 Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us for the return of our virtual spirituality series. My name is Jessica Colligan, and I'm happy to welcome you on behalf of Fairfield's Alumni Relations Office. With me this evening is Father Jerry Bloschek, who since the last time we did one of these Zoom events has both a new title and a new office. He is now our alumni chaplain and a special assistant to President Mark Nemek, and his office is here in Alumni House. And we are so fortunate to have him as an official member of our team. We've loved having him here for these past four or five months and are excited to continue to work with him, both on a daily basis and for events like this, which we're so pleased to share with you tonight. Before we get started, I just want to ask that you please keep your microphones muted to minimize any distractions. And I encourage you to use speaker view in Zoom rather than gallery view, just to keep the focus of your screen on Father Jerry as he gives his talk. We also encourage you to use the chat feature if you have any questions, you can either send them directly to me, or if you're more comfortable just putting them in the general chat to everybody. You can do that as well and we will try to get to as many of them as possible in the time we have allotted. And now I will turn things over to Father Jerry. Thanks very much, Jessica. I'm very happy to be able to see some of you and know that other old friends and colleagues, members of our larger Fairfield community and many friends who come to Fairfield for culture and for education and for spirituality. So I'm very glad to be with you. And I'm very, very glad to be able to talk about a topic which on the face of it can't sound very interesting and I'm surprised that we have so many people who are with us. The, the topic that we said we would talk about is understanding the universal apostolic preferences. I'll spell out what exactly those are but first let me give a little historical background so that we have a context to understand what it is in that that these that these universal apostolic preferences refer to. It may, it may not be something that you know but Jesuits don't meet very often as a group in the entire 550 year history of the order Jesuits have only gathered for a global or universal meeting, which is our supreme decision making body. We've only met 36 times in the history of 550 years. So, when we do it's very important. It usually is to elect a new superior general, or to assess where we are in terms of our internal life, or how the order and our institutions in our larger Ignatian family to whom we always feel very united. How are we doing in terms of our activities and our responsibilities to the larger church and to the larger world. So, indulge me for a minute when I take you back to October. To the 36th general congregation or major meeting of Jesuit leaders from the entire world. This took place in Rome, and we elected a new superior general. We replaced our retiring superior general, Father Adolfo Nicholas, with our new general, Father Sosa, Father Arturo Sosa, who was a professor of social sciences at our Jesuit University in Venezuela and Caracas, and had been superior or coordinator of all of our Jesuit ministries in Latin America. At this meeting, not only did we elected new superior general, but we did an appraisal of where we are, and where we think we should be going. This group of Jesuits put together a document, a decree we call them of our general congregations. And the title of that decree is Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice. I want to share a little bit about this document with you because I think it will give you the context for understanding where the very notion of coming up with universal, universal, apostolic preferences came from. And more importantly, even than that, it gives you some sense of perspective about the frame of mind or the assumptions that were in the minds of Jesuit leaders when they put this document together. But first of all, the document begins, the society of Jesus has always sought to know and follow God's will for us. It already states a supposition that the order is not just doing its business. It's not like we can say this is what we've always done. We've always had schools. We've always lived this way. We have our constitutions. And so, semperitim, always the same thing. That's not at all Ignatian. It's not at all at the heart of St. Ignatius. It's not at all at the heart of anything or anybody or any institution that wants to call itself Jesuit or Ignatian. Any institution and anyone who's affiliated with our institutions to be faithful to this style, this charism, this way of seeing the world to be in constant openness, in a constant attitude of adaptability and flexibility, to be open to two sources. One, as we continue to listen to what God tells us through the church, through its reflection, and through our own personal prayer and our own discussion and discernment together. And then by looking at the signs of the times, by looking at what's happening in the world, Jesuits and our institutions are always on the search for the modus. What is the better way, the more effective way that we can be of service to the people to whom God sends us? How can we understand more profoundly what's happening? How can we analyze more deeply? How can we respond more generously and more authentically