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My submission (How effectively has the law since 1997 ensured a 'work life balance' for workers with family responsibilities? Answer this question with reference to the relevant statutory materials, case law, legal commentary and social science literature) is essentially about how the law in the UK can be used to help those within the workforce achieve an effective work-life balance, meaning they have ample time and energy to focus on their professional responsibilities as well as their family life and leisure time. This article outlines that despite an apparent long-standing commitment by successive governments to tackle this issue, the legal framework created has largely failed to ensure people have an effective work-life balance. This is especially true for migrant workers who are often exploited within the UK workforce, as well as women, who arguably are not effectively protected by this area of law after pregnancy/early maternity and increasingly are having to find ways to cope with the dual burden of paid work and childcare/homemaking responsibilities. This submission also considers how this area of law has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic as well as Brexit, both of which have created new challenges and exacerbated existing ones. - Consider these two quotations from UK government White Papers/Consultation documents: "Helping employees to combine work and family life satisfactorily is good not only for parents and children but also for businesses". (Fairness at Work, White Paper, May 1998, para 5). "The proposals in this document will bring benefits for employers as well as employees, by increasing participation in the labour market while also helping people to balance work with their family and personal responsibilities". (Consultation on modern workplaces, May 2011). How effectively has the law since 1997 ensured a 'work life balance' for workers with family responsibilities? Answer this question with reference to the relevant statutory materials, case law, legal commentary and social science literature. Much like the other areas of labour and employment law, the legal framework used to help those in the labour market achieve an effective 'work life balance' has had to adapt to new challenges in society, which has in turn affected the realities of the UK workforce.[1] Primarily, this issue has become increasingly more prevalent since the latter half of the 20th century because of societal and legal changes that have meant the traditional model of a male breadwinner and female homemaker has become increasingly unrepresentative of the UK labour market.[2] The quotations contained in this essay question, although from different UK governments, suggest a firm and longstanding commitment to ensuring employees with familial responsibilities can use the law to achieve an effective work life balance. This essay will discuss and evaluate the various reasons for this commitment. However, it is arguable that since 1997 successive governments have failed to effectively tackle the UK's long working hours 'culture', as well as the ineffective legal framework that seeks to help achieve an effective work life balance.[3] This essay recognises the fact that there have been some positive advancements since 1997 in the statutory entitlements employees have (or can obtain) that afford them greater flexibility at work in order that they can also fulfil their familial responsibilities.[4] Examples discussed later include the introduction of shared parental leave and the laws protecting and promoting the rights of women during pregnancy and early maternity.[5] However, this essay will seek to show how these positive policies have had a limited overall effect in terms of achieving an effective work life balance, especially for women and immigrants participating in the UK workforce.[6] This will involve a statistics-based criticism, employ case law and a feminist theoretical perspective, as well as give general ideas and propositions as to how the law needs to go further to achieve its aims. I will argue that the law is currently tempered too much by fears of damaging businesses or the UK economy as a whole. Furthermore, the impact of coronavirus will be considered, specifically how new problems have emerged and existing issues have been exacerbated.[7] The Development of the Law Concerning Work Life Balance Since 1997: Changes and Problems Although this essay is primarily concerned with the impact of the legal framework developed since 1997, there are some important contextual developments that occurred before this and are worth mentioning. Throughout the 20th century, the UK labour market moved from a laissez faire model to one characterised by increased regulation. This was controversial and different governments varied in their commitment to pursuing greater order in the labour market using the law.[8] This trajectory was reversed in the 1970s and afterwards, wherein the Thatcher government (influenced significantly by the ideas of neoliberalism)[9] pursued policies of de-regulation and privatisation. Moreover, from 1975 until 2020 the legislature of the UK was required to effectively implement EEC/EC/EU law and directives, which has had a profound impact on the labour market.[10] Furthermore, as previously mentioned the advent of feminism meant that more women than ever were entering (or re-entering) the workforce after having children, whereas before they would have been homemakers.[11] In terms of the narrative of legal development this essay's starting point is the introduction of the 'New Labour' government in 1997, led by Tony Blair. This government helped to produce the Fairness at Work white paper, Chapter 5 of which contained a number of 'family friendly policies' aimed at ensuring a more effective work life balance for those with families.[12] The New Labour government had a few reasons behind the implementation of such policies, but primarily they were utilised to increase competitiveness in the market to ensure its prosperity[13] and to implement the 1996 EC Parental Leave Directive.[14] This directive had ambitious aims that even with the margin of appreciation would have been hard for the UK, with its long working hours culture, to achieve. These aims included promoting equal opportunities; flexible working; greater women's involvement in the labour market and; men taking an equal share of the responsibilities associated with family life.[15] Subsequently, Conservative led governments that published the Consultation on Modern Workplaces[16] and Good Work: A Response to the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices[17] were also driven by rationales based on economic prosperity. It was thought that this would increase productivity, worker loyalty, the quality of work and reduce the costs associated with high employee turnover.[18] The culmination of this narrative, i.e., the current legal framework governing the work life balance people in the UK labour market can achieve, covers a wide range of situations and involves many protected rights. Yet, despite this scope it also has many failings, primarily because it is fragmented and lacks a unified approach. The focus of this area of law on using skilled workers to diversify and increase competitiveness within the market means that often those working in more flexible or atypical employment are denied some of these rights and protections.[19] For example, most women require some level of maternity pay to be able to afford to take maternity leave, yet to qualify for it there must have been 26 weeks of continuous employment before the expected week of childbirth as well as a paycheck of at least £116 a week. So, for women without provisions for maternity pay within contracts and who earn less than this because they are employed on a temporary basis, work in the gig economy or other types of atypical work, statutory maternity pay is unobtainable.[20] Evidence from the Office for National Statistics found that 55% of the people working on zero-hour contracts (one example of atypical work) were women in its report Contracts That Do Not Guarantee a Minimum Number of Hours, which is even more significant because women make up only 46.8% of those employed not on zero hours contracts.[21] By contrast, 87% of men are in full time work.[22] This means that women who are entitled to statutory maternity leave under the Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999 are not always able to take it because the law fails to provide them with an adequate way of surviving financially: the only other option is a very low level of maternity allowance from the government.[23] Additionally, there are many scholars who argue that flexible working for women with family responsibilities is the way forward, yet the right to request this also requires continuous employment of at least twenty-six weeks.[24] Arguably, this is a cyclical issue: more women are in atypical work because it allows the flexibility to fulfil private domestic obligations, but these women lack statutory and contractual protections and so cannot achieve the same type of flexibility in full time, permanent employment which in turn excludes them from fully participating in the labour market.[25] Additionally, the non-profit organisation Trust for London found that migrants were more likely to work "during night shifts and in non-permanent jobs".[26] This means that similarly migrant women who are in types of atypical work, such as zero-hour contract hospitality jobs (which is very common for this demographic), cannot claim maternity pay and cannot have help at home from their husbands who cannot get paternity leave under the Paternity and Adoption Leave Regulations 2002 because this also requires 26 weeks of continuous employment.[27] Of course, because of the numerous, inflexible requirements needed for shared parental leave to be available under the current law this is also not a viable option for immigrant families or women in low skilled or low paid areas of work that are atypical in nature.[28] All of this demonstrates that the law has little interest in human rights or equality as a justification for an effective work life balance, and that this economic focus has resulted in a legal framework that ignores the problems and experiences of these key demographics that make up a significant amount of the population who have both work and family commitments. It will only go so far as not to damage the competitiveness or prosperity of the economy.[29] Furthermore, if those working part time in the labour market or in atypical work wanted to make an application based on the Part Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulation 2000 because they were being excluded from such rights, they would have to use their own resources and time to make a complaint to the Employment Tribunal. Arguably, this is not a particularly effective form of remediation as it only offers compensation for losses incurred because of this "less favourable treatment" and hear that the employer has been recommended to stop this action.[30] The Impact of EU Law The law concerning work life balance has been significantly impacted by EU law both before and after 1997. Unlike the mainly economic rationales behind the UK law, the EU acknowledges these benefits whilst also having a focus on social equality, equality of opportunity between men and women, the socioeconomic rights of individuals as well as dismantling harmful societally imposed gender roles.[31] This was evidenced clearly by the ambitious Parental Leave Directive.[32] It has influenced both the legal framework of rights concerning workers and employees with family responsibilities as well as UK equality law, as the UK legislature and judiciary is obliged to implement the aims of these directives using domestic law (albeit with a margin of appreciation).[33] However, academic Nicole Busby in her article 'The Evolution of Gender Equality and Related Employment Policies: The Case of Work-Family Reconciliation'[34] has argued that the focuses of the EU are conflicting, "parallel and incoherent".