national jesuit news

NATIONAL JESUIT NEWS
NOVEMBER 2005 ■ VOLUME 35, NUMBER 2
Jesuit Conference
Board meets to discuss
the future
By James Rogers
Displaced from their intended New
Orleans meeting location, the Jesuit Conference Board of Directors gathered in Baltimore October 8 -13 for wide-ranging
discussions on the future of the Society of
Jesus in the United States. The 10 American provincials and Conference President
Fr. Brad Schaeffer (CHG) were joined by the
provincials of Upper Canada and French
Canada, Secretary of the Society Fr. Frank
Case (ORE) and the current United States
assistant Fr. James Grummer (WIS).
Much of their attention focused on a
new Statement of Apostolic Priority. As Fr.
Provincial Fred Kammer (NOR) said,
“What we say here is more than a document, it is a call to a bold mission.” Four
commissions are meeting to study the statement’s impact and make specific recommendations in the areas of ministries (Nov.
In Rome, pieces of Christ
11), partnerships (Nov. 12), Jesuit life (Dec.
10) and governance. The provincials are
expected to finalize the statement at their
November 22-23 meeting in Loyola, Spain.
“The next steps in strategic discernment will flow from the direction of the
apostolic priority,” said Fr. Charles Kelley
(NEN), national director of assistancy
planning. The progress of the commissions
will be regularly reported in a series of
provincial letters entitled The New Magis.
Information will also be available on
www.jesuit.org.
In other business, the board began
reviewing the reports on the proposed
Boston College-Weston Jesuit School of
Theology re-affiliation. Expressing appreciation for the comprehensive work done
thus far by both B.C. and W.J.S.T., the J.C.
Board agreed to continue discussion and
committed to reaching a final decision on
see Future on page 2
By Julie Bourbon
The New Orleans Province continues
to improvise in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina’s devastating assault on the Crescent City more than two months ago. With
Jesuits, colleagues and students scattered
across the country, every day is an exercise in creative thinking and hopeful
planning tempered by the reality that
recovery will be a long, challenging
process.
“It’s coming, it’s coming,” said Mike
Giambelluca, principal of Jesuit High
School New Orleans. Recently returned
from Dallas, where he and his wife relocated after waiting out the storm in the
flooded school building on Banks Street,
Giambelluca’s days and nights are nonstop Jesuit business, with little time to
attend to his own troubles. The couple,
like many other families, lost their home;
Photo by Julie Bourbon
Recovery amidst the
wreckage
A giant tile mosaic of Christ awaits installation in a chapel on the Croatian-Slovenian border. Fr.
Marko Rupnik is the artist in residence at Centro Aletti in Rome. For this and other stories on
the Roman works, see pages 8-11. More in the Dec/Jan NJN.
see Recovery on page 3
5 News
7 News
20 Jesuit Relations
Woodstock Center celebrates 30
years.
Jesuit film celebrates Jubilee
year
Priest teams up with AIDS
orphans
News
By James Rogers
At the heart of the Jesuit charism is a
yearning to preach the Gospel, save souls
and seek out Christ’s poor in the world.
For the Society of Jesus in the United
States, the words of Christ resonate amidst
the dual reality of unparalleled economic
wealth and the desperate cry of the disenfranchised poor. “A man’s life does not
consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).
One task of the strategic discernment
process is to answer the question so
poignantly raised on makeshift signs in
flooded New Orleans and echoed by the
forgotten in every city - who will help us?
This was the question addressed by the 10
provincials of the United States as they
gathered in Baltimore for the Jesuit Conference Board meeting in October. The
answer will require a conversion of the
Society and the larger American culture. A
new Statement of Apostolic Priority now
being prepared by the provincials seeks to
define the nature of that conversion. The
diversity of Jesuit ministries offers common opportunity for a renewed evangelization of culture. Each work of the
Society shares a unifying theme – encouraging well-rounded men and women for
others.
In the rich heritage of its apostolates,
the Society of Jesus will find its future.
Education helped marginalized European
immigrants work their way into prosper-
Continued from page 1
Future
whether to enter into a formal letter-ofintent no later than February 2006.
Convening in their capacity as the
Jesuit Refugee Service USA Board of Governors, the provincials heard a report from
Fr. Ken Gavin (NYK), director of JRS/USA.
To date, more than $1.75 million has been
raised for the Tsunami fund. $720,000 has
already been earmarked for relief efforts,
with $370,000 distributed directly to JRS
works in Aceh Province, Indonesia, and in
Sri Lanka. They continue to evaluate programs that meet the long-term needs of
the people in the region for additional sup-
ity. Social ministries fed the hungry and
advocated for just economic structures.
Parishes shared the Gospel of God’s love
and built communities of faith. The successes were great but the needs are still
greater. The poor are indeed always with
us. They gather under the standard of the
cross. There they find Christ and there
also must they find the Society of Jesus.
The Apostolic Priority will ask every
brother, priest, scholastic, and partner:
how can we further intensify our effort?
In the coming weeks, commissions on
ministries, partnerships, Jesuit life and
governance will meet to explore and develop specific recommendations. Interested
parties can find regular updates in the
form of provincial letters entitled The New
Magis, to be posted in every Jesuit community. Each letter reports the latest
developments, where to go for additional
information and methods for sharing your
feedback on the process.
By embracing the Magis and always
yearning to go beyond our current effort,
the Society walks with Christ poor. In an
age dominated by consumerism and the
false allure of consumption for its own
sake, the Society of Jesus has a responsibility to preach a Gospel that offers Americans something else to live for – each
other. What challenges and opportunities
do you face in your particular ministry
when answering the call who will help us?
The Strategic Discernment process invites
us all to reflection leading to conversion.
port, including a $600,000 proposal from
JRS Sri Lanka.
The remainder of the J.C. Board
meeting covered reports of the various
committees. A few of the highlights
include: Social and International Ministries approved nearly $50,000 in social
and pastoral research grants; there is now
a memorandum of understanding in place
between the Jesuit Conference U.S.A. and
C.P.A.L. coordinating fundraising by Jesuit
projects in Latin America through the
U.S.A. Office of Centro Magis; and a meeting of young academics will be held June
16 -18, 2006, at Loyola Marymount University, immediately following the formation meeting.
Rogers is the Secretary for Communications at the Jesuit Conference.
Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of State
Provincials discerning
a call to conversion
British Robinson (first row, second from left), national director of social and international ministries at the Jesuit Conference, was recently appointed to the Advisory Committee on Voluntary
Foreign Aid by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Established by
presidential directive after World War II, the committee serves as a link between the U.S. government and private volunteer organizations active in humanitarian assistance and development work overseas. Robinson joins 23 other members who advise USAID on issues relating to
foreign assistance. She will be the only representative from a Catholic organization and one
of two faith-based representatives.
The Loyola
Experience
An Anniversary Retreat
Pilgrimage to Spain
Under the Spiritual Direction of:
John Padberg SJ, Julio Giulietti SJ, &
Thomas A. Kane CSP
11 Days: June 24 to July 4, 2006
$2999 Special Cash Discount Price
$3098 Standard Base Price
From New York plus airport taxes, tips
and material fees.
Rev. Thomas A. Kane, CSP
Weston Jesuit School of Theology
3 Phillips Place
Cambridge, MA 02138
MOVING?
SECRETARY FOR COMMUNICATIONS:
James L.Rogers
EDITOR: Julie Bourbon
PUBLICATIONS MANAGER: Marcus Bleech
2
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
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Continued from page 1
Recovery
they’re living across the river on the Westbank, their children are in three different schools and they are figuring
out the next steps, day by day, moment by moment. “It’s
going to be scratchy.”
The school, which under normal circumstances has
about 1,100 students, more than 400 of whom are currently enrolled at Strake Jesuit in Houston, began its latest incarnation October 17. On that day, approximately
800 young men who had been out of school since the end
of August started classes on the campus of St. Martin’s
Episcopal School in Metairie, just outside New Orleans
in Jefferson Parish. Jefferson suffered significantly less
damage and flooding than Orleans in the storm’s wake.
Jesuit students at St. Martin’s will participate in a
second session of classes in the afternoon and evening,
much like their classmates at Strake Jesuit are doing.
They will continue until a few days before Christmas and
will be back in business on Banks Street January 3. Classes will extend three weeks later into summer than they
typically would.
The flooding at Jesuit, in hard-hit Mid City, covered
the first floor of the school, including the switchboard,
some classrooms and several offices, as well as the auditorium, renovated two summers ago for $1 million. Just
a few miles away, Loyola University fared much better,
with minimal wind damage and no flooding. Like the
other universities in the city, except the University of
New Orleans, Loyola shut down for the semester.
Students were allowed to come back in mid-October
to claim their belongings from the residence halls and
pre-registration for the spring semester will begin earlier
than usual this year, in November, as part of the school’s
effort to get as many students as possible to return in
January. Although he’s been hearing from many members of the community that they’re planning to come
back, Fr. Kevin Wildes, Loyola’s president, isn’t taking
anything for granted. He’s been touring the country, visiting students and faculty in exile at Jesuit universities,
which took them in free of charge.
“We’re just trying to get out in front of all of this,”
said Wildes (MAR), who returned to campus November
1 after relocating to Alexandria, La., to set up the
school’s administrative offices. In addition to worrying
about 3,500 undergrads and nearly 800 law students,
the future of the university’s faculty and staff weighs
heavily on Wildes’ mind. He estimates that almost twothirds of their homes suffered significant damage or
were completely destroyed.
They, too, have scattered across the region and country and, unlike the typical college student, have spouses who may have found work elsewhere and children
who have settled into other school systems in the meantime. He worries that layoffs may be in store but can’t
predict anything until registration for the spring is complete. Faculty and staff are receiving their full salaries
through Christmas.
“Every time I go back (to the city) it’s better,” said
Wildes, who is in his second year at Loyola. The experience has been a trial by fire for him and has crystallized his feelings for the place he now calls home. Joking
that he feels “like Yasser Arafat,” sleeping in a different
place every night, Wildes said the hurricane and its
aftermath “forced me to think more about the city. About
where its uniqueness lies” and about how Loyola can
contribute to its reconstruction.
Loyola has joined with Tulane University, its next
door neighbor, which suffered much more extensive
damage, to open a charter school in the neighborhood
for the children of faculty and staff. Wildes is hosting a
meeting of architects and city and state officials this
month on Loyola’s campus to discuss the reconstruction.
Meanwhile, in Houston, where thousands of Katrina
and Rita victims fled, Fr. Larry Moore (MIS) is helping
to hold down the fort for the law school. An associate
dean and professor, Moore has taken up residence in the
garage apartment of a professor from the University of
Houston Law Center, which opened its doors to students
from both Loyola and Tulane law schools. About 320 Loyola students are with him in Houston, no stranger itself
to the vicissitudes of the hurricane season. Their law
school was damaged in Tropical Storm Allison 40 years
ago; as a result, Moore said, they have been “unusually
sympathetic” to the plight of their fellow counselors in
training. “They’ve been very gracious. They threw out
the welcome mat.”
In another act of generosity, several publishers of law
books, which are notoriously expensive, have donated
thousands of them to the displaced. The hall outside
Moore’s temporary offices is lined with volumes, and a
constant stream of students comes by with questions,
concerns, even heartaches. More than one has told him
they plan to drop out this semester, finding the strain of
the whole experience to be too much for them. Those
who stay enrolled and didn’t evacuate to Houston may
end up passing their semester in a city far from the Gulf
Coast.
“This is, I think, unprecedented in American legal
education,” said Moore, noting that nearly every law
school in the country, including Harvard, Columbia and
Stanford, has taken in students from New Orleans. “We
have students in places they could not imagine.”
The semester in Houston will conclude before the
Christmas break, with exams coming after the new year,
followed by a late start of the second semester, back on
the Broadway campus in New Orleans.
“We are functioning and we have every expectation
of returning to Loyola,” said Moore, who has been back
to the city once, at the end of September, to pick up
some clothes, medicine and other essentials. After 23
years in New Orleans, this is Moore’s first evacuation,
which was kicked off by a few days of discernment with
other members of the province in Grand Coteau, at the
novitiate.
They talked about loss, ambiguity, the meaning of
water, and what they wanted to do in light of the city’s
current situation. After two days of prayer and discernment, they fanned out, many to Spring Hill College
in Mobile, others as far away as Scranton and Georgetown.
Fr. Jerry Fagin, who normally teaches theology at
Loyola’s Institute for Ministry, was heading to the Woodstock Theological Center for a planned semester sabbatical when he evacuated. After some wrangling with
the airline over his ticket, he made it to D.C. in one piece,
fully packed and ready for the semester.
It’s been a strange adjustment for Fagin (NOR), who
has been at Loyola since 1978. He has not been back yet.
The circumstances under which he left were not the ones
he was expecting, to put it mildly, and the combined
effect of geographical distance and emotional proximity is disconcerting.
“It’s a strange feeling being so isolated from it (the
storm’s aftermath). I’m seeing it through the news media
and friends who have been back,” he said. “I had the
first impulse of ‘Should I go back and work in the shelters?’”
He and his superior decided it would be best for him
to go through with the sabbatical, as planned, which
means returning in December to a very different city
than the one he left in August. “There is sadness and a
sense of uncertainly about the future,” Fagin said. “What
will the future look like?”
Sadly, one thing that the future does not hold for the
Jesuits of the New Orleans Province is a chance to sit in
the white rocking chairs on the front porch of the villa
in Waveland, Miss. Like nearly every other home in that
little town, it was completely washed away, rockers and
all. Their upkeep was one of Moore’s duties and pleasures, and he estimates that he spent hundreds of hours
painting and repainting them over the years.
“That’s what I miss,” he said at the close of another
long day in Houston, before heading back to his loaner
apartment to cook a solitary dinner and plan classes for
the next day. “Waveland and all of the times there. It
became kind of a second home.”
A request from the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province
God’s blessings be with you and your loved ones.
The Jesuit brothers and priests have a long history in
the South, going back several centuries. Along with
many families both rich and poor, our ministries and
apostolates in New Orleans have suffered greatly from
Hurricane Katrina and were challenged again by Hurricane Rita. Our ministries outside the New Orleans
region have been called upon to receive and care for
many evacuees. They too have shouldered the burden.
Our founder, St. Ignatius, told each Jesuit that he
must be able to beg in order to ensure that the Gospel
light is shown in even the darkest times. So we turn to
you today and beg your assistance during these challenging times for the New Orleans Province.
■ The Fr. Pedro Arrupe Fund will support the stormrelated needs of the province and its apostolates, e.g.,
the rebuilding of Immaculate Conception Rectory, the
province offices or Jesuit High New Orleans, so that we
can continue to serve our communities. Some of these
places suffered losses in the millions of dollars.
■ The St. Peter Claver Fund is directed to services
to the poor and homeless in their post-hurricane needs
through such affiliated apostolates as the Tompson
Homeless Shelter, Good Shepherd Nativity School, the
Thensted Center and Cafe Reconcile. You can help the
Jesuits help others by supporting these works. In years
to come, these ministries will continue to provide hope
for the poor so that they may rebuild their lives with
dignity.
If you care to support any of these institutions in
either fund, you can make your check payable and send
your tax-deductible gift to:
The Jesuits
HURRICANE RELIEF OFFICES
P.O. Box 218
Grand Coteau, LA 70541
Please write Fr. Pedro Arrupe Fund or St. Peter Claver
Fund on the memo line of your check. If you would like
it to go to a particular ministry/institution, please note
that on the memo line as well. Please visit www.norprov.org for a complete listing of apostolates or to donate
online.
Thank you for taking the time to consider being a
partner in the recovery of the Gulf Coast region and its
hurting-but resilient-people.
One more thing we beg of you: prayers for the people of the Gulf Coast. Let us pray that the Lord guide us
and help us to help others. May St. Ignatius watch over
us in the weeks and months ahead.
Peace.
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
3
NEWS
jesuits and interreligious dialogue
Mission and Dialogue
By Carl Starkloff SJ
We have little information about Ignatius’ views on
“interreligious dialogue,” other than his famous encounter
with the Moor on the way to Montserrat. But that story of
the discerning donkey says a great deal about the mature
Ignatius reflecting on the very immature Iñigo: while
Ignatius was fully devoted to his Christian-Catholic beliefs,
he understood the necessity at least of tolerance. Today
we have come some journey from the language of “mission among the infidels,” and we have learned to attend
more closely to Ignatius’ Presupposition to the Spiritual
Exercises, which challenges us to seek for a favorable interpretation of the ideas of others. And yet, we hear the call
to testify to the Gospel.
Having agonized for three decades over the tension
between mission and dialogue, I offer a brief comment.