to what the people of God need throughout the world and what the church is calling us to be? So if we have now universal apostolic preferences, therefore accept time and the fact that in 10 years we should be ready to re-examine those and say again, well, based on what we experience in the world, what we see, and also what the Holy Father and the bishops and the synods in the church are teaching us, how can we better respond? To God's people and their needs. In our documents there's, again, a turn of phrase which I find very congenial and very authentic to us. It says, in any Jesuit, in any Ignatian enterprise there is a holy restlessness. There is a certain kind of apostolic aggressivity. So simply saying this is what's worked. It would be anathema to Ignatius or I think to any authentic Jesuit mission or Ignatian work to say, well, that always worked in the past. That's what we've always done. Well, that's not the way we proceed. So we proceed gathering new information with a freedom, a kind of holy indifference that allows us to be free enough to do things in a way that is radically new if necessary, and that will challenge the way we've proceeded in the past. So it's useful to understand that that's a Jesuit Ignatian way of proceeding, discerning, gathering new information, reflecting, making a choice, and then reassessing the choice. Did that in fact yield the results we were looking for? And so I'll say more about that specifically. When Jesuits are making decisions and when Ignatian-inspired institutions are making decisions, I suggested or implied that there are two primary sources, and this congregation spells it out in its first number. As we search for God's will and what God is asking of us today, the congregation's document says we do so from the heart of the church. In other words, we always know who we are. I mean, in common parlance, people like sometimes to say, well, you know, I like the Jesuits, but I don't like the Catholic Church. Or, you know, there was an article years ago about Jesuit colleges that said Jesuits see Catholic, no. That's not true. No Jesuit and no Jesuit institution has any identity if it's not rooted solidly, creatively, reflectively in the heart of the church, which itself is always discerning. And God knows with Pope Francis, if Jesuits are inclined to restlessness and challenge, Francis is a great example of that. Francis is pushing us all to continue to ask new questions and to continue to ask ourselves how better do we proclaim God's word and how better do we serve God's people, especially those who are most marginalized. You'll hear that the priorities that the Jesuits are affirming and asking all of us who are affiliated with and who are stakeholders in Jesuit mission, the, the, the preferences that they're asking us to reflect on. You'll, you'll, if you, if you're keeping current with Pope Francis and the various discussions and the various reactions to him or against him, you'll hear that these are very much in line with what Pope Francis has in mind when he's leading the church. But now listen to this and this is quintessentially Jesuit indignation. So we look at the future we try to figure out how we should be at Fairfield or at Fordham, or at Boston College or at a retreat house, or a Jesuit social center, or in any Jesuit sponsored work at the Murphy Center what should we be doing will always always with the mind that we are identified with the church and its mission but then equally and totally Ignatian and inspiration is we make our decisions by gazing at the world. So we go away that we can hold ourselves up, put ourselves on ivory towers, or dispense ourselves from the hard challenging and exciting task of looking at the world as it really is. So listen to how the Jesuits who were gathered in Rome back in 2016 listen to how they phrased it. There's a world that has been groaning in labor pains till now there, quoting St. Paul's letter to the Romans. On the one hand, we see the vibrancy of our youth yearning for better lives. We see people enjoying the beauty of creation. And we see in many ways in which people use their gifts for the sake of others. And yet, our world faces so many needs today, so many challenges. We have images in our minds of people humiliated, struck by violence, excluded from society, pushed to the margins, and our earth bears the weight of the damage human beings have wrought. Hope seems threatened. In place of hope, we find fear and anger. So any discernment, any analysis, any decision about how we should allocate our resources and make decisions for how our institutions or our personal lives will proceed or based on that two fold rootedness in the teachings of the church and in a candid, honest, vulnerable look at what is really happening in the world. And I think none of us are feeling all that very comfortable if we were to say right now, if we were to do an Ignatian exercise of imagining our world and its suffering and its challenges. The background for making these kinds of Ignatian discernments or choices or deliberations doesn't end with looking at the sufferings and challenges of the world. It continues on in this way. We must always remember that, and this is again, it's a kind of a new way of talking in the history of Catholic spirituality. Saint Ignatius said that God is not over and above the world. It isn't that God is the cosmic clockmaker who started the world and then