Loyola Character and Commitment Statement
The following statement represents many months of work by both Jesuit and lay faculty, staff and administrators at Loyola. It was written by the Task Force on Jesuit Identity and approved by the Board of Trustees in November 1980.
- Loyola faces the years ahead with confidence. Relying on God's
providence and assiduously practicing the virtue of discernment,
we will plan for what lies ahead. Our society is marked by increasingly
rapid change, growing complexity, and a burgeoning pluralism. These
realities are not without their impact upon our community. Loyola
is today a larger, more complex institution than it was thirty years
ago. The student body and the faculty are more numerous and more
pluralistic in their composition. Moreover, the proportion of Jesuits
at Loyola has declined and may show further decline in the immediate
future. It appears beneficial, therefore, that we take stock at this
juncture and articulate, without diffidence or defensiveness, our
self-understanding and our educational vision.
- Our starting point as a community is our recognition and acceptance
of the goodness of all God's creation and the ideal of human solidarity
and community under God. Further, we acknowledge the Lordship of
Jesus and affirm that God was in Christ reconciling the world to
God. Around this central confession of faith we hope to shape our
lives. It would be meaningless for Loyola to label itself Catholic
and Jesuit were it not to center its self- understanding upon these
truths. Though our world is broken and fragmented by evil, both personal
and social, the enfleshment of God's Son as our brother grounds our
hope for the eventual and ultimate victory of goodness and order.
God in Christ has called us to choose freely and to follow in the
footsteps of our Lord and to do what in us lies to nurture the Reign
of God that is aborning in this world where divine and human activities
intersect.
- Motivated by the Christian vision of reality, Loyola undertakes
its task as a Catholic institution of higher learning in the Jesuit
tradition. Loyola's Jesuits have publicly stated that their "mission
is essentially religious but specifically intellectual and educational
in the broadest and deepest sense." In all phases of this academic
endeavor the university community must strive to achieve the excellence
that has come to be synonymous with the Jesuit tradition of learning.
As a community of educators and scholars, Loyola's faculty and staff
must be dedicated to excellence in teaching, in research, and in
service to the larger community. The university must provide an environment
conducive to growth of its faculty and staff and the development
of scholarship and understanding of personal values that is so much
a part of the Christian tradition. At the same time, concern for
the student as a person is central to the Jesuit educational mission.
Above all, Loyola will endeavor to develop in its students a love
for truth, the critical intelligence to attain it, and the eloquence
to articulate it. By word and example, Loyola will dedicate itself
to educate our students in the Christian tradition, which we recognize
as "not wedded to any given philosophy, science, art, or politics
(but) still not compatible with every point of view." (Loyola University
Goals Statement)
- While academic excellence and liberal education are the immediate
goals of our university community, they cannot be, in view of our
commitment as a Jesuit university, the ultimate raison d'etre. Academic
excellence stands in the service of the full human development of
persons as moral agents. In this regard, it would be well to recall
the role of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola in the development
of every Jesuit. After the Gospel, the Exercises are the wellspring
of the Jesuit spirit. They endow Jesuit activity with a distinctive
quality. Some understanding of the Exercises, therefore, is necessary
to understand the ultimate aim of the Jesuit educational endeavor.
The Exercises aim to enable a person, with God's help, to make a
Christian choice in regard to the most significant truths and values
of life. The choice may be a fundamental option or a conversion affecting
the totality of one's existence. Again, it may simply issue from
a periodic reassessment of priorities. Whatever the matter of choice
may be, the decision-making process should be marked by certain characteristics.
First, it ought to be disentangled from inordinate attachment, disordered
affectivity. It must purge itself of bias, prejudice, and stereotypical
thinking. Only so can it be genuinely free. Second, any significant
option ought to be illuminated by human and divine wisdom. No pertinent
light that comes to us from history, science, art or religious experience
should be ignored. Third, significant choices must not remain merely
notional. They must be woven into the texture of one's life; choice
must incarnate itself in action. In the light of the Ignatian ideal,
choices are to be made with a commitment to pursuing the greater
good in any course of action. Capacity for truly human action is
what Jesuit education hopes ultimately to achieve.
- Because education at Loyola is person-centered and concerned ultimately
with choice and action, the curriculum, spiritual life and student
life must on all levels and in all areas be concerned with values.
Our goal is wisdom, not mere technical competence. In this regard
it is well to recall that the Spiritual Exercises, as the Gospels
before them, while world-affirming, condemn self-aggrandizement and
promote service to others. Jesus, the man for others, is for us the
archetype. Solicitude for others, not mere efficiency or mere bureaucratic
convenience, must motivate us to a concern for all members of the
university and to ever-widening circles of concern for our city,
our state, our region, our nation and our planet. Because of our
human solidarity, a concern for one, even the least of his brothers
or sisters, is a concern for all.
- It is understandable then that in the face of our contemporary
situation Jesuits the world over have recently determined that the
best way to embody their commitment to the Gospel and the Ignatian
Exercises is through the promotion of justice animated by faith.
Accordingly, Loyola as a Jesuit university embraces the conclusion
of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus that Jesuit
education must be a catalyst for needed social change, hence dedicated
to fostering a just social order.
- This commitment to social justice can be shared by all who are
of good will, thus capable of enlisting the support of our entire
community in all its ecumenical diversity and ideological pluralism.
We must, therefore, in our policymaking, in our administration, in
our entire curriculum, and in the totality of our campus life, strive
to bring to life concern for justice to which our Jesuit and Christian
heritage commit us. Further, we must challenge all assumptions in
light of this commitment. Consequently, as an institution we must
be person-centered, not merely bureaucratically efficient.
- All members of the university community, regardless of their personal
faith-commitment or value system, are urged to collaborate in the
promotion, clarification, and pursuit of the objectives set forth
in this statement. With full respect for the complexities of a pluralistic
culture, with wholehearted commitment to the ideals of religious
and academic freedom, and with renewed dedication to the ecumenical
spirit of Vatican II, Loyola university is open to any person who
sincerely seeks for truth and value. Dialogue and debate concerning
controversial issues, even religious ones, are not only tolerated
but encouraged. Yet, it should be recognized that the university
has an identity defined by its mission that relates to every aspect
of institutional life. Deliberate derogation from or subversion of
these objectives is incompatible with the university's mission, destructive
of its identity, and disruptive of the university community well-being.
The university community should make every effort to reconcile any
member who finds himself or herself in conflict with these objectives.
- More could be said about Loyola's identity. However, what has been said should suffice to spur reflection and dialogue. Loyola is a community given to the pursuit of excellence in teaching and scholarship, personal and spiritual development, and to the promotion of justice and faith in accordance with its nature as an institution of learning. One of the leading challenges to any university today, and especially to Loyola in view of its Jesuit and Catholic character, is to teach an ethic of selfless service and sharing that decisively breaks with the present obsession with joyless and insatiable consumption. Education at Loyola succeeds only to the extent that it leads our community to examine how faith relates to society's systemic injustice. Moreover, it fails if it does not demonstrate how faith can be coupled with love to move us to action in the pursuit of justice. Jesuit education, then, is the education of persons for others, persons who will seek to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk reverently in the spirit of Jesus as the man for others.