[35] The dual focus of both on improving the market as a whole by using policies to allow more people to be involved and using the law to equalise equality between men and women has resulted in "a patchwork of provisions rather than an overarching framework".[36] This argument is an interesting one that definitely has its merits, especially the characterisation of familial responsibilities as a form of unpaid work because of its significant contribution to society - it re-frames the way these two goals are thought of.[37] Busby argues that this approach means the EU "subordinates gender equality to economic objectives".[38] Additionally, Busby makes agreeable statements about how EU law and the Court of Justice has failed to promote the rights and roles of men in the domestic setting.[39] However, she arguably fails to account for the numerous and ambitious advancements in work life balance law that has been facilitated in the UK by the EU. The examples of directives that have, even in a de jure way, protected women in the UK workforce from discrimination on the basis of pregnancy or maternity and helped to facilitate a more gender-neutral approach to governing parenting responsibilities. For example, section 18(2) of the Equality Act 2010 which protects women from discrimination or dismissal on the basis of pregnancy or related sickness was influenced by the need to implement the Pregnant Workers Directive[40] and the Equal Treatment Directive,[41] which formalised the previous case ruling of Webb v EMO Air Cargo (UK) Ltd by removing the need for a male comparison in cases of discrimination.[42] The Pregnant Workers Directive also influenced the introduction of statutory maternity pay and the Equal Treatment Directive ensures a woman has a right to return to work after maternity leave.[43] However, it is important not to overstate the influence or importance of EU law, especially because of the fact that the UK is due to leave the EU imminently. There is significant statistical evidence that EU law and UK equality law fails to tackle more "surreptitious" forms of discrimination against pregnant women.[44] The Equality and Human Rights Commission found in its report Pregnancy and Maternity Discrimination and Disadvantage: Summary of Key Findings found that ¾ of mothers surveyed said they had a negative/discriminatory experience during pregnancy and maternity leave, 20% said they experiences harassment or negative comments because of pregnancy or flexible working and 11% felt forced to leave their jobs.[45] On the side of employers, 84% said it was in their interests to support pregnant women yet 70% also felt women should declare upfront if they were pregnant and 27% felt the cost of maternity leave put an unreasonable burden on them.[46] Despite this widespread discrimination, only around 1% of claims are brought.[47] This demonstrates how the de facto reality is that both EU and UK law fails to protect women from discrimination due to pregnancy, and remedies for this are few and far between because (like many other aspects of this area of law) there is poor take up of such rights. Furthermore, in 2019 the EU introduced the Directive on Work-Life Balance For Parents and Carers which aims to do everything the current UK legal framework has failed to do: increase the participation of women in the workforce, increase the de facto use of family related leave and flexible working arrangements.[48] This would be incredibly influential in UK law, especially in terms of strengthening paternity rights and moving towards normalising men taking a more active role in familial responsibilities.[49] However, because of Brexit and the fact the transition period will not be extended again, the UK would have to choose to implement this directive,[50] and perhaps they will in the form of the Good Work Plan, which would have various implications in and of itself.[51] The Good Work Plan – Gender Norms and the Legal Framework Beyond Pregnancy and Birth In 2018, the UK government produced the Good Work Plan: Proposals to Support Families,[52] which was responding to the earlier Taylor Review and reiterated the same economic benefits that would be had from helping individuals to achieve a better work life balance.[53] There are definitely benefits to the approach that would be adopted. Recommendation 41 recognises that pregnancy and maternity discrimination remain a problem, and that an inherent cultural shift is needed to change this that the law should support and facilitate.[54] Overall, the idea of a "balance between flexibility and worker protections" sounds positive.[55] Arguably one of the most positive aspects of the Good Work Plan is that it recognises how the rights of atypical workers are often subverted under the current law and the fact that this needs to change. However, the reality is that the EU directive would have gone further because the UK still lacks a fundamental concern for a regulatory framework that is genuinely concerned with the rights of workers and not just the economic benefits of having more women in the workforce. Additionally, it does not directly relate the current law concerning pregnancy/maternity discrimination and an effective work life balance with the subversion of atypical worker's rights, which would be a significant step forward in and of itself.[56] Furthermore, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has essentially argued that the Good Work Plan does not go far enough.[57] They point out that the reality is that the current legal framework reinforces harmful gender norms that continues to reproduce patriarchal ideas regarding gender roles. They quote an article by Helen Norman ('Does Paternal Involvement in Childcare Influence Mother's Employment Trajectories During the Early Stages of Parenthood in the UK?' which essentially found that "mothers with preschool children are twice as likely to return to employment at nine months and at three years' post-childbirth if the father is involved by sharing or doing the most childcare at these times".[58] This area of law simply does not want to concern itself with supporting mothers in the workforce, which is yet again one of its primary downfalls. This is significant in terms of establishing one of the least talked about but most problematic aspects of the current law concerning work life balance: it has a significant number of statutory rights and protections for during pregnancy and immediately after birth but fails to provide long term support for mothers.[59] This is because the law refuses to tackle the bigger issue of gendered norms in society that would allow women to be more active in the labour market and normalise men taking a more active role in the domestic sphere of life.[60] Shared Parental Leave and the Feminist Perspective Another important and influential source of criticism of the system governing work-life balance is the feminist perspective on how women are disproportionately affected and pushed out of the labour market as a result.[61] Primarily, feminist scholars of sociology argue that women, far from being freed from the oppressive nature of gender norms in society, now have a dual burden.[62] This is because the law concerning work life balance has failed to tackle these gender norms, which means the unpaid labour burdens of the domestic sphere and childcare is still disproportionately placed on women rather than men; women have the burden of paid work as well as those roles "associated with femininity and motherhood".[63] This is because, as this essay has previously mentioned, the law concerning work life balance in both the UK and Europe has failed in substantially tackling these gender norms despite the fact societal changes have significantly decreased the relevance of the male breadwinner and female homemaker model.[64] Moreover, there are feminist scholars who argue that women have poorer long term career prospects because they need to be in part time/atypical employment to manage their familial responsibilities because the law has not created an effective system where they would be able to do this in full time employment.[65] This is another way in which the law concerning work life balance fails to support mothers in a long-term sense beyond pregnancy and its immediate aftermath. However, there has been some argument amongst legal scholars and officials about whether such arguments have been abated by the introduction of Shared Parental Leave in 2014. This new regulation, in theory, "makes it possible for partners to share the entitlement to maternity leave and maternity pay between them".[66] As Grace James put it in her article 'Family-friendly Employment Laws (Re)assessed: The Potential of Care Ethics' this has been added to the existing framework of rights for working parents and reiterates a commitment by the law to dismantling the gender norms that are keeping women from effectively and substantially engaging with the labour market.[67] Despite this, Grace James is right when she points out that this "package of rights" (including shared parental leave) is fundamentally flawed.[68] Firstly, this shared parental leave package fails to deal with the continued discrimination against pregnant women and mothers that statistically feel pushed out of the labour market.[69] Furthermore, the refusal by the law on work life balance to place too much of a financial burden on the employers means that only a small proportion of the workforce are even eligible for this.[70] Both parents must be employees and pass the relevant statutory and common law requirements to be categorised as such, i.e., they must have a contract of employment under s.230 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, be able to satisfy the control test;[71] have their activity be an integral part of the business;[72] as well as the tests of economic reality;[73] mutuality of obligations and;[74] continuity of employment. Beyond these already numerous requirements, both parents also must have earnt at least £390 in thirteen out of the sixty-six weeks of employment.[75] Additionally, as couples are likely to work for different employers there is a great deal of organisational effort that goes into organising shared parental leave.[76] Again, this means that those working in atypical work are automatically not covered by such provisions. Furthermore, the slow uptake on this due to the law's failure to tackle traditional gender roles in society effectively enough has severely limited the de facto effectiveness of shared parental leave in dealing with the problems facing people with work and family responsibilities in the UK.[77] Moreover, this article offers an interesting contextual background about how remedies for people whose employers deny them such rights are limited because of cuts in "legal aid funding and the closure of many legal advice centres".[78] Arguably, this helps us understand how developments outside of the immediate legal framework also affect work life balance in a significant way which need to be remedied in the future if it is to be effective. Jamie Atkinson offers an interesting perspective on shared parental leave in their article 'Shared Parental Leave in the UK: Can it Advance Gender Equality by Changing Fathers into Co-Parents?' by comparing it with similar policies in Nordic countries that have much higher levels of gender equality.[79] To summarise, she argues that generous levels of compensation to parents, flexibility about how the leave is taken, wide reaching eligibility requirements and "other incentives to get the father to take leave" are the most important elements in ensuring the success of such policies (which she measures by the amount of people who make use of it).[80] Although she rightly identifies that these Nordic countries are also not perfect, it provides an interesting perspective for how shared parental leave in the UK can improve on itself to further gender equality.[81] Impact of Coronavirus: Problems Old and New The feminist narrative of women being disproportionately affected by poor regulation of work-life balance in the UK has only been strengthened by the impact of coronavirus.[82] Within the private sphere of unpaid work, women are already doing the majority of this work and school closures combined with millions of people working from home has meant this burden has only grown.