Forming Women and Men
for and with others
Promoting a Faith
that Does Justice
Forming Women and Men
of Competence, Conscience
and Compassion
Who is most deserving
of our care?
Forming Women and Men
for and with others
Promoting a Faith
that Does Justice
Fr. Arrupe to Jesuit Alumni
• Jesuit Gen Congregation 32
• Jesuit Gen Congregation 34
• Fr. Kolvenbach at Santa Clara
Forming Women and Men Fr. Kolvenbach on the
of Competence, Conscience pedagogy involved.
and Compassion
Who is most deserving
of our care?
U.S. Jesuit Provincials’
Strategic Discernment
Process
Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
Superior General of the Society of Jesus
“Women and Men for Others”
Union of Jesuit Alumni, Valencia Spain, 1973
Today our prime educational objective
must be to form men-and-women-forothers; men and women who will live not
for themselves but for God and his Christ
- for the God-man who lived and died for
all the world; men and women who
cannot even conceive of love of God
which does not include love for the least
of their neighbors; men and women
completely convinced that love of God
which does not issue in justice for others
is a farce.
Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
“Women and Men for Others”
First, let me ask this question: Have we
Jesuits educated you for justice? You and
I know what many of your Jesuit teachers
will answer to that question. They will
answer, in all sincerity and humility: No,
we have not. If the terms "justice" and
"education for justice" carry all the depth
of meaning which the Church gives them
today, we have not educated you for
justice.
Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
“Women and Men for Others”
What is more, I think you will agree with
this self-evaluation, and with the same
sincerity and humility acknowledge that
you have not been trained for the kind of
action for justice and witness to justice
which the Church now demands of
us. What does this mean? It means that
we have work ahead of us. We must help
each other to repair this lack in us, and
above all make sure that in the future the
education imparted in Jesuit schools will
be equal to the demands of justice in the
world.
Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
“Women and Men for Others”
First,
a basic attitude of respect
for all people
which forbids us
ever to use them
as instruments for our own profit.
Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
“Women and Men for Others”
Second, a firm resolve never to
profit from, or allow ourselves to be
suborned by, positions of power
deriving from privilege, for to do so,
even passively, is equivalent to
active oppression. To be drugged
by the comforts of privilege is to
become contributors to injustice as
silent beneficiaries of the fruits of
injustice.
Pedro Arrupe, S.J.
“Women and Men for Others”
Third,
an attitude not simply of refusal
but of counterattack against injustice;
a decision to work with others
toward the dismantling of
unjust social structures
so that the weak, the oppressed,
the marginalized of this world
may be set free.
The 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus
December 2nd, 1974 - March 7th, 1975
Decree 4:
Our Mission Today:
The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice
1. To the many requests received from all parts of the Society
for clear decisions and definite guidelines concerning our
mission today, the 32nd General Congregation responds as
follows.
2. The mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of
faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute
requirement. For reconciliation with God demands the
reconciliation of people with one another.
3. In one form or another, this has always been the mission of
the Society; but it gains new meaning and urgency in the light
of the needs and aspirations of the men and women of our time,
and it is in that light that we examine it anew.
The 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus
December 5 to March 22, 1995
Decree 3:
Our Mission and Justice
Therefore we want to renew our commitment to the
promotion of justice as an integral part of our
mission.
Our experience has shown us that our promotion of
justice both flows from faith and brings us back to
an ever deeper faith. So we intend to journey on
towards ever fuller integration of the promotion of
justice into our lives of faith, in the company of the
poor and many others who live and work for the
coming of God’s Kingdom.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
Superior General of the Society of Jesus
Santa Clara University, October 2000
“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in
American Jesuit Higher Education”
Since Saint Ignatius wanted love to be expressed
not only in words but also in deeds, the
Congregation committed the Society to the
promotion of justice as a concrete, radical but
proportionate response to an unjustly suffering
world. Fostering the virtue of justice in people was
not enough. Only a substantive justice can bring
about the kinds of structural and attitudinal
changes that are needed to uproot those sinful
oppressive injustices that are a scandal against
humanity and God.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in
American Jesuit Higher Education”
Injustice is rooted in a spiritual problem,
and its solution requires a spiritual conversion of
each one’s heart and a cultural conversion of our
global society so that humankind, with all the
powerful means at its disposal, might exercise the
will to change the sinful structures afflicting our
world.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in
American Jesuit Higher Education”
Within the complex time and place we are in,
and in the light of the recent General
Congregations, I want to spell out several ideal
characteristics, as manifest in three
complementary dimensions of Jesuit higher
education: in who our students become,
in what our faculty do, and in how our universities
proceed. When I speak of ideals, some
are easy to meet, others remain persistently
challenging, but together they serve to orient
our schools and, in the long run, to identify them.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in
American Jesuit Higher Education”
For four hundred and fifty years, Jesuit education has
sought to educate “the whole person” intellectually
and professionally, psychologically, morally and
spiritually. But in the emerging global reality, with its
great possibilities and deep contradictions, the whole
person is different from the whole person of the
Counter-Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, or the
twentieth century. Tomorrow’s “whole person” cannot
be whole without an educated awareness of society
and culture with which to contribute socially,
generously, in the real world. Tomorrow’s whole person
must have, in brief, a well educated solidarity.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in
American Jesuit Higher Education”
Students, in the course of their formation, must let the
gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can
learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its
suffering, and engage it constructively. They should
learn to perceive, think, judge, choose, and act for
the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and
the oppressed. Campus ministry does much to foment
such intelligent, responsible, and active compassion,
compassion that deserves the name solidarity.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in
American Jesuit Higher Education”
But the measure of Jesuit universities is not what our
students do but who they become and the adult
Christian responsibility they will exercise in the future
towards their neighbor and their world. For now, the
activities they engage in, even with much good effect,
are for their formation.
