Talakayan | Does Religion Hurt or Heal?

In this episode, Dr. Jayeel Cornelio, Dr. Maricel Ibita, and Dr. Mark Calano discuss how religion can be hurtful to believers, and provide avenues through which it may be healing.

Jayeel Cornelio, PhD is the Director of the Development Studies Program at the Ateneo de Manila University and an associate editor of the journal Social Sciences and Missions (published by Brill). For his scholarship on religion, he received the 2015 Virginia A. Miralao Excellence in Research Award from the Philippine Social Science Council and the 2017 Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the National Academy of Science and Technology. Dr Cornelio received the PhD in sociology from the National University of Singapore and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Ma. Maricel S. Ibita, Ph.D, STD is associate professor at the Theology Department of the Ateneo de Manila University and an invited lecturer at the Loyola School of Theology, St. Vincent School of Theology-Adamson University, and the Ecclesiastical Faculties of the University of Sto. Tomas. She finished her dissertation at the KU Leuven, Belgium in 2015. Her research focuses on narrative, poetry and metaphor studies; feminist, liberation, social science, trauma, ecological and sustainability hermeneutics; and Jewish-Christian biblical sources. As Global Minds and VLIR-UOS-Belgium projects promoter from 2018 to 2022, she, along with her twin sister, Malou, has advocated for an enhanced pastoral cycle of doing theology.

Mark Joseph T. Calano is an associate professor and the Graduate Program Coordinator of the Department of Philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University. He graduated Bachelor of Philosophy (cum laude), MA Philosophy (cum laude), MA Religious Studies (magna cum laude), PhD in Language Education (magna cum laude) from Saint Louis University, and PhD in Philosophy from Ateneo de Manila University; he did postdoctorate fellowships at the Scientia Forum in Tübingen, at the Dynamics of Religion in South East Asia (DORISEA) in Berlin and Göttingen, Germany, and at the Benedict XVI Center in Vienna, Austria. In his normal days, he is a flutist and an Aikidoka with a nidan rank (second-level blackbelt) from the Aikikai Hombu dojo in Japan.

Talakayan is a series which presents how scholarship merges with practice by highlighting innovations, creative solutions, or responses to the complexities, ambiguities, and vulnerabilities we collectively face today. It is produced and shared for the benefit of learners everywhere. Talakayan is available on Arete’s YouTube channel for free.

Talakayan is an Areté Production done in partnership with Loyola Schools Department of Communication and the Eugenio Lopez Jr. Center for Multimedia Communication.