Ignatian Humanism & Catholic Studies

at John Carroll

by Paul V. Murphy, Ph.D.

Ignatian Day

January 13, 2006

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;

Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--

Chríst--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

This morning’s event and topic go to the heart of a critical issue for the future of our work here at John Carroll – the mission and identity of this university as Jesuit and Catholic. As the number of Jesuits declines the question of how the Jesuit tradition can remain or can remain meaningful is a very real one. While there is a long and venerable history to this tradition, not all of it is very applicable. As a scholar of Sixteenth-Century Italy and Italian religious history I frequently encounter the early Jesuits in my research. By the end of the sixteenth century they were a pervasive presence in Italian, and indeed global, culture. When scholars speak of the early Jesuits and education they tend, almost by default, to speak of that most venerable of Jesuit educational documents, the Ratio studiorum, or plan of studies. This was the handbook for Jesuit education for centuries. But this morning I want to leave that aside for what I believe is a much more fundamental and more applicable element in Jesuit education and – potentially – for our work here at John Carroll. That is the cultural vision of Ignatius and what I will refer to as “Ignatian Humanism.”

Fundamental to any understanding of Jesuit education is the spirituality of Ignatius himself and his attitude to the world. Ignatius of Loyola was an individual with a personal spiritual experience that was appropriate to the times. What he chose to do with his life was novel – not the same old, same old. While in recovery from battle wounds, Ignatius had undergone a conversion. At the core of this experience was the “discernment of spirits.” By looking within oneself and being attentive to the motions of the inner life one could identify the presence and the will of God. It was in identifying the source of consolation - i.e. a sense of peace and well-being that one was capable of choosing between various options in life. Ignatius linked this discernment to the sense that he was called to a life of service. This discernment of spirits became the basis of a method of prayer and teaching others how to pray that brought many to a more intense spiritual life, to know God intimately and in the context of their daily lives. All of this was under girded by a sharp focus on the person of Jesus and the reading of scripture. Ignatius scribbled down his experiences in a set of notebooks. He continued to edit these in the years to come. Eventually these experiences and methods would come to be published as The Spiritual Exercises. To be clear, this is a hand book for a spiritual director who accompanies and advises an individual during a retreat. It is not great literature. But, if there is anything that serves as the foundation of Jesuit life and Ignatian enterprises it is the Spiritual Exercises.

There are three aspects of Ignatian Spirtituality that I would like to highlight this morning that I believe have special relevance to us here.

First, a central aspect of the Spiritual Exercises is the conviction of Ignatius that we can find God in all things. This is not unique to Ignatius but he emphasizes it in a special way. Much of the spirituality of the late Middle Ages had emphasized the falleness of creation, its need for redemption. The monastic traditions in Christianity had emphasized the need to “flee the world” in order to find God. Ignatius inverted this in effect not only by omitting language about the need to avoid the world but by encouraging the individual doing the exercises to engage in the world as a means to find God. This is a fundamentally “incarnational” attitude to the world. This incarnational view of the world is expressed by Hopkins in the poem that I read a few minutes ago. We do not need to bring God to the world for God is already “lovely in eyes and lovely in limbs not his.” That is, it assumes that God dwells here among us. Ignatius encourages us to engage in the world and reflect on the spirit of God in the world. This posture towards the world came to be described by one of Ignatius’ companions as “Contemplation in Action.” That is, it insists that God is experienced in the day-to–day activities of our lives.

