The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm and its Relevance for the Jesuit University

The article describes the seven characteristics that should identify a Jesuit university nowadays: 1) Pedagogical practices at Jesuit universities should promote authentic dialog and reconciliation; 2) Pedagogical practices at Jesuit universities should promote human excellence in every aspect of human life; 3) Pedagogical practices at Jesuit universities should promote exploration and discovery focused on and among disciplines; 4) Programs and practices at Jesuit universities should promote exploration and intercultural appreciation; 5) Jesuit universities should contribute both in theory and in practice to the promotion of justice in society as a whole and within society’s various institutions; 6) A Jesuit classroom should promote the construction of a global vision in students and professors; and 7) Internships and programs at Jesuit universities should promote authentic spiritual growth and faith development.Based on the key approaches of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) and having in view that this is not a prefabricated model ready to be applied, its particularities in higher education are contextualized in light of the reflections of the Society General Superiors.The characteristics or identifiers presented motivate educational institutions to build an identitythat responds to a long tradition of Jesuit education and constant renewal of their commitment toform leaders to heal a broken world.

The power of forgiveness in a broken world: An understanding of forgiveness in Ephesians

South Africans live in a broken country where hatred leads to violence and destroys the relationships between people. The pertinent question here is: Is forgiveness between South Africans possible? This article is an attempt to understand ‘forgiveness’ in Ephesians, and to discuss the power of such forgiveness in a violent and broken South Africa. Ephesians 4:23 demands a change in the people’s mindset in order to be able to, inter alia, be kind and compassionate when they forgive each other (Eph 4:32). This forgiveness means to take control as a believer and to use one’s power as a Christian to forgive because God forgave us. We need to be the initiators of the transaction. Forgiveness is a ‘means for imitating God’, for ‘carrying out God’s plan’, and ‘enhancing one’s relationship’ with God. Forgiveness will restore relations; it is a gift to oneself and to others, to society, to one’s country. Ephesians advises to no longer rehearse and re-think the memories of pain, to stop harbouring and nursing grudges, to stop playing the victim and perpetuating negative emotions associated with this rehearsing, and to break people’s commitment to remain angry.Contribution: Ephesians aims to persuade believers that forgiveness is a choice to imitate God. Forgiveness is an act out of grace, kindness, and compassion.

Beyond repair: Staying with breakdown at the interstices

This article engages with the notion of ‘break-down’ as a way of going beyond claims to recover the discarded or practice repair. It experiments with ethnographic cross-pollination, setting vignettes from seemingly disparate field-sites alongside one another, to meditate on singular unfinished moments that together reflect wider dynamics of invisibility, negation, stigma and suspension at the urban interstices. From the peripheral neighbourhoods of Zaria, Nairobi, Paris, Berlin and London, these vignettes evoke shifting relationships to labour in precarious urban environments, where fleeting but situated codes, logics and deals have emerged out of seemingly broken urban worlds. Engaging with Stephen Jackson's notion of ‘broken world thinking’ and Donna Haraway's invitation to ‘stay with the trouble’, this article argues for staying with the breakdown.

“After Enlightenment, Return to the Marketplace”

Ever since John Locke argued that religion was essentially a “private search” and must be radically excluded from political life, we have prided ourselves in the West on the separation of church and state. John Esposito, of course, has famously ignored this shibboleth. In the past, students were not content to acquire a purely academic understanding of their faith; their aim was not to earn a doctorate or a professorship. Instead, they expected to be spiritually transformed by their studies—an experience that propelled them out of the classroom and back into the mundane, messy, and tragic world of politics. This essay traces this theme in Indian and Chinese traditions as well as in the three monotheistic faiths. All insist that poverty, inequity, cruelty, and exploitation are matters of sacred import and that after achieving Enlightenment one must, as the Buddha insisted, “return to the marketplace” and work practically and creatively to heal the suffering of humanity—a message that is sorely needed in our tragically broken world.

Handprint, the Shower of Gold, and Thingness of Architecture

Architecture is an eminently artificial human enterprise but subject to natural laws and principles residing somewhere between the mineral world and vegetation. It is eminently archaic, as the dominant epistemologies, pragmatic conditions and techniques may change, but fundamental notions, ideas and principles remain where they have been ever since the construction of the first shelter. Architecture is also eminently thingly. As a thing, every work of architecture is in opposition to our broken world of events. For better or for worse, in actual practice this opposition settles in the act of construction, as a project becomes a building: material, structure, space.