AT THE NAME OF JESUS In the mid-1970s a good number of Jesuit colleges, universities, and high schools in the United States came up with a new brand. The goal of a Jesuit education, they proclaimed, was to educate “men for others” – which quickly morphed, of course, into “men and women for others.” The slogan derived not from some high-powered Madison Avenue advertising agency. It was the genial intuition, or so it was claimed, of the man who was then the General of the Society of Jesus, Father Pedro Arrupe. Concerned about what seemed to me a severely reductionist understanding of the mission of a Catholic high school or college, I sought to trace down the original context of that rotely repeated phrase. It stems from a 1973 address that Father Arrupe gave to European alumni of Jesuit schools and colleges. Arrupe indeed employs the telltale phrase several times in his address, whose focus was “education for justice.” But what I found revelatory was that Arrupe himself gave a far richer and more distinctively Christian thrust to his proposal. Thus in his first setting forth of the theme he makes this explicit avowal: “Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-for-others; men who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ—for the God-man who lived and died for all the world.” And, in the concluding section of his address, Arrupe further elaborated the Christological foundation of his proposal. A man for others “is the man filled with the Spirit; and we know whose Spirit that is: the Spirit of Christ, who gave his life for the salvation of the world; the God who, by becoming Man, became, beyond all others, a Man-for-others.” It would be an interesting exercise to consider why the Christological substance was so evidently eviscerated from the subsequent sloganeering. A desire not to appear “parochial?” Not to offend “secular sensibilities?” To manifest greater “ecumenical sensitivity?” As an alumnus of a Jesuit high school, college, and university, I have over the years sought to prod some of my Jesuit friends to espouse and articulate the full-bodied Christic vision not only of Father Arrupe, but even more authoritatively of the Second Vatican Council whose documents, I have argued, are Christologically saturated. But such a recognition and acknowledgement is also incumbent upon some sectors of the American Catholic theological guild as well. I have witnessed over the years that Catholic theology in the United States is often marked by what one perceptive friend calls a notable “Christological deficit.” This is not the occasion to expound the case at length, but as a not uncommon instance, let me refer to a recent article in Commonweal. The article, entitled “The Changing Role of Catholic Moral Theologians,” is a report on a recent global conference of participants in the project, Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church. The article offers a quick overview of developments in Catholic moral theology since Vatican II, both in its approaches and in its practitioners. And it celebrates the current rich (sometimes bordering upon promiscuous) pluralism. To her credit the author, M. Cathleen Kaveny of Boston College, did raise a concern about “how our field will organize and prioritize these diverse methods, perspectives and questions so that they do not devolve into a cacophony.” Upon reflection, she came to the conviction that “three commitments” manifested themselves in the otherwise diverse presentations and approaches at the conference. One might call them three guiding theological “principles” (my term, not hers). She enumerates them as: 1) the goodness of God’s creation and human responsibility for its care; 2) the dignity of all, especially the poor and marginalized; and 3) the demands of human solidarity across diverse communities. Certainly these are foundational and exemplary theological principles and commitments. But one cannot help but be struck by what is glaringly absent: THE Name is missing. In this, Kaveny’s piece mirrors the “Christological deficit” I and others have often discerned in certain circles within American Catholic theology. A Christological deficit, some have maintained, also mars the Synod’s working document, the Instrumentum Laboris. Foremost among these critics has been Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. In an early intervention at the Synod, Chaput lamented: “If we lack the confidence to preach Jesus Christ without hesitation or excuses to every generation, especially to the young, then the Church is just another purveyor of ethical pieties the world doesn’t need.” One prays that this Christological deficiency will be addressed and countered through a wise discernment of the Synod fathers that would give rise to a robustly Christocentric final document. Robustly and substantively Christocentric: not a mere pious and superficial invocation of the name of Jesus, but a careful exposition and proclamation of the uniqueness of the person of the Savior and the transformative call to discipleship Jesus issues. A document that echoes the Petrine witness: “For there is no other Name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:10–12). As stimulus for their discernment over the next two weeks, the Synod fathers could hardly do better than to ponder carefully Pope Francis’ rich homily on the occasion of the canonization of the new saints this past Sunday, October 14. Francis told the thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square: “Jesus is radical. He gives all and he asks all: he gives a love that is total and asks for an undivided heart. Even today he gives himself to us as the living bread; can we give him crumbs in exchange?” And the Successor of Peter then underscores the “today,” the perennial spiritual aggiornamento to which we are all called: “Today Jesus invites us to return to the source of joy, which is the encounter with him, the courageous choice to risk everything to follow him, the satisfaction of leaving something behind in order to embrace his way. The saints have travelled this path.” What more joyful and meaningful challenge to today’s youth (and to each of us). For the saints canonized Sunday (and all the saints of the Church), Jesus is not some pious way-station, extracurricular to being men and women for others. Jesus is the curriculum itself, both the way and the goal of their faith journey: the Measure of their transformation. I have long wondered whether the “Christological deficit” I have noted is the fruit of a Christological amnesia that stirring proclamation and catechesis might remedy? Or whether the malady runs deeper? Whether the symptoms point to a “Christophobia” – not on the part of opponents of Christianity, but, sadly and more troubling, by its “adherents.” A fear, as the poet Francis Thompson put it: “Lest having Him I must have naught beside.” Such seems to have been the affliction of the “rich young man” of the gospel upon which the Pope preached. And a “field hospital” hardly seems an adequate setting to treat so debilitating a fear, so pervasive a phobia. It requires, rather, the sort of intensive care that issues in the radical cure of heart and mind that the New Testament calls “metanoia!” And this only the divine Physician can effect.