In 1995 I made my annual retreat (silent/directed) at Craighead Retreat House neat Glasgow, Scotland. I had taken my final exams and turned in my dissertation for an MA in Education in Media Studies at the University of London’s Institute of Education and was awaiting the results before returning to the USA.
One day I found a green pamphlet at the retreat house from the series of Jesuit writings published by The Institute for Jesuit Studies in St. Louis:
To Fall in Love with the World: Individualism and Self-Transcendance in American Life
by John Staudenmaier, SJ, a professor at Detroit-Mercy University.
The essay explored individualism in the US, individualism and technologies, and capitalism and individualism.
I have been wanting to write about media and capitalism in this economic crisis, but when I found John’s essay online, I thought it would be useful to share it with you. I may write something later…
In this day of economic distress, Staudenmaier’s piece still has something to say about how we will continue, as believers, to be present in and to the world as the economic situation changes us… and how we can change. He does this by considering the Christian way-of-being in a consumer society in the mid-1990’s and assessing this through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
(I wrote an article using Staudenmaier’s premise published in Today’s Catholic Teacher Jan/Feb 2008: Cinema Divina: Spiritual Development through Contemporary Film)
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