Title:The Last Word

On academic life

One thing I love about teaching is getting to know people. Currently I teach a course for seniors. It’s a wonderful group. When seniors sign up for Catholic theology, they want to be there.

Theology addresses utterly fundamental matters, touches the meaning of everything.

Today students are much busier. They’re under more pressure to succeed and do well and prepare for jobs. Their life is much faster. It’s not just this place—it’s cultural.

On pandemic teaching

The last few years have been tough because of the pandemic. So much of college life is about people. In many ways that’s the most formative part of the experience— the fish you’re swimming with. This crowd lost about a year of that. Many seniors were in the area so we’d get Wisey’s sandwiches and have the quadrangle to ourselves.

In virtual classes I liked having their faces very clear on the computer screen, but my students told me it’s tough being on camera under everyone’s eyes all the time. Sometimes the technology was bonding: I’d run into trouble and the students are geniuses so they’d help me.

On campus faith life

I first came to Georgetown in the 1960s as a seminarian. Back then every Catholic had to make a yearly weekend retreat, take four courses in theology and six in philosophy, no electives. It was basically watered-down seminary.

Today the university is Catholic in another way. One cannot be on campus very long without noticing the attention given to matters of social justice. And the number and variety of spiritual retreats is extensive. But participation, as it should be in such matters, is voluntary. You have to want to do it.

We have chaplains from many different faiths, and that pluralism is important to all we do.

On God, and retirement

A Catholic believes that God is a loving Creator who sustains and enables all created reality. To use a crude image, God is not another player in the cosmos but the one who creates and sustains and enables it, the means to grace with love.

Catholics believe that God decisively reveals the embrace of love and identifies with humankind in the person of Jesus Christ. So Catholic faith is, if you will, an earthy faith.

As for retiring, some Jesuits do but it depends. We tend to be pretty active, maybe slowing down because of the limitations of aging.