We recently sat down with Roberta to get to know more about her journey to IPS…
What is your background? Before joining IPS, did you have any experience at Loyola?
I have a history with Loyola University Chicago. As a child, I developed a long lasting relationship with the honorable and highly respectable Sister Jean Delores, as did my father, while employed as a Chef at Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary for 42 years. I am an alumnus; obtaining my Bachelor degree in Communication. I was previously employed at Loyola University for 2 years and went on to obtain my master’s degree in sociology from DePaul University Chicago. Before returning to Loyola, I was employed at the Booth School of Business as a Financial Aid Advisor and at the University of Chicago as an Administrative Coordinator. Presently, I have returned to the prestigious Loyola community, as Coordinator of Student Services within the Institute of Pastoral Studies.
Why IPS? What drew you to the position?
I decided to apply for the position of Coordinator within the IPS department because of the diverse job responsibilities. The duties listed offered me an advancement towards learning new objectives.
What are you most looking forward to as Coordinator of Student Services?
I am looking forward to interacting and meeting all students who are welcomed and accepted into the many different programs offered in IPS. I am also looking forward to the process of helping those accepted students achieve their goal in completing the program of their choice, and of course, their graduation ceremony.
You can reach Roberta by phone at 312.915.7487 or by email at rmclaur@luc.edu
5-16-2018|Comments Off on Join us as we welcome Roberta to IPS!
Photos from 2018 Graduate School & Institute of Pastoral Studies Commencement
Loyola University Chicago’s Graduate School and Institute of Pastoral Studies Commencement ceremonies were held together at the Gentile Arena on May 8, 2018.
For a number of years, IPS students have requested the opportunity to live in “Intentional Communities”. There already exist several options for participating in intentional communities in Chicago (e.g., Amate House) but we want to make available as a pilot project the opportunity for students to self-select an “Intentional community” as a LUC residential life option.
For the upcoming year (2018-19) we have two suites (three bedrooms each) that are available for this purpose. We anticipate three men will be in one suite and three women in the other suite. To be clear, there is no programming specifically developed for this community but it does provide an opportunity for those who want to experience communal life with others and who wish to be intentional about this process. Sometimes “intentional community” is defined as a community of those seeking a high degree of social cohesion. Exactly what shape this particular intentional community forms will be up to the individuals who participate in this option.
Students will be assigned to a triple room apartment style suite at Baumhart Hall (26 E Pearson) along with two other IPS students. Each student will receive their own bedroom with shared common living spaces. These apartments come furnished with one bed, one desk and chair, and one dresser in each bedroom. The common area is furnished with two kitchen stools, one sofa, and two side tables. The annual room rate (fall semester, winter break, and spring semester) is $12,180-$14,470 USD per student. Students are also required to submit a $500 USD deposit that will be later put toward the annual room rate. Summer rates for 2019 have not yet been released but would be subject to an additional charge. Meal plans are optional for an additional charge.
The deadline to apply for this opportunity expires May 15. Students may submit a housing application through LOCUS by selecting the Residence Life link on the left hand side. Interested students are encouraged to contact Kristin Butnik at kbutnik@luc.edu in IPS or Clair McDonald, Assistant Director for Housing in the Office of Residence Life at CMcDonald5@luc.edu.
Dr. Luca Badetti has just joined the IPScommunity as an Adjunct Assistant Professor. He will be part of the Pastoral Counseling program and will teach two Fall 2018 classes: “Research Methods” and “Foundations of Pastoral Care”.
Dr. Badetti was born in Rome, did middle school in Milan, and then moved to the United States. He obtained a master’s in Clinical Psychology from the Institute for the Psychological Sciences at Divine Mercy University and a doctorate in Disability Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), writing his dissertation on “Self-Determination and Community Life in Persons with Intellectual Disabilities”.
VoyageChicago recently published a detailed profile on Dr. Badetti, highlighting among other things his current work as the Community Life Director at L’Arche Chicago, “a multi-cultural faith community on the west side comprised of three homes in which people with and without intellectual disabilities live together ordinary life (sharing meals, going on outings, praying together, etc.).” In this role, Luca supports community life across its different layers: hiring and training assistants/staff, leading team meetings, events and retreats, accompanying, listening and walking with people as they grow through their community journey.”
We would like to share below Dr. Badetti’s responses to a few questions we recently posed to him:
Why IPS? What drew you to this program?
I have come to believe that life reveals itself to us as we journey along – it can surprise us and lead us, sometimes in very unexpected ways. This is true across its different domains, even the academic and professional one.
I didn’t plan to find Loyola University’s Institute for Pastoral Studies but I found it, and it found me.
To give a bit of background, during my undergraduate studies I wanted to study the human person in a holistic way, and one discipline was not enough to do so! I therefore double majored and double minored, seeking to bring together theology, philosophy and psychology.