Second, Ignatius was fundamentally committed to the belief that God deals

directly with each one of us. It is interesting that the founder of what became the largest order of priests in an age when the Church was firmly reinforcing its hierarchical structure as a response to the challenge of the Protestant Reformation would reaffirm this point about the direct experience of God; that God does not need a human intermediary since we all have access to the experience of God. There is something radically egalitarian about this view. In a set of notes that he added to the Spiritual Exercises Ignatius offered advice to those who would be spiritual directors. Among those I have always found particularly interesting note #2 in which he specifically warns the Retreat Director, when describing a scene from Scripture not to go into too much detail lest he preempt the imagination of the one doing the retreat. The retreat director:

ought to relate faithfully the events of such Contemplation or Meditation, going over the Points with only a short or summary development. For, if the person who is making the Contemplation, takes the true groundwork of the narrative, and, discussing and considering for himself, finds something which makes the events a little clearer or brings them a little more home to him —whether this comes through his own reasoning, or because his intellect is enlightened by the Divine power—he will get more spiritual relish and fruit, than if he who is giving the Exercises had much explained and amplified the meaning of the events. For it is not knowing much, but realising and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.

In other words, Ignatius assumes that God will work through the imagination of the individual. The advice to the director – and I would say to those of us in education – is don’t get in God’s way! For example, I am very pleased that my two older children have already read C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I am happy now to take them to see the film version of the story because I know that they have had the freedom to imagine it first on their own terms. Likewise, Ignatius seeks to preserve the freedom of the individual to encounter God directly.

Third, Ignatius’s attitude to the world was based on a desire to serve. In this the early Jesuits concretized in their rules a radical availability for mission. The entire organization of the Jesuits as outlined by Ignatius was designed to foster this availability. Ignatius rejected mandatory celebration of the divine office as a community with its elaborate rituals largely for the purpose of preserving the time that Jesuits would need for their apostolic works. The Jesuits refused to accept official responsibilities in the Church such as becoming pastors of parishes, or accepting the office of bishop likewise in order to preserve their freedom to move. But it is what is referred to as the “Fourth Vow” of the Jesuits that encapsulates this availability – a vow to go anywhere on mission where there is need and to do so without hesitation. The best-known example of this comes from the life of St. Francis Xavier. His work in India and Japan is well-known. But I am always particularly impressed by how he was assigned to that mission and actually left on it because he wasn’t supposed to go to Asia. He was a well-bred, highly educated, sophisticated, and very urbane Spanish nobleman who had become Ignatius of Loyola’s best friend. Ignatius saw what good work he could have done in Rome. He was perfectly suited to navigate the corridors of the Roman Curia. Ignatius decided to have this gifted individual and friend act as his assistant in Rome. When the King of Portugal asked for two Jesuits to go to Asia on Portuguese ships two other Jesuits were assigned that mission. Two days before the departure of those Jesuits however one of them became seriously ill and was unable to travel. So on forty-eight hours notice Ignatius assigned that mission to his best friend. And on forty-eight hours notice Xavier gave up everything he had intended for his life to do something completely different. They said goodbye in the piazza in front of the Church of the Gesu and they never saw each other again. That is a radical availability for mission. Whatever discussions we might have about Xavier’s methods in India and Japan, the willingness to go remains very dramatic.

Because this commitment was so open-ended, the Jesuits soon engaged in an extremely wide array of works: preaching, hearing confessions, teaching children, running hospices for the hungry, homeless, and dying, operating colleges and universities, establishing missions in Asia and Latin America, acting as spiritual directors and counselors. They soon became prominent as theologians at the Council of Trent. The colleges of the Society became a particularly effective enterprise. The Jesuits combined the methods of the humanist schoolmasters of the Renaissance with the rigorous training in philosophy and theology that Ignatius and his companions had received at Paris. These schools were, in effect, the final chapter in the history of Renaissance education.

