Boston College is one of 28 colleges and universities in the United States that were founded by Jesuits. Altogether, there are some 78 institutions of higher education around the world that are associated with Jesuits. There are also 46 high schools and several middle schools sponsored by Jesuits in the U.S. and there are Jesuit secondary schools worldwide. The sites of the World Union of Jesuit Alumni and that of "Famous Jesuit Alumni" are two places to see the products of Jesuit education.
The first Jesuit schools adopted the curriculum of the Renaissance humanist academies--Greek and Latin poetry, oratory, drama, and history--which, when properly taught, was intended to develop an upright, articulate, and committed person. This version of liberal education became the centerpiece of Jesuit pedagogy.
For an overview of this humanism and its setting in the rhetorical tradition see John W. O'Malley, S.J., "How Humanistic is the Jesuit Tradition? From the 1599 Ratio Studiorum to Now," (in Jesuit Education 21: Conference Proceedings on the Future of Jesuit Higher Education, ed. Martin R. Tripole, S.J., Philadelphia: St. Joseph's University Press, 2000, 189-201).
For an overview of the evolution of Jesuit education in the past hundred years, see "A Century of Jesuit Education, 1900-2000," (in Jesuits 2000: Yearbook of the Society of Jesus, 44-62) by Gabriel Codina, S.J., the secretary for education of the Society of Jesus.
The website of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) is a good starting point for information about Jesuit higher education in the United States and for links to information about Jesuit higher education across the world. For information about Jesuit high schools, see the website for the Jesuit Secondary Education Association (JSEA). The Directory of Jesuit Education, containing the names and addresses of the persons responsible for Jesuit education throughout the world, is now available online.
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The Idea of a Jesuit University
Everything that has been said above about "The Idea of a Catholic University" might as readily be said about Jesuit universities. In addition, colleges and universities that have been influenced by the Jesuit educational tradition--itself formed by the spirituality of Ignatius Loyola--will exhibit characteristics that are typical of this way of embodying the Christian spirit.
Many writers have tried their hand at summarizing the characteristics of Jesuit education. A good place to start is two addresses given by Very Rev. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., superior general of the Society of Jesus, at the 1989 celebration of the founding of Georgetown--and therefore of Jesuit education in the U.S--exactly 200 years earlier. The first was devoted to the broader influence of Jesuit high schools and colleges in the context of U.S. culture; the second focused in greater detail on Jesuit colleges and universities.
There is a good picture of Jesuit higher education in a gathering of excerpts from the documents of the 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, assembled by Joseph Daoust, S.J., currently president of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.
The Jesuit Community at Boston College in 1994 issued a document that captured Jesuit education in six statements, "Jesuits at Boston College: BC's Mission, Jesuits' Mission: Six Propositions for a Conversation."
Five characteristics were enough for Robert A. Mitchell, S.J., who served as president of the University of Detroit-Mercy and subsequently of LeMoyne College, to sum up Jesuit education in "What It's All About: The Five Traits of Jesuit Education."
Five also sufficed for Loyola University, Chicago in a page from the university's web site devoted to the defining characteristics of Jesuit education.
On the other hand, Stephen C. Rowntree, S.J., who taught philosophy at Loyola University, New Orleans, and now teaches it at the Jesuit house of studies in Harare, Zimbabwe, found it took ten theses to convey an understanding of Jesuit education. See "Ten Theses on Jesuit Higher Education" (America, 28 May 1994).
Three points sufficed for Frank H. T. Rhodes, then president of Cornell University, to identify the foundational principles of Jesuit education in the address he delivered at the 1989 Georgetown celebrations, "The Mission and Ministry of Jesuits in Higher Education," (America, 5 August 1989).
A very useful view of the fundamental orientations of early Jesuit education, readily translatable to the contemporary scene, is an article by John W. O'Malley, "How the First Jesuits Became Involved in Education," (in The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400th Anniversary Perspectives, ed. Vincent J. Duminuco, S.J., Fordham University Press, 2000).
