Archive for the ‘Colleges and Universities’ Category

Jesuit priest, geologist and author James W. Skehan, a Boston College professor emeritus who served as the longtime director of the University’s geophysical research observatory, has been honored with the unveiling of a bronze bust in his likeness at an event celebrating his 89^thbirthday.

The sculpture was created in clay by local artist Janie Belive, who works at Campion Center in Weston, Mass., where Fr. Skehan is in residence. Vincent J. Murphy, James Lewkowicz and Robert O. Varnerin—longtime friends of Fr. Skehan—commissioned the bronzing of the sculpture. The bust’s base, from the Le Masurier Family Quarry in North Chelmsford, Mass., is made from Chelmsford Granite, one of Fr. Skehan’s favorite rocks. The bust is on display in BC’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, which was founded (as the Department of Geology) by Fr. Skehan in 1958.

Many colleagues and friends joined Fr. Skehan at the Apr. 25 event. John Ebel, Boston College Earth and Environmental Sciences professor and Weston Observatory director, gave an address that served as a retrospective on Fr. Skehan’s career. A reception with birthday cake followed, hosted by BC’s Jesuit Community and the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department.

Fr. Skehan is a renowned geologist whose research has focused on the history of the Avalon terrane, the geological micro-continent stretching from Long Island to Belgium upon which Boston lies. From 1973 to 1993, he directed BC’s Weston Observatory, which monitors seismic activity around the globe.

He is the author of Roadside Geology of Massachusetts, a 400-page illustrated guide to the geological history and makeup of the Commonwealth. He followed that with Roadside Geology of Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Fr. Skehan has been honored in special ways during his storied career. In 2003, Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark A. S. McMenamin named a new genus of trilobite in Fr. Skehan’s honor. Skehanos is a marine arthropod that lived more than 500 million years ago and whose fossil was discovered in Massachusetts.

Author Sarah Andrews created a fictional Fr. Jim Skehan character for In Cold Pursuit, her mystery novel set in Antarctica. Fr. Skehan is also the recipient of the American Institute of Professional Geologists’ Ben H. Parker Memorial Medal, honoring individuals with long records of distinguished and outstanding service in the field of geology, among other honors.

A man of science, Fr. Skehan is also a man of deep faith. Growing up, his family said the rosary regularly after dinner. He entered the Jesuit order in 1940 and was ordained in 1954.

A noted retreat and spiritual leader, he is the author of Place Me With Your Son: Ignatian Spirituality in Everyday Life and of Praying with Teilhard de Chardin, on the life and thought of French Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher de Chardin. The convergence of geologist and priest was profoundly on display when Fr. Skehan said the first Mass on the volcanic island Surtsey soon after it rose off the coast of Iceland.

Fr. Skehan sees no conflict in his devotion to both science and faith, telling the Boston College Chronicle:

“If you look at a beautiful sunset, or how mountains are formed, or observe how continents move, you can view it either as science or as God speaking to you, or both. I do both. What I do as a scientist is no different from what I do listening to the cosmic word of God. It’s nice to have both [science and faith] – in fact, it makes everything so exhilarating. What could be more marvelous?”

[Boston College]

Across the United States, the Society of Jesus, the U.S.’s largest order of priests and brothers in the Roman Catholic Church, runs universities, high schools and middle schools, parishes and retreat houses.  And today, the 450-year-old religious order has an app.

Available for free at the iTunes App Store, the Jesuit app operates on any iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad; a similar app will soon be available at the Android Marketplace for use on devices such as the Droid, Evo and HTC Touch.

The new app allows users to locate Jesuit retreat centers, schools and parishes across the U.S., read the latest news and information about the Jesuits, and access Jesuit prayers and spirituality documents.

The app’s three sections include:

Locations
Here users can find Jesuit apostolates – parishes, retreat centers, colleges and universities. It includes easy-to-use directions and contact information for any Jesuit institution in the U.S. and is searchable by apostolate name, by the user’s current location or through any address the user enters.

News
All the latest news stories from National Jesuit News are displayed here.  Users can tap on any headline to view the full story, share the link with friends or open the story in their browser.

Prayer
In this section, users can view prayers, spirituality documents and background information on the Society of Jesus.

