A Discussion with Fr. Anthony Egan, Jesuit Priest, Jesuit Institute of South Africa

With: Anthony Egan Berkley Center Profile

May 19, 2011

Background: As part of the Education and Global Social Justice Project, in May 2011, undergraduate student Conor Finegan interviewed Father Anthony Egan, a Jesuit priest with the Jesuit Institute of South Africa and a university lecturer in applied ethics at St. Augustine College of South Africa. In this interview, Egan discusses his role in at the Jesuit Institute of South Africa and his interest in the Believing in Creation and Evolution project as an evolutionist and priest, as well as the challenges, weaknesses, and future of the project.

Can you tell me about your journey to your present position and what inspires you to do the work that you do?

It goes back to early 1980s. I finished high school at the end of 1983. I started University of Cape Town in 1984. As an undergraduate, I was going in the direction of becoming a lawyer, and one of the reasons for that was to make a lot of money. Another part of it was because I thought law had a potential to do useful things and challenge the establishment. That was the 1980s, a really bad era, when there were macrosystems and massive state crackdowns.

In the course of my undergraduate and postgraduate studies in history, I became drawn to the Society for Jesus and got to know the Jesuits. When I finished my master’s [degree] in history in 1990, I joined the Society of Jesus; I joined the Jesuits. This began on September 12, 1990. I did my novitiate in England and [degree in] philosophy in England. Then I came back to South Africa for what is called regency. This is the time between philosophy and theology when I did a weird thing; I worked as a non-ordained student chaplain. I was working on a Ph.D. in history. However, I did this in the Politics Department at University of Adventism, right. I’ve always been interested in inter-relationships between Christianity, the left and the right. The history of the South African [church and state] has always been a funny inter-relationship—sometimes warm and sometimes hostile—but in many ways, you see both the church and the left share concerns about economic, social, and political rights, although the language was [often] different and the attitudes were different in the old days. In South Africa, whenever you talk about the left, the left was the Communist Party historically. Of course, the church had great hostility to the Communist Party, certainly well into the 1980s.

On the other hand, the Church started to develop its own liberation theology. Certainly as a student in the Catholic Student Movement in the 1980s, many of us were very much involved in liberation theology. We had a strong left-winged political arc, which in a sense was part of the process. Historically white people who support the struggle against apartheid have tended to gravitate either to the liberal party or to the left, or to the Communist or the liberal party, which was basically crushed in 1968. By the time it was crushed, its language and rhetoric were identical with the African National Congress (ANC), quietly existing. The liberal and left understanding of the world was what motivated many of us. The Catholic Student Movement was a high-powered movement in the 1980s. We had very deep connections with the End Conscription Campaign, which was the movement against the draft in South Africa of white men into the army. We were very close to the End Conscription Campaign (ECC)—most of us were either in the ECC, committed to it, or had close sympathies for the ECC. We operated in different ways. Some of us were also politically moving towards the African National Congress. Some people had connections, and some didn’t. I didn’t. Politically I was with the ANC. Many of us moved to the left of the ANC politically, close to the Communist Party, who’ve always been in alliance with the ANC.

Coming back to the 1990s, as a Jesuit, I finished my regency when I was studying to do my doctorate. My study was about a Methodist minister who was as near as you could be to being a member of the Communist Party in South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s. This fairly ideological understanding of the South African problem for many of us was linked into a current commitment to the left. I went to the United States to finish theology; I did my studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Jesuit faculty there, which used to be Western Jesuit School of Theology. Now it’s Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. My first assignment was working full-time as a lecturer in applied ethics because I had a Ph.D. in history. I also had a license in moral theology from Western, where I worked with people like Jim Keenan and David Hollenbach. I ended up working at Central Gaston College in South Africa, which is a new Catholic university in South Africa. I was there for a number of years, working full-time and part-time in the parish that we have in Branford. I did my tertianship in 2006 and 2007 in the Philippines. Tertianship is the final phase of Jesuit formation done after ordination.

