Jesuit colleges without Jesuits?
Troy, Thomas F.
JESUIT COLLEGES WITHOUT JESUITS? IGNATIAN IDENTITY AT RISK THOMAS E TROY nyone within earshot of one of the twentyeight Jesuit colleges or universities in the United States knows that they...
...But how can these characteristics be realized when so many contemporary realities and pressures have pushed religion to the campus periphery...
...Are they ready for radical surgery: Why run big universities (and prestigious law schools) that are not Catholic or Jesuit...
...They include more women, blacks, Hispanics, foreigners, and non-Catholics...
...And then there are the people who actually run Jesuit institutions, for it is not quite accurate to say, as I did, that they are run by the Society of Jesus...
...However, true to their Ignatian inspiration, Jesuits are particularly trying to make the idea of Jesuit education better known to their non-Jesuit colleagues, to establish on the intellectual front genuine communities of Jesuits and laypersons...
...It never was the source of Jesuit drive, enthusiasm, and energy...
...Can 1,000 change 26,000...
...Notre Dame, conducted by the Congregation of the Holy Cross, is the best known Catholic university in the country and the Vincentians' St...
...Recently the former president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, William C. McInnes, S.J., thought it was time "to bring the dialogue on Jesuit education out of the closet and into the national forum...
...Jesuit formation units need to stress the college role...
...At Holy Cross the faculty of 259 numbers three times as many women (59) as Jesuits (20...
...They generally have a core curriculum, but students in their four years rarely have to take more than one or two courses with a Catholic thrust...
...How does one square that minimalism with John Paul's statement that in a Catholic university Catholicism be "vitally present and operative...
...Hence, they are consciously reaching out to the latter, to talk with them, even to find new ways of talking...
...Jesuit schools need to do a better job of hiring qualified Jesuits...
...25 October 1991:605 educated more women (95,801) than men (86,827...
...At Holy Cross it is possible to go through four years without taking any course in Catholic philosophy or theology...
...In fact, in 1990 Jesuits "I always say no pain, no gain...
...Perhaps...
...Another common feature is a campus ministry, a channel of Jesuit influence, an up-to-date version of the Newman Club...
...They have been separately incorporated under state laws...
...Today these Jesuit colleges and universities dominate Catholic higher education...
...But at Holy Cross, for instance, a presidentially appointed committee admitted its inability to define the college as a Catholic, Jesuit liberal arts college...
...The median age of Jesuits is steadily increasing, and the new men are few, under one hundred a year in the United States...
...They will have to do more of this now that Pope John Paul II, in his 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, has admonished Catholic educators against letting non-Catholics outnumber Catholics on their faculties...
...At latest count there are on these boards 858 trustees, of whom 249 are Jesuits...
...Underlying the pride of past achievements and the optimism of the moment, however, there was one question which the National Jesuit News said could not be avoided: "Is this the last hurrah of Jesuit education in the United States...
...The flip side of larger, albeit more diversified student bodies, is more teachers, who by necessity are not Jesuits...
...That is the book and the message which Jesuit educators have been passionately preaching as the solution to their educational problem...
...However, not all is wine and roses...
...Rather, in a generation, they will be as completely secularized as are the once great American Protestant universities...
...The Jesuit method of education, the Ratio studiorum or plan of studies, was a well-designed and welltested pedagogical plan and curriculum centering on the classics, the arts, philosophy, and theology...
...However, five Jesuit schools--Boston College, Loyola in THOMAS E TROY, a free-lance writer, boasts of having read and filed at home every copy of the Jesuit weekly America published since he was introduced to the journal when he was a Holy Cross freshman in 1937...
...Jesuits also run an impressive panoply of undergraduate, graduate, law, education, medical, business, nursing, engineering, and dental schools...
...It flourished for two hundred years but had become only a memory long before World War II...
...That source was, after Christ and the Gospels, those Exercises, written by Ignatius and made the basis of Jesuit training and spiritual renewal...
...Fordham advertises itself as "the Jesuit university of New York...
...ow can Jesuit schools be "Jesuit" without Jesuits...
...Advertising schools as Jesuit means that the Society wants to underscore its determination to adjust to the changing world about it, to live always in "the real world," even while remaining committed to humanizing and evangelizing it...
...Hence the current problems have troubled but not daunted the Jesuits...
...Not only are students more numerous, but student bodies are more diverse...
...In sum, the Jesuit reporter who worried about the "last hurrah" of Jesuit education had reason for concern...
...Though a minority on their own faculties, Jesuits express deterruination to maintain a strong presence in the presidencies, on the boards of trustees, and in other critical areas...
...On the other hand, too many Jesuits are, according to a Jesuit rector, "too comfortable and do not do what is necessary to become qualified scholars...
...Certainly Arrupe's successor, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., at Assembly '89, tried to dispel any misunderstanding about the role of education in the promotion of justice even while he frankly admitted that "our own enthusiasm about the future may depend on how much we feel that the schools we now call 'Jesuit' still retain their Jesuit identity...
...In attempting the latter, they should, if dedicated to higher education, take their lead from John Paul's apostolic constitution wherein he affirmed "the church's belief in the intrinsic value of knowledge and research" (emphasis added...
