Steve's Planned Gift

Stephen Dunphy had never met a Jesuit before sitting down with Fr. Terrance Mahan, S.J. for an admissions interview at Loyola University. Fr. Mahan, then dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, pointed out Dunphy's less than stellar academic record. Dunphy was not deterred.

"I told him, 'Father, I have never been to a Catholic school. I want to go to a Catholic school,'" Dunphy said.

He got in.

That interview led Dunphy to a lifetime commitment to the Society of Jesus. He has made a planned gift to Jesuits West to ensure others may experience the same impact the Jesuits have had on his life.

"The Jesuits have been such an important part of my spiritual life and my actual life," Dunphy said. "I want other people to benefit from the good experience that I've had, I really do. God never called me to be a Jesuit, but I think he called me to be a Jesuit groupie."

Growing up in Los Angeles, Dunphy began his Catholic journey at about age 12. That is when he and his sister stumbled across a storage trunk their late father had brought back from the Korean War. Dunphy's sister was drawn to their father's flight jacket. Dunphy was taken with a small book buried inside the trunk. My Sunday Missal, written in Latin and English, fascinated him and he fell in love with the Catholic Church by reading it.

Soon Dunphy attended Mass regularly with the Filipino family next door. When the pastor asked him if he would like to be baptized, Dunphy said he would have to ask his mother. A non-practicing Mormon, she said no, but only because she wanted to make sure Dunphy was serious about this important step. Teenagers, she told him, often do things, and then lose interest.

Dunphy's interest did not wane. He continued to attend catechism. He kept going to Mass. When he was 16, he asked his mother again. What took you so long, she asked Dunphy, I was convinced a long time ago.

Dunphy graduated from a public high school and then attended a local community college where he joined the Newman Club. "I had never been around young Catholic adults in my life, never having gone to Catholic school," he said. "I blossomed socially and religiously." When a friend decided to apply to Loyola, Dunphy decided to apply as well so that he could finally attend a Catholic school.

After his first year at Loyola, Dunphy was so in love with the Jesuits that he applied to and was accepted into the Jesuit Novitiate. Though he discerned after a year that he was not called to the religious life, Dunphy's commitment to the Society of Jesus did not falter.

He returned to Loyola to earn a bachelor's degree and then a teaching credential. For nearly 19 years, Dunphy taught world history and geography at a public junior high school before becoming a lay parish administrator at a local parish. He went back to his alma mater, by then Loyola Marymount University, to earn a certificate in lay parish administration.

His Jesuit connections continued. At a parish just blocks from his home, Dunphy once attended a talk by a Jesuit and picked up a brochure about the Loyola Institute of Spirituality in Orange County. Intrigued, Dunphy completed a three-year course through the institute, including making the 19th Annotation.

Dunphy has also taken an Ignatian pilgrimage to Spain with America Magazine. Once during a pilgrimage to Italy, Spain, and France with the Roman Catholic Bishop of Orange, Dunphy carved out time to make his own Jesuit pilgrimage in Rome, including visiting the Church of the Gesù.

Now retired after 31 years at the parish, Dunphy recently checked off one long-term item on his bucket list. "I've never had any regrets about leaving the Novitiate, no regrets but one – that I left before I had finished the 30-day Spiritual Exercises," he said. He completed the Exercises at the Jesuit retreat house in Los Altos last October.

Dunphy carries that experience with him today, just as he does all his Jesuit experiences. At home, he has accompanied a friend through the 19th Annotation, he begins each day by reading in the Book of Jesuit Saints and Martyrs or in An Ignatian Book of Days, and he counts among his friends the various Jesuits he is met over the years.

And while Dunphy did not keep in touch with Fr. Mahan after that Loyola interview, he wrote him a letter last year before he passed away, explaining the influence he had on his life. Dunphy treasures the letter Fr. Mahan sent in response, a tangible reminder of the Society of Jesus' impact on Dunphy.

"I can look back and see where God's worked in my life. He has been very subtle. I haven't had any flashes of lighting or apparitions or anything, but He's been there subtly," Dunphy said. "I'm not a holy person. I'm just a person who is finding my way to God through Ignatian spirituality."