is going to somehow judge it at the end of time and only from now and every now and again, like a puppet master dips down and rearranges things or, you know, asks for things. Saint Ignatius says that God is the very life that is breathed into us and that God is constantly laboring in the world. And that God is laboring toward the flourishing, the health, the fullness, the beatitude of nature and of people and of societies and of individuals relating to him and to one another. So the core of Ignatian belief is that this world is not only a place that we can say is so needy and so challenged and so filled with suffering and conflict and polarization, but that the world is also the place where God is at work and that God is redeeming and freeing and saving the world. And something that may sound even more preposterous if we think about who we are and what our own limits are. The core Ignatian Christian belief is that inspired by Jesus and Jesus' spirit, people like you and me, people like you and me, specifically, concretely in all of our peculiarity and particularity are called to labor with God for the redemption and saving and reconciliation of our broken world. So we are invited not to throw up our hands and despair, but following and allowing the spirit of Jesus to motivate us, to animate us, to direct us. We are invited to make a difference and to believe that we are invited and empowered to collaborate with God in the healing of the world. The Jews have a great way of talking about this. You may have heard of the healing of the world. So that's what excites a Jesuit and that's what excites our Ignatian collaborators, that as we face challenges and we know we have to make decisions, we believe that we are empowered and called to do so. Okay, enough background. I've gone over this way too long. But at that general congregation, at that meeting of Jesuits back in 2016, when a new superior general is elected, he is given a mandate. The Jesuits don't like, as I told you, don't like to meet very often. And so what they'll say is, okay, Father General, you're the new general superior of the order. So we're going to give you some marching orders. And some of the marching orders that these Jesuits back in 2016 gave to Father Sosa was, we want you to look over all of our institutions, over all the Jesuits throughout the world, and we want you to do a careful inventory. We want you to consult widely, not only with the Jesuits, but with all of the lay people, women and men on whom we depend for the success and the vitality of our ministries, and also consult with all those other members of our sister churches, and of all women and men of goodwill, who are committed to the healing and redemption of the world, and to the revitalization of the spiritual sustenance of human society and cultures, consult with them, you know, speak with them and help us reassess in the face of all of the challenges of our broken world, where are the focuses, where are the directions that we as individuals and as corporate entities. And then when I say we, I mean all the members of the Ignatian family, what should characterize us as individuals, what concerns should, should turn us upside down and stretch us, what concerns, what questions should we be asking. I remember years ago I had a job at Fordham, I was the Vice President again for Mission and Ministry, and I began to think as I discussed with our faculty across 11 different schools, and it was my job to try to talk about, or to articulate what makes up the identity of an institution. And I came to the at least temporary conclusion or provisional conclusion that what identifies an institution is what are the questions that they wrestle with, what are the issues that an institution takes deadly seriously. What in earnest does an institution contend with, whether it's if it's if it's a parish or if it's a retreat house, if it's a social center, if it's a university, if it's a college, if it's a grammar school, what are the major concerns that without which this institution wouldn't be itself. Okay, so Father Sosa is told that he needs that the order is asking him to do this. So, one year later he begins the process. So in 2017, he starts a process where he invites every Jesuit region, every Jesuit superior, and all of our institutions to consult widely, and to come up with not a mandate that you not not priorities in the sense that this is more important and that is more important than B or C or D, but rather what are the preferences. What are the concerns that by preference, you give great importance to, and what are the preferences that animate and shape whatever enterprise whatever ministry whatever institution, you're doing. You know, as I go through them with you, it's not the case that, you know, Fairfield, for example, could choose a, it's like not a Chinese menu, you know, you don't choose a and then leave BC and D out. They're saying that any authentically Jesuit Ignatian work is marked by these fundamental concerns. And Father General Father Sosa will be saying, look, across the board. It's a problem in the next 10 years, not overnight to come up with a strategic plan, but to be wrestling with these and to be saying, as we continue to think, discuss discern, analyze, how do we incorporate these preferential concerns. Maybe that's the way to talk about it preferential concerns can't do everything, but Father Sosa in the order saying, these