O\u27Malley, John W.

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Conversations on Jesuit Higher EducationVolume 39 Article 32-1-2011A Characteristic Impulse Toward ExcellenceJohn W. O'MalleyFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversationsRecommended CitationO'Malley, John W. (2011) "A Characteristic Impulse Toward Excellence," Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education: Vol. 39, Article 3.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/vol39/iss1/32 ConversationsAny school worth talking aboutwants to excel. That’s why it hirescoaches to produce winningteams. That’s why it sets up searchcommittees to hire the best facul-ty. That’s why it sends out agentsto recruit the best students, andwhy it spends lavishly to build thesmartest classrooms and the mostattractive residence halls. Strivingfor excellence is hardly a monopoly of Jesuit schools,and we should beware of making silly claims aboutour purchase on it.Nonetheless, we are heirs of a tradition of edu-cation that stretches over four and a half centuries inwhich excellence was a consistent leit-motif, some-times implicit and subtle but always in play. It had itsorigins in the origins of the Jesuit order and especial-ly in the main founder, Saint Ignatius. It got woveninto the ethos of the order and thence into the ethosof the schools. I can point out three sources for it.Though the sources can be distinguished from oneanother, they are so interrelated that they becomeone in their historical manifestations.The first source is the person of Ignatius himself.Like the founders of other orders, he impressed traitsof his personality on the Society of Jesus. He is oftendescribed as a “Renaissance man.” That designationis true up to a point, but we must remember that hewas born into a noble family in which the chivalricideals of the medieval knight valiant were still verymuch alive. Before his religious conversion, hisfavorite reading was stories about great deeds ofsuch heroes, and on his sick bed at Loyola he madeSt. Francis and St. Dominic over into great achieversfor God like the knights of old. As he decided to imi-tate those saints, he determined he too would con-quer souls and do great deeds for God.A CharacteristicImpulse TowardExcellence“We are not born for ourselves alone.”By John O’Malley, S.J. 1O'Malley: A Characteristic Impulse Toward ExcellencePublished by e-Publications@Marquette, 2011Conversations 3As he progressed in the spiritual life, he purifiedthe ideal, but he never lost the desire to achieve“great things” for the king he now served. Thatdesire manifested itself in a number of ways.Especially pertinent for us academics is his decisionwhen he was about thirty-three to go “spend sometime in studies in order to help souls.” In the con-crete, that meant going to a university, which meanthe had first to learn Latin. I find it remarkable thatthis man, who according to sixteenth-century stan-dards was well into middle-age, would sit in a class-room with pre-pubescent boys to try to drum into hisreluctant head the rudiments of Latin and thenmatriculate into a university, where in this period ofhistory students entered in the early teens. Much more remarkable, however, is the list ofuniversities in which he tried to pursue his goal—Alcalá, Salamanca, and, finally, Paris. These rankedamong the “top ten” or even top five on the conti-nent of Europe. In our day he would equivalently betaking on Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard.Ignatius, though academically not particularly wellequipped to do so, not only tackled the best, butgravitated toward them with a characteristic impulsetoward excellence.He was not a great writer, but he produced aclassic of spiritual literature, the Spiritual Exercises.As a classic the book by definition is susceptible,within clear parameters, to a range of interpretations,and in the course of its long shelf-life it has in factundergone a considerable range. The text itself sug-gests and even encourages a certain malleability of per-spective on what is to be accomplished by “doing theExercises.” When they are undertaken in their entirety,however, in their full thirty-day form, the motif of “dis-tinguishing oneself” emerges clear and strong.The Exercises, then, are the second source ofstriving for excellence. They are a distillation of keyelements in the Christian tradition of spirituality butas interpreted by Ignatius. Their full program is clear-ly impregnated with his personality. A key momentin them, as everybody acknowledges, is the contem-plation on “The Kingdom of Christ” placed betweenthe First and the Second Weeks. In the Third Point(n. 97) Ignatius makes clear the level of response tothe call to serve Christ that is expected: “Those whoEquivalently, Ignatius