Follows, a rather poignant letter to the President of St. Louis University from our old classmate, Ernie Ament ’47:

January  12, 2007

Fr. Lawrence Biondi, SJ,  President
Office of the President
Rm 206. Du Bourg Hall
Saint Louis University,
St. Louis, MO 63100

Dear President Biondi,

     This past November I received your letter seeking support for your hope of transforming SLU into “the finest Catholic University in America”.  I support that goal of course because any entire education beyond grade school was Jesuit directed: high school (Campion. in Wisconsin), undergraduate (John Carroll University), graduate (M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics, St. Louis University) four of my five children attended Jesuit universities, including St. Louis; and an uncle of mine (Fr. Charles Murray, S. .J.) was a Missouri Province Jesuit who pastored and founded parishes in Colorado and was later assistant to the Jesuit provincial in St Louis. My Catholic Jesuit education is one of my proudest possessions.
But the actions of St. Louis University and other Jesuit universities over the past few decades have caused concern for many serious Catholics such as myself as to what exactly a Catholic and a Jesuit university is today — whether Catholic colleges and universities who aspire to rival the great public schools are truly Catholic anymore or have to a large degree abandoned their Catholic elements and secularized themselves to the extent that their Catholicity is largely illusory or tangential to their increasingly secular identity.

At the Land 0' Lakes Conference of prominent Catholic institutions, for instance, that took place in Wisconsin in 1967, St. Louis University, among others, asserted complete autonomy and independence for itself from all Church authority of any kind.  That certainly had to affect its relationship with the Church's magisterium.  It subsequently turned ownership of itself over to a board of lay trustees chosen without regard to their Catholic conviction or commitment or to any religions’ beliefs at all.  A board not permitted a Jesuit majority or even necessarily a Catholic majority.  Faculty at SLU are now hired without regard to their religious beliefs and with no overall Catholic majority required.  Schools of theology are departments of religion now, in which Catholic dogma is taught as merely one of many religious creeds.

More telling is the recent public tax abatement St. Louis won by convincing a Missouri appellate court that it is not in fact a Catholic school (As the opposing litigant, the Masonic Temple Assoc, argued), that it has no binding connection to any religious creed or authority and does not promulgate a specific creed.  It cannot, in short, promote Catholicism.  Can such a University as this ever become the “finest Catholic university in America"?

There is also the question of the "mandatum" for professors of Catholic theology — admittedly a complex matter in the light of academic freedom — but nonetheless a policy that Pope John Paul II specifically asked theology faculty of Catholic universities to assent to and which many serious Catholics consider natural and reasonable for Catholic theologians to endorse. The insistence of the Pope that Catholic institutions teach the magisterium of the Church and accept the mandatum of the local bishop in matters of Catholic theology simply implies that Catholic universities must seek greatness in ways other than those secular institutions follow if they want to remain faithfully Catholic.
From the above it seems to me that through a mistaken or incomplete understanding of academic freedom St. Louis University has maneuvered itself into a position where it is much more difficult to be Catholic than before.

Finally, there is the matter of the Jesuit character of St. Louis University.  No person of my age who has had a Jesuit education fails to enthuse about the deep and all pervasive religious character of the educational system St. Ignatius devised for the members of his Society and for those outside of the order whom they taught.  The affect of that Ignatian education was overwhelming and lasting. It changed individuals and through them changed the world.

On this subject allow me to quote a Jesuit whom you certainly know more of than I do, but one who expresses vividly what I experienced so memorably throughout my Jesuit education and which I fear is being lost today. In an article for First Things in April of 2002 entitled "The Jesuit Enigma," Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., wrote: St. Ignatius founded a company of men passionately committed to the defense and propagation of the faith under the direction of the supreme Vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman pontiff.  The "Rules for Thinking with the Church" at the end of the Spiritual Exercises inculcate deep reverence for the Magisterium and rule out any public dissent.  Ignatius expected Jesuits to be perfectly obedient to religious and ecclesiastical superiors.  In discussing the kind of doctrine that ought to be taught to Jesuit students, he wrote in the Constitutions: “The doctrine which they ought to follow in each subject should be that which is safest and most approved, as also the authors who teach it” (no. 358).  He wanted professors to steer away from new or suspect authors and opinions.

What I find most striking in this article is that while Cardinal Dulles insists with St. Ignatius that Jesuits be men who are "thoroughly trained in the traditions of the Church and completely loyal to the hierarchy," he also pictures the Society of Jesus as an exciting, bold and imaginative organization. Clearly he feels that the Church and its magisterium and mandatum are not intellectual restraints to knowledge but enhancements.