I did a lot of work in inner-city slums. I also worked in a rural area of predominantly traditional believers. I was working with a traditionalist who was battling to keep [his] land in the face of encroachment, so they came back to South Africa. The Jesuit Institute had started, and I was transferred to the Jesuit Institute where I’ve been since my return in 2007. I’ve been working primarily here in a mix of things, lecturing in ethics and theology at St. Augustine’s, writing a lot of pieces for our website that contributed to research. I mostly write in the areas of church, politics, [and] public life, and [do] some work in public retreats.

The stuff we are doing at the moment is reviving Vatican II in the minds and the imaginations of the public because, in many ways, I think Vatican II is forgotten. In the younger generation, they probably don’t remember anything other than what we have. On the other hand, I was born just a few months after Vatican II and grew up in it. Many of my generation hated Vatican II because they felt it broke away all certainties because society became more fluid. I said that fluidity is inevitable. That’s my basic story of how I came to be at the Jesuit Institute. I do a strange mixture of things where part of the time I’m teaching, and part of the time I’m a chaplain. My current work is in the Vatican II.

How did you come to the creation and evolution program?

South Africa has the highest level of creationists in the world—higher than the United States. The United States has an estimated of 52 percent of creationists. We’re something like 64 percent. I’ve always been an evolutionist—never had any doubts about it. Although I’m not a scientist, I would see this creation-evolution project as a force of descendants. For me it’s never been a problem. I’ve never seen any reason why we cannot totally believe in the evolution of a 15 billion year biological thing and remain within the Christian tradition. We are talking about the difference between the how and the why. How we came to be through evolution. Why? There is God. God kicks the whole show off. You get to a point in evolution, in theory, where you are a split second after the Big Bang. Before that, nobody knows where anything comes from, something comes out of nowhere. For me, that was an important thing in the sense that I’m challenging perceptions because so often you meet people who study evolution in the school system and at the universities, but they don’t believe a word of it. Some folks, particularly [in] conservative religions where you’re expected to repeat what the church tells you, repeat it because that’s the way you do it, but deep down, you don’t believe it. I think science people have this problem where they can’t make the connections. So for us, this creation-evolution project came about because we have a number of Catholics who work at the Origin Center. Two or three work at the Origin Center, which looks at the whole thing of evolution because this is the best place to do pathology in the world, since all the bones are here. In a sense, we have this big project going on, and it’s on evolution through research. Every few years we are discovering something new.

One of my colleagues first got to know the Jesuits through one of my confidants who was chaplain at the University of Johannesburg where she was an undergraduate. She knew us. She was part of the chaplaincy. She’s an evolutionist. We’ve been getting out to lots of schools, and we started with the Catholic school system. Hopefully we can get into the state system eventually. The vast majority of believers are in state schools.

Let’s go back to the 64 percent. What do you think contributes to that belief? It seems to be unusually South African to believe in biblical literalism, to take the story of Adam and Eve as truth, as literal fact. What do you think fuels that belief? Where does it come from?

Particular forms of Christianity that are prevalent in South Africa lack education and have a traditional belief system. South Africa is no longer a mainstream Christian country—it is reformed by Catholic, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian traditions. The tradition that is dominant now is African Independent Christianity, which is biblically literalist and heavily influenced by beliefs in spirits and ancestors. Black clergy have a certain glass ceiling in terms of leadership in the Protestant churches. They couldn’t break through the glass ceiling, so they broke out. Many of them passed down the African traditional beliefs. They also define themselves as African Traditional in some way or another. Another thing is the lack of formation in South Africa. Third, there is a deep resentment, particularly among black South Africans, that we were descended from apes. To say we descended from apes fits into a lot of racist stereotypes that black South Africans are still very conscious of. Remember, black people were not considered to be fully human by many whites who ran the show. The idea that we descended from hominids and remain connected to apes and chimpanzees fits into this kind of fear. This is just another way of denigrating and deriding black people. So there is a whole race dimension to this as well, which we’ve only just started to look at.

