Ivo Sefton de Azevedo has been a professor of
international law at three different universities in Brazil -- the Universidade
Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre; the Pontifícia
Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS); and the Universidade
do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), a Jesuit university. He won his LL.B. at
UFRGS in 1956, and his LL.M., a Master's in Law, at Yale University in 1962. He
served two one-year terms as president of the Instituto Cultural Brasileiro
Norteamericano in Porto Alegre. His maternal grandfather was an Englishman,
Kester Wilson Sefton, who came to Brazil in the 19th century, never
went back to England, died and was buried in Brazil in 1931. He and his wife,
Déa Teresinha Seben de Azevedo, have two sons, two daughters, and six
grandchildren. After his retirement, Ivo has dedicated most of his time to the
family and to reading, chiefly about religion. He subscribes to The
Tablet and the National Catholic Reporter, and spends a good deal of
time on the Internet, “trying to persuade people who are responsible for
progressive Catholic websites to have their materials shown also in Spanish
and/or Portuguese so as to reach a wider readership.”
Joan Chittister, O.S.B. is a social psychologist and
communications theorist with a doctorate from Penn State University. She is a
regular columnist for the National Catholic Reporter , writing on issues
involving women in church and society, human rights, peace and justice, the
Catholic Church and contemporary religious life, and she has published more than
20 books. Sister Joan is past president of the Leadership Conference of Women
Religious and served three terms as prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie,
PA. She is currently the executive director of Benetvision: a resource and
research center for contemporary spirituality. She has received 11 Honorary
Doctorate degrees, the most recent from Saint Michael’s College,
Burlington, VT in September 2002. Her latest book, Scarred by Struggle,
Transformed by Hope (Wm. B. Eerdmans), will be published in the spring of
2003. In 2002-03 she will address audiences in Portugal, Rome, Wales and will be
a keynote speaker at The Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and
Spiritual Leaders at the Palais des Nations (United Nations) in Geneva.
John J. Deeney was a Jesuit for 30 years, seven in the
California Province, 23 in the China Province. He has taught at universities in
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic of China. His life's work
continues to be helping to improve East-West understanding through his teaching,
research and publication on Chinese-Western comparative literature and culture.
He is currently a professor at the University of Pittsburgh's Center of
International Studies and, this school year, he will be teaching graduate
courses in Chinese-Western comparative literature and the Bible and/in/as
literature at Soochow University in Taiwan.
Edward M. Fashing is a cattle and grain farmer in
Sturgeon, Missouri, a lector in his parish, and an activist in several farm
organizations. He laments the hard times that have come to farmers in America,
and he recommends we read Victor Davis Hanson’s stirring book, FIELDS
WITHOUT DREAMS; DEFENDING THE AGRARIAN IDEA, because, he says, “I cannot
read the book without weeping. I may never finish it.” Ed has a BS from
Loyola University of Chicago (1960) and MS in chemistry from DePaul University
(1968). He taught chemistry and physical science for six years at University of
Illinois (Chicago, and he has also taught geology, environmental studies, and
the chemistry of hazardous materials at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois,
and physics at Truman State and Columbia College in Missouri. He has done cancer
and aflatoxin chemical research, and worked as audio-visual planning editor for
Encyclopaedia Britannica Film Corp. Some 43 years ago, he married Annette
Lubker. They produced five children, all members of Four-H, and raised ten
Missouri State Fair and county fair champion steer carcasses. Ed was Newman
Community faculty moderator at two Illinois colleges.
David Gawlik is a Board member of Corpus, an
association for an inclusive priesthood that is rooted in a strong Eucharistic
commitment and promotes an expanded and renewed priesthood of married and single
men and women in the Church. He is the editor of Corpus Reports, his
organization’s bi-monthly journal, and he publishes a daily e-zine M I R A
B I L E D I C T U. His publishing company, Caritas Communications, helps
authors publish their own books on spirituality/vision/transformation. He is
also co-pastor of Blessed John XXIII, a Sophia-oriented small faith community in
Pennsylvania.