I respectfully ask you to address, in the St. Louis University Magazine perhaps, the growing concerns of serious Catholics about Catholic education in America today and in particular about Jesuit education and elucidate more fully your conception of what the "finest Catholic university in America" must be like and its relation to the Church as a whole and how St. Louis can be that university.

Sincerely,
Ernest J. Ament
Saint Louis University graduate, 1953 and 1958
810 Barrington Rd.
Grosse Pointe Pk, MI 48230

Ernie says that Biondi’s response says simply:  “You are wrong, keep sending money.”

John Pfefferle (CHS '60) has ties that run deep in his community. The Marquette alumnus lives out his alma mater's mission of excellence, faith, leadership and service through his professional career as president and owner of Pfefferle Companies, a commercial property management and sales company, but just as importantly through his involvement with numerous community organizations in the Fox Valley. He serves as a board member for St. Elizabeth Hospital Foundation, president of the Fox Valley Family Practice Residency Clinic, trustee for the Xavier/Appleton Catholic Educational System, and a member of the Jesuit Retreat House Advisory Board in Oshkosh, to name a few. He has been instrumental in major renovations to Xavier High School in Appleton.

Jesuit ideals were instilled in John early on in his life. He graduated from Campion Jesuit High School before earning degrees in philosophy and theology from Marquette University. After graduation, he traveled around the country, working for an appraisal company. Eventually he moved to his hometown of Appleton, where he began his real estate career. John is now considered the most active and prominent developer and manager of commercial real estate in the Fox Cities region. John also enjoys spending time with his wife, Lynn, their three children and seven grandchildren, all of who live in the Appleton area.

That's a lot of days of getting ready, aiming and shooting at targets - some as bland as $21 million in drainage improvements, others as thrilling as watching our Dixie Youth World Series champions come home to The Crossings Park.

Next time you play in a Town of Hilton Head Island park, lie on a wide beach, ride on a bike path or ease into a left-turn lane at an improved intersection, think of this: "Ready, shoot, aim!" That's a favorite line of Chuck Hoelle (CHS ’62), the retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel who will retire again Friday after 14 years with the town government. He has primarily been the shepherd of $150 million worth of town improvement projects.

The "ready, shoot, aim" types who seem to dominate government drive Hoelle, an old Top Gun radar intercept officer, batty. A wish list with no priorities, a project with no funding scheme, a task with no individual's name attached to it, a goal that is not measurable, a plan without a five-year outlook - this is the stuff that would make Hoelle (pronounced Holly) pull his hair out, if he had any. It's his lame excuse for puffing through a pack of Marlboro Lights a day. And it's been known to drive him to a Bud Light or two if it's not Lent, and if he's safe at home back in Beaufort, where he used to command the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort and ended 27 years of active duty as head of strategic planning for the Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

When former Mayor Harvey Ewing and former town administrator Mike O'Neill gave Hoelle an offer he couldn't refuse to "come aboard" Hilton Head, as he puts it, his 1990 Honda had 47,000 miles on it. Now the odometer on that same straight-shift, four-cylinder Accord reads 413,000 miles. Mayor Tom Peeples and town administrator Steve Riley credit Hoelle with breaking a capital-improvements logjam that was here when he arrived, and for helping town government establish a culture of long-term thinking that collaborates, aims and then fires.

A succinct list of projects completed by the town runs six pages. The "Capital Improvements Program Overview for FY 2008-1017" fills five pages.
Hoelle, who leaves as deputy town administrator, has been but one cog in a big wheel that makes this happen. He credits the "courage" of Town Councils over the years in finding and fighting for funding sources.

But we all owe Hoelle a debt of gratitude as he puts us in his rearview mirror this week. I took the opportunity to try to capture what makes the 63-year-old man tick. What else is there beyond the piercing eye contact and staccato voice barking out figures and dates always spiced with a few dramatic "and, oh, by the ways."

Hoelle says the Marine Corps was easy after four years of boarding school at Campion Jesuit High School in Prairie du Chien, Wis. There, he said, you get a good education or you die. Every student had to participate in sports, varsity or intramural, every season. They all took Jr. ROTC. And they went to Mass every single morning.

He read Thucydides' "Peloponnesian War" and Julius Caesar's "The Conquest of
Gaul" — in Latin! "They taught us that you can do things you didn't think you could do,
or want to do, and not only do it, but do it right, or keep doing it until you do it right," Hoelle said. He soared into Boston College with a 1,400 on his SAT, and quickly flunked out. He didn't go to class. After a year of punching out furniture in a plant near home in suburban Chicago, Hoelle told his dad he was ready to go back to college.
"I hope you can afford it," he was told.

