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November 08, 2004 |
A new work of art–a fountain by sculptor Peter Rockwell, son of famed Saturday Evening Post cover artist Norman Rockwell–was unveiled at Boston College in October.
The Tree of Life, which stands just under 10 feet tall and more than 6 feet wide, is located on O'Neill Plaza, on the university's Chestnut Hill campus.
Made of bronze, the statue represents an olive tree with its bifurcated trunk and a space in the center that resembles a pair of hands. The hands hold an infant, laughing and reaching skyward as two children climb up, reaching for the child. In the middle, where the flowering begins, is a dead body meant to symbolize the body of Jesus Christ, according to Rockwell.
On the right side of the tree is a crucifix and the left side, from where flowers grow, is another child, seeming to fly between the branches while reaching for the cross. Uniting the two parts of the tree is a bird, meant to symbolize the Holy Spirit, Rockwell said. Water flows from four masks at the base of the fountain, each pointing in a different direction. [Source: Boston College; Photo: Lee Pelligrini]
Fr William Byron SJ, part of a panel on "A Crisis in Corporate Governance" at Georgetown University in October, said that the issue behind the recent crisis is "corporate ethics ... the integrity of executives and the people who are overseeing them."
Fr Byron, a professor of business ethics at Loyola College, recalled a discussion he once had with the Johnson & Johnson executive who ordered a nationwide recall of Tylenol in 1982 after seven deaths in Chicago were caused by someone who put cyanide in some Tylenol capsules.
Fr Byron said the executive told him it all came down to one word, "trust." If the people didn't trust the product they wouldn't buy it, the executive said, and if they didn't trust the company, the company would fail. While many in the corporate world had reservations at the time about the wisdom of the $100 million recall, Johnson & Johnson emerged from the crisis financially strong and widely admired as a leading example of corporate responsibility.
Looking at the recent scandals, the priest said, "What we've seen happen has been a failure of oversight capability" by corporate boards. He called for corporations to establish "a bright line" between governance and management, creating a balance of power between the board of directors and the CEO. Achieving that "requires trust, a free exchange of ideas, and integrity on both sides of the line," he said. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Seattle University has taken the salon discussion model, which has been around since ancient Greece, and used it as a means to engage college students. Unlike traditional university lectures, these are informal, with students often staying afterwards to continue the dialogue.
The university's salon program was launched last year, and the gatherings were guided by scholars from across the country on the theme of sexual justice. Each addressed issues to fuel discussions, including "Coming Out to Family and Friends," "Sex Trafficking in Southeast Asia," and "Abstinence Only vs. Sex Education." Students, faculty, staff, and some parents participated in the debates, panels, and small group discussions.
This year's theme is "consumption and poverty," with the program taking a look at the ways consumerism affects us all.
"If more universities and schools begin integrating this salon model into the educational experience, more students might welcome the role of engaged scholar. Being an engaged scholar is not about ivory towers and elitism — it's about a passion for ideas, challenges to mind and heart, and the openness to change life choices based on new learning," said Mara Adelman, associate professor of communication at the university. [Source: Mara Adelman, Seattle University]
Spring Hill College will expand its higher education presence in Atlanta by providing accelerated degree completion and graduate courses for adult students.
"I am very excited about the opportunity to expand the presence of Spring Hill College into Atlanta and to provide a Catholic Jesuit education to the people in the metro area there," said Spring Hill's president, Fr Gregory Lucey SJ. "We're taking the Jesuit College of the South to even more people of the South."
Building on the success of its eight-year-old theology program in Atlanta, the college's new adult education program will likely feature classes in teacher education, professional nursing, or general business.
Spring Hill hopes to begin offering accelerated degree completion or graduate programs by fall of 2005. [Source: Spring Hill College]
Jesuit Cardinal Avery Dulles said in an October lecture at Fordham University that CS Lewis, an Anglican convert from atheism, became "probably the most successful Christian apologist of the 20th century."
Lewis's work was effective because he had "experienced the difficulties from within," and because he "handled profound problems in simple words," the cardinal said. But he said the religious outlook expressed by Lewis had an "individualistic and academic quality" with "very little sense of church and the sacraments."
"In joining the church, he made a genuine and honest profession of faith, but did not experience it as his entry into a true community of faith," he said. Cardinal Dulles said that "my own experience has been very different." Raised Presbyterian, he joined the Catholic Church as a young man after he went through a period of unbelief.
"In becoming a Catholic, I felt from the beginning that I was joining the communion of the saints," he said. "I found great joy at the sense of belonging to a body of believers that stretched across the face of the globe."
Cardinal Dulles said Lewis's favorite arguments for the existence of God were not the classical ones called ontological and cosmological but were "those from morality, from reason, and from desire." [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Fr Placido Fonseca SJ, a pastoral worker from Mumbai, India, who attended the first international meeting on the pastoral care of street children sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, said his work has to take into account the multireligious identity of India, which is believed to be the country with the highest number of street children.
Fr Fonseca founded the Snehasadan program in 1967, which serves street children through sixteen homes on the outskirts of Mumbai and one in Goa.
"The government is non-Catholic. The children are mixed. My pastoral thing will be more holistic. Jesus and God will be there in the background," the priest said during the October meeting in Vatican City. "I would place the emphasis on being whole rather than making them holy. I cannot give them faith. I can only make them feel good," he said.
Fr Fonseca said there about 100,000 children living on the streets of Mumbai. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
Several hundred alumni, students, and employees gathered in late September to kick off Wheeling Jesuit's 50th anniversary celebration.
Representatives of the Society of Jesus, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, the Wheeling Jesuit University Alumni Council, and the Board of the Directors addressed the crowd.
Wheeling Jesuit was founded 50 years ago with the mission to provide educational opportunities to the men and women of Appalachia in the Jesuit tradition. [Source: Wheeling Jesuit University]
At a conference in St. Paul on "The Person, the Poor and the Common Good: A Catholic Dialogue on the Environment," sociologist Fr John Coleman SJ of Loyola Marymount University said that the concept of the common good is central to Catholic social teaching, but outside of Catholic social thought it is "a highly contested idea, by no means a byword in American political discourse."
He warned that it will be an uphill battle to convince Americans of the importance of a common good when they think what is good depends on each individual's interests and preferences, not on objective grounds that even a pluralist society can agree on.
He decried the widespread "United States against the world" attitude among Americans when it comes to environmental issues. "We're far and away the greatest polluters. . . . It's a scandal," he said.
He called for a shift in attitude "to see the economy as niched in ecology" rather than viewing ecology and the economy as parallel but separate concerns. He also urged a shift from a humanity-centered worldview to one that is centered on all of creation. [Source: CNS. Do not repost electronically]
A list of Jesuit Saints and Blessed, accompanied by short biographies and occasional illustrations, is available at the web page of the Curia produced by the Secretariat for Social Communications: www.sjweb.info. The list can be accessed by the name or the date of the liturgical feast. [Source: SJ Electronic Information Service]
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