul II and Interreligious Dialogue (1999); Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha (2003); The Search Will Make You Free: A Jewish Dialogue with World Religions (2006); and Interfaith Activism: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Religious Diversity (2015). His articles and reviews have appeared in leading scholarly journals in China, England, India, Japan, the USA, and Poland, the land of his birth. His essays have been published in ten edited books. He has also given scores of public lectures throughout North America and Europe as well as in Israel, Japan, and South Africa. He is a Holocaust survivor and immigrated to the USA in 1949.
Alan Race is a retired Anglican priest and currently the chair of the World Congress of Faiths Executive Committee and editor of its celebrated journal Interreligious Insight. He is recognized worldwide for his seminal ideas in the Christian theology of religions and in interfaith understanding and relations and has been involved in promoting interfaith dialogue and cooperation at many levels. He has worked with interfaith dialogue groups and has taught theology related to religious pluralism and interfaith work for many years. He is the author of the classic text in Christian theology of religions, Christians and Religious Pluralism (1983, enlarged 1993), as well as Interfaith Encounter (2001) and Making Sense of Religious Pluralism (2013), reprinted as Thinking About Religious Pluralism (2015) in the USA. He has contributed to numerous collections of essays, most recently to a Jewish-Christian dialogue, Deep Calls to Deep (2017). He co-edited the SCM Press textbook, Christian Approaches to Other Faiths (2008), and a volume of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in dialogue, Beyond the Dysfunctional Family (2012).
Notes oN coNtrIButors
Helene Egnell is a priest in the Church of Sweden (Lutheran). She serves as bishop’s adviser at the Centre for Interfaith Dialogue in the diocese of Stockholm. She has a Master of Philosophy degree from the Irish School of Ecumenics and holds a Ph.D. from Uppsala University with the dissertation Other Voices: A Study of Christian Feminist Approaches to Religious Plurality East and West (2006).
Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 17 December 1936 and is the 266th pope and sovereign of the Vatican City State. He is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first from outside of Europe since the eighth-century Syrian Gregory III. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969 and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina’s provincial superior of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. A papal conclave elected him on 13 March 2013. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Noted for his pastoral style and personal warmth, Pope Francis has emphasized the mercy of God, concern for the poor, care of the planet, commitment to interfaith dialogue, and hope for the world. His most significant pronouncements include Evangelii Gaudium (2013) on faith and evangelization; Laudato Si’ (2015) on environmental sustainability; Amoris Laetitia (2016) on love within the family; and Gaudete et Exsultate (2018), dealing with “the call to holiness in today’s world.” Pope Francis is critical of economic systems which benefit only the rich and self-serving politics
which refuse to embrace asylum seekers and those fleeing persecution. His commitment to interfaith dialogue is for the sake of mutual learning and collaboration for the common good of all peoples and the planet.
Dennis Hirota is Professor Emeritus of Shin Buddhist Studies at Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan. He was head translator of The Collected Works of Shinran (1997) and has written several books on Japanese Buddhist thought, including Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path (1995), No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997), Shinran: shukyo gengo no kakumeisha (1998), and Asura’s Harp: Engagement with Language as Buddhist Path (2006). He is completing a book on Shinran’s thought, in light of Martin Heidegger.
Amineh A. Hoti is the executive director of Markaz-e-Ilm, the Center for Dialogue and Action in Urdu Islamabad, working toward introducing peacebuilding in society. She co-founded the Center for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations (with Dr. Ed Kessler) in Cambridge, UK. She also founded the Society for Dialogue and Action at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge. She obtained her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. She was a distinguished fellow of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad. She has promoted peace education in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the USA and has been a speaker at the White House, Georgetown University, and in Doha, Qatar. She is associate producer and script consultant for the film Journey into Europe and was female lead researcher for the project from 2013 to 2016. She has written a number of books on promoting peace education and deeper understanding between people of different faiths, genders, and ethnicities, including Sorrow and Joy among Muslim Women (2006). She was chosen as the “Torchbearer” for Peacebuilding by Hello! Pakistan magazine in Pakistan’s Hot 100 (December 2016). She is now working on Religions of Pakistan, bringing religions together for peace.
