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Lego, Social Justice and Works in Progess

By John Sealey

Every month or so, I am awakened around 3 a.m. by soft clicking noises. Light shines from beneath the door where our youngest child Alek (age six) is out of bed playing with Lego blocks. If not for parental or physical limitations, he would happily pass the night.

To most of us, his Lego cache looks like a mess of plastic spilling out of two storage tubs onto the floor of his room. Yet, he scrutinizes the chaos with a surgeon’s precision, sifting and sorting the parts by their function and theme (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Bionicals). Without the assistance of assembly directions, he orders and assembles the random pieces into improvised models for sail, flight or fight. Not surprisingly, his Lego Club catalogues are frayed holy writ with prominently circled kits indicating his wish list for Christmas or his birthday. Alek doesn’t like it when I interchange Lego parts, for instance putting Indiana Jone’s bull-whip where Darth Vader’s light saber should be.

The Wisconsin Province recently compiled (I won’t say finished) a work-inprogress web site that also required some degree of sorting, collecting, ordering and assembling. A Lego analogy might also be drawn since the new site also hopes to connect various Jesuit projects engaged in faith-justice work, an area of ministry often called the social apostolate. Provincial Fr. Thomas Krettek envisioned this site during last year’s Jesuit General Congregation 35 in Rome. Since that time, the Wisconsin Province has developed the site to profile these various projects and centers across the world. It was formally launched in June and we invite all Jesuit Journeys readers to visit www.jesuitsocialapostolate.org.

According to Fr. Krettek, "General Congregation 35 emphasized the universal dimension of the Society and the importance of effective networking. I am hopeful that this web site might help to encourage our collective work and shared mission, increase our familiarity with one another and thereby advance common apostolic goals. May it familiarize us with the important contributions of the social sector and attract others to join us."

The Web site profiles the breadth and range of Jesuit service and accompaniment with the poor. It unveils social analysis and theological reflection on causes of suffering and social change advocacy which is underway across the globe. In the U.S., Jesuit visibility is probably most readily evident in the schooling and education with 28 universities and 71 high schools/middle schools. Jesuits are also well known in the spiritual and pastoral zones with 80 Jesuit parishes, 26 retreat houses and a host of spirituality web sites such as Creighton’s popular online ministries.

Yet, compared to these well established highly visible ministries, the social apostolate in the U.S. is less institutionalized, organized and structured. International Jesuits ask whether U.S. Jesuits and their colleagues are involved, concerned and supportive of efforts to respond to social concerns. In a way, this web site hopes to answer that question with an affirmative YES while also providing some potential linkages for Jesuits and colleagues who work and support these efforts across various geographies.

Take a moment and visit www.jesuitsocialapostolate.org and you will see a remarkable level of service, reflection and advocacy across the world. In the U.S., social ministry often has a stealth quality, existing within an institutional umbrella of a university or another ministry, rather than functioning as a separately chartered, Jesuit sponsored non-profit. This arrangement can have the benefit that social concerns are made known to students and faculty and therefore help to inform the mission, but it also makes these efforts harder to track. Even within a single university, it is frequently the case that various departments may not be aware of the good work, sometimes very closely related work, which is being done elsewhere on campus.

The more than 300 Jesuit social works around the globe have been arranged by thematic focus and geographic region. Visitors can choose from among 35 languages and navigate the data by interactive mapping, keyword search or thematic listing. The site also includes blogging and calendar features for registered users and an easy link for authorized updates, revisions and new additions. A continuous slideshow provides some images of the Jesuit social apostolate.

For 35 years, Jesuits and the ministries they inspire have been synonymous with the commitment "to serve faith and promote justice." As the largest religious order of men with almost 19,000 Jesuits worldwide working on six continents and in 127 countries, Jesuits have created relationships ranging from thought leaders and decision makers to those who are destitute and marginalized. Jesuits and those formed and inspired by Ignatian principles are an enormous influence for good and yet we have yet to fully realize the potential force. In a recent letter, Superior General Fr. Adolfo Nicolás observed, "So many of the issues that concern us, that affect our ministries and challenge our apostolic discernment, are of a universal character ... such as migration and refugees, advocacy and networking on social issues, ecology and sustainable development. At the same time we are aware that many of the areas we want to contribute to are much larger and more complex than we can address by ourselves. Issues such as poverty, globalization, peace, unemployment, education require us to work wholeheartedly with many others."

One concrete area to advance this cooperation is to enhance our comprehension of what is being done by other Jesuits and colleagues. What are they finding? How are they innovating? What are the results? How might we learn from this and find inspiration? How might our mission be more closely united?

Please visit and interact with the site. We welcome your feedback. Who knows...a few readers might just be awake and clicking at 3 a.m.!

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