[83] In her article 'The COVID-19 Pandemic has Increased the Care Burden on Women and Families', Kate Power cites a statistic that 41% of women currently inactive in the UK labour market are so because of their unpaid care responsibilities.[84] It is very unlikely that the law will recognise this problem or endeavour to solve it, because it is occurring in the private sphere.[85] These are the problems that coronavirus has exacerbated. Additionally, the coronavirus pandemic has created new issues in the UK workforce because many people, most notably women and immigrants in atypical work, have lost their jobs due to the economic downturn and the law has failed to recognise that the issues facing men and women during this pandemic are different in many ways.[86] Women are more likely to be frontline healthcare workers, which additionally will have only increased their already substantial burden in terms of balancing professional work and private life responsibilities.[87] Furthermore, immigrant women (who like all other women are bearing a lot of the economic brunt of this crisis) because of the "'no recourse to public funds' condition stamped on many non-EU visas".[88] Additionally, undocumented women face even more issues because they are fearful of making use of social security or NHS services.[89] The response from the UK government in terms of labour law has failed to account for these differences. Furthermore, arguably this is more evidence of how the law is unconcerned with assisting women beyond pregnancy and childbirth because it demonstrates their unwillingness to get too over involved with the private sphere of life that would bring about a significant change in terms of the position of women within society. Conclusion This essay has demonstrated how UK law since 1997 has failed to ensure an effective work-life balance for those with familial responsibilities, an issue that has disproportionately affected women, as well as immigrants in the labour market. Additionally, it has shown that feminist perspectives are extremely useful in helping us to understand how women are still excluded from the UK workforce because the law refuses to go far enough to tackle harmful gender roles within society.[90] This is because the law is purely concerned with increasing competitiveness in the market and benefiting the economy and so ignores concerns about equality and human rights that EU law has adopted in its own rationales.[91] Women and immigrants in atypical or part time work are therefore often excluded from such benefits and arguably the Good Work Plan does not go far enough in the future to deal with these issues in the same way that perhaps the Directive on Work-Life Balance For Parents and Carers could if Brexit was not happening.[92] Furthermore, whilst the government response to coronavirus has been much more regulatory and helpful than predictions suggested, it has ignored the fact that women and men are experiencing different adverse effects because of the pandemic and worsened the dual burden women have to bear of paid and unpaid responsibilities.[93] [1] Hugh Collins, K.D. Ewing, Aileen McColgan, Labour Law (2nd edition, Cambridge University Press 2019) 398. [2] ibid. [3] Chris Kerridge, 'How can we overcome the UK's long working hours culture?' (People Management, 8 November 2019) accessed 15 November 2020. [4] Collins (n 1), 399. [5] Grace James, 'Family-friendly Employment Laws (Re)assessed: The Potential of Care Ethics' [2016] Industrial Law Journal 45(4), 477. [6] Sarah Dyer, 'Migrant work, precarious work-life balance: what the experience of migrant workers in the service sector in Greater London tells us about the adult worker model' [2011] Gender, Place and Culture; A Journal of Feminist Geography' 18. [7] Kate Power, 'The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the care burden of women and families' [2020] Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 16(1), 69. [8] Collins (n 1), 9. [9] Jamie Robertson, 'How the Big Bang changed the city of London for ever' (BBC News, 26 October 2016) accessed 5 December 2020. [10] Maria Koumenta and others, 'Occupational Regulation in the EU and UK: Prevalence and Labour Market Impacts' (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Final Report, July 2014) accessed 30 November 2020. [11] Pat Hudson, 'Women's Work' (BBC History, 29 March 2013) accessed 25 November 2020. [12] Board of Trade, Fairness at Work (White Paper, Cm 3968, 1998). [13] ibid. [14] [1996] 96/34/EC. [15] ibid. [16] Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Consultation on modern workplaces (Consultation, first published 16 May 2011). [17] HM Government, Good Work: A response to the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, 2018). [18] Matthew Taylor, The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices (Independent Review, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 2017). [19] Conor D'Arcy, Fahmida Rahman, 'Atypical Approaches; Options to Secure Workers with Insecure Income' (Resolution Foundation, January 2019). [20] Collins (n 1), 406. [21] Contracts That Do Not Guarantee a Minimum Number of Hours (Office for National Statistics, 23 April 2018) accessed 30 November 2020. [22] Trades Union Congress, Good Work Plan: Proposals to Better Support Families; TUC Responds to BEIS Consultation' (Consultation Response, 13 December 2019) accessed 7 December 2020. [23] Collins (n 1), 406. [24] Employment Rights Act 1996, section 80(G)(1). [25] Trades Union Congress, Good Work Plan: Proposals to Better Support Families; TUC Responds to BEIS Consultation' (Consultation Response, 13 December 2019) accessed 7 December 2020. [26] Mariña Fernández-Reino, 'Migrants in the UK Labour Market: An Overview' (Trust for London, 17 July 2017) accessed 4 December 2020. [27] Steve French, 'Between Globalisation and Brexit: Migration, Pay and the Road to Modern Slavery in the UK Hospitality Industry' [2018] Research in Hospitality Management 8(1). [28] Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014. [29] Joanne Conaghan, Kerry Rittich, Labour Law, Work and Family: Critical and Comparative Perspectives (Oxford University Press 2005). [30] Collins (n 1), 425. [31] Nicole Busby, 'The evolution of gender equality and related employment policies: The case of work– family reconciliation' [2018] International Journal of Discrimination and the Law 18(2),105. [32] 96/34/EC. [33] Busby (n 33), 106. [34] ibid. [35] ibid at 105. [36] ibid. [37] ibid at 106. [38] ibid at 120. [39] ibid at 112. [40] 92/85. [41] 2006/54/EC. [42] C-32/93. [43] Collins (n 1), 407. [44] ibid at 404. [45] Lorna Adams and others, Pregnancy and Maternity Discrimination and Disadvantage: Summary of Key Findings (Equality and Human Rights Commission, Department for Innovation, Business and Skills, 2016). [46] ibid. [47] Amelia Gentleman, 'Pregnant? Wait Till the Boss Hears' (The Guardian, 23 June 2011) accessed 1 December 2020. [48] 2019/1158. [49] Rachel Crasnow, Chesca Lord, 'Will the New Radical Work-Life Balance Directive Help UK Parents and Carers? (Cloisters – Employment, 25 June 2019) accessed 5 December 2020. [50] ibid. [51] Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 'The Good Work Plan' (Policy Paper, 17 December 2018) accessed 15 December 2020. [52] ibid. [53] Taylor (n 18). [54] Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 'The Good Work Plan' (Policy Paper, 17 December 2018) accessed 15 December 2020. [55] ibid. [56] Trades Union Congress, Good Work Plan: Proposals to Better Support Families; TUC Responds to BEIS Consultation' (Consultation Response, 13 December 2019) accessed 7 December 2020. [57] ibid. [58] Helen Norman, 'Does Paternal Involvement in Childcare Influence Mother's Employment Trajectories During the Early Stages of Parenthood in the UK' [2019] British Sociological Association 54(2). [59] James (n 5), 480. [60] ibid. [61] Emily Grabham, 'The Strange Temporalities of Work-Life Balance Law' [2014] feminists@law 4(1). [62] Gaëlle Farrant, Luca Maria Pesando, Keiko Nowacka, 'Unpaid Care Work: The Missing Link in the Analysis of Gender Gaps in Labour Outcomes' (OECD Development Centre, 2014) accessed 2 December 2020. [63] ibid. [64] Mick Cunningham, 'Changing Attitudes toward the Male Breadwinner, Female Homemaker Family Model: Influences of Women's Employment and Education over the Lifecourse' [2008] Social Forces 87(1). [65] Collins (n 1), 422. [66] Collins (n 1), 409. [67] James (n 5), 480. [68] ibid at 478. [69] ibid. [70] Collins (n 1), 410. [71] Established by Yewens v Noakes [1880] 6 QBD 530. [72] Established by Stevenson Jordan v Macdonald and Evans [1952] 1 TLR 101. [73] Stringfellows v Quashie [2012] EWCA Civ 1735. [74] Carmichael v National Power plc [1999] UKHL 47. [75] Collins,(n 1), 410. [76] ibid at 411. [77] James (n 5). [78] Ibid at 485. [79] [2017] International Journal of Law in Context 13(3). [80] Jamie Atkinson, 'Shared Parental Leave in the UK: Can it Advance Gender Equality by Changing Fathers into Co-Parents?' [2017] International Journal of Law in Context 13(3), 361. [81] ibid. [82] Power (n 7). [83] ibid at 68. [84] ibid. [85] ibid. [86] Jenna Norman, 'Gender and COVID-19: The Immediate Impact the Crisis is Having on Women' [2020] British Politics and Policy at LSE. [87] ibid. [88] ibid. [89] ibid. [90] James (n 5). [91] Board of Trade, Fairness at Work (White Paper, Cm 3968, 1998). [92] 2019/1158. [93] Alison Andrew and others, 'How are mothers and fathers balancing work and family under lockdown' (Institute for Fiscal Sciences, 27 May 2020) accessed 12 November 2020.

When looking at the literature surrounding the Iran Hostage Crisis, many scholars focus solely on the events that occurred in Iran leading up to the embassy being taken. This focus tends to paint Iranians as the "bad guys" in all situations. However, there was a large population of Iranian students in the US at the time, and these students had a completely different experience than those often remembered from the nightly news. Few scholars have set out to demonstrate the lives of those Iranian students, but those who have often describe the controversy that surrounded them. Scholars recognize how Iranian students in the US faced discrimination and how the US government was looking to deport them. These scholars tend to look at the lives of students who had it the worst, assuming all Iranian students' lives were atrocious in the US. They do not take into account those who were still welcomed at their universities throughout the crisis, as students disregarded diplomatic tensions and looked at the humans they spent their days with instead. By looking at more universities and more student experiences, a broader picture can be understood about the lives of Iranian students in the US during the crisis. ; Winner of the 2020 Friends of the Kreitzberg Library Award for Outstanding Research in the University Archives category. ; A Diplomatic Fiasco: How Iranian Students in the US were Affected Throughout the Iran Hostage Crisis Faith Privett Professor Boonshoft HI 249 Historical Methods 0800 5 December 2019 3979 Words 2 Not long after Ronald Reagan's inauguration as President of the United States on January 20th, 1981, former President Jimmy Carter was meeting the hostages he tried so desperately to release for 444 days. One of the bleakest moments of United States foreign policy history is the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which lasted from November 4th, 1979 to Reagan's inauguration day. In total, 66 people were taken hostage initially, but 52 were held for the full 444 days. America and the rest of the world watched as the days in captivity kept getting longer and longer, and their hopes conversely dropped. However, those accounts rarely showed the perspectives of the thousands of Iranian students in the US who suffered discrimination, harassment, and questioning throughout the crisis. They were seen as the enemy in a country that is supposed to be the "Land of the Free" and the "Great American Melting Pot." Nevertheless, this was not the case for all students; some were accepted with open arms throughout the crisis, as all so desperately sought world peace. Some students who did not necessarily feel the general American abhorrence were those who attended Norwich University, a private military college in central Vermont. Even though the rest of the country had conflicting views towards Iranian students in the US during the late 1970s, the Iranian Imperial Navy students at Norwich University were welcomed and well respected because of the well-developed program, the shared military experience and respect for authority, and the outward-looking ideals taught by the university, despite the tensions between the US and Iranian governments at the time. When looking at the literature surrounding the Iran Hostage Crisis, many scholars focus solely on the events that occurred in Iran leading up to the embassy being taken. This focus tends to paint Iranians as the "bad guys" in all situations.1 However, there was a large population of Iranian students in the US at the time, and these students had a completely different experience 1 Scott, "Bound for Glory." 