Edward Kessler is founding and executive director of the Cambridge Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations. In 1998, he founded the Woolf Institute, which is devoted to the study of relations between religion and society (especially Jews, Christians, and Muslims) and is recognized around the world for the excellence of its research, teaching, and public education programs. He has written or edited 12 books including the acclaimed Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice of Isaac (2004). In 2011, he was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to interfaith relations.
Leo D. Lefebure is Matteo Ricci Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, USA. His books include Toward a Contemporary Wisdom Christology (1988), The Buddha and the Christ (1993), Life Transformed: Meditations on the Christian Scriptures in Light of Buddhist Perspectives (1993), Revelation, the Religions, and Violence (Pax Christi Book Award, 2000), The Path of Wisdom: A Christian Commentary on the Dhammapada (Frederick J. Streng Book of the Year Award, Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2011), and True and Holy: Christian Scripture and Other Religions (Catholic Press Association First Place Book Award for Academic Studies of Scripture, 2015). He is a trustee of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions.
Jeffery D. Long is Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College, USA, where he has taught since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2000). He is the author of A Vision for Hinduism (2007), Jainism: An Introduction (2007), and Historical Dictionary of Hinduism (2011), as well as the forthcoming Indian Philosophy: An Introduction, Hinduism in America: A Convergence of Worlds, and Arise! Awake! Swami Vivekananda Speaks to the Twenty-First Century. Long is also the editor of the series Explorations in Indic Traditions: Theological, Ethical, and Philosophical. He has spoken at many venues in the USA, India, and Europe.
Anantanand Rambachan is Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA, and Forum Humanum Gastprofessor for the Academy for World Religions, University of Hamburg, Germany. His books include Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Sankara (1991); The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of the Vedas (1994); The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity (2006); and A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two Is Not One (2015).
Stephen B. Roberts is a Christian theologian who researches in the area of theology in the public sphere. His Ph.D. thesis, Religion and Dialogue: Textuality, Rationality and the Re-imagining of the Public Sphere (2011), used the interreligious practice of scriptural reasoning to articulate a dialogical conception of the public sphere as a space hospitable to religious forms of reasoning. His current research explores a variety of ways in which theology is performed in the pluralistic public sphere, such as in the texts of popular culture and the life and worship of faith communities. Having previously worked as a university chaplain, he has an ongoing interest in the distinctive role of chaplains in relation to public theology, his own theological research trajectory arising directly out of that context and practice.
Shoshana Ronen is a professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and chair of the Hebrew Studies Department. She is the author of In Pursuit of the Void: Journeys to Poland in Contemporary Israeli Literature (2001), Nietzsche and Wittgenstein: In Search of Secular Salvation (2002), and Polin—A Land of Forests and Rivers: Images of Poland and Poles in Contemporary Hebrew Literature in Israel (2007). Her most recent book is A Prophet of Consolation on the Threshold of Destruction: Yehoshua Ozjasz Thon, an Intellectual Portrait (2015).
Ataullah Siddiqui is a British academic and reader in Religious Pluralism and Interfaith Relations at Markfield Institute of Higher Education, UK, and course director for the Certificate in Muslim Chaplaincy. He served as director of the Markfield Institute from 2001 to 2008. He is an honorary visiting fellow in the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, and a visiting fellow at York St. John University. He has written extensively on Christian-Muslim relations and interfaith issues including ChristianMuslim Dialogue in the Twentieth Century (1997) and Islam and Other Faiths (1998), a collection of Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi’s articles. He co-edited Christians and Muslims in the Commonwealth: A Dynamic Role in the Future (2001) and British Secularism and Religion (2011). He is also the author of Islam at Universities in England: Meeting the Needs and Investing in the Future (2007).
