Santa Clara University

Faculty Convocation

The Catholic University of the 21st Century: Educating for Solidarity

Paul Locatelli, S.J.

September 13, 2005

I was preparing this talk when we began seeing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina ruining the lives and homes of people and cities along the Gulf Coast. We also saw, for the first time, the depth of poverty in New Orleans. Close to 30 percent live in abject poverty and of them, 84% are African Americans.¹

The play, August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, that our incoming students read for orientation also identifies the plight of African Americans in our country. The set behind me is for another one of Wilson’s plays, Seven Guitars.

The Gulf Coast national catastrophe, like 9/11 and the tsunami in South Asia, reminds us once again how we all are in this together. We are not isolated and immune from each other’s loss and suffering. This is the essential lesson of the virtue of solidarity that many of our students have learned well.

Last week, Michael Weisner, a graduate of 2005 wrote me about his experience in Louisiana:

Michael’s actions highlight the value of a Santa Clara education. For us to better realize our greatest potential, we must constantly ask:

These are not unfamiliar questions. They are like the ones raised by the umbrella Future Directions paper entitled, The Mission of Santa Clara As a Catholic Jesuit University in a Globalizing World. Since last January, that and the other papers on Future Directions provoked some very thoughtful and lively discussions among faculty, particularly around the meaning of solidarity.

On October 6, 2000 in the Mission Church, Father Peter Hans-Kolvenbach, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, introduced the new standard of a "well-educated solidarity" for Jesuit education. Because it has generated so much discussion and debate, I have chosen "Educating for Solidarity²" as the theme for today.

I will also be speaking on this topic at the five-year follow-up conference to Father Kolvenbach’s talk at John Carroll University in October. My hope in both of these talks is to stimulate and promote further discussions around the creative tensions between solidarity and learning, discussions that will enable all of us to learn more about how to improve the academic quality of a Santa Clara education.

Ignatian Origins: The creative tension between solidarity and learning has been part of Jesuit education since the time of Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit Order in 1540. Excellence in learning was paramount for Ignatius. He studied at Salamanca and Paris, universities among the best in Europe. And while Ignatius and his handful of companions were students at the University of Paris, they imagined a new kind of religious order, and the Society of Jesus was born.

Originally, the Society of Jesus was not founded for the sole purpose of education. Rather, Ignatius insisted that the mission of the Society was to go to any place in the world and initiate any work where the hope to serve people is for the greater glory of God.³ So, he wanted Jesuit ministries to be located wherever the need was greatest.

Over time, Ignatius came to believe that education was central to Jesuit works. Eight years after its founding, in 1548, the people of Messina, Sicily, petitioned Ignatius to establish the first Jesuit college for lay students in their city. He approved. Educating the poor and rich children of Messina would improve both their lives and the culture of the city.

Within the next 8 years, 1556, the year Ignatius died, another 35 or more colleges around Europe and India were founded. Among them was the Gregorian University in Rome. In 1554, when Peter Canisus, S.J., asked Ignatius what Jesuits could do for Germany, he responded, "colleges."⁴

For Ignatius, the aim of Jesuit education is to form well-educated, morally responsible citizens who would leaven their communities with knowledge, wisdom, and virtue.⁵ While the remarkable vision of Ignatius is still relevant, the educational questions of the 16^th or 19^th or even 20^th centuries are different today.

In his 2000 address, Father Kolvenbach established a new standard for the new century, but with roots extending back to Ignatius. His lecture has become a seminal and bold vision for Jesuit education.

In it, he noted and I paraphrase that "The real measure of our Jesuit universities lies in who our students become" and then he went on to say that we are to "educate the whole person of solidarity for the real world." In the emerging global reality, with its great possibilities and deep contradictions," graduates [of Jesuit education] now must have "an educated awareness of society and culture" that "inspires a genuine commitment to contribute socially, [morally], generously, in the real world. Tomorrow’s whole person must have, in brief, a well-educated solidarity.⁶"

This view of education both inspires and awakens a new sense of vision and purpose, but also raises questions, even discomfort, as well as risks of ambiguity.

Nonetheless, Jesuit colleges and universities around the world are using this standard to evaluate their mission, programs, and pedagogies. In some ways, Santa Clara is on the leading edge of looking at its education in this way.

