Welcome to Nexus

Kind greetings, and welcome to Nexus: Conversations on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, a digital-age journal that amplifies and publishes scholarly dialogue taking place in the Hank Center here at Loyola University Chicago. With this (our fourth) issue, we realize that we have come a very long way in a short time. We have already had a “Special Issue” of Nexus in the mix—our very well-received summer offering, “Real Presences”—and we are on schedule to provide our next issue (reflections on Catholic communication ecologies that we are calling “Media and Messages: Catholicism and Digital Media”) in late fall of 2025.

 

Volume Three of Nexus takes us to some very exciting terrain. Friends of the Hank Center will know of our deep dedication to providing scholarship, convening conversations, and supporting far-reaching work of all kinds in an area of scholarship that has come to be known as the “Catholic Imagination." This issue, with its focus on the critical and creative work of younger, emerging scholars, both honors and continues this work. Former Hank Center Director, Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J. and yours truly both have books on the subject; our Loyola colleague, Fr. Steve Schloesser S.J., himself the author of a superb book with kindred sensibilities, offered courses on the Catholic Imagination in the 1990s and early 2000s; and, similar courses devoted to the 20th Century Catholic Literary Revival (a central topic of the Catholic Imagination) were offered at Jesuit universities in the 1980s by luminaries like Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (AKA, Fr. Simeon, OCSO) and several others.

 

These courses and scholarship owe a debt of gratitude not only to the creative work of writers and makers of the Catholic Imagination (as wide-ranging as Léon Bloy, Gertrud von Le Fort, David Jones, Julien Green, J.F. Powers, Shusaku Endo, Brian Moore, and Kirsten Valdez Quade) but also to the critical work of William Lynch, S.J. (whose work in the 1950’s and 60’s is foundational), Gene Kellogg (another Loyolan whose astute study, The Vital Tradition, published in 1970 by Loyola University Press needs to be better known), and the groundbreaking essays collected by Melvin J. Friedman in The Vision Obscured (also published in 1970 by Fordham). Key texts by Conor Cruise O’Brien, David Tracy, Paul Giles, Francesca Aran Murphy, and Ellis Hanson among others helped build out the tradition in the late 20th century; and, in 2000, the sociologist-novelist-priest, Fr. Andrew Greeley, published perhaps the best known and accessible book on the topic entitled simply The Catholic Imagination. Taken together (and with so much other good work besides—especially by artists and scholars writing in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s), these efforts provide a prolegomena to our current, bustling moment in Catholic Imagination.

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The Catholic Imagination, then, has become a placename for an exciting and dynamic interdisciplinary field—one with a history that is long and self-conscious, but also one that is somewhat and unknown and under-organized. To encourage a better understanding of the field, Dana Gioia and a few others hatched a brilliant plan in 2014 to celebrate and explore the Catholic literary imagination through a series of national biennial conferences—moveable feasts that have grown and markedly expanded the conversation.  These conferences, which now go by the shorthand of “The Catholic Imagination Conference,” constitute nothing less than a movement. They have given birth to new journals, scholarly series, and academic programs; they have engendered a groundswell of excellent creative and scholarly activity; they have provided, perhaps most importantly, a much-needed community for writers, creators, readers, and thinkers of all stripes. In a decidedly Inklings-like way, “What, you too?” has become a common greeting among conference attendees—and the conversations (and friendships) bloom from there. We expect to hear again the warmth of this greeting when the Catholic Imagination convenes for its landmark fifth installment hosted by the deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame in late October 2024.

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Another outgrowth of these conference conversations—and one that followed on the heels of the 2019 installment (hosted by the Hank Center at Loyola University Chicago)—was the creation of the Graduate Summer Institute in the Catholic Imagination. After a series of Covid convulsions, the inaugural GSI met in a multi-day virtual seminar in June 2022. The pieces that constitute this issue of Nexus are the fruit of the inaugural voyage, and the issue editors, Dr. Jessica Schnepp and Dr. Bill Gonch, are both alumni of the GSI.

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I offer my heartfelt thanks to Jessica and Bill for serving as editors and shepherding all the pieces through. I am also grateful for the patience of our author/creators as this issue took a little longer to get from farm to table than planned. But it is well worth the wait and there are so many superb pieces to read. Add to that the excellent, original visual art by Katie Broussard (another of our GSI alums), superb editorial help by Nathan Bradford Williams, and the usual first-class design by the great Emma Chaplin, and we see how well Nexus is coming along.

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Imagination is, of course, also a central component of Jesuit identity and Ignatian philosophy/spirituality. So, for this issue, we have included another appropriate element. We are delighted to feature the work of Jesuit men in formation and the two winners of Berchmans Prize. Named for St. John Berchmans, S.J, the patron saint of Jesuit scholastics and students, the Berchman's Prize celebrates the achievement of papers that are presented at the annual Winter Forum, hosted by First Studies here at Loyola. We are happy to “catch-up” here as well and share the astute, substantive work of Matthew Zurcher, S.J. and Michael Petro, S.J. Congratulations, gentlemen, and well done.

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The Catholic Imagination is one expression and offspring of the Catholic intellectual tradition. As such, it provides both a content and a method for both artistic making and scholarly review. It discloses a unifying habit of mind, one that approaches the transcendental mysteries of the true, good, and beautiful with creativity, expansion, and consequence. This kind of work—this kind of imagination— is the lifeblood of Loyola University Chicago and the Hank Center is delighted to present these fruits to readers of goodwill.  Please read on—and I hope these pieces, provided by the next generation of Catholic artists and scholars, stimulate insight and engender constructive, life-giving conversation.