Dharam Singh retired from Punjabi University, Patiala, India, as Professor of Sikh Studies and editor-in-chief of The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. He is working as visiting professor in the Centre on Studies in Sri Guru Granth Sahib at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, finalizing his English rendering, with detailed annotations, of the Vars of Bhai Gurdas, the first exegete of the Sikh scripture. Among the books to his credit are Sikh Theology of Liberation (1991), Sikhism: Norm and Form (1998), Dynamics of the Social Thought of Guru Gobind Singh (1999), The Khalsa (1999), Guru Granth Sahib: Guru-Eternal for the Sikhs (2004), Guru Arjan Dev (2006), Sikhism and Religious Pluralism (2009), and Understanding Sikhism (2012). He has edited a number of books and has also written the English rendering of the famous exegetical work, Darpan Sri Guru Granth Sahib (forthcoming).
Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh is Crawford Professor of Religious Studies at Colby College at Waterville, Maine, USA, and co-chair of the Sikh studies section of the American Academy of Religion. Her interests focus on poetics and feminist issues and she has written extensively in the field of
Sikhism. Her books include The Guru Granth Sahib: Its Physics and Metaphysics (1981), The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent (1993), The Name of My Beloved: Verses of the Sikh Gurus (2001), and The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity (2005). She has lectured widely in North America, England, France, India, and Singapore, and her views have been aired on television and radio in the USA, Canada, Bangladesh, Australia, Ireland, and India.
Rabbi Abraham Skorka is an Argentine rabbi, a biophysicist, and Professor of Biblical and Rabbinic Literature at the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano Marshall T. Meyer at Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he has also served as the rector for nearly 20 years. He is an Honorary Professor of Hebrew Letters at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and was recently appointed university professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He and Pope Francis are close friends and they co-authored On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century (published in English in 2013).
Debbie Young-Somers is the community educator at Movement for Reform Judaism and a reform rabbi ordained in 2009 at Leo Baeck College, UK. She teaches “Dialogue and Encounter” to student rabbis, as well as trainee clergy at The Queen’s Foundation, for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham. She holds a first-class degree in religious studies from Lancaster University and is a Buber Fellow of Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden. Young-Somers has been active both professionally and as a volunteer in the interfaith world since her teenage years. Her first rabbinic post was at West London Synagogue where she coordinated interfaith activities and the Jewish preparation program, as well as developed an interfaith program for teenagers. She has written in magazines, journals, and books, most recently in Deep Calls to Deep (2017). She is a regular contributor to Radio 2’s Pause for Thought, In Spirit on BBC London and to the national Jewish press. She is currently studying the craft of storytelling.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Harold Kasimow and Alan Race
Since the pontificate of Pope John XXIII (1958–63)—thought by many to have been the most compassionate pope of the last few hundred years— the world has been blessed with some surprising successors. No one expected to have a pope from Poland, followed by a German pope, and now perhaps the most surprising pope of all—a Jesuit from the southern hemisphere of the New World.
Since his election on 13 March 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, has aroused a great deal of interest around the world. This has been evident from the beginning when he chose to live in the Vatican guesthouse rather than in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace. The choice of Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi, also heralded a certain predisposition: a concern for the poor and the environment. Pope Francis has become known both for his warmth of personal style and for his steely determination to present the relevance of Christian faith in outward-looking dialogue with world issues, such as the environment,
H. Kasimow, A. Race (eds.), Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue, Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96095-1_1
H. KASIMOW AND A. RACE
poverty, and human rights. In this latter respect, he continues the trajectory set by the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) in its determination to open the Catholic Church to engagement with the modern world. That openness sought to embrace both theological issues of believing and pastoral issues of human flourishing through rapidly changing times. Pope Francis’s immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, was known for his strong theological interests, especially his desire to repudiate intellectual currents associated with postmodernism affecting Christian understanding. Although fairly traditional-minded theologically, with Pope Francis it is the pastoral and ethical dimensions of Christian commitment that have assumed more center stage—as they were during his times of leadership as Archbishop of Buenos Aires (1998–2013) and as Cardinal Priest of San Roberto Bellarmino (2000–13) in Argentina, a country that has known political turmoil, social unrest, and individual suffering through poverty. The would-be pope was known for his compassionate voice in his championing of the poor. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the same compassion can be detected in his papal pronouncements, sermons, and interviews, not to mention his simpler lifestyle compared to many previous occupiers of Saint Peter’s office.