The Historical Continuity of the Commitment to Excellence: For our students to become well-educated, academic excellence must always be the raison d’etre of Santa Clara. Excelling academically has not only been a hallmark of Jesuit education but of Catholic education as well. By entitling his vision for Catholic universities, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, translated as, "From the Heart of the Church," Pope John Paul reminded us that the origin of the great medieval universities like Bologna in the 11^th century, and Paris and Oxford in the 12^th century come from the heart of the Church.

Of course, one must also acknowledge Plato’s Academy as an early version of a university as was true of the great Islamic university al-Azhar in Cairo in the 10^th century.

We must also acknowledge that at times, the Church hierarchy failed to respect the genuine search for truth, as in the case of Galileo and, in our own time, the silencing of the Jesuit theologian, John Courtney Murray who was eventually vindicated during the Second Vatican Council.

But for the Christian West and Western civilization, the Church is the "heart" from which the great medieval universities developed and, today, should be at the heart of all Catholic universities around the world.

Unfortunately, the discussions and guidelines for implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae, particularly those relating to the role of Catholic theologians, have created more controversy⁷ than necessary by too often shifting the focus to the wrong issues. Even worse, trivial, narrow ideologies that are extraneous to Catholic education have derailed meaningful discussions. Nonetheless, academic excellence is essential to both the Jesuit and Catholic tradition of learning.

The Current Commitment to Excellence: Clearly, both Pope John Paul in Ex Corde Ecclesiae and Father Kolvenbach in his many talks on education urge excellence in research and teaching, and then, to use knowledge about global realities to fashion a more humane and just world.

In Ex Corde, John Paul writes:

As a Catholic university, orthodoxy does not mean limiting questions and the search for truth, but rather calls for grappling with broader and deeper questions about global realities and, in interreligious dialogue, questions about the mystery of life and death, good and evil, and the mystery of God.

Other broader questions would also include, for example, the meaning of the Catholic imagination in literature and arts, the perspective of Catholic social and intellectual teachings, and the place of Catholic theology in a plurality of religions and culture.

The aim of Father Kolvenbach’s new standard is to improve academic excellence. And, the love for learning is a clear ideal in Ex Corde:

Likewise, Father Kolvenbach insisted that we "provide [students] with the knowledge and skills to excel in whatever field they choose... this demands academic excellence," an excellence that is enhanced by well-educated solidarity. This becomes an obligation for us, because not only civic and community leaders but educators as well have a responsibility for the well-being of local and global society.

In this context, the meaning of solidarity begins to take shape. Let’s explore some of its dimensions.

Solidarity enhances academic excellence in the education of the whole person, because it integrates qualities into learning that fashion a more humane and just person and globalizing world.

First, solidarity is a virtue that binds our humanity with the entire human family as individuals and as a community. It demands of every person an ethical and moral responsibility for the well-being and integrity of all, particularly the poor, afflicted, vulnerable and excluded.

As Pope John Paul wrote, solidarity is not a "feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress" at another person’s plight but rather "a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good...to the good of all...because we are truly responsible for all."¹⁰

This responsibility recognizes the good we currently do as educators for our students and various communities, but also awakens us to broader global realities. The bishops at the Second Vatican Council, noted we are to make our own "the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted."

They go on to say that we find "no more eloquent proof of its solidarity with the entire human family...than by engaging with it in conversation about these various problems." The problems they referred to are not the narrow or parochial concerns of the Catholic Church but rather the pressing global issues of "hunger, poverty, illiteracy, oppression, war, international rivalries, and the whole purpose and meaning of human existence."¹¹

At an international meeting in 1995, thirty years after the Council, what Jesuits said about faith and justice applies to the understanding of solidarity, namely, that it "transcends notions derived from ideology, philosophy, or particular political movements."¹²

Rather as a virtue that is common to all of us and all of creation, they noted a broad range of justice issues. For example, the influence of the media in the service of justice, the ecological preservation of the environment and creation itself, the tragic marginalization of nations and the need for freedom, peace and security as well as the concern for refugees, and a special concern for women.¹³

Solidarity, as a virtue, then, leads to defining the person of integrity who assumes responsibility for all of humanity and creation.

Second, solidarity is also a habit of the heart that makes us aware of our responsibility for one, global, moral ecology. It makes us also aware of how we are all part of this moral ecology.