One of the things I always emphasize in the project is, as far as we know, Homo sapiens originated in Africa. You and I were originally from Africa, and from Africa they moved everywhere else. So Africa is the hope of human beings. But try to emphasize that in the face of where all of development of hominids, which may includes apes, orangutans, chimpanzees, etc... And, again, it’s this literal understanding of the Bible. I do a lot of adult education work, and it’s a real battle to get them to see that scriptural text can still be the word of God, and, at the same [time], not the literal word of God. This is how they see it, and some are Catholics and even postgraduates. Their lack of their knowledge of scripture is vast. Sometimes I try to scare the hell out of them and say, “You know, there’s no archaeological evidence to show that the Canaanites got wiped out by the Israelites. They have searched all the sites and not found a single sign of any battle or massacre. So this may bad news for the fundamentalist, but it’s definitely good news for the Canaanites.” They all smile nervously at me. But that is the problem we have in South Africa: low levels of education and very unsophisticated understanding of religion.

So, when you start talking about symbols, symbols aren’t real. They say, “No, Father, this is the body of Christ." Well, it “is” is, but it isn’t at the same time. And the “isn’t” isn’t precisely what transubstantiation is trying to explain. We are products of our education.

So there is mis-education and a tradition of not understanding religion. Can we call this a social justice issue? Is it at all informed by poverty or the race relations of the past?

The history of South African education is a history of discrimination. In the 1970s and 1980s, this can be represented if you wanted to do a ratio or proportion of money spent in terms of white, colored, Indian, and black South Africans. If you give whites 100 units, coloreds would get about 14 units, Indians would probably get about 50 units, and blacks will get about 20 units. There’s a very, very unequal distribution of wealth for education and schools. That’s a reality. You could finish high school and you could teach at a black high school, where you didn’t need a degree. It was good if you had a two-year, three-year school diploma; you could teach.

Now they’ve upgraded it a lot. However, the problem now is that although the education system is no longer skewed in terms of resources and [although] it has become more standardized and the race dimension has been broken down (now there is no segregation in the school system), the school system that we have now is highly unworkable. We’ve moved from a Stone Age-like school to a new education system which is, if you look at all the documentation, incredibly progressive. But we don’t have the teachers to teach. We don’t have the resources in the school to actually make education work. Virtually no schools in South Africa have an excellent library. Young people have developed a kind of indifference to schooling. There’s a lack of enthusiasm.

The teachers, too, [experience these problems] because of the whole shifting that’s been going on in the whole school system. A lot of experienced teachers have left the school system. Some of the white teachers leave because they can’t handle having black bosses, [and] others have been offered better jobs elsewhere. Teachers are paid peanuts. Excellent teachers in particular get offered high-paying jobs in industry, so we’ve lost excellent teachers. The system doesn’t work because it’s basically a model which is aimed at countries like New Zealand, or Scandinavia, and we don’t have the basic resources to run the system it created. And in addition to that, there also are very powerful teaching unions that have historically protected the rights of teachers, but they will protect teachers who aren’t doing their job. There are very powerful unions without any checks or balances. So the school system itself, even though it’s been transformed, is still tiny and disordered.

What about the students who come out of that school system? If a student, then, goes on to the rest of his life with a belief in biblical literalism, do you think they’re disadvantaged? If so, how would they be disadvantaged?

I would see them as disadvantaged on a different level. You can be an engineer and be an evolutionist. I debated evolutionism versus creationism, with the example of a creationist who is also a dentist. You could practice dentistry, medicine, [and] you can be a biblical fundamentalist and still have a good career. So on an economic level, I don’t necessarily view that as a disadvantage. As a teacher or pastor or minister, I think you might just perpetuate the problem. My sense is that this is a sad, sad thing that they are so close-minded. They have a mentality that I cannot see the beauty and complexity of this 40 billion year-old universe and not ponder the evolution of species as a sign of God’s grace, rather than as a sign of some kind of diabolical delusion, because, obviously, all of us evolutionists are in league with the devil.