Hoelle lived at home, worked two jobs, including the night shift in a juvenile jail, and got his degree from a college now known as Benedictine University in Lisle, IL.  He majored in English literature and minored in Russian literature. "My thesis was on James Joyce's 'Ulysses,' " he said. "That's how far gone I am." He took ROTC and came out a Marine, commissioned a second lieutenant. He would have a rare career — commanding three different squadrons and an air base without ever having to pull duty in Washington.
It was on his first hitch here in the Lowcountry that the brash young lieutenant with the call sign "Groovy" met Jean Snell, a local Beaufort girl, on a blind date. It didn't go well. "If we never saw each other again, it would've been too soon," he said. Four months later, they were married at Carteret Street United Methodist Church.

Thirty-seven years later, they're still together, with two adult daughters and two grandchildren. Jean is a master gardener, and also an English literature major. Her parents were both figures in Beaufort - Irene Snell was secretary to the principal at Beaufort High and H.K. Snell was a career Army officer who was big in the Boy Scouts program and was known as "the policy man" to clients of his door-to-door insurance sales. Hoelle has helped give back to the community by twice chairing the United Way of the Lowcountry.

“TOP GUN TUNA MELT”

And it was back in the Lowcountry, when Hoelle commanded MCAS Beaufort, that he met a mentor. Major General David A. Richwine, a Silver Star Vietnam veteran, taught Hoelle and all the officers he commanded the art of W. Edwards Deming's Total Quality Leadership. Hoelle brought the "manage things, lead people" philosophy — and his belief that "it's the sergeants running the war, not the generals" - to Town Hall.

He also brought it to Jump and Phil's Bar and Grill in Hilton Head Plaza, where Hoelle has eaten lunch and conducted town business almost every day. When he strolls in about 1:30 p.m. with a lot of reading material in hand, they already know he likes a Diet Coke with very little ice, a tuna melt and chicken Caesar salad with no croutons.

He even has staff meetings there regularly. He calls the corner table "my alternate CP." That's command post. The owners call it the "Top Gun Table." A photo of Hoelle with his 1976 Top Gun graduating class hangs on the wall. And on the menu is the "Top Gun Tuna Melt." Hoelle says he can get the pulse of average Hilton Head Islanders and tourists there by listening. And if a phone's ringing, it's not his.

As for his personal strategic plan on Hilton Head, Hoelle said, "For 14 years I got to do what I was meant to do: Public service in a leadership billet. I had superb teachers. We worked together as a team, and hopefully hit some targets some of the time."

Intelligent Design and Darwinism

Scientific study shows that billions of years ago reproduction of life was accomplished by the splitting of single cells.  A duplicate was produced with maybe a very minute change to cope with perhaps a temperature change or whatever.

Scientists also tell us that a billion or so years later sexual reproduction was started.  This change had to mean an abrupt massive change since these cells apparently decided to change their method of operation.  A cell or group of cells just decided to be male and at the same time another decided to be female. Then these two changed cells must meet and proceed to act in an unnatural manner in a short life span in order to reproduce.

Evolutionists say abrupt change is impossible.

But scientific evidence says it happened.  This would only be possible with the design of a higher power.

Live with it….it’s life.

Bob Kieswetter ‘50

Interestingly, we had a phone call from one of the younger grads a while back, wondering if we gather info on those who may have lost their faith and have become evolutionists (Atheists).  I advised him that no, we had not.  It is said that 30% of any given group has done that.  Especially more intelligent folks.  I presume that includes many CHS educated folks.  If any of you (it would be hard to believe that there are none amongst us) would be interested in acknowledging one another please let us know.  Just as a matter of curiosity, perhaps y’all would do this by contacting us.  If anonymity is important, just a post card or envelope or e-mail with no ID but just the word “yes” on it would allow a count if for nothing more than satisfying those curiosities.

Our New York agent, Paul McCullough ’70, sends this for our edification:

