Paris & Jerusalem

Paris & Jerusalem: better use or towards a higher purpose. The Ratio Studiorum To use a modern phrase, conversion in the Ignatian Year “upcycles” your gifts. It adds meaning and value. As it was with Saints I have put the best argument for my Paul and Augustine understanding into a book that came and many others, out in 2019, In the School of Ignatius: so it was with Saint Studious Zeal and Devoted Learning. Ignatius. In terms of his relationship to My focus is not merely on history the Ratio studiorum, or theory but on those things I would like to most needed in this revolutionary, highlight that even contentious, and confused moment in world history. before his conversion he knew the power and importance of Letters. CLAUDE PAVUR, S.J. ’70 Here I am using the word “Letters” Institute for Advanced to mean not epistolary literature Jesuit Studies but rather all kinds of significant Boston College written communication; it might be Pavur is a graduate of the Class of 1970. He serves on the staff of the academic or poetic or historical or oratorical or spiritual or philosophical Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at or theological writing. Sometimes Boston College, and he specializes in the “Letters” is used in the broadest way translation of Latin documents relating to mean education itself: if you are a to the Society of Jesus. “person of letters,” you have gotten an education. As a courtier, a man of the royal court, Ignatius knew the hat does the pilgrim importance of documents of many Ignatius, his mind set on types: deeds, charters, wills, official Jerusalem, have to do with royal decrees, official petitions, the Society’s official plan records of all kinds. He himself had of studies, the Ratio studiorum? That learned to read and write, and he document appeared in 1599—over 40 developed a special interest in the years after Ignatius’s death (1556), so creative literature connected with most people tend not to make much of his late medieval world of castles and a connection between it and Ignatius, knights. He would have also known nor between it and the original idea of the importance of Scripture and of the Society. In reality, the Ratio the patrimony of ancient texts and the studiorum is deeply connected to Church’s traditions. the stream of Ignatian and Jesuit It is precisely because Letters were spirituality, and to miss this point is to so real and so important to Ignatius miss something absolutely essential. that the books he was given during his

This year we are recalling recovery from the battle at Pamplona Ignatius’s great conversion moment had such an impact and made such a 500 years ago, in 1521. Conversion difference. Ignatius’s convalescence often comes about through crisis, reading triggered his imagination, such as Ignatius’s injury, but it usually which engaged his affects and his deep builds on what is already there. It longings, and these put him in touch turns previously developed gifts to with the spiritual movements that were leading him to God.

This moment in Ignatius’s life helps me to make a very important point for Jesuit education today: content matters. Elsewhere I say that the curriculum carries the mission. Where you turn your attention, what you study, when, and how, with what focus, with what inner uptake, response, reflection, whose voice you are listening carefully to—all of that is crucially significant. It is not enough to become a technical expert in something; the kind of learning that really matters is a living, inspiring flame that involves your heart and soul. In the conversation about curriculum there must be the right matter, delivery, and reception, operating within a well-fashioned plan under competent direction.

Ignatius’s interest in Letters was already there at the start. It shaped his journey, and his journey shaped the Society of Jesus, which from the beginning conscientiously kept records, letters, assessments, catalogs, accounts, and histories concerning the compañía. In fact, the Society’s membership went on to produce “Letters” that distinguished its external profile in an astonishing number of publications. Even before he had gone to formal studies, Ignatius himself had respect for Letters and believed in their relevance for the spiritual life. His conversion was in 1521; by 1522, he was becoming an author.

The Spiritual Exercises reveals how much Ignatius valued organization. It is a very structured work and Ignatius insisted on the order. Do not do second-week material in the first week. Things happen in sequence. There is a larger plan to follow. Accomplish each step as fully as possible on the way. Each meditation also follows a recurring structure. Already we see a sensibility that appears significantly in what will become the Ratio studiorum, a plan of studies that lays out a specific order and coverage, even if within that scheme much variety is possible.

In any case, Ignatius’s sense of order was reinforced by his experience of university studies. He tells us that he had jumbled everything up when he was studying in Spain, but when he got to Paris, he forced himself to start over and do everything thoroughly and in order. He always wanted that kind of education for his followers. He praised the “ordo Parisiensis,” the Parisian order (or “arrangement” or “sequencing”). It was not used everywhere in Paris, but it was a distinctive approach Ignatius experienced there, one that was especially productive, expedient, and student-centered: it had a sequence of grades and examinations to admit students to higher levels. There was stress on student activity, with a humanistic curriculum in the context of medieval scholastic structures. This emphasis was entered into the primitive Jesuit DNA, so to speak, as major step toward the Ratio studiorum.

