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Fessio Exiled

Jesuits Shun Invitation to Support New College

By Christopher Zehnder

Repercussions from the late unpleasantness involving the St. Ignatius Institute and the University of San Francisco are still being felt. No sooner had Catholics heard the glad tidings of the founding of Campion College of San Francisco, than they received the news that Father Joseph Fessio had been "exiled" by his Jesuit superiors to a suburb of Los Angeles to work as a hospital chaplain. Fessio's superiors said they did not want the founder of both Ignatius Press and Institute to have anything to do with Campion. I called Fessio on March 14 to talk about the college and to get the story behind his "exile." What I learned left me wondering -- what possible cause did the Jesuits have to treat him as they did?

The story Fessio told me about the founding of Campion College was surprising and admirable. "It was on February 17 that things kind of came together," said Fessio. He had celebrated Mass that day for the 40th wedding anniversary of John Galten (the ousted director of St. Ignatius Institute) and his wife. That afternoon Galten and Fessio talked about opening a college. "I said to Galten, 'look, let's do it! I think it will work,'" said Fessio. "So I got people together and I got working on the thing."

The "thing," said Fessio, is a very simple concept. "We have no capital expenditures. All we need is one classroom, which will be a library as well. No dorms -- students will live in apartments. No full-time faculty, only part-time. The curriculum is a fixed curriculum; all students take the same courses. It's a two-year program, not a four-year one. Accreditation standards are different for two-year institutions, so we actually put together in ten days a curriculum, the catalog, financing, accreditation preparation, and affiliation agreements with three other institutions." On the eleventh day, February 28, the website went up announcing the founding of Campion College of San Francisco.

In speaking of the founding of Campion, Fessio kept speaking of we; who are "we," I asked him? "Well, it's me, basically," he admitted. "But," he hastened to add, Michael Torre (a professor at St. Ignatius Institute) "put the curriculum together from the Institute curriculum. He did the draft. Then we had a meeting with him, other faculty members of the institute and John Galten and discussed it at greater length and refined it. Our [Ignatius Press] onsite guy does web stuff for us. He put it all up on the web in one day. What made this thing very efficient was the use of the internet, because I was able to get the accreditation standards off the internet for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. We had attorneys working on incorporation, reserving the name, and so on. People on the staff here were working on a logo and letterhead. So, a bunch of people were working on different things, but I did most of the rest. I took the draft catalog for Ave Maria College and was able to go through with it and modify it for our purposes and come up with a catalog."

Campion College is described as a two-year college with an integrated Catholic liberal arts, great books curriculum." The college's curriculum enshrines, said Fessio, the traditional Jesuit ratio studiorum, which "can be interpreted many ways. One of the important things is that it brings things together, not just philosophy and theology, but literature and history, as well -- the humanities in their totality." If such a Christian education aims at the fullness of humanism, it does so because it "aims," says the Campion website, "at the formation of the whole person in the image of the God-man, Jesus Christ."

The Campion curriculum is an integrated curriculum -- that is, the courses are given in a definite order and students must master previous courses in order to move on to subsequent ones. Since the program lasts only two years, it does not replace a major which students will pursue at another university or college. Campion, though, provides students with what most universities and colleges could not give them -- an immersion in the literature, philosophy and theology of western culture, rooted in the Hebraic and Greek traditions, and transformed by the revelation of Christ in the Catholic Church. The curriculum presents works of literature, philosophy and theology in an historical sequence, moving from the ancient world into the modern age. The curriculum not only considers the Mediterranean "cradle" of western culture, but moves to a consideration of the cultures of the Americas and those of the whole world. Classes are also offered in natural science (an overview of the theories of empirical science), music and art and American society and culture. Students must pass a proficiency test in a foreign language "important for serious study of the Western Tradition" before achieving the Associates Degree in Christian Humanism, which the college confers.

Michael Torre, who teaches at St. Ignatius Institute, said that Campion's curriculum reflects the original curriculum of the St. Ignatius Institute, drawn up by Father Fessio. It is, thus, that Torre said that it was not he (as Father Fessio indicated) who had put the Campion curriculum together. Campion has the curriculum it does, said Torre, because of Father Fessio. At best, he and others only provided help and advice. "I think that is rather important," said Torre, "because there is a kind of implicit accusation that the faculty are not willing to cooperate with the University of San Francisco and have gone off and founded Campion College. And that is inaccurate." He and other faculty members, said Torre, whom the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education and Archbishop Levada asked "to cooperate with the university, have done just that." For the good of the university, said Torre, he and other faculty members have refused to pursue their grievances against the university. The original St. Ignatius Institute curriculum, said Torre, "sought to marry two things: a great books approach to western culture and civilization to the Jesuit ratio studiorum. It thereby sought to marry two different pedagogies: one, a seminar style on the great books, the other, a systematic presentation, usually in lecture style, of fundamental courses in content." While Campion will offer seminar classes (where students read a text and discuss it) in literature and in philosophy and theology, it will also have lectures in systematic philosophy and theology.