are so important that they have to be your preference. So eventually, they in a process of almost 16 months, they gather, they do all the work and I'm not going to bore you with what we did here in our own community to contribute to that effort. But every Jesuit group, every institution was asked to contribute. Anyway, so by January of 2019, Father Sosa was prepared to go to the Holy Father and say, look, here's what we've come up with. And here's what Pope Francis wrote back to him. Dear Father, your preferences are in agreement with the current priorities of the church as expressed through the ordinary teaching of the Pope, the Synods, the Episcopal Conferences. But then listen to what he adds. However, without a relationship with the Lord in a personal and communal life of prayer and discernment, these preferences will bear no fruit. That's what we need people like Pope Francis for. Yeah, it's all very good. Yeah, absolutely. You're online. But unless you continue to stay tapped into the source, the vision, the juice, this is not going to work. It'll just be another exercise in, you know, in futility. All right. So in February of February 19, 2019, Father Sosa issued the Universal Apostolic Preferences for the years 2019 to 2029, the first one. By the way, I don't know whether it's 730, you feel like taking notes or if there's anything, if there's any importance here that you feel you want to jot down. But don't worry about it, because at the end, Jess, Jessica is going to tell you that we're going to make available to you a copy of this, of the, of this, of this letter from Father Sosa of February 19. And you'll be able to go back and say, all right, when Bloschek was talking, it wouldn't make a lot of sense. But now I get it. You know, when you actually have the text in front of you, maybe you'll say, okay, that's what he was trying to get at. Okay. First, preferential concern. I kind of like that better. The first preferential concern is across our ministries in everything that we do to show the way to God through spiritual exercises. And a lot of you are here precisely because in one form or another, you've experienced this great legacy, this great treasure of St. Ignatius, the spiritual exercises, which are modulated, modified, adapted in a multitude of forms. And that's what Ignatius wanted. There's a certain form that he came up with 30 days in solitude, then he comes up with other ways of doing it. And then over the course of time, he said, you know, these have to be always modified and applied to people in their concrete specific circumstances. So we're told by this, by Father Sosa, we resolve to offer the spiritual exercises in as many ways as possible. Listen, providing many people, especially the young, the opportunity to make use of them and to begin or to advance in their following of Christ. I'm delighted to say that the Murphy Center for Ignatian Spirituality here at Fairfield has done a spectacular job, thanks to the talented directors, thanks to the visionary founders and benefactors that put the center together. For example, just so that you realize that this is not all building castles in the air, the Murphy Center, as some of you know, has a 10-week program where our students, members of our larger community promise to spend an hour in solitude every day and then see a spiritual director once a week. I wish we had time, or you can go on the Murphy Center's website where they do have a list of, I think there are a few videos and a list of testimonies, especially of our young people, our students. Right now, for imagine, 60 of our students have signed up to do that. Imagine, can you imagine 60 undergraduates taking the buzz out of their ears and not turning their machines on for an hour every day and then meeting with a spiritual director. When I had more time and more freedom, I served as one of the directors and I wish I could tell you, I wish I had time to tell you the stories, the transformative experiences that happen. But many of you have your own personal experiences of what can happen when with support and some guidance, we stop and we listen and we experience that God, who as I said in the very beginning of my remarks, we are confident is always working. God is always working in our lives and God's intention is always to bring us to deeper truth, to deeper freedom, to deeper love, and to watch that happen with our students is extraordinary. Right now too, and I'm going to stop because I could give examples all night. One of the great joys of the Murphy Center is the close alliance between the Murphy Center and our athletic department. We have 450 varsity athletes at Fairfield, every one of them goes through a day long retreat, where some form of the spiritual exercises is offered to them. Imagine, like it or not our athletes and I happen to like it our athletes are campus leaders. And all of them in the course of the year, go through at least a day of some experience of the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius. And again, their witness their testimony is extraordinary and very inspiring. The spiritual exercises this rhythm, this insight this way of of of helping people encounter themselves as God sees them and helping them to experience God in others and in nature, and in the scripture in Jesus in new ways is. It's what we need to be about. So I'm happy to tell you that at least with preferential option number