Though the papal emphasis on pastoral and ethical issues has become familiar, Pope Francis’s engagement with interreligious questions is less well known. However, this does not mean that there is an absence of engagement, for the pope recognizes how deeply entangled issues of interreligious collaboration, dialogue, and theology are with the world’s overriding need for justice, peace, and ecological sustainability. It could not be otherwise for a pope whose watchword is often “dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.” The chapters in this book bring the reflections on interreligious collaboration, dialogue, and theology to the foreground and so fill a gap in the general critical analysis of the pope’s pronouncements. It will be seen that far from being marginal to the pope’s general outlook, they form an integral part of his overall approach to Christian mission when this is interpreted in its broadest sense.
When we ponder the words of Pope Francis on dialogue, it reminds us of the prophet Ezekiel: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). Pope Francis dares us to open ourselves with a heart that will heal the historic wounds of animosity, hatred, and mistrust among the religions of the world. His hope is that authentic dialogue will help us to see each other primarily as brothers
and sisters, all loved equally by the God of love. It is not hard to imagine that the main reason that Pope Francis has become the most beloved spiritual leader of our time is that he opens his heart to all those he encounters. Many who have been in his presence have spoken of how much he resonates to human need.
In a previous book, John Paul II and Interreligious Dialogue (editors Byron Sherwin and Harold Kasimow, New York: Orbis, 1999), scholars from three traditions—Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism—reflected on the dialogical theology of the then pope. In this book the range of reflection has broadened to include scholars from seven traditions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and secular humanism. This is in line with the growing popularity for and interest in dialogue between many religious traditions and with nonreligious philosophies as well. Furthermore, the responses take up both aspects of the dialogical task, gleaned from the pope’s pronouncements, in equal measure—the theological and the collaborative-practical. This too reflects the changing contours, interests, and emphases, since the previous book, of dialogical relations between religions and beliefs across a wide field. Furthermore, this appraisal by scholars from different traditions broadens the discussion of Pope Francis’s writings and speeches and thus makes a significant contribution to interreligious literature, relations between religions and beliefs, and positive, collaborative action for a better world.
PART I
In His Own Words
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VEAL CUTLETS, OR COLLOPS, À LA FRANÇAISE. (ENTRÉE.)
Cut the veal into small, thin, round collops of equal size, arrange them evenly in a sauté-pan, or in a small frying-pan, and sprinkle a little fine salt, white pepper, and grated nutmeg on them. Clarify, or merely dissolve in a clean saucepan with a gentle degree of heat, an ounce or two of good butter, and pour it equally over the meat. Set the pan aside until the dinner-hour, then fry the collops over a clear fire, and when they are lightly browned, which will be in from four to five minutes, lift them into a hot dish, and sauce them with a little Espagnole, or with a gravy made quickly in the pan, and flavoured with lemon-juice and cayenne. They are excellent even without any sauce.
3 to 4 minutes.
SCOTCH COLLOPS. (ENTRÉE.)
Prepare the veal as for the preceding receipt, but dip the collops into beaten egg and seasoned bread-crumbs, and fry them directly in good butter, over a moderate fire, of a light golden brown; drain them well in lifting them from the pan, and sauce them like the collops à la Française.
VEAL
CUTLETS À
LA MODE DE LONDRES, OR, LONDON FASHION. (ENTRÉE.)
Raise the flesh entire from the upper side of the best end of a neck of veal, free it from the skin, and from the greater portion of the fat, slice it equally into cutlets little more than a quarter of an inch thick, brush them with egg, strew them with fine bread-crumbs, and fry them of a light brown. Toast, or fry apart as many small slices of bacon as there are cutlets, and let them be trimmed nearly to the same shape; place them alternately on their edges round the inside of a hot dish (so as to form a sort of chain), and pour into the middle some rich gravy made in the pan, and very slightly flavoured with eschalot; or substitute for this some good brown mushroom sauce. Savoury herbs, grated lemon-rind, nutmeg or mace, salt, and white pepper or cayenne, should be mixed with the bread-crumbs, in the proportions directed at page 213, for cutlets of calf’s head; or they may be varied at pleasure. A cheek of bacon is best adapted to this dish.
SWEETBREADS SIMPLY DRESSED. (ENTRÉE.)