3 than those often remembered from the nightly news. Few scholars have set out to demonstrate the lives of those Iranian students, but those who have often describe the controversy that surrounded them.2 Scholars recognize how Iranian students in the US faced discrimination and how the US government was looking to deport them. These scholars tend to look at the lives of students who had it the worst, assuming all Iranian students' lives were atrocious in the US.3 They do not take into account those who were still welcomed at their universities throughout the crisis, as students disregarded diplomatic tensions and looked at the humans they spent their days with instead. By looking at more universities and more student experiences, a broader picture can be understood about the lives of Iranian students in the US during the crisis. The US and Iran have a tumultuous diplomatic relationship that continues to this day, or better put does not continue to this day. The US had an interest in Iran during World War II and later into the start of the Cold War due to the fear of communism spreading and the fact that Iran had copious amounts of oil. In 1953, this came to a head when the leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, showed some "communist" tendencies that did not support US and British interests. The two countries staged a coup that removed Mossadegh and placed the previous ruler, Muhammed Reza Shah, back into power. This jumpstarted US involvement in Iran through diplomatic means that continued until the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. According to research by Dr. David Patrick Houghton, this involvement consequently may have led to the interest of the revolutionaries to take the hostages in 1979, as they saw the US as a threat to their sovereignty once again.4 2 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances." 3 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis." 4 Houghton, US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis, 58-59. 4 Iranians may also have related the actions of the Shah to US involvement because the US supported him despite his authoritarian tendencies. Dr. Matthew Shannon notes the injustices that took place under the Shah in numerous works. When the Shah came into power, he instilled policies that led to "rapid socioeconomic modernization," but the process in which he did it brings about questions of civil rights and democracy.5 The modernization process that took place in Iran, known as the White Revolution, made the country incredibly western by allowing capitalist practices in land and factory holdings and giving women the right to vote, among other things.6 However, the vote that supposedly put these acts into power was not necessarily ratified by the legislative body of Iran at the time, although the Shah made it look as such.7 By taking away democratic practices such as these, the Shah furthered his cause of becoming an authoritarian ruler without opposition. Along with taking away democratic practices, the Shah also limited expression in Iran, especially for those that may have come out against his reign. Much of this was enforced by SAVAK, or the National Intelligence and Security Organization, who was known for repressing any anti-government sentiments, especially anti-Shah sentiments. Starting in the 1950s, SAVAK was trained in the US by government officials, and their only oversight and command came from the Shah, meaning they did whatever they were told to do by him directly.8 News came out in the 1970s that SAVAK was using torture to suppress anti-government acts within Iran. Military tribunals, which were open to the public for a time, were moved behind closed doors for over a year by the Shah after a defendant showed scars during a tribunal they had obtained from torture by SAVAK.9 These human rights abuses and the fact that 5 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 662. 6 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 675. 7 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 63. 8 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 25-27. 9 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 681. 5 SAVAK could be anywhere instilled fear in the hearts of Iranians both at home and abroad, which helped the Shah uphold his authoritarian regime. Besides support for the Shah by the US, Shannon also focuses on how US involvement in Iran from 1953 to 1979 focused highly on education, as many of those who worked in the Iranian government in the early days of the Shah were educated at American universities. The exchange rate of students from Iran to the US to study in college was greater than any other country at the time, with over 50,000 Iranian students enrolled in US universities in the 1979-1980 school year, and in the years following, post-secondary education in Iran was oftentimes structured after American universities.10 The cooperation between the US and Iran regarding education before the Shah's removal helped to modernize the country, which was seen differently by each party involved. Luckily for historians, many of the documents from the era are still preserved in university archives, including those at Norwich University, where upwards of 134 Iranian students were attending in the spring of 1979.11 Numerous student newspaper articles, administrative files, and oral histories tell the stories of Iranian students at Norwich from 1976 to 1980. The President Loring Hart files describe the administrative set up of the program, which was modeled after the program at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where Iranian students had been attending for a few years before the program starting at Norwich. Deputy Commander LTC Paul Lafond went down to VMI to review their program in early May 1976, and he detailed a report that helped to eventually flesh out Norwich's Iranian student program. Some of the recommendations Lafond had were that Iranian students should room with American students, not with other Iranian students, because this would help them adapt to American life and learn 10 Hamidreza, "A Follow-Up Study on U.S.-Trained Iranian Faculty Members," 1038-1039. 11 Hart, "The President's Corner," Norwich University Record. 6 English quicker.12 Because of the Corps of Cadets' lifestyle at both VMI and Norwich, other recommendations were made regarding how cadre, or student military leaders, should train the Iranian cadets, as their learning styles were not the same. Lafond recommended that Iranian students respond well to clear orders, but they do not always respond well to negativity or derogatory or vulgar language. They should also be told when something is wrong, as they are oftentimes eager to fix it, but they will not understand if it is not brought to their attention. Lastly, Lafond notes that English proficiency is the biggest issue on campus, and even though the students attended a summer program that focused on English, it was not enough.13 This information was taken into account when designing the Norwich program. The administration designed an eighteen-week summer program that prepared the first fifty Iranian students with classes mainly focused on English, Math, Physical Education, and Naval ROTC, before the start of the school year in August 1976.14 With each year that Iranian students were on campus, more and more were able to attend as they worked out some of the issues with the program, and it became better established. Early on, Iranian students on campus ran across a few issues in their daily lives that highlight some of the changes that Norwich went through from 1976 to 1980 to improve the program. In a Norwich Guidon article published in October 1976, American author Gerard Grimes interviewed "Recruit Mohammad Zerehi from Iran" about what life was like at Norwich and how students could better understand their international counterparts.15 Zerehi noted some of the issues he and his fellow Iranian students were having on campus included English proficiency, adapting to the climate, and the diet. Zerehi asks readers that they do not 12 Lafond to Hart, 7 May 1976. 13 Lafond to Hart, 7 May 1976. 14 "Iranian Students Come to Norwich" Norwich Guidon. 15 Grimes, "Iranian Students at Norwich" Norwich Guidon. 7 discriminate against the Iranian students on the issue of pork, which many chose not to eat, because it is a religious practice.16 Other accounts by Iranian students recognize the issue with pork as well, but that over time, both the students and the school were able to resolve these problems and continue growing.17 Because this was written so early on in the program, it is noticeable that eventually, American and Iranian students got used to each other's practices, which led to their friendship and respect for one another throughout the years. Vital to the descriptions of life at Norwich from 1976-1980 are the oral histories of Iranian cadets Arsalan Namdar and Benjamin Heydary. Both men described what training was like, how they got along with their classmates, struggles they had, and how they eventually had to leave. Namdar described Rook Week as a "Piece of cake" because they had already been through years of more intense training in the Iranian Imperial Navy (IIN).18 Namdar also noted the Iranians "goofed off" at the beginning of training, much to the chagrin of their American classmates. This behavior transitioned once tasks started getting more intense. Another issue they ran into was the fact that their cadre were often younger and more inexperienced than they were, which created difficulties when they would get yelled at and disciplined.19 Heydary described similar feelings towards younger authority figures, but that he often kept his head down and dealt with it due to his humble upbringing.20 Another issue that arose earlier in the Iranian student's time at Norwich was that they often had more money than their American classmates because they were still getting paid their full salaries while attending school. This created a bit of strife between students, as the Iranians were not afraid to spend their money on cars and stereos.21 16 Grimes, "Iranian Students at Norwich" Norwich Guidon. 17 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 18 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 19 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 20 Heydary, interview by Yahm, March 10, 2015, transcript. 