one, we're doing great. And I want to thank I know a number of our directors from the spirituality center the Murphy Center are probably on in our gathering, and I want to thank them individually, and as a group because they're there, they're in the trenches they are dealing with our students, day to day. Another quick example is Father Dennis and is working with our Egan School of Nursing, and with our young nurses, especially our nurses who work in critical care, and in hospice care. They have a program helping them to develop and strengthen their own spirituality, so that in their vocation slash mission as as healthcare workers. They have the spiritual thanks to our tradition of the spiritual exercises, they to gain a deeper familiarity with and ease, and ease in their relationship of finding God, even in the situations not even but exactly in the situations of human sickness and poverty and deterioration. Okay, that was preference number one preference number two preferential preferential concern number two. The language is is on the one hand painful but extremely for me inspiring. We pledge ourselves to walk with the poor, the outcasts of the world, whose dignity has been violated in a mission of reconciliation and justice. We resolve to discern who are the most vulnerable and excluded persons in our midst, and to find ways to walk closely beside them. We confirm our commitment to migrants displaced persons refugees victims of war and human trafficking. And how do we do that, we do that in an institution of higher learning by improving our studies our analysis and our reflection, in order to understand in depth, the economic political and social processes that underline these situations. Do you understand so as a university. It may not be the case necessarily that that that that all of our resources go to immediate care in response to the sufferings of migrants and displaced persons and victims of sexual trafficking, but as an institution of higher learning it is eminently our duty and our responsibility to encourage our faculty and our students in their study of politics of advertising of chemistry of political economics or education to examine these issues and not try to pretend that they are not the aching wounds of the world. So we do everything we can for example when we are interviewing new faculty. We want to know what are your research interests. Are you going to be interested ultimately, if you want to be part of the mission of Fairfield University. Yes, be the most competent accountant you can be. Yes, be the most that the most competent chemist that you can be. But how are you going to allow the concerns of the world to work their way into your research into your teaching into the internships into the collaboration of research with our students. So, even in our core curriculum concerns for the causes of the world's woes and sufferings are built into our core curriculum, so that they are inescapable. There'll be no for them. I'm sorry. Oh my God, I do this so many times. The number of times I want to say Fairfield and I say for them. This proves to you that I have that I have crimson flowing in my veins so for all of my my Fairfield friends and alumni. What can I tell you, but here I am at Fairfield I love Fairfield. So, no Fairfield students should ever be able to say, we were never challenged about the reality of ecological degradation. Nobody ever asked us in our courses to think about the underlying political and social and economic and military causes of world poverty of inequality of income of wars and and and and displacement of people. It's part of what our professors are asked to work on. And we ask our students in a non ideological way. We're not interested in turning out, you know conservatives or liberals couldn't care less. I want, and we all want our students to be occupied by these issues, and not to be naively innocent, or a block headedly ostrich heads in the sand approach to the sufferings of the world. No, you are people of responsibility, and your people of intelligence, and your people of obligation to your brothers throughout the world. I'm going to just give you the third, because the third will introduce me to another example that I want to give you. So the third to accompany youth in the creation of a hope filled future. This third preferential concern says young people, if you're looking at the whole scope of the globe now, not necessarily here in Fairfield County, but if you look at the world. Young people, most of them poor face, and even our students do in their own ways, face economic insecurity, increased political violence, multiple forms of discrimination, progressive degradation of the environment. What Father Sosa with the approval of course, of the Holy Father says across our ministries, and in every country, again whether it's a parish or grammar school high school, whatever we have always we should be trying to quote, create and maintain spaces for youthful creativity for encounter for discerning the path to happiness by contributing to the well being of all humankind. There needs to there must be there will be says Father Sosa and the Holy Father in any Ignatian inspired institution, a special preferential concern for youth. Now, here we are, we're a university. So that's right up our alley. But how we do it matters simply because our customers, the people who pay the checks are young people and their families doesn't