So I think there is a disadvantage on a spiritual and intellectual level because you just don’t see the complexities and the beauty of that complexity. And the problem is, when you stop thinking in complex terms, it expands to other areas, so you think in very simplistic terms, for example, in politics, like the ANC liberation movement of South Africa. There are other movements, but people think that they must always vote for the ANC, even if the ANC is corrupt, stupid, and incompetent. We don’t send the message to them, as in other countries, and say, “You don’t deserve it; we’ll whack you on the knuckles.” You cannot think in those complex terms: “This is our liberation movement—any vote gives them a vote—and it’s back to apartheid.” But there’s no way that they’re ever going restore apartheid, even if they did win an election, which they seem incapable of doing. And that’s the problem—you start thinking in very simplistic terms and don’t see any shades of gray.

I also think that’s a justice issue. It’s an injustice to the person that these kinds of crazy myths are perpetuated in the political, economic, social, and religious cultures to have those reductionist views. We were reductionists in the 1980s; we were fighting a revolution. Today, the revolution is won. Now we have to say how the next stage of the revolution will go—renewing a country, giving South Africa what it deserves. Potentially, South Africa could be a country in the G8, but we always seem to shoot ourselves in the foot. And I think that’s an injustice to the country. I think things like a richer way of thinking, a dualistic imagination, a lack of willingness to look at flexibility and complexity—it’s not the kind of injustice you see when you go into a township and see the extreme poverty compared to the extreme wealth. That’s a totally different injustice, and that needs to be looked at in a different way. It’s not really about evolution, but it’s part of a broader thing of changing people’s minds. The most important thing, I’ve come to realize, is to change people’s consciences.

So when did you and other South Africans first identify the need for a lecture program concerning creation and evolution?

It must have been around 2008 or 2009. We really ran with it last year and this year. Many of things we do with the institute have emerged more by circumstances and almost by accident. In the institute we have a certain number of people here who have certain skills. So, for example, theology, history, and politics, I can pretend I know something about evolution and psychology.

Peter studies theology and has a background in science and a thorough understanding of South Africa culture and languages. Peter knows eight languages, so his language is culture [and] quite a bit of anthropology. His doctorate was a cross between anthropology and systematic theology. Raymond has a background in theology, philosophy, and human rights stuff. Pauline, whom I think you’ve met, is a school teacher with a strong background in spirituality; she has created a new way of looking at spirituality as exercises in groups. Frances’ background is in literary studies, but also comparative literature and also in leading retreats, spiritual direction, and training people to be spiritual. And Ann Marie is a qualified psychologist, who has a master’s [degree] in educational psychology, and is a therapist, life coach, and spirituality master. I would say she’s the best spiritual director in the country. Ann Marie is extremely good in the areas of spirituality and psychology. Then we have other folks who are connected to us in different ways. Those are the skill sets we have to work in.

Then what happens is people come around, and they ask us to do things. Some of the things we are asked to do are crazy, some are distractions, and some of those things I think are really useful. There’s always a balance between, “Do we do this, because it’s a favor somebody asked us to do?” and doing something that benefits our institute. For example, if someone walks into the church and asks us to do something at a retreat the instinct is to say yes, even though it’s not the best use of our resources, and we often debate amongst ourselves. I’m a strong believer in the importance of original research, which means I have to be away for a time if I do it, which means I’m out of the loop. Sometimes there is a debate: “Should I be doing this research, or should I be doing other stuff?” So there’s always a discussion of what projects will give us income, what will be good in itself, and the important work that can be pioneering.