21 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 8 Dr. Matthew Shannon also describes the Norwich Iranian Cadets in his book Losing Hearts and Minds. Without saying much, he recognizes that Norwich had one of the largest programs in the US training Iranian Naval officers and that it trained women as well, which was new in the era and especially in the Middle East. He also describes some of the programs at Maine Maritime Academy, The Citadel, the Virginia Military Institute, and the United States Naval Academy. In general, these programs were similar because they were building off of each other's programs; Iranian students studied engineering and business most often while receiving Naval ROTC training and improving their English.22 He finds that Iran sent their naval officers to US military schools because they wanted a standard education, which was difficult when they sent their cadets to numerous other countries to train as Iran did not have an officer training facility at the time. Also, Shannon notes that the US had an interest in training Iranian cadets because of the protection of oil assets in the Middle East.23 The Nixon Doctrine, which was President Nixon's plan to support conflicts in the Pacific through management and materials but not manpower, was also being upheld through the act of training and providing military aid.24 Iranian students throughout the rest of the country were not as lucky as those at Norwich, as protests against them often occurred on college campuses. Will Teague described some of the protests held on college campuses in the South throughout the entire hostage crisis, but mainly in 1979 as the news was fresh in the minds of Americans. Teague documents protests at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, the University of Tulsa, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. These protests included gatherings of hundreds of students marching against Iranians, 22 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 105. 23 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 103. 24 Gannon. "25 July 1969: The Nixon Doctrine." https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2008/07/25-july-1969-the-nixon-doctrine/ [accessed 20 Nov 2019]. 9 burnings of flags and images of Ayatollah Khomeini, and derogatory and threatening signs all directed towards the Iranian students that were on these campuses.25 Newspapers were also an outlet for protest, as correspondence and letters to the editor called Iranian students, "savages, barbarians, bandits, and terrorists."26 However, Teague also notes that Iranian students were writing to newspapers as well, trying to show their side of the issue. Overall, they described their confusion about the event, just as much as American students were confused, but they wanted their fellow students to know the Shah was not whom they thought he was, and because they were not the ones who experienced his reign, they should not be quick to let him into the US.27 Besides the protests against Iranians on college campuses, Iranian students in the US themselves were protesting, for other reasons. The Iranian Student Association in the United States (ISAUS) was a student led-group with chapters around the country that organized protests and lobbied against the Shah's actions. Because they were in the US, they were able to use their freedom of speech rights to express their beliefs, where if they were in Iran, they most likely would not have been able to express their opinions for fear of getting imprisoned. Early on in the history of the ISAUS, their goals were to advocate for more democratic practices in Iran, including freedom of expression. They lobbied the Kennedy administration, specifically Robert Kennedy, to try and influence US foreign policy towards Iran and the Shah's regime.28 After news of SAVAK's torture started coming to the US from new students arriving, the ISAUS switched their tactics and started advocating for bringing to light the crimes against humanity that the Shah and SAVAK were committing. The ISAUS issued "On the Violation of Human Rights in Iran," which outlined the abuses under the Shah and called for the US to stop 25 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis," 115-116. 26 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis," 120. 27 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis," 116-118. 28 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 672-674. 10 supporting him. They were able to get attention in newspapers around the world, but the US continued to support the Shah due to their prior commitments.29 Protests against the Shah continued throughout the US the entire time he was in power. However, both Namdar and Heydary describe what set Norwich Iranian cadets apart from the rest of the Iranian students in the US at the time. Namdar states, "In later years…Americans and Iranians really became friends based on the values…."30 He goes on to say, "I think Norwich taught me a lot in terms of quality and integrity…experiencing life, and trying hard, and just trying to work with others and be friendly."31 At first, things were difficult for the students because of the language barrier and the fact that the Iranian and American cultures were so different. As Namdar recognizes, through time, both the American and the Iranian cadets learned more about one another and grew to respect the fact that they were different, which improved how they worked together. One can hypothesize that this might have something to do with the military training that all students received at Norwich. The military encourages the fact that soldiers need to work together to produce the best outcome in the field, despite their differences at home, which allowed the Iranian and American cadets to look past their many differences and unite on common ground. President Loring Hart described the impact that the Iranian students had on the American students at Norwich as, "They have brought to all of us broader horizons, and a new awareness…. They have provided a current which has flowed through our campus and our town…, reminding us that our college and our community is indeed a part of the greater scene beyond us."32 This statement describes the worldly perspective that Iranian students brought to the school and how it made Norwich students more aware of others who were not like 29 Shannon, "American-Iranian Alliances," 682-684. 30 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 31 Namdar, interview by Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript. 32 "The Rest of the Story," Norwich University Record. 11 themselves. Like Heydary states, there were instances of discrimination or derogatory slang terms used against the Iranian students at the beginning of their time at Norwich, but once students got to know each other and the barriers were broken down, they were able to become friends despite their differences.33 After all of the unrest occurring in Iran at the time, 1979 was the icing on top of the cake. The Shah left Iran in early 1979, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a popular religious leader who was incredibly anti-Shah and anti-American and who became an icon for revolutionary voices within Iran while in exile, took power shortly after.34 The entire country was calling for the Shah's return so he could face charges in front of the people he oppressed for so many years. Instead, the Shah sought cancer treatment in the US, which is what most people think caused the hostage situation to occur. A substantial diplomatic issue arose as President Carter considered allowing the Shah into the US, which many Iranians thought was the US harboring their criminal and preventing them from exerting their sovereignty. When the Shah was admitted into the US, the unrest came to a peak, and protesters outside the US embassy in Tehran, Iran, many of which were US-educated students, stormed the embassy and took 66 Americans inside hostage, 52 of which they held for the entirety of the crisis. With so many people protesting the Shah both in the US and Iran, there is much to say about how the media spun the story to make all Iranian's the bad guys in the situation when they faced discrimination in the US themselves. Professor Catherine Scott explained the "captivity narrative" that was portraited throughout the crisis by the media and the government, which convinced the American citizens to hate Iran more than they ever had before. A captivity narrative is best described when a story is portraited in such a way that the victims' actions 33 Heydary, interview by Yahm, March 10, 2015, transcript. 34 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 70. 12 against the captors are justified because of the actions that were committed against them.35 What she is saying is that the Americans knew they were the victims during the hostage crisis, and they played into it, but they were not willing to take into account the atrocities that they themselves committed beforehand. Retaliation, by any means, was not only justified but also necessary to protect the American people. This only increased the abhorrent treatment by Americans against Iranians because it was for the public good, even if the public included over one hundred thousand Iranians. The fact that the media portraited the US as victims, and the federal government was retaliating against Iranians just made it more acceptable for the everyday Americans to lash out against their Iranian counterparts. Because of the backlash against Iranians by the US public, there was also government backlash as well. President Carter issued Section 214.5, which called for the investigation into Iranian students in the US to ensure that they were abiding by their visas. If they were not, they were to be deported. This turned into somewhat of a witch hunt as Iranian students could be investigated and deported at any point. According to Tinsley Yarbrough, the deportations were supposed to reduce the number of protests in the US against Iranians so they would not get in the way of hostage negotiations.36 However, many people outside of the government sector questioned the constitutionality of the act, including members of the ISAUS, who brought a case forward against Section 214.5 in late 1979. The original ruling on the case by DC District Court Judge Joyce Green was that the students were correct, and the order was unconstitutional due to discrimination.37 The Appeals Court overruled Judge Green's decision because Section 214.5 had to due with foreign affairs, and under the Constitution, the judiciary could not shoot down 35 Scott, "Bound for Glory," 180. 36 Yarbrough, "Federal Alienage Doctrine," 248. 37 Teague, "Hostages of the Crisis," 124-125. 13 any law regarding the handling of foreign affairs by the executive.38 This allowed the deportations to continue without question, and arguably set a precedent that is followed today. While the rest of the country was dealing with Section 214.5, Iranian students at Norwich encountered a different dilemma. Because they were members of the Iranian military, they had different travel visas than Iranian students at other universities around the US. On April 9th, 1980, President Carter issued a deportation order that all, "non-diplomatic and consular officials and employees of Iran in the US leave no later than Friday April 11th."39 This made it clear that the Iranian cadets at Norwich had to leave for good because their visas made them fall under this category. A newspaper article from the Iranian students' departure day describes the fact that President Loring Hart and the administration contacted as many agencies as possible, trying to allow the cadets to remain at school to finish the year, but there were no loopholes they could use as students at the Citadel and VMI also had to leave. The article then goes on to describe the last few days of the Iranian students on campus, their rush to pack and sell their belongings, and the "emotional farewell" that awaited them on April 11th.40 Cadet Kazem Yahyapour stated in an interview on the day he was forced to leave that he wished he could kiss everyone goodbye, and that, "friendships…made at Norwich will never be forgotten."41 The article also says that Cadet Yahyapour hugged Cadet Colonel William Elliott in a "symbolic gesture."42 This symbolic gesture represents the experiences Iranian cadets had at Norwich, and how their time was much different from that of their counterparts at other American universities, as Norwich welcomed 38 Yarbrough, "Federal Alienage Doctrine," 252-253. 