Ignatius of Loyola and his first companions, who founded the Society of Jesus in 1540, did not originally intend to establish schools. But before long they were led to start colleges for the education of the young men who flocked to join their religious order. And in 1547 Ignatius was asked to open a school for young lay men.

By the time of his death (1556), there were 35 such colleges (comprising today's secondary school and the first year or two of college). By the time the order was suppressed in 1773, the number had grown to more than 800-all part of a system of integrated humanistic education that was international and brought together in a common enterprise men from various languages and cultures. These Jesuits were distinguished mathematicians, astronomers and physicists; linguists and dramatists; painters and architects; philosophers and theologians; even what today would be
called cultural anthropologists.

These developments are not surprising; the order's founders were all University of Paris graduates, and Ignatius' spirituality taught Jesuits to search for God "in all things." After the order was restored (1814), however, Jesuit schools and scholars in Europe never regained the prominence they had had. Besides, they were largely involved in the resistance to modern thought and culture that characterized Catholic intellectual life through the 19th century and beyond.

In other parts of the world, especially in the United States, the 19th century saw a new birth of Jesuit education. Twenty-one of today's 28 U.S. Jesuit colleges and universities were founded during that century. These schools served the needs of an immigrant people, enabling them to move up in the world while maintaining their Catholic belief and practice in a frequently hostile Protestant environment. After World War II, U.S. Jesuit higher education (as American higher education generally) experienced enormous growth and democratization under the G.I. Bill. Significantly, this growth entailed a shift from a largely Jesuit faculty to one made up increasingly of lay men (and more recently women). Further, Vatican Council II (1962-1965) released a great burst of energy in the Catholic church and Jesuit order for engagement with the modern world, including its intellectual life. Finally, Jesuit schools in the 1970s and 1980s moved to professionalize through the hiring of new faculty with highly specialized training and terminal degrees from the best graduate schools.

These sweeping changes of the last 50 years have brought U.S. Jesuit schools to the present situation where they face crucial questions. Will so-called Jesuit institutions of higher education simply merge with mainstream American academe and thereby lose any distinctiveness and reason for existing-or will they have the creativity to become more distinctive? While taking the best from American education and culture, will they still offer an alternative in the spirit of their Jesuit heritage? Will they foster the integration of knowledge-or will specialization reign alone and the fragmentation of knowledge continue? Will they relate learning to the Transcendent, to God-or will spiritual experience be allowed to disappear from consideration except in isolated departments of theology? While developing the mind, surely, will they also develop a global, cross-cultural imagination and a compassionate heart to recognize and work for the common good, especially for bettering the lot of the poor and voiceless [see "Men and Women for Others"/"Whole Persons of Solidarity" and "The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice"]-or will the dominant values present in them be self-interest and the "bottom line"?

Jesuits and Jesuit Education: A Primer
Jesuit Community at Boston College

A collection of discipline-specific business resources from the Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at Xavier University

The Woodstock Theological Center
an independent nonprofit institute at Georgetown University

A method of prayer that Ignatius of Loyola taught in his Spiritual Exercises.  He considered it the most important a person could do each day.  It takes only a few minutes. A contemporary adaptation of Ignatius' teaching broadens the traditional "Examination of Conscience" (preparation for confession) into the "Examination of Consciousness."  As presented by Creighton U. theologian Dennis Hamm, SJ, this prayer has five steps:  (1) Pray for light to understand and appreciate the past day.  (2) Review the day in thanksgiving.  (3) Review the feelings in the replay of the day.  (4) Choose one of those feelings (positive or negative) and pray from it.  (5) Look toward tomorrow.

Examen and Ignatian Prayer

The Examen: A Daily Prayer