Resources

I thought that I would share some resources that I have been looking at to gather some ideas; some are more related than others, but I thought they were all worth sharing:

• John W. O'Malley's The First Jesuits: This is a historical text that I have found helpful just getting to know the Society of Jesus in its first 20 or so years of existence during the 16th century. Very thorough and O'Malley is tops.
  
• Jon Sobrino, Ignacio Ellacuría and others, Companions of Jesus: a collection of writings from the Salvadoran martyrs and Jon Sobrino (the 7th Jesuit of the house who was away in November 1989 when the Jesuits were killed) which includes Ignacio Ellacuría's brief speech on "The Task of a Christian University" which I quoted in the first post of this blog (the title of the blog is a quote from this speech). A good resource for getting to know the martyrs.
  
• The documents of the Jesuits' 35th General Congregation held in 2008 - click here for access to the documents. In particular, Decree 6 - "Collaboration at the Heart of Mission" - has been a great resource for looking at how the Jesuits are moving forward in their 'way of proceeding' in collaboration with laity and people of other faiths. It also provided a pretty good description of organizations like ISN, which means we are on the right track here!
• Adolfo Nicolás, SJ, "Depth, Universality, and Learned Ministry:
  Challenges to Jesuit Higher Education Today" - can be found here. The Superior General for the Jesuits, Fr. Nicolás gave a talk for a conference in Mexico on networking and the context of globalization. An interesting read and informative for universities!
• Joseph Owens, SJ "Radical Parish Communities" and John O'Malley "The Future of Jesuit Parishes: Reflections on Past and Present" - can be found here. Here, there are some musings about the parish as an alternative community that is in line with Ellacuría's vision for universities - in a sense, it is a brief apologia for Jesuit involvement with parishes. Also, O'Malley checks in with some historical background on Jesuits and parishes and clarifies some misconceptions as well as pointing forward to some further considerations for the future. Well worth looking into and thinking about.
  
• The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are always in the background of all things Jesuit, so of course, they are an influence here. There are many different published copies of the Exercises.