...In the Jesuit framework, ultimately yes, but proximately no...
...Loyola in New Orleans has a chairwoman...
...Hence, Jesuits have become a small minority on their own campuses...
...Jesuits too often seem willing to settle for an ecumenically moral campus ethos...
...They are tackling it vigorously, but success is much in doubt...
...608: Commonweal...
...No other Catholic religous order runs anywhere near as many...
...The Jesuits themselves need to do more to attract men who value scholarship and who, as Avery Dulles, S.J., said at Assembly '89, will contribute to human knowledge through scientific research and will carry on the Jesuit tradition in music, poetry, theater, and architecture...
...Yes, said the former president of Georgetown University, Timothy Healy, S.J., who now runs the New York Public Library, if Jesuits are willing "to share the full base of their life and work, the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola" with their Catholic and non-Catholic, Jewish, and even agnostic colleagues...
...A loyal (but skeptical) alumnus can find hope in the conviction that if anybody can succeed in an endeavor such as this, the Jesuits can...
...According to Mclnnes, "A wave of anti-intellectualism rolled across the Society of Jesus, rocking it from top to bottom...
...After all, there are twenty-eight of them, all linked together by their common Catholic faith and Ignatian inspiration...
...Nevertheless, the current celebrations show that Healy and Kolvenbach are articulating a widespread Jesuit conviction...
...The Jesuits' twentyeight schools represent 12 percent of the Catholic colleges and universities, and claim one-third of the total 1987 student enrollment, 175,043 out of 571,065...
...If that happens, the fallout will surely hurt other Catholic colleges and liberal arts schools generally...
...One popular list, drawn up in 1969, emphasizes: "An apostolic intent, a lived witness, a pragmatic strategy of education, an emphasis on intellectual development, and a world-affirming spirituality...
...The boards elect the presidents who, until June 1990, were all Jesuits...
...Hence today's Jesuit enrollment is notably different from the largely white, Catholic, European sons of earlier decades and includes many students with little or no interest in Jesuit education...
...It was an ingenious compromise between education and Christian activism...
...More distressing is the likely continuance of this decline for the next decade, after which the Jesuit population is expected to stabilize...
...Some Jesuit institutions, when considering new professors, directly describe Jesuit aims and characteristics and solicit from prospective faculty and administrators some expression of willingness to work positively in a Jesuit atmosphere...
...All boards but one are chaired by laymen...
...Fewer young Jesuits seem attracted to education...
...While the twenty-eight institutions are independent, they work together through the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Associations, an effective Washington lobby...
...It made Jesuit schools distinctive, if not unique, and it stamped Jesuit-trained students as clear thinkers, articulate spokesmen and writers, apostles, scholars, and gentlemen...
...They were 31,861 in 1971, and thereafter dropped regularly, to 24,924 in 1988...
...Chicago, Fordham, Georgetown, and Marquette--are among the ten largest American Catholic schools...
...That suggestion, repeated in a new book, Jesuit Higher Education (Duquesne University Press), seemed to invite non-Jesuit participation...
...The event is in the hands of God...
...Nowhere in the current literature this writer has seen has there been any such simple, authoritative Jesuit affirmation...
...While total Jesuit enrollment increased last year, ten schools suffered losses...
...They were not a book to be read but a life to be lived...
...From 1789 until 1954, when Wheeling was established, a Jesuit college or university was founded in this country on the average of every six years...
...and Jesuits know it...
...Meanwhile, another development, which accentuates the problem of fewer Jesuits, is the nature of post-World War II student enrollment...
...Students can graduate after four years having had no more than one or two--if any--Jesuit professors...
...To some, saving the world-the "preferential option" for the poor, oppressed, and afflicted--seemed more demanding than "saving souls...
...Instead, in this postVatican II world the Jesuits have dedicated themselves to service to the faith through the promotion of justice, that preferential option for the poor...
...There was some question in the post-Vatican II turmoil as to whether the educational ministry, only one of several Jesuit ministries, should be continued...
...This twin celebration--with Masses, retreats, conferences, lectures, seminars, and workshops--stressed the role of Ignatian spirituality in answering that question, in defining the character of Jesuit education, and in trying to preserve the "Jesuitness" of the twenty-eight colleges and universities...
...Students and faculty number 200,000 on Jesuit campuses, but Jesuits--one thousand professors, some administrators, and retirees in residence--are nearly lost in the flood...
...Once again the Jesuit stamp on the college or university is obscured...
...The question and some misunderstanding persist, but the waters are calmer today because of the late superior general Pedro Arrupe's enunciation of the ideal: "Education for others...
...Will Jesuits let the faltering ones simply drop as finances doom them, or will they take some strategic, cooperative approach to the consolidation of schools...
...That appellation, Jesuit--originally flung opprobiously at Ignatius and his followers as "Jesus-ites"--has long been a treasured Jesuit possession, a particular mark of excellence in education...
...They insist on having theology and religious studies departments and on having them headed and staffed as much as possible by Jesuits...