Readers may be familiar with the (highly inadequate)
interreligious rubrics of “exclusivism, inclusivism and
pluralism.” I have long since cast aside any kind of exclusivism – the belief that no one can be saved apart from an
explicit adherence to Jesus Christ and the Church. But neither have I been able to embrace a theology of pluralism,
which argues that there are many equally valid ways to
salvation, depending on the culture of the believer. That
leaves me with the argument from inclusivism, that salvation is mediated through Jesus Christ, but that all believers of good will are included in that salvation. This is the
“inclusive pluralism” of the late Jacques Dupuis, which
argues that historical plurality of religions is here to stay,
but that each faith must be true to its essential teachings,
which include a type of universal way of salvation. Pluralists call this position “condescending” and reductively exclusivist, a “my religion is better than your religion”
position. I would like to offer a nuance of this argument.
Responding with a number of thinkers associated
with the English theologian Gavin D’Costa, I suggest that
each of the “world religions,” true to its central beliefs, is
ultimately inclusivist. Each religion grants salvation to
other believers, but from its own faith standpoint. However, I add an argument that I think has been left more
or less unheeded. I mean the argument from what I call
a “phenomenology of faith.” When we practice phenomenology, we are adopting a process of examining any
phenomenon with “restrained” judgment. This permits
us to study all that composes the “essence” of the subject being studied. This method can also help us to avoid
confusing different types of discourse.
What is the “essence” of faith? Well, “Faith is the
assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things
not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). This is much more than a
pious admonition from a proof text! It is a description of
what one is doing when one believes; one is not “solving”
a scientific problem in such a way as to give one the certitude to call another’s belief insincere or scientifically erro-
4
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
neous. It is the embracing of a testimony from a hallowed
tradition. Thus, a devout Hindu will tell me that I can follow my own tradition and still be saved, but that I will finally be saved by a union of Brahman-Atman; the Buddhist
will allow me many incarnations until I finally find Nirvana; the Muslim will hope for my salvation as one of the
“people of the Book.” But each tradition is true to its founding faith. While interreligious dialogue resembles discussions over scientific paradigms, this dialogue is not an
argument about the “best religion.” The historical practice
of religion is always imperfect, but each believer chooses
a certain form of religion, as a result of any number of factors, as the way that unites one with God.
What about the “tension” between proclamation and
dialogue? When the earliest Christians began to announce
the “Good News,” they did so because they had been
grasped by a powerful message about the Person of Jesus
Christ. A Christian can do no other, but must appreciate a
similar zeal in a devout Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Jew
and, as is becoming clearer, in many adherents of aboriginal religion. I must also pursue an intelligent apologia for
my faith before the tribunal of world experience: “Be ready
to give an account to all who ask about the hope that is in
you” (1 Peter, 3:15). I must, like the early apologists, inquire
respectfully about the hope of one who believes differently.
Thanks to centuries of learning the bitter consequences
of religious polemics, we avoid the more denunciatory
remarks of those early writers, but we follow a similar integrated path of devotion and learning. Is there a “risk” in
such open encounter? Well, yes: we risk learning new and
valuable “truths” and practices. We may even incorporate
some of these, such as many Christians do now who prac-
tice Zen meditation or Yoga or certain tribal ceremonies,
without surrendering their essential beliefs.
We Jesuits must labor for peace in a pluralistic world;
some of it is no doubt demonic, and some is worthy of
acceptance. The Ignatian tradition is one of making choices “without coming to a decision through any disordered
affection.” This makes the way of interreligious dialogue
one of deep spiritual and intellectual challenges.
Starkloff (MIS) teaches theology, specializing in faith
and culture, at Saint Louis University and at Regis College
in Toronto School of Theology.
Woodstock Center marks three decades of
theological reflection
Thirty-five years ago, a beloved general of the Jesuits raised
this thought: “In my judgment the first of all ministries that
must be mentioned now is theological reflection on the human
problems of today.”
That pronouncement by the late Superior General, Fr. Pedro
Arrupe, moved many: A Jesuit theologian who had converted
from agnosticism many years earlier wrote essays limning this
notion of theological reflection, and two Jesuit provincials pursued their vision of a research center in Washington devoted
to promoting such in-depth reflection.
In late September, several hundred Jesuit friends and collaborators along with Jesuits themselves gathered for events
marking the 30th anniversary of that institution, the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.
In so doing, they gave thanks to four Jesuit “Founding
Fathers” of Woodstock held up by Fr. Provincial Timothy Brown
(MAR). Those were Arrupe, theologian and now-cardinal Avery
Dulles (NYK), and the two provincials, Fr. J. A. Panuska (MAR)
and the late Fr. Eamon Taylor of New York, who gave Woodstock
its charge of seeking justice through theological reflection.
“It is a mission which is as necessary today as it was” three
decades ago, said Brown, speaking at a Sunday afternoon Mass
celebrated principally by Dulles September 25. “And it is a mission which has been pursued over the years not only by the
Center’s staff, but by hundreds and even thousands of people.”
Arrupe issued his call for theological reflection in October
1970. He said on another occasion, “And by theological reflection I mean especially the need and urgency of an in-depth and
exhaustive reflection on human problems, whose total solution cannot be reached without the intervention of theology
and the light of faith.”
Besides Arrupe, probably no one spoke more influentially
about the work of theological reflection than Dulles (who was
a skeptical undergraduate at Harvard before embracing Catholicism). During his homily at the anniversary Mass, the firstand-only U.S. Jesuit cardinal returned to the theme by
underlining Woodstock’s theological thrust.
“Woodstock is, in the first place, a theological center,” said
Dulles, whose ordination as a Jesuit in 1946 made national
news because his father was then U.S. Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles. “Its particular mission is to see what theology
might have to say to people involved in secular callings such
as business, law, medicine, and government, here in the nation’s
capital.”
He added, “God’s word is spoken, we believe, not only to
the Church but to the world.”
Theology was on tap the next day as Woodstock hosted its
final anniversary event, a public forum on the papacy’s future.
The gathering was a response to the world’s fascination with
the papacy following the death of Pope John Paul II, but also
to an invitation issued in John Paul’s 1995 encyclical letter on
Christian unity. In that document, he called for a broad ecumenical conversation about how to “find a way of exercising
the primacy” of the pope in today’s world.
If there was a stand-out message of the forum, it was that
some major Christian communities, especially Lutherans,
Anglicans, and Orthodox, are wide open to the idea and underlying theology of papal primacy.
“We would affirm that more than ever there has to be a
global leader of Christianity,” said Protopresbyter Thomas
Hopko, an Orthodox ecumenist and theologian. “And I think,
like it or not, the Pope of Rome today is de facto if not de jure
leader of Christians in the world. He is the Dali Lama of Christians.”
But Hopko and three Protestant panelists that evening were
less committed to modern structures of papal governance.
They, along with Franciscan Fr. John J. Burkhard, the Washington Theological Union’s acting president, entertained ideas
of re-visioning the papacy to emphasize collegiality and like
ways of advancing Christian unity.
The forum drew approximately 225 people to Georgetown,
and nearly as many Woodstock friends and supporters turned
out a day earlier for the anniversary Mass and reception.
Spearheading the forum was Fr. John C. Haughey (MAR),
one of Woodstock’s early Jesuits who returned as a senior fellow last year, forging a link between Woodstock then and now.
The center was founded as a think tank in 1974, essentially
replacing the Jesuit seminary by that name, which closed in
1972. (Woodstock began observing its 30th anniversary during the last academic year; the late-September events marked
the close of that celebration.)
During those early years, Woodstock’s research projects
led to such notable works as “Claims in Conflict: Retrieving
and Renewing the Catholic Human Rights Tradition,” by Fr.
David Hollenbach (MAR), and two widely read volumes edited by Haughey, “The Faith That Does Justice: Examining the
Christian Sources for Social Change,” and “Personal Values in
Public Policy.”
In the 1980s and ‘90s, Woodstock began generating programs of ongoing outreach. Among them are Preaching the
Just Word, which has introduced the concept of biblical justice
to thousands of priest-homilists nationwide, and the Woodstock Business Conference, a national network of Catholic business people.
In recent years, the center’s projects have spawned works
such as “Spiritual Exercises for Church Leaders” by senior fellow Dolores Lecky and writer Paula Minaert (Paulist Press,
2003), which is serving as a tool of discernment in parish and
diocesan reflection groups; and “Forgiveness in International
Politics: An Alternative Road to Peace” (U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops, 2004), which won second-place honors this
year from the Catholic Press Association in the “pastoral” books
category.
An initiative that has struck a chord among Jesuits internationally is the Global Economy and Cultures project begun by
Woodstock director Fr. Gasper F. Lo Biondo (MAR). The project, particularly its personal-narrative approach to studying
interactions between economic globalization and local cultures, has provided a template for a global Jesuit taskforce
preparing a report on the subject for Fr. General Peter-Hans
Cardinal Avery Dulles and Fr. Gap LoBiondo, Woodstock director.
Kolvenbach. Lo Biondo belongs to that seven-member taskforce.
Among works on the way is “Just War, Lasting Peace”
(Orbis, forthcoming), a collaboration by Leckey, Minaert, Mark
Mossa (NOR) and the Jesuit Conference’s John Kleiderer. The
book is the result of a Just War forum co-sponsored by Woodstock and the Jesuit Conference in the fall of 2003. Two volumes
will emanate from Haughey’s project on the “catholicity” of
Catholic higher education. And the Woodstock Library is heaving John Courtney Murray - all of the late Jesuit theologian’s
published works and many unpublished - onto the Web (www.
georgetown.edu/centers/Woodstock).
Behind these and other theological ventures is a way of
reflection, lashed to Ignatian spirituality, which is “continually open to new questions and perspectives,” said Lo Biondo.
“That’s what we call conversion.”
The end-of the-anniversary celebrations were followed by
deep sadness over news that renowned Catholic theologian
Monika K. Hellwig, who moderated the papacy forum and was
Woodstock’s newest research fellow, had suffered a devastating stroke. She died September 30.
Bole is a Woodstock fellow.
Photos courtesy of Woodstock Theological Center
By William Bole
Concelebrants of the Woodstock 30th anniversary Mass, celebrated principally by Cardinal Avery Dulles, far left.
National Jesuit News
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November 2005
5
Commentary
Zip-code solidarity in a flattened world
By George Wilson SJ
A few years ago I was rash enough to propose that the
Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States should
establish a national Jesuit alumni association. Such an
entity could facilitate interaction and productive collaboration among our alumni and alumnae across the country, making more visible and strong the common bond
our graduates attest to. Giving all due weight to the
uniqueness of our individual institutions, there is
nonetheless something real and powerful about a shared
identity among graduates of our network of schools. Committed as these men and women are to their own institutions, many still declare proudly that “I graduated from
a Jesuit school.” Our message and much of the vision it
expresses do get through.
One of the byproducts of my earlier brash proposal
was that I heard about projects already underway of which
I had been unaware. I was happy to learn of the efforts of
the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU)
office under Fr. Charlie Currie (MAR) in initiating regional gatherings of alumni from across the broader network
of colleges. There are good efforts afoot, and we need to
support them.
With the wisdom of hindsight, my proposal to jump
to a national organization was an over-reach. We are not
ready for such a dramatic development and indeed may
never be. That said, I remain convinced that we are not
reaching the potential that is ours with the existence of
this body of schools bearing our common name. If the
particular vehicle of a national association is not right,
what measures short of that can continue movement to a
greater collective empowerment? Names carry enormous
power. It’s quite possible that professional people outside
our world are intuitively more aware of its corporate
potential than are we who are so close to individual
schools within the network. But how might we leverage
that name, “translate” it into visible images, and thus
have a broader impact even after students have left our
direct care?
We may not have found the right programmatic steps
yet but I hope that both Jesuits and those laymen and laywomen who collaborate in running these schools find the
goal itself worth pursuing. Surely they desire that their
hard labors achieve the maximum effect possible in our
students’ post-graduation years and careers. One of the
groups that responded most positively to the initial idea
of a national association was the network of alumni directors themselves. They saw it as enabling them to provide
better service to alums scattered far beyond the city where
their institution is located.
Ideas like these formed a pre-conscious backdrop as
I recently began reading Tom Friedman’s latest book, “The
World is Flat,” a book I believe should be required reading for anyone in the ministry of helping people prepare
for the world (i.e., all of us). One of Friedman’s main
threads is about the way many disparate kinds of organizations are shifting their focus from the traditional
model of command and control to one based on communicating, connecting and collaborating horizontally.
Often these modern organizations see the wisdom in
working together on some projects while fiercely competing on others. Another key, new concept in Friedman’s
synthesis is the potential for generation of ideas laterally from individual to individual across the flattened globe,
with no organizational go-between, rather than from the
top down. All that is needed is the informational link
that enables the sharing of ideas. How might such ideas
relate to our schools?
Friedman’s section on the phenomenon of “Googling”
led me to consider the significance of our zip codes. It
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National Jesuit News
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November 2005
made me think of my own zip code, 45230, and wonder
how many Jesuit alums might be living within its boundaries right now. Since 45230 is on the east side of Cincinnati, I assumed that quite a few Xavier graduates would
be living there. But with GE, Procter and Gamble, Chiquita, Federated Department Stores, and Kroger in Cincinnati, there is a high likelihood that graduates of other
Jesuit colleges or universities also reside in 45230.
Now let’s imagine a few such people. Joe graduated in
business from St. Louis University; Barbara was a biology major at Spring Hill. Both are in their first year of postcollegiate work, recently re-located to Cincinnati from
Hannibal and Pensacola, respectively. Neither knows anyone in Cincinnati. It’s intimidating enough to start from
scratch in a large corporation, but having no other connections in a strange city makes it tougher still.
Suppose that upon graduation, Joe and Barbara each
received a pin number giving them access to a secure website at which they could punch in the number 45230 and
retrieve the names and addresses of those in that zip code
who had graduated from any of our schools within the
past, say, five years. Barbara might discover that in her
department there was a fellow who had just moved from
Spokane after completing his degree at Gonzaga, while
Joe learns that a few doors away from his apartment lives
Frank, who moved there from Jersey City two years earlier after getting a BS in computer science from Fordham.
The possibilities for all these alums would be
enhanced greatly by such an arrangement, establishing
common bonds that could create more meaningful relationships in their lives.
Let’s let our imaginations go one further step. Tom
also lives in 45230. While pursuing political science at
Xavier he developed an awareness of the importance of
human community through his involvement in campus
ministry projects. On the eve of his departure from Xavier
he heard a homily about Jesuit identity extending beyond
his own school. He also happens to enjoy a good beer
party. So he gets hold of the list of recent 45230’s and circulates the word that he is going to hold an informal gettogether around the pool at his apartment complex. Doors
open for Joe, Barbara and Frank to meet the neighborhood X grads as well as people from other Jesuit schools.
Being local, Tom even succeeds in getting his college mentor, Fr. Aquaviva, to drop by for a few beers. More possible connections.
No on-going organization. No financial entanglements
or possible encroachment on turfs or development fund
drives. No burdensome expectations. No loss of identification with one’s school of origin. No need of centraloffice supervision or logistics apart from setting up the
software. Just the provision of a facilitating vehicle that
any individual is free to take advantage of or not.
What would be needed? An agreement to supply the
data to some central server, and the creation of the password and security software. Each year, every school sends
its list of graduates along to the webmaster. At graduation time each student is given the opportunity to opt in
by letting his or her name be accessed; at any time it is
possible to opt out by means of a few keystrokes.
At present the presidents of our institutions of higher learning meet regularly, as do the institutional advancement officers. Do the IT officers of the network meet
periodically to share new possibilities for IT integration
and further creative linkages across the system? If not,
they should.
Organizations much larger than our network can do
it. Why not us?
Wilson (MAR) lives in Cincinnati and does organizational facilitation for Management Design Institute. gbwilson@choice.net.
A world is not enough:
Jesuit film celebrates Jubilee Year
The Loyola Productions film “AMDG - A world is not
enough” will be released in December 2005 to officially
kick-off the Jesuit Jubilee year honoring Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier and Peter Faber. The film will come
in a beautiful cloth-covered gift package and will include
the DVD, a CD with hymns and other traditional tracks
(e.g., the “Salve Regina”), a timeline and full-color booklet, including a viewer’s guide with tips on how best to
use the DVD with groups.
Fr. Eddie Siebert (DET), director of Loyola Productions, is enthusiastic about the quality of the project and
the international commitment to this endeavor. “The
film will illustrate Ignatius’ pilgrim way of life that
engages the world around him, the adventurous risk taking of Xavier as he brings the Gospel to new peoples and
cultures, and the personal care that comes from Faber
as a master spiritual director,” Siebert said. “Through
these themes, we will show how the Society acts today
because we are talking about God active in history now.
“The film is about the early Jesuits and their
charisms, but its potential effect upon the viewers is
transformative. I think of one of the composers for our
film, Matthew Ferraro, who was deeply moved by his
experience of working with us and learning about the
spiritual ministry that Jesuits offer the church.”
