**ANNOUNCEMENT:** We will be trying out a new location for the April meeting!
* Please ensure your RSVP is accurately updated by the Sunday before the meeting as the restaurant may need to staff an additional person to accommodate our group. * Quieter Space * Members can now bring a guest! * Up to 20 people total may attend! * Individual checks issued. * Full Bar and Menu.
**The Sparrow** By: Mary Doria Russell
* About 420 pages [depending on publisher/edition] * Rated 4.17 on StoryGraph * Rated 4.13 on GoodReads * Published in 1996
**Back of Jacket:** It was predictable, in hindsight. Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient action, exploration and research. During what Europeans were pleased to call the Age of Discovery, Jesuit priests were never more than a year or two behind the men who made initial contact with previously unknown peoples; indeed, Jesuits were often the vanguard of exploration.
The United Nations required years to come to a decision that the Society of Jesus reached in ten days. In New York, diplomats debated long and hard, with many recesses and tablings of the issue, whether and why human resources should be expended in an attempt to contact the world that would become known as Rakhat when there were so many pressing needs on Earth. In Rome, the questions were not whether or why but how soon the mission could be attempted and whom to send.
The Society asked leave of no temporal government. It acted on its own principles, with its own assets, on Papal authority. The mission to Rakhat was undertaken not so much secretly as privately–a fine distinction but one that the Society felt no compulsion to explain or justify when the news broke several years later.
The Jesuit scientists went to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God’s other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the furthest frontiers of human exploration. They went ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater glory of God.
They meant no harm.
**Please RSVP in advance and revise if unable to attend. There is a limit of 24 for this discussion as well as a waiting list that fills in when RSVP’s are canceled.**
We’ll already have a table inside, please ask the restaurant host where we are seated.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Fundraising is now turned on for events and is voluntary. I am a working college student that organizes the group. Meetup charges $45 monthly and donations are greatly appreciated. Thank you.