In whatever way sweetbreads are dressed, they should first be well soaked in lukewarm water, then thrown into boiling water to blanch them, as it is called, and to render them firm. If lifted out after they have boiled from five to ten minutes according to their size, and laid immediately into fresh spring water to cool, their colour will be the better preserved. They may then be gently stewed for three quarters of an hour in veal gravy, which with the usual additions of cream, lemon, and egg-yolks, may be converted into a fricassee sauce for them when they are done; or they may be lifted from it, glazed, and served with good Spanish gravy; or, the glazing being omitted, they may be sauced with the sharp Maître d’Hôtel sauce of page 117. They may also be simply floured, and roasted in a Dutch oven, being often basted with butter, and frequently turned. A full sized sweetbread, after having been blanched, will require quite three quarters of an hour to dress it.
Blanched 5 to 10 minutes. Stewed 3/4 hour or more.
SWEETBREAD CUTLETS. (ENTRÉE.)
Boil the sweetbreads for half an hour in water or veal broth, and when they are perfectly cold, cut them into slices of equal thickness, brush them with yolk of egg, and dip them into very fine breadcrumbs seasoned with salt, cayenne, grated lemon-rind, and mace; fry them in butter of a fine light brown, arrange them in a dish placing them high in the centre, and pour under them a gravy made in the pan, thickened with mushroom powder and flavoured with lemonjuice; or, in lieu of this, sauce them with some rich brown gravy, to which a glass of sherry or Madeira has been added. When it can be done conveniently, take as many slices of a cold boiled tongue as there are sweetbread cutlets; pare the rind from them, trim them into good shape, and dress them with the sweetbreads, after they have been egged and seasoned in the same way; and place each cutlet upon a slice of tongue when they are dished. For variety, substitute croutons of fried bread stamped out to the size of the cutlets with a round or fluted paste or cake cutter. The crumb of a stale loaf, very evenly sliced, is best for the purpose.
STEWED CALF’S FEET
(Cheap and Good.)
This is an excellent family dish, highly nutritious, and often very inexpensive, as the feet during the summer are usually sold at a low rate. Wash them with nicety, divide them at the joint, and split the claws; arrange them closely in a thick stewpan or saucepan, and pour in as much cold water as will cover them about half an inch: three pints will be sufficient for a couple of large feet. When broth or stock is at hand, it is good economy to substitute it for the water, as by this means a portion of strong and well-flavoured jellied gravy will be obtained for general use, the full quantity not being needed as sauce for the feet. The whole preparation will be much improved by laying a thick slice of the lean of an unboiled ham, knuckle of bacon, hung beef, or the end of a dried tongue, at the bottom of the pan, before the other ingredients are added; or, when none of these are at hand, by supplying the deficiency with a few bits of lean beef or veal: the feet being of themselves insipid, will be much more palatable with one or the other of these additions. Throw in from half to three quarters of a teaspoonful of salt when they begin to boil, and after the scum has been all cleared off, add a few branches of parsley, a little celery, one small onion or more, stuck with half a dozen cloves, a carrot or two, a large blade of mace, and twenty corns of whole pepper; stew them softly until the flesh will part entirely from the bones; take it from them, strain part of the gravy, and skim off all the fat, flavour it with catsup or any other store sauce, and thicken it, when it boils, with arrow-root or flour and butter; put in the flesh of the feet, and serve the dish as soon as the whole is very hot. A glass of wine, a little lemon juice, and a few forcemeat balls, will convert this into a very superior stew; a handful of mushroom-buttons also simmered in it for half an hour before it is dished, will vary it agreeably.
Calf’s feet (large), 2; water, 3 pints; salt, 1/2 to 1/3 teaspoonful; onions, 1 to 3; cloves, 6; peppercorns, 20; mace, large blade; little celery and parsley; carrots, 1 or 2: stewed softly, 2-1/2 to 3-1/4
hours. Mushroom catsup, 1 tablespoonful; flour, or arrow-root, 1 large teaspoonful; butter, 1 to 2 oz. Cayenne, to taste.
CALF’S LIVER STOVED, OR STEWED.