mean that we've accomplished our mission. We're still going focus on our students and on their total integral human well being and growth is what we must be about. And that's if any of you went to Jesuit colleges and universities, and if you're still bothering to listen to a broadcast like this, it must mean that you had some positive experience of that that you experienced people who were concerned about the growth of your mind, not only in your professional preparation but also who cared about you as a human being and understood that you lived in particular and peculiar circumstances. Maybe you had economic needs back when you were here, or when you were some other Jesuit college or high school, maybe you were going through your own personal psychological sexual social challenges. There was somebody who understood and who cared and who was there for you and who let that be clear. In other words, I hope that somebody respected you and loved you and cared for you. Now, powerfully, Father Sosa says, to accompany young people demands of all of us who work with them authenticity of life. You all know that young people can smell a fake a mile away. You lose all credibility. If you're a fake. When I first started teaching in university way up in Syracuse, New York, one of the old Jesuits said to me, I was telling him how unprepared I was I didn't know this and I didn't know that. And he said, look, just just be honest and be transparent and be authentic because the kids always smell a fake. If you don't know something tell him you don't know it. We're talking about something broader still when we talk about authenticity of life. So we want as our student life. We want our student personnel folks, we want our faculty, we want our public safety officers we want everyone who works here to live as best they can authenticity and honesty. And it says here spiritual depth and an openness to sharing our life mission to share with our students our own journey and to share with them as is appropriate who we are and why we do what we do. So you see the kind of vision of a community of care and creativity and tough learning and demanding education that Father Sosa has in mind in our ministry to youth. The last and I'm going to go through this briefly I'm going to mention it only because I want to come back and tell you about an initiative that I think explains or demonstrates our commitment to number to be to walk with the poor the outcasts who are most vulnerable who are most excluded and to walk with youth. The last and again, this would be a topic for a whole other set a whole other session. I have so many wonderful faculty colleagues who are working to implement this. It is to collaborate in the care of our common home, which is a quote, which is a reference to Pope Francis's encyclical letter a lot to see our responsibility for the care of our mother the earth. And the call is to collaborate with others. This is nothing that that you know, we on our own can do to collaborate with others in the construction of alternative models of life that are based on respect for creation and on sustainable development, capable of producing goods that one justly distributed. Ensure a decent life for all human beings. Maybe at another time. In fact, if we do this I'd like to get to get together my really admirable committed colleagues who are many of whom teach in our environmental studies program. Or on our campus sustainability committee. I would love for them this issue was so important and candidly I know so little about it. And they know so much. Maybe, maybe just we can get them together and talk to our, our friends here about the motivation and the implementation of this of this preferential concern. But what are we doing for to walk with the outcast to walk with those who are most vulnerable. And what are we doing a special service to our youth. I think you have probably heard through the Tom Tom's, or if you follow the Connecticut Post, or if you got the message from Frank Carol, the chair of our board. We've been working over the course of the last 18 months on an accessibility of the presidential the president created a committee to examine access increased educational access, because we are convinced that as as a Jesuit Catholic community, the most, most important, most effective instrument that we have to respond to the needs, especially of the most vulnerable in our own neighborhood here in bridge in the greater Bridgeport area is to move toward slowly carefully to move toward a two year junior college in downtown Bridgeport that would provide access to education to a population which has been for generations, seriously neglected and underserved. These would be Pell eligible students, that is to say their families live under a certain government established level of poverty, and mostly young women and men of color first generation families refugees, who are capable, who have the desire and the intrinsic ability, but who haven't, who haven't been prepared to find admittance to a 62 to a four year college, and whose, and whose, and whose preparation is very likely not going to be accomplished in one of our existing state community colleges. So we have on the basis of a wonderful community and wonderful junior college established and sponsored by a Loyola University in Chicago, a Rupe college, we here at Fairfield have developed our own distinctive model of what we working hand in with