This book project examines a conflict over contemplative prayer involving a leading early Jesuit, Baltasar Álvarez, and his long-standing penitent, Teresa of Ávila – and how this discord sheds light on pressures molding the order’s corporate spirituality in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Censured by his superiors because of his spiritual teaching and his ties to Teresa, Álvarez’s case shows how corporate Jesuit spirituality was dynamically related to the world around it. Contemplation and Conflict charts external and internal pressures that spurred efforts by Jesuit authorities to shift the Society’s spirituality from a rich polyculture toward a monoculture centered on the “safe” – and distinctively Jesuit – Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola.
Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits
Co-authored with the late John W. O'Malley, this essay explores the emergence of "Ignatian Spirituality" in the twentieth century. What Jesuits, as well as their friends and collaborators, understand by this term is a relatively recent articulation of Jesuit values and priorities. It is the fruit of a long and storied confluence of humanistic research and historical contingencies, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the present day. This essay offers an initial sketch of this process. [Full text] [Spanish Translation in Ignaziana]
The Way (2024)
This tribute article for the late Philip Endean, SJ, explored his contributions to the historical study of the Society of Jesus – especially its spirituality. [Full text]
Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (2020)
Co-authored with Aaron Hyman, ahis article explores the complexities of George Kubler's perspective on the theme of extinction in relation to Indigenous persistence in Andean highland art, especially in the church of San Pedro Apóstol in Andahuaylillas, Peru. [Full text]
Studies in Spirituality (2016)
Recent scholarship on the Christian spiritual senses has neglected works by Ignatius Loyola, a notable omission because the senses are crucial in his spirituality and because prominent commentators read his Spiritual Exercises in terms of spiritual sensation. This essay argues that other texts – the so-called Autobiography and Spiritual Diary – are more helpful than the Exercises for glimpsing Ignatius’s views on spiritual sensation. [Full text]
The Heythrop Journal (2013)
This paper explores the implications of Chapter V of Lumen Gentium from Vatican II regarding the concept of holiness within the Catholic Church. It argues that the Council marked a shift from viewing holiness as the domain of a select few to a universal call to holiness for all believers. The article identifies this as a key area of change-within-continuity in the understanding of the Second Vatican Council. [Full text]