Jesuit Father James Schall

Jesuit Father James Schall recently gave his last lecture at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., after teaching there for 35 years. Fr. Schall, who has written over 40 books and taught thousands of students, will retire to California, where he first joined the Society of Jesus in 1948. “The gratitude of many will carry him westward,” writes Jesuit Father Kevin O’Brien, Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Georgetown University.

Fr. O’Brien recalls taking “Elements of Political Theory” with Fr. Schall in 1986, when Fr. O’Brien was a junior at Georgetown. “He introduced me, and by now thousands of other Georgetown students, to Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas. In his classroom, I became captivated by the idea of virtue as the measure of human character.”

Fr. O’Brien writes that Fr. Schall’s retirement has prompted him to reflect on the Jesuits who inspired him to join their ranks and who have sustained him in his commitment. “More than ever, I realize that I stand on very broad shoulders and rest in even larger hearts. One of the reasons I am a Jesuit is because of men like Fr. Schall, whom I have had the privilege of calling a brother,” Fr. O’Brien writes.

Jesuit Father Kevin O’Brien

Fr. O’Brien says, “Fr. Schall is a humble man, reticent about accolades and attention. In his goodbyes, he will undoubtedly point to others — to God first, of course, through whom all things are possible. But he can also point to fellow Jesuits, colleagues, students and alumni with whom he has shared his life here. He too can recognize the very broad shoulders on which he has stood — some of whom are buried down the hill at the Jesuit cemetery.”

Fr. O’Brien says there is a certain humility that comes with taking leave:

“All that we are asked to do is leave a place better than when we found it and invite others into the ongoing project of giving glory to God and serving others. Fr. Schall has done that and more. In his retirement from teaching, he can relish all the good that continues to be done through the people he has influenced along the way.”

Read Fr. O’Brien’s full tribute to Fr. Schall at The Hoya.

Jesuit Father David Collins

What do you get when you mix a dorm filled with undergraduate students and a Jesuit-in-residence? An opportunity for Ignatian spirituality. At Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Jesuits-in-residence serve as mentors to students. For instance, Jesuit Father David Collins, one of the university’s Jesuits who lives in a student dorm, holds open houses every week so that students can stop by to talk.

“It’s an unstructured way for students to come up and, in fact, raise issues that they want to talk about,” Fr. Collins said. “The advantage of putting so much emphasis on an unstructured open house is that it allows themes to be set by students.”

Fr. Collins, a history professor, said the experience of living in a residence hall allows faculty to interact with students they might never otherwise meet.

Jesuit Father Dan Madigan

Jesuit Father Dan Madigan, from Australia, is in his first year as a Jesuit-in-residence on campus, and for him the experience offers a chance to broaden his understanding of American college life.

“I was very interested to meet resident assistants — that was an eye-opener, because I didn’t go to a school like this,” Fr. Madigan said. “I went to undergrad in Australia, and we always go to state university as commuters, so we don’t have the sense of 24/7 residential contact.”

Like Fr. Collins, Fr. Madigan likes that he can meet a more diverse group of undergraduates — and give students the opportunity to get to know a Jesuit.

“We make a lot of the fact that this is a Jesuit university, but many students never get to meet a Jesuit,” Fr. Madigan said.

Jesuit Father Matthew Carnes

Jesuit Father Matthew Carnes is a chaplain-in-residence for the first time at Georgetown this year, but he has previously been a Jesuit-in-residence at Santa Clara University in California, and he has big plans.

“I’m going to lead a secret Jesuit tour,” Fr. Carnes said. “Essentially, at nine at night we go with flashlights to different historical sites, get keys to see secret places around campus and finish up with ice cream at my apartment.”

The Jesuits say that dorm life is no more chaotic than is typical for a college community.

“Other than when the Yankees won the World Series, I’ve never been kept up at night,” Fr. Collins said. Read more about the Jesuits-in-residence at The Hoya website.

Fr. Campbell served as president of Georgetown from 1964 to 1968 and is remembered for promoting student service to residents in Washington, D.C.