Bishop Kajano, and the diocese of Bridgeport, how we will provide this bridge this new opportunity for educational access to new generations of the kind of people by the way for whom historically Fairfield was created. You may know enough about our university and some of you may say exactly from that kind of a family, when the Jesuits up in New England decided when they noticed when they discerned when they spotted the reality that there were many, many generations that there were many families, Catholic families as industry expanded in the 2030s and 40s here in Southern Connecticut the Jesuits said they need they need a college. They need educational access we want to give them the best we can. And so the Jesuits began to creep around downtown Bridgeport, looking for land to buy to open a college. And yes, land was too expensive in downtown Bridgeport, but there were two contiguous estates that were up for back taxes up here. And so in Fairfield, and so the Jesuits bought these two pieces of land, but the intention was always to provide educational access in an atmosphere of academic rigor, pre professional focus and care of the whole person, giving these young people of the previous age all that they needed to realize their potential, and to achieve their success, and to become, you know, productive, and, and accomplished contributing citizens to our area. That's how we started, and that's what we're going to go back and bridge to go back to Bridgeport and do. So that's how we're going to try to implement. And the implementation of these of these preferential concerns, how they're going to be incarnated. It's not a once a once for all decision. We are going to be returning to these again and again. And whenever our provincial visits, whenever representatives from the Association of Jesuit colleges and universities visit us to assess and to grade us on whether or not we are faithful to our the criteria that they will be using will include and be chiefly structured by these, these preferential concerns that we've been talking about. Likewise, very soon we'll have a New England colleges and universities assessment as well. And they asked specifically, what is how do you define your mission and your and your orientation, and we will have to even explain to our secular New England college and universities colleagues, how these criteria which we say identify us are are shaping our curriculum, our hiring, our promotion, our, our scholarly productivity and our service to the larger community. And I better stop now just we have one everybody to sleep. I saw one of my friends that I'm not going to identify my friend has a nice glass of what I what I take to be a Pinot Grigio, and I wouldn't mind having that here now but what can I say. So, you have one question and so far we'll see preface is it by saying this may be more of a question for her parish, but she's asking is the church considering evolving rituals within the church or within mass services that reflect a more universal inclusion. That has, well that you know that you're right it's not even a question for your what's a question immediately for your parish, but it's a question of the bishops are given tremendous, tremendous authority over the worship in their own dioceses and the local, the I'm sorry the American bishops would be taking up these concerns. Now by inclusivity, do you mean the role of women. Do you mean gay and lesbian people trans people or cultural distinctions and inclusivity. All of those are terribly important questions, the topic of cultural inclusivity and the proper role of women in in liturgical life and in church life. Yeah, we don't we don't get to say what happens in your local parish. We do get to say to some degree what happens in our own campus ministry. By the way, if you haven't met our wonderful new Fairfield alum, director of campus ministry, Father Keith much Kiewicz, a macos I think he says, we should bring Keith on and you can you can throw a few of those questions at him. Well that's actually a great advertisement because we will have Father Keith on December 14. So that will be market calendars now I'll send. I'll make sure I include that in the follow up email so we will have an opportunity here from our new campus ministry director. And as I said, or as Father Jerry said, I will be sure also in the follow up email to include a copy of Father Sosa's letter so you can read through all of this a little bit more thoroughly and I think. Father Jerry, I have a feeling that once people get a chance to really read through that they and digest everything a little bit more. There may be some more questions so to your point maybe we do some follow ups on the specific preferences like you know the climate concerns and all that going forward so we may find that after this people are having more questions so we could certainly do follow ups. I've also you know I've also blithered on a long time so people are probably you know doled into into into a weariness but the Board of Trustees is going to be making a definitive decision very soon on what's going to happen with our proposed two year college. And if that's approved, then we'd have a lot of exciting things to share with you. As I say I think we should do more on ecology and sustainability, and we have wonderful colleagues who can do that. And since I have you before I lose you, I want to make it I want to give a give us a commercial. You