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Ignatius 
came rather unexpectedly to the decision to accept an invitation to establish the first Jesuit school for lay students (at Messina in 1548) but once he made the decision other Jesuit schools quickly opened in Palermo, Vienna, Rome, and elsewhere. By Ignatius' death in 1556, some 35 were in existence. Two hundred years later there were more than 800 Jesuit schools in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. They constituted the largest system of education before the modern era of public schooling and the only truly international one. Responding to the criticism that instruction in these schools was haphazardly organized, Jesuit educators asked for a document that would be a comprehensive "plan of studies" that would serve as a guide. After a number of trial versions, the authoritative Ratio Studiorum, to give it its common title, was issued in 1599.
Not a tract of educational philosophy, the Ratio was a compilation of directives for the conduct of each official in a Jesuit school. Nonetheless, a theory can be read into the details of each job. Discussions of the principles of Jesuit education embodied in the Ratio abound. Here is a brief list of useful articles:
Gabriel Codina, S.J., "Our Way of Proceeding in Education: The Ratio Studiorum," a commemorative essay on the Ratio Studiorum that appeared in Educatio S.J. (May 1999), a publication of the Secretariat for Education of the Society of Jesus in Rome.
An introduction to the Ratio Studiorum by John W. O'Malley, S.J.
The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia article on "Ratio Studiorum" with a brief survey of its history.
Claude Pavur, S.J., "The Document that Got Specific About Jesuit Education: The Great Ratio at 400"
Fordham University organized a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the 1599 Ratio. The papers from that conference were published in The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400th Anniversary Perspectives, ed. Vincent J. Duminuco, S.J. (Fordham 2000).
The Digital Library Initiative of Boston College Libraries prepared a web site that has useful links to material about the Ratio, including the translated text of the Ratio, a historical essay by John O'Malley, S.J., and materials related to a former exhibition held at The Burns Library at Boston College that highlighted early editions of the Ratio: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/ulib/digi/ratio/ratiohome.html.
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When Jesuit representatives from around the world gathered in 1974 for the 32nd General Congregation, they looked closely at the situation of so many people in the countries where they worked, people who lived in poverty and oppression, who were homeless or refugees, or who lacked the most basic human rights. In the spirit of Vatican II they also looked at the foundations of their own vocation, in the Gospel summons to "help people" in their need. The result was a surprising document, challenging Jesuits to take as their central mission "the service of faith of which the promotion of justice is a constitutive element." Faith and justice, the Congregation said, should be linked in everything Jesuits do, especially in the fields of theological reflection, communications media, social action, and education.
The new vision was controversial. Critics outside the Society said it was often too closely allied with liberation theology and Marxism. Within the Society, some Jesuits in universities and schools felt threatened by an emphasis that seemed to diminish the value of study and teaching. But slowly the connection between faith and justice became central to Jesuits' way of thinking and working and to the style of the educational instituti
ons in which they worked.
The vision of faith and justice proposed by GC 32 has been affirmed by subsequent General Congregations of the Jesuits. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the original document, Santa Clara University in 2000 convened a national conference on justice in Jesuit higher education. On that occasion the Superior General of the Jesuits, Very Rev. Peter Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., restated the original commitment in terms that posed a new challenge for a new century.
Among the many discussions of justice and the Jesuit university, one especially worth reading is Michael Buckley's thesis that a contemporary understanding of humanism entails sensitivity to human suffering and to social injustice. See Michael Buckley, S.J., "The University and the Concern for Justice: The Search for a New Humanism," (in Thought 57, June 1982, 219-233).
A short, clear exposition of the scriptural basis for a concept of justice, is Richard J. Clifford, S.J., "Justice in the Bible," (in Jesuit Education 21: Conference Proceedings on the Future of Jesuit Higher Education, ed. Martin R. Tripole, S.J., Philadelphia: St. Joseph's University Press, 2000, 113-116).
John R. Donahue, S.J., in What Does the Lord Require? A Bibliographical Essay on the Bible and Social Justice (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2001) provides a useful critical bibliography on this topic.
Blueprint for Social Justice is published monthly by the Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice at Loyola University of New Orleans and focuses on one social justice topic each month.