Hurricane Katrina has again made us painfully aware of the reality that we both belong to and have a responsibility for all people, because we are part of the one, global, moral ecology. Katrina has again also awakened us to many ecological realties, among them, the interplay of poverty, class, and race. Earlier this year, the tsunami evoked a generous response from us as did 9/11 four years ago. We experienced solidarity with the people of South Asia and the victims of 9/11 and their families because we knew we were connected.

Solidarity is personal; it binds us emotionally, actually and practically to all other people and creation on the globe – not only in times of crisis but for all people, times and places.

The realization of one moral global ecology awakens compassion for example, for those living next door, the immigrants doing important work as laborers, the family living in very expensive neighborhoods, and the large number of poor families who are living in vans that move from parking lot to parking lot in San Jose. We have to ask, how do we become neighbor to these people and not just to our friends?

Third, solidarity challenges and, at times, transforms our point of view about the world. It places the common good and the dignity of each person as the highest values.

We all begin with our own point of view. We all begin with presuppositions about life and the world. We all have individual value systems. When we question our presuppositions and see life as others do, especially as the poor do, learning – both research and teaching – will change.

Solidarity raises serious questions about the extremes of Marxist communism on the one hand and a neo-liberal self-interest ideology on the other hand. Marxism ignores the dignity and rights of each person and neo-liberal ideology believes that market forces alone can resolve problems of poverty and even ethics.

John Rawls and Amartya Sen seek to strike the right balance between the individual and society. Their work helps to clarify the transition from justice as fairness to a justice of solidarity.

For Rawls, a political philosopher, the original condition of humanity is not a community but a social contract that operates like a mildly regulated market, where everyone has the opportunity to participate, even though the results cannot be guaranteed. His principle of justice aims to promote fairness by establishing social structures and rules that benefit, within limits, the least advantaged members of society.

Sen, the 1998 Nobel Prize winner for economics, goes beyond the justice as fairness of Rawls to a justice of solidarity. ¹⁴ For Sen, what persons are owed in justice is their freedom. But not a freedom understood in an ideal or a historical way. Rather, a freedom that ensures human dignity and the broad range of social and political institutions that sustain each person’s freedom. Although his view of solidarity is not complete, he presents a rich contextual picture of the relationship of person to society. His ethical framework for socio-economic development leads to a prosperous and just society, for the poor as well as the rich.

Fourth, another dimensions of solidarity is thinking about globalization differently and more broadly. Globalization is affecting, positively and negatively, the global, moral ecology.

Globalization contributes "to the progress of the world through global communication, financial markets and trade, exchange of culture, migration, and dissemination of knowledge including science and technology, and, for some, greater understanding of religions.¹⁵ Integrating communities, nation-states and people into global development and equality benefits people.

Yet, it’s too easy to dismiss the negative effects global economic development has on the cultures of indigenous people. The answer that indigenous people want a better economic life is too glib and fails to see and experience life as they do. Economic globalization is negatively affecting families and undermining indigenous cultures. And, even in countries like India and China that are benefitting from globalization, many people remain mired in poverty.

As educators, we must seek greater understanding of the meaning of globalization, and also address its underside in our research and teaching. In 1995, Jesuits identified the need to care for the many people who are "suffering from poverty and hunger, from the unjust distribution of wealth and resources, and from the consequences of racial, social, and political discrimination," concluding, "not only the quality of life but human life itself is under constant threat.

It is becoming clearer that despite the opportunities offered by an ever more serviceable technology, we are simply not willing to pay the price for a more just and more humane society.¹⁶

Hence, absent the justice of solidarity, globalization can easily degenerate into a dehumanizing process.¹⁷

Solidarity, fifth, also challenges us to see poverty as more than merely an economic reality. Poverty shapes lives in a pervasive way. As Gustavo Gutierrez, an indigenous Peruvian priest who has lived in the barrios of Lima for years, summarizes:

With poverty, and the intertwined problems of race and class, increasing in the United States, we need to ask what is going wrong with our democracy, our economic system, and our educational and legal systems. Since poverty and class are also a global problem, especially for sub-Saharan Africa, similar questions must be asked about the process of globalization. This is not about eradicating those structures, but developing the knowledge to change them, freeing them of corruption and injustice where needed.

The justice of solidarity, finally, demands, more than ever, sophisticated ethical analysis and actions. Ethics and solidarity are about relationships in which we ask the justice question, not who is our neighbor, but how do we become neighbor to all both as individuals and as a university.

