Inaugural Lecture Series - Spring 2005
“The University and the Human in a Pluralistic Age”
Celebrating the Inauguration of the Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., as 16th president of Loyola University New Orleans, October 15, 2004
"'In Ten Thousand Places:'
The Jesuit University and Humanism in a Pluralistic Age"
An introduction by the Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.
President, Loyola University New Orleans
The culture wars are all around us. The battles and skirmishes in these wars range from controversies about how to celebrate and acknowledge a holiday like Christmas to controversies over developing or regulating new reproductive technologies. No matter the battle, one finds very different views about the nature of society and what it is to be human, and these differences are at the root of the culture wars.1
The tie between Christianity and humanism seems very foreign to many people in contemporary American society. In our society today, there are many people who think that humanism and religious faith are diametrically opposed to one another. Indeed, in our current culture wars, some religious leaders rail against humanism and some humanists worry about religious intolerance. In this climate it seems contradictory for a religious university, like Loyola University New Orleans, to celebrate humanism in a religious university. It is obvious that any humanism is grounded in a vision of human flourishing and fulfillment. What may not be as obvious is that there are different visions of what constitutes human flourishing and each vision of human flourishing will develop a slightly different view of what it is to be human.
The idea of religious humanism is further complicated, not only by how the human is understood but also by the assumptions made by a religious tradition. If a faith tradition assumes, for example, that there is no relationship between grace and the natural order, humanism will be seen as a movement that ought to be challenged rather than a moment to be embraced. The Catholic imagination understands the fallen nature of human life, but it also embraces the goodness of creation and views the natural order of creation as a revelation of God. The Catholic imagination is open to the human as a revelation of God.
The Jesuit tradition of humanism and universities rests on these fundamental Catholic assumptions. One of the key assumptions for Ignatian humanism is that grace builds on nature. There is an affinity between the life of God, grace, and the life of the human and creation. In making this assumption one can search for truth outside the community of Christians. In this “world of grace”2 one can find God in all things. In light of this view, as it was embraced by Ignatius and Jesuits after him, one can understand how and why Jesuits became associated with universities and why the Jesuit tradition of education has been humanistic.
What does it mean to say that Loyola is a Jesuit university?3 St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, had a deep, intense personal experience of God. That relationship is recorded in the Spiritual Exercises. One way to talk about the Exercises is to talk about them in terms of freedom. The Exercises can help the individual understand how his or her freedom is limited by attachments, obsessions, and sinfulness. The Exercises challenge our hearts and can liberate our loves and our imaginations. The Exercises are not only about being free from our attachments, however; they are also about being free for something. The Exercises challenge us to develop great desires and to always choose the option that is more conducive to one’s goals to serve God and the human community. There is the invitation to free our imaginations and boldly envision the future for our world. There is a restless dynamic that challenges us always to ask what more we can do.
Ignatius understood how liberal education could shape students who were intellectually rigorous, unafraid to question and probe. Like the Spiritual Exercises, the tradition of liberal education provides a set of questions that can be adapted so as to lead a student to intellectual freedom and to imagine a world different than the one he or she discovered. Such an education could help lead to men and women to be good, as human beings and citizens, not just good at a certain craft or profession.
Jesuit education celebrates the full range of intellectual power and achievement and assumes that while knowledge is good, it is not an end in itself. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, has distinguished Jesuit education from Cardinal Newman’s idea of a university where knowledge is an end it itself. Kolvenbach has written that while higher education surely has intrinsic value, Jesuit higher education must always ask:“For whom? For what? The answer to these questions will always be related to the common good and the progress of human society.”4 In a Jesuit university, the exploration of any area of knowledge is always done with an eye for making us better and morefully human and our world a place where humanity can flourish.5 These questions could not be more timely in a post-Katrina world.
We live in a time when there are deep tensions and questions about religion and its role in public discourse. In this context, Loyola University New Orleans is a place where the church and the world can meet, where people of different cultures and faiths can have civil discourse and argument. In an age that knows too much violence and warfare, this is a place where people can argue peaceably. Inspired by an Ignatian spirituality that holds one can find God in all things, Loyola is a university that believes in diversity, not because it is a current trend in our society, but because every culture, every faith provides an opportunity to encounter God, the human, ourselves, and to learn.6 This tradition of Ignatian humanism is anchored in a vision, which holds that, in the words of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:
“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.”7
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Notes
- See Edmund Pellegrino, “Christian Humanism, Catholic Universities, and Bioethics,” this volume, pp. 17-24.
- Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J., ed., A World of Grace: An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner’s Theology ,New York. Seabury, 1980.
- See John W. Padberg, S.J., “Cicero, Ballet, Tryannicide, Quinine, andPrayer: The Jesuit University as University and as Jesuit,” this volume, pp. 6-16.
- Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., “The Jesuit University in the Light of the Ignatian Charism.” Address to the International Meeting of Jesuit Higher Education, Rome, May 27, 2001, #26.
- See M. Cathleen Kaveny, “Autonomy, Solidarity, and Law’s Pedagogy,” this volume, pp. 25-42. This essay provides an excellent example of how knowledge can be used to shape society.
- See Ron Modras, “Diversity, The Catholic Church, and Ignatian Humanism: Or, How to Make a Roux,” this volume, pp. 43-54.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins. Poems and Prose. New York. Penguin, 1978, p. 51.
