Father Caruso, the president of St. Ignatius, announced on the Ignatius web site that Father Brian Paulson would be the next “provincial” for the newly formed USA Midwest Province. This province will be made up of the Chicago, Detroit and Wisconsin Provinces. Fr. Paulson was Fr. Caruso’s predecessor as president of St. Ignatius, serving from 1999 to 2010.
I want to take the opportunity to congratulate Father Paulson and wish him the best of luck in his new position. Being the provincial means that Father Paulson will be the “head” of the Jesuits and Jesuit institutions in this province, but, despite my 50+ years of association with the Jesuits, I admit to having only a vague sense of what else the position includes. I’m sure that much of it is administrative.
Fr. Brad Schaeffer, a Jesuit who is an Ignatius alumnus (class of ’67), returned as a scholastic to teach and coach baseball, and, after ordination, came back as principal. After a few years at Ignatius, he was tapped to work for the Chicago Province, and at some point, became the head of the Jesuit Conference in the U.S., which, in Taylor Street terms, is the capo d’capo of the Jesuits in the United States…pretty “heady” stuff.
I’d also like to thank all of the men who filled the roll of president at Ignatius. That was, and is, an awesome responsibility. My first inclination was to write about my perceptions of each of the 8 men who were presidents of Ignatius during my full-time tour of duty, but, honestly, I didn’t know most of them very well. That prompted a second reaction. It seemed to me that they weren’t very well known by students and parents, either. It is true that those who were “in-siders”, for want of a better word, board-of-trustee members, those involved with fund-raising, and, probably, officers of different organizations within the school would have had more contact. Students would mostly have seen the president only at school masses and at graduation. He really was “the man behind the screen” so to speak.
That wasn’t universally true. For example Father Paulson often accompanied students on retreats. Father John Reilly, God rest his soul, was a teacher, assistant principal, then principal before becoming president. I can’t speak to the amount of contact that the others had, but Fathers Paulson and Reilly come immediately to mind as being more recognizable to students.
Despite the fact that they signed my paycheck (figuratively if not literally), their primary job was to keep the doors of the school open. During the late 60’s and through the 70’s…and perhaps into the early 80’s… that was not easy task. There seemed to be a delicate balance between raising tuition and not raising it so high that parents couldn’t afford to send their sons here.
It occurred to me that, whatever the nature of the calling to the priesthood/Jesuits for each of these men, I’m willing to bet that it didn’t include being an administrator. It didn’t involve fund-raising or many of the other less glamorous responsibilities of being president. If a person becomes a principal, he or she has take courses for certification with the intent of becoming principal, but the president of a school was just assigned the position. Having taken a vow of obedience, what option did he have?
As an act of self-indulgence, I’m going to mention my short stint as an administrator. I was the athletic director for 3 years, and, no, I didn’t have to take a class to get that job. I’d like to have been the first to say that I really wasn’t equipped to handle the task, but others have said it before I did. (For the record, I did leave that position of my own accord.) I realized that being in administration wasn’t why I became a teacher. (In that way, Frank Raispis and I were alike…maybe the only way.)