Solidarity, then, has the quality of combining a sense of the transcendent God with the world, of hope in the midst of tragedy, and of justice with active compassion. It moves us to realize that the quality of our lives and all of creation is intrinsically linked in every way. It becomes the virtue that shapes our personality and character, and also can transform our perspective, and evokes ethical, compassionate actions. This also influences who we are as a university.

Excellence: a well-educated Solidarity: Universities have a unique, and critical and ethical role to play in society. The evidence shows that education, combined with stable political, corporate, and legal systems, and the infusion of workable technology, is key to integrating people into their communities and introducing them to the benefits of globalization. The model of private detached research and learning is not enough.

Universities need to be places of open and exacting discernment and debate, orienting their educational programs to include urban and global education. In education, not only are we to preserve our humanistic orientation and the quest for intellectual, ethical, and theological excellence, but realize that engagement and accompaniment with every other person will enhance such excellence.

This also invites and demands that we give the poor, the vulnerable a stake in conceptualizing and structuring our local and global moral ecology, while not ignoring our responsibility or that of the power brokers who hold civic or community offices. A just and humane world demands that we act together. As a Aboriginal Australian said to a student interested in an immersion experience noted:

In his 1982 commencement address at Santa Clara University, Ignacio Ellacuría, the martyred Jesuit president of the University of Central America, eloquently articulated what educating for solidarity means for us today:

Educating for Solidarity will enhance a Santa Clara education, not diminish or undermine it because the aim is "to inspire each student to take responsibility for the social realities of this world."²⁰

As Father Kolvenbach said, students "must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering, and engage it constructively..."²¹ "Solidarity with our less fortunate brothers and sisters...is learned through "contact" rather than through "concepts." When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the degradation and injustice that others suffer is the catalyst for solidarity which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry, reflection and action."²²

This calls for an active disposition, a readiness to listen and participate with all who make up this moral ecosystem, not merely those that fit into an established point of view.²³ It means recognizing that knowledge exists as much in the community as in the university. And, we can learn with and from the poor who have much to teach. Often, they have a rich spirituality that gives them hope in the midst of conflict and disease, courage in the face of systems and societies that neglect them, and a capacity to love even in a world that discriminates against them.

Educating for solidarity demands exacting academic and intellectual inquiry and debate to analyze root causes, to develop conceptual theories by following evidence to its logical conclusion, and to implement policies and practices that will improve society for all, but particularly the quality of life of the poor.

We give priority to the poor because their need is greater and we can learn so much from them.

For persons of solidarity, the local and global gritty reality becomes part of another point of view:

• that over one billion people live on less than $1 per day and another 2.8 billion live on less than $2 per day,
• that over 1 billion people are slowly starving to death for lack of nutrition, and
• that 35,000 children under the age of 5 die each day from preventable infectious diseases or hunger.

Most of our students will not have direct contact with these tragedies, but through immersion trips and various Arrupe courses, these global realities can influence their point of view and presuppositions about life. One notable piece of evidence that our students are getting a well-educated solidarity can be found in remarks by Chris Wall’s valedictory address last June:

In such a way, Chris summarized beautifully the meaning of "a well-educated solidarity."

A word about prominence. Ultimately, only by being true to academic excellence and our distinctive mission will we be recognized nationally for a high quality education. Aspiring for national prominence is not an end in itself nor does it mean copying characteristics of another university. Rather, it is the logical outcome of doing what we have already chosen to do and doing it exceptionally well.

To put it another way, being effective in educating leaders and citizens of competence, conscience and compassion will Santa Clara achieve national recognition for its excellence.

A Santa Clara education begins for over 1,200 students this year. For orientation, newly matriculated students and their parents read August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, The Piano Lesson. With them, I reflected briefly on the play, drawing into focus the ideal of well-educated leaders and citizens.

The historical backdrop for The Piano Lesson is the 1930s when the black migration from the south to the north had created new black communities that would be devastated by the economic ruin of the Great Depression. The Lesson takes place in Pittsburgh in 1936 at the house of the Charles family, African-Americans who have migrated from Mississippi.

The conflict centers around the piano. The piano was once traded by Sutter, a white slave master, for two of the family's ancestors. It was beautifully carved by their enslaved grandfather with faces of their slave ancestors working on the Sutter farm in Mississippi.