This combination of an incarnational world-view, the expectation that the individual encounters God directly, and their physical and intellectual encounter with the world in these many works and places produced in the Jesuits what I would consider a rather novel posture among Christians in their encounter with culture. Perhaps the best example of this is the work of the Early Jesuits in Asia, China in particular. The most compelling example of this apostolic thrust is seen in the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci. While earlier generations than ours might have viewed theologians such as Robert Bellarmine or Peter Canisius as patrons of Jesuit higher education, Ricci may better serve that purpose today. He was born in central Italy and received an education typical of the late Renaissance. He studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in addition to philosophy and Theology. In 1583 his superiors sent him to join the early Jesuit mission in China. When already past the age of forty, Ricci became fluent in Mandarin. He and his colleagues soon realized that clinging to European modes of expression and models of ministry would hinder rather than foster this work. Ricci chose to “inculturate” into Chinese society in a way that became emblematic of Jesuit missions in Asia for almost two hundred years. If Chinese philosophers dressed well in silks then despite traditional Western and Catholic views of how a holy man should dress poorly in a cassock, then Ricci dressed as would a Chinese philosopher. If traditional Latin forms of expression for God or other religious terms were untranslatable into Mandarin, then Ricci sought out the best possible alternatives in the philosophical and religious vocabulary of Imperial China. If veneration of one’s ancestor’s was a central element in the culture of the Chinese, then Ricci preferred to adapt it to Christian practice rather than condemn it as an example of “heathen” or “pagan” worship. The Jesuits in China even gained - at least temporarily - permission to celebrate the Eucharist in Mandarin at a time when the Roman Catholic Church vehemently rejected the use of the vernacular in the liturgy in Europe. In short, Ricci, and others like him sought to place themselves in the context of Imperial Chinese culture rather than try to import what might by unwelcome or unintelligible. This is not to say that all Catholics were comfortable with this willingness of the Jesuits to accommodate themselves to the local culture. Some accused the Jesuits of watering down the Gospel for the sake of acceptance. And some believed that efforts to speak of the Christian God in the philosophical language of China bordered on heresy. It must be admitted that this experiment in inculturation did not last forever – the “Chinese Rites” as these practices were called were eventually banned by the Church.

What is important for us is to consider the way of proceeding of Ricci and other Jesuits in Asia. In a way that was consistent with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius – the conviction that God is already in the world, and that we should be attentive to the spiritual experiences of individuals, these early Jesuits willingly adapted themselves to the divine that they encountered in fact not simply the divine they assumed would be there or the divine as they preferred it to be there. You might say they were open to finding God in all cultures. They were, to employ a perhaps over-used term, entrepreneurial in their way of proceeding. This willingness to adapt themselves earned for the Jesuits very early in their history a reputation for thinking outside the box.

The willingness to adapt to the circumstances of the surrounding culture and to respond to needs as they present themselves is not solely a matter of historical memory. The current commitment of the Society of Jesus to matters of Justice and Peace may be the present day corollary to the missions in 17^th century Asia. For the last generation Jesuits and their colleagues have defined their work as being in “the service of faith of which the promotion of justice is a necessary requirement.” This commitment is directed to the building up of a world that is “at once more human and more divine.” This is not solely the work of those who are engaged in social work. It is meant to imbue all the works of the Jesuits including Jesuit universities. Just as Matteo Ricci chose to encounter the culture of Imperial China on its own terms so too have the Jesuits of Central America, for example, chosen to engage their world on its own terms. They have displayed the same intellectual rigor and generosity of spirit as earlier Jesuits yet they have done so in a way that is strikingly - and to some, disturbingly – novel. Their willingness to ask hard questions at the risk of their lives and reputations is a latter day example of Ignatius’ own availability for mission. The Jesuits of the Universidad Centroamerica who along with their housekeeper and her daughter suffered for this. When the military in El Salvador became threatened by their work they responded with violence, but a violence that actually recognized the true challenge of these intellectuals – their minds. I do not mean to be too graphic but the fact that the army literally “blew their brains out” was, according to the testimony of some involved, meant to send a message about their intellectual activities. One of those who died, Fr. Ignacio Ellecuria articulated this commitment in his description of a Christian university:

“A Christian university must take into account the Gospel for the poor. This does not mean that only the poor study at the university; it does not mean that the university should abdicate its mission of academic excellence or excellence needed in order to solve complex social problems. It does mean that the university should be present intellectually where it is needed: to provide science for those who have no science; to provide skills for the unskilled; to be a voice for those who do not possess the academic qualifications to promote and legitimate their rights.”

