Faith Life

Speaker: Rev. James F. Keenan, S.J.

Internationally renowned Moral Theologian and Bioethicist, Vice Provost for Global Engagement, Canisius Professor and Director of The Jesuit Institute at Boston College, Father Keenan is the author of numerous books and essays, including Moral Wisdom: Lessons and Texts from the Catholic Tradition.

This talk suggests that longstanding “conscience formation programs” are not all that successful unless they help us first to cultivate the capacities to be vulnerable to one another and to recognize the other, often overlooked. My thesis is that, until there’s vulnerability and the willingness to recognize, there isn’t much capacity to be a person of conscience.

Speaker: Rev. Roger Haight, S.J.

Visiting Professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he convenes the Theology and Ethics Field and teaches Systematic Theology. Pioneering Catholic theologian, former President of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Haight’s attention to fundamental issues in theology is reflected in his books on the nature of theology as a discipline, Christology, ecclesiology, grace, liberation theology, spirituality, and the dialogue of Christian theology with science and evolution. Roger Haight was the recipient of the Alumnus of the Year award from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in 2006.

The talk will set the background of pre-Vatican II Catholic theology and then describe how this theology developed in the United States after the Council and characterize its present-day character.

Speaker: Rev. James Martin, S.J.

Editor-at-large of the Jesuit magazine America. In 2017, Pope Francis appointed Martin as a consultant to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications. A New York Times Best Selling author, Martin’s books include The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life, Jesus: A Pilgrimage, and My Life With the Saints. He is a sought-after public speaker and media commentator on subjects such as the life and teachings of Jesus and Ignatian Spirituality as inspired by the life and teachings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Father Martin looks at his experiences of ministering to those who have been marginalized, excluded, and rejected.

Speaker: Rev. Thomas Lucas, S.J.

Currently Pastor, Saint Ignatius Loyola Parish in Sacramento, CA. Emeritus University Professor at the University of San Francisco, Father Lucas is an internationally recognized expert in Jesuit art history and a well-known liturgical designer and artist with an international portfolio. He received his doctorate in theology and the arts at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. As a graduate student, he designed and directed the restoration of the 16th-century rooms of St. Ignatius Loyola in Rome and curated an exhibit on Jesuit architecture at the Vatican Library.

In this illustrated Zoom presentation, Fr. Lucas will trace how the Society of Jesus used and adapted the visual and performing arts as effective and engaging tools for teaching, evangelization, and devotion in the first centuries of its existence.

Fr. Lucas is no stranger to our St. Ignatius Community. In recent years, he has presented a variety of evenings to our community, including Jesuit urbanism, the poetry of Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the history of our St. Ignatius Parish. After a quarter-century of teaching at USF and Seattle University, he now serves as pastor of our sister parish, St. Ignatius Loyola, in Sacramento.

Speaker: Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J.

Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, is Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he earned undergraduate and masters’ degrees from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona. He was a researcher at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics, before entering the Jesuits in 1989.

Is there a particularly “Jesuit” form of science? From Acosta’s work in the New World to modern research at the Vatican Observatory, we’ll look at the work of a number of Jesuit scientists through history and see how what they did, and why they did it, was colored and influenced by Ignatian Spirituality as seen in the Spiritual Exercises.