And what of mathematics? Campion offers none. Father Fessio said that two years does not allow enough time for the humanities courses they want to offer and mathematics. "If you put something in," he said, "you have to take something out." Torre said about the same thing but added that Campion's course in logic gives the curriculum "a kind of backbone." As for the necessity of having mathematics in a college curriculum, Torre said that in most bachelor of arts programs today "what you have to take by way of mathematics is very minimal. There is one course you have to take, and sometimes statistics will do." He was not sure, though, whether mathematics would be required for accreditation.

I asked Fessio if Campion would follow any particular school of thought, whether Thomism, Scotism, or something else? The school's philosophy, he said, is "Catholicism. Let's stick with isms," he went on -- "how about the Catechism? Faithfulness to the present, living magisterium of the Church, especially in those areas which are most controverted. We're not taking [a particular philosophical approach], as far as I know. Obviously we're going to take the great masters of Catholic tradition, with Thomas Aquinas at the center. We're going to study Aristotle; we'll study modern philosophers. This is a great books program; so, to some extent, we're bringing together the minds who've had this conversation called civilization over the centuries and millennia."

The number of students studying at Campion will initially be small -- only 15 will attend. Ignatius Press, of which Campion is a part, will assure these students full tuition scholarships, "indefinitely," said Fessio, "for as long as business holds up."

Given the above description of Campion, to what could Fessio's Jesuit superiors object? Fessio said that he had kept in contact with his provincial by e-mail throughout the planning stages of the college. "I told him that, as far as accreditation standards went, it might be useful if I were the president, because I have a degree and John Galten does not. I said I didn't think I needed permission because this is an Ignatius Press project, and Ignatius Press is my assignment. I said, nevertheless, I want this both to be, and to be seen to be, in harmony with the mission of the Society of Jesus, and therefore I would like to get [the provincial's] approval with the General's confirmation of it. I detailed how I thought Campion could be complementary to USF -- we would not be attracting the students who would be going to the institute; our students would have two years, so they could transfer to USF if they wanted to, where they could get another point of view. People disagree, but why can't we have different approaches and have a debate about it? That was my request."

Fessio said that his provincial "had a consultors meeting on Saturday night [March 9] and he called me into his office on Monday the 11th where he gave me a letter basically saying that I was to have neither a public or private role in Campion, that I was to be associate chaplain down at Santa Teresita Hospital in Duarte, but that I would have time there to keep running Ignatius Press. I asked him specifically if, first of all, the clear intent here was to distance the Society of Jesus from Campion College by cutting me off from all contact with Campion College? What is so terrible about Campion College being associated with the Society of Jesus? I asked him. He didn't answer that question."

"What do you think the answer is?" I asked Fessio.

"I'm not sure," he replied. "I'm not clear why a university with 7,000 students is so concerned about a program with 15 possible students nearby. I'm really kind of at a loss to tell you why they are so concerned.

"I know there is great hostility towards the old institute faculty, and to me in particular," Fessio continued. "There are personal things involved in it. Partly it is my fault. I don't spend much time with other Jesuits, so their view of me -- just like my friends' view of me -- has been mythical. The supporters of Father Fessio have a much more developed view of my powers and abilities than I have, but my enemies also do. So, people are responding, not to who I really am, but who I appear to be."

But if his superiors are willing to remove him from Campion, why not from Ignatius Press, which finances Campion? "I don't know," said Fessio. "For one reason, there's no place to put me; I know, because no one else wants me. Secondly, Ignatius Press is not radical or an embarrassment to anyone with reason. We may have a different point of view, but it's intelligible and intelligent, and so on. And I think they [his superiors] realize that because I am enough of a public figure that there would be pretty bad publicity [if they did remove me from Ignatius], and it might make the Society look bad. And I do have friends in Rome who have some influence."

One of Fessio's friends "in Rome" (actually, he is in Vienna, Austria), Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has endorsed Campion, and the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, which Cardinal Schönborn had a hand in starting, will admit Campion graduates into a three-year program that will give them a Masters in Divinity. Not just Gaming, but Ave Maria College in Michigan has agreed to accept the credits of Campion students, as has the Franciscan University of Stuebenville, Ohio.

Despite his provincial's letter forbidding him all association, public or private, with Campion, Fessio speaks of Campion's future as if he might have a hand in it. Though all remains in the planning stages, Fessio said he thinks the program may eventually accept 60 students for its two-year program. "Another thing we could do," he said, "is set up another one, 400 miles away, because there is an advantage to having a kind of junior college approach for regional students."

Having several campuses, Fessio continued, "could take different forms. One that has been suggested is that one of these be set up near a secular campus, like - Berkeley or -, where students take some of their courses at Campion and other courses at the secular campus. This is being done right now in Michigan, where Ave Maria College has an agreement with the University of Eastern Michigan where students can take certain courses at Eastern Michigan, and the Eastern Michigan students can take certain courses in theology at Ave Maria."

Whatever future role Father Fessio may have in Campion, he seems willing to accept his "exile" to Duarte. What are the prospects that he could eventually return to San Francisco and take a public role in Campion? "Anything can happen," he said. "I'm not going to seek it, or ask others to seek for any change. But you never know."

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