Berniece's brother Boy Willie, recently released from prison, has come from the South to Pittsburgh, intent on selling the piano, ironically, to buy a piece of farm land once belonging to the Sutter family. The struggle between Boy Willie and Berniece over the piano gradually broadens to deal with the terrible sin of slavery and the continuing racism, survival, revenge, and redemption.

The Piano Lesson provides a number of lessons for us. I noted to the students that it’s a superb play and piece of literature. We can understand the plot and literary genre and even catch some of subtlety of the complex story. But, I asked the students, can we move beyond analysis and literary criticism to some deeper questions?

Will we let the play help us engage the very complex ethical and moral dilemmas that run throughout the book? Or will we remain indifferent, for example, in the face of racism and prejudice.

Will the play move us to the level of entering into the reality of life beyond that of the author and the book. And, make the experience of the story our own story. Because what I believe August Wilson has done in The Piano Lesson, is inform us of reality and realize the need for a compassion that binds our freedom and human dignity with that of every other person. That is at the heart of Jesuit education. And that is at the heart of the meaning of our call to solidarity.

Thank you

******

Notes:

1. Jason deParle, "What Happens to a Race Deferred," New York Times - Week in Review, September 4, 2005, p. 1. Specifically, "28% of people in New Orleans live in poverty. Of those 84% are black."
2. Rev. Peter Hans-Kolvenbach, S.J., "The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American, Jesuit Higher Education," address to Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, October 6, 2000.
3. Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, III. #304. Also see #82, 92, 308, 588, 603, 605, 626, 749.
4. John O’Malley, S.J., The First Jesuits, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts , 1993, p. 207.
5. Constitutions, IV. 11. 1. #440. From the beginning of Jesuit education, the love for learning was integral to leavening society with both knowledge and virtue for the greater good of society.
6. Kolvenbach, The Service of Faith.
7. Watchdog conservative organizations have tried to hold Catholic colleges and universities hostage by using their narrow definition of both university and Catholic.
8. Pope John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, n 12.
   • Endnotes to Ex Corde: [14]. Cf. The Magna Carta of the European Universities, Bologna, Italy, September 18, 1988, "Fundamental Principles." [15]. Cf. Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, n. 59: AAS 58 (1966), p. 1080; Declaration on Catholic Education Gravissimum Educationis, n. 10: AAS 58 (1966), p. 737. "Institutional autonomy" means that the governance of an academic institution is and remains internal to the institution; "academic freedom" is the guarantee given to those involved in teaching and research that, within their specific specialized branch of knowledge and according to the methods proper to that specific area, they may search for the truth wherever analysis and evidence lead them, and may teach and publish the results of this search, keeping in mind the cited criteria, that is, safeguarding the rights of the individual and of society within the confines of the truth and the common good.
9. Ibid. n1. 
10. John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, n38
11. Abbot, S.J. & Gallagher. Gaudium et Spes. n 1. The documents of Vatican II. (New York, NY. Guild Press, 1966)
12. Documents of the 34^th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995). [D2.4]
13. Ibid. [D2. n48] And, Complementary Norms, Part VII, 247 #1, p.273/4.
14. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York, NY: Random House, 1999)
15. Amartya Sen, Globalization and Poverty, an address at the Institute on Globalization at Santa Clara, University, Santa Clara, CA, October, 2002.
16. See Decree 4 of the Thirty-Second General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, An English translation, (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995) [GC32, D4,N69]
17. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., "The Jesuit University in the Light Of the Ignatian Charism," address at the International Meeting of Jesuit Higher Education, Rome (Monte Cucco), May 27, 2001. n 30.
18. Gustavo Gutierrez, "Option for the Poor," in I. Ellacuria and J. Sobrino, eds., Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 235-250 at 236.
19. Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., "The Task of a Christian University," Convocation address at Santa Clara University, June 12, 1982; Una universidad para el pueblo, Diakonía 6:23 (1982), 41-57.
20. Kolvenbach, "The Service of Faith."
21. Kolvenbach, "The Service of Faith."
22. Peter Hans-Kolvenbach, S.J., Address to World Almuni/ae Congress, Kolkata, Poland, January 22, 2003, p. 5.
23. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan provides a point of view about global reality when he stated: If globalization is to succeed, it must succeed for poor and rich alike. It must deliver rights no less than riches. It must provide social justice and equity no less than economic prosperity and enhanced communication....