The "Continuous Quality Improvement" term traditionally used by Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits, suggesting the spirit of generous excellence in which ministry should be carried on. (See A.M.D.G.-"For the greater glory of God.")

Rethinking Magis
Trudelle Thomas, Xavier University

On November 16, 1989, shortly after 1:00 a.m., six Jesuit priests at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA) were assassinated along with their housekeeper and her daughter by an Atlacatl commando unit of the El Salvadoran military.

Those killed in the attack were:

• Ignacio Ellacuria, 59, rector of the Central American University, native of the Basque region of Spain
• Ignacio Martin-Baro, 50, vice-rector, founder and director of the Public Opinion Institute
• Segundo Montes, 56, a sociology professor and Jesuit priest who did work on Salvadoran refugees in the United States
• Arnando Lopez, 53, a philosophy professor and Jesuit priest
• Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, 71, a native Salvadoran Jesuit priest, co-founder of the UCA, and director of a university-affiliated center for humanitarian assistance
• Juan Ramon Moreno, 56, a Spanish-born Jesuit priest and director of two university-related programs
• Julia Elba Ramos, 42, housekeeper and cook, and Cecilia Ramos, her daughter, 15

The UCA Jesuits had been vocal advocates of social change in El Salvador. For this reason, the El Salvadoran military considered the priests to be "intellectual godfathers" of the FMLN guerilla movement and therefore a threat to the government.

In addition, the priests were accused by the El Salvadoran military of being communists, supporting the FMLN movement, and hiding weapons at the University. None of these accusations were ever substantiated.

In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution 761, "Remembering and commemorating the lives and work of [the Jesuit Fathers, their housekeeper and her daughter] on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of their deaths at the University of Central America José Simeón Cañas in San Salvador, El Salvador." The resolution was sponsored by Rep. James McGovern (D) of Massachusetts.

Hear how Dr. Gillian Ahlgren's approach to Jesuit education was influenced by this event

Universidad Centroamericana's webpage dedicated to the martyrs

In a now famous address to alumni of Jesuit schools in Europe (July 31, 1973), Pedro Arrupe painted a profile of what a graduate should be. Admitting that Jesuit schools had not always been on target here, Arrupe called for a re-education to justice:

Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-and-women-for-others... people who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; people convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for human beings is a farce.... All of us would like to be good to others, and most of us would be relatively good in a good world. What is difficult is to be good in an evil world, where the egoism of others and the egoism built into the institutions of society attack us.... Evil is overcome only by good, egoism by generosity. It is thus that we must sow justice in our world, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society.

Following up on what Arrupe had said, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, challenged the 900 Jesuit and lay delegates from the 28 U.S. Jesuit colleges and universities gathered for "Assembly '89" to teach our students to make "no significant decision without first thinking of how it would impact the least in society" (i.e., the poor, the marginal who have no voice). And 11 years later, speaking on "the faith that does justice" to a similar national gathering at Santa Clara University (October 6, 2000), Kolvenbach was even more pointed and eloquent in laying out the goals for the 21st-century American Jesuit university:

Here in Silicon Valley, some of the world's premier research universities flourish alongside struggling public schools where Afro-American and immigrant students drop out in droves. Nationwide, one child in every six is condemned to ignorance and poverty.... Thanks to science and technology, human society is able to solve problems such as feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or developing more just conditions of life, but stubbornly fails to accomplish this.

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The real measure of our Jesuit universities, [then,] lies in who our students become. Tomorrow's "whole person" cannot be whole without a well-educated solidarity. We must therefore raise our Jesuit educational standard to "educate the whole person of solidarity for the real world."

Solidarity is learned through "contact" rather than through "concepts." When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Our universities boast a splendid variety of in-service programs, outreach programs, insertion programs, off-campus contacts, and hands-on courses. These should not be too optional or peripheral, but at the core of every Jesuit university's program of studies.

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Faculty are at the heart of our universities. Professors, in spite of the cliché´ of the ivory tower, are in contact with the world. But no point of view is ever neutral or value-free. A legitimate question, even if it does not sound academic, is for each professor to ask, "When researching and teaching, where and with whom is my heart?" To make sure that the real concerns of the poor find their place, faculty members need an organic collaboration with those in the Church and in society who work among and for the poor and actively seek justice.

What is at stake is a sustained interdisciplinary dialogue of research and reflection, a continuous pooling of expertise. The purpose is to assimilate experiences and insights in "a vision of knowledge which, well aware of its limitations, is not satisfied with fragments but tries to integrate them into a true and wise synthesis" about the real world. Unfortunately, many faculty still feel academically, humanly, and, I would say, spiritually unprepared for such an exchange.

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If the measure of our universities is who the students become, and if the faculty are the heart of it all, then what is there left to say? It is perhaps the third topic, the character of our universities-how they proceed internally and how they impact on society-that is the most difficult.

In the words of [Jesuit] General Congregation 34, a Jesuit university must be faithful to both the noun "university" and to the adjective "Jesuit." To be a university requires dedication "to research, teaching, and the various forms of service that correspond to its cultural mission." To be Jesuit "requires that the university act in harmony with the demands of the service of faith and the promotion of justice." [A] telling expression of the Jesuit university's nature is found in policies concerning hiring and tenure. As a university it must respect the established academic, professional, and labor norms, but as Jesuit it is essential to go beyond them and find ways of attracting, hiring, and promoting those who actively share the mission.

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Every Jesuit academy of higher learning is called to live in a social reality and to live for that social reality, to shed university intelligence upon it and to use university influence to transform it. Thus Jesuit universities have stronger and different reasons than do many other academic institutions for addressing the actual world as it unjustly exists and for helping to reshape it in the light of the Gospel.