From three to four pounds of the best part of the liver will be sufficient for a dish of moderate size. First lard it quite through by the directions of page 181, with large lardoons, rolled in a seasoning of spice, and of savoury herbs very finely minced; then lay it into a stewpan or saucepan just fitted to its size, and pour in about half a pint of broth or gravy; heat it very gently, and throw in, when it begins to simmer, a sliced carrot, a small onion cut in two, a small bunch of parsley, and a blade of mace; stew the liver as softly as possible over a very slow fire from two hours and a half to three hours; thicken the gravy with a little brown roux (see page 107), or with a dessertspoonful of browned flour; add a couple of glasses of white wine, and a little spice if needed, and serve it very hot, after having taken out the herbs and vegetable.
The liver may be stewed without being larded; it may likewise be browned all over in a carefully made roux, before the gravy is poured to it: this must then be made to boil, and be added in small portions, the stewpan being well shaken round as each is thrown in. The wine can be altogether omitted; or a wineglassful of port mixed with a little lemon-juice, may take the place of sherry. After the liver has been wiped very dry, minced herbs may be strewed thickly over it before it is laid into the stewpan; and it may be served in its own gravy, or with a sauce piquante.
Liver, 3 to 4 lbs: 2 to 3 hours.
TO ROAST CALF’S LIVER.
Take the whole or part of a fine white sound liver, and either lard it as a fricandeau upon the surface, or with large strips of highlyseasoned bacon in the inside (see Larding, page 181); or should either of these modes be objected to, merely wrap it in a well buttered paper, and roast it from an hour to an hour and a quarter at a moderate distance from a clear fire, keeping it constantly basted. Remove the paper, and froth the liver well from ten to fifteen minutes before it is done. It should be served with a sauce of some piquancy, such as a poivrade, or brown eschalot, in addition to some good gravy. French cooks steep the liver over-night in vinegar, with a sliced onion and branches of savoury herbs laid over it: this whitens and renders it firm. As an economical mode, some small bits of the liver may be trimmed off, floured, and lightly fried with a sliced onion, and stewed down for gravy in three quarters of a pint of water which has been poured into the pan, with the addition of a few peppercorns, and a small bunch of herbs. A seasoning of salt must not be forgotten, and a little lemon pickle, or juice, would generally be considered an improvement.
1 to 1-1/4 hour.
BLANQUETTE OF VEAL OR LAMB, WITH MUSHROOMS.
(ENTRÉE.)
Slice very thin the white part of some cold veal, divide and trim it into scallops not larger than a shilling, and lay it into a clean saucepan or stewpan. Wipe with a bit of new flannel and a few grains of salt, from a quarter to half a pint of mushroom-buttons, and slice them into a little butter which just begins to simmer; stew them in it from twelve to fifteen minutes, without allowing them to take the slightest colour; then lift them out and lay them on the veal. Pour boiling to them a pint of sauce tournée (see page 108); let the blanquette remain near, but not close to the fire for awhile: bring it nearer, heat it slowly, and when it is on the point of boiling mix a spoonful or two of the sauce from it with the well beaten yolks of four fresh eggs; stir them to the remainder; add the strained juice of half a small lemon; shake the saucepan above the fire until the sauce is just set, and serve the blanquette instantly
Cold veal, 3/4 lb.; mushrooms, 1/4 to 1/2 pint: stewed in 1-1/2 oz. butter, 12 to 15 minutes. Sauce tournée, or thickened veal gravy, 1 pint; yolks of eggs, 4; lemon-juice, 1 tablespoonful.
Obs.—Any white meat may be served en blanquette. The mushrooms are not indispensable for it, but they are always a great improvement. White sauce substituted for the thickened veal gravy will at once convert this dish into an inexpensive English fricassee. Mace, salt, and cayenne, must be added to either preparation, should it require seasoning.
MINCED VEAL.
