After losing a $1.5 million grant to fund a chair in Islamic studies last month, Temple University’s religion department has attempted to right its stumble, with Catholics.

The university announced it has received a new gift from a former Catholic seminarian to fund an interfaith dialogue, to the tune of a familiar number: $1.5 million, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Harry Halloran, 68, who took a single religion course at Temple 30 years ago, has offered the sum to finance the so-named Leonard and Arlene Swidler Chair of Interreligious Dialogue. Leonard Swidler, an authority on ecumenism, has been a professor at Temple for more than 40 years.

Halloran, a Villanova resident and chairman and CEO of American Refining Group, an oil and alternative energy company, has gone 300,000 steps farther, by offering that amount toward the previously offered $1.5 million Islamic studies chair through his philanthrophy, Enlightened World Foundation.

A Muslim organization had offered that total, but withdrew after Temple delayed in responding. Swidler was one who suggested that University President Ann Weaver Hart gave into pressure from trustees, who had fears of receiving money from a Muslim organization, this the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which had been included in a federal probe but never directly involved in any indictment.

The situation gets muddier. Art Hochner, president of the Temple Association of University Professors, has mentioned concerns over whether the academic side of the university was included enough in these decisions.