The Lluis Espinal Foundation is a Study Center under the initiative of the Society of Jesus in Catalunya. It consists of a team of university professors and experts in theology and different social and human sciences, who are concerned with the increasingly important cultural interrelations between faith and justice. Their collection "Christianisme I Justicia" offers some of their findings.
The Center of Concern in Washington, D.C. maintains a valuable website for Justice resources.
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Student culture at Jesuit universities, and particularly Boston College, is so marked with an ethos of service that it sometimes seems to be the defining characteristic of Jesuit undergraduate education. There is ample precedent for this, first of all in Ignatian spirituality, which from its beginnings saw that becoming conscious of the gifts we have received from God, and seeing the vivid example of Jesus, we would inevitably be led to ask what we can do in return. This insight leads inevitably to the desire to join in the work of Jesus by responding to the needs of our fellow men and women.The centrality of justice in Jesuit thinking over the past three decades provided a further framework for the development of the concept of service. In a 1973 address to graduates of Jesuit schools from around the world, Pedro Arrupe, S.J., superior general of the Jesuits, said that the goal of Jesuit education was to produce "men for others." This soon became one of the best known slogans of Jesuit education.
Nonetheless, thoughtful observers have never been happy with the tendency to identify service programs as the essential element of Jesuit education. Students at most elite private colleges and universities engage in service in huge numbers.
And merely volunteering some time need not produce significant changes in students' attitudes or behaviors. The quality of the service program seems to matter more than the number of hours spent in service.
Prof. Patrick J. Byrne, of BC's Philosophy Department, has explored this topic in an important article, "Paradigms on Justice and Love" that appeared in Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education (Spring 1995). Simply put, his thesis is that service programs produce significant change in students in direct proportion to the quality of reflection and analysis that accompany the service activity--reflection on both the socio-political causes of the problems and on the personal learning that one experiences in the act of serving. These, of course, are the distinctive features of the more than thirty-year-old Pulse Program at BC, of which Prof. Byrne was one of the founders. In varying degrees, they also characterize the subsequent service programs that are so well known at BC--4 Boston, Urban Immersion, Appalachia Volunteers, and other programs.
Inter-religious and Intercultural Dialogue
As Jesuit missionaries spread around the world in the 16th and 17th centuries, they encountered Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, and other religions of the world and initiated a long tradition of dialogue that was sometimes contentious but surprisingly often was respectful and mutually instructive. In the late 20th century, in the aftermath of Vatican II, and in an increasingly globalized culture, the need for inter-religious understanding became even more evident. The most recent General Congregation of the Society in its 5th decree, "Our Mission and Interreligious Dialogue," made it a priority for Jesuits to engage in inter-religious dialogue, saying "To be religious today is to be interreligious in the sense that a positive relationship with believers of other faiths is a requirement in a world of religious pluralism."
In a separate decree, "Our Mission and Culture," the Congregation noted that the experience of Christians today resembles the situation in which the early church was shaped by Hellenistic culture. "A similar process is going on today in many parts of the world, as representatives of indigenous cultures, the great religious traditions, and critical modernity bring insights which the Church must consider as part of the dialogue between Christian experience and the diversity of other experiences. In this way, the Church is recovering, in our times, the creativity shown in the early centuries and in the best of its evangelizing."
Francis Clooney, S.J. has been one of the significant voices in the contemporary development of Jesuit thinking about inter-religious dialogue. In addition to his scholarly work in the area of comparative theology, he has written on religious diversity and dialogue in the Catholic university. See "Goddess in the Classroom: Is the Promotion of Religious Diversity a Dangerous Idea?". He coordinates U.S. Jesuit activity in this area. There is a useful website ("Mission and Interreligious Dialogue") devoted to the history of Jesuit inter-religious dialogue, documents, articles by individuals, current activities, and issues of the Dialogue Bulletin from the Jesuit Curia in Rome.