When there is neither gravy nor broth at hand, the bones and trimmings of the meat must be boiled down to furnish what is required for the mince. As cold meat is very light in weight, a pound of the white part of the veal will be sufficient for a dish, and for this quantity a pint of gravy will be needed. Break down the bones of the joint well, add the trimmings of the meat, a small bunch of savoury herbs, a slice or two of carrot or of celery, a blade of mace, a few white peppercorns, and a bit or two of lean ham, boiled, or unboiled if it can be had, as either will improve the flavour of the mince. Pour to these a pint and a half of water, and stew them gently for a couple of hours; then strain off the gravy, let it cool, and clear it entirely from the fat. Cut the white part of the veal small with a very sharp knife, after all the gristle and brown edges have been trimmed away Some persons like a portion of fat minced with it, others object to the addition altogether. Thicken the gravy with a teaspoonful and a half of flour smoothly mixed with a small slice of butter, season the veal with a saltspoonful or more of salt, and half as much white pepper and grated nutmeg, or pounded mace; add the lightly-grated rind of half a small lemon; mix the whole well, put it into the gravy, and heat it thoroughly by the side of the fire without allowing it to boil; serve it with pale toasted sippets in and round the dish. A spoonful or two of cream is always an improvement to this mince.
MINCED VEAL AND OYSTERS.
The most elegant mode of preparing this dish is to mince about a pound of the whitest part of the inside of a cold roast fillet or loin of veal, to heat it without allowing it to boil, in a pint of rich white sauce, or béchamel, and to mix with it at the moment of serving, three dozens of small oysters ready bearded, and plumped in their own strained liquor, which is also to be added to the mince; the requisite quantity of salt, cayenne, and mace should be sprinkled over the veal before it is put into the sauce. Garnish the dash with pale fried sippets of bread, or with fleurons[77] of brioche, or of puff-paste. Nearly half a pint of mushrooms minced, and stewed white in a little butter, may be mixed with the veal instead of the oysters; or should they be very small they may be added to it whole: from ten to twelve minutes will be sufficient to make them tender. Balls of delicately fried oyster-forcemeat laid round the dish will give another good variety of it.
77 Fleurons, flowers, or flower-like figures, cut out with tin shapes
Veal minced, 1 lb.; white sauce, 1 pint; oysters, 3 dozen, with their liquor; or mushrooms, 1/2 pint, stewed in butter 10 to 12 minutes.
VEAL-SYDNEY. (GOOD.)
Pour boiling on an ounce and a half of fine bread-crumbs nearly half a pint of good veal stock or gravy, and let them stand till cool; mix with them then, two ounces of beef-suet shred very small, half a pound of cold roast veal carefully trimmed from the brown edges, skin, and fat, and finely minced; the grated rind of half a lemon, nearly a teaspoonful of salt, a little cayenne, the third of a teaspoonful of mace or nutmeg, and four well-beaten eggs. Whisk up the whole well together, put it into a buttered dish, and bake it from three quarters of an hour to an hour. Cream may be used instead of gravy when more convenient, but this last will give the better flavour. A little clarified butter put into the dish before the other ingredients are poured in will be an improvement.
Bread-crumbs, 1-1/2 oz.; gravy or cream, nearly 1/2 pint; beefsuet, 2 oz.; cold veal, 1/2 lb.; rind of 1/2 lemon; salt, small teaspoonful; third as much mace and nutmeg; little cayenne; eggs, 4 large or 5 small: 3/4 to 1 hour.
FRICASSEED VEAL.
Divide into small, thick, handsome slices of equal size, about a couple of pounds of veal, quite free from fat, bone, and skin; dissolve a couple of ounces of butter in a wide stewpan, and just as it begins to boil lay in the veal, and shake it over the fire until it is quite firm on both sides, but do not allow it to take the slightest colour. Stir in a tablespoonful of flour, and when it is well mixed with the cutlets, pour gradually to them, shaking the pan often, sufficient boiling veal gravy to almost cover them. Stew them gently from fifteen to sixteen minutes, or longer should they not be perfectly tender. Add a flavouring of mace, some salt, a quarter-pint of rich cream, a couple of egg-yolks, and a little lemon-juice, observing, when the last are added, the directions given for a blanquette of veal, page 229. Strips of lemon-rind can be stewed in the gravy at pleasure. Two or three dozens of mushroom-buttons, added twenty minutes before it is served, will much improve this fricassée.
