The Most Rev. Gordon D. Bennett, S.J., told a crowded Sacred Heart Chapel audience Thursday that the challenge for Loyola Marymount University is to maintain its identity in accord with the original principles of the university and its founding orders.
Bennett’s address was the keynote for the university’s Mission Day, an annual day of symposia, presentations and conversations that deal with the LMU mission. The day’s activities included guided conversations that examined faith, Jesuit education and Ignatian spirituality. “An Ignatian education has to be a community of learning that learns the virtue of love by being spiritually free,” said Bennett, the Peter Faber Fellow in Pastoral Theology and Ignatian Spirituality at LMU. After retiring as bishop of Mandeville, Jamaica, in 2006, Bennett has been serving LMU by giving tutorials to recently hired administrators and assisting the Center for Ignatian Spirituality. LMU’s sponsoring orders are the Society of Jesus, Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. Bennett pointed to recent events on campus as an example of taking the Ignatian vision beyond the classroom. “The university’s response, especially the students, was quick and appropriate,” he said about the demonstration and teach-ins last fall semester that were held to counteract several race-related incidents on campus. Bennett also praised LMU’s various extracurricular academic centers as examples of extending intellectual inquiry. He added that the regents and administration must also be mindful of the university’s mission and guard it. Bennett, whose work at the Center for Ignatian Spirituality includes guiding faculty and staff members in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, described the Spiritual Exercises as the path to authentic freedom from outer and inner forces, such as addictions and consumerism, in modern society. Composed in the 1500s, the Spiritual Exercises, Bennett said, serve today as a guide to remaining faithful to the university’s founding vision and mission. |