The Ask and the Answer

Even St. Ignatius’ advice about fundraising for the early works and institutions of the Society of Jesus has relevance today.

“You seem to hold that the use of natural helps or resources, and taking advantage of the favor of man, for ends that are good and acceptable to our Lord, is to bend the knee to Baal.” So wrote St. Ignatius of Loyola to a fellow Jesuit in 1549, just nine years after the founding of the Society of Jesus. His interlocutor, Juan Alvarez, S.J., was balking at receiving the patronage of a wealthy benefactor. St. Ignatius, in a moment that was perhaps the first confirmation of the old adage that “where there’s a will, there’s a way Jesuit,” set him straight:

“Rather, it would seem that the man who thinks that it is not good to make use of such helps or to employ this talent along with others which God has given him, under the impression that mingling such helps with the higher ones of grace produces a ferment or evil concoction, has not learned well to order all things to God’s glory and to find a profit in and with all these things for the ultimate end, which is God’s honor and glory.”

Another date — the year before — is important for context: 1548. That is when the Jesuits, whom St. Ignatius initially imagined as a band of educated but more or less itinerant preachers, missionaries and spiritual directors, founded their first school for lay students in Messina, Sicily. Though it grew in fits and starts in its early years, the Messina school became a model for Jesuit education that was replicated literally all over the world. 

While men and women can take a vow of poverty, institutions can’t, even if (as was the case in Messina and at most Catholic educational institutions) many of the administrators and faculty draw no salary. Working for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls starts to require a familiarity with endowments, planned giving and — a term I just learned recently — “high capacity donors.”

In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, that meant seeking the help of the nobility — and sometimes (as anyone who has read about the Renaissance papacies knows) indeed turning a blind eye and accepting help from people who seemed to “bend the knee to Baal” in their own lives. More often, it meant not being shy about asking and receiving, and doing both with a higher goal in mind. 

If you’re a history buff, this makes for some fascinating stories, including that of Joanna of Austria, the powerful noblewoman and later regent of Spain who was both a benefactor and a political protector of the early Society. At her death in 1573, it was revealed that she had secretly become the Jesuits’ first and only female member. She wasn’t the only supporter of the Jesuits to join their ranks: One early benefactor-turned-member (and Joanna’s friend and correspondent), Francis Borgia, later became the superior general of the Jesuits. A century after his death, he was named a saint. 

For the Jesuits, this “go in their door, bring them out ours” strategy more or less worked, and certainly was a godsend for their educational institutions. By the time the Ratio Studiorum, the Jesuit document standardizing their educational way of proceeding, was published in 1599, the Society was operating 245 schools. By 1750, that number was approaching 700, with almost 100 schools educating 40,000 students a year in France alone. Today in the United States, the Jesuits sponsor 27 colleges or universities and over 60 high schools. Other religious orders, like the sponsoring women’s congregations at Loyola Marymount — the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary and the Congregation of St. Joseph of Orange — also have long legacies of sponsoring and operating substantial educational networks. 

If you’re an alum of one of them (or four), you’re probably getting your share of fundraising letters and emails yourself. I was invited to a hilarious breakfast a few years ago where an ill-informed dean at a Jesuit school mistook me for someone with substantial financial means; somewhere in between the Eggs Benedict and the check, I had to tell her that I was actually a rather broke journalist, and would not be able to endow the Keane Family Scholarship. Who am I, Jim of Austria?

But I get it. My own education and that of many of my siblings at Loyola Marymount was significantly helped by generous scholarships. That financial aid was largely funded by a bequest from a benefactor who had died many years before. She was the heiress to an oil and real estate fortune, if I remember correctly. And I like to imagine she would think today that she gave her resources to a worthy cause. 

James T. Keane ’96, is the literary editor of America magazine and the author of “Reading Culture Through Catholic Eyes: 50 Writers, Thinkers & Firebrands Who Challenge & Change Us.”

To support The Campaign for LMU, contact Kathy Ash at [email protected].