This does not make the university a training camp for
social activists. Rather, the students need close
involvement with the poor and the marginal now, in
order to learn about reality and become adults of
solidarity in the future.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in
American Jesuit Higher Education”
If the measure and purpose of our universities lies in
what the students become, then the faculty are at the
heart of our universities. Their mission is tirelessly to
seek the truth and to form each student into a whole
person of solidarity who will take responsibility for the
real world.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in
American Jesuit Higher Education”
So our professors’ commitment to faith and justice
entails a most significant shift in viewpoint and choice
of values. Adopting the point of view of those who
suffer injustice, our professors seek the truth and
share their search and its results with our students.
A legitimate question, even if it does not sound
academic, is for each professor to ask, “When
researching and teaching, where and with whom is my
heart?” To expect our professors to make such an
explicit option and speak about it is obviously not
easy; it entails risks. But I do believe that this is what
Jesuit educators have publicly stated, in Church and in
society, to be our defining commitment.
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
“Jesuit Education and Ignatian Pedagogy”
2005
The Jesuit tradition of Ignatian Pedagogy is a process
by which teachers accompany learners in the lifelong
pursuit of competence, conscience, and compassionate
commitment. Such an Ignatian pedagogical paradigm
can help teachers and learners to focus their work in a
manner that is academically sound and at the same
time formative of persons for others.
The U.S. Provincials
“A Meditation on our Response
to the Call of Christ” 2006
In this light, how can we ignore the fact
that those most in need of our solidarity
are those who suffer painful hardships?
Their misery seems almost inescapable.
Many are trapped in poverty. So limited
are their opportunities, their poverty has
become structurally entrenched. Their
lives are severely diminished; their
hopes are crushed by a persistent and
oppressive poverty that denies to all but
the boldest the basics of human dignity
and the opportunity to live happy and
fulfilled lives.
The U.S. Provincials
“A Meditation on our Response
to the Call of Christ” 2006
Perhaps the most pressing and painful
examples are
forced migrants (refugees, migrant
workers, the undocumented);
inner city populations (racial minorities,
the elderly, the homeless, the
persistently poor);
indigenous peoples at home and abroad;
and the globally destitute, more than
800 million people who go to bed hungry
each night.
The U.S. Provincials
“A Meditation on our Response
to the Call of Christ” 2006
These groups represent all those whom
poverty relegates to the very margins of
society where their dignity is ignored,
their rights are violated, their humanity
is degraded, and their hopes are
shattered. Solidarity with them is not a
matter of politics. It is part of our
solidarity with Christ and the expression
of our love for God.
The U.S. Provincials
“A Meditation on our Response
to the Call of Christ” 2006
In higher education, when we do
scholarship and research that lifts the
human spirit and heals the human body,
when we provide an environment where
love and service to others are fostered in
our students, when we nurture them in
their faith life and in the greatest
traditions of Christian Humanism and
train them to be scientists, doctors,
teachers and businesspersons of
integrity,
The U.S. Provincials
“A Meditation on our Response
to the Call of Christ” 2006
when we engage our benefactors or
alumni to build not only a better
university but a better world, when we
stand openly in “solidarity with the poor,
the marginalized, and the voiceless,”
when our students travel to Central
America or Africa to see a hidden face of
Christ, when national and international
realities are critically examined with an
advocate’s eye for the downtrodden,
when our faculties reach out to China or
send libraries to Africa, we are working
in solidarity with “the least” and with all.
Forming Women and Men
for and with others
Promoting a Faith
that Does Justice
Forming Women and Men
of Competence, Conscience
and Compassion
Who is most deserving
of our care?