39 "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon. 40 "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon. 41 "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon. 42 "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon. 14 these students with open arms despite the hard times in their country, when they could have turned against them as so many others in the US did at the time. Overall, the Norwich program tried incredibly hard to welcome the Iranians into the US by basing their training and education off of other programs in the US and using their misgivings to make their program the best they could be. The values of respect, tolerance, friendship, integrity, and hard work made people from different backgrounds, and even different countries, able to work together instead of hate one another when diplomatic ties between the two countries fell apart. This was not the case in the rest of the United States at the time, when tensions ran high among neighbors, and Iranian students were constantly on edge, wondering when the government was going to send them back to their revolution-torn homeland. Today, diplomatic ties still have not been reestablished, and the situation with Iran created a deeply divided society in which blame was able to be placed on anyone at any time based on where they came from, a sight not unseen throughout history before and since then. However, the precedent set by Norwich students during the crisis could be an example to the rest of the world of how people from different backgrounds can learn to work together when their two countries could not seem to get along. 15 Bibliography Primary Sources Arsalan M. Namdar, interview by Sarah Yahm, April 2, 2015, transcript, Norwich Voices Oral History Project, Norwich University Archives, Kreitzberg Library, Northfield, VT. • Arsalan Namdar was an IIN student at Norwich and faced the issue of deportation in April 1980. His oral history was recorded in 2015, and he looks back on his time at Norwich, as well as his experiences in the US in general and back home in Iran. Benjamin Heydary, interview by Sarah Yahm, Northbridge, MA, March 10, 2015, transcript, Norwich Voices Oral History Project, Norwich University Archives, Kreitzberg Library, Northfield, VT. • Heydary's oral history works alongside Namdar's oral history to describe what was going on at Norwich from 1976 to 1980 when they were both IIN cadets at Norwich. Heydary also explains how he got to Norwich and how he actually went back to do his military service under the Ayatollah before coming to the US. "Degree Status of Deported Iranian Students" Norwich University Record, May 1980. • The article describes a meeting with the Board of Trustees to determine the degree status of those Iranian seniors who were deported but who were supposed to graduate in May or in the summer. It states that they can get their degrees eventually once relations with Iran are restored, which to this day have yet to be formally restored. "Fond Farewell to Iranian Students" Norwich Guidon, May 10, 1980. • In an article written in the Guidon following the deportation of the Iranian students, the author describes the scene in the last few days the students were on campus. They note specifically that the Iranians had to leave because of the Executive Order issued by 16 President Carter on April 9th that all, "non-diplomatic and non-consular officials and employees of Iran in the U.S. leave no later than Friday April 11th." They state the overall good relations that everyone had on campus, even though the rest of the country was deeply divided along the lines of their country of origin. Grimes, Gerard. "Iranian Students at Norwich" Norwich Guidon, October 31, 1976. • A Guidon writer, Gerard Grimes, interviewed an Iranian recruit, Mohammad Zerehi, about his experiences and those of his fellow Iranians during their first year at Norwich. It describes the overall good treatment the students received, although this was before tensions rose too much between Iran and the US. Hart, Loring. "The President's Corner" Norwich University Record, March 1979. • The article describes President Loring Hart's views about the IIN students at Norwich at the time. He mentions how there is currently turmoil in the country, and that he wishes for peace. He also notes how many students are at Norwich and that Iranian women are now enrolled. "Iranian Students Come to Norwich" Norwich Guidon, May 6, 1976. • The article describes the beginning of the program at Norwich after the students arrived and some of their expectations overall, including some of the characteristics of the new students. Report from Deputy Commandant LTC Paul Lafond to President Loring Hart, 7 May 1976. Loring Edward Hart Records, Box 12, Norwich University Archives, Kreitzberg Library, Northfield, VT. • The report states the observations that LTC Lafond made when he went to VMI to go over their Iranian exchange program to see what would work best for Norwich. This 17 bases their program off of the VMI program, based on their mistakes and successes, including how the language barrier made a difference. "The Rest of the Story" Norwich University Record, Winter 2012. http://thenorwichrecord.com/the-rest-of-the-story/ [accessed 20 November 2019]. • This is a story from the alumni newspaper was written long after the Iranian students left campus. However, it takes into account the memories of IIN students of their time at Norwich, departure day, and what it was like going back to Iran. It paints a picture of the Iranian students on campus and when they left. Secondary Sources Chaichian, Mohammed A. "The New Phase of Globalization and Brain Drain: Migration of Educated and Skilled Iranians to the United States." International Journal of Social Economics 39, No. 2 (2012): 18-38. • Dr. Chaichian is a professor of sociology at Mount Mercy University. His article recognizes the "brain drain," which is the emigration of educated individuals that is currently occurring from Iran to other western nations, like the US. He states that this is caused not only by a shift in the internal structure of Iran and its acceptance of western-based education but also the international economic opportunities that are available outside of the country. Gannon, Frank. "25 July 1969: The Nixon Doctrine." https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2008/07/25-july-1969-the-nixon-doctrine/ [accessed 20 Nov 2019]. • This article makes note of President Nixon's words regarding the announcements he made about his plans for Asia, which explains what came to be known as the Nixon 18 Doctrine. He wanted to get away from using manpower and focus more on management and support for countries attempting to fight oppressive or communist regimes than by providing troops. Hamidreza, Arasteh. "A Follow-Up Study on U.S.-Trained Iranian Faculty Members: Satisfactions and Dissatisfactions." College Student Journal 43, No. 4 (Dec 2009): 1037- 1045. • Dr. Hamidreza is a professor of education and psychology at a university in Tehran, Iran, and his study is based on US-educated college faculty in Tehran, giving him access to the information. He notes some of the problems that US-educated faculty have because of the openness of American education and the structured, hierarchal nature of Iranian that do not always agree with each other. However, Iranian higher education is still based on the American system of higher education. Houghton, David Patrick. US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. • Dr. Houghton is a professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College and is an expert on US foreign policy. This book goes into depth about the actions taken both in Iran and the US to solve the Iranian Hostage Crisis, while also going into depth about the causes of the crisis from both perspectives. He analyzes how each group, Americans and Iranians, looked at the historical background of the situation and drew upon different events to support their reasoning for their actions during the crisis. The argument is that it was their own experiences that validated their analogies and their actions. The issue of foreign policy is brought up as there was no precedent for this, so 19 they analyze the information that was used as the basis of American and Iranian decisions. Kessel, John H. "The Structures of the Carter White House." American Journal of Political Science 27, No. 3 (Aug 1983): 431-463. • This article is from 1983 and was written shortly after President Carter left office. Professor Kessel was a distinguished scholar at Ohio State, and he interviewed the members of the Carter administration upon their phasing out, getting information straight from the source. He sets up what the Carter administration did, how it changed over time, and how the goals and interests of the President are carried out through his staff. It never uses the words "Iran Hostage Crisis" at all. Mobasher, Mohsen. "Cultural Trauma and Ethnic Identity Formation Among Iranian Immigrants in the United States." American Behavioral Scientist 50, No. 1 (Sept 2006): 100-117. • Dr. Mobasher is a professor of anthropology at the University of Houston. This article recognizes the shift in pride within Iranian immigrants to the United States during and after the crisis, and how it has affected them to this day. Because of their status as both Iranians and as Muslims, American society automatically looks down on them and makes assumptions, which puts them in a position to suppress their heritage and culture. Scott, Catherine V. "Bound for Glory: The Hostage Crisis as Captivity Narrative in Iran." International Studies Quarterly 44, No. 1 (Mar 2000): 177-188. • Scott is a professor of political science at Agnes Scott College. In her article she describes the use of the media to influence the stories coming out of crises, such as the Iran Hostage Crisis, that made America rally behind the hostages and the President as the 20 victims who were fighting brutal and vicious Islamic captors, changing the narrative for years to come. Shannon, Matthew K. "American-Iranian Alliances: International Education, Modernization, and Human Rights During the Pahlavi Era." Diplomatic History 39, No. 4 (Sept 2015): 661- 688. • Professor Shannon is educated at UNC and Temple and teaches history at Emory and Henry College. He also authored Losing Hearts and Minds about Iranian relations. Shannon tells the story of American-Iranian relations that began and ended with the shah. Iranian students in the US tried multiple times to get the US to dump the shah because of his authoritarian tendencies and campaign against human rights, although the US's international policy regarding them eventually failed. Shannon, Matthew K. Losing Hearts and Minds: American Iranian Relations and International Education During the Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017. • By describing the events of the Iran Hostage Crisis and those that lead up to it, Shannon focuses on the importance of education throughout. He recognizes how the Iranian students that came to the US and went back helped to support the White Revolution and how all Iranian students, in turn, became voices for their country outside of its borders because they could not within. The main argument is that it was the students who inevitably brought about the Iranian Revolution and the actions that came with it due to their activeness in government, including how they used their American educations to further their causes and cause the destruction of US-Iranian relations. 21 • The book actually mentions the military programs at the SMCs that were in place and how they inevitably influenced the educational training aspect of both country's diplomacy towards one another. Teague, Will. "Hostages of the Crisis: Iranian Students in Arkansas, 1979-1981." The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 77, No. 2 (Summer 2018): 113-130. • When writing this journal article, Teague was a doctoral student of history at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville, so he had the access and resources to make a clear argument for examples within the state of Arkansas and its experience with Iranian students. He also uses sources from other universities, mostly throughout the South, which painted a picture of what protests were like and how often they occurred on college campuses with Iranian students. This can be used to compare Norwich to the rest of the country. He also adds some of the challenges that came up with deportation, and how America was trying to decide whether or not it was legal, which can be related to past events like Executive Order 9066 and even today with President Trump's Muslim ban. Yarbrough, Tinsley E. "Federal Alienage Doctrine and the Iranian Student Litigation." Human Rights Quarterly 4, No. 2 (Spring 1982): 243-260. • Tinsley Yarbrough is an expert on the mid-20th century US Supreme Court and has published numerous books and articles on the topic. By relating the Iranian student litigation in 1979 to numerous cases and rulings throughout the 20th century regarding immigration issues, he establishes a precedent for the decisions made that can be brought into question in the modern-day by explaining the arguments of the case against Section 214.5.

