ASummaryandReflectiononDeanBrackley’s.docVIP

A Summary and Reflection on Dean Brackley’s, S.J., Justice and Jesuit Higher Education Heather Z. Lyons Department of Psychology Loyola College in Maryland Slide 1 On October 14, 2005, the formal proceedings of the Commitment to Justice in Jesuit Higher Education Conference began with a keynote address from Father Dean Brackley. Father Brackley is a Jesuit priest trained at the University of Chicago and author of two books including his recent, The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius Loyola. As a man who lives his word, he currently holds a position at the Central American University (UCA) in San Salvador where he teaches theology, ethics, and administers the university’s School for Religious Education. Before that he taught briefly at Fordham University. However, much of what he outlined in his lecture was sparked by a transformative experience in social ministry on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and South Bronx. There he described witnessing “the reality of poverty” and “drug related violence.” He went on to explain how this experience of “dense life and death drama, with its daily crucifixions and resurrections, helped gather together [his] scattered self” that followed years of soul searching living as a privileged man in a world of injustice. For him, this gathering together occurred not only in response to this social ministry but because as he was emerging from a long and continued discernment on these experiences the Jesuits’ 32nd General Congregation convened and “affirmed the service of faith and the promotion of justice,” providing a framework for his experiences. While his description of the Lower East Side and South Bronx might sound dramatic these experiences reflect what those of us who teach continue to learn. That is, anxiety and threats to our students’ worldviews present themselves as opportunities. That often when discomfort is raised just enough we are able to inspire insight and c