I think the Origin Center is not the biggest moneymaker. I can find a few thousand rand a few weeks teaching; in comparison at our institute I make less than that. But it’s an important thing because it’s raising awareness and consciousness in getting us going. Other projects, on the other hand, are purely financial. Obviously, in other things, we see a gap, and we need to fill that gap. So some things are original.

The Origins Centre, to put it bluntly, was original. The work of Vatican II that we’re doing is renewal of memory, re-creating or renewing the memory of Vatican II in the church. Because, obviously, it was very important. Because in a sense, Vatican II defined the Catholic Church. Of course, today we know that Vatican II is a source of debate. “What really happened at Vatican II?” “What did the church say?” The debates at the end of the Vatican II Council were first, “That’s it; now we’re done. Let’s implement what we’ve done.” Second, “This is a good start. Where are we going to go to from here?” Third was, “This is a disaster. It will take 50 years to repair the damage.” Today, the church is divided on those three things. This was an engagement with the church, but also an engagement with the modern world. Vatican II brought the church out of its closed doors to engage with the world. What we are doing here is constantly engaging with people.

In terms of the program itself, identifying this need is obviously a first step, but what do you hope to accomplish with it?

For the faith and evolution project I think the first thing I would want to do is to help people to see that you can be a believer and still an evolutionist, that you don’t have to see it halfway like creation, science, and intelligent design. The problem with intelligent design is that it tries to fill in the gaps in the evolutionary process by putting God in, but as the gaps are filled by research and science and new discoveries, God disappears. Ultimately, intelligent design is going to see itself basically dissolve into nothing. On the other hand, if you start from a position of evolution being an autonomous thing, and God is present in and with it, you have a different way of understanding of God. This is a way for people to get a deeper understanding of God to resolve the tensions, to correct mistakes in understanding, and to help deepen the spiritual life of people.

It’s important we do this—half of fundamentalists are atheists like Richard Dawkins and others like him. They come up with absurd statements like, “Christians don’t believe in evolution.” The Big Bang was developed as a theory by a priest in the 1920s. When Stephen Hawkins developed his Ph.D. study in the early 1960s in Cambridge, Fred Hoyle felt exalted because Hawkins’ mathematical calculations seemed to prove that the maker had advanced within the Big Bang theory. Hoyle thought this was tremendous because it opened the possibility for God, which others had objected to. You do your physical, astronomical studies, and you see where there’s a shift and various other things; it confirms Hawkins. This challenges scientists to stop presuming that believers believe in weird and nonsensical stuff. We don’t!

This program is interesting because it deals with young adults. What sort of tools do you use, as one of the lecturers, to get on their level and help them understand a complex topic in a delicate manner?

I’m trying to use stuff that they will respond to culturally. So, for example, I asked them if the Gospel of Luke were a true story, and they all said yes. Is Nelson Mandela’s biography The Long Walk to Freedom a true story? “Yes.” Is Harry Potter a true story? “No.” And then I say actually, none of them are true stories. They look at me. I say that if by truth you mean it’s accurate, then I talk about Bible as writing a biography. You always select stuff. I try to get them to think about how we think. I ask, “If you were writing your story about life, would you put in every single detail? Do you remember your birth?” And then I get them to think about that. They said to me once, “You know, you do push them.” But I don’t believe in soft peddling.

So I say let’s look at the autobiography. They ask, “It’s a true story, isn’t it?” And I say yes. “Gospel of Luke, isn’t that the same as the Gospel of Matthew?” “No.” So I help them to see how a gospel is written—it’s not divine narration, or an eyewitness event—and I give them a basic understanding of what the church has, which most of them have never heard. I think religious education is lousy. I [tell] them basic stuff about how a gospel is written. Then I go to Harry Potter. We all agree it’s fiction. On the other hand, aren’t there true things in the story? About loyalty, friendship, the need to fight evil, and that even failing people can struggle for what is good. Then I get to looking at all the stories. The story of how the earth was created 14 billion years ago, and the story of creation as it is in the Bible. My sense is to get them to think. I get interesting responses.

