Sixty Years of Blueprint in the Jesuit Tradition
Loyola's Blueprint for Social Justice completes its 60th year of publication!
When the Rev. Louis J. Twomey, S.J., was missioned by his Jesuit superiors to Loyola in October of 1947, one of his objectives was to develop a bridge between the academic intellectual life and appropriate social action in order to implement the social teachings of the Catholic church. Second, Twomey's mandate was to establish an Institute of Social Order for the Jesuits in the southern region of the United States. And so, one year after arriving at Loyola, Twomey began publishing Christ's Blueprint for the South, a monthly social action bulletin "published as an aid to southern Jesuits in applying Christian solutions to the social problem."
Wrote Twomey, "The columns of Blueprint will continue to be used for commentary on the social teachings of the Church and on the application of these teachings to the concrete circumstances of given situations in social and economic life" (Blueprint, September 1953, Vol. VI, No. 1, p. 2). Twomey continued this promise as Blueprint's scope broadened beyond its originally intended audience within the Society of Jesus in the southern United States. Very shortly after its inaugural issue, however, requests for Blueprint started pouring into Twomey's "Central Office" from Jesuits all over the world - to the extent that the circulation grew to beyond 3,000 in 44 countries.
In September 1964, at the same time when Twomey's Institute of Industrial Relations was renamed the Institute of Human Relations, Blueprint's 17th year saw it renamed Blueprint for the Christian Reshaping of Society. While candidly admitting his sentimental attachment to the old title, Twomey noted that "sentiment can be reasonably indulged only up to a certain point. That point, we believe, has been passed... Henceforth the single word, Blueprint, will designate our written efforts to be an aid in the social formation of Jesuits not only in (America) but wherever (Jesuits) feel that we can be of some help in making the social teachings of the Church essential guidelines in the pursuit of their apostolate" (October 1964, p. 3).
Why was Blueprint intended only for a Jesuit audience? Although the name change implied a broadening of scope beyond the south, even in the Vatican II days of the emerging layperson, Twomey still insisted that Blueprint was to be read only by Jesuits: "As already indicated, the Blueprint and its services are restricted to Jesuits. Thus in our 'intra-family' efforts we enjoy greater freedom to analyse (sic) our Jesuit social deficiencies, to criticize constructively our failures adequately to respond to the needs of our times, and to suggest positive measures of how within the Society we can more effectively actualize our tremendous potential in aiding the Church to implement its updating and ecumenical movements" (September 1965, p. 2). So Twomey wanted the freedom to be "constructively critical" within the Jesuit family without giving scandal (or, perhaps, further ammunition!) to those outside the Society.
Twomey was always very concerned about the internal deficiencies of the Society of Jesus both in educating our own scholastics and brothers in Catholic Social Teaching and in putting this challenging teaching into practice, especially in Jesuit-sponsored institutions. The two major themes of his prophetic preaching and writing revolved around the issues of racism and the rights of the worker to organize into unions -"two sides of the same social justice coin," as he often put it. But Blueprint's scope widened just as the social teaching of the church expanded to cover many other issues such as economic development, international relations, and the whole spectrum of human rights.
Twomey's methodology was always very practical. Over the years, with the help of other Jesuits such as the late Revs. Emmett Bienvenu and Jacques Yenni, he published a thorough set of teaching guides to help Jesuits integrate the social message of the gospel into their classes, from arithmetic to zoology. Twomey's "gospel" clearly included the 1947 letter of "On the Social Apostolate" of then-Jesuit Superior General John Baptist Janssens, S.J., which Twomey seemed to regard as having with only slightly less divine inspiration than Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
The Twomey years of Blueprint came to an abrupt end with his untimely death on October 8, 1969. For the five years before his death, Twomey was clearly exhilarated by the many changes taking place in the Church and the Society as a result of Vatican II and the Jesuit General Congregation 31 which incorporated Vatican II's aggiornamento into the Society of Jesus. It was in those years that Blueprint became the "Official Publication of the National Office of the Jesuit Social Apostolate," thereby gaining official status and wider circulation among the Jesuits in the U.S. and abroad.
As the Jesuits emerged more and more into the inner cities of the U.S., especially in our formation programs for young Jesuits, Twomey seemed to take great joy in documenting these changes in Jesuit seminary formation following upon Vatican II in many issues of Blueprint which seemed to quietly preach "go and do likewise." Perhaps the high point of his later years was the central role he played in the drafting of Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe's 1967 challenging letter to the American Jesuits on "The Interracial Apostolate." With the publication of this letter, Twomey lived to see many of his own priorities and practices become the official policy of the worldwide Society of Jesus.
When the Rev. David Boileau took over as editor in 1970, the monthly became more and more a source for documentation of the explosion in social awareness taking place in the Catholic Church at that time. It was in the Boileau years (1970 - 80) that Blueprint opened its doors to a wider readership and no longer was restricted to a Jesuit-only circulation. In these years Blueprint became increasingly a resource for use in classrooms, not only an "in the family" Jesuit consciousness-raiser. For example, three large tabloid editions of Blueprint provided a wealth of materials for Loyola "teach ins" on women's rights, the world food problem, Appalachia, and even a 76-page tabloid on the full range of "life" issues from womb to tomb which accompanied an impressive series of university lectures on each of these topics.
Under the Rev. George Lundy, S.J.'s leadership (1980 - 84), the Rev. John Mawhinney, S.J., focused Blueprint on providing "a critical perspective on the structure of our economy" (May 1980, p. 3). Capital punishment and nuclear disarmament were hot topics in the church and the nation at that time, and Blueprint entered these debates with many articles on these issues.
When Robert Udick took over as Blueprint's first lay editor in 1984, he gathered around him a board of advisors indicating his priorities for the publication: international justice, organized labor, criminal justice, war and peace, and social justice.
From 1987 until 1991 Jim Gallese and Jody Miller Shearer collaborated on Blueprint in continuity with these themes and also increased the treatment of Central America, environmental, and health care issues. The year 1991 saw Ted Quant take over as director of the newly re-named Twomey Center for Peace through Justice, and new editor Richard McCarthy added his own gift for graphics and photography to his broadening the authorship of Blueprint articles treating many of these issues. McCarthy's personal expertise in micro-economics and community gardening has led into so many developing directions - including the development of Loyola's ECOnomics Institute and the formation of the Crescent City Farmers Market.
Currently, Blueprint for Social Justice focuses on 1) faith leading to 2) social justice, 3) reverence for diverse cultures, and 4) inter-religious dialogue. With such a "platform", Blueprint has a challenging mandate for the future.
Blueprint for Social Justice is distributed free of charge to readers in the U.S. plus 51 other countries, from Australia to Zimbabwe. One of its strengths is its brevity, focusing on only one social justice topic each month, with a maximum length of seven pages of text coming from a wide variety of authors. If you are interested in receiving or contributing to Blueprint for Social Justice, please contact the Twomey Center at (504) 861-5830; fax (504) 861-5833; e-mail: bluprint@loyno.edu. Blueprint for Social Justice is also available on the world wide web at http://www.loyno.edu/twomey/ .
