BY JOHN CECERO, S.J.
While Christopher Kaczor’s observations and warnings on mission drift are, or should be, of great concern to anyone in Catholic and Jesuit higher education who cares about preserving and strengthening mission awareness and implementation, it seems to me that the remedies offered, and the examples used to illustrate them, are less than promising as strategies for real improvement. At the conceptual level, they may make eminently good sense, but how to communicate their rationale with our colleagues who may be less than sanguine about Catholic and Jesuit mission is lacking in this essay.
For example, Kaczor proposes mission comprehensiveness as a remedy for a virtually exclusive focus on the promotion of justice, at the exclusion of faith and the education of the whole person. He proposes that faculty up for hire, tenure, or promotion be asked how they would contribute to all three aspects of mission. What should happen if the person can only respond to one or two? Should they not be hired, or denied tenure or promotion? And what about the faculty persons who are interviewing the candidate, if they neglect to ask about all three?
In other words, it may not be enough simply to assert that a given question must always be asked; instead, it may be more fruitful to explore how to engage the candidate or the faculty interviewer about what they may be thinking, and if there are real reservations about one of these areas, to engage them in a fruitful dialog in order to explore their assumptions, concerns, and hesitancies. The assumption in my framing here is that Catholic and Jesuit institutions are themselves mission territories that require patience, empathy, and creativity on the part of those who are committed to the effective communication of mission.
With this in mind, one promising path to a more fruitful approach to mission drift and its remedies may be found in the thought of Pope Francis on conflict resolution. In his 2020 book, in collaboration with biographer Austen Ivereigh, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, the Pope alludes to the work of his former professor, theologian and philosopher Romano Guardini, who frames apparent opposites as contrapositions instead of as polarities. Unlike polarities which invite conflict and stalemate, contrapositions foster creative tension.
In Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, Pope Francis with Austen Ivereigh, urges patience when dealing with change: “important things need time, …change is organic, …there are limits and we have to work within them while keeping our eyes on the horizon, as Jesus did.” Photo courtesy of Aleteia.
Take, for example, Kaczor’s concern with mission dilution with respect to the curriculum, where questions of faith are subordinated to career preparation. The contraposition in this instance might be between an emphasis on an intrinsic understanding (a humanistic, Catholic one) versus an instrumental understanding (a job training or return-on-investment approach). Instead of merely being posed as conflictual, these might be creatively engaged by proponents on either side, not with a focus on achieving consensus, but with a focus on a better understanding and creative implementation of one contraposition as enhancing the other contraposition within the curriculum.
Kaczor might object that it’s already too late for this process to succeed. On the other hand, this kind of engagement may end up strengthening mission in ways not yet imagined or conceived.
John Cecero, S.J., is vice president for Mission Integration and Ministry, and associate professor of Psychology at Fordham University.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Medium.