Posts Tagged ‘Georgetown University’

It is more important than ever for students exploring a religion, especially Islam, to examine its sociopolitical, historical and theological roots, according to Jesuit Father Daniel Madigan, an associate professor of theology at Georgetown University.

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.

John B. Guida, S.J. (Photograph from the Woodstock College Archives): Born in Italy, Guida taught philosophy at Georgetown from 1863 to 1868.

A photograph of the Georgetown Jesuit who was jailed after being mistaken for John Wilkes Booth is only one of about 80 Civil War items on display at the Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library through the month of June.

The items are from the library’s Special Collections Research Center and from the Woodstock College Archives.

Authorities released John B. Guida, S.J., a philosophy professor, once Booth (who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln) was found.

“On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Special Collections Research Center wanted to tell the story of the war’s impact on Georgetown and its faculty and students,” explained University Archivist Lynn Conway, who put the exhibition together. “It is a story of perseverance and survival.

Jesuit Father Philip L. Boroughs was elected the 32nd president of the College of the Holy Cross by its Board of Trustees, with his position to begin January 2012. Fr. Boroughs, currently vice president for mission and ministry at Georgetown University succeeds Jesuit Father Michael C. McFarland, who had announced in February that he was stepping down after 11 years. Fr. McFarland will continue as president until Fr. Boroughs arrives.

Boroughs, a member of the Holy Cross Board of Trustees since 2008, has been professionally involved in Jesuit higher education for 20 years as a faculty member and administrator at Gonzaga, Seattle, and Georgetown universities. He was appointed in 2003 to his current post as Georgetown’s first-ever vice president for mission and ministry, directing numerous programs for faculty, staff, students, and alumni which further Catholic and Jesuit identity.

“From my first days as a member of the Holy Cross Board of Trustees, the distinctive mission of Holy Cross—along with the themes of academic rigor in a liberal arts environment, the commitment to teaching and learning, the emphasis on social justice, meaning and value—have resonated with me,” Boroughs said. “It is an honor and a great privilege to have been selected to join the Holy Cross community as its next president.”

Prior to his time at Georgetown, Fr. Boroughs served as the rector of the Jesuit Community at Seattle University where he was also a faculty member in the School of Theology and Ministry and an administrator (1992-2001). Previously, he taught religious studies at Gonzaga University (1989-91), served as the assistant novice director for the Oregon Province of Jesuits (1980-82), and was a parish priest at St. Leo Church in Tacoma, Wash. (1978-80). He is a former member of the Board of Trustees at the University of San Francisco.

For the full article in Georgetown’s The Hoya, click here.

Jesuit Father Joseph Lingan, the interim president of Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., has been named the new rector of Georgetown University’s Jesuit community. He will succeed Jesuit Father John Langan on July 31.

“I have always been aware of Georgetown’s prominence among Jesuit universities,” said Fr. Lingan. “I am humbled to be asked to serve at Georgetown and look forward to becoming an active member of the university community.”

Lingan will be responsible for the university’s 65 Jesuits, who come from various parts of the United States and as far away as Europe and Africa.

“A lot of the work calls for conversations with the individual Jesuits, acting as a religious superior within the community,” Fr. Langan said, reflecting on his time as rector, “and that brings responsibility for the well-being and spiritual growth of the members.”

Prior to his post at Gonzaga, Lingan served as novice master for the Maryland, New England and New York Provinces of the Society of Jesus from 2003 to 2010.