Some of the kids in some of the schools—these are more upper-class schools—they say that this is all very good, but why do we worry about this religious stuff? Many of them are non-religious. Among the more working-class schools we work with, they’re more concerned about what the Bible says. Accordingly, you have to play it by each group.

Sometimes the kids are fine with evolution and the Bible. You have this parallel conscious—they feel obligated to believe in science because it’s obvious to them. On the other hand, there’s the obligation to believe in the word of God. And I tell them, “I give you permission to not believe it in the literal sense.”

So what do you think this program does well? Where do you find its greatest successes?

I think the greatest success we have is that we have had students come to me and say we have to help them to understand. One guy to me and said, “Father, I know how I can be part of the church and believe in evolution. I can see now how I can do it.” That’s wonderful. For many, they feel able to at least consider the possibility of holding these two discourses, not so much in tension, but in a kind of dramatic relationship.

On the flip side of that, where do you see room for improvement? What do you see as some of the program’s weaknesses?

I think the weakness of the program lies in the fact that it depends on the person who is presenting it. We’re a very small number of people. There is a constant need to find more information. There is constant need to update the program, and there’s not enough time to get everything done. And I cannot stick to a text because I get bored, and when I get bored, people will see our flaws. We have to keep a sense of freshness.

Our other challenge is how far the material we are using can move beyond the Catholic schools. I use a lot of contemporary, Catholic scripture. How do I teach the program to a very charismatic Pentecostal fundamentalist? Do we just say, “Sorry, guys, we must move on.” How do I get through to them? There is constantly research and development on this program. Last year, we tried to get groups of other religions, like Muslims. It just didn’t work. Obviously, what we need to do is develop an interfaith model. That’s a challenge.

With all of this in mind, what specific steps can be taken to improve the program, especially given the lack of time?

I think there are a number of things. We need to expand; we need more people who can do the project so it doesn’t rely just on Merrill [van der Walt] and myself, Peter [Knox], and Raymond [Perrier]. We need a rabbi, or such—someone who can speak the same language. We need to get other members on the team who can do the presentation with confidence.

Who or what do you see as constituting the biggest opposition, or the biggest pushback, against the ideas that are promoted in the lecture? How do you handle that?

I have not encountered any hostility to this program from priests or bishops. I mean there are one or two funny, old nuns who we come across who are suspicious of it. On the national level, Catholic schools are promoting it. The teachers need to understand it better, but there is no obvious opposition. The fact is that we have a limited number of people who are doing this. We can’t be there all the time, every day, but there is no opposition.

Another factor that I’m looking into is the Jesuit identity of this program. There is really no other program like it in the country. Where do you see the two meeting? How does the Jesuit identity inform or influence the idea of having a program like this?

Our Jesuit identity has always been tied to engagements outside of the mainstream church. The Jesuit mission is at the core of these issues. The point is the Jesuits are not supposed to be the guys who follow the maintenance: we’re supposed to be part of the mission, and the mission today is no longer going out to the South Pacific and converting the natives. Rather, it has to do with engagements, where perhaps the church is the most vulnerable and non-resistant, like in Surrey, for example. One project I’ve been asked to be involved in is a study of intellectual traditions in South Africa. This is a personal project; I’ve been asked to look at a series of traditions.

The people I’m working with, almost all of them, are not very experienced. The Jesuit mission is about working the margins and engaging with the contemporary world. You know, I think that Jesuits are one of the few congregations whose mission in this is not defined by the work we do. The Christian Brothers are a teaching order. The Dominicans are an order of teachers. The Jesuits are defined by their spirituality, which is about finding God in all things and all people. In a sense, it should be the foundation where we build our work. Whether that is working in a parish, or working in media, or working in a university, or working in an institute like this. That’s how we define our role. Hopefully, that’s what gives us purpose. In a sense, because we are not rooted in a very narrow work focus, spirituality gives us a sense of priorities.