Ferraro, who composed a musical score based on the
life of St. Ignatius, reflected, “After my trip to Manresa
and Loyola, Spain, where I made my first eight-day
retreat, I can now say that I have unequivocal proof that
God and Jesus Christ exist.” He continued, “Virtually I
was unaware of Ignatius a year ago, but tracing Ignatius’
steps was a life-changing course for me. I feel an intensity to my faith and I am becoming a better person. It
is like when I look into the eyes of most Jesuits, they have
an uncanny sense of history and a keen perspective on
the world.”
“I want my art to make a difference in the lives of
others. I want it to shake up and wake up and inspire
others. I’ve discovered that now my art must have mean-
Composer Matthew Ferraro in the studio.
“From the beginning we have tried to do something new,
With no script to follow, no tested formula to rely on.
We are dancers on a tightrope, a story of leaps and falls, hopes and failures.”
-- from “AMDG - A world is not enough”
ing and a positive impact and
I have an entirely different
perspective,” Ferraro said. “I
have become a crusader for
the church with strength and
resolve. I see the tremendous
good that the Jesuits have
done for people. Just look into
their eyes and you see their
dedication to their mission.”
While Ferraro was
immersing himself in the
Ignatian heritage at the Basilica in Loyola, he began to get
his inspiration for his hymn
to Ignatius. He recalls walking along the solemn, neverending hallways with gentle
light streaming in through the
windows and thinking, “this
is pre-heaven.” And then he
played the main organ in the Fr. Gene Geinzer at the AMDG recording session.
Basilica with the house
organist screaming “grande,
grande” (louder, louder) as she was pulling out all the with ourselves as human and examine why we are here. I saw
stops to allow the music to fill the crevices of the church. a phrase from Ignatius that sums up what has happened to me.
Ferraro exclaimed, “I stayed awake until four a.m. com- ‘The Spiritual Exercises are the only way I know that a [hu]man
posing the second movement to my hymn. I felt as if can become a better [hu]man.’”
Ferraro is one of three composers who wrote a hymn for the
many forces were leading me to this place.”
“This experience was foundational for my life. Others have musical CD. Acclaimed singer and writer Cristobal Fónes (CHL)
noticed a change in me,” he said. “We need to take time with created a hymn for Francis Xavier and internationally-known
the Creator. We don’t stop - to look or to listen - to get in touch composer Carl Riley wrote one for Peter Faber. These hymns,
together with the film score, were recorded in London with
vocals by the Crouch End Chorus, conducted by David Temple.
Loyola Productions is proud of the international dimension
to the project. Dramatic scenes are in English with subtitles in
several languages. Voiceover for the documentary scenes will
be in English, Spanish and French with subtitles in the three
languages, plus Italian, Czech, Slovenian and Mandarin.
Provinces across the world have contributed financially and have
provided footage and images.
Siebert, Br. Michael Breault (CFN) and Fr. Paul Brian Campbell (NYK) are the executive producers of the DVD package with
Frs. Tom Rochford (MIS), secretary for communications at the
Roman Curia, and Gene Geinzer (MAR) as the producers. The
script is a collaboration between Breault, who wrote the dramatic portions, and Giuseppe Zito (ITA), and Rochford and
Zito collaborated on the voiceover. Luis Blanco-Döring (NOR)
and Frs. Pierre Bélanger (GLC) and John Predmore (NEN) have
assisted with the project. Production and packaging have been
accomplished with the help of Loyola Press, Chicago. Please
check the Loyola Production website www.loyolaproductions.com or the Jesuit Conference Jubilee website at
www.jesuit.org for order information.
Predmore (NEN) was ordained in June and is completing his
S.T.L. at Weston Jesuit School of Theology. Please contact him at
predmoresj@yahoo.com if you wish to suggest ideas or receive
more detailed information about the Jubilee events.
Photos courtesy of Loyola Productions
By John Predmore SJ
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
7
Feature
THE ROMAN WORKS
asked about that, remarks that clerics are not the statement
in Rome that they might be in the United States. “We wear it
when we should and take it off when we don’t have to,” he
says.
Hilbert has been in Rome for 25 years and the dean of
canon law for less than one year. He is busy but gracious with
his time, stopping more than once when a student pops his
head in to ask a question (usually in Italian). “In any given
day, I’ll be in and out of four or five languages,” he says. It is
a demanding position. He stays sane by singing baritone in a
choir that performs traditional Italian songs.
Like many of the buildings in Rome, the Greg is palatial,
salmon pink on the outside, all marble and high ceilings and
thick brick walls on the inside that make it seem cooler than
it really is. It is an ecclesiastical university, Hilbert explains;
study is aimed at those who will be working in ecclesiastical
ministry, for the internal life of the church.
A tour of the building takes one through cavernous lecture halls, furnished with dark wood desks; the library, which
houses close to one million volumes and whose stacks take
up seven floors; catwalks overlooking courtyards many floors
below; the verdant rooftop garden, one of many in a city
whose every wall and windowsill bursts forth into riots of
pink and purple bougainvillea; and the construction site that
is the basement. When work there is complete, the new Matteo Ricci Conference Center will expand the Greg’s space by
one-third and provide a revenue source as it is rented out for
meetings and symposia.
Part of Hilbert’s job is to serve as a liaison to the Gregorian Foundation in New York City. Many of the board’s members are lay-men and -women, usually businesspeople, usually
alums. “They say ‘I now think I’m helping the universal
church,’” says Hilbert. This sentiment is echoed often by the
men living and working in Rome.
The Biblicum
By Julie Bourbon
In his letter of Christmas and New Year greeting in 2003, Fr.
General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach addressed the choice of five apostolic priorities for the whole Society. Noting that they were mentioned in various degrees of GC 34 as well as at a Major Superiors
meeting in Loyola, Spain, he wrote “Far from replacing the main
directions of the Society’s mission, they offer areas for the realization of these orientations.”
The third apostolic preference reiterated in Kolvenbach’s letter was for the intellectual apostolate, which led to the fourth, the
inter-provincial houses and works in Rome. “I thank the Major
Superiors who have shown themselves most generous in putting
personnel and financial assistance at the disposition of these
Roman works,” he wrote.
The Roman works are, truly, an international coalition,
representing all corners of the globe and, increasingly, the developing world. The three Pontifical Universities entrusted to the
Society by the Holy See - the Gregorian, the Biblicum and the
Orientale - boasted student populations this past year of more
than 4,100 total, most of them from Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. More than 150 countries and territories on six
continents were represented, yet while well known throughout
the rest of the world, the pontifical universities remain a mystery to many American Jesuits.
But the value of the Rome experience, according to the men
living and working there, many of whom also did their studies in Rome, is not to be underestimated. “No other intellectual apostolate of the Society is equal to this,” says Fr. John
Kilgallen (CHG), professor of New Testament exegesis at the
Biblicum.
A late-May visit to Rome reveals that each of the schools
there has its own character and strength. The atmosphere at
the two smaller colleges is much more subdued than at the
Greg, although whether that’s due to size or to the fact that
students are studying for final exams is unclear. The dizzying Tower of Babel effect is common in Rome, where everyone seems to be multi-lingual; required classes at the Greg
and the Biblicum are conducted in Italian although students
8
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
have their choice of language at exam time (Italian, French,
Spanish, German or English). At the Orientale, classes are
offered in nine different languages, with liturgy in the multiple
vernaculars of its students. Together, the three colleges make
up the Pontifical Gregorian Consortium, which was federated by Pope Pius XI in 1928.
The Gregorian
The Pontifical Gregorian University (the Greg), by far the
largest of the colleges with more than 3,400 students, is a hive
of activity near the close of the semester, with students hustling to prepare for exams and finish papers, taking smoke
breaks on the front steps facing the Piazza della Pilotta, currently under renovation and soon to be favored with a newly
commissioned sculpture of Ignatius. About half of the students at the Greg are studying theology, working on a twoyear licentiate course in moral theology; some stay on another
two or three years to complete a doctorate in the same. Studies are divided into three cycles - the baccalaureate, the licentiate and the doctorate. The academic programs include the
faculties of theology, philosophy, canon law, history, missiology and social sciences, and institutes of spirituality, psychology, religious studies and the study of religions and
cultures. There is also a center for interdisciplinary communication studies, a program in the cultural heritage of the
church, and an interdisciplinary center for seminary educators.
Founded by Ignatius as the Roman College in 1551, the
Greg is one of the oldest universities in the world, envisioned
by him as a “university of all nations, for the defense and
propagation of the faith and for the training of wise and qualified leaders of the Church and society.” More than half of the
students are from Europe, and about 80 percent are priests
and religious.
Fr. Michael Hilbert (NYK), 54, the dean of canon law,
greets me in his office. There is a waft of cigarette smoke in the
air and the ubiquitous bottle of water on his desk to combat
the withering heat. He is dressed in clerics and later, when
To the left of the Greg, on the Piazza della Pilotta, stands
the Pontifical Biblical Institute or the Biblicum, home to about
350 students studying sacred scripture. Founded in 1909 by
Pope Pius X and entrusted to the Jesuits at that time, it is
home to the world’s greatest collection of Biblical books. It
also has a Jerusalem campus, founded in 1927, and affiliations with the Hebrew University and the École Biblique. Its
two faculties are in the areas of Biblical sciences and Ancient
Near and Middle East studies. The Biblicum offers the licentiate and Ph.D. in sacred scriptures and the emphasis for students is on research, publishing and teaching. The Biblicum
Institute Press publishes scholarly works, such as a word-byword analysis of every word in the Greek New Testament,
originally written in Latin and now translated into English.
“For the service of the church, there is no equal,” said Fr.
Jim Dugan (NYK), 62, librarian at the Biblicum, which shares
more than one million volumes with the Greg and the Orientale and houses 165,000 volumes of its own. Dugan was a
student at the Biblicum for three years in the early 1970s and
the librarian at the Orientale for 12 years. Calling their work
a “commitment to the universal Catholic church,” Dugan says
that he and his fellow Americans assigned there “stay because
the work of the Institute is so important, and the people are
so good.”
Presently, 38 Jesuits live at the Biblicum, of which eight
are students there and 25 are on the faculty. While many Biblicum alumni teach Sacred Scriptures at other universities
and seminaries globally, Fr. Steve Pisano (CFN), in his third
year as rector, believes that it’s better for faculty to have studied elsewhere “to prevent inbreeding.” The emphasis in studies there is on methodology, and a knowledge of ancient
languages (such as Akkadian, Ugaritic, Egyptian, Syriac, Coptic and Aramaic) is necessary to do readings in the original
language. Students might spend an entire semester studying
one chapter. “We’re trying to train people to become exegetes,”
says Pisano, 59. Pisano came to Rome as a student in 1976
and has been teaching Old Testament exegesis and textual
criticism of the Bible at the Biblicum since 1982. He was superior there for six years and is now in his third year as rector.
The Orientale
Across town, near the Termini Train Station and the basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, is the Pontifical Oriental Institute
for Eastern Christian Studies, or the Orientale. About 340 students from 21 Oriental Catholic churches in 50 countries
(Ukraine, Romania, South India, the Middle East, etc.) study
the Eastern churches, which represent about 30 million
Catholics worldwide. Its two faculties are the ecclesiastical studies of Eastern-Rite churches and canon law of the same. The
school was chartered in 1917 by Pope Benedict XV and is dedicated to the promotion of understanding between Rome and
the churches of the East through the study of the history, spirituality, theology, liturgy and canon law of the Orthodox and
Eastern Catholic churches.
Boasting a library collection with books in 21 languages,
the Orientale may be the most international of the colleges.
“Our field is enormous,” says Fr. Hector Vall (TAR), rector. With
his thick, wavy white hair and lively, bespectacled eyes, Vall, a
native of Barcelona, is a champion of the college, playfully comparing its size to the Greg, that “monster” a few miles away. “It
seems to be a small place, but the influence is in the whole
world,” Vall says, offering his common refrain that the Orientale has “too many eagles” for such a tiny nest.
Indeed, for students from poor Eastern European countries, Asia Minor, the Middle East and India, an education at
a Jesuit institution in Rome is of tremendous value to them
back home, where the bishops and congregations who paid for
their study, accommodations and travel await their return. They
represent the best and the brightest in their dioceses, where
opportunities of this kind typically do not exist. “These studies here help a lot for them,” says Vall, with a conviction born of
the last seven years spent watching students from impoverished dioceses struggle sometimes to come up with the few
cents it costs to make copies in the library.
Fr. Michael Hilbert, dean of canon law at the Gregorian.
“To have the Roman connection, for these churches, is very
important,” says Fr. François Gick
(NEN), the Orientale’s librarian, an
American Jesuit born in Beirut to
an Italian mother and Yugoslav
father who grew up speaking Italian, Arabic and French. He speaks
English with a slight accent and his
manner is quiet but no less
enthused than Vall’s about the
work they are doing at the Orientale. The two have an easy rapport
as they joke about the expanding
library, which will soon grow
beyond its shelf capacity.
“In 10 years we’ll begin probably to put them on the floor,” says
Gick, gesturing around at the
stacks where he spends most of his
time, living the dream of a librarian, directing a proper research
library. “My degree is put to some- Fr. Hector Vall and Fr. François Gick of the Orientale.
thing useful,” he says happily.
Gick and Vall are two of 25
Jesuits living and teaching at the Orientale. Thirty Jesuits in total dents, a feeling “that here we’re not pastoral, or dealing with
are on the faculty, and several Jesuit students live there while some of the things an American would be dealing with in his
pursuing studies. “There’s a lot of different things going on all the studies.” That feeling, he says, is not entirely right, but it’s not
time,” says Vall. “We are very busy, but we are happy to do it.”
completely wrong, either.
For the sheer broadening flavor of the experience, though,
Hilbert says, American Jesuits should consider coming to Rome.
Who studies in Rome?
Many students - Americans and others - have told him of the
greater interest they’ve taken in international affairs since their
Everyone wants to study in Rome, it seems, but the Amer- arrival at the Greg, where they might sit between a classmate
icans, whose numbers are in decline. According to the 2005 cat- from Rwanda and another from Korea. The world beyond them
alogue for Rome, there were no American Jesuits studying at becomes less of an abstraction when faced with it every day.
the three Jesuit colleges last academic year, and two doing stud- Hilbert was one of 456 Jesuits assigned to the Roman houses
ies at other universities but living in Jesuit communities. Of the last year, of which 54 were American.
“I think it opens the mind,” to be exposed to other cultures,
4,100 students at the three colleges last year, about 95 of them
said Fr. Ignacio Echarte (LOY), Fr. General’s delegate to the
were Jesuits.
Among the personnel at the Roman works, speculation Roman houses. The topic of enculturation is very important
ranges from the feeling in the United States that the general right now, Echarte, 54, says, with one school of thought saying
tenor in Rome is too conservative to the convenience of having you must be rooted in your own culture, while another approach
both Weston Jesuit School of Theology and the Jesuit School of is that you must be able to look at your culture from the outside.
A Spaniard, Echarte’s first language is Basque, and he also
Theology at Berkeley located on either coast of the country.
Indeed, Americans more often than not study in the United speaks Spanish, French, Italian and English. The day before our
States, at the two Jesuit theologates or at other universities offer- meeting, he interacted with nine people from seven countries.
ing advanced degrees in theology, philosophy and related fields. “For me, it’s a challenge,” he says in nearly perfect English of his
In the States, they are usually taught in a pedagogical style that daily encounters with men and women of many cultures and
is more interactive than the European system, more geared tongues. “For me, it was very enriching.”
Is language a barrier for American Jesuits? “The reality is,
toward the adult learner, say some Jesuits. It’s a style Americans
are more accustomed to languages in Europe are needed,” says Echarte. For those whose
by the time they reach language skills are rusty (or non-existent), intensive training is
university level studies. part of the Rome experience before classes even start.
Fr. Gregory Waldrop (NOR), 44, is in his second tour of
Hilbert, of the Gregorian, says he was orig- Rome. He studied at the Greg from 1995-98 and returned two
inally destined for years ago to pursue doctoral studies in late Medieval and RenaisChina, after regency in sance Italian art through the University of California at Berkethe Philippines and Tai- ley. Prior to coming to Rome, he taught English to Polish Jesuits
wan, but was sent to for a summer, an experience that gave him a taste of the interRome instead. Years ago, national Society. “I really appreciated that opportunity,” says
Cardinal Avery Dulles Waldrop. He lives at the Gesu.
