Graduate Bulletin 1999-2001
LOYOLA CHARACTER AND COMMITMENT STATEMENT
The following statement represents many months of work by both Jesuit and lay faculty, staff and administrators at Loyola. It was written by the Task Force on Jesuit Identity and approved by the Board of Trustees in November 1980.
- Loyola faces the years ahead with confidence. Relying on God’s providence
and assiduously practicing the virtue of discernment, we will plan for
what lies ahead. Our society is marked by increasingly rapid change,
growing complexity, and a burgeoning pluralism. These realities are
not without their impact upon our community. Loyola is today a larger,
more complex institution than it was thirty years ago. The student body
and the faculty are more numerous and more pluralistic in their composition.
Moreover, the proportion of Jesuits at Loyola has declined and may show
further decline in the immediate future. It appears beneficial, therefore,
that we take stock at this juncture and articulate, without diffidence
or defensiveness, our self-understanding and our educational vision.
- Our starting point as a community is our recognition and acceptance
of the goodness of all God’s creation and the ideal of human solidarity
and community under God. Further, we acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus
and affirm that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God. Around
this central confession of faith we hope to shape our lives. It would
be meaningless for Loyola to label itself Catholic and Jesuit were it
not to center its self- understanding upon these truths. Though our
world is broken and fragmented by evil, both personal and social, the
enfleshment of God’s Son as our brother grounds our hope for the eventual
and ultimate victory of goodness and order. God in Christ has called
us to choose freely and to follow in the footsteps of our Lord and to
do what in us lies to nurture the Reign of God that is aborning in this
world where divine and human activities intersect.
- Motivated by the Christian vision of reality, Loyola undertakes its
task as a Catholic institution of higher learning in the Jesuit tradition.
Loyola’s Jesuits have publicly stated that their “mission is essentially
religious but specifically intellectual and educational in the broadest
and deepest sense.” In all phases of this academic endeavor the university
community must strive to achieve the excellence that has come to be
synonymous with the Jesuit tradition of learning. As a community of
educators and scholars, Loyola’s faculty and staff must be dedicated
to excellence in teaching, in research, and in service to the larger
community. The university must provide an environment conducive to growth
of its faculty and staff and the development of scholarship and understanding
of personal values that is so much a part of the Christian tradition.
At the same time, concern for the student as a person is central to
the Jesuit educational mission. Above all, Loyola will endeavor to develop
in its students a love for truth, the critical intelligence to attain
it, and the eloquence to articulate it. By word and example, Loyola
will dedicate itself to educate our students in the Christian tradition,
which we recognize as “not wedded to any given philosophy, science,
art, or politics (but) still not compatible with every point of view.”
(Loyola University Goals Statement)
- While academic excellence and liberal education are the immediate
goals of our university community, they cannot be, in view of our commitment
as a Jesuit university, the ultimate raison d’etre. Academic excellence
stands in the service of the full human development of persons as moral
agents. In this regard, it would be well to recall the role of the Spiritual
Exercises of Ignatius Loyola in the development of every Jesuit. After
the Gospel, the Exercises are the wellspring of the Jesuit spirit. They
endow Jesuit activity with a distinctive quality. Some understanding
of the Exercises, therefore, is necessary to understand the ultimate
aim of the Jesuit educational endeavor. The Exercises aim to enable
a person, with God’s help, to make a Christian choice in regard to the
most significant truths and values of life. The choice may be a fundamental
option or a conversion affecting the totality of one’s existence. Again,
it may simply issue from a periodic reassessment of priorities. Whatever
the matter of choice may be, the decision-making process should be marked
by certain characteristics. First, it ought to be disentangled from
inordinate attachment, disordered affectivity. It must purge itself
of bias, prejudice, and stereotypical thinking. Only so can it be genuinely
free. Second, any significant option ought to be illuminated by human
and divine wisdom. No pertinent light that comes to us from history,
science, art or religious experience should be ignored. Third, significant
choices must not remain merely notional. They must be woven into the
texture of one’s life; choice must incarnate itself in action. In the
light of the Ignatian ideal, choices are to be made with a commitment
to pursuing the greater good in any course of action. Capacity for truly
human action is what Jesuit education hopes ultimately to achieve.
- Because education at Loyola is person-centered and concerned ultimately
with choice and action, the curriculum, spiritual life and student life
must on all levels and in all areas be concerned with values. Our goal
is wisdom, not mere technical competence. In this regard it is well
to recall that the Spiritual Exercises, as the Gospels before them,
while world-affirming, condemn self-aggrandizement and promote service
to others. Jesus, the man for others, is for us the archetype. Solicitude
for others, not mere efficiency or mere bureaucratic convenience, must
motivate us to a concern for all members of the university and to ever-widening
circles of concern for our city, our state, our region, our nation and
our planet. Because of our human solidarity, a concern for one, even
the least of his brothers or sisters, is a concern for all.
- It is understandable then that in the face of our contemporary situation
Jesuits the world over have recently determined that the best way to
embody their commitment to the Gospel and the Ignatian Exercises is
through the promotion of justice animated by faith. Accordingly, Loyola
as a Jesuit university embraces the conclusion of the 32nd General Congregation
of the Society of Jesus that Jesuit education must be a catalyst for
needed social change, hence dedicated to fostering a just social order.
- This commitment to social justice can be shared by all who are of
good will, thus capable of enlisting the support of our entire community
in all its ecumenical diversity and ideological pluralism. We must,
therefore, in our policymaking, in our administration, in our entire
curriculum, and in the totality of our campus life, strive to bring
to life concern for justice to which our Jesuit and Christian heritage
commit us. Further, we must challenge all assumptions in light of this
commitment. Consequently, as an institution we must be person-centered,
not merely bureaucratically efficient.
- All members of the university community, regardless of their personal
faith-commitment or value system, are urged to collaborate in the promotion,
clarification, and pursuit of the objectives set forth in this statement.
With full respect for the complexities of a pluralistic culture, with
wholehearted commitment to the ideals of religious and academic freedom,
and with renewed dedication to the ecumenical spirit of Vatican II,
Loyola university is open to any person who sincerely seeks for truth
and value. Dialogue and debate concerning controversial issues, even
religious ones, are not only tolerated but encouraged. Yet, it should
be recognized that the university has an identity defined by its mission
that relates to every aspect of institutional life. Deliberate derogation
from or subversion of these objectives is incompatible with the university’s
mission, destructive of its identity, and disruptive of the university
community well-being. The university community should make every effort
to reconcile any member who finds himself or herself in conflict with
these objectives.
- More could be said about Loyola’s identity. However, what has been said should suffice to spur reflection and dialogue. Loyola is a community given to the pursuit of excellence in teaching and scholarship, personal and spiritual development, and to the promotion of justice and faith in accordance with its nature as an institution of learning. One of the leading challenges to any university today, and especially to Loyola in view of its Jesuit and Catholic character, is to teach an ethic of selfless service and sharing that decisively breaks with the present obsession with joyless and insatiable consumption. Education at Loyola succeeds only to the extent that it leads our community to examine how faith relates to society’s systemic injustice. Moreover, it fails if it does not demonstrate how faith can be coupled with love to move us to action in the pursuit of justice. Jesuit education, then, is the education of persons for others, persons who will seek to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk reverently in the spirit of Jesus as the man for others.