Archive for January, 2012

Jesuit Father Michael Linden has been appointed by Father General Adolfo Nicolas as the new Superior of the Jesuits in Jordan and Iraq. Fr. Linden brings to this unique position years of service in Jamaica, work with the Jesuit Refugee Service, and long experience as the Provincial Assistant for International Ministries in the New England Province office.

He will continue in this role while overseeing the work of the Jesuit Center in Amman and coordinating with the Jesuits of the Near East Province to explore ways in which the New England Province can help in meeting their needs and in working together in this area. Linden succeeds Jesuit Father Al Hicks, who has served the province and the church in Jordan and Iraq as superior for the past eight years.

In a sitting room where lace doilies top every table, Jesuit Father Robert F. Taft’s gray sweater and wooden cane add to the impression that he’s a refined retired professor.

But then he shared what he believes is the line his former students quote most: “There are two things you do not do alone: liturgy and sex.”

The world renowned liturgical scholar was interviewed Dec. 13 as he prepared to return to the United States after more than 46 years in Rome.

Students and friends share his pithy quotes with relish and his graduate summer school students at the University of Notre Dame even published a collection of them several years ago.

“They’re totally spontaneous. It’s not like I sit in my room before class thinking, ‘What wisecrack can I throw at them today?’ It just happens,” he said.

Father Taft, who said he’s “on the top of the heap” when it comes to knowledge of the Byzantine liturgy, officially retired as a professor at Rome’s Pontifical Oriental Institute in 2002. He was scheduled to move to the Jesuit retirement center in Weston, Mass., just after Christmas and will celebrate his 80th birthday Jan. 9.

With more than 800 titles already to his credit, the Rhode Island native, who was ordained in the Byzantine rite in 1963, still has one big writing project left: completing the sixth and final volume of his history of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, used by both Eastern Catholics and Orthodox.

Packing interrupted work on the book, he said, but the slow progress also is due to less energy and more time devoted to prayer.

“One of the advantages of getting old is that what the Byzantine liturgy refers to as the ‘dread tribunal of Christ’ that you’re going to stand before puts the fear of God into you, and so you move to pray more,” he said. “That already has had an influence on my spiritual life.”

In addition to teaching, Father Taft served for decades as an adviser to the Vatican, writing more than 90 reports, draft documents and expert opinions on matters related to the Eastern churches.

“It’s better to be part of the process than to stand on the sideline and criticize, although I criticize, too,” he said. “My attitude has always been I’d rather have myself writing these decisions than have someone dumber than me doing it.”

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Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro,  the editor of the influential Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, U.S. Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, a Portuguese poet, a Spanish architect, two astrophysicists, a Belgian journalist and a curator at the Vatican Museums were named by Pope Benedict XVI to help advise the Pontifical Council for Culture.

For the first time since 1993, religious and laymen — not just cardinals and bishops — were named full members of the council.

The new lay members are French philosopher and writer Jean-Luc Marion and Estonian classical composer Arvo Part. Eleven new consultors or advisers were named to the council, including Bruno Coppi, a professor of plasma physics and astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Others include: Father Jose Tolentino De Mendonca, a Portuguese theologian and poet; Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect; Piero Benvenuti, an Italian astrophysicist; Wolf Joachim Singer, a professor of neurology and head of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany; Marguerite Peeters, a Belgian journalist; and Micol Forti, the curator of the Vatican Museums’ collection of contemporary art.

Blessed John Paul II created the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982 with the aim of helping the world’s cultures encounter the message of the Gospel. In 1993, the late pope united the council with the council for dialogue with nonbelievers thus paving the way for using culture as a bridge for dialogue between people of faith and those who profess no religious beliefs.

Seattle University’s highly acclaimed chapel, has garnered the American Institute of Architects’ 2012 Gold Medal for architect Steven Holl. The medal is one of the most prestigious awards given to architects, with its previous recipients including Frank Gehry, Santiago Calatrava, Ieoh Ming Pei and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Built in 1997, the Chapel of St. Ignatius was immediately welcomed as Seattle University’s spiritual heart and has come to be a popular destination for visitors interested in joining the campus community in worship or simply marveling at its beauty.

Jesuit Father Jerry Cobb, currently provincial assistant for formation and the provincial assistant for higher education for the Oregon Province, chaired the planning committee that hired Holl and supervised the design and construction of the chapel. As the chapel celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2007, Father Cobb shared his thoughts with Broadway & Madison, the printed faculty and staff newsletter that preceded the University’s current publication, The Commons. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Broadway & Madison:  What’s something the average faculty or staff member might not know about the chapel?

Father Cobb:  Non-Catholics might be consoled to know that in 1995 we asked Steven Holl to design a chapel that would be “engaging for people of all faiths or no faith or faith-under-crisis.” The poet Rilke once advised that when people disappoint you, you should turn to nature because nature will not disappoint you, and I feel something similar about the Catholic Church. When it disappoints you, which is likely to be every day, you can turn to places such as the chapel where God’s saving presence seems tangible and life-giving.

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