Hi, Aaron. I don't know if you still have time for your summer newsletter (or fall issue, for that matter), but you might consider adding this link for anyone who wishes to visit the PDC area. In other words, it shows what people can see after the PDCI guards turn any Campion visitors away. It describes an auto tour along Rte 35 (that's the road that runs right by the east side of Campion where the famous Campion billboard is located). In addition to other interesting sites, the tour link mentions Campion and some of its alumni.  And "the PDC" on the State Trunk Tour is Prairie du Chien (pop. 6,018), Wisconsin's second oldest city (Green Bay is the oldest, in case you were wondering) contains five National Historic Landmarks. The Fox and Sauk tribes were here for hundreds of years prior to French explorers arriving and saying "voila!" Early establishment began in 1673, with the first trading posts developed in 1685 by French explorer Nicholas Perrot. Fur trade, along with Prairie du Chien's natural location near the Wisconsin River and Mississippi River confluence, guaranteed the small settlement would prosper for years to come. Prairie du Chien's history spans five centuries, including the only significant Wisconsin battle in the War of 1812. PDC's first fort, Fort Shelby, was built by Americans captured by the British in the War. By 1816, it had been replaced with Fort Crawford. The Black Hawk War, which took place in 1832, featured a commanding officer in the form of Colonel Zachary Taylor, who later became 12th President of the United States. A lieutenant during the same time named Jefferson Davis not only married Zachary Taylor's daughter (named Sarah "Knoxie" Taylor, proving cutesy nicknames existed in the 19th century), he later became President of the Confederate States of America. Neither worked out well; the future President Taylor didn't approve and poor Sarah passed away from pneumonia only months after their 1835 marriage; his new country in the 1860s didn't last very long, either. http://www.statetrunktour.com/35.php    We highly recommend this site.  Those of you without a computer should get to your library, or grandchild to look at this historical documentary.

Emma Bouzek

Emma Regina White Bouzek, 92, passed away peacefully on Saturday, February 16, at Prairie Maison in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

She was born to Leo and Emma (Becwar) White on September 7 , 1915, in Eastman. She was the youngest daughter among two sisters and seven brothers. The family moved to Prairie du Chien in 1927. She married Edward J. Bouzek May 10, 1933.

Her first employment was at Herpel's grocery store in Lowertown, followed by a cashier position at the Highway Market working for Marty Betzle and Bubbins Straumann. Later, she earned her high school diploma, studied shorthand and typing at St. Mary's Academy and accepted a position from the Howe family at the Courier Press as a bookkeeper, receptionist and photographers' assistant. Many years later she was employed at Campion Jesuit High School as secretary in the Admissions office and the Chicago, Minnesota, Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien Parents' Clubs. Later she acted as secretary to four presidents at the Jesuit school where she eventually earned the title of Executive Assistant to the President. After Campion closed in 1975 she worked in the activities department and later became a bookkeeper at Prairie Health Care Center, now Prairie Maison. It is ironic that she should one day be a resident where she previously played such an important role.

Emma had many interests outside her career. She served two terms as Secretary of the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women at St. John's Church and was Publicity Chairman for both organizations for 23 years. She was a charter member of the Women's Civic Club, the Dingalings, the ABC Club and a member of The Christian Mothers Society, Rosary Society and Eagles Auxiliary #1502. Her free lance writing and photos appeared in various state newspapers and she was a stringer for The Times Review, Wisconsin State Journal and La Crosse Tribune. Her poetry was published in Wisconsin Poets. Her hobbies were photography, wood working, tole painting, crocheting and knitting. She also served as extraordinary minister of Holy Communion and brought communion to the homebound of St. John's until ill health prevented her from continuing. She was a volunteer teacher's aide for several years at St. John's grade school.

A Father in Faith:

The Legacy of Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

By Kevin Burke, S.J.  (2007)

IN THE INTRODUCTION to Pedro Arrupe: Essential Writings, a book I edited several years ago, I wrote, "Pedro Arrupe, S.J. was the Superior General of the Society of Jesus when I entered the order in 1976 and in ways too numerous to count he inspired, taught, encouraged, and formed me as a Jesuit. Although I never met him personally, I count him among my spiritual friends and fathers in faith.”  These words still ring true. I consider Fr. Arrupe a great man, even though, in his own lifetime and since his death he has been viewed as controversial. He is seen by some as too hard-line and traditional and by others as too permissive of "new ways" that were damaging to the traditions of religious life within the Church. I believe he ranks among the holiest and greatest Catholic leaders and saints of the 20th century, people like Archbishop Oscar Romero, Mother Theresa, and Pope John XXIII.

Fr. Arrupe was a human being and, as such, a person of his times and his own training, with shortcomings of temperament and experience, with passions, biases, and even peculiarities. But his life itself serves as a parable of contemporary Christian discipleship. He was born 100 years ago this November in Bilbao, Spain. He grew up in a family of modest means, the youngest and only boy among five children. His mother died when he was 10 and his father when he was 18. At 15, he began undergraduate studies in medicine at the University of Madrid. In 1926, after the death of his father, he and his sisters traveled to Lourdes where he witnessed a miraculous healing, an experience that led him eventually to set aside his medical career (over the vigorous protests of his favorite teacher) and enter the Society of Jesus.