...That dedication is noble, needed, and stirring...
...Thus a cartoon in the Holy Cross Crusader showing a campus crowd bore the caption: "Find the Jesuit...
...The twenty-eight Jesuit institutions of higher education have much to celebrate...
...IGNATIAN IDENTITY AT RISK THOMAS E TROY nyone within earshot of one of the twentyeight Jesuit colleges or universities in the United States knows that they have been celebrating 450 years of Jesuit education...
...Still, there is that identity problem: Jesuit education today is vastly different from the Jesuit education of a generation ago...
...Why not stick to colleges and high schools at which they would be able to develop, as of old, a distinctively Jesuit and Catholic character...
...How many faculty are Catholic, or even Christian, is not known because accrediting agencies, recruiting practices, and the law hamper asking about religious affiliation...
...On Jesuit campuses today there are 27,000 teachers of whom only 1,000 are Jesuits...
...Jesuits must begin to give as much thought to ensuring the Catholicity of their schools as they give to preserving their Jesuitness...
...Education was a ministry to which Ignatius, intent on saving souls and defending the Catholic church, was drawn not because he planned it but because so many of his contemporaries, seeing his success in training his own men, wanted it for them606: Commonweal selves and their sons...
...Finally, Jesuits know their schools are likely to decline in number...
...For instance, women, once largely absent from Jesuit campuses, now constitute the majority of students on seventeen of them...
...Yes, said Kolvenbach, who minimized the numbers problem: "One Jesuit who is truly a Jesuit can be all that is needed to guarantee...the Jesuitness of the university...
...The celebrations began in the nation's capital in June 1989 with Assembly' 89, the 200th anniversary of the founding of Georgetown University and the start of Catholic higher education in this country...
...Jesuit enrollment rose to 182,628 in 1990...
...John's has the largest enrollment...
...The Ratio studiorum may be dead, but that after all was a philosophy and strategy of education...
...with Detroit's merger with Mercy College, a religious sister took over for the first time in Jesuit history...
...As a starter, Jesuit writers, who have almost exhausted themselves in their laudatory coverage of three years of celebrating, should begin to produce for a non-Jesuit audience more justification for current 25 October 1991:607 Jesuit educational philosophy, especially "education for others...
...At Holy Cross a faculty committee "argued that religion had only a 'minimal' role in traditional Jesuit liberal arts education...
...Are the Spiritual Exercises the answer to these concerns...
...Jesuits face the danger of minimizing religion as they work with an increasingly diverse campus population and a curriculum run wild...
...These corporations contract with local Jesuit communities which provide specified services and are guaranteed certain offices but do not control the corporations, which are run by boards of trustees who are known to be committed to Jesuit education...
...It was also the year that Jesuit numbers, reflecting the post-Vatican II turmoil among clergy and religious, began a steady decline...
...Meanwhile, Jesuits are finding that many of their non-Jesuit colleagues are willing, even eager, to share their vision of the Jesuit university...
...What Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., said in Commonweal (June 1) about revitalizing Catholicism in Catholic colleges certainly applies to Jesuit institutions...
...While they once ran their schools their way, they must yield much to those who march to different drummers...
...Minorities now constitute 14.8 percent of the Jesuit student body...
...Thus, a Boston College Jesuit, Joseph A. Appleyard, has described the college's forthright experiment in hosting an informal weekend discussion among twentyfive professors on "working in a university which identifies itself as Catholic and Jesuit...
...Even so Jesuits seem more insistent than ever on advertising their colleges and universities not as Catholic or Roman Catholic but as Jesuit...
...Let the expanded dialogue begin...
...While Jesuit schools have expanded and flourished, they have stopped multiplying...
...Their primary purpose was to turn out not simply thinkers and spokesmen, not only lawyers, doctors, and economists, but other Christs...
...Wheeling College in West Virginia has renamed itself Wheeling Jesuit College...
...Jesuits confront a daunting challenge...
...For many reasons--numbers, accrediting requirements, federal and state laws on student aid, nondiscrimination, grants, etc.--the twenty-eight colleges and universities have been cut loose corporately from the Jesuit order...
...Unless they succeed, their colleges and universities will be schools Ignatius would not recognize...
...Before that unsettling question could be really tackled, Jesuits had already started celebrating two other anniversaries: In 1990, the 450th anniversary of the founding of the Society of Jesus and in 1991, the 500th anniversary of the birth of Ignatius Loyola...
...but it leaves education only an instrumental value and Jesuits with little validity for a life of scholarship, learning, la vie intellectuelle...
...And what is the "Jesuit" and "Catholic" character of the education being dispensed by the 26,000 other professionals, many of whom are not grounded in Jesuit ideals...
...nreatistic...
...As for "education for others," the committee declared that no one has "a blueprint for Catholic and Jesuit education, much less for education conducive to inspiring 'men and women for others.'" Jesuit educators elsewhere have had no difficulty coming up with long lists of the characteristics of Jesuit education...
...Next will be a lay president somewhere...
...That "dialogue on Jesuit education," said Mclnnes, must be brought into "the national forum...
Vol. 118 • October 1991 • No. 18
