Faber Institute

The Art of Friendship and Cultivating Depth of Life

About Faber Institute

The Faber Institute was founded in 2014 by Fr. Rick Ganz, SJ (a Jesuit priest) and is based in Portland, Oregon. The Faber Institute is committed to “awakening souls” in an age when the existence of the soul, and of its particular capacities and formidable powers, is overlooked. We do this by putting people in touch with sources of depth and vision within themselves through which they gain a discerning capacity to recognize the highest good of persons, and its counterfeits.

The works of the Institute are the “works of soul”:

  • teaching spiritual and theological doctrine in accessible ways which inspire personal conversion
  • preaching the Gospel and opening the riches of the Scriptures
  • giving the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius through Retreats
  • giving spiritual direction to individuals
  • doing the priestly work of the Sacraments
  • giving counsel to the doubtful
  • creating bonds of trust and giving help to all Christian denominations
  • teaching people how to deliberate well and to make good decisions in Christ
  • and perhaps most of all, how to practice the art of friendship in the way that Christ Himself demonstrated in his earthly life as possible, and necessary, for us

Staff and Board of Directors

These works are made especially famous in world history by the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus), who exercise them for the strengthening of the common good, and as a specific expression of the meaning of the work of Jesus Christ. The Faber Institute is a work of the Society of Jesus, though it is an independently established 501(c)(3) entity, under the oversight of its own Board of Directors. The writings of Fr. Ganz, SJ, most especially in the “Writings” section of the Faber Institute website, express his ongoing, and constantly developing understanding of the long and tested traditions of the Church, and in accord with the habits and “style” of the Jesuits. But because Fr. Ganz is always a learner in these profound matters, his writings are not to be understood as “speaking for” the Catholic Church or for the Society of Jesus. Those Institutions are proficient at speaking for themselves.