These reflections on Ignatian Spirituality and mission lead me to the notion of Ignatian Humanism that I use in the title of this presentation. By this term I intend this approach to culture that is inherently open to the world and seeks to study nature and the human experience as a means to deepen the awareness of God’s presence around us. It is at once intellectual and spiritual. This Ignatian way of proceeding was initially supported by their training in humanism. The method of Renaissance humanist school masters was to form the young in what even today we call eloquentia perfecta, perfect eloquence, so that they can speak persuasively. Since adaptation to one’s audience is inherent in successful oratory, the very training of the Jesuits added to their already substantial spiritual interest in adapting themselves to culture. The Jesuits established an order that was prepared to take on any conceivable project that was in service to others and encouraged others to encounter God.

So, how then do we understand their deep involvement in schools and what does that mean for us? The point is that the early Jesuits saw education as an effective means to carry out their missions according to the spirituality of Ignatius and it cultural and spiritual premises. Their attachment to Renaissance Humanism and Thomism in philosophy and theology did not develop from some kind of a-historical, disengaged commitment. Those were the methods they knew and those were the most up-to-date methods available to them. The cultural vision of Ignatius was one that freed him to imagine new ways of proceeding in his own life. To a large extent this arose from his confidence in the presence of God in the world around him. Precisely on account of this confidence he and his companions could feel free to dispose of customs long-honored but perhaps no longer entirely necessary or helpful.

Higher Education in the Mission

What might these examples of Jesuit activity say to us at John Carroll? What would this Ignatian Humanism that embraces the world as the theater of God’s grace have to offer to us? I suggest that one thing we might do is re-conceptualize what we do here. It is customary for Jesuits to refer to this as the “higher education” apostolate. I suggest that what we do is above all a cultural work. That is, beneath the nuts and bolts of our organization, under the teaching and research in which we engage, we need to recognize ourselves as engaging in a work of cultural investigation and cultural dialogue. Such mutual dialogue with our culture will stand in contrast with earlier practice. At one time Jesuit schools – and indeed most other Catholic schools in the US– operated not so much to foster an appreciation of the local culture as to protect an immigrant Church. They engaged to a large extent in what we would call apologetics – the defense of the faith in the face of what was perceived as a hostile culture. The mission of these institutions tended to turn on the distinctiveness of Catholics and Catholicism. They did not emphasize the need to inculturate, at least not in fundamental ways. Unfortunately, many discussions of the Catholic identity on college campuses today still turn on the question of traditional distinctiveness, on whether or not we are still doing what was done here when Fr. Rodman arrived.

This is a challenge. If we take seriously the Ignatian notion of finding God in all things, of respecting the validity of the individual’s experience, and if we value the radical availability to immerse and accommodate ourselves in the manner of Matteo Ricci and others then we may find ourselves called to re-imagine what it means to be fully human. Adhering to an Ignatian vision will allow us to transform discussion over mission and identity from one that somehow circles around the question of restoring something that has been lost to one that creatively seeks to understand the culture in which we find ourselves today and to respond to it in the most appropriate and adequate manner possible. Theologically, if God really is more than we can ask or imagine, and if God is to be found in the circumstances of our lives and world, then we really must do this. The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner liked to emphasize that “God is always more.” If I take that seriously then I must consider my present way of doing things and seeing things as essentially provisional in comparison to what I might learn next. It is a posture of humility towards the world. Are we that open to the world? Or do we prefer the comfort zone of our accustomed ways of proceeding?