I obtained a master’s in clinical psychology from a graduate institute of the psychological sciences (its abbreviated name was IPS too!), which sought to combine psychology with theology.
I then continued my own reflection on integration, which continues to this day. This reflection also informs and has been informed by my community leadership and pastoral experience in L’Arche, a movement of faith communities in which people with and without intellectual disabilities share life together in a spirit of belonging. I currently am the Director of Community Life in our Chicago community, which I became a part of once I moved to the city about eight years ago for my doctorate in Disability Studies.
I was already interested in IPS when I found out about it years ago, having known some of its students but also one of its founders. Considering my background, here it was…an institute that sought to combine psychological and theological insights for the accompaniment of people! How could I not be interested?
IPS then found me, inviting me to teach as one of its adjunct professors.
How do you feel about joining IPS?
I am honored and pleased.
I just mentioned a bit about my academic/community background…I find so many connections between it and the focus of IPS. I am glad to now be part of the IPS team.
Coming originally from Rome and currently living in Chicago, I also find quite exciting that IPS has a presence in both Chicago and Rome. Yet another connection!
What are your expectations about being part of the IPS family?
I am ready to be surprised!
Expectations, on the other hand, can be tricky, precisely because of what I was mentioning before about life revealing itself. Expectations can be like little boxes in our heads, while life is so much bigger than them. But, yes, I am open to being surprised.
Finally, can you share a personal spiritual practice that continues to restore and re-energize your mind, body, heart and spirit?
I believe there is a deep core to spirituality, beyond words, that is very intimate, mysterious and profound. Like other intimate realities, it should be protected and not exposed.
There is also a level in spirituality that is personal while also being communal and social, from which one can share with others using words and from which I am drawing my reply to your question.
Instead of using the concept of a practice I do, I’d like to speak of a reality I like to enter into – and also nurture: leisure.
What in Italy is called the “dolce far niente” (the sweet doing nothing) is a beautiful being present. Whether sharing coffee with a friend, listening to music, enjoying good food, sitting quietly, strolling around and so forth, leisure can be a delightfully human, and therefore profoundly spiritual, experience. That primacy of being over doing.
On April 5th, IPS and Loyola Alumni Relations co-sponsored a networking event that featured the following speakers who presented on the topic “Ministry in a Dynamic World: Finding Focus, Activating Energy, & Nurturing Gifts”.
Fr. Jason Malave, Cardinal’s Liaison for Renew My Church, Archdiocese of Chicago
Ann Ridge, IPS Alumna 2002, IPS Adjunct Instructor, and PhD candidate at The Chicago Theological Seminary
Keyalo Gray, MS Ed., Career Advisor, Loyola University Chicago
Close to 40 people participated in the event, including several who viewed our livestream via the IPS Facebook page. Many thanks to Associate Dean and Assistant Clinical Professor Peter Jones for managing the livestream, undertaken to enhance the overall IPS experience of our online/distance students. Finally, over 20 people supported the IPS Student Scholarship Fund.
We’d like to thank Deirdre, Fr. Jason, Ann, and Keyalo for sharing their time, talent and treasure with us that evening.
A Lenten reflection from IPS Assistant Professor, Michael Canaris:
Theologian Daniel Groody, CSC has reflected on strengthening our spiritual disciplines in various demonstrations of solidarity and renewal, some of which are particularly appropriate for Lent: focusing on prayer, simplicity and recollection in regular moments like the Sabbath. One of the most eye-opening of these practices he suggests is considering a “fast from technology.”
The average American checks their phone every 12 minutes or over 80 times per day. More than two-thirds of us get at least substantial portions of our news from social media sources, which are intentionally designed to offer stories based on previous inclinations and interests. Self-sorting “traditional” media outlets on television and radio provide much of the same. All of this results in an increase in tribalism and the silos of echo-chambers that characterize so much of our public discourse. Dialogue with one another becomes strained. And if we claim to love God who we cannot see while refusing to hear the cries of our neighbor who we do, then we are liars according to the Word of God.
We often have recourse to fall back somewhat easily on the (admirable) directives of the church when it comes to questions of what our fasts should look like during Lent. These regular calls to penitence help us raise our hearts and minds to God, to focus on our radical dependence and constant need for God’s presence, forgiveness and revitalization in our lives.
But it’s also important to remember that God does not somehow intrinsically prefer one half of our surf and turf predilections over the other on certain days of the week. Choosing lobster over filet on Friday merely out of a rigorist interpretation of the law offers negligible impact on one’s spiritual life, and even less on the nature of God’s unbegotten and eternal beatitude and beneficence. (That said, I have eaten meatballs after midnight on early Saturday morning raids to the refrigerator more times in my life than I would like to confess in public.)
But to recalibrate the grounding of our self-mortifications consistently, it is essential to return often to the words of the prophet Isaiah, among my favorite in all of Scripture:
“Why do we fast, but You do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but You do not notice?”
“Look,” says the Lord, “you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.
You fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down your head like a reed, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
And you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?
Is not this rather the fast that I desire: to loosen the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the foreigner into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wounds shall be healed quickly.”
Our use of technology, which has given us countless blessings, is also increasingly enabling us to practice all too habitually the last of these divine condemnations. When our phones and computers hinder real connections and instead allow us sufficient cover “to hide our humanity from our own kin,” we know that we have not only a cultural but a theological problem.
Fasting from food is not the same thing as forced starvation. So too, a willingness to examine our practices regarding technological communication is not a compulsory abandonment of those realities that are necessary for the betterment of our professional and personal lives. But an honest scrutiny will likely reveal addictive or detestable practices for which a day of fasting may now be appropriate or necessary.
This may be the year when assessing and addressing these tendencies could help us grow closer both to our human neighbor and to God.
This reflection first appeared in Catholic Star Herald. Michael Canaris, PhD is an Assistant Professor at IPS. You can reach him at mcanaris@luc.edu.
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Join the Loyola community in prayer and celebration at HOLY WEEK services and events across the Chicagoland campuses. Click here.
Close to 50 people attended the retreat, allowing for time to reflect on expectations of self during times of transition.
Change is constant, continuous, and often challenging. The dynamics of change can affect our lives, our families, and our work in positive and negative ways. Transition is the process we go through as we struggle to adapt to interior and exterior change. All transitions begin with an ending and end in a new beginning. Therefore, in times of transition, we may find ourselves reliving the Paschal Mystery of death and rebirth. In this workshop we will discuss the beginning, middle, and ending phases of transitions and how living out that process affects our daily lives. These are times that offer us an opportunity to reflect on our expectations of self and our own personal journeys.
A Lenten reflection from IPS Assistant Professor of Spirituality, Jean-Pierre Fortin:
According to the Gospel of John, when Jesus is brought before Pontius Pilate, he tells the Roman governor: “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). Jesus was born, came among us to bear witness to the truth. For us Christians, who profess to be followers of Jesus, a fundamental task and challenge to accomplish and face is to bear witness to Jesus. As it invites us to experience and celebrate the mystery of Christ’s Passion, death and resurrection in particular fashion, the Lenten/Easter season is a most suited time for us to reflect on the quality of the witness we bear of and to Christ.
A formative way to do this is to follow Pontius Pilate’s example, who admits to being profoundly challenged by the person and words of Jesus when he responds to Jesus’ witness with an honest question: “What is truth?” (John 18:38) Pilate opens himself to the possibility that he may be encountering a truth he had never foreseen. This encounter with truth in person may change who he is in profound ways. During this Lenten season, then, we may reflect on the ways Jesus questions our assumptions about our lives, we may think about the questions we have been carrying with us for some time (perhaps even a long time) which we know we should ask to Jesus in person. What are the questions that would liberate us, allowing us to pursue the truth revealed in Jesus in more faithful, complete fashion? We may bring these questions before Jesus in our prayer, with the desire and hope of being transformed so as to be able to bear witness to the truth that he is.
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See below for other Lenten offerings, resources, and events taking place around Loyola University Chicago and the greater Chicagoland area.
The Mission Office invites you to begin and end this Lenten season with an Ignatian examen focused on forgiveness and healing. Each session will begin with an examen followed by shared reflections on the insights or fruits of the examen. The first examen will focus on forgiveness, and as we begin Holy Week, the second examine will focus on healing. For more on this program, go to: https://www.luc.edu/mission/employeeprograms/lentenofferings/.
The Archdiocese of Chicago’s Department of Parish Vitality and Mission is delighted to provide Catholics and non-Catholics with a wide variety of opportunities to take Pope Francis’s words to heart and begin a Lenten mission of deepening relationships with those around them and with Jesus Christ. For specifics, go to this page: https://pvm.archchicago.org/lenten-resources.
Finally, for web-based resources, Campus Ministry has collated the below handout:
Coordinating Board Awards were first given in 1973 and are presented to individuals and groups within the Archdiocese in recognition and appreciation for their outstanding contributions to the life of the Church of Chicago.
In addition to IPS, the following also received a Coordinating Board Award:
Purpose over Pain
Wellness Programs for Priests- Loyola University, Ramute Kemeza, BSN, RN
Relevant Radio – Chicago
Archdiocese of Chicago Office of Radio and Television
IPS is humbled to receive a Coordinating Board Award, especially given the ACP’s mission:
To cooperate with the Archbishop in the Pastoral Care of the Local Church.
To foster dialogue and support among priests and deacons locally, nationally and abroad.
To nourish collaboration of priests and deacons with others serving in ministry.
To promote locally, ecumenism among the Christian Churches, and to cooperate with and promote interfaith dialogue with other faiths.
To seek cooperative action that promotes peace and justice through the entire metropolitan community, particularly noticing and attending to the needs of the poor and the alienated.
To strive for equality of women and men of all races and cultures.