In convening our on-and-off gathering of Jesuit scholars for the first time in the 1993-1994 academic year, we use the following (unlikely) question to get us thinking:
How do we read when we read,
"Challenges of Mission Today to our Minima Societas "?
That is,
Like other Jesuits, Jesuits actively involved in research and writing have received Challenges of Mission Today, a document preparatory to the coming Congregation; and like other Jesuits, these Jesuit scholars received this document in the context of their apostolates - here, research and writing, be it in theology or geology or literary criticism or history or whatever; while sharing a great deal that is very important with other Jesuits, by their profession Jesuit scholars have been trained to read in a certain way, to ask certain kinds of questions, to debate, to be skeptical and suspicious in a controlled, fruitful fashion, to propose alternatives to what is read; if (as we hope) our scholarship is integrated with our personal identities, it bears a strong interrelation to how we think and read and speak and pray as Jesuits.So:
Although a Jesuit document such as Challenges of Mission Today may be as familiar as anything we can possibly think of (and though much of our response to it may be provoked even before we actually read it), when we bear down carefully on its implicit presuppositions and demands, its style and rhetoric, we should be able to uncover interesting and influential connections between what we do as scholars - think, read, write - and what we do when we read this document.
Our October 24th session is therefore meant to get at what we do as scholars and how it matters to us as Jesuits NOT by talking about the Congregation, and NOT by discussing the issues raised in the document, but rather by talking about our reception of this document. How are we reading as we read it, how do our research and scholarly discipline affect our reading?
We - the steering committee (Ron Anderson, Jim Bernauer, Arthur Madigan and myself) - will start the discussion off by describing how our own areas of research affect the way we read the document, and then open it for your similar considerations. So please think in advance, and try to sketch out how you read the Challenges of Mission Today, what you start with, notice most, asks questions about, what kinds of (implicit or explicit) comparisons you make with what you ordinarily read as a scholar.
It might be helpful to imagine how you would introduce and review the document for a group of non-Jesuit scholars in your field. We expect to be critical but not negative in our discussion, though new perspectives and hard questions are always welcome. The nearest model for what we hope to do is "Understanding Scientific Prose," edited by Jack Selzer (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), a book comprised of a series of 13 essays by specialists in various areas of contemporary rhetorical studies, philosophy and literary criticism, on a single scientific article by Stephen J. Gould; each essay in its own way gets at how the Gould article says what it says. We consider this the first of a series of related sessions, as we renew our effort to find a basis for a truly scholarly, interdisciplinary conversation among Jesuits. So let's try this and see if it works.
Frank Clooney, S.J.
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