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Mission Week looks to hope-filled future

Dec 1, 2022
2 min Read
Kate Malott
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Mass of the Holy Spirit

At the beginning of the academic year, Creighton hosted its third Mission Week, a series of campuswide events and opportunities to gather in community and reflect upon and celebrate the University’s unique Jesuit, Catholic heritage and values. This year’s theme was “Walking Toward a Hope-Filled Future,” and focused on the third of four Universal Apostolic Preferences — Journeying with Youth. These preferences serve as points of reference guiding the work of the Jesuits and lay colleagues worldwide through 2029.

Mission Week events included student speeches on hope, the Ignatian Awards luncheon, a keynote address by the Rev. Sam Sawyer, SJ, incoming editor-in-chief of America Magazine, and Mass of the Holy Spirit (pictured above at St. Johns Church).

Another highlight was the annual Presidential Town Hall. Following the town hall, Creighton President the Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, PhD, presented the annual Kingfisher Award to Patrick Murray, PhD, professor of philosophy and the John C. Kenefick Faculty Chair in the Humanities.

The award encourages teaching humanist values across all academic disciplines and honors an outstanding person who has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the enduring values, principles and practices of the humanities. It is presented in partnership with the Kingfisher Institute for the Liberal Arts and Professions.

Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, PhD, and Patrick Murray, PhD
The Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, PhD, left, and Patrick Murray, PhD, who received the Kingfisher Award.

“Dr. Murray believes a leader in the humanities should engage disciplines outside the humanities. On our campus, and through his dedication and research, he has fostered interdisciplinary connections between the humanities and theology, natural sciences, sociology, economics, politics, environmentalism, and film,” Fr. Hendrickson said.

Murray’s engagement with Jesuit education goes back 56 years when he enrolled as a student at Marquette University. Following graduate work at Saint Louis University, he arrived at Creighton, where he has taught for more than 40 years.

He is among the nation’s foremost authorities on the theory and philosophy of Karl Marx and has authored three books with a fourth and fifth in progress. His Marx’s Theory of Scientific Knowledge (1988) is considered among the finest English-language contributions to the study of Marxian philosophy.

Murray has partnered with numerous local institutions and organizations, including the University of Nebraska Omaha, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Film Streams, the Omaha Public Library, the Joslyn Art Museum and the Nebraska Humanities Governor’s Lecture, on topics ranging from immigration to African American history in Omaha, climate change and the social mission of Catholic universities, and the philosophy of law as it relates to race and racism.

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