The Jesuit Social Justice Dialectic within the Cristo Rey School Model

Abstract

American Jesuit Secondary Education seeks to maintain a Jesuit social justice dialectic that ensures balance between preserving the virtue of the Jesuit mission and selling of the Jesuit brand. The mission consists of cultural immersion and social justice for global Catholic evangelization. The brand is the promotion of this mission through financial wealth and political influence accumulated by means of American capitalism. This dissertation explores the complexity of this dialectic looking at the Jesuits' emergence in the United States from a historigraphic perspective in American Jesuit secondary education. It explores the Cristo Rey school model within a Jesuit context via case study looking at the Jesuit social justice dialectic amidst challenges to its mission and brand in the American context.