From the Director's Desk...

New permanent fellows are Dolores Leckey and Drew Christiansen, S.J. Both, by fortuitous coincidence, come to us from the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, where Dolores spent 20 years heading up the Secretariat for the Laity and Drew spent seven years heading up the international division of the Office of Justice and Peace. They are already making an enormous contribution to Woodstock, Dolores overseeing our Church Leadership Program, Drew as rapporteur of our Global Economy and Cultures project and member of our Forgiveness in Conflict Resolution team.

Drew also heads up our International Visiting Fellows program. Among our six international scholars you will find a rich variety of interests and experiences. We could devote a whole issue of this Report to any one of the projects that each of them is pursuing, and, in time, as their work develops, we might just do that. Each of them is grappling with the way culture affects and is, in turn, affected by social changes–in the economy, in political systems, and in other institutions within civil society–and how religion relates to both culture and society. In a wonderful "continuing seminar" of brown bag luncheons, the rest of us Woodstockers are coming to understand how central this "triad" of culture, society (and its institutions), and religion is for both understanding and working to improve our human lives together–that the Kingdom may come.

For the visiting fellows, therefore, and especially for the anonymous benefactors who are providing roughly a quarter of a million dollars a year for the next twenty years to fund this program, we are profoundly grateful.

We express that same gratitude by listing in these pages all of you who have contributed financially to the support of our work this year. We have already had to add a new category of donors in order to recognize the higher level of gifts that we are receiving: the Ignatian Group ($10,000 or more annually).

Finally, in this issue of the Woodstock Report, we introduce four new board members and acknowledge, by listing them all, the tremendous contribution that all of our board members make to Woodstock with their encouragement and direction. For one of them this board membership is a kind of "homecoming." Father Joseph A. Panuska, S.J., made the decision, together with the provincial of the New York Province, to establish Woodstock as a theological center twenty-five years ago this year, when he himself was provincial of the Maryland Province. It was principally his vision and wisdom that got it all started. So it seems genuinely fitting that he "returns" to give future direction to what he originally conceived! He joins Pat Clancy, Nita Crowley, and Brad Schaeffer, S.J., all good friends, who bring a wealth of talent and experience to Woodstock’s board.

With grateful prayers,

James L. Connor, S.J.