It might have seemed that Pedro Arrupe turned his back on the world when he entered the Jesuit Novitiate. Jesuit training at that time manifested many of the features of monastic life, including a radical withdrawal from the world followed by years of seclusion, asceticism, and study. But the world kept interrupting Fr. Arrupe. He was directly affected by the chaos afflicting Europe from the Great Depression through World War II, including Hitler's rise to power in Germany and the violent Spanish Revolution. In 1932, the Republicans expelled all the Jesuits in Spain from the country, sending Arrupe, a 24-year-old seminarian, into exile.

WITNESS TO HISTORY

Following his ordination and in response to his own urgent desires, his provincial sent him to Japan in 1938. There he planned to work as a missionary for the rest of his life. But, of course, life in Japan represented no retreat from the world or the events shaping it. Fr. Arrupe assumed the duties of the master of novices for the Japanese mission and moved to Nagatsuka on the outskirts of Hiroshima. He was there on Aug. 6, 1945, when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the city. He later wrote of that day:

"I shall never forget my first sight of what was the result of the atomic bomb: a group of young women, 18 or 20 years old, clinging to one another as they dragged themselves along the road. One had a blister that almost covered her chest; she had burns across half of her face, and a cut in her scalp caused probably by a falling tile, while great quantities of blood coursed freely down her face. On and on they came, a steady procession numbering some 150,000. This gives some idea of the scene of horror that was Hiroshima. We continued looking for some way of entering the city, but it was impossible. We did the only thing that could be done in the presence of such mass slaughter: we fell on our knees and prayed for guidance, as we were destitute of all human help."

Once he rose from his knees, Fr. Arrupe converted the novitiate into a hospital and his novices into nurses. They cared for about 150 people suffering from the mysterious aftereffects of radiation poisoning and of these, only one, a small child suffering from meningitis, died. It was an extraordinary and disconcerting experience. He didn't know what he was treating, and he was overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the event. He was standing at the epicenter of a world-changing historical moment without yet realizing it.

In 1954 Fr. Arrupe was appointed superior and then later the provincial of Jesuits in Japan. In 1965, much to his surprise, the 31st General Congregation of the Society of Jesus elected him as its 28th Superior General. A man whose life took shape in the midst of the great events of the time, who experienced exile, imprisonment, war, and the dawn of the atomic age, now assumed responsibility for the largest religious order in the Church at the very moment the Church was asking itself anew how to engage the world.

Fr. Arrupe helped the Society of Jesus rediscover its fundamental call to discernment, its call to read the signs of the times. Jesuits found they were not so much called to abandon their schools or missions or retreat work, but to do all these things in new ways. We serve the Church by being at the growing edge where the Church is constantly running up against the world.

JESUIT EDUCATION AFTER ARRUPE

Fr. Arrupe's call to embrace a faith that does justice had an enormous impact on Jesuit education. In 1973, on the feast of St. Ignatius Valencia in Spain, he gave one of his most famous speeches. Its title has become a motto for Jesuit education: "Men and Women for Others." His audience was comprised of the alumni of Jesuit schools from various parts of Europe, many of whom came from wealthy and prestigious families. Early in his talk, Fr. Arrupe asked his audience whether their Jesuit teachers had adequately educated them for justice. He then observed, "You and I know what many of your Jesuit teachers will answer to that question. They will answer, in all sincerity and humility: 'No, we have not.'" Fr. Arrupe went on to explain that our primary educational objective must be "to form men and women for others... men and women who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men and women completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce."

A generation later, a palpable shift in Jesuit life and ministry has taken place. The task of educating men and women for others has become almost a byword in the various circles of Jesuit education. Many Jesuit schools now promote some version of this saying as an official or unofficial motto, and changes in the curricula and campus ministries of the schools reflect the shift to justice-centered evangelization. The 32nd General Council, over which Fr. Arrupe presided in 1974-1975, declared: "The mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement." This, perhaps more than anything else, represents the defining achievement of his term as Superior General of the Society of Jesus.

His address, "Men and Women for Others," remains a striking reminder and symbol of that achievement. Indeed, one can hardly imagine the Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought at the University of San Francisco, or the kind of Jesuit president this university has in Stephen A. Privett, S.J. without Fr. Arrupe. If Jesuit education has always had a humanistic emphasis on excellence in the arts and sciences, what it has today, as a direct result of Fr. Arrupe's legacy, is a special emphasis on education for a faith that does justice, a deep attention to the education of the whole person, and above all, on education as a way to find God in all things.

Duane Angevine ’51 was visiting our old campus recently and took some pictures before a guard unceremoniously put a halt to his efforts.   Below you will find three of them.