The video below explains in more detail how the app operates. Visit the app information page here to find out more.

Dan Kennedy graduated from Boston College (BC) last month, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and the recipient of the school’s most prestigious prize, the Edward H. Finnegan Award.

Winners of the Finnegan, given to the student who best exemplifies the BC motto, “ever to excel,’’ tend to go big – top grad schools, Wall Street, overseas fellowships. Kennedy is planning to give away his computer, recycle his Blackberry, and move to a modest communal house in St. Paul, Minn.

He will get $75 a month for incidentals. He will have no romantic relationships. He will go where his superiors ask him to go, and do what they ask him to do. If all goes well, Kennedy – “Dan-o’’ to his friends – can hope to be ordained a Jesuit priest in 2023.

Entering a religious order straight out of college is rare these days, particularly for a standout student at an elite school. One or two graduating BC seniors enter seminary each year, but never in recent memory has a Finnegan winner done so.

“Um, I could never see Dan-o on Wall Street,’’ Shannon Griesser, a junior, said, laughing. “I’ve never met such a kind human being, to the core.’’

But he is hardly a “laxbro,’’ either, as one of his theology professors, Stephen Pope, quipped. (The term is slang for a lacrosse-obsessed frat brother.)

Medium height and solidly built, the bespectacled Kennedy keeps his room in military order, his comforter neatly folded, paper clips and pens exactingly arrayed in his desk drawer. He uses words like “unitive,’’ as in, “There’s nothing more unitive than enjoying a meal together.’’ There is no self-consciousness in his voice when he talks about his motivation for becoming a Jesuit: “My personal relationship with Jesus Christ.’’

“It’s the love I feel from God, and how I want to reciprocate that,’’ he said.

“I’m not entering the church of 50 years ago or 500 years ago. I’m entering the church in 2012,’’ he said. “So you have to be realistic about the challenges of the images of priesthood in this day and age. . . . I don’t find it daunting, but it’s going to be a challenge.’’

Many of his closest BC friends are religious – but many are not. Florence Candel, an atheist who said she arrived at school with “a lot of anger at the church,’’ developed a strong friendship with Kennedy, who presented a face of Catholicism that Candel said she had never seen before – open, accepting, and embracing her questions as invitations for conversation. “Dan-o just basically taught me that to say I have a lack of faith is incorrect,’’ she said. “I obviously have faith in some things. Maybe not the same faith as people around me have, but that’s OK.’’

Candel still calls herself an atheist, but she sometimes participated in the informal “examens’’ Kennedy held for friends in his room on Monday nights. A cornerstone of Ignatian spirituality, the examination of consciousness is a ritual of prayerful reflection on daily life.

For 15 or 20 minutes, the group would sit together in Kennedy’s dorm room, a suite shared with three roommates, and silently consider questions Kennedy posed: “Where did you encounter God today? When could you have been more loving? What were you grateful for?’’

The daily examen is just one of the ways Kennedy continued to explore Jesuit life. In addition to attending Mass at least once a week, and getting to know the Jesuits on campus, he began to meet with a spiritual director, Jesuit Father William B. Neenan, BC’s vice president and special assistant to the president.

Kennedy will spend the first two years doing a series of “experiments’’ imitating the life of St. Ignatius, including a 30-day silent retreat, stints working at a hospital and with the poor. He will study a foreign language, and he will go on a pilgrimage with just $10 in his pocket and a letter from his superiors to speed his progress.

After the first two years, Kennedy will be sent to study philosophy for three years at a Jesuit university; then he will probably teach at one of the Jesuit high schools in the province. In the following three years, he will earn a master’s of divinity, preparing him for ordination.

Find out more about Kennedy’s considerations and expectations as he plans to join the Society of Jesus this August in this Boston Globe article.

A distinguished moral theologian and ethicist will become the new dean of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University on July 1, 2012.

Jesuit Father Thomas J. Massaro is currently Professor of Moral Theology at Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry.

“We are delighted that Fr. Massaro will be leading the Jesuit School of Theology as a premier national and international center of graduate theological teaching, research, and ministerial formation,” said Santa Clara University Provost Dennis Jacobs. “As a teacher, scholar and Jesuit priest, Fr. Massaro brings great passion and a commitment to excellence in all that he does.”

