Ignatian Spirituality » Paul Campbell

Links for the Weekend

Jim Manney — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:11:47 +0000

Paul Campbell, SJ, talks about his personal prayer practices. (“The most important thing I do is to see a spiritual director.”)

Jim Martin, SJ, on sexual abuse and the Sacred Heart.

How the St. Louis Jesuits changed liturgical music. (“One person credits them with wrecking the liturgy and the next person credits them with saving it.”)

Jim McDermott, SJ, on why movie sequels often flop.

How empathic are you? Take the empathy survey and compare yourself to 14,000 college students. (A troubling report on the state of empathy here.)

Blog Posts of Note

Jim Manney — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:27:50 +0000

Lisa Kelly on cleaning the slate.

Aaron Pidel, SJ, on so-called progress in human knowledge (“The most recently founded fields of study. . . often show a peculiar and youthful zeal for proving the obvious.”)

Fr. Robert Barron on the sci-fi movie “District 9.” (“It explores, with great perceptiveness, a problem that has preoccupied modern philosophers from Hegel to Levinas: how to relate to ‘the other.’”)

Paul Campbell, SJ, on funny movies.

Ignatius the Intense

Jim Manney — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:24:05 +0000

At his People for Others blog, my friend Paul Campbell has trouble coming up with “five fun facts” about Ignatius Loyola. One of them is the fact that Ignatius was hauled up several times before the Spanish Inquisition.

This got me thinking about the personalities of saints. There aren’t many “fun” facts about Ignatius because Ignatius was probably not much of a fun guy. I think he was pretty intense. He seems to have had a charismatic personality and a wonderful gift for friendship. But he was probably more at home in intense one-on-one conversation than circulating at a cocktail party.

One of Ignatius’ great friends was Philip Neri, a fun-loving Italian who loved practical jokes and wisecracks. Philip was a great evangelist in Rome who founded the Oratory congregation. He often did outrageous things. He would dress as a clown, tell jokes to somber visitors, and walk in the streets with a bouquet of flowers and a cushion on his head. He would shave half his beard off and enjoy watching people’s reactions. Ignatius said that he wanted Philip in the Society of Jesus. It seems that Philip did apply. But for some reason it never happened. Maybe the Jesuits weren’t enough fun.

A blogger named Chris Hoyt has drawn a couple of comic strips about Philip. View them here.