Sister Frances Gimber is a longtime member of the
Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She has been a teacher of English and
religion in her order’s secondary schools, and an administrator in the US
and in Japan. She spent seven years in Rome in her congregation’s
communications secretariat, and has recently published a biography of Marie
Louise Schroen, one of the congregation's legendary formation directors. Sister
Gimber did volunteer work for the Rome office of the Jesuit Refugee Service, and
kept a photo of Pedro Arrupe on her desk. She is now giving courses in the
history of her order as part of her order’s formation program and is
taking over the order’s archivist this fall in St. Louis, Missouri.
Filo Hirota is a longtime member of the leadership
team of her ancient order, the Mercedarian Sisters, founded during the Crusades
for the ransom of captives. She has worked in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Mexico and
Guatemala. She has worked at the Office for Human Development of the Federation
of Asian Bishops Conferences, and on the Catholic Council for Justice and Peace
of the Japanese Bishops Conference. In 1998, she was an auditor at the Asian
Synod in Rome, and has been a member of the Commission on the Justice of the
International Union of Superiors Generals in Rome, and will be reassigned to
Japan before the end of 2002.
John Horgan is Professor of Journalism at Dublin City
University – the first academic in Ireland to hold such a position. He has
had two careers, one in journalism, the other in politics. He joined The
Irish Times in Dublin later in 1963, and, as The Times’
religion editor, was sent to Rome to cover the final session of the Council.
John covered all the Roman synods and numerous other church events in Ireland
and abroad until 1973, when he became the editor of The Education Times.
John was elected to the Irish Senate in 1969, along with Mary Robinson, later
President of Ireland. With Mary Robinson, he was involved in a number of
important political and legislative initiatives. He became a member of the Dail
(the Irish Parliament) in 1977, and a member of the parliament of the European
Union in 1981. His writings on church-related topics have included The Last
Revolution (1965) a translation of a seminal work on the development of doctrine
by the radical Dominican theologian L.-J. Lebret; a chapter in Humanae Vitae:
The History of the Debate (1968), The Church Among the People (1969),
a study of the post-Conciliar church, and Humanae Vitae: the encyclical and
the responses of the national hierarchies, which he co-edited with Austin
Flannery, O.P. His more recent writings have been largely politics and
media-related, but he is a regular contributor on religion topics to journals
such as The Furrow, Doctrine and Life and Commonweal.
Donald Junkins, Just Good Company’s poetry editor,
is an American poet and critic, author of ten volumes of poetry, including the
forthcoming Late At Night in the Rowboat, and Journey to the Corrida,
Playing for Keeps, and Crossing by Ferry, plus eight critical
articles on Ernest Hemingway. He has won several awards for his poems, including
three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he has delivered
Hemingway papers at nine international Hemingway conferences. He directed the
Master of Fine Arts Program in English at the University of Massachusetts for
ten years and taught poetry and American Literature there and several other
universities and private schools in America, Germany and Italy. He won an
American Fulbright to China in 1993 and taught Hemingway and American Poetry at
the University of Xiamen, China. His poems have been translated into French,
Ukrainian, and Chinese. In addition to his books, his poems have appeared in
The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review and thirty-five
other American journals.
Jack Keating was a star pitcher for the St. Ignatius
High School Wildcats in the early 1950s, joined the California Province of the
Society of Jesus in 1955, then left in 1969 to pursue what became a
distinguished career in academe. His has a graduate degree in philosophy and
theology from Gonzaga University and Santa Clara University, and both an M.A.
and a Ph.D from Ohio State University in Social Psychology. In 1990, he was
founding dean of the two branch campuses of University of Washington (in Tacoma
and Bothel), and in l994 became provost of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
In l998 he was installed as the fifth Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin,
Parkside (on Lake Michigan between Chicago and Milwaukee), a comprehensive
university for 5,500 students in the University of Wisconsin System.
Robert Krasnansky began the conflict resolution in
schools movement in Maryland which has led to peer mediation programs in
hundreds of schools. He has run over a dozen conferences for educators and
students on behavior issues, and served as editor for the National Association
for Mediation in Education. He produced 90 programs for public access cable
television promoting global perspectives. And he has initiated partnerships
between his church and churches in El Salvador and on the West Bank. Bob is a
former Jesuit from the Maryland Province. He has an MA in English, has taught
Latin, English and Theology at the secondary level, and has owned his own
business. He is a leader in an organization of former Jesuits on the East Coast,
administers a Listserv for that group and helps organize their annual meetings.