Fr. Massaro’s teaching interests include Catholic social ethics, theories of economic justice, sociology of religion and the history of Christian political thought. His scholarly pursuits also flow from his deep commitment to hands-on social activism, particularly in labor justice and the promotion of peace.

“I am very eager to start my work as dean of Jesuit School of Theology,” said Fr. Massaro. “The extraordinary reputation of the school as a leader in theological education is well deserved. For decades, it has been preparing men and women for learned ministry in a distinctive way, one that is culturally aware and intellectually rigorous. What a privilege it is to help prepare Catholic lay and religious leaders for tomorrow’s church.”

The Jesuit School of Theology (JST) of Santa Clara University, located in Berkeley, Calif., is a preeminent international center for the culturally contextualized study of theology. Its mission is to inspire and prepare men and women to become leaders in the Church, academy and society, serving others through a faith that does justice. Rooted in Ignatian Spirituality, JST educates and trains Jesuits, religious, ordained and lay students from across the United States and from 40 other countries for lives dedicated to ministry and scholarship.

Fr. Massaro is the author or editor of five books, including American Catholic Social Teaching (Liturgical Press, 2002); Catholic Perspectives on Peace and War, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); U.S. Welfare Policy: A Catholic Response (Georgetown University Press, 2007) and Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action, Second Classroom Edition (Rowman and Littlefield, 2012).

A regular columnist for America magazine and sought-after public intellectual, Fr. Massaro lectures frequently on the moral evaluation of public policies regarding domestic and international issues such as foreign policy, anti-poverty efforts and globalization.

Jesuit Father James A. Woods has seen a lot after spending over four decades at Boston College (BC.) Since 1968, he has served as dean of the Woods College of Advancing Studies (WCAS) and he will be stepping down from his position this spring.

“My first teacher was my father, a role model who inspired me and others to do our best, to see what could be done,” Fr. Woods said. “We were the closest of friends.”

His father was a milkman, who he often accompanied on milk runs. His mother was an involved community member and parent, who offered him advice and support, and pushed him to make his dreams come true. “She taught me to ‘dream great dreams’ and to work with confidence to make them a reality,” Fr. Woods said.

His parents’ philosophy on life sparked a mindset that has guided him since childhood. “My parents’ outlook sparked optimism and hope,” he said.

Fr. Woods decided to become a Jesuit when he was a senior at Boston College High School, wishing to follow in the footsteps of those who had educated him.

“I was interviewed in the very spot where my office is today, but back then, it was an army barracks,” he said. “In front of the army barracks was an enormous pile of dirt, the forthcoming Fulton Hall. And then I saw the four other buildings that made up Boston College: Gasson, Bapst, St. Mary’s and Devlin Hall.”

He began his studies at the Shadowbrook Jesuit Seminary in Lenox, Mass. After four years, he continued his studies at Weston College, which was a constituent college within BC at the time, where he studied philosophy and worked toward a master’s degree in teaching mathematics for three years. After three years teaching at an all-boys’ boarding school, Cranwell, he returned to Weston College for theological studies, was ordained in 1961 and graduated in 1962.

Before beginning his position as WCAS dean, he was Provincial Secretary for the New England Jesuits and concurrently began working at the university as registrar of the Schools of Liberal Arts, Philosophy and Theology, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Fr. Woods had various other responsibilities and various other jobs over the course of his life, including starting Bishop Connolly High School in Fall River, Mass., and serving as Adult Education Advisor to former president Jimmy Carter.

“I met monthly at the White House with a team of experts to facilitate the learning opportunities for a growing, diverse learner population,” he said. “This has been a lifelong commitment to each and [every] student eager and ready to begin their studies part-time.”

“Being responsive to the academic, financial and pastoral needs of the surrounding communities has been my responsibility these past 44 years,” Fr. Woods said. “Serving those students who dream of a Boston College education part-time in the Woods College of Advancing Studies and helping them make it happen has been extraordinarily meaningful for me.”

Cheryl Wright, coordinator of student services for the WCAS, began 30 years ago as a temporary employee filling in for her mother, but stayed ever since.

“He made this school what it is today,” she said. “It’s the love and respect that the students have for him that has made such a difference in their lives and in his life.”

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