According to A History of Georgetown University, “[Campbell] … pledged that Georgetown would play a wider community role under his administrations by fostering student volunteer activities in the city and providing educational opportunities and other services to the city’s residents.”

While at Georgetown, Fr. Campbell also reconstituted the board of directors to include its first lay members, and he created the first University Senate comprising faculty and administrators.

“We are saddened by the passing of a cherished member of our community and a former leader of the university,” said Georgetown President John J. DeGioia. “In the Jesuit tradition of men and women for others, Fr. Campbell recognized the growing needs of city residents and the ability of Georgetown students to help meet them.”

Fr. Campbell also served as provincial assistant for colleges and universities for the Maryland Province, director of Woodstock Theological Society in Washington, D.C., and professor at Saint Joseph’s College (now University) in Philadelphia and Loyola College (now University Maryland). [Georgetown University]

Jesuit Father Jean-Baptiste Mazarati spoke to students, faculty and staff about the Jesuit ministry in Africa and his plans to return to the continent after receiving a doctoral degree from Georgetown. // Photo: Georgetown University

Two African Jesuits completing their doctorates in health care at Georgetown spoke to students, faculty and staff last week about their plans to return to the country to help their communities.

The talk, “Jesuits in Africa: The Hope of International Development” was part of Jesuit Heritage Week, which began on Jan. 29 and ran through Feb. 4.

“Jesuits are working in 28 out of 54 African countries today,” noted Jesuit Father Rodrigue Takoudjou.“We African Jesuits clearly perceive health care and education as priorities in our ministries.”

Fr. Takoudjuou, of Cameroon, is getting his Ph.D. in pharmacology, plans to teach at a Jesuit medical school in Chad.

One of the main health care issues that Jesuits are helping combat in Africa is HIV/AIDS, mostly through organizations such as The African Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN).

“AJAN’s mission is to stimulate and coordinate the work of African Jesuits in responding to HIV and AIDS in an effective, coordinated and evangelical manner, culturally sensitive and spiritually grounded,” he explained. “The African Jesuits are involved in more than 100 HIV/AIDS initiatives throughout the continent.”

Fellow panelist Jesuit Father Jean-Baptiste Mazarati, of Rwanda, will teach at the state medical school in his country when he graduates with a doctorate in tumor biology in 2012.

“Africa stands in the world as a big question mark. So who will answer that question?” Mazarati said. “It is a question of endemic poverty. It is a question of endemic disease. It is a question of endemic conflicts. It is a question of lack of leadership. …It is a question of a continent that holds so much richness, yet is struggling to take off.”

Africa also has a large population of children, he said, so there is a strong need for educational advancements.

Jesuits are sending Rwandan priests around the world to seek higher education in the sciences, social sciences and development “to make sure that tomorrow we come back to Rwanda stronger,” and ready to teach, Mazarati said.

Carol Lancaster, dean of the School of Foreign Service, moderated the event. Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, also participated in the panel discussion.

“Jesuits have made such a contribution to this university and to the world,” Lancaster said.

The Jesuits’ personal stories of mission and ministry in Africa enlightened, yet posed more questions for some in the audience.

“The intersection between religion and African development is an extremely interesting field that must be further explored to fully understand the challenges and hopes of development,” said Vivian Ojo, who helped organize the event with Mariana Santos.

“The Jesuits provided some answers to some of the most difficult questions [plaguing Africa],” Ojo added. “I left the conversation with a desire to search for more answers about a topic not often explored.”

His research interests have included the investigation of abnormal gene regulation in cancer and ethical issues in human genetics, including the ethical and social ramifications of molecular genetics research. He is an expert on ethical issues in personalized medicine, pharmacogenomics, human cloning research, stem cell research, and genetic testing.

Fr. FitzGerald recently sat down with National Jesuit News to discuss how being a priest and a scientist go hand-in-hand, and how the Church should learn to anticipate upcoming ethical questions.