Linda Mitchell Maloney received most of her higher
education (and three degrees) from Saint Louis University, adding one more from
the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen in Germany. Since 1995 she has
been academic editor at The Liturgical Press in Collegeville, MN. She is an
oblate of St. Benedict's Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and a candidate for
Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church.
Sr. Mary John Mananzan is a Missionary Benedictine
Sister who served for 18 years as Dean of College of St. Scholastica's College
in Manila Philippines and finished her two terms there as President in April
2002. She took her graduate studies in the Wilhemsuniversitaet in Muenster
Germany and at the Gregorian University in Rome obtaining a Ph.D in linguistic
philosophy and a minor in systematic theology and missiology. She was
international coordinator of the Women's Commission of EATWOT (the Ecumenical
Association of Third World Theologians) for five years and was the association's
Executive Secretary-Treasurer until September 2001. She was also member of the
International Editorial Board of CONCILIUM. She now serves as executive director
of the Institute of Women's Studies at St. Scholastica's College and is national
chairperson of GABRIELA, a federation of women's organizations in the
Philippines. She is currently is doing research as a Fellow of the Asian Public
Intellectual Program in four Asian countries on Woman, Religion, and
Spirituality in Asia.
Anne Marie Mongoven, O.P. is professor emerita at Santa
Clara University in California, where she designed the curriculum for the
Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries and acted as its director for eight
years. She has a PhD in Catechetics and taught both fundamental theology and
catechetics in the graduate program at Santa Clara. She has published several
books including her most recent The Prophetic Spirit of Catechesis and a
creative series of catechetical texts for children entitled Living
Waters. Her articles have been published in America, Worship, Chicago
Studies, The Living Light and other journals. She is a member of the
Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, Dominicans.
Gaston Roberge, SJ, was born in Montreal in 1935, went
through the normal course of studies in the Jesuit Order, and has lived as a
missionary in the Province of Calcutta (now called Kolkata) since 1961. He got
his MA in theater arts (Film) at the University of California at Los Angeles in
1970. With the support of the late Satyajit Ray, he founded a communication
center, CHITRABANI, in Kolkata. From 1996 to 1999, Father Roberge was executive
secretary for social communication at the Jesuit Curia in Rome. He has published
12 books -- on communication, cinema, human development and spirituality. One
book, Communication Cinema Development received a national award
(special mention) for best book on film at the 46th National Film
Festival of India in 1999. He currently teaches communications at the Jesuit
college of Kolkata.
Mary Doria Russell has a Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the
University of Michigan and she is a convert from Catholicism to Reform Judaism.
Her critically acclaimed best selling novels, The Sparrow and
Children of God have been called uncannily accurate and sympathetic
portrayals of Jesuit life and spirituality by Jesuit readers and reviewers.
The Sparrow, which was a Book of the Month Club selection, has sold from
20,000 to 30,000 copies every year since its publication in 1996. At her
website http://www.MaryDoriaRussell.info one can find a list
of overseas publishers, and her literary prizes, plus photos and interviews and
review excerpts of each book. She is currently writing her third novel, A
Thread of Grace, from her home in Cleveland, Ohio.
Elizabeth (Bea) Scott is a young mother living in
Cincinnati, where she and her husband, Steve, are teachers. Bea is a former
Jesuit Volunteer and former member of the board of directors of JVC: Southwest.
She wrote her MA thesis (in the catechetics program at Santa Clara University)
on the martyrs of El Salvador. She has led and/or participated in 11 trips to El
Salvador. She taught Spanish and Religious Studies at St. Ignatius College Prep
in San Francisco and Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, where she
developed a course that integrated Spanish and Religious Studies and culminated
in an immersion trip to El Salvador.