Issue 57.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1998. ; f,o r r eltg ous Christian Heritages and Contempora~ Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER1998. VOLUME57. :NUMBER5 Review for Religious is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles .in the journal are meant to be informative, practical, bistorical, or inspirational, written from a tbeological _or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPPEMA@SLU.EDU Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. 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Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe TracT Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Kathryn Richards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wktberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1998 ¯ VOLUME 57 ¯ NUMBER 5 contents 454 feature Learning Communities: A Spirituality of Work for the Information Age Michael Skelley proposes that a spirituality which focuses on creating learning communities promises to be especially appropriate for work in the info~'mation age. He integrates theological concepts with ideas from organizational development research. 472 484 491 ignatian spirituality The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises John J. Begley SJ offers a contemporary understanding of Jesus' parables that inserts their use within the Ignatian Exercises and so facilitates a retreatant's entering into the experience of Jesus. St. Ignatius and My Piano Anita J. Baly reflects on how her experience of the Ignatian Exercises gave her insight about playing the piano and praying as complementary processes that call on remarkably similar skills. consecrated life The Experience of God in Consecrated Life during the 20th Century Joseph A. Tetlow SJ sums up the differences between the pre-Vatican II and Vatican II approaches to consecrated life in terms of the postmodern understanding of experience as constructed, derivative, intentional, and dialogic. Review for Religious 513 Gathering the Fragments: Associate Leaders Reflect on Their Experience Roberta Archibald SSJ, Joanne Bauer SBS, and Jean Ustasiewski OSF share the experience of a group of associate leaders who meet regularly in the Philadelphia area. 522 529 536 prayer Unceasing Prayer: Romancing the Divine Jerry D. Keeney develops the image of romancing the Divine for shaping our relationship with God. Prayer Joseph McCloskey SJ draws upon his experience as a pray-er to describe some necessary elements in a prayer life. Renewal of Prayer Mary Terese Donze ASC explores ways in which the word of God inspires and nourishes our prayer life beyond and above every book on prayer. departments 452 Prisms 541 Canonical Counsel: The Evangelical Counsel of Obedience: Key Current Legislation 547 Book Reviews September-October 1998 That they may be one, as we are one. prisms Rpe John Paul II wrote the encyclical That They May Be One (Ut Unum Sint) in 1995. This document, dealing with our Christian commitment to ecumenism, took its title from the petition spoken by Jesus in his Last Supper discourse as remembered in the Gospel of St. John. Jesus prayed that all his followers would be blessed with the unity, the oneness which his Abba-Father and he enjoyed: "That all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us" On 17:21). A most pervasive tendency among us is to make a divi-sion of any grouping into "them" and "us." It happens in families, between those "siblings or relatives who are "out" and those who are "in." It occurs in the way male and female differences have become "them" and "us" in the gender movements of our day. It is evident in the struggles caused by racial, ethnic, or religious distinctions. Witness our contemporary history of the United States, Bosnia, Sudan, and Rwanda. It is found in the church whether between hierarchy/clergy and laity or between liberal and conservative/traditionalist. Even an official church action like excommunication pronounced by local bishops or by Vatican congregations seems to divide off members into a "them" against an "us." Historically it has been true that religious congregations vied with each other within the church, for example, the competition between branches of 14th-century Franciscans and between 17th-century Dominicans and Jesuits--something in consecrated life, Review for Religious thank the Spirit, which seems less a problem in our time. It is writ large in the struggles in our economic world between east and west and between north and south--the "have's and the have-not's." The "them" and "us" (or, at its personal ultimate, "the world" and "me") mentality seems to be in the very air we breathe. What does this year dedicated in a special way to the Spirit call forth in us? Our desire could well be that the Spirit gift us with various prisms through which to view life and our relation-. ships with others in more accepting ways. We might pray that the Spirit become for us the pervading atmosphere in which we live and move and have our being. We need to stir ourselves to take the first few steps away from "political maps" that divide everything into a "them" and "us." We could decide to take action by our daily examination of conscience~ We begin our examen by thanking God for the small ways in which we have allowed the Spirit to unite ourselves with others in our thinking about them and in our acting towards them. We then examine ourselves and note the occasions when we have succeeded in avoiding a "them" and "us" attitude and the occasions when we have not. We, moved by the Spirit, beg God's forgiveness for the obtuseness of our minds and the hardness of our hearts in choosing and reinforcing the deadly worldview of division in our behaviors of this day. Finally we ask ever more fervently for the outpouring of the Spirit upon us to strengthen us in our mission. Empowered by the Spirit, we dedicate ourselves anew to struggle at eliminating the "them" and "us" mentality in our family, in our community, in our parish life, in our work life, and in whatever other areas it seems to pre-vail. The Spirit is the Love-Reality, the very communio, of God's life. The Spirit, we might ~ay, is the Love-touch of God's life in us, and so the Spirit's presence in our lives means our communion of life with our Trinitarian God. The Spirit's activity is God's cre-ating the communio among all of us here and now. Christ's prayer, then, becomes more insistently our prayer and moves us so to work to bring about a world that is at once more human and more divine--that all may be one. David L. Fleming SJ September-October 1998 feature MICHAEL SKELLEY Learning Communities: A Spirituality of Work for the Information Age Many spiritualities of work have been developed by the world's religious traditions. The differences between these spiritualities come not only-from their various theological presuppositions, but also from the various economic and social realities they address. As the nature of work has changed over the course of human history, so too have the religious interpretations of work. We have entered a new era in the history of work, the information age. The new realities of the workplace pose an immense challenge to workers and to the theologians, pastoral counselors, and ministers who want to help them develop a spirituality of work. How can we articulate, fos-ter, and practice a spirituality of work appropriate to the information age? We may not simply assume that a spir-ituality deduced from past theologies will fit our present situation. If the nature of work truly has changed, then a different kind of spirituality will be required.~Nor can we assume that theologians have the competence by them-selves to develop a new spirituality of work. This task requires ~hat we dialogue with a wide range of scholars who study contemporary work organizations. The potential number of partners and possible agen-das for such a dialogue is immense, and we cannot engage Michael Skelley is a full-time faculty member and the director of the undergraduate program at DePaul University's School for New Learning. His research and publications have focused on spirituality, worship, work, and learning. His address is DePaul University; 243 S. Wabash, #700; Chicago, Illinois 60660. Re~iew for Religious them all. Nor will we survey the historical development of the theology of work; that has been done quite well elsewhere.~ We will integrate some insights from this tradition with a few ideas from scholars of information-age work. The growing consensus in the latter field is that the primary challenges and opportunities of the information-age workplace revolve around learning. In the Christian tradition, coincidentally, learning has long been seen as a path to holiness. This paper, therefore, will explore how a spirituality focused on transforming our workplaces into learn-ing communities might be an apt spirituality of work for the infor-mation age. The Spirituality of Work Throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition, work has been seen as both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we some-times experience work as an opportunity to display our talents, develop our gifts, contribute to the common good, and exercise our creativity. When work is like that, it is joyful, engaging, and fulfilling. Such work experiences return intrinsic rewards that far outweigh their extrinsic compensations: they satisfy some of our deepest needs and highest aspirations. But, on the other hand, we also experience work as overwhelmed by impossible demands, torn by interpersonal conflicts, dehumanized by trivial proce-dures, and oppressed by unjust practices. Such work causes frus-tration, anger, and despair. Whatever compensation we receive, then, cannot repair the damage done to our spirits and bodies. When our work is like this, it poisons us and our family, friends, and communities. Work brings out the best and the worst in us. We need a spirituality of work precisely because work is so ambivalent. As our spiritual predecessors did in their own cir-cumstances, we search for ways of working which might help us taste more of work's blessings and fewer of its curses. We search, in other words, for ways to transform our ambivalent experiences of work into a consistent experience of God. Our positive expe-riences inspire us to believe in the goodness of work. Can we, then, find ways of working which regularly evoke the best in us and our work? Our negative experiences test our character and challenge us to change. Can-wE find ways of working which will liberate us from the destructive aspects of our work and our work-places? This transformation is the task of a spirituality of work. September- October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities A spirituality of work is a way of working that helps cowork-ers to achieve together our fullest development as human beings. Three points are important about this definition. Thefirst is that a spirituality of work is a way of working, not a way of promot-ing religious ideas and practices. Work can be integrated into spirituality without being interpreted in explicitly religious ways. We need to challenge that ancient legacy of dualist thinking which still conditions most people to assume that secular activities can-not, by definition, be sacred. That is why P~re Marie-Dominique Chenu, a pioneer, in the modern effort to develop theologies of work, said that the question of the relationship between nature and grace is fundamental to the spirituality of work.2 When people see grace and nature as separate and opposed realities, they think that the task of a spirituality of work is to make work explicitly religious. Spirituality then becomes the intrusion of something