Ignatius’s conversion was defined not only by an intense introspection and a concern to find forgiveness and to reform his life, but also by a lasting impulse to be of service to souls for the greater glory of God. Thus, studies were ultimately “ implicated in the logic of his conversion.

Returning from the Holy Land, Ignatius had already decided to study, with the idea of perhaps entering some religious order. He applied himself to Latin for two years in Barcelona, up to the point at which he could go on to university work. In Spain, at the universities of Alcalà and Salamanca, concerned Church officials made him realize more pointedly that even if he were correct in what he was saying in his spiritual direction of people, there had to be instruction and vetting and official recognition. In the Church’s eyes, it was not enough for him to go out and naively help souls on the basis of his immediate instincts and personal experience, righteous and mystical though they were. At first Ignatius felt that the authorities were unfairly interfering with his own apostolate, but the choice that he made was to accede to their understanding and to adopt it for his whole converted life. Though his first impulse was to be a spiritual activist, to run out into the streets and converse with people directly and honestly on the basis of what had happened to him, he eventually went the slow, long, and thorough way. So eleven months in Manresa were followed by eleven years in studies. Ignatius took up these studies as a mature man with few resources and with certain ailments from his injuries and all his penitential practices. He went to the most demanding university of his day, the University of Paris. He took one of its most difficult exams. This entire academic career unfolded against the immediate backdrop of the Reformation. What one thought and confessed was crucially important for the salvation of one’s soul.

Old wisdom, if it is really wisdom, also has contemporary relevance that we would ignore to our detriment.

How can one attain to a higher level without rising there from lower levels? We cannot discard what has been called “the Western tradition,” a mega-cultural matrix that incorporates many world-historical advances and is open to yet more. It includes not only modern and contemporary greats but also Ignatius and Thomas Aquinas and Augustine and Paul and the Gospels. The Holy Spirit has been active all along. Despite failings in large streams of cultural history, the Spirit’s workings cannot be ignored. When applying the hermeneutic of suspicion, one must also apply the hermeneutic of salvation history. Ignatius’s conversion led him to fashion the Society of Jesus out of a group of fellow students at the University of Paris. They had the essential devotion, but they also had “Letters,” that is, an education. The chief aims of the Society of Jesus— the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine and the propagation and defense of the faith—can only be pursued by people who have the right studies behind them. Doctrine cannot be communicated Educational justice is giving students what they without teaching, and faith cannot be need to approach full maturity and to become more defended without capable of making well-informed, well-reasoned instruction. As judgments about the common good. such, the Society of Jesus was always invested in studies. Even in the Constitutions, our foundational guiding text which emanated from or through Ignatius himself, academic formation takes up almost a quarter of the work. It probably soon became clear that even with this focus that a more thorough document had to be produced, one that was too extensive to include in the text of the Constitutions. We also know that Ignatius wanted a universally valid plan that would be used in all the schools of the Society. He did not simply leave the schools alone to go their own ways. What the very earliest Society did

not realize was that it would soon be managing an expansive cultural/ educational mission. Nor did it know that this work would to a large extent come to characterize it, supply it with abundant vocations, and become a great responsibility entrusted to it by the Church.

Today, rather than seek after particular political or narrow ends, we might do far better to attend to educational justice, which supports many different forms of social justice involvement. Educational justice is giving students what they need to approach full maturity and to become more capable of making well-informed, well-reasoned judgments about the common good. This involves a comprehensive vision of justice that includes but extends more widely and more deeply than any specific political intervention. Certainly flourishing family life and religious life are essential to a full Christian concept of social justice. Family and faith are now greatly challenged—and likewise education, particularly Christian education in a secularizing age. We therefore have work to do. On the basis of any historically informed understanding of the Society of Jesus, it is indeed our work.

Neither a secularizing consumeristic nor an atheistic social engineering does justice to the human spirit. Our cultural/ educational apostolate certainly could be an important avenue for deeper understanding, reconciliation, and solidarity, as it might allow for a more dispassionate, in-depth, wide-ranging, balanced, and self-critical approach to our common inherited problems and resources. For their part, popes have been stressing the value of the educational apostolate for a long time, and education is an apostolate inevitably connected with culture. “[Education] is the concentrated epitome of a culture,” says Henri Marrou, “and as such is inseparable from the form of that culture.”