Given his field of interest, Rome is a natural fit for Waldrop,
advised him to go to
Rome for the “Roman who speaks English, Italian and Spanish. He has heard many of
experience,” and he has the concerns about the lack of a familiar pastoral theology and
never regretted it. There pedagogical style that makes Americans think twice about comwere at least 10 Ameri- ing to Rome. Like Hilbert, Waldrop can see some truth there,
can students in his year but feels that some of the criticisms are unfair. For instance, in
at the Greg. “The pool is Rome generally, “the atmosphere tends to be clerical, but not
not as great as it was” in the (Jesuit) houses,” he says. “There’s that atmosphere that is
then, Hilbert says. When Roman,” he explains, but he hasn’t noticed in his own commuasked to speculate why, nity some of the ideological tensions he has felt at times in Amerhe thinks about it for a ican formation communities. The richness of the experience
moment, then posits has made up for any shortcomings, in the end. Just by being
that perhaps there is an there, he says, he is living a piece of Jesuit history that continues
“anti-Roman animus,” into the 21st century. “I feel like I’m a part of a whole long line
among American stu- of Jesuits.”
National Jesuit News
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November 2005
9
Photos by Julie Bourbon
About 85 percent of the Biblicum’s students are priests and
they are increasingly from the developing world, to which they
usually return so as to teach in seminaries there.
There is a looming need for faculty at the Biblicum as many
of the current professors will be emeritus soon, or already are;
after a long stretch in which faculty development was not
emphasized, Pisano says, they are now looking to do so some
replenishing. For that, he says, “We rely on the Society throughout the world. (We) would like many (of the faculty) to be
Jesuits.” It would be unrealistic to expect many lay professors to
move their families to Rome, where the cost of living is high
and the pay frequently isn’t, Pisano says; for this reason, he
speculates, Jesuit schools in the States rely more heavily on lay
collaboration than they do in Rome.
Feature
CREATING A SENSE OF JESUIT
COMMUNITY IN ROME
By Julie Bourbon
Rome and send money back to their sisters, some of whom are
cloistered. Palomera, especially, is fond of the young sisters and
visits occasionally, bringing treats which their mother superior
cannot, out of courtesy, refuse. “For us, it’s good to have something feminine in the house,” he says jovially, as he worries that
the elevator the women use in their dining area is in need of immediate repair before someone’s arm gets caught in the ancient contraption - Roman elevators are quite small and often open on three
sides. “You have a weak spot for the sisters!” teases Elizalde.
Elizalde and Palomera, like many of the Jesuits in Rome, have
a world of international ministry experience. Elizalde was on mission in Vietnam from 1961-76 and from 1979-91 worked with
Vietnamese immigrants in Portland, Oregon. Palomera, a liturgist
by training, worked from 1962-93 in Bolivia, as well as six years
as the rector of the PIO Latin Americano in Rome. “Having been
missionaries, it helps to be here in the international house,” says
Elizalde.
There seems to be a certain delight that an older man takes
in playing host to a young woman. Courtly by nature, the Jesuits
at the Bellarmino and Gesu communities were the gentleman
tourguides of my stay in Rome, dispensing cookies and orange
soda in the kitchen, showing me the washing machines (and
assuring me that everyone does his own laundry), giving away
bus tickets and making phone calls for me in Italian, telling me
they expected a little old lady reporter.
Fr. Luis Palomera (BOL), rector of the Bellarmino and speaker of heavily accented and nearly perfect English once he gets
warmed up, immediately asks for backup upon our introduction.
Enter Fr. Julián Elizalde (CHN), the community’s spiritual director. Elizalde squeezes his eyes up as he smiles with his entire face,
and the two tease each other like old friends, their rapport and
affection evident in the way they finish each other’s sentences in
two languages.
About 80 Jesuits live at the Bellarmino, the palatial residence built by the Gabrielli family in 1570, down the street
from S. Ignacio in one direction, a long block from the shadow of the Pantheon in the other. Once the site of the Roman
Seminary and College of Nobles, it was entrusted to the Society by Pope Paul V, lost, then restored by Leo XII in 1824. The
Gregorian University was housed here from 1873 until 1930.
They are an international community, with most of them working on their licentiate and doctoral degrees.
“Bellarmino and Gesu are like twin brothers, but Bellarmino is the older brother,” says Elizalde, speaking of the
smaller community a 10-minute walk away and which I will
visit the next day. Speaking as much with his hands as his
words, Elizalde describes life in the Bellarmino. “We try to give
a spirit of community,” he says. “For this we have several strategies or traditions.”
These strategies must balance the structure of community life with the freedom to do research and studies. The men
pray together daily and celebrate Mass weekly. Once or twice Fr. Julián Elizalde in the courtyard at the Bellarmino.
a month they hold a community meeting at which they talk
about their countries, their backgrounds, play music, dance.
The house is a labyrinth, more luxurious than some of the
The men are invited to form smaller communities within the larger one; while the natural impulse is to divide by language, they’re other Jesuit buildings in Rome, they tell me, because of its origins
encouraged not to close themselves off to men of other tongues. as a palace. Over the years there have been renovations, a floor
added on to the top, original floors cut into two levels, resulting
Italian is the great leveler in these cases.
These little communities are meant to be more than just din- in staircases that end abruptly in the ceiling or others that take
ing groups; they are intended to allow the men “to relate more you to one side of a floor but not the other. Guests and new resiintimately to other students and not be lost in the crowd,” says dents have been known to become lost in confusion and despair.
Palomera is particularly proud of the chapel, which was
Elizalde. Also not intended to be lost is their sense of priestly ministry even as they are focusing on studies. It can be difficult to redesigned by a female architect - that feminine touch again that
maintain a sense of their priesthood just after ordination, says the men say warms up their little palace. It is, indeed, simple and
Palomera, when there are so many competing obligations and beautiful, a welcoming place of worship with three small altars
on either side of the main altar, a holdover from the days before
responsibilities.
“Just like in the first years of marriage, it’s important to be concelebration, and a converted choir loft that used to hold even
together, the first years of priesthood are very important,” says more altars. The same woman helped him renovate his office.
Elizalde. Just when they should be engaging in priestly ministries, Painted a pale shade of yellow and connected to his small bedmany of the men are intimidated by the thought of ministering room - work and private spaces are commonly less distinct in
in Italian, a language they may not yet have mastered. “The dan- Rome than in the States - it is easy to imagine Palomera counselger is they’ll lock themselves in their rooms and do studies because ing residents here. The chairs are comfortable. “Students like coming there,” he says happily, as bright as the room itself.
they’re isolated by language.”
Some of the men have regular ministries every Sunday - giving spiritual direction, working with youth, hearing confessions,
saying Mass at Christmas - primarily parish work. “This is one Gesu Community
thing we are insisting, especially in the first year of priesthood,”
says Elizalde, with the patient air of a man who has directed young
Not far away is the younger “brother,” the Gesu community,
priests for many, many years.
which houses Ignatius’ rooms - the site where he conducted the
The Jesuits at the Bellarmino share their residence with a business of the early Society, where he worshipped and where he
group of sisters from Pueblo, Mexico, who do the cooking for the died. It is hallowed ground for any Jesuit who visits there. Directcommunity. Palomera, 69, and Elizalde, 68, are sensitive to the ly adjacent is the Gesu Church, the Jesuit mother church, which
fact that American Jesuit communities are unlikely to have such has been covered in scaffolding for several months and currentan arrangement, but it allows the women to pursue studies in ly bears the image of a Peugot car ad. Such advertising is com10
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
mon, and scaffolding is ever present in Rome, where everything
seems to be in a constant state of excavation or repair, or both.
Fr. Francisco Lopez Rivera (MEX), the rector of the community, is surprised to have a young visitor. He was expecting someone older, he says, but he quickly recovers. His bearing is of great
quiet dignity and humility. Stately and slender in a light sweater,
he has been the rector for two years. Third-two years ago, he studied at the Biblicum and received his licentiate before returning to
Mexico, where he taught at the Institute of Theology, was novice
master, then academic director, then assistant for formation. A
little bit of everything. “The rest of the time I try to teach the Bible,”
he says with a laugh.
“When I was old, they called me back to Rome,” says Lopez
Rivera, 68. “Such is the life of a Jesuit.”
There are 35 Jesuits living at the Gesu, of which 28 are students. They represent every continent save Australia, but Lopez
Rivera is not quite satisfied with the mix. “The majority come
from Europe, which is not so good,” he says regretfully. “It really
should be international. We are making a campaign. We would
like more Latin American, African and U.S. students.”
Typically, students at the Gesu are not yet ordained, although
that’s changing, slowly. The community life is less structured than
at the Bellarmino, with lunch the only common meal and a Friday
evening community Mass. Residents are responsible for the 11
a.m. Sunday Mass at the Gesu Church, as well as other apostolic
activities, including at the Fe Y Alegria school in Rome, which
has many Peruvian and Ecuadorian immigrants. “We consider this a very important part of their formation. Otherwise,
they become too bookish, too academic,” he says. Most of the
men will leave Rome once they complete their studies.
The Gesu actually houses two communities: the Italian
Jesuits who run the big church and make up the provincial
curia, and the colegio community of younger Jesuits doing
studies. Fr. Gregory Waldrop (NOR), 44, has been living at the
Gesu since the fall of 2003, and prior to that lived there from
1995-98 while doing studies at the Greg. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance art through the University of California Berkeley.
Italian is the official language of the Gesu community,
which has forced Waldrop to become a better speaker than he
might have otherwise. At meals and other times, “there is an
implicit understanding that you won’t be seeking out language
partners,” he says. Many diocesan seminarians in Rome head
back to their houses and speak English, which can be a relief
after a day of classes in Italian, but “by necessity, you have
to get at least a facility,” in the language, he says.
Back on the tour of the community, Lopez Rivera and I
arrive at Ignatius’ rooms. They have been renovated several
times and are entered into through a hallway with a magnificent painted fresco on the ceiling and stained glass windows.
One wonders what Ignatius would have thought of such ornamentation, both here and in the Gesu Church. A bust of the Society’s founder rests on a pillar; it is said to be his actual height,
which would have made him a small man, just over five feet tall.
A glass case holds a pair of Ignatius’ shoes, simple and worn.
Standing over another case that holds one of Ignatius’ original
documents, Lopez Rivera notes, with a bit of mischief: “He was
a very organized man and wrote very many rules. Maybe too
many.” He bows upon entering and leaving the rooms.
When asked again about the international makeup of the
community there, and his desire that more non-European students study in Rome, Lopez Rivera recounts a conversation he
had with an African provincial, who told him he could send two
men to the Hekima College, the Jesuit theologate in Nairobi, for
the cost of sending one man to Rome. He also mentions the policy of Jesuits making their first year of studies in their home
province, a policy he generally supports.
But there is more. He fears that Rome is considered “too
conservative, too academic, too intellectual,” by Americans (both
from the United States and Latin America), and “not in touch
with the problems of the people - poverty, migration.”
“To a certain extent, this is true,” he goes on, with great
thought and care, adding that the pedagogy may be more tightly structured than what students from the Americas are used
to, “very good, very consistent,” not better or worse, just different. “So you win something and you lose something in coming
here.”
CENTRO ALETTI: BRINGING EAST AND WEST
By Julie Bourbon
“In diversity the Holy Spirit
makes harmony resound and
the celebration of colors shine.”
If traffic on the streets of Rome moves at a chaotic pace in
the early morning - as opposed to the rest of the day, when it is
merely frenzied - it calms considerably on the side streets and
alleys, perhaps because the May heat is less intense there in the
shadows, where red and pink bougainvillea spill from window
boxes and scooters are parked at haphazard angles to the salmon
stone buildings. Just around the corner is the Termini Station
and the beautiful basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Many of these buildings harbor inner courtyards that are
calmer still. On a street where the numbering system makes a
u-turn, moving in sequence down one side and coming back up
the other (it must do this because the street suddenly changes
names at the end of the block, at the fork in the road - this happens often in Rome), mid-block, is the Ezio Aletti Study and
Research Center or Centro Aletti. This morning, its verdant and
spacious courtyard is abuzz with activity, for which many apologies are made.
But apologies are not necessary. For all the motion, the men
loading equipment into trucks, the disembodied pieces of mosaic art lying about on tables and floors - a Jesus head on a table, a
sandal clad foot with no leg in sight - there is an aura of good
humor and even peace. After all, they’re gathering up the parts of
a chapel to be installed that week in Slovenia. It will commemorate the site where, in a cave below, during the Cold War, communists killed 15,000 men and women on the border between
Slovenia and Croatia.
This is the work of Fr. Marko Rupnik (SVN), artist and theologian. He has designed close to 30 chapels, including the pope’s
private chapel, the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the loggia of the
Apostolic Palace of the Vatican. “This is something very special.
If I live to be 100 …” he trails off, shaking his head. The papal
chapel is the second only to the Sistine Chapel in size. John Paul,
who commissioned Rupnik’s work at the Vatican, blessed the
chapel at Centro Aletti, which Rupnik also designed.
“It was a very wonderful relationship,” says Rupnik of his
friendship with the late pope. The two shared a common experience of living under communist rule that deeply influenced their
spiritualities. “I think he felt very strongly this question about
unity of Europe.”
Quiet and a little pale, but with a spark of playfulness about
him, Rupnik, 50, presides over the packing up and shipping out
of this latest chapel project. A painter by training, Rupnik now
concentrates mostly on tile mosaics, sweeping his arm around
the chapel at Centro Aletti. “For now, this is my painting,” he says.
The government of Slovenia asked him to build the chapel on
the border, a process which for him begins dialogically, by asking the people who will use the space what they want and what
they feel, then meditating on it. Because of the nature of the space,
and what the chapel represents, it is loaded with import for Rupnik. He calls it “our real approach of reconciliation between killed
and killers. It’s very difficult, but without this, we cannot go ahead.”
It is a fitting project for the team at Centro Aletti, an intercultural reflection, study and research center attached to the Pontifical Oriental Institute (the Orientale). Its primary purpose is to
provide opportunities for Christian scholars and artists from Central and Eastern Europe to meet their Western colleagues. Visitors,
mostly Orthodox Christians, stay for two to three months, generally, with more than 800 having visited Centro Aletti in 12 years.
Rupnik describes the mission of Centro Aletti,
where he has lived since 1991, directing the workshop of spiritual art since 1999, as a meeting place
for tradition and modernity, an “exchange of gifts.
How to use (them), how to translate into life.”
With its aim of overcoming division between
East and West, Centro Aletti offers a place for
Catholics from Orthodox, Oriental and Latin rites
to come together, perhaps for the first time. The staff
is made up of three Jesuits and five diocesan sisters
who specialize in Oriental theology. They offer courses, seminars and symposia in Rome and across
Europe, coordinating with universities, major superiors and bishops and covering topics such as spirituality and formation, theology in dialogue with
contemporary culture, and art and liturgy.
Rupnik directs the studio of spiritual art, a long,
sunny space that is littered with the trappings of a
working artist: pencils in various states of sharpness, cans of paints and solvents, a machine to
break up tile, hand-drawn studies of the current
chapel project hanging from the walls. An artist
might study here under Rupnik’s tutelage for four
or five years.
Centro Aletti also runs a publishing house,
Lipa, which is guided by the sisters. “This is
another very graced work,” says Rupnik, noting
that they have published 80 books in 10 years,
and that 160 translations have been written. “It
means that we touch a very sensitive point in Fr. Marko Rupnik and sketches that will become the mosaics on a chapel wall.
Europe because they accept it so strongly.”
In a tour of the dining room at Centro Aletti, Fr. Milan Zust (SVN), superior and minister of the com- Croatian and English. Boyish and unsure of his command of
munity, explains Rupnik’s mosaic that dominates one wall. It English, Zust also lectures at the Orientale and sometimes gives
is a depiction of Mary and Martha at the feet of Jesus; Christ conferences at Centro Aletti, where he hopes the exposure
is both at the table being served fish, and on the table, becom- between East and West can help to undo “wrong thinking”
ing the meal himself. Lazarus is shown coming unbound in among peoples of different cultures who don’t know much about
one corner. Martha, representing the West, Zust says, “is active,” each other.
“The main point is exactly this - to live together,” says Rupwhile Mary, representing the East, “is contemplative.” The colnik. “The main point are the relationships between persons.
ors of their dresses blend together in Christ’s robes.
Zust, 38, teaches missiology at the Gregorian and lectures Not what but how. The style of life.”
It is, finally, a place where relationships are cared for and
on pastoral theology, Christian spirituality and new evangelization. Like nearly everyone in Rome, he is multilingual, to which he has dedicated his life and his art. “We believe the
speaking Slovenian, Italian, French, German, Russian, Serbian, human person is fundamentally relationship.”
Fr. Rupnik, an artist and theologian by training, now designs the chapels, as well as their artwork.
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
11
Photos by Julie Bourbon
TOGETHER IN A MOSAIC OF ART AND SPIRITUALITY
PROVINCE BRIEFS
MISSOURI
Aging gracefully: Jesuit college,
university reeling in the years
OREGON
■ After 66 years of religious radio
and television broadcasting, the
Sacred Heart Program will cease
operations in mid November. The
program, founded in 1939 by Fr.