Ingrid Shafer, a native of Innsbruck, Austria, holds
graduate degrees in literature, human relations, and philosophy. She is
Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Mary Jo Ragan Professor of
Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
where she has taught since 1968. In 2002, she was the recipient of the Medal of
Excellence for University Teaching in the State of Oklahoma by the Oklahoma
Foundation for Excellence, the greatest honor a higher education faculty member
can receive in the State of Oklahoma. She is a board member of the Association
for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC), the Association for Communal
Harmony in Asia, and the Global Dialogue Institute, and national area chair for
religion and culture of the Popular Culture Association. Her most recent book, Religions in Dialogue: From
Theocracy to Democracy, co-edited with Alan Racewas, was published by Ashgate
in fall 2002. In addition to four previous books, Dr. Shafer has published more
than seventy articles, book chapters, and poems. Since 1986, she has been a
regular contributor to Good News Homily Service. She maintains the ARCC websites, and manages Vatican2, the ARCC online
discussion forum. Her article, "From Noosphere to Theosphere: Cyclotrons,
Cyberspace, and Teilhard's Vision of Cosmic Love," appeared in Zygon:
Journal of Religion and Science in December 2002. Dr. Shafer has lectured in
America, Europe, Africa and Asia. She was an invited speaker on Science and
Religion at the 1999 Parliament of World Religions and she offered workshops on
Peace and Dialogue in Japan in May and August 2002. In addition to the ARCC
site, she designs, publishes, and maintains numerous websites dedicated to
developing a global ethic and building bridges between diverse academic,
ideological,religious, and cultural worlds, and has just taken on the design of
Just Good Company. Her main domain with links to most of her web
projects is http://ecumene.org.
Patt Shea graduated from Immaculate Heart College in
Hollywood, California, a major in drama. She soon married Jack Shea, a
television producer-director (a two-term president of the Director’s
Guild). After mothering five children and spending some 20 years in countless
writing classes at UCLA, she became a successful sit-com writer, for ALL IN THE
FAMILY, ARCHIE BUNKER’S PLACE, HAPPY DAYS, LOU GRANT, and IN THE HEAT OF
THE NIGHT. She was a three-time finalist for the Humanitas Award and a winner of
the Scott Newman Award. She has been a member of the Committee on Communications
of the U.S. Conference of Bishops. And, with Jack Shea, she helped found
CATHOLICS in MEDIA ASSOCIATES. (CIMA), an organization that applauds and
recommends current programs and film productions that uplift and enlighten what
it means to human. She and her writing partner, Bud Wiser, have turned to
writing feature movies.
Carol Stanton is the director of development at
Glastonbury Abbey, Massachusetts, a community of 13 Benedictine men and a
worshipping community of more than 250. She has an M.Phil in ecumenics from the
Irish School of Ecumenics, Dublin and an M.A. in religious education from St.
Louis University. Last year, she won a Ph.D in theology from Trinity College in
Dublin, with a thesis on the Irish Catholic Church in the Public Arena .
She has worked in the Education Outreach of St. Luke Institute, in Silver
Spring, Maryland, and spent a number of years in her home town of Orlando,
Florida, as communications director of the Diocese of Orlando, and worked there
as a TV news reporter and anchor for the ABC and NBC affiliates.
Kevin Starr is the acknowledged dean of California
studies, the most eminent living authority on the history of California. He was
appointed State Librarian by Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, and re-appointed by
Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat. He graduated from the University of San Francisco
and earned his MA and Ph.D. degrees in American literature at Harvard
University. In addition to his teaching load at the University of Southern
California, where he holds an endowed chair, he is a full time historian and the
author of six volumes of California history published by the University of
Oxford Press. The latest of them is Embattled Dreams: California in War and
Peace, 1940-1950. In progress: Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge,
1990-2002 . He is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship for his writing, and
a post-doctoral fellowship in California studies at the University of California
has been named in his honor.
Leonard Swidler is professor of Catholic thought and
interreligious dialogue at Temple University in Philadelphia, and editor of
The Journal of Ecumenical Studies. He is the founder-director of the
Center for Global Ethics, a leader of interreligious dialogues in Africa and
Asia, and the founder of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the
Church. He has edited or authored more than 50 books – among them a hugely
relevant work called Toward a Catholic Constitution, a study that shows
how a constitutional government for the Church at every level can help bring
accountability to the Church.