Title: Catholic Author Paul Elie Invites First Years to Grow in Their Faith

Every week, a group of first-year students gathers around a conference table and discusses the future of Catholicism. 

The students are part of an Ignatius Seminar, a course designed by a faculty member around something deeply personal to them and grounded in the Jesuit tradition.

For instructor Paul Elie, that something personal was a book, one that held special meaning. 

Elie is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He’s devoted his career to writing about religion and the arts. 

In June 2024, while writing his next book, Elie began his day with a prayer book given to him by then President John J. DeGioia. As his coffee brewed, he read a collect, or a five-step Christian prayer. His thoughts often turned to DeGioia, who was recovering from a stroke. 

The book, sent earlier that year, was filled with collects written by the Northern Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama.  

“As if President DeGioia didn’t have enough to do, he put this book in my hands; knowing that I’m a religious artist of a kind, he introduced me to another religious artist, one I didn’t know about – a figure in my own field. He speaks often about Georgetown’s convening power, and over the years he has applied his own convening power at a grandmaster level to bring people together. This was a very local instance of that.

“I’m getting a little teary-eyed talking about this,” he said in thinking about DeGioia’s stroke.

As Elie was planning the course, The Future of the Catholic Idea, he wanted to advance DeGioia’s legacy and Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity. The collect, he thought, offered a vehicle to do just that. This fall, Elie assigned Ó Tuama’s book and asked students to compose five collects of their own, inviting them to reflect on biblical figures, their own needs and desires, and the experience of Catholicism.

“The aim of the course is to initiate Georgetown students into the public conversation about Catholicism from the very beginning of their time on the Hilltop,” said Elie, who’s also a senior fellow in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. “For them to actively write collects – that’s a direct initiation. They’re not apprentices; they’re already making liturgical language at age 18.”

Sophie Sagastume (C’29), a first-year in the College of Arts & Sciences, was drawn to the Ignatius Seminar in part because of Elie. She had gotten to know her hometown’s parish priest and Jesuits at Georgetown. But she was eager for a layperson’s take on Catholicism.

“Professor Elie’s takes are very raw and real,” she said. “It’s refreshing how applicable it is to our daily lives. The way that [Elie] is living out his faith is the way that I can also live out my faith as another layperson.”

Sagastume wrote one of her collects about Jesus’ flight to Egypt as told in the Gospel of Matthew.

“No matter the discomfort of our circumstances, we may always find fulfillment in our flight to you. Amen,” she wrote.

Sagastume found the process insightful in how she might imitate biblical figures in her own life. She also found it illuminating for her prayer life, particularly as the class shared their collects with one another.

“I so often default to common prayers in the Catholic faith … but now I can say, ‘Maybe I’m going to pray one of my collects,’” she said. “It feels rewarding to be able to share that with someone. Maybe someone wants to pray my collect and feels like it’s going to help them in some way.”

In addition to composing collects, the class has discussed the Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles, J.R.R. Tolkien, the lives of the saints, Vatican II, Catholic communities and efforts for justice and prophecy, and Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate, with an eye toward what the future of Catholicism looks like. 

After two more fall semesters of first-year seminars, Elie envisions the course culminating in a group trip to Rome, which will bring together different classes of Hoyas who are thinking about the Catholic future.

Elie said the course is about inviting students into the public conversation about Catholicism.

“There’s an opportunity for formation here: They come to Georgetown intensely curious about Catholicism, eager to have it be not merely a learning experience. The goal is for them to be participants in the conversation about what the Church is and where it is going,” he said.

Sagastume has found that the course has shaped not only her theological understanding of Catholicism, but her own faith too.

“It’s a nice way to reflect on such an integral part of our life that sometimes becomes monotonous with how much we do it,” she said. “It’s like the class allows you to renew your perspective on your faith.”