Honoring St. Ignatius
July 31 is the day on which Catholics honor Ignatius Loyola, he founder of the Jesuit Order (the Society of Jesus). I was a member of the Society from the time I graduated high school (1952) until 1962, after teaching at the Jesuit high school in San Francisco named for Ignatius. At one time or another I have made quasi-pilgrimages to places associated with Loyola, including the family estate in Basque country where he recuperated from a wartime injury and began rethinking how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.
The ten years I spent as a Jesuit shaped my own life in ways that I still may not appreciate completely. I was first the prayerful novice, then a student spending two years getting what was a very old-fashioned training in the classics and three years more getting indoctrinated in Thomistic philosophy, and then back into the classroom as the teacher, doing my best to teach batches of San Francisco teenagers the wonders of algebra and Spanish (and also coaching the soccer team and running the bookstore).
I've written about my time as a Jesuit and what followed in two books, both available on Amazon (Unexpected Company and Looked for God, Had to Improvise). The first was a collection of memories from men (Jerry Brown being one) who like myself once had been Jesuits back in the days before the cultural explosion triggered by the Second Vatican Council. Those were the years of "the long black line," very different from how Jesuits are trained today. The second is much more about my transition to someone I might have thought very different, the radical professor with a lifestyle very much at odds with the religious world I had come from.
On the wall of my office by the door I have the small ceramic plaque of St. Ignatius pictured below. It is from the Benedictine monastery at Valyermo, out in the desert. Not at all fierce or threatening, but a gentle enough reminder of who I once was and, perhaps, something to help me along as I continue to think through my own history and puzzle what it has all been about.
The ten years I spent as a Jesuit shaped my own life in ways that I still may not appreciate completely. I was first the prayerful novice, then a student spending two years getting what was a very old-fashioned training in the classics and three years more getting indoctrinated in Thomistic philosophy, and then back into the classroom as the teacher, doing my best to teach batches of San Francisco teenagers the wonders of algebra and Spanish (and also coaching the soccer team and running the bookstore).
I've written about my time as a Jesuit and what followed in two books, both available on Amazon (Unexpected Company and Looked for God, Had to Improvise). The first was a collection of memories from men (Jerry Brown being one) who like myself once had been Jesuits back in the days before the cultural explosion triggered by the Second Vatican Council. Those were the years of "the long black line," very different from how Jesuits are trained today. The second is much more about my transition to someone I might have thought very different, the radical professor with a lifestyle very much at odds with the religious world I had come from.
On the wall of my office by the door I have the small ceramic plaque of St. Ignatius pictured below. It is from the Benedictine monastery at Valyermo, out in the desert. Not at all fierce or threatening, but a gentle enough reminder of who I once was and, perhaps, something to help me along as I continue to think through my own history and puzzle what it has all been about.
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