Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Italian Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a renowned biblical scholar, former archbishop of Milan and popular writer, gave a final interview shortly before he died on August 31.

During the interview, Cardinal Martini discussed renewal in the church:

“Vatican II restored the Bible to Catholics. … Only someone who receives this Word in his heart can be among those who will help the renewal of the church and will know how to respond to personal questions wisely. The Word of God is simple and seeks as its companion a heart that is listening. … Neither the clergy nor church law can substitute for a person’s inwardness. All the external rules, the laws, the dogmas were given to us in order to clarify the inner voice and to discern spirits.”

Cardinal Martini also described the situation of the church today as “tired” and said the church is “two hundred years behind.” When asked who can help the church, he said:

I advise the pope and the bishops to look for twelve people outside the lines for administrative posts [posti direzionali] — people who are close to the poorest and who are surrounded by young people and are trying out new things. We need that comparison with people who are on fire so that the spirit can spread everywhere.

Cardinal Martini also said that “the church has to recognize its own errors and has to travel a radical journey of change, beginning with the pope and the bishops.”

He ended the interview saying, “The good people around me enable me to experience love. This love is stronger than the feeling of discouragement that I sometimes feel in looking at the church in Europe. Only love conquers weariness. God is Love. I have a question for you: ‘What can you do for the church?’”

Read a translation of the full interview at the Commonweal website.

Jesuit  Father Chuck Frederico, vocation director for the Maryland, New England and New York Provinces of the Society of Jesus, was a recent guest on “The Busted Halo Show with  Fr. Dave Dwyer” on Sirius Radio.

In addition to discussing the Jesuit formation process, Fr. Frederico shared his own vocation story.

Fr. Frederico explained that after high school he went to the Culinary Institute of America in New York, which had previously been a Jesuit novitiate, St. Andrew-on-Hudson.

Before attending, one of Fr. Frederico’s high school teachers, a diocesan priest, told him to do three things when he arrived. One, to take notice of the “AMDG” — which stands for Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (“For the greater glory of God”),  the motto of the Society of Jesus — written on the front door. Fr. Frederico recognized this from his grade school days. “I’d been writing that on the top of my loose leaf since first grade because the nuns I had, the sisters of St. Joseph, were founded by the Jesuits.”

His teacher also said in the small chapel there would be a window of St. Aloysius Gonzaga receiving first communion from St. Charles Borromeo. Fr. Frederico recognized this from his grammar school days as well, as he attended St. Charles Borrmeo.

Third, his teacher asked Fr. Frederico to read a book on Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Fr. Frederico was fascinated by his life.

After culinary school, he went to Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia to study food marketing. “I  met the Jesuits in spirit at the Culinary Institute and in the flesh at Saint Joe’s,” Fr.  Frederico said.

Fr. Frederico was planning to have his own restaurant, but God had different plans.

“I was fascinated by these guys [the Jesuits]. I had six different Jesuits in the classroom, and each of them taught with such passion,” he said.

By his senior year, Fr. Frederico was applying to the Jesuits. Listen to the whole segment with Fr. Frederico online.

This summer, seven Jesuits took part in a five-week excursion through the Migration Corridor, the Central American route typically traveled by those fleeing poverty and seeking opportunity in the United States.

“La Jornada,” or the Journey, began in Honduras and ended in Nogales, Ariz. Along the way, participants learned about the realities of the lives of migrant workers.

Matthew Kunkel, a Jesuit scholastic said, “When people make this journey, they’re desperate. They’re not doing it because they want to break the law. They’re doing it because they’re trying to survive.”

The group traveled by bus and stayed in shelters, visiting human rights organizations and parishes that assist migrants along the way.

“If the experience was extremely demanding for us, I can only imagine what it would be for the migrants themselves,” said Jesuit Father J. Alejandro Olayo-Méndez.

Learn more about their journey in the Ignatian News Network video below and visit their blog: http://themigrantjourney.wordpress.com.

This month, 40 men entered the Society of Jesus in the United States as novices. Their path to priesthood — called formation — can take upwards of ten years and begins at one of four Jesuit novitiates across the country.

Oregon Province Jesuit Father Tom Lamanna has been the director of novices at Ignatius House, a novitiate in Culver City, Calif., for the past decade.

He says that one of the graces that comes with his job is “being able to walk very closely with people in their relationship with Jesus. That’s very holy ground.”

According to Fr. Lamanna, the community dynamic at the novitiate is unique because it’s the first stage of formation and the novices are asked to pull back from their previous lives.

“We give them an experience of Jesuit community and a study of the life of Ignatius and the founding documents of the Jesuits,” says Fr. Lamanna. “Then the novices and the Society can decide if it’s the right fit,” he explains.

For Fr. Lamanna, the most life-giving aspect of his job is guiding men through the Spiritual Exercises. “To watch the spirit and Jesus at work with them at a very deep level is a real privilege,” he says.

To learn more about Fr. Lamanna’s job as director of novices, view the Ignatian News Network video below.

As a Jesuit, Father Raymond Schroth has always been involved in journalism, whether as an editor, writer or teacher. But his journalism career started out long before he joined the Society of Jesus in 1957.

“In grammar school I created a newspaper for our block,” he recalls. Since then he’s served as associate editor of Commonweal; taught journalism at Fordham University and Loyola University New Orleans; written book reviews for several publications; and published nine books, including “Fordham: A History and Memoir” and “The American Jesuits: A History.” Currently he is literary editor at America magazine.

He has also served as editor of the national Jesuit magazine Conversations: On Jesuit Higher Education for the past ten years but is now moving on from that role.

The goal of Conversations is to strengthen Jesuit identity at the nation’s 28 Jesuit colleges and universities, and under Fr. Schroth’s leadership, the magazine’s timely coverage has included discussions of how to keep Ignatian ideals alive on campus given the diminishing Jesuit presence.

“The issues [of the magazine] that have given me the most satisfaction have to do with promoting the intellectual life in general,” Fr. Schroth says. “We had one on reading and recommending the great books and one on the quality of intellectual life.”

One of the perks of being the editor of Conversations is that Fr. Schroth has now visited every Jesuit college and university in the country—some more than once. He’s also had the opportunity to meet some of the best and brightest faculty at the institutions.

While editor, Fr. Schroth actively recruited student writers, which provided the magazine with another point of view and offered students the opportunity to publish in a national magazine.

Fr. Schroth is grateful to the members of the National Seminar in Jesuit Higher Education who meet to help plan each issue of Conversations. One of his favorite parts of the job was the day twice a year when the latest issue arrived at his door.

“There’s always somebody that finds a mistake and that keeps me humble. As humble as I’m going to get,” he says.

For more information on the magazine, visit Conversations online. Details about the editor position are at www.jesuit.org/jobs.