Eugene Murphy, was an early
model for religious broadcasting in
America. Changes in FCC
regulations have made it increasingly difficult to market the
programming SHP produced. The
remaining assets will be directed to
an endowment to fund programs to
educate and form the laity in Ignatian Spirituality in the major cities
of the province.
■ Fr. Steve Planning (MAR),
President of Arrupe Jesuit High
School in Denver, reports that
enrollment has reached 200
students at this Cristo Rey school
now beginning its third year of
operation. On the first day of classes an anonymous donor gave the
school a check for $500,000. Construction of two new science labs
and three more general purpose
classrooms is progressing nicely.
■ The art museums at Saint Louis
University are currently sponsoring three exhibitions. The Museum
of Contemporary Religious Art
(MOCRA) is exhibiting DoDo Jin
Ming’s photography that focuses on
turbulent oceans and dream landscapes. SLUMA (Saint Louis University Museum of Art) is
displaying an extensive collection
of jade along with first-year theologian Hanh Pham’s gentle nature
photography. The three exhibits
run through the fall.
■ Saint Louis University School
of Public Health conducted the
first independent, comprehensive
health study of the Montaro River
Valley in La Oroya, Peru, to determine the amount of contamination
caused by the lead smelter in that
community. Archbishop Pedro
Barreto (PER), who invited the
university to do the study, visited
St. Louis in September to express
his gratitude and to ask for continued support.
■ The School of Theology and
Ministry at Seattle University has
a newly designed website under
the leadership of Fr. Pat Howell
and webmaster Aren Kaser. Lectures presented by top theologians
in the country are now available
on-line. You can find the lectures
at www.seattleu.edu/theomin.
Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala., and the University of San Francisco celebrate major milestones
this year, with the former turning 175 and the latter not far behind at 150 years old. Each has a storied history and has played an important role in the
life of its hometown.
Founded in 1830 by the first bishop of Mobile,
Michael Portier, Spring Hill opened with 30 students. Portier traveled to France seeking teachers
and funds for the school and laid the cornerstone
of the first building on July 4, 1830. It is one of the
oldest colleges in the South and the third oldest
Jesuit college in the United States. The Jesuit
Province of Lyons, France, took over direction of
the school in 1847, calling it St. Joseph’s College at
Spring Hill.
The school survived Union occupation at the
end of the Civil War, two Great Fires (1869 and
1909) and multiple hurricanes, including this year’s
Hurricane Katrina, which prompted the emergency
enrollment of 130 displaced students from New
Orleans. Martin Luther King, Jr., referred to Spring
Hill in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” noting
that it was among the first colleges in the South to
integrate.
“Since 1830, Spring Hill College has been integrating faith and culture, educating for the common good, and shaping leaders in the service to
others,” said Fr. Gregory F. Lucey (WIS), president.
“We have sought excellence in all we have done, and
today we celebrate what Spring Hill has become and
what it can be in the new millennium.”
Special events during the September anniversary celebration included a birthday party with the
biggest birthday cake in Mobile, a scholarship banquet and a keynote address by NBC newsman Tim
Russert, a graduate of John Carroll University.
The University of San Francisco is almost as old
as the city in which it resides. Founded by an Italian immigrant Jesuit following the surge of immigration to California after the Gold Rush, it began as
a one-room building atop a sand dune with only
three students. Originally called Saint Ignatius
Academy, then Saint Ignatius College, it became
USF in 1930, on the occasion of its diamond jubilee,
having rebuilt out of the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and fire.
■ Fr. Bill Watson, Oregon assistant for international ministries
and Colombia, made a presentation on the Colombia/Oregon
Twinning Agreement at the Partnering For Peace conference in
Chicago in October. The interfaith
event supported existing relationships with North American groups
working with Colombian communities.
■ Alan Yost was ordained to the
Diaconate on Oct. 8 with nine
other Jesuits and one Capuchin
Franciscan. The Mass took place
at St. Peter’s Church in Cambridge
and the ordaining prelate was
Bishop Francis X. Irwin, DD,
ACSW. Yost will be ordained to
the priesthood June 3, 2006 at
Saint Ignatius Church in
Portland.
■ Fr. Bill Bichsel was honored at
the Washington State Jobs with
Justice Fifth Annual Honoree Dinner and Silent Auction. The organization honored local activists
committed to their goals of fighting for immigrant workers’ rights
and those affected by the war.
■ “White Collar” luncheons in
Seattle and Portland were hosted
by those close to the province to
bring together previous and
potential donors from the area.
The luncheons provided an opportunity for guests to visit with
other supporters and learn about
the work of the Jesuits in the
Northwest. The luncheons are
possible due to generous donors
with connections to restaurants in
both cities.
■ Francisco Javier Díaz Díaz, a
scholastic in his second year of
first studies at Loyola Chicago,
recently passed his USMLE Step 2
clinical skills examination, an
important step on his journey to
becoming a licensed physician in
the United States. Díaz Díaz has
already earned an M.D. from the
University of Costa Rica.
-- Michael Harter SJ
-- Sr. Beth Elliott, OSM
-- Karen Crandal
Jesuit history in California is inextricably linked
to that of immigration to the state. They worked in
hospitals and prisons and provided other social services to the newly arrived immigrants, ministering
to the needs of the ancestors of the first Asian immigrants to America and also to the needs of the most
recent European immigrants. The work of the
Jesuits of San Francisco with the Irish and Italian
immigrants of the late nineteenth century has its
counterpart today at the University of San Francisco, where first- and second-generation immigrants
from throughout the world now make up a significant percentage of the student population.
USF’s October 15 anniversary, called “Legacy
and Promise,” was celebrated over several weeks
that included a Pacific Rim lecture series featuring
the author Isabel Allende and others, class reunions,
a Mass and a gala.
USF President Fr. Stephen Privett (CFN), in his
homily at the sesquicentennial mass on October 16,
said “This university from its earliest days until
now has never protected the privileges of a few, but
always opened up opportunity for many who would
otherwise not have
access to their share of
this world’s goods.
This is our legacy and
our promise.”
For more, visit
www.shc.edu
and
www.usfca.edu.
Photo courtesy of Spring Hill College
■ A record 27 seniors have qualified as National Merit Semifinalists
at Rockhurst High School in
Kansas City. The athletes also are
doing well, with the varsity football
team off to a 6-0 start including a
33-14 victory over the Abilene
Eagles in Texas Stadium, the home
of the Dallas Cowboys, on September 23.
A view of Spring Hill College’s student chapel as it looked in 1909.
12
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
John Carroll
inaugurates
new president
Fr. Robert L. Niehoff was inaugurated John Carroll University’s 24th president on October 11, 2005.
The theme of the inauguration, "Engaging the World,"
focused on the Jesuit tradition of developing men and
women who engage the
world around them. Niehoff
replaces John Gladstone, who
is now the president at Jesuit
High School in Portland.
In accepting his responsibilities, Niehoff (ORE)
pledged to lead JCU in pursuing service and justice,
increasing its diversity and
reaching out to the commuFr. Robert L. Niehoff
nity and the world. “John
Carroll is not as diverse as it
should be,” he declared. “We must diversify our faculty and staff in order to create the learning environment that actually engages our world.”
Niehoff entered the Society of Jesus in 1972 and
completed a B.A. degree in philosophy, two master’s
degrees in theology and an M.B.A. at the University
of Washington, and a Ph.D. at Gonzaga University in
Spokane. Since ordination in 1982, he has served as
treasurer of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, associate treasurer of the Oregon Province, financial officer of the Archdiocese of Nassau, Bahamas,
and financial analyst, co-director for mission and
identity, and assistant to the vice president for student life at Gonzaga University. Joining the University of San Francisco in 1996 as associate dean in the
School of Education, he became associate provost in
fall 2000. In January of 2002, he was given the additional title and duties of vice president, planning and
budget.
Niehoff is currently on the board of directors at
Wheeling Jesuit University, where he also serves on
the board of trustees, the executive committee, and
is chairperson of the academic and student affairs
committee. He is a member of the academic affairs
and finance committees of Saint Louis University’s
board of trustees and a member of the university mission and financial and business affairs committees
of Regis University’s board of trustees. He also serves
on the board and as chair of the audit committee of
the board of directors of the Pacific Graduate School
of Psychology and serves on the finance committee
of the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus where
he also chairs the audit committee.
Rockhurst president announces
resignation
Fr. Edward Kinerk announced September 26 that
he will step down as president of Rockhurst University in June of 2006. Kinerk (MIS) has been president of the university since 1998. He was the first
alumnus to have been named president of Rockhurst.
He had previously worked on the provincial’s staff
as the formation director and assistant for province
planning, and as provincial from 1991 to 1997.
A search committee has been formed to appoint
his successor, who will become the 14th president of
Rockhurst. Kinerk expects to take a sabbatical after
which he will receive a new work assignment from
his provincial.
“It was a tremendous privilege to serve as president of the university I attended,” said Kinerk, 62.
“I cherish the relationships I have made both on campus and in the community.”
During his tenure, Kinerk significantly expanded recreational and athletic facilities at the campus
in midtown Kansas City. He also strengthened the
university’s sense of Catholic, Jesuit mission and
identity. He oversaw the expansion and beautification of the campus quadrangle, featuring a new 93foot bell tower, pergola and fountains, as well as
construction of the Greenlease Art Gallery and a $50
million fund-raising campaign. In 1999, Kinerk
changed the school’s name from Rockhurst College
to Rockhurst University to more accurately reflect
the nature of its program offerings, which today
include five graduate programs.
Kinerk was born in Kansas City, Mo., and grew
up in the shadow of the Rockhurst campus. He
attended St. Francis Xavier Grade School and graduated from Rockhurst High School in 1960. Four
years later, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Rockhurst College.
Kinerk joined the Society of Jesus in 1966 and
received a master’s degree in theology from Saint
Louis University in 1970. He was ordained in 1972.
In 1975, he received a doctorate in spiritual theology from the Gregorian University in Rome, where he
wrote his dissertation on C.S. Lewis.
Hellwig, theologian, passes
away at 74
Monika Hellwig
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Noted theologian and author Monika Hellwig died at Washington Hospital Center Sept. 30 after suffering a severe stroke. She was 74 years old.
She had just recently retired as president and executive director of the Association of
Catholic Colleges and Universities. Hellwig taught theology for more than 30 years
at Georgetown University before taking up the ACCU post. Just days before her death
she had taken up a new position as a research fellow at the university’s Woodstock
Theological Center. A former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, she received numerous honors and awards for her work, including more than 30
honorary degrees.
CALIFORNIA
■ Fr. John Weling, president at
Verbum Dei High School in Watts
announced that the California
Province had renewed its partnership with the diocese of Los Angeles
to co-sponsor the education and
development of the young men in
South Central LA. Enrollment at
the “Verb” has doubled over the
last two years as the Jesuits continue serving the various needs and
ministries of this community.
■ Among his other duties as coordinator of community service for
alumni relations, Br. Jim Siwicki
has been appointed the interim
director of Campus Ministry at
Santa Clara University. Jim
replaces Fr. Mario Prietto who was
installed as rector of the USF Jesuit
Community in San Francisco over
the summer.
■ Fr. Matt Carnes spent his summer traveling to Chile, Argentina
and Peru to conduct dissertation
research and catch up with his
Jesuit contemporaries in each of
those countries. Matt also had the
chance to sneak in a trip to Macchu
Picchu before returning for more
doctoral work at Stanford University.
■ Fr. Paul Mariani was spotted
back in the California Province
recently. Paul is in his fourth year
of doctoral studies in history at the
University of Chicago where he
recently led a gripping discussion
on the effects of communism and
Catholic resistance in China during
the Rock and Roll Revolution of the
50’s and 60’s.
■ Fr. Ed Fassett professed his
final vows in the Society of Jesus at
Jesuit High School, Sacramento,
last month where he has succeeded
Fr. John McGarry as interim principal. Ed has been serving the
school as assistant principal for
instruction and student services.
■ Fr. John Becker has recently
published his second novel, “Cold
Comfort.” John, who incidentally
turned 80 this past July, continues
to teach several sections of English
Literature to the young men of Brophy Prep in Phoenix.
■ Fr. Don Sharp (ORE) has been
appointed chair of sacred scripture
at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo
Park. Don is joined at the seminary
by Frs. Mike Barber, George
Schultze, Jim Bretzke (WIS) and
Eddie Samaniego, who serve in
various capacities.
WISCONSIN
■ Fr. George Drance, artist-inresidence at Fordham
University, has begun a theater
troupe. Magis Theater Company,
in lower Manhattan, has as its
mission ongoing training in innovative acting techniques, the
teaching of young people and performance. The company’s first
production, Shakespeare’s The
Winter’s Tale, combined high
drama with some wonderfully
trippy clowning around.
http://magis-theatre.tripod.com/
■ Speaking of drama, Creighton
University president Fr. John
Schlegel has an act of his own. In
Opera Omaha’s recent operetta
Paul Bunyan, Schlegel performs
as none other than the big galoot
of Americana himself. The colorful production involves Swedish
loggers, singing trees, a blues
quartet and cats on roller blades,
among other things. Said Schlegel
of the experience, “I’m taking ‘living large’ to a whole new level.”
For more on Schlegel’s Omaha
debut, check out
www.Omaha.com.
■ Speaking of living large, four
Red Cloud High School graduates were recently awarded Gates
Millenium Scholarships through
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. These highly competitive
scholarships are granted to students of diverse backgrounds and
cover all unmet financial need
throughout their entire
undergraduate education, as well
as the possibility of aid extended
into graduate school for certain
fields. In the six years since the
Millenium Scholars program
began, Red Cloud students have
won 11 times. This year’s winners
are attending the University of
San Francisco, Creighton University, South Dakota State University and Black Hills State
University. For more
information, check out www.redcloudschool.org/breakingnews/ga
tes.htm.
■ And speaking of breaking
news, in late September,
Marquette University unveiled a
new sculpture of Jacques
Marquette in front of the campus’
Joan of Arc chapel. The sculpture,
designed by artist Ron Knepper,
stands 8 feet, 2 inches high,
weighs nearly 3,000 pounds, and
imagines the 17th century Jesuit
explorer stepping onto shore. For
more information, check out
www.marquettetribune.org.
-- J. Thomas Hayes SJ
-- Jim McDermott SJ
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
13
province briefs
CHICAGO
DETROIT
■ Fr. Robert Thesing has begun
his service as provincial assistant for
formation. Thesing has been working closely with the men in formation and has already attended a
national meeting of formation assistants.
■ Fr. Denis Dirscherl of the St.
Xavier Jesuit Community in
Cincinnati was featured in an article
in the Archdiocese for the Military
Services News. The article focused
on Dirscherl’s service to the military,
his impressive athletic abilities and
his status as a Russian scholar.
■ Frs. Ben Hawley, president, and
Tom Widner, rector, and the entire
Brebeuf Jesuit Community are
proud of the recent news that Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory High
School has been named the top high
school in central Indiana by
Indianapolis Monthly.
■ Fr. Michael Sparough and
Charis Ministries were recognized
earlier this year by the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops as an
example of the best practices in ministry to adults in their 20s and 30s.
■ Loyola University Chicago,
Xavier University, St. Ignatius
College Prep, Loyola Academy, St.
Xavier High School and Brebeuf
Jesuit have all accepted students
from the hurricane stricken Gulf
Coast.
■ Fr. Bill Creed is serving as spiritual advisor to the Chicago Ignatian
Lay Volunteer Corps, which began
its fifth year with a record 31 members, 22 of whom are returning from
last year. Fr. Mitch Pacwa will feature Ignatian Lay Volunteer Corps
(ILVC) on his show EWTN Live on
November 16 at 8 PM EST/ 7 PM
CST. Pacwa will interview Fr. James
Conroy (MAR), the co-founder of
ILVC, and George Sullivan, the
Chicago chapter director.
■ Fr. Sean O’Sullivan recently
organized the first Escuela Para
Padres meeting of the school year at
Cristo Rey Jesuit High School.
Escuela Para Padres is a parent education class offered on a monthly
basis that covers topics such as
domestic violence prevention.
■ Frs. John P. Foley and Frank
Chamberlain (PER) recently
finished directing a weekend retreat
at Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat
House that was conducted entirely
in Spanish. Fr. Jim Lambert (NOR)
also assisted with the successful
first-time retreat.
NEW YORK
■ Fr. Eric A. Zimmer, assistant
professor in the communication,
culture & technology program at
Georgetown, was commissioned
as a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force
Reserve on June 22.
■ Fr. Robert Dahlke organized a
reunion of Jesuits and former Jesuits
of the New York Province which was
held a few weeks ago at Fordham
University. Over 120 Jesuits and former Jesuits attended.
■ Cardinal Adam Maida has
appointed Fr. David Watson pastor of Gesu Parish, Detroit. David
was installed as pastor at the 10:30
a.m. liturgy on Sunday, September
25, by Auxiliary Bishop John
Quinn.
