 About Us
In 1960, Fr. George Ganss, a 55-year-old Jesuit priest and scholar, had an idea but he also had a problem. Fr. Ganss was convinced that the intellectual and spiritual tradition that stemmed from St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, could be a powerful tool in helping shape contemporary culture. If the Graeco-Roman tradition had helped make us what we are, then could the Ignatian tradition one help make us what we ought to be? Language represented a problem, since most of the written Ignatian tradition existed in Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, and German. And how exactly do you make something like that available to people in the United States who for the most part know only English? Simple enough—theoretically. You translate the Ignatian tradition, or at least a good part of it, into English. And then you have it published and disseminated. Practically, however, it is a little harder. Fr. Ganss thought that he could have that Jesuit source material translated (Jesuit scholars and others could be talked into doing that). But who was going to publish a lot of material that (let’s face it) was not going to have a very large audience? Publishers, after all, are in business to make money. And small press runs cost a lot more money that it makes. One way, of course, is to start your own publishing house. And that is precisely what Fr. Ganss did. He drew up a plan for a small, selective publishing house that would specialize in the Jesuit tradition and he presented that plan to Jesuit officials in Rome. Out of that plan, the Institute of Jesuit Sources began in 1961. And from IJS more than 80 books have emerged—all of them intended to make one or other aspect of the Jesuit spiritual and intellectual tradition available to the English speaking world.
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