In the moments before his Elements of Political Theory class, Jesuit Father James Schall stood in the hall, chatting with early-comers about the weather, the readings, and other courses. Fr. Schall not only knew all of his current students by name, but also recalled almost all of his recent students. He made introductions among the students standing in front of him, and a large, comfortable conversation started.

This conversation seemed to carry over into class. The period involved little group discussion, but was rather a series of conversations between Schall and individual students.

To Schall, this conversational teaching style fosters students’ intellectual engagement.

“College students learn most from talking to each other. You have to have ways for students to converse,” he said. “That’s why education is fostered by a good campus.”

When class began, Schall asked if he had failed to call on anyone during the course so far. “I don’t want anyone to feel left out,” he said. With 100 students crowded into a large White-Gravenor classroom, it would seem easy to be left out during a 50 minute class period.

However, Schall’s custom of pacing the aisles—addressing questions and comments to students at random—makes it difficult to shirk participation. Despite his sniper-like questioning style, his students appeared calm, seemingly unfazed by the possibility of being called on at his whim. Although his quiet voice could easily be drowned out by coughing, his students remained attentive and prepared to be called on. The conversations ranged from Plato, to the etymology of names of the months, to Shakespeare.

Schall teaches exclusively from the Western canon, classic texts that have been a cornerstone of Jesuit education from its beginnings. Some see these texts as providing a critical perspective on the legacy of human thought.

Professor Patrick Deneen, a government professor who also teaches Elements of Political Theory, speculated that Schall’s traditional perspective attracts students to his popular class.

“A paramount reason why students flock to Father Schall is because he reveals to them the profound depth of their ignorance,” he said. “But more than that, he allows them to experience that magnificent feeling that is the beginning of philosophy—the hunger for knowledge.”

Having come to Georgetown as a Ph. D student in 1956, Schall refers to himself as “ancient history.” But as he explained—paraphrasing Aristotle, a main character in his classes—“history is cyclical.” Its lessons should be heeded.

Schall is the last of the old guard: one of the few remaining Jesuits who still shape Georgetown students’ intellectual, spiritual and personal education in the mold of classic Catholic tradition. As the University becomes more secular, global, and pre-professional, some students yearn for the traditional education that seemingly only Schall can still provide.

TRADITION IN THE CLASSROOM

Similar to the texts he teaches, Schall conducts class in a classical manner.

“He does it the old-fashioned way:  by making them read serious books, take the books seriously, and take themselves seriously as people who have a responsibility to read those books as well and thoughtfully as they can,” Provost James O’Donnell wrote in an email.

As a professor in the government department, Schall is most well-known for his Elements of Political Theory course, though he said his course on Plato is his favorite to teach. His teaching methods are decidedly traditional.

In lieu of a Powerpoint display, Schall organizes his thoughts with a pencil on a small pad. He does not allow students to use laptops in his class, citing an unofficial study he conducted in which a few of his students admitted he would not want to know what students actually used their computers for in class.

Schall’s syllabus is one page and provides no schedule for readings. His students are expected to attend class— one of the two main factors for evaluation in the course—and to keep up with the reading assignments he announces.

Though this might frustrate a schedule-oriented student, those in his classes seem to understand—and more importantly, appreciate—why he does what he does.

“He’s opposed to the modern curricula,” said Geoff Lyons (COL ’12), an Elements of Political Theory student. “He follows a more Christian theological tradition. He doesn’t like to ‘scientize’ philosophy, which is the direction he believes it’s going.”

AN INTELLECTUAL CAMPUS LIFE

Schall is wary of the loaded schedules most Georgetown students take on, weighted with extracurricular activities and internships, in addition to their academics.

“All universities should build walls, not to keep people in, but to keep the world out,” he said. A confined campus is conducive to traditional learning, based on discussion and contemplation. His ideal education is a comprehensive experience that includes conversation, studying, and socializing.

“The point of a liberal education is not preparing you for business,” he said. “It’s giving you the freedom to learn about the ultimate questions.”