would be studying at Stanford, JohnsHopkins, and Harvard.2Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, Vol. 39, Iss. 1 [2011], Art. 3http://epublications.marquette.edu/conversations/vol39/iss1/3wish to give greater proof of their love and to dis-tinguish themselves...will not only offer themselvesentirely...but will make offerings of greater valueand of more importance...” Here is the first and mostsignificant font of the magis with which we are allso familiar—a code word for excellence.The central moment in the Second Week comeswith the considerations Ignatius provides in prepa-ration for the “election” or major decision the indi-vidual is facing. In those considerations—the“Meditation on the Two Standards,” “On the ThreeKinds of People,” and the “Three Kinds ofHumility”—the same spirit prevails. In the last ofthese, for instance, the “third kind” of humility,which is the one held up as the ideal to strive for, isdescribed as “the most perfect kind.”Much, much more could be said about theExercises in this regard, but the third source is lesswell known and appreciated. It was only whenIgnatius rather late in life moved to Rome with hiscompanions that he encountered Renaissance cul-ture in its home. Almost immediately young menbegan joining the order who were imbued with it.To make a long story short, this led to the momen-tous decision to begin to operate schools that for themost part would operate according to the ideals ofhumanist educators of Renaissance Italy.What attracted the Jesuits to the humanist pro-gram was its student-centered focus, unlike the uni-versities, which were by definition professions-cen-tered. The humanist program was not only student-centered but had quite specific ideas about the kindof graduate it could help produce—somebodydevoted to the public weal, somebody devoted tothe service of others. Cicero had articulated the idealcenturies earlier, “We are not born for ourselvesalone” (De officiis, I.7.22). That pagan ideal theJesuits found more than compatible with theirChristian ideals and made it their own. Centuriesafter Ignatius, Pedro Arrupe almost certainly unwit-tingly paraphrased Cicero when he crystallized theideal in the expression “Men and women for others.”But Cicero proposed an ideal beyond mere serv-ice. He proposed an ideal of self-sacrifice in the pur-suit of justice and right order in society that mighteven cost one’s life. He proposed the ideal of highcourage and magnanimity, of undertaking “not onlygreat deeds and ones useful in the highest degree tothe common good,” but also “those fraught withdanger both to life itself and to many other goodsthat make life worth living (ibid. I.20.66).” This textwas taught in all the Jesuit schools, and many Jesuitstherefore knew passages from it by heart.Most remarkable, however, is thefact that the passage from which Ijust quoted was, without acknowl-edgment, paraphrased and incor-porated into the ConstitutionsIgnatius and his secretary, JuanAlfonso de Polanco, wrote for themembers of the Society of Jesus. The passage occursin Part IX that deals with the superior general andthat includes a list of the qualities he should have. Asis often noted, those qualities are ideals held up notonly for the general but for every Jesuit—by exten-sion for everybody engaged in enterprises in the tra-ditions of the Society. The passage echoes Cicero.The general must possess “magnanimity and fortitudeof soul.” Those qualities will lead him into “initiatinggreat undertakings...and persevering in them withconstancy and not losing courage in the face of con-tradictions, even though they come from persons ofhigh rank and power” and even though they may costhim great suffering and even loss of life. There is something, I believe, in the human spir-it that urges us to do our best, but, as we know alltoo well, we do not always heed that something.Attending a little bit to the tradition of which we area part can perhaps help us pay closer heed andmake it operative in our common enterprise. I haveprovided a scrawny sketch of some elements of thestriving for excellence that is a component of theJesuit tradition and that has manifested itself in somany ways in the history of the order. Every schoolstrives for excellence. So do we. We have a charac-teristic impulse toward it.  ■John W. O’Malley, S.J., author of The First Jesuitsand What Happened at Vatican II, is universityprofessor at Georgetown University. 4 ConversationsDeeds fraught with danger3O'Malley: A Characteristic Impulse Toward ExcellencePublished by e-Publications@Marquette, 2011

A Characteristic Impulse Toward Excellence

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A Characteristic Impulse Toward Excellence

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