CAMPUS » Ignatius Loyola http://www.campusmagazine.org A national online magazine produced by student-journalists at colleges and universities around the United States. Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:10:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Ideas have Consequences http://www.campusmagazine.org/2008/12/ideas-have-consequences/ http://www.campusmagazine.org/2008/12/ideas-have-consequences/#comments Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:28:04 +0000 Donato Infante http://www.campusmagazine.org/?p=236 In the words of Richard Weaver, “Ideas have consequences.” Any time a professor gives a student a new idea, that professor has changed the way the student acts. The professor who teaches students that two compounds when mixed will explode has changed the way the students mix compounds. Similarly, the professor who has his students read about Socrates encourages his students to seek the Good. If a university introduces its students to the Western tradition, they will be undergoing a certain moral formation. A program which we have here at Boston College, which is called Perspectives on Western Culture, is in my mind, one of the best examples of what a college should be offering. While I am not a participant in it, it is a philosophy program which, over the course of four years, reads these same books which have formed the Western tradition: the Bible, Augustine, Luther, Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Strauss, etc.

St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, which runs Boston College, speaking about the purpose of a Jesuit university, said that, “The college of the Society of Jesus has but one sole object in its studies, labors, and cares: to amend the corrupt morals of the age, to convert hearts by example, to promote the sanctification of souls, and by learning and science founded in the pure and true faith and sacred teaching of Jesus Christ, to bring men back from the pernicious seductions of pleasure to a good and holy life, from the flesh to the spirit, from the world to God.”

Members of the Society of Jesus have for centuries been leading educators and, in the fields of seismology and astronomy, leading researchers. There was no conflict between the two. Seismology is even nicknamed “the Jesuit science.” There is nothing wrong with universities which do research, as long as they also take as their primary task the education of students. If the task of a university is to advance knowledge, the surest way to do this is to create more researchers.

]]> http://www.campusmagazine.org/2008/12/ideas-have-consequences/feed/ 0