Schall tells a story about a conversation he had with a friend in an Irish pub. His friend asked if he heard anything in the pub. Schall said he didn’t, and the friend responded, “Exactly.”

Irish pubs, he explained, are great places to learn since they are usually so quiet. “People are there to talk,” he said. “No one is there just to get drunk. It’s more quiet; no one is yelling like they do at bars in New York.”

Schall’s view of the role of a professor is simple, but profound.

“A professor is a person to whom people come because he has studied his way and can say, ‘Okay you will do this,’ or ‘We can read this together.’ Students are being guided to read things, but in a sense, they are being prodded to believe that this thing is more important than this thing,” he explained.

There is a certain level of trust students must have in their professors, he said but he quoted a friend who warned, “The worst thing that can happen to a student is to give his soul to an unworthy professor.”

Without these physical and metaphorical walls, students will be “educated by some other system, always somewhere else,” Schall said, referring to everything students do that is not directly related to their studies. Schall fears that Georgetown has failed to maintain its sense of purpose, becoming what he calls a “resumé university.”

“Resumé universities have students who focus on their internships, their extracurricular activities, their sports. What’s behind them is the notion that education is more than just knowing, but that detracts from the purpose of a university,” he said. “You can’t be a student if you’re doing 30 hours a week of something else.”

Schall maintains that students should remain actively involved in their educations whenever not in class.

“Of course you can do nothing if you want, but you have the time to be free to be thinking about things,” he said.

This type of contemplation makes education worthwhile and gives a university a purpose. Schall teaches students to know themselves, recommends not getting internships, and suggests that students drink in a pub instead of studying excessively. It is easy to see why students continue to take his classes.

He will continue to teach —and teach in the manner he see most purposeful—in spite of the trends most other Georgetown professors are following, because to him it is always about the students.

“I do not think students ever change that much, thank God,” he said. “All 20-year- olds are 20-year-olds. I do not believe in progress in this sense. We cannot bypass free will and basic good sense. Basically education is not about Georgetown, it’s about truth and honor.”

Schall relates this to his life as a Jesuit. “As a priest, you have to do the same thing, get them to see the kind of life they should live and why. But they have to see it. You cannot force them,” he said.

A FORWARD-LOOKING UNIVERSITY

Though he agrees that his opinions about education are rare at Georgetown, he chalks it up to location—not some overarching trend. “You don’t think of Washington as a place to study philosophy,” he said, claiming that all Georgetown students want to be lawyers. “Because it is in Washington, Georgetown has departments that leech off the government department.”

Georgetown studies are heavy on science and statistics. Although he is himself a professor in the government department, it is clear that Schall relates more closely to philosophy.

Deneen agrees that Schall’s method of teaching is unique at Georgetown. “Much of the activity of the Georgetown University is increasingly focused on ‘current events,’ so part of what Fr. Schall is advising is avoid the present-ist tendencies of our own institution,” he wrote. “Such a stance requires independence and courage, some of the virtues that Fr. Schall aims to foster among his students.”

To Deneen, too strong a focus on the present can be detrimental to education.

“In learning ever more about ‘current events,’ we become ever-more ignorant about who we truly are,” he wrote.

His classes, his presence, and his ideas about scholarship are important elements of Georgetown tradition and identity, and will continue to keep Hoyas grounded, especially as Georgetown starts to follow the trend of becoming more globalized.

As a professor, Schall looks simply to give his students a “wake up experience,” which he explains is a moment when “the student is looking down, probably confused, and then looks up and says ‘Yeah, I want to know more about that,’” he said.

Those who have worked with Schall for years have witnessed first-hand the impact of his teaching philosophy and dedication to his students.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been talking to a student for a while and been impressed with something they were saying and just gotten this little whiff of suspicion, and I say:  ‘Did you ever have a class with Fr. Schall?’ And they light up and say, ‘Yes, wow, the greatest,’” O’Donnell wrote. “He’s one of the few stellar people that any institution hopes it can boast of that have that kind of consistent, far-reaching, deep impact on students.”

