A Jesuit Inspiration
Michael C. McCarthy, S.J.
At the age of 19 I left college at Stanford to become a Jesuit. It’s not that I didn’t love being a student there; I did. But somehow it wasn’t enough. By contrast, the Jesuit high school I attended in San Francisco stressed a very clear educational objective: to form men and women for others. We learned, among other things, that an education not oriented toward justice for others was a farce. Despite Stanford’s extraordinary resources and possibilities, I missed the clarity of purpose. I left to enter the Jesuit order. Never have I regretted the decision.
That was in 1983. Since then I have spent most of my life in higher education. But as much as I love teaching and scholarship, my relationship with academia has been an awkward one. In many respects I find academic culture to have the same flaw that Catholic clerical culture does: the tendency to turn in on itself and guard its privileges rather than spend its energies in humbly serving the world.
Occasionally, however, great leaders rise up and challenge us to be more.
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