SMALL ENTRÉES OF SWEETBREADS, CALF’S BRAINS AND EARS, &c. &c.
For tables of which the service consists rather of a great variety of light dishes (entrées) than of substantial English fare, the ears, brains, sweetbreads, gristles or tendrons, and the tail of a calf, may be dressed in many different ways to supply them; but they require a really good style of cookery, and many adjuncts to render them available for the purpose, as they do not possess much decided natural flavour, and their insipidity would be apt to tire if it were not relieved by the mode of preparing them. We shall give some few especial receipts for them in the chapter on Foreign Cookery, should sufficient space remain open for us to admit them; and insert here only such slight general directions as may suffice for preparing some of them in a simple form; as they are not in reality of first-rate importance. All of them may be served with good curried, or highlyflavoured tomato-sauce, after having been stewed in strong broth or gravy. The brains and sweetbreads cut into small dice or scallops, and mixed with béchamel, or with common white sauce, may be used to fill small vol-au-vents, or patty cases. The ears are usually filled in part with forcemeat, or a preparation of the brains, and placed upright when dished; and the upper part is cut into narrow fringe-like strips. For “Tendrons de Veau,” and “Breast of veal rolled and stewed,” the reader is referred to Chapter XXXIV
CHAPTER XII. Mutton.
No.
1. Leg.
2. Best End of Loin.
3. Chump End of Loin.
4. Neck, Best End.
5. Neck, Scrag End.
6. Shoulder.
7. Breast. A Saddle is the Two Loins. A Chine, the Two Necks.
Mutton is best suited for table in autumn, winter, and early spring It is not considered quite so good when grass-lamb is in full season, nor during the sultry
months of summer
TO CHOOSE MUTTON.
T best mutton is small-boned, plump, finely-grained, and shortlegged; the lean of a dark, rather than of a bright hue, and the fat white and clear: when this is yellow, the meat is rank, and of bad quality. Mutton is not considered by experienced judges to be in perfection until it is nearly or quite five years old; but to avoid the additional expense of feeding the animal so long, it is commonly brought into the market at three years old. The leg and the loin are the superior joints; and the preference would probably be given more frequently to the latter, but for the superabundance of its fat, which renders it a not very economical dish. The haunch consists of the leg and the part of the loin adjoining it; the saddle, of the two loins together, or of the undivided back of the sheep: these last are always roasted, and are served usually at good tables, or for companydinners, instead of the smaller joints. The shoulder, dressed in the ordinary way, is not very highly esteemed, but when boned, rolled, and filled with forcemeat, it is of more presentable appearance, and to many tastes, far better eating; though some persons prefer it in its natural form, accompanied by stewed onions. It is occasionally boiled or stewed, and covered with rich onion sauce. The flesh of that part of the neck which is commonly called the “best end,” or the back ribs, and which adjoins the loin, is the most succulent and tender portion of the sheep, and makes an excellent small roast, and is extremely good served as cutlets, after being divested of the superabundant fat. It is likewise very frequently boiled; but so cooked it makes but an unsightly and insipid dish, though an idea prevails in this country that it is a very wholesome one. Cutlets (or chops, as the butchers term them) are commonly taken from the loin, and are generally charged at a higher rate than joints of mutton, in consequence, probably, of the constant demand for them. They may likewise be cut from the saddle, but will then be very large, and of no better quality than when the two loins which form the saddle are divided in the usual way, though a certain degree of fashion has of late been accorded to them.[78] The scrag, or that part of it which
joins the head, is seldom used for any other purpose than making broth, and should be taken off before the joint is dressed. Cutlets from the thick end of the loin are commonly preferred to any others, but they are frequently taken likewise from the best end of the neck (sometimes called the back-ribs) and from the middle of the leg. Mutton kidneys are dressed in various ways, and are excellent in many. The trotters and the head of a sheep may be converted into very good dishes, but they are scarcely worth the trouble which is required to render them palatable. The loin and the leg are occasionally cured and smoked like hams or bacon.
78. Many years since, these “saddle-back” cutlets were supplied to us by a country butcher, and though of very fine South Down mutton, had no particular importance attached to them, nor were they considered as remarkably new
