forming women and men for and with others forming women and men of competence, conscience and...

Forming Women and Menfor and with others

Forming Women and Menof Competence, Conscience

and Compassion

Who is most deservingof our care?

Promoting a Faiththat Does Justice



and Compassion



Fr. Arrupe to Jesuit Alumni

• Jesuit Gen Congregation 32

• Jesuit Gen Congregation 34

• Fr. Kolvenbach at Santa Clara

Fr. Kolvenbach on thepedagogy involved.

U.S. Jesuit Provincials’Strategic DiscernmentProcess

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-for-others; 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.


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.


First, a basic attitude of respect for all people which forbids us ever to use them as instruments for our own profit.


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.


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.

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.Superior General of the Society of JesusSanta Clara University, October 2000“The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice inAmerican Jesuit Higher Education”

Injustice is rooted in a spiritual problem, and its solution requires a spiritual conversion ofeach 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 inAmerican 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 threecomplementary 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, someare easy to meet, others remain persistently challenging, but together they serve to orientour schools and, in the long run, to identify them.


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.


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 forthe 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.


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.


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 thereal world.


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.


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.

Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.“Jesuit Education and Ignatian Pedagogy” 2005

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.


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 expressionof our love for God.


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,


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.




and Compassion



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