Hopefully, that’s what gives us our distinct priorities—the intellectual apostolate, which is broadly based. China, the new frontier, and Africa, [the] fastest growing part of the Catholic Church, one of the fastest growing regions of the Jesuits. All of this is working in the margins. China is as far away from mainstream Christianity. Jesuits don’t live together in China; they have to live separately, anonymously, although the Chinese secret service knows they are Jesuits. In Africa, [we are] trying to be a serious player in the world. Sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot, but we engage, we communicate. That is why this project is important—because we are engaging with the margin, and the margin is where people don’t think they can be believers and also accept evolution. Scientists look at believers as people who are stupid.

To look at the program very broadly and the tools that are used, what do you think educators around the world in general could learn from the project, its processes, and its engagement?

I never imagined that this project was original, maybe because I’ve taken evolution for granted since I was a kid. It’s a very simple program, although what you need to do is be prepared to operate in this in a disciplined way. Evolution—the science—is very straightforward. It is a classic science that teaches three things: natural selection, the notion of genes, and species developed over time. Any high school teacher could present this.

It’s about learning how to adjust and learn how to work between disciplines. We need a sense of history of the debate. We need history as discourse, which isn’t reductionist, and a sense of understanding scripture, which also isn’t reductionist. The material is all there, it’s quite easy to find. A good mainstream, Catholic Bible commentary—even the New Jerusalem Bible commentary—would probably be too much, and far too technical. A basic, good slide introduction to the Bible, very basic texts on science and religion can come in very neatly. The most complicated part, as far as I’m concerned for most teachers, is to look at the idea of the philosophy of history and to make that connection between story and history, factual and fictional. This is very basic stuff about how history is written and how scripture is written. Also, the way that stories are taught, the truth in a story, and the notion of a true story. I think I wrote my original presentation in about two hours. All you need to do is to look outside the box—it’s about history, theology, scripture, story telling, fact, fiction, truth.

Could you speak to the future of the program. What happens next? The institute cannot sustain this and continually visit every school. Peter talked about the idea of teaching teachers how to teach evolution and science with religion, teaching them together. What are your thoughts?

Yes, obviously. One the great Jesuit principals is to multiply. One Jesuit should help to train a whole bunch of other people to do this stuff. For example, in this institute, the vast majority of people who give retreats more regularly than anyone are not Jesuits. Frances, Marie, and Pauline—they do most of the retreat training, training trainers, teaching teachers—they’re wonderful. They have trained with Jesuits and from there they’ve been training trainers. That’s the multiplying factor. If we can get teachers on board to do it, then we can retire. The interest is there—that’s the sense I picked up in this country—certainly in Johannesburg. Catholic school teachers are interested. Some are afraid, but once you break through the fear, they’re are interested. I’m not a school teacher. In fact, in many ways I’m terrified of teaching kids, more than teaching university students. Partly because I talk too fast and I get rather complicated. One day, hopefully, if we get a whole cadre of teachers trained, that would be wonderful. As I’ve said, there’s no copyright on what I’m presenting. In fact, I would say I’m copy-left. Let them have it. I don’t mind if it completely changes them; in fact, that’s fantastic. It’s too important for it to be kept in our little Jesuit box.

Thank you. Is there anything else that you want to add?

People are disadvantaged by a lousy education system and by a kind of fundamental, religious upbringing, which also leads to poverty. It’s not a direct social injustice. You have to think that one through. In a sense, it’s interesting to see that better schools have fewer problems with this project than the poorer schools. For example, we found initially “isn’t this fabulous, the students can all come here and experience it all.” The problem is, for a lot of schools it is difficult to get the buses. Also, there’s all kind of bureaucracy. In the end, we decided we would go to the schools. It’s a real schlep, but so much easier for the kids.

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