I will conclude by re-stating the two most important ideas of In the School of Ignatius: (1) The Ratio studiorum is a foundational document for the Society. (2) We cannot really have an adequate idea of Ignatius or of the Society of Jesus until we understand the spirituality of docta pietas (learnèd devotion) that not only exists in them but is integral to their charism. We will always have the historical and the heavenly Jerusalem in our hearts, but we also must keep in mind the virtues and benefits of the studia that absorbed Ignatius at the University of Paris—the ones that he used in his apostolic service and the ones that he legislated for both the Society’s schools and its scholastics in his Constitutions. May the Spirit guide us in our discernments and in our operations, ad majorem Dei gloriam. 

BLUE JAY SPIRIT

A SPIRITED WINTER HOMECOMING DANCE

On Dec. 8, the Jesuit Student Council hosted a homecoming dance for the history books. For the first time in decades, the dance took place on Jesuit's campus. From the illuminated tent to the ice sculpted Jayson, the event instilled Blue Jay Spirit in all attendees.

A Warm Welcome to Jesuit’s 11 New Faculty & Staff

Jesuit welcomed 11 new faculty and staff members to the Blue Jay family in the fall. Starting in the guidance department, Grace Delaney joined the staff as the new Health and Wellness Counselor. Delaney has a B.A. from Moody Bible Institute Chicago, an M.A. in counseling from University of Holy Cross, and an M.A. from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Before arriving at Jesuit, she worked as a substance abuse recovery counselor and an adolescent counselor at Jefferson Parish Juvenile Services. She also provided counseling services to community members through Catholic Charities and the counseling center at the University of Holy Cross.

Priscilla Felix also joined the counseling department. Felix, who was born in New York, possesses over 15 years of college counseling experience. She carries a B.S. from SUNY Plattsburgh and an M.S. from Mercy College.

The math department added Mr. Jeff Miraflor, S.J., a graduate of Jesuit High School Tampa, to its staff. Miraflor has a B.A. in philosophy from Fordham University. After earning his degree, he taught at local elementary and middle schools and is currently teaching geometry and algebra while directing the choir.

Across the aisle, the English department welcomed Brett Dipuma ’14. He possesses a B.A. in English and theology from Wheeling Jesuit University and an M.A. in English from Duquesne University. He teaches English II and IV while coaching swimming.

Also new in the English department is fellow alumnus Brian Credo ’11. He received his B.A. in classics with a supplementary major in medieval studies from the University of Notre Dame and an M.A. in classical studies from the University of Pennsylvania. At Jesuit he teaches Latin I, Latin IV AP, and Greek II and moderates the Classics Society.

Travis Kieff ’17 joined the science department. Kieff graduated in mechanical engineering from the University of New Orleans and was an assembly intern at ION Geophysical. He teaches physics, Intro to Engineering Design, and Intro to Robotics.

Mark Johns, who is currently pursuing an M.A. in theology from the Oblate School of Theology, joined the theology department after receiving his B.A. in philosophy from Conception Seminary College.

Alumnus Eli Larriviere ’18 returns to Jesuit with a degree in sports administration from Louisiana State University. He currently teaches Fine Arts II and P.E. and coaches wrestling.

Athletically, Jesuit is thrilled to welcome three new faculty members. Leading the Blue and White on the gridiron is experienced coach Ryan Manale. He also joins the school’s faculty while serving alongside Joseph Latino as an assistant athletic director. Manale was the head coach at De La Salle for 10 years and an assistant coach at Rummel for 13 years.

Joining his staff is Daniel DeVun ’08. DeVun received a B.S. from Northwestern State University and coached football at Jesuit from 20112016. He then moved on to De La Salle, where he taught social studies and theology in addition to coaching football from 2017-2020 and track from 2018-2020. DeVun teaches world geography and P.E. while assisting the football program.

Lastly, Chris Jones joined the faculty as a P.E. teacher and the football staff as the running backs coach. Originally from Cairo, California, Jones achieved a B.A. in social science and spent the last nine years at De La Salle in the P.E. department while coaching football and track. 