■ Fordham Prep welcomed the
National Theatre Workshop of the
Handicapped under the direction of
Br. Rick Curry (MAR) for an assembly on disability awareness in
September.
■ Also on Sept. 25, Fr. Gerry
Stockhausen (WIS) blessed the
newly renovated St. Ignatius
Chapel in the commerce and
finance building on the campus of
University of Detroit Mercy. Fr.
Gary Wright played a major role
in conceptualizing, planning and
keeping an eye on the details to
make this prayer/worship space
possible.
■ Frs. Stockhausen and Gary
Wright teamed up with novice
Tony Stephens (CHG) and former
Jesuit David Nantais as “Taking
Stock” returned to the concert
stage to lead off six hours of outdoor music at the start of the
school year.
■ Frs. Peter Fennessy, Greg
Hyde, Rey Garcia and 63 others
associated with Manresa Jesuit
Retreat House in Bloomfield,
Mich., traveled to Russia in
September. The group participated
in a cruise from St. Petersburg to
Moscow. Peter and Greg, the leaders of this trip, helped the travelers
explore the relationship between
the Roman Catholic Church and
the Eastern Orthodoxy, a top priority of Pope Benedict XVI’s early
papacy.
■ Fr. John O’Malley delivered the
annual Roland Bainton lecture at
the Divinity School of Yale University on September 26 entitled,
“Vatican II: Did Anything
Happen?” On September 28 he
delivered the same lecture in the
“Gathering Points” series at Marquette University, Milwaukee.
The following morning he led a
conversation with the vice-presidents and deans about his book,
“The First Jesuits,” and its
relevance today.
■ Fr. John Staudenmaier returns
from sabbatical to the newly created office of mission and identity at
UD Mercy.
■ Cardinal Avery Dulles’ topic for
the annual McGinley lecture at Fordham University in October was
“Pope Benedict XVI, Interpreter of
Vatican II.”
■ Fr. Patrick Lynch, the rector of
the Canisius Jesuit Community
planned and hosted the semi-annual
meeting of the higher education rectors of the American Assistancy at
Loyola Hall on Columbus Day weekend.
■ Fr. Vincent Duminuco had a
busy summer overseas teaching in the
International Jesuit Education Leadership programs in Poland. Later in
the summer he went to Lithuania to
give two addresses at the celebration
of the re-founding of Jesuit education
in Vilnius. Vin is no stranger in
Lithuania - he advised the Jesuits
there shortly after independence was
re-established in the early 1990s.
■ Fr. Daniel Fitzpatrick spent the
summer preaching and directing
retreats, and attended the national
CLC meeting in St. Louis
■ Fr. James Coughlin, the Xavier
Jesuit Community’s own Bobby Flay,
was the organizer and chief grill
expert at the community’s annual
Labor Day picnic. John Mulreany
provided the entertainment on the
accordion.
■ Frs. Michael Tunney and James
Miracky led 21 Jesuits on the annual
province retreat. The theme of the
retreat was “Evangelization of Culture
and Learned Ministry.” Both Michael
and Jim were praised for their sensitive and inspiring presentations.
■ Fr. Richard Zanoni spent a good
part of the summer constructing a
magnificently built and decorated
altar for use at school wide liturgies at
Canisius High School. Fr. Fred
Betti, the campus minister, blessed
the altar at the school’s Mass of the
Holy Spirit in mid-September.
14
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
Associate Director
Loyola Institute for Spirituality
The Loyola Institute for Spirituality (LIS), a new model for spiritual ministry in the Ignatian tradition, has a full-time opening for the
position of ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR. Located in Orange County, California, LIS provides conferences, days of prayer, retreats and training in spiritual ministry for congregations, schools, dioceses and
organizations throughout Southern California. LIS is not itself a residential retreat house, although it does provide some over-night retreats
at various centers in the area. Services are provided in English or Spanish. LIS works ecumenically with Christians of various denominations.
The LIS team consists of three Jesuits and lay partners who value
collaborative ministry. This Associate Director position involves coordination/administration of spiritual formation programs. The position includes opportunities for giving retreats, days of prayer,
conferences and spiritual direction with other team members or on
one’s own. LIS seeks a qualified layperson, religious or Jesuit to fill
this position. Master’s degree in Spirituality, Pastoral Theology or
related fields and some teaching experience highly recommended;
background in Ignatian spirituality and in directing Spiritual Exercises required, and some experience with direct pastoral/social ministries in multicultural contexts recommended. Bilingual ability a
plus. Competitive salary and benefits are negotiable. Preferred startup date is March 2006. Deadline for application is December 31, 2005.
To apply, send introductory letter and resume with two letters of
recommendation to:
Dr. Jeff Thies
Chair, Search Committee
Loyola Institute for Spirituality
480 S. Batavia St.
Orange, CA 92868
(714) 997-9587; fax (714) 997-9588.
loyinst@pacbell.net
www.loyolainstitute.org
President
Marquette University High School
Marquette University High School, located in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is currently in search of a new president, lay or Jesuit.
Marquette High is an all-male, college-preparatory school in the
Catholic and Ignatian tradition. Most importantly, the president
ensures that the Catholic and Ignatian character of the school is developed, evaluated and promoted among students, faculty and staff. The
president must be able to articulate the mission and vision of the
school to alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff and the wider community. Additional duties include hiring and evaluating the principal of the high school, overseeing the operations of the president’s
office, school finances, development and fund-raising, promotions,
public relations, alumni relations, and the care and maintenance of
the school’s physical facilities. The Board of Directors hires the president who reports regularly to the Board and acts as a liaison between
the Board and the larger high school community.
Applicants should have an advanced degree in an academic field.
They should have a clear understanding and appreciation of the mission and vision of Ignatian education. It is probable that the successful
candidate will also have at least 3-5 years of work experience in secondary education and demonstrated success in administrative roles.
Interested candidates should send a letter of intent, curriculum vitae,
and 2-3 possible references to the address listed below. The foregoing materials must be received no later than November 15, 2005.
The new president will assume the duties of the office on July 1,
2006.
For further information about the school, including a detailed job
description of the president, please visit our website at www.muhs.edu.
-- Louis T. Garaventa SJ
-- John Moriconi SJ
-- Kenneth J. Boller SJ
-- Jeremy Langford
job announcements
The Search Committee
c/o Marquette University High School
3401 West Wisconsin Avenue
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53208-3896
Associate Professor
Spring Hill College
Spring Hill College invites applications for
two tenure-track positions in the Department of
Psychology at the Assistant Professor level to
begin August 2006. For each position, we seek
applicants who are strongly committed to excellence in teaching and have the ability and willingness to direct undergraduate research. An
earned doctorate in psychology is preferred
although ABD candidates may be considered. In
addition to the courses listed below, candidates
for each position will be expected to teach courses based upon the needs of the department and
the candidate’s area of expertise. The qualified
candidate for the Clinical/Counseling position
will have the ability to teach Abnormal, Personality Theories, Psychotherapy & Counseling, and
General Psychology. For the position in the Biological area, candidates will have the ability to
teach Biological Psychology, Health Psychology,
Tests & Measures, and General Psychology.
Interested applicants should send letter of
application, vita, unofficial graduate transcripts,
three letters of recommendation, statement of
teaching philosophy and evidence of teaching
ability (e.g., copies of student evaluations and
syllabi) to Royce Simpson, Chair, Department of
Psychology, Spring Hill College, 4000 Dauphin
St., Mobile, AL 36608. Email: rsimpson@shc.edu
Application review will begin January 16 and
continue until the positions are filled. An Equal
Opportunity Employer.
Assistant Vertebrate Biology Professor
Spring Hill College
SPRING HILL COLLEGE, a Jesuit, Catholic
Liberal Arts College, dedicated to quality teaching, seeks a broadly trained person for Assistant
Professor tenure track position beginning August
2006. Teaching duties will include Principles of
Biology, Anatomy and Physiology, Vertebrate
Biology and upper division courses in area of
specialty. Areas of expertise in embryology or
neurobiology desirable. Ph.D. and documented
excellence in teaching required.
Applicants interested in developing a
research program with undergraduates are
encouraged to apply.
Send letter of application, vita, statements
on teaching and research, unofficial academic
transcripts, and three letters of reference to:
Dr. Charles M. Chester, Chair
Department of Biology
Spring Hill College
4000 Dauphin Street
Mobile, AL 36608
(cchester@shc.edu)
Information about Spring Hill College available at: http://www.shc.edu.
Position open until filled. Spring Hill College is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Assistant Biology Professor
Spring Hill College
Spring Hill College invites applications for a
tenure track position in Mathematics at the rank
of Assistant Professor, beginning in August 2006.
A Ph.D. in the mathematical sciences is
required; the area of specialization is open. Candidates are expected to have a strong commitment to excellence in teaching; in addition,
service and scholarly activity are expected for
promotion and tenure considerations.
Spring Hill College is a Jesuit, Catholic liberal arts college that emphasizes dedication to
quality teaching from its faculty.
Candidates should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, statements on teaching and scholarly work, transcripts of all
graduate studies, and three letters of recommendation. All materials are to be sent to:
Dr. Charles Cheney
Dept. of Mathematics
Spring Hill College
4000 Dauphin Street
Mobile, AL 36608
Applications will be considered until the
position is filled. Information about Spring Hill
College available at: http://www.shc.edu.
Inquiries or documents may be sent to
cheney@shc.edu
Academic Dean
for Academic Affairs
The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley
The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley
(JSTB) invites applications for the position of
Academic Dean for Academic Affairs, beginning
in summer 2006. Candidates should be Jesuit
priests with a doctorate in a theological discipline or related field. Background should
include a strong record in the areas important
to the position: teaching, scholarship, and
administration. They should possess a strong
commitment to the education of both ordained
and lay ministers in a global church (the school
has many international students), as well as to
ecumenism (JSTB participates fully in the Graduate Theological Union, an ecumenical consortium).
The Academic Dean is the chief academic
officer of the school, providing leadership and
support to the faculty and oversight of the direction, quality and development of the various
degree programs of the school. JSTB offers the
MDiv, ThM, MTS degrees; in cooperation with
the Graduate Theological Union it participates
in the MA, MABL and the PhD programs. JSTB
is also an Ecclesiastical Faculty, offering the
Licentiate and Doctorate in Sacred Theology.
The Dean has particular responsibility for leading the faculty, in a collegial fashion, in its academic, intellectual and professional life and
mentoring its junior members in their development. For a fuller description of the position, please see the JSTB website: www.jstb.edu.
For further information, please contact John
C. Endres, S.J., Chair/ Search Committee/ Jesuit
School of Theolog y at Berkeley / 1735 LeRoy
Avenue / Berkeley, CA 94709-1193. Email: jendres@jstb.edu. To apply, the candidate should
submit a letter of application to the chair,
describing his interest and vision for the position, a CV and list of three references. Screening will begin immediately and continue until
an appointment has been made, preferably by
March 2006.
MARYLAND
■ Fr. Provincial Timothy B.
Brown was honored by the St.
Thomas More Society of Maryland
at their annual Red Mass. The Red
Mass, also known as the Lawyer’s
Mass, has been celebrated since
the mid-13th century to mark the
annual opening of the courts and
to seek the enlightenment of the
Holy Spirit in court deliberations.
This annual event also honors the
contributions of a member of the
legal profession to church and
community. This year the St.
Thomas More Society chose to
honor Brown as its "Man for All
Seasons" recipient.
■ The Jesuit Community at Old
St. Joseph’s Church in Philadelphia is enjoying their new roof
deck that affords a marvelous view
of Center City and beyond. The old
deck was removed this past winter
when the roof of the 150-year-old
rectory was replaced. Fr. Michael
Hricko says OSJ is the best place
in town to watch the Fourth of
July fireworks.
■ Frs. Desmond Buhager
(CSU), Roch Lapalm (GLC) and
Tony Raj (JAM) will be joining
the residents of the Wheeler
House Jesuit Community in Baltimore while attending the
Pastoral Counseling Program at
Loyola College.
■ Fr. George Aschenbrenner
was awarded the Ignatian Award
by the Jesuit Center for Spiritual
Growth in Wernersville, Penn.,
for his 12 years of service at the
center and for his many years of
work with the spiritual exercises
of St. Ignatius. He was presented
with a brass statuette, a copy of
the large Ignatius statue that sits
outside the center.
■ Fr. Bill Watters was celebrated at a Mass of Thanksgiving in
his honor on October 2 at St.
Ignatius Church in Baltimore,
where he was pastor for 14 years.
A reception was held afterwards.
■ Fr. Frank McGauley presented
Fr. George Hess (JAM) with the
“Fat Cat” award at a gathering of
the “Jamwallahs,” a group of
Jesuits who have worked or are
currently working in India. The
Jamwallahs gathered for a reunion
recently at St. Alphonsus Church
in Woodstock, Md. Hess received
the award for his seemingly effortless achievements wherever he has
gone.
NEW ENGLAND
■ Fr. Ronald Anderson, a native of
New Zealand, came to New England
in 1981 as a scholastic of the
Australian Province. He became a
member of our province in 1994. On
August 31, he completed his transition at historic Faneuil Hall in
Boston by turning in his green card
and becoming a naturalized American citizen.
■ On Labor Day weekend, Eastern
Point Retreat House in Gloucester,
Mass., held its second retreat for
men who have been homeless. Based
on a model developed by Fr.
William Creed (CHG), the retreat
gave 11 men from St. Francis House
and Anchor Inn in Boston opportunities to talk with one another about
their lives, fears, faith and hope, as
well as to marvel at the beauty of the
ocean. One participant gave the
experience his highest praise: “This
is better than TV.”
■ On September 29, Fr. William C.
McInnes received the William V.
McKenney Award for lifetime service
to Boston College. The citation concluded with the words, “Ever ready
to serve, Fr. McInnes brings to every
task his terrific sense of humor and
the creativity, courage and energy of
a man half his age. His gentle example of living each day by giving personal witness Ad majorem Dei
gloriam has had a profound impact
on all around him.”
■ On October 10, Fr. James W. Skehan of Boston College received
from the American Institute of Professional Geologists “its most distinguished award, the Ben H. Parker
Memorial Award, for [his] long-time
continued contribution to the profession of geology.”
■ Fr. George Williams, founder of
Jesuit Prison Ministries, Inc., is
working with the Suffolk County
Sheriff’s department and local educators to establish “Magis,” a new
Jesuit-sponsored school inside the
Nashua Street Jail. This school will
offer basic educational services for
the detainee/inmate population at
the jail, as well as English as a Second
Language, GED studies and other
programs.
■ On October 14, Dr. John R.
Siberski, geriatric psychiatrist and
third-year theologian at Weston
Jesuit, gave the keynote address,
“Geriatric Depression in the Setting
of Medical Illness,” at the 11th
National Sisters of Mercy Conference
on Aging, sponsored by the Mercy
Network on Aging.
-- Jackie Antkowiak
-- Richard H. Roos SJ
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
15
MEMORIALS
Robert J. Dietrich SJ
(Detroit) Fr. Robert J. Dietrich, 80, died April 2, 2005,
in the Jesuit Community at St. Ignatius High School,
Cleveland. He was a Jesuit for 56 years and a priest for
44 years. The cause of death was leukemia
Bob was born in Belleville,
Ill., where he attended St. Peter’s
grade school. From 1939-43, he
attended St. Ignatius High, Cleveland. He served three years in the
Navy during World War II.
Returning home to Cleveland, he
worked for the Western Electric
Co. and began college studies at
John Carroll University. Bob
entered the Jesuit Novitiate in
Milford, Ohio, in August 1949.
He did his philosophy (1953-56) and theology (195862) at West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Ind. Bob
taught math during his Regency at St. Ignatius High
School, Cleveland. John Cardinal Dearden ordained Bob
at Colombiere College, Clarkston, Mich., on June 15, 1961.
He did his tertianship at St. Stanislaus, Parma, Ohio
(1962-63). In the years after ordination he taught Latin
at St Xavier High, Cincinnati (1963-65), University of
Detroit High (1965-69) and St. Ignatius High, Cleveland
(1971-72). The following years Bob became a spiritual
director at the Jesuit Retreat House in Parma, Ohio(197273), and at the Loyola of the Lakes Retreat House, Clinton, Ohio (1973-74). Bob then did pastoral work at Gesu
Church, University Heights, Ohio, in 1974-75. He became
a Chaplain (1976-77) at Mt Carmel Hospital, Detroit;
Charity Hospital, Cleveland (1977-78) and St. Vincent’s
Hospital in Toledo (1978-82). He received an M.Div in
pastoral psychology and counseling from Ashland College, Ashland, Ohio, in 1975. Bob spent a year at Kent
State University in 1982 studying African Studies.
