Two summers ago, there was a display of lamppost banners around the Hoval, each one advertising a value related to Holy Cross’ Jesuit identity. At the top of each banner was the phrase: “Jesuit Heritage.” It did not say “Jesuit values,” “Jesuit mission,” or “Jesuit identity.” The word heritage may mean a few different things, but it certainly suggests something received from the past [1]. It may or may not refer to something still living. A man may speak of his “Catholic Heritage,” but this does not guarantee that you will see him at Mass next Sunday. The question, then, is whether this inheritance continues as a living identity, a decorative heirloom, or something in between. Is Holy Cross “Jesuit,” or merely “raised Jesuit?”
The word “Jesuit” is often thrown around at Holy Cross, but there is not a clear understanding of what it means, especially as it relates to our college. If you asked a member of our community a hundred or even fifty years ago what made Holy Cross a Jesuit college, they probably would have looked at you strangely and replied, “Why, the Jesuits, of course!” Today the answer is not so obvious. One needs only to walk from Loyola to Ciampi, then to the new Jesuit residence to get a visual impression of the decline in the number of actual Jesuits who live at Holy Cross. The average student interacts with Jesuits rarely, if at all. We no longer have a Jesuit president, and few Jesuits remain in administration. There are only a handful of Jesuit professors, mostly in Religious Studies. And perhaps most surprisingly, only one out of our dozen chaplains is a Jesuit. This should not be surprising, considering our Church’s vocation shortage, but it makes the answer to our question much less obvious. Our “Jesuit-ness” is no longer incarnate in the collared figures who walk around our campus. It is now more abstract; we cannot point to it. We must recognize first, then, that it is unclear what makes a college “Jesuit” if not Jesuits, and that we are at risk of losing whatever that is.
What does Holy Cross herself have to say? The “Jesuit, Catholic Tradition” section of our website [2] identifies three ways “we honor the Jesuit legacy” (again, suggesting the past). They are: “humanistic studies,” “solidarity with the poor and disenfranchised,” and “a diverse community of participants.” These are good and desirable things. They surely do flow from the Jesuit charism and tradition. But they cannot be what makes Holy Cross Jesuit; non-Jesuit colleges are just as capable of these things. Do we do them better? Maybe. But they are exterior. They are what we do, not who we are. They are, in soteriological language, Holy Cross’ “works.” Just as we are not saved by works [3], we are likewise not “made Jesuit” by them either. Holy Cross is made Jesuit by its faith, none other than the Catholic Faith, expressed through the particular Jesuit charism.
It may seem obvious to some, but the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus) are a religious order within the Catholic Church. As a clarifying note, this means that “Jesuit” has a narrow meaning that does not apply to us students or the wider college community, despite the applicability of broader categories like “Jesuit charism.” More importantly, this means that Jesuits exist in the context of the Catholic Faith, and any identity that is not properly Catholic cannot, by definition, be a Jesuit identity. This means that when Holy Cross departs from the Catholic Church (not only in explicit matters of faith but also in ethical matters), it separates itself that much from its Jesuit identity. This is not to say that non-Catholics are or should be unwelcome at Holy Cross, but merely that any institution whose core is not Catholic cannot be Jesuit. With this in mind, I do not think it is controversial to say that Holy Cross largely departs from the Catholic Church on matters of faith in thought and practice, and a still larger portion departs on ethical matters. Insofar as this is the case, Holy Cross can only pretend to be authentically Jesuit. The name “Holy Cross” is not enough, our statues of saints are not enough, and the fact that many of our students grew up going to Catholic school is not enough when we are not Christians. As long as we are not Christians, our Jesuit heritage remains merely that, heritage.
But is that it? Shall we use the Jesuits rolling in their graves in our cemetery to power the PAC? Shall we Catholics be content complaining as Holy Cross becomes increasingly “progressive,” increasingly secular, and thus less Jesuit? Shall we be cynics, satisfied with our laughter when our friends and family ask, “So is your school, like, really religious?” A pessimist may say yes, but pessimism is not Christian. Any Fenwick Review writer could write a long and provocative article about all the ways Holy Cross fails to be authentically Catholic and thus fails to be Jesuit. Maybe that is necessary. But it is not enough. What we need is to identify where Holy Cross lives out its Jesuit Charism well, and work to strengthen these points. We need to claim our Jesuit inheritance. We must participate in and promote the sacramental life of the Church at Holy Cross. We must adopt authentic Ignatian modes of prayer. We must preach the Gospel. We must pursue academic excellence, and scholarship which seeks truth and advances the cause of faith, rather than subversion. We Catholics must live in such a way that reveals the fruits of the Jesuit charism so that Holy Cross will see what it means to be authentically “Jesuit.”
Endnotes
[1] The OED defines Heritage as “the condition or state transmitted from ancestors.” Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “heritage (n.), sense 4,” June 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5778821977.
[2] “Jesuit, Catholic Tradition,” College of the Holy Cross, accessed November 5, 2024, https://www.holycross.edu/about-us/jesuit-catholic-tradition.
[3] According to the Council of Trent, session six, canon 1: “If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema.”