Eugene C. Bianchi – författare

Founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus remains the largest and most controversial religious order of men in Catholicism. Since the 1960s, however, Jesuits in the United States have lost more than half of their members, and they have experienced a massive upheaval in what they believe and how they work and live. In this groundbreaking book, Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi draw on interviews and statements gathered from more than four hundred Jesuits and former Jesuits to provide an intimate look at turmoil among Catholicism's legendary best-and-brightest. Priests and former priests speak candidly about their reasons for joining (and leaving) the Jesuits, about their sexual development and orientation, about their spiritual crises and their engagement with other religious traditions. They discuss issues ranging from celibacy to the ordination of women, homosexuality, the rationale of the priesthood, the challenges of community life, and the divinity of Jesus. "Passionate Uncertainty" traces the transformation of the Society of Jesus from a fairly unified organization into a smaller, looser community with disparate goals and an elusive corporate identity.From its role as a traditional subculture during the days of immigrant Catholicism, the order has changed into an amalgam of countercultures shaped around social mission, sexual identity, and an eclectic spirituality. The story of the Jesuits reflects the crisis of clerical authority and the deep ambivalence surrounding American Catholicism's encounter with modernity.

Founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus remains the largest and most controversial religious order of men in Catholicism. Since the 1960s, however, Jesuits in the United States have lost more than half of their members, and they have experienced a massive upheaval in what they believe and how they work and live. In this groundbreaking book, Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi draw on interviews and statements gathered from more than four hundred Jesuits and former Jesuits to provide an intimate look at turmoil among Catholicism''s legendary best-and-brightest. Priests and former priests speak candidly about their reasons for joining (and leaving) the Jesuits, about their sexual development and orientation, about their spiritual crises and their engagement with other religious traditions. They discuss issues ranging from celibacy to the ordination of women, homosexuality, the rationale of the priesthood, the challenges of community life, and the divinity of Jesus.Passionate Uncertainty traces the transformation of the Society of Jesus from a fairly unified organization into a smaller, looser community with disparate goals and an elusive corporate identity. From its role as a traditional subculture during the days of immigrant Catholicism, the order has changed into an amalgam of countercultures shaped around social mission, sexual identity, and an eclectic spirituality. The story of the Jesuits reflects the crisis of clerical authority and the deep ambivalence surrounding American Catholicism''s encounter with modernity.

This memoir invites readers to explore stages of their own spiritual journey. Bianchi graphically describes his path from an Italian immigrant family on the West Coast, through twenty years as a Jesuit, to being a professor of religious studies at Emory University. As he develops a more this-worldly inner life, Bianchi struggles with church teachings about Christ, sexuality, and authority. He candidly reveals how failed marriages gave him a humbler grasp of meeting the transcendent in everyday problems. He embraces a contemplative spirituality that links Buddhist and Taoist practices with western mysticism. With a foot in Christianity, he shows how to walk a way of inter-spirituality as a meaningful road for the contemporary seeker. For Bianchi this involves becoming a metaphorical Christian as he moves away from religious certitudes of early life to find spirit in nature and humanity. Bianchi, a well-known writer on spiritual aging, challenges Baby Boomers to craft a contemplative life that works for them today. With his wife and two cats, he discovers a home for body and spirit along the banks of the Oconee River in Athens, Georgia.

Elder Wisdom invites us to a refreshing new vision of aging in the company of one hundred creative elders who share their insights and experiences about getting older. These mentors invite us to reflect on their lives so that we can reflect on our lives with pertinent questions about how we are eldering. They don't promise us an "e;ageless body"e; or a "e;timeless mind,"e; but rather practical wisdom on how we can grow inwardly and reach out during later life in exciting and rewarding new ways. Over a two-year period, Eugene Bianchi interviewed more than one hundred older people for this book. Their ages range from the midsixties to centenarians. They range from well-known people such as Jimmy Carter, Maggie Kuhn, E. G. Marshall, Tillie Olsen, Desmond Tutu, Martin Marty, and June Singer to an electrician, a teacher, a homemaker, an entrepreneur, an artist, and a bookstore owner. The selection is at once diverse and universal. The book's gift is its power to draw us into lives that are similar to our own, so that we can apply its elder wisdom to ourselves. Topics covered include learning from work and life's turning points, empowering your elder self, expanding, reaching out, cherishing your family, cultivating friendships, encountering mortality, developing a personal spirituality, and sharing gifts of wisdom. Elder Wisdom is not just for the still-active elder. It is a pathfinder that will help all of us move toward elderhood in creative and promising ways.

How can you as a unique individual grow older in creative, life-enhancing ways? In On Growing Older, Eugene Bianchi provides a psycho-spiritual guidebook toward wisdom for every man and woman who wishes to age with purpose and grace. In twenty-four reflections, he explores such crucial issues encountered by every individual in the aging process as transforming work, remembering ourselves, developing respect, opening to creativity, living truthfully, making friends/enemies, letting go, peacemaking elders, reclaiming nature, dealing with loneliness, suffering, loving, hoping, forgiving, cultivating joy, and being religious. Each chapter concludes with practical techniques, imagery, and suggestions to help the reader meditate on and personalize the themes discussed. Artist Lee Lawson's illustrations set a contemplative tone and focus throughout this wise and helpful book.

Bianchi's wide-ranging book draws together insights from the social sciences, the humanities, and religion to establish a holistic framework for a spirituality of aging. He argues that middle life and late adulthood present opportunities for turning inward for a deeper contemplative life within the context of active, worldly endeavors. This can also augur a reform of social relationships--beyond individual development alone--toward the creation of a more cooperative, just society. In this way, physical decline is countered by a spiritual ascent. He summons aging persons, fortified with universal values and concerns gained from age and experience, to return to the centers of decision making. Throughout, the author ponders such questions as personal power, identity, fear, freedom, contemplation, sexuality, the church, faith, suffering, and hope. In candid interviews, older religious leaders reflect on their early value formation, personal traumas, choice of careers, midlife transitions, experiences of old age, and the prospect of death. In dwelling mainly on human spiritual dilemmas of the aging cycle, Bianchi offers a strong, clear message of hope--one that stands against the tide of our culture which tends to shunt older people to the outer eddies of life's stream. Aging as a Spiritual Journey is immensely valuable to all laypersons and those in the helping professions who are concerned about the quality of the aging process.

Interbeing is Eugene Bianchi's fourth collection of poems. It reflects two concerns of later years: first, his own experience of nature--ecology--which has become a spiritual road for his own self-awareness; and secondly, in a larger context, the increasing threat to all life on earth which looms ever-larger with global warming. These concerns reflect Bianchi's long career as a writer and teacher, first as a member of the Jesuit order and then as a professor of religious studies at Emory University in Atlanta for over thirty years. This book of poems, coming late in life, makes Bianchi especially aware of the gradual development of one's spirituality. The poems blend the secular and the religious into one voice as specific life events unfold in immigrant beginnings, Jesuit experiences, the ups and downs of being married, the professorial life at Emory, novel and memoir writing, ethical issues of war and peace, and participation in a local Buddhist sangha in the spirit of Thich Nhat Hanh.