New faculty and staff pose for a photo at the 2021 faculty in-service day. (top row, left to right) Jeff Miraflor, S.J., Eli Larriviere ’18, Travis Kieff ’17, Brett Dipuma ’14, and Mark Johns (bottom row, left to right) Priscilla Felix, Grace Delaney, Daniel DeVun ’08, Chris Jones, and Brian Credo ’11

A Return to Tradition

Jesuit Takes Victory in Historic Rivalry

For the fourth consecutive year, the Golden Football remained to Carrollton & Banks. Playing one of their best games of the year against Holy Cross, the Jays left

Tad Gormley Stadium as victors by a score of 51-7, the largest margin in the series for the past 29 years. The

Jays now hold a 60-40-1 advantage in the series. All signs point toward an exhilarating 2022 matchup that will commemorate the 100th year of this historic rivalry.

The matchup continues to leave an impact on fans and players alike with festivities and traditions that occur before and during the contest. Before the game, thousands outside Tad

Gormley gathered around the pots that alumni and parents tended throughout the morning while engaging in conversation.

As kickoff neared, the Jesuit band paraded around the in-stadium track to a rapt audience. Once the stadium settled, the historic game began.

Halftime featured another tradition: the honoring of the Distinguished

Military Alumnus and the Legend of the Game. For the 2021 Rivalry Game, the Distinguished Military Alumnus was Arthur “Dooty” Patron ’51, and the Legend of the Game was John

Hazard ’83.

After college Patron entered the naval flight training program in

Pensacola, where he earned his “wings of gold” and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine

Corps. His four-and-a-half-year stint of active service at the end of the

Korean conflict included deployments to Japan, the Philippines, and

Okinawa.

Hazard, the Legend of the Game, played defensive tackle for the Blue Jays his freshman through senior year, which included the 1980 Jesuit-Holy Cross meeting in the Superdome. Leading the Jays as team captain, he was named to all-district, allmetro, all-state, and all-American teams and was a starter on the 1981 district championship team. After moving on to play football at Louisiana State University, he was honored as academic all-SEC, second team all-SEC, and honorable mention all-American. He was a team captain when LSU won the SEC Championship in 1986 and played in a Liberty Bowl and two Sugar Bowls.

Two students were also honored for their commitment to service and their academic prowess. The 2021 Royal Honda Community Service Award was awarded to senior Jacob Caldarera, and the 2021 Scholar-Athlete award was presented to senior Jack Gasquet.

Reflecting on the on-field and offfield spectacles, first-year coach Ryan Manale understood the importance of all the pieces that went into the historic matchup.

“What a great environment and game to be a part of,” Manale said. “It was great to have the Jays on top and for our student athletes to experience that game.” 

THE GIZZARD THE GIZZARD & THE GONG & THE GONG

For every era, there comes an image with which it is intimately associated. For every movement, a symbol synonymous with its very essence. The Gizzard Gong was not created to be an instrument. It was not created to produce humor or to celebrate a victory for the Jays. Like any hero, the Gizzard Gong was born to start a revolution. To usher in a new era of wealth and prosperity at Jesuit High School. To bring forth a renewed spirit of zeal and camaraderie to Carrollton & Banks.

For every era, there comes an image with which it is intimately associated. For every movement, a symbol synonymous with its very essence. The Gizzard Gong was not created to be an instrument. It was not created to produce humor or to celebrate a victory for the Jays. Like any hero, the Gizzard Gong was born to start a revolution. To usher in a new era of wealth and prosperity at Jesuit High School. To bring forth a renewed spirit of zeal and camaraderie to Carrollton and Banks.

And guess what? The Gizzard Gong has done exactly that. It has The Gizzard Gong has done exactly that. It has ignited the ignited the spark to foster in a new era of Blue Jay dominance. Since spark to foster in a new era of Blue Jay dominance. Since its its introduction, it has led a renaissance of success at Carrollton and introduction, it has inspired a renaissance of success at Carrollton

Banks: countless National Merit Scholars, a Cross Country State & Banks: countless National Merit Scholars, a cross country state

Championship, a Swimming State Championship, a Football State championship, a swimming state championship, a football state

Runner-Up, and much more to come. This revolution is very much runner-up, and much more to come. This revolution is very much alive in the hearts of Blue Jays throughout the world—it echoes alive in the hearts of Blue Jays throughout the world. It echoes with with excitement through the halls of the school, and it resounds in excitement through the halls of the school, and it resounds in the the courtyard with the loud chatter of school spirit. The Gizzard courtyard with the loud chatter of school spirit. The Gizzard Gong

Gong has lit the fire of the revolution, and it is up to us to tend its has lit the fire of the revolution, and it is up to us to tend its flames. flames.  —Senior Jackson Gasquet, Student Council Treasurer—Senior Jackson Gasquet, Student Council Treasurer