[The Georgetown Voice / Aodhan Beirne]

Jesuit Father Kevin FitzGerald

Georgetown University is hosting a series of three events entitled “Jesuits and the Sciences” which will explore the history of Jesuit engagement with the sciences and some challenging questions scientific advancement presents to humanity in the near future. As the University continues the construction of its new science building to house a unique collaboration between Physics, Chemistry and Biology Departments, these symposia will bring faculty and students together to reflect on the significance of the Sciences in the context of a Catholic/Jesuit University.

September 14 (Wednesday):
BEFORE THERE WAS A GEORGETOWN: JESUITS AND THE SCIENCES
Presenters:
- John O’Malley, SJ; Georgetown University, Theology Department
- Mordecai Feingold; Professor of History, California Institute of Technology

September 19 (Monday):
AFTER HUMANS: BLACK HOLES AND TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Presenters:
- John C. Haughey, SJ; Woodstock Theological Center, Senior Fellow
- Ilia Delio, OSF; Woodstock Theological Center, Senior Fellow

September 28 (Wednesday):
WHAT DIFFERENT JESUIT SCIENTISTS DO DIFFERENTLY
Presenters:
- John Braverman, SJ; St. Joseph’s University, Department of Biology
- Cyril P. Opeil, SJ; Boston College, Department of Physics
- Kevin Fitzgerald, SJ; Georgetown University, Biochemistry/Pharmacology Dept.

All three will take place in Lohrfink Auditorium (McDonough School of Business Rafik B. Hariri Building) from 5:00-7:00PM.

“Fr. O’Brien will oversee the office in its work to implement a variety of mission-focused programs, seminars, days of recollection, retreats and reflection series which promote the Catholic and Jesuit character of Georgetown with faculty, staff, students, alumni and a number of university boards,” according to President John DeGioia. “He will also coordinate programs that contribute to the formation of lay colleagues in the Jesuit tradition.”

Fr. O’Brien succeeds Jesuit Father Philip Boroughs who will become president of College of the Holy Cross in January 2012.

Fr. Madigan, a native of Australia with a doctorate in Islamic religion from Columbia University, said theological study of Islam is also important in helping Christians and non-Christians better understand their own faith.

“When we talk about theology among ourselves we adopt a kind of a language and we’re so used to doing it, we don’t challenge each other on it,” Madigan said. “We don’t realize how weird it sounds to people who grew up in a different faith.”

Establishing an interreligious dialogue between Christianity and Islam, and among all world religions, is an important step towards greater accountability and acceptance, according to Madigan.

Read more about Madigan at the Georgetown University website.

Jesuit Keith Maczkiewicz (back row, second from right) with Georgetown students on retreat.

Jesuit Keith Maczkiewicz had hoped to do something he had never done before during his Long Experiment, a time when each Jesuit novice does five months of full-time apostolic work while living in a Jesuit community. He had worked in high school campus ministry, but when he was missioned to Georgetown University to assist in campus ministry there, his novice director said, “You may have done this job before, but you never did it as a Jesuit.”

Maczkiewicz, who was involved in Sunday liturgies, Catholic chaplaincy programs and retreats and ministry as a chaplain-in-residence in a dorm at Georgetown, soon realized that his novice director was right.

Maczkiewicz said he was very conscious that the 30-day experience of the Spiritual Exercises was affecting all of his life and ministry. “I realized that the Exercises had become not only important to me, but had become my heritage, in a way, had become an inherent part of my life.”

Working with the Exercises as an instrument of prayer, and helping to lead others in prayer and discernment, helped him to solidify his own relationship with God. “The Long Experiment has helped me to fall in love with Christ all over again in the midst of my ministry, in the context of my Jesuit community, and with the lenses of poverty, chastity and obedience focusing, broadening and enriching my life,” Maczkiewicz said.

Today, Maczkiewicz is a scholastic in First Studies at Loyola University Chicago. He professed his vows to the Society of Jesus last year. You can read more about Jesuit novices’ long experiments in Jesuits magazine.