For the next five years (1983-88), Bob did mission
work at Wau and Mupoi, Sudan. He returned to the
province and then took a sabbatical at the Jesuit School
of Theology at Berkeley (1988-89) and at Weston School
of Theology at Cambridge, Mass. (1989-90).
It was in the last years of his life that Bob found great
interest in the concerns of African ministry. His years in
the Sudan left an impression on him. Returning to the
Cleveland area in 1991, and residing with the community of St. Ignatius High, he began to collect books to be
sent to Africa. It was a long and tedious work at times,
but Bob was committed to what he loved doing and sent
over 500,000 books to Africa. He became an advocate for
Bishop Anthony Pilla’s “Church in the City” program.
Bob assisted the Sudanese refugees who settled in Cleveland and also served the Cleveland diocese by doing supply work in parishes and at the Carmelite Monastery.
He loved being with his Jesuit community, reading
about the latest in spirituality and quoting Henri Nouwen.
He had the smile of an Irishman even though he was of
German descent. It is only fitting that Our Lord called
him home in the season of His Resurrection.
-- Dick Conroy SJ
Malcolm Carron SJ
(Detroit) Fr. Malcolm Carron, 88, died April 19, 2005,
at Colombiere Center, Clarkston, Mich. He was a Jesuit
for 67 years and a priest for 54 years. The cause of death
was congestive heart failure.
Mal was born in Detroit on May 15, 1917. He divided his grade school between Fairbanks (1923-27) and
Barbour Hall, Kalamazoo, Mich., (1927-31). He attended the University of Detroit High school (1931-35) and
then the University of Detroit, receiving an A.B. in philosophy and history. Mal entered the Jesuit Novitiate in
Milford, Ohio on September 1, 1939. He studied philosophy (1942-45) and theology (1948-52) at West Baden
College, West Baden Springs, Ind. His first teaching
assignment was at St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland
16
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
(1945-48). On June 13, 1951 Archbishop Paul C. Schulte
ordained Mal. He received an M.A. in English at Loyola
University, Chicago (1949), and a Ph.D. in higher education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1956).
After his Tertianship at St. Stanislaus, Parma, Ohio
(1952-53), Mal would spend his Jesuit life in Detroit. His
work in education was outstanding both at the university and high school levels. He was always concerned that
the student receive the best education possible, especially the disadvantaged student. Mal was at
home with everyone. In the Jesuit
community, he was just “one of
the guys.”
In his public dealings he was
comfortable with politicians,
ministers of other faiths and educators, as well as the employees
who took care of the grounds and
buildings. When other Catholic
high schools were moving to the suburbs, Mal was committed to the city of Detroit. When the riots occurred in
the late 1960s he worked with public officials to bring
calm back to the city. He served on more than 50 civic
committees and boards. Quite often he was referred to
as “Mr. Detroit.”
Mal began as a professor at the University of Detroit
in 1956. In 1966 he became president and served for 10
years. From 1976 to 1981, Mal served the university as
chancellor. He became president of University of Detroit
High in 1981 when the school was declining in enrollment. He worked hard to increase the enrollment. He
took a year sabbatical in 1992-93, and then began the
work of starting Loyola High School for disadvantaged
black students. The school is now beginning its twelfth
year.
He returned to University of Detroit Mercy and acted
as a resident director from 1996 until 1998. When his
health began to fail, he moved to the Colombiere Health
Center in 1998. There Mal maintained his sense of humor
even though his memory was failing. One of the nurses
would refer to Mal as, “my boy, my pal, and my buddy.”
He was a Jesuit you could call “a man for Others.” In the
words of the Gospel one could say, “Well done good and
faithful servant.”
-- Dick Conroy SJ
Joseph F. MacDonnell SJ
(New England) Fr. Joseph F. MacDonnell, 76, died
at Campion Center in Weston, Mass., on June 14. From
Springfield, Mass., he was predeceased by three brothers, one of whom was a Jesuit, and one sister. He is survived by his brother Fr. Martin P. MacDonnell of the New
England Province.
Fr. MacDonnell graduated from Cathedral High
School in Springfield in 1946 and attended Boston College
for two years before entering the Society at Wernersville.
After novitiate there and juniorate at the “old Shadowbrook” he did philosophy at Weston College, then went
in 1955 to Iraq to teach English, math and physics, and
coach basketball at our secondary school in Baghdad.
(He had been a very competitive athlete in several sports
since his earliest years.) He returned to the U.S. in 1958
for theology at Weston, ordination in 1961, and tertianship at Pomfret, Conn. He earned
a master’s degree in mathematics
at Fordham and returned in 1964
to Baghdad College to teach math,
theology and physics, and to
serve as chairman of the math
department and head coach of
the basketball team. When the
Baathist political party came into
power in 1969, all schools were
nationalized, and foreign teachers, including the Jesuits, were
expelled.
Fr. MacDonnell returned to the U.S. to teach math at
Fairfield and started work on a doctorate in math at
Columbia, receiving the Ph.D in 1972. He was a leading
member of the association of Jesuit mathematicians
known as the “Clavius Group,” named after Christopher
Clavius, the 16th century Jesuit mathematician,
astronomer and defender of Galileo. He was generous in
giving after-class time to students, especially those who
found mathematics difficult. He organized days of reflection and evening discussion dinners for university layfaculty and staff as a way of acquainting them with the
Jesuit educational mission and the spirituality at its heart.
He stayed active with the alumni organization from the
mission in Baghdad, and he arranged the annual faculty/staff Christmas party at the Jesuit residence. For 32
years he celebrated Sunday Mass at a nearby parish so
he could “get to know the neighbors” there. In his “spare
time,” he wrote four books on mathematical topics and on
the mission of Jesuits. Whenever possible he took part
in family and extended-family celebrations: baptisms,
confirmations, weddings, birthdays, graduations and
funerals.
Fr. MacDonnell had a wry and sometimes astringent
sense of humor. He gave three principal exams per semester; the story is told of a student who had failed two of
those exams abysmally and came to Fr. MacDonnell to
ask how he could get - not merely a passing grade - but
a “B” for the semester. Fr. MacDonnell addressed him
calmly and said, “What you need is a professor who can’t
average three numbers. Unfortunately, you haven’t got
one.”
Fr. MacDonnell was a man happy and fulfilled in his
chosen career who often spoke in poetic fashion about
the beauty of mathematics. “I have always been grateful
to teach mathematics,” he said, “because I love it. It’s
like figuring out a crossword puzzle. And in it there’s the
joy of discovery.”
Joe’s Jesuit brothers and many friends would say that
he is now experiencing the joy of the greatest discovery
of all.
-- Paul T. McCarty SJ
Vincent F. Connolly SJ
(New England) Fr. Vincent F. Connolly, 74, died at
Campion Center in Weston, Mass., on July 1. He was a
Jesuit for 50 years and a priest for 35 years. He was born
in Boston, graduated from Boston English High School
in 1947 and from Boston College in 1952. After service
as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and
a year of “catch-up” study of Latin at St. Philip Neri
School (run by new England Province Jesuits for “late
vocations”), he entered the Society at the “old” Shadowbrook in 1955. When the midnight fire that destroyed
Shadowbrook broke out in March
of 1956, Vin’s training and skills
as a Marine enabled him to keep
his own composure and direct
many others to safety from the
burning building. In 1957 he
came to the “old” Weston College
for philosophy, followed by five
years of sociology studies at St.
Louis and Columbia Universities.
He had a strong interest in South
America and traveled in 1964 to Bogotá, Colombia, for
special studies in sociology, as well as theology and Spanish.
He returned to the U.S. in 1969 for a final year of theology and ordination and to prepare his doctoral dissertation in sociology. The dissertation was a
groundbreaking study of relations between government
taxation policies in Colombia, labor unions and the civic
role of Roman Catholic bishops in that country. In 1977
he went again to Colombia to serve in pastoral ministry
there and in Brazil until 1983, when he returned to the
U.S. to serve again in pastoral work for five years in New
York City, Bridgeport, Conn., and Boston. During this
time he served variously as a hospital chaplain, minister of a Jesuit residence, team-member in Hispanic ministry at Boston’s Holy Cross Cathedral and similar work
with the Hispanic community in Springfield, Mass. He
went again to South America in 1988, this time to teach
and do sociological research at the Pontifical Catholic
University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Six years later he
traveled to Jamaica, W.I., to serve in campus ministry at
the University of West Indies and teach theology in the
local diocesan seminary until 2004, when rapidly failing
health required him to come Campion Health center. He
led an active, generous and varied Jesuit priestly life.
-- Paul T. McCarty SJ
Leon J. Hogenkamp SJ
(New York) Fr. Leon J. Hogenkamp, 65, died July 17
due to complications from cancer. He was a priest for 35
years and a Jesuit for 48 years.
Fr. Hogenkamp was born in Buffalo in 1940 and
entered the Jesuit novitiate of St. Robert Bellarmine in
Plattsburgh, N.Y., in 1957, shortly after graduating from
Canisius High School in Buffalo. After professing first
vows in 1959 in Plattsburgh, he completed his baccalaureate studies at Bellarmine College in Plattsburgh and
then studied philosophy at Loyola Seminary in Shrub Oak, N.Y.,
from which he earned a master’s
degree in philosophy.
Fr. Hogenkamp joined the faculty of McQuaid Jesuit High
School in Rochester in 1964 as a
seminarian and taught Greek and
French. He also served as moderator of the senior class and the
school newspaper, The Lance.
Although Fr. Hogenkamp left
McQuaid in 1967 to pursue a master’s of divinity degree
in theology at Woodstock College in New York City, he
continued to serve as acting principal of the summer
school program from 1968-69. He completed his degree
and was ordained a priest in 1970.
In 1971, Fr. Hogenkamp returned to McQuaid after
pursuing his doctoral studies at Columbia University. He
took the helm as principal at a time when the school was
experiencing an uncertain future. Closing of the school
had been considered in 1969 due to the declining number of Jesuits, lower enrollment and financial pressures.
In this difficult context, it was he who wrote to the provincial volunteering to return to the school.
At age 31, Fr. Hogenkamp was the youngest Jesuit
principal in the United States, serving in that position
for nine years.
In 1980, Fr. Hogenkamp left McQuaid for a year for
sabbatical studies. He returned in 1981 as assistant to
the president and remained in that position through 1984.
From 1984-87, Fr. Hogenkamp was director of Christ the
King Retreat House in Syracuse. From 1987-89, Fr.
Hogenkamp served as McQuaid’s executive vice president. From 1989-92, he served as director of St. Ignatius
Retreat House, Manhasset, NY.
In 1992, Fr. Hogenkamp was named assistant to former president Fr. James J. Fischer and remained in that
capacity through 1994. In 1994, Fr. Hogenkamp was
named vice president of advancement and in 1998 was
named McQuaid’s vice president. His major responsibility was managing the construction of McQuaid’s 27,000
square-foot art annex, completed in 2001. Subsequently,
Fr. Hogenkamp oversaw the renovation of the school’s
gymnasium in 2002 and the chapel in 2004. Fr.
Hogenkamp, who also earned a paralegal degree,
designed and taught a street law course for juniors and
seniors, the first of its kind at McQuaid.
Fr. Hogenkamp was renowned for his mastery of
detail, his intellectual agility and flexibility to learn about
and execute arduous projects, his versatility, which
enabled him to remain balanced and fair, and his Jesuit
spirituality and personal concern for each person.
Thomas W. Gedeon SJ
(Detroit) Fr Thomas W. Gedeon, 80, died July 22,
2005, at Genesys Regional Medical Center, Grand Blanc,
Mich. He was a priest for 49 years and a Jesuit for 62
years.
Tom was born in Cleveland on June 28, 1925. He
attended St. Vincent de Paul grade school (1931-39) and
St. Ignatius High school (1939-43). Tom entered the Society of Jesus at Milford, Ohio, on February 14, 1943. Four
years later he began his philosophy (1947-50) at West
Baden College, at West Baden Springs, Ind. In 1948, Tom
received his A.B. in Theology at
Loyola University in Chicago. Tom
spent his three years of Regency
at St. Xavier High School in
Cincinnati (1950-53). He
returned to West Baden College
for theology (1953-57) and was
ordained to the priesthood on
June 5, 1956 by Archbishop Paul
C. Schulte. He did his tertianship
(1957-58) at St. Stanislaus Retreat
House in Parma, Ohio.
Tom returned to Detroit in 1958 as director of
fundraising for the new Detroit Novitiate being built in
Clarkston, Mich., called Colombiere College. From 1961
until 1974 he was the director and superior of the retreat
house in Parma, now named the Jesuit Retreat House.
Taking a year’s sabbatical, Tom then became executive
director of Retreats International at Notre Dame for the
next 22 years. Tom returned in 1999 to the Jesuit Retreat
House in Parma as retreat consultant until ill health
caused his final move to the Jesuit Health Care in Clarkston, Mich.
Tom had three hobbies which fulfilled his Jesuit life
and helped in his direction with retreatants: gardening,
photography and pottery. A greenhouse is needed to help
roses grow and become strong with nourishment by the
sun before they are placed out in the garden to show their
natural beauty. The warmth of the “Son” and the nourishment of the soil, as the word of Jesus, were a means
in directing the retreatant. In his photography, Tom was
able to see natural beauty in the simplest things. Tom
saw the blossoms at their best in spring, or the beauty
in an old barn. Like all photographers, Tom waited for
the timing when the subject was at its best, seeing in
objects or persons what we often overlook in ourselves.
But is was in his pottery that Tom saw the Spiritual Exercises. Tom had this to say about pottery: “It’s basically a
spiritual exercise. You put clay in the center of the pot-
ter’s wheel and allow it to slowly open to its beauty. Just
as in centering, slowly as you open yourself to your inner
life, you begin to see the beauty in yourself and how you
live your life.”
-- Dick Conroy SJ
Thomas E. Clarke SJ
(New York) Fr. Tom Clarke, 87, died on August 14,
2005 at the province infirmary on the Fordham campus.
He was a priest for 55 years and a Jesuit for 64 years.
Fr. Tom was born on Aug. 4, 1918 in New York City
and attended Xavier High School. After graduating from
Xavier in 1936, he enrolled at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City. In the summer of 1938, however, he discovered
that he had contracted tuberculosis. Doctors felt it advisable to collapse the infected lung and Tom spent more
than a year recuperating in the Adirondacks. Although
dependence on a single lung affected his breathing for
the rest of his life, it apparently never restricted his activities or reduced his capacity for
work. He graduated magna cum
laude from St. Peter’s in 1941 and
entered the Society at St. Andrewon-Hudson on June 20 of the
same year.
Because of the years lost to illness and his college background,
the course of studies in the Society was considerably abbreviated. Tom spent only a year in the
juniorate and just two years
studying philosophy at Woodstock. In his single year of
regency he taught at Brooklyn Prep and then returned to
Woodstock for theology. Archbishop Keough of Baltimore ordained him to the priesthood on June 18, 1950.
After a biennium in Rome he would return to Woodstock
to teach systematic theology. In 1970 he moved with the
Woodstock theology program to New York City and
remained a faculty member until the institution closed.
With the end of the theological program in Manhattan, Fr. Tom was free to explore his interest in problems
of spiritual development in the context of modern society. He spent four years as a spiritual director at the
Retreat House in Monroe, N.Y., and another four years
at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington.
Early in the next decade, however, his course for the
remainder of his life became clear. From a base at Xavier,
more specifically from a room in the 17th Street subcommunity, he would devote himself to a ministry of
writing and spiritual direction in New York and in countless other retreat houses and convents throughout the
U.S. and other countries. In the mid-1990s, when the top
floor residence in the elevator-free building on 17th Street
became too much of a strain, he found a last and deeply
cherished home at Bethany Retreat House in Highland
Mills, N.Y. There the solicitous support and care of the
Religious Sisters of Jesus and Mary made it possible for
Fr. Tom to pursue a ministry of spiritual direction and
writing until the very last months of his life. Over the
course of a long ministry, he assisted countless Christians in their journeys of faith and service of the Lord.
-- F.J. O’Brien SJ
William R. O’Leary SJ
(New York) Fr. Bill O’Leary, 61, collapsed unexpectedly in his room at St. Peter’s Preparatory School and
died at a Jersey City hospital shortly thereafter, on August
15, 2005. He was a priest for 32 years and a Jesuit for 43
years.
Fr. Bill was born on May 31, 1944 in Brooklyn, NY.
He attended Regis High School in Manhattan and entered
the Society at St. Andrew-on-Hudson in Poughkeepsie
N.Y. on August 14, 1962. His course of studies over the
next 11 years, both in its length and in its locations, was
characteristic of the period immediately after Vatican II.
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
17
MEMORIALS
The time allotted to various subjects had been much
reduced and all the academic institutions attended could
be found within a radius of 100 miles of New York City.