An interesting approach to the role of inter-religious and intercultural dialogue can be found in a paper written by John McDade, a Scottish Jesuit theologian, for the 1999 conference on Jesuit higher education at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia ("The Jesuit Mission and Dialogue with Culture," in Jesuit Education 21: Conference Proceedings on the Future of Jesuit Higher Education, ed. Martin R. Tripole; Saint Joseph's University Press, 2000, 56-66). McDade quotes the remark of an English Jesuit, Peter Hackett: "Christianity lacks an anthropology of its own, and always has to learn from other sources what it means to be human." McDade suggests that Christianity is always involved in a double activity, proclaiming to human culture the significance of the unique reality of the divine Word made flesh but also discovering in dialogue with human culture a richer account of what it means to be human. It not only draws on other anthropologies, it needs them to understand itself. "Now, if this is right, Christian truth cannot eliminate what is outside its territory without undermining itself: the non-Christian other to which we relate is the other that we need in order to be ourselves." (62)
An article from Company Magazine, "Changing Faces", focuses on the promotion of unity on Jesuit campuses, where a generation of students has grown up in culturally plural world.
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As one of its self-chosen tasks General Congregation 34 set out to clarify how the Jesuit mission is s
trengthened by women and to expand on the precedent set by General Congregation 33. The resulting document, "Jesuits and the Situation of Women in Church and Civil Society," calls for Jesuits to "align themselves in solidarity" with women and acknowledges courageous steps taken by positive reformers in the women's movement.
This solidarity manifests itself in ministry of all types, but is crucially at work in Catholic higher education. Here, against the background of history, post-Enlightenment pluralism, and twentieth-century humanitarian reform, feminist thinkers and theologians work to clarify the roles of women and the Church. Some of the most insightful and fruitful dialogue comes from these grounds. In her article "Feminist and Catholic Values: the View from the Professional Schools," Mary Brabeck, affirms that the Jesuit mission and the project of feminism are compatible because of a commitment to justice. She argues that despite this commitment, justice is not necessarily partitioned equally, and women still become isolated in the academy.
Lisa Cahill, professor in Boston College's Theology Department identifies such problems at the interpersonal and institutional level in her article "Women and Men Working Together in Jesuit Institutions of Higher Learning." Noting that the Jesuit order has its history in structures that have oppressed women, she also sees a commitment to justice as the promise of improving partnership. She suggests that, because of their commitment to justice, Jesuits are in a ready position to create an educational environment that respects women.
Jesuits, Lay Colleagues, and the Future
Most Catholic universities in the U.S. were founded n the 19th century by members of male and female religious 
congregations (Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, Augustinians, etc.) and these congregations provided large numbers of faculty and all the top administrators of their institutions until quite recently. Since the mid-sixties this situation has been rapidly changing. Rare is the Catholic college or university today where more than one or two members of the founding congregation hold positions of authority. These institutions are now staffed, led, and governed almost exclusively by lay men and women. This situation raises fascinating questions about how the mission of a Catholic university will be understood and transmitted when the influential voices no longer come from a relatively small core of individuals formed in the spirituality and traditions of a religious congregation but come instead from a large number of men and women of varying experiences who claim a stake in the identity of the institution. A good place to start considering some of the issues is an essay by a faculty member with long experience of studying and working in Jesuit education, "From Omaha to Philadelphia and Beyond: Jesuit-Lay Cooperation in 21st Century Higher Education" by Brennan O'Donnell (in Jesuit Education 21: Conference Proceedings on the Future of Jesuit Higher Education, ed. Martin R. Tripole; Saint Joseph's University Press, 2000).
The 34th Congregation of the Jesuits produced a landmark document, "Cooperation with the Laity in Mission." This document notes that ministry in the Church is increasingly becoming ministry led by lay people and makes the startling proposal that Jesuits should consider their own primary work to be the support of lay colleagues in their ministry.
Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has written a pastoral letter about lay ministry in the church that offers an interesting glimpse of the larger ecclesial context in which these university developments are occurring: "Pastoral Letter on Lay Ministry" (in Origins, 4 May 2000).
J. A. Appleyard, S.J., and Howard Gray, S.J. discuss the connection between lay leadership in the university and the recent conversation about understanding mission: "Tracking the Mission and Identity Question: Three Decades of Inquiry and Three Models of Interpretation."
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