One area where such Ignatian openness can be an advantage is in the sciences. In a world where science and religion are unfortunately pitted against one another in unnecessary ways (often enough I suspect by those who are not really committed to either), the Ignatian belief in the presence of Grace everywhere in creation should make the campus of a Jesuit university particularly open to the most current research in the natural and physical sciences. It is not the obligation of the secular scientist to look at the world and call it “creation.” That is the conclusion of the believer. But if the believer really takes seriously the notion of creation as the work of a loving and compassionate God, then the findings of scientific research, far from frightening us should allow further opportunities to wonder at creation. The burden should not fall on the secular scientist to demonstrate his or her value to an enterprise such as John Carroll. Rather in matters such as this the burden falls on those of us who call ourselves believers to have the faith to embrace new scientific data. But here we are also free to make and hear the suggestion that the meaning of new scientific knowledge may be greater that what can be gleaned from the laboratory bench alone. If science and religion can be compatible anywhere it should be so on the campus of university that calls itself Jesuit and Catholic.

In the humanities and social sciences too we enjoy a privileged location in terms of cultural dialogue on the nature of the human experience. This is not to say that that is a comfortable place at all times. As David O’Brien of the College of the Holy Cross noted some years ago, it is easier to hold a conversation on a college’s Jesuit identity than it is to hold one on its Catholic identity. Often enough this is on account of the discomfort that many experience when they hear official Church teachings on a number of issues. It seems to me however that the disjuncture between what the Church officially holds in some areas on the one hand and the culture around us on the other should not be viewed as a problem so much as an opportunity. A Jesuit and Catholic university can be – if it chooses – a place where further mutual understanding can be established between the Church and culture. It can be a place where faith and culture refuse to turn their backs on one another. A Catholic community such as our own can be of assistance to the Church not so much by reiterating official positions as by helping the Church to better understand the world to which it seeks to offer the Good News. We can play a role in helping the Church ask good questions and sort things out. But we cannot do this unless we are engaged in the culture that we find around us while at the same time enjoying an appropriate autonomy from both culture and Church. Avoiding the culture, denying the very valid questions that it raises limits our ability to be of service.

Catholic Studies at JCU

My own work on a day-to-day basis deals with Catholic Studies. For this reason I can hardly avoid these issues of mission and identity. Catholic Studies programs around the U.S. have sprouted up as a response to the question of mission. For some this is an opportunity to restore a Catholic content that has waned over the years. I am certainly interested in maintaining and indeed augmenting good theology, philosophy, and other courses of a Catholic nature in the curriculum. We continue to provide opportunities for student engagement of Catholic History and the Catholic intellectual tradition. But Catholic Studies cannot only be a means to hold up for admiration a venerable tradition that comes down to us from our predecessors. We need also to foster opportunities for students to encounter rigorous analysis of current and often enough contentious issues that Catholics confront and will confront for the foreseeable future. Issues more readily addressed in the sciences and social sciences can play a crucial role in a vibrant Catholic Studies Program. If our students do not have the opportunity to encounter and study both sides of the Faith-Culture dialogue their ability to engage in it or see its ramifications in their own careers will be seriously limited. As Blessed Pope John XXIII stated in his opening address to the Second Vatican Council in 1962: “We are not on earth to be museum keepers but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life.”

I am also interested in engaging those who have not previously seen themselves as having a place in this undertaking to consider how they might play a role. Enhancing the role of the sciences in these matters will be very important. The initiative that Jim Lissemore and others are spearheading on poverty and Jim’s willingness to create a course on the Biological impact of poverty is an excellent example of creative response to our environment. I have begun discussion with Paul Nietupski on how we can enhance our awareness of Christianity in Asia and what that will mean for the future. We continue to work with the Latin American Studie professors to enhance awareness of the experience of the Church in that region.

But on the most fundamental level I would like to foster conversation about what it would mean to be John Carroll University if we took that Ignatian vision seriously. If we have that conversation then we can focus more on the way we proceed here rather than get bogged down in conflicting notions of what courses we should be offering. In the end we need to ask ourselves: Will we proceed in a manner that either through inertia or a desire to protect administrative or intellectual turf resists the opportunity to re-imagine how best to encounter and engage the world as it exists? Or do we have the faith – divine or human – to move ahead in new ways? If Hopkins was on to something when he wrote that “Christ plays in ten thousand places” what would that meant to us?