After novitiate and juniorate at St. Andrew, he studied
philosophy at Shrub Oak and spent two years of regency
teaching at the Loyola School. His
three years of theology fitted
within the brief lifespan of Woodstock College in New York. Fr. Bill
was ordained by Cardinal Cooke
in the Fordham University Chapel
on May 26, 1973.
After ordination, Fr. Bill
returned to the Loyola School as
a student counselor and also
undertook graduate studies at
Fordham University where by
1976 he had earned a master’s degree in education. In
that same year he joined the counseling staff at Xavier
High School, the institution with which he would always
be most closely identified. Except for three years as director of Boy’s Hope on Staten Island, he would spend the
next 15 years counseling Xavier students, for much of
that time as chair of the department.
In 1990 he moved for three years to Canisius H.S. in
Buffalo before beginning a new career as administrator
of the physical plants of several of the province’s retreat
centers. He worked at Inisfada in Manhasset, L.I.,
from1993 until 1996 and then took responsibility for the
structure of Loyola House of Retreats in Morristown, N.J.
As his health declined, he accepted in 2003 the chaplaincy at St. Joseph’s Home for the Blind in Jersey City,
N.J.
This list of catalogue assignments, however, does not
include a work to which Fr. Bill devoted himself enthusiastically for many years - the pastoral care of native
peoples in Alaska. As a theologian, he had spent a sum-
mer in the Far North and fell in love with the place and
the people. For many summers thereafter he returned to
Alaska. Fittingly, in the photo on his funeral card, he is
wearing a native Alaskan necklace.
-- F.J. O’Brien SJ
Francis X. Grollig SJ
(Chicago) Fr. Francis X. Grollig, 83, died August 20,
2005 at Colombiere Center in Clarkston, Mich. He was a
priest for 52 years and a Jesuit for 65 years.
A native of Cincinnati, Fr. Grollig attended grade
school at St. Ursula Academy and graduated from St.
Xavier High School in Cincinnati. Shortly after his high
school graduation in 1940, Fr. Grollig entered the Jesuits
at Milford, Ohio. During his studies to become a priest,
he earned an AB in Latin in 1947 and an MA in history
and philosophy in 1950 from Loyola University Chicago.
Subsequently he earned a Ph.D. from Indiana University in anthropology in 1959,the first Jesuit priest to obtain
a doctorate in any subject from that school. He was granted a licentiate in philosophy from West Baden College in
Indiana in 1949 and a licentiate in sacred theology. During his Jesuit training, he also taught history and English at St. Xavier High School and Latin at Loyola
Academy in Wilmette, Ill. Fr. Grollig was ordained a priest
on June 17, 1953 at West Baden, Ind.
After ordination Fr. Grollig, was first assigned to St.
Xavier Church in Cincinnati and then, in 1955, to Loyola University Chicago where he became a teaching fellow
in the history department.
In 1959, Fr. Grollig became the first chairman of the
Anthropology Department at Loyola University Chicago.
As chairman, he began the Annual Peru Program in 1961
and the Annual Mexican Program in 1978. In 1989, Fr.
Grollig was named director of the Latin American Studies Program at Loyola University Chicago, a position he
held until 1991. Throughout his many years there, he
edited and wrote several books on both anthropology
and Latin American studies.
Fr. Raymond Baumhart (CHG), former president of
Loyola University, remembered Fr. Grollig as “A quiet
scholar with a dry wit. He was helpful to students and
others in need.”
The following Jesuits have died since the NJN
last published and prior to our October 7
deadline. Their obituaries will appear as space
and information become available.
Anderson, Robert L. (NOR)
September 16
Barth, J. Robert (NYK/NEN)
September 21
Connor, Joseph M. (MAR)
October 1
Gelin, Henry C. (DET)
August 30
Hollingsworth, Robert (NOR)
September 25
Johnson, Earl (NOR)
September 5
Kempker, Paul J. (WIS)
September 16
Long, John F. (NYK)
September 20
Mueller, Francis E. (ORE)
September 28
Mullen, Charles J. (MAR)
September 26
Thall, Apollinaris (NYK)
September 4
Welsh, John R. (NOR)
September 5
BOOKS
The Jesuits and the
Arts 1540-1773
John W. O’Malley SJ and
Gauvin Alexander Bailey, editors
Saint Joseph’s University Press, Philadelphia, 2005
496 pp., cloth, $50 plus shipping ($35 before
December 15)
ISBN: 0-916101-52-5
The first survey ever published of the Jesuits global artistic enterprise in Europe, Asia and the Americas, from the foundation of the Society of Jesus in 1540
to its suppression in 1773. A lavish coffee table volume
with 476 full-color images of Jesuit buildings, paintings, sculpture, theatrical sets and music from around
the globe, many published here for the first time.
Includes 12 essays.
Black, White, and Catholic. New Orleans,
Interracialism, 1947-1956
R. Bentley Anderson SJ
Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, 2005
320 pp., cloth, 45.00
ISBN: 0-8265-1483-9
New Orleans has been on our minds and in our
hearts in recent weeks, but this book reminds us that
its stories of struggle and redemption date back further than today’s headlines. Anderson leads readers
through the tumultuous years just after World War II
when the Roman Catholic Church in the American
18
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
South struggled to reconcile its commitment to social justice with the legal
and social heritage of Jim Crow society. Though these early efforts, by and
large, failed, they galvanized Catholic
supporters and opponents of the Civil
Rights Movement and
provided a model for
more
successful
efforts at desegregation in the 1960s.
Street Smart. The
New York of Lumet,
Allen, Scorsese,
and Lee
Richard A. Blake SJ
The University Press of
Kentucky, Lexington,
2005
368 pp., cloth, $35.00
ISBN: 0-8131-2357-7
The diversity of New York City’s
neighborhoods has left distinctive
marks on four New York-bred filmmakers. Blake argues that a good understanding
of
each
director’s
neighborhood of origin is necessary for
a comprehensive critical grasp of that director’s films. Examining the diverse social, economic and ethnic backgrounds with a solidity
not found in other auteurist studies, the book
also remedies the fact that little critical work
has been done on Lumet
and Lee.
Kaloub ala Nar. EsSalaat m’a erRaheban
el-Yesoueyeen
(Hearts on Fire.
Praying with Jesuits)
Translated by George
Atallah Muslah, with
Emil el-Dik and
Clarence Burby SJ
Jesuit Center,
Amman, Jordan, 2005
204pp., paper, free of charge
An Arabic translation of the popular
prayer book compiled by Michael Harter SJ,
it is already in its second edition. For copies,
e-mail hicks@jesuits.jo. Postage will be
requested and donations to the Center will
not be turned away.
The joke is not dead
By Raymond A. Schroth SJ
I hate to say this, but I think the New York Times may
have got something wrong. In the lead article in the Sunday Style section at the end of May, obituary writer Warren St. John declared that the joke died
recently, after a long illness of about 30
years.
Think about it. When was the last
time Americans heard - or tried to tell - a
good classic joke? Not as wisecrack, or
insult, or the TV late night comic’s two
second quip about Bill Clinton’s sex life
or Michael Jackson’s nose followed by a
drum roll and yuks from the studio
orchestra. I mean a joke as story.
Two penguins walk into a bar. The
priest, rabbi, and Protestant minister are
in a plane about to crash and there’s only
one parachute. The two guys on the golf
course and the two women up ahead, and
one guy walks up to ask if they can play
through. Real jokes.
On the cause of death, St. John speculated, there is much dispute. Some
blame women. The joke is a man thing.
Now that men and women socialize less
in packs and more together, the guys can’t
tell their favorite stories.
Some blame political correctness.
Somehow Irish drunks, stingy Scots, Jewish mothers, black servants, Polish light
bulb changers and Chinese laundrymen
are no longer the appropriate subjects of
humor.
Finally, everyone blames the young.
Their mini-second attention span and
their brains shrunken by radiation from
their cell phones make it impossible for
them to focus on anything after, “So the
bartender says to the penguin . . .”
But where did the Times go wrong?
They forgot the one social sub-group in
which these factors do not rule, and
where therefore the joke has been preserved, as in a time capsule, or perhaps
a museum. The Jesuit community.
There, the average Jesuit is 70 and the
average age of every joke is at least the
same.
So, in the interest of historical preservation, I conducted a survey here at Saint
Peter’s College, where we have some real
serious jokesters, to scout out the all-time
best jokes, stories that deserve to outlive
their tellers.
Fr. Bob McCarty (NYK) is one of the
few Jesuits who dares to attempt a real
joke in class. How’s this?
A drunken gentleman is staggering down the street late
one night and, hanging on a lamp post, he runs into a cop
on the corner who wants to lock him up for being intoxicated in public. The drunk protests and argues that he is
in fact not wandering around but standing right in front
of his own home.
“See that house right there?” he says. “It’s mine.”
“See this key?” he says. “See those stairs? They’re mine.
Follow me upstairs.”
The cop follows him up.
“See that bedroom? It’s mine.”
He opens the door.
”See that woman in bed? That’s’ my wife.”
“See that man in bed with her?”
“That’s me.”
This one was begun by Fr. Dave Stump (NYK) and
corrected by Fr. Tom Sheridan (NYK) - or was it the other
way around?
Young Fr. O’Toole had just been ordained a few weeks,
and one Sunday he was sent to say mass
at an interfaith scout camp. It happened
that a lot of the Lutheran scouts showed
up at the Catholic mass, and the whole
bunch of them, Catholics and Lutherans
together, started coming up for Communion at the same time.
Fr. O’Toole was flustered and had to
think quickly about what to do. The next
week, he reported to the Bishop on the crisis. “So what did you do?” the bishop
asked. “Well, Your Excellency,” O’Toole
replied. “I asked myself what would Jesus
do.” “Oh no!” the bishop replied. “You
didn’t!”
The top joke I found was one in the
classic genre of old-time British army
movies from the days when the “Sun
never set” on the Empire. The stories
bristle with places like Kartoum and
Crimea, and lines like “blown to bits,”
and “Haarrrrrumph!” And it helps to
have seen the classic films: “Gunga Din,”
“Lives of the Bengal Lancers” and, above
all, the original “Four Feathers.”
The report is that the class didn’t get it. Strange.
Another approach is Fr. Tom Blessin’s (NYK) more
intellectual observation about the three philosophical
schools represented among baseball umpires.
The idealist: I calls ‘em the way I sees them.
The realist: I calls ‘em the way they are.
And the logical positivist: They are what I call them.
A group of retired generals is sitting
around drinking sherry in their club as
they reminisce about the Sudan, its battles, its heroes, its fools. General Hardsaddle has been asked whatever happened
to Lieutenant Faversham, and he heaves
a heavy sigh and straitens his shoulders
to recount the tale.
The battle had waged for several days,
and now our valiant Brigade was surrounded by a thousand Fuzzy Wuzzies
and bloodthirsty Dervishes. Then young
Faversham burst into my command tent
all trembling with fear and with a terrified look in his eyes.
‘Sir,’ he cried. ‘It’s too much! I can’t
face them.’
So I stood up and looked him straight
in the eye and said, ‘Faversham, Would
you rather go out there and face a thousand Fuzzy Wuzzies and bloodthirsty
Dervishes or would you rather stay in here
and face me?’
At that Faversham saluted, barked
‘SIR,’ clicked his heels, spun around, and
strode out into the battle.
There was a great tumult. Shots.
Shouts. Explosions. Bloodcurdling
screams. And then - silence.
I opened my tent flap and walked out. And there was
Faversham. And (gesturing to his left) there was Faversham. And (pointing far to the right) there was Faversham.
So I said, ‘Faversham, pull yourself together, man. This
is war!’
As I said, it helps if you’ve seen the movies.
Schroth (NYK) is professor humanities at Saint Peter’s
College in Jersey City.
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
19
Jesuit Relations
For AIDS orphans, school is a lifeline
20
National Jesuit News
■
November 2005
The rooftops of Kibera, a slum of 800,000 in Nairobi.
and books. “We really have to look at that,”
he said. “You can’t do much with a secondary education, there as here.”
But they will find a way, of this he is certain. “We certainly have a desire to help our
students go forward. Otherwise, we’re doing
them an injustice.”
For more information, contact Charlton
at Charlton@clckenya.org.
PERIODICALS
extravagant by any means,” said Charlton.
There are currently eight full-time instructors and two part-time. As the student body
grows, so will the faculty.
Charlton, who transcribed from the
Chicago Province in 1993, originally went
to Africa in 1990 because the Church was
growing there, he said, and he had an
expertise in theology and spirituality. When
the idea of going was presented, “I spontaneously said ‘Well, I can do that,’ and I had
never thought of being a missionary,” he
said with a laugh, noting that the Jesuits
have only been in Kenya since the late
1970s; it was the last place they went in
Africa. He started out teaching systematic
theology at Hekima College in Nairobi.
His time there is split among his commitment to St. Al’s, and his job as ecclesiastical assistant for the Christian Life
Communities in Kenya and director of the
CLC Zaidi Centre for Ignatian Spirituality
at Loyola House, of which he is the superior. Every three years he takes three months
to return to the United States, but it’s hardly all vacation time. Charlton has been traveling about seeking the $800,000 it will take
to build the new structure St. Al’s is planning for the growing school. The Chicago
Province has been especially generous to
the school, providing start-up funds.
Because the school keeps growing every
year and the senior class will soon be looking for the next step beyond high school,
Charlton has begun investigating their
options. Government universities are significantly subsidized in Kenya, but even
with subsidies and loans, a student might
still be called upon to pay $500 for lodging
national jesuit news
exams and curriculum are content driven
not skills and aptitude driven. Students
take multiple classes in math, physics,
chemistry, English grammar and literature, business studies, agriculture, history, geography, Christian religious education
and Swahili, which for most of them is one
of three languages they speak, including
English and their first tribal language.
All of their students, Charlton said, are
at least “broadly Christian,” and the country as a whole is about 46 percent Christian and 23 percent Catholic.
In order to be accepted at St. Al’s, students must live in Kibera and receive a
home visit by members of the school’s staff
to confirm that they are destitute and have
lost one or both parents to AIDS. None of
the students, to Charlton’s knowledge, are
HIV-positive, although all are AIDS affected.
Students attend classes for 10 months
out of the year, all but one day each week.
The school feeds them breakfast six days
a week and lunch five, which costs about
$40 per student per week. Books and uniforms are free. The student body breaks
down to about 60 percent girls, 40 percent
boys. Charlton explained that the acceptance policy at first favored girls “because
girls are disadvantaged” even more so than
boys in Kibera, but they’ve found that by
accepting only the best students, the 60/40
split has remained constant.
The teachers at St. Al’s worked on a voluntary basis the first year; this year, they
are being paid about 75 percent what they
would receive at a government-sponsored
school, “and the government scale is not
1616 P St. NW, Suite 300 ■ Washington, DC 20036-1420
Kibera technically doesn’t exist.
Although more than 800,000 people live
there, the government of Kenya does not
officially acknowledge their presence. And
so, in this Nairobi slum, the people make
do without electricity, without running
water, with raw sewage running through
the streets, living in tentative shacks, with
HIV/AIDS a plague upon them.
In Kenya, if AIDS doesn’t kill you, it
gets you some other way, perhaps by relegating you to the ranks of the more than
11 million AIDS orphans in Sub-Saharan
Africa. Kibera is teeming with them, children left parentless, or with one parent
dead and the other dying. If they’re lucky,
extended family will take them in, but
their schooling - assuming they’re in
school in the first place - may be disrupted or brought to a sudden end. Primary
school is subsidized by the state, but secondary school is not, and for families living on less than $1 per day, in absolute
poverty, continued education is a dream,
and maybe not even that. A year of high
school costs about $800, but it might as
well be a million.
There are more than 10,000 children
of secondary school age in Kibera; threequarters of them are not in school at all.
Last fall, though, 56 young people registered at St. Aloysius Gonzaga High School,
housed in a shack at the edge of Kibera and
reachable by a footbridge crossing an open
sewer. Opened in January 2004, it is the
first Jesuit school of its kind in Africa,
probably the only one of its kind, period.
This year, the school had 70 places for
freshmen and received 150 applications.
It was not his
plan to start a high
school, says Fr.
Terry Charlton,
but he couldn’t say
no
when
approached by the
director of the
Hands of Love
Society (HOLS),
an offshoot of the
Fr. Terry Charlton
Christian
Life
Community for
which Charlton is national chaplain. HOLS
members had sponsored 12 students
attending a local school until the costs
became prohibitive and they decided to
open their own in January 2004. After four
years, St. Al’s expects to reach a capacity
of 420 students.
“It will be small enough that you can
have face recognition and meet special
needs,” said Charlton (AOR), including
counseling and general social support. He
called the school’s program “education for
life,” that will equip students to engage in
ethical decision-making.
The curriculum is rigorous and follows
the British educational system in that
Photos courtesy of Terry Charlton SJ
By Julie Bourbon