think that Jesuit said nothing to do except ask you to think about more things right, but this is also the Ignatian year. When Father Sosa, who is apparently very energetic has asked us also to be thinking through the life of St Ignatius and how it has implications for our own personal lives and for the living out of and the incorporation of the preferential concerns. So we're in the middle of the Ignatian year. I thought I was going to talk to you about that to tonight but I realized I had bitten off more than I could chew. So I dropped that. And, but I will tell you, as a commercial that in late January and early February, we're going to have an online book club. We're going to be studying and reading together. Can you can you can you see this. We'll send you this information to just we'll figure out how to let you know this is the autobiography of St Ignatius. So over the course of four or five meetings, we're going to chop it up. You're going to read it. I'm going to give you some notes I'm going to suggest some avenues for reflection. I'm going to put it together it's not going to be me at, you know, a talking gray head it's going to be all of us sharing what we learned how we were impacted, how we were inspired, as we looked at the life of St Ignatius, as he recounts it himself. So that's coming. Any more questions before we before we wind up anymore. Any questions at all. If you have anything that I can see, but if anybody has anything feel free to chime in. And if not, as I said, we will certainly have other opportunities to follow up on this and to have further discussions about specific preferences if that is something that is of interest to you. So once you have a chance to look over Father Sosa's letter if there's anything that comes to mind certainly don't hesitate to ever send it my way and if it's a question specifically for that you would like Father Jerry to address to you. I'm going to arrange to do that and I will share that with him, or if you just have thoughts for future events like this that you would like us to do we're certainly open to those suggestions as well. Yeah, that'd be great idea I mean if there are things that you would like as as the extent is our extended family of parents present and past of of participants in different programs from the Alumni Affairs Office or from the Murphy Center. All of us who have somehow connected. I always on this. This is not magical thinking but I really do believe that when people are drawn together it's not by chance. And so we have something that we're sharing, and we have something that we're building on and so let's see where all this leads. Okay. Yes, sir. Oh, my friend, Bart she and Bart. How are you from Bart is coming to us from Summit New Jersey. Father, did the congregation consider the issue of recruitment. You know, Bart, they did, but I don't think they they didn't put together a specific document or a specific. recommendation. And I think it's important because at the same time that I keep saying to our trustees and to and to and to senior leadership here at Fairfield that the the enduring and effective and commitment to the identity as a Jesuit Catholic University depends in the first place on the senior leadership, the trustees, the benefactors, the alumni, the alumni and everybody who makes up the community, the community. Now, in that community. I think that the role of a certain number of relatively active relatively competent Jesuits is significant right like I try. I, we did everything we could to make sure we got Keith as campus minister, we did everything we could to make sure we got Father Paul Roark as as a Vice President for Mission and Ministry, because we believe that these, these people are really living connections to the great tradition. What do you think for what should we do for recruitment. How did we miss you by the way. I would, I would plead in my defense. Mr. Sperry Catherine. Bart's wonderful wife. But can I tell that can I tell them the truth that we may not have got you but can I tell them. Bart's father, who was a judge. Was he a he was a federal judge Bart state court judge state court judge in New Jersey. After raising his family, and once he became a widower entered the society of Jesus as a Jesuit brother. So brother Bart. I'm sorry for 26 years. 26 years how old was he when he entered 67. He became a Jesuit brother at 67. And touched, touched the lives of any of us touched profoundly the lives of any of us who were raised by Bart and the other brothers the brothers had a irreplaceable role. And the fact that speaking of vocations the fact that we don't have a lot of Jesuit brothers vocations, you know that we have brother Jonathan Stott who teaches in the physics the chair of the physics department. But we have a terrible scarcity of Jesuit brothers to the great dereliction of the society. You're going to turn me off I can see it. No, no, never. I don't see any more questions just seeing some thanks and some kudos to you Father Jerry so thank you so much for another wonderful event thank you all for being here. And as I said keep an eye out for that follow up email later this week we'll have a link to the recording if you want to listen in again, we'll have the letter for Father Sosa, and just a couple of other reminders and links for upcoming events. Thank you and we'll tell you more and we'll tell you more about the January February program. Absolutely.