foreign into the work. Unfortunately, most of what is touted today as spirituality of work suffers from vari-ous degrees of this dualistic thinking. Such spiritualities impose religious ideas, language, and practices on work. The vigorous resistance that many working people have to these intrusions is justified, not simply because these spiritualities discourage humane work, but also because they encourage questionable theology. But when grace and nature are seen as inseparable, the task of a spirituality of work is to enhance something that is already pres-ent in the work. Spirituality then becomes a matter of making explicit what is already implicit. If, as Karl Rahner said;, our world is permeated with the divine self-communication, we can experi-ence God and achieve our fullest human potential even in the most ordinary kinds of work.3 Work becomes spiritual, not by becoming religious, but by becoming more truly work, by being true to the spiritual dimensions already part of its character. This does not diminish the important and proper place of religion; rather, it points to religion's roots in daily life. Such a spiritual-ity of work is concerned with fostering human development in ways which are appropriate to the workplace. It supports the potential we already know work possesses to engage our gifts and contribute to the common good. ~ Second, the definition above implies that a way of working is a form 6f spirituality to the extent that it supports our complete human development. Holiness is a matter of wholeness, and so whatever fosters our holistic human development leads us toward Review for Religious spiritual maturity as well.4 Or, as Irenaeus taught, God is glorified when human beings are fully alive. The major religious and spir-itual traditions of the world have proven successful at furthering the kind of human development we seek. They provide us with a wealth of complementary images of the breadth and depth of our potential as human beings. Obviously, each of these traditions has been guilty at times of fostering narrow-minded notions of virtue that highlight only some aspects of what we are capable of becoming. But, when they are seen together, it is clear that they share some fundamental values, attitudes, and standards that lead people toward fulfilling their human poten-tial and help them understand this effort,s The task of a spirituality of work is to root our ways of working in these basic understandings of holistic human development. This second point does not con-tradict the first one, namely, that the spirituality of work is a way of work-ing and not a way of promoting religious ideas. To say that a spir-ituality of work needs to be rooted in the values of the world's religious traditions is simply to propose that we need to be reflec-tive about the assumptions we bring to our work. The ways we work necessarily presuppose certain ideas, frequently muddled and usually unarticulated, about the values that guide our lives. The question is not whether we want to have a spirituality of work or not; everyone already has some sort of spirituality of work, although we are rarely conscious of this fact. Nor is the point to advocate the values of one particular religious tradition, no matter how emi-nent they may be. To do so would be to presume a consensus in the workplace about religion that is unlikely to exist. The goal is to be reflective about our fundamental values and to ensure that they support not only efficient and effective work, but fully humane work as well. We can do so by rooting our work in the most uni-versal possible expressions of basic human values. The third point we need to notice about the definition above is that a spirituality of work is about achieving our full human development together, in common, not just individually. It is a Work becomes spiritual, not by becoming religious, but by becoming more truly work, by being true to the spiritual dimensions already part of its character. Septentber-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities way of working together with our coworkers for the transforma-tion of our work and our workplaces so that all of us can develop our full human potential. In other words, we need to challenge another kind of dualism, that between our private, individual selves and our public, communal selves. Popular spiritualities today typically identify the spiritual with an individual's interior experience. People seldom connect work with spirituality, for it is associated with the public and exterior dimensions of our lives.6 Popular attempts .to develop a spirituality of work typically assume that their task is to enhance our individual, interior development. They rarely reflect on how the spirituality of work could and should be something that all workers share. This dualistic think-ing does a disservice both to work and to spirituality. It ultimately reinforces the kind of depersonalized, mechanistic approach to work associated with Frederick Taylor, the inadequacies of which are now widely recognized.7 And it misses the critical insight of liberation and feminist theologies that transformation of the social, political, and communal dimensions of our lives is an essential part of spiritual development. Work in the Information Age: Organizational Learning After this review of the task faced by a spirituality Of work, we now need to explore how the information age has changed the nature of the work we do. This will prepare us to think about how a spirituality of work needs to be different today. At the beginning of this century, most workers in the United States were either farmers or domestic servants. By 1950 the com-position of the workforce had completely changed, and most workers were engaged in some form of industrial labor.8 The the-ologies and spiritualities of work that have appeared in the last fifty years focus on the issues of that industrial age, not recognizing how work has changed.9 At the end of the 20th century, it is clear that we have entered an entirely new age in the history of work. We live in a postindustrial society of "knowledge work," the infor-mation age. A significant but steadily shrinking number of work-ers are still employed in the industrial sector, and many others work in service jobs, but the largest portion of the workforce now consists of knowledge workers. By the year 2000, only ten percent of the workforce in the United States and other postindustrial countries will be directly involved in making things.19 Review for Religious While our parents and grandparents usually worked with their hands, moving and making things, most of us work with our heads. The work we do involves knowing, thinking, and learning. Our jobs do not simply require more educational preparation than the work of previous generations did. They require us to do some-thing fundamentally different: to create, interpret, organize, apply, transfer, and manage knowledge. Knowledge work radically changes the nature of a market economy and redefines the rela-tionship between workers and the means of production. This is a new kind of economy and a new kind of work.1~ As Peter Drucker has said, "The social center of gravity has shifted to the knowledge worker. M1 developed countries are becoming postbusiness, knowledge societies. Access to good jobs and career opportunities in developed countries increasingly requires a university diploma. Looked at one way, this is the !ogical result of a long evolution in which we moved from working by the sweat of our brow and by muscle to industrial work and finally to knowledge work. But the development also represents a sharp break with the past."12 Knowledge work requires new abilities to continually learn from and think with one's coworkers. In the past, tasks that required thinking could typically be carried out by individuals using general knowledge. Much of today's knowledge work, in contrast, is too complex for any generalist to accomplish alone. It requires the coordinated efforts of a variety of specialists. People must be able to share their expertise with one another for the work to get done. The primary agent of knowledge work, there-fore, is an organization, not an individual. This fact need not diminish the importance or dignity of the individual worker. It is a consequence of the highly specialized expertise that individ-ual knowledge workers have. Together they are able to create some-thing that none of them could create alone: Knowledge work is a multifaceted task that requires the collaboration of a variety of experts and specialists. It must be done by an organization con-centrated on a particular task. Effective organization, then, is a necessary condition for knowledge work.13 Consequently, as knowledge workers we must work not just for an organization, but at it. That is to say, we must work con-tinually at growing with our colleagues into a community that can do real knowledge work. The organization is not just where we work; it is an essential outcome of our work itself. The task of cre-ating an effective organization where knowledge work is possible Septe~tber- October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities is an inescapable part of each knowledge worker's creative efforts. The nature of knowledge work requires us to deal continually with organizational change, development, and transformation. The academic or professional discipline which concentrates on organizational change is commonly called organization develop-ment. L4.Organization development systematically applies behav-ioral science knowledge to the planned development of organizational strategies, structures, and processes in order to improve an organization's effectiveness.~s Organization develop-ment is practiced in many different ways. Most recent approaches, however, emphasize increasing the organization's capacity to learn.~6 For example, Peter Senge, director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management, focuses on creating learning organizations, "organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where peo-ple are continually learning how to learn together."~7 Organizational change experts focus their efforts on organi-zational learning for many reasons. They hope that learning will simultaneously foster the development of the people in the orga-nization and provide superior economic performance. They see it as an extension of the movement to improve the quality of prod-ucts and services. They see it as a way of managing the increas-ingly rapid pace of social and technological change.~8 But, most basically, they recognize that there cannot be any consistent change for the better in work organizations unless these organi-zations are able to learn. All planned change presumes learning, and so leading change is a matter of facilitating learning. Argyris and Sch6n speak of this "learning imperative": "Now in the mid-1990s, it is conventional wisdom that business firms, governments, nongovernmental organizations, schools, health-care systems, regions, even whole nations and supranational insti-tutions need to adapt to changing environments, draw lessons from past successes and failures, detect and correct the errors of the past, anticipate and respond to impending threats, conduct experiments, engage in continuing innovation, build and realize images of a desirable future. There is a virtual consensus that we are all subject to a 'learning imperative,' and in the academic as well as the practical world, organizational learning has become an idea in good currency.'''9 Review for Religious But it is not proving easy to transform our work organiza-tions into learning communities. Organization-development spe-cialists agree that our work organizations have handicaps that prevent them from learning effectively. Senge thinks that funda-mental difficulties most organizations have in becoming learning communities can be traced in part to traditional Christian spiri-tualityd° He says that our work organizations have been rendered dysfunctional by three problems: reactiveness, fragmentation, and competition. These problems reflect deeper cultural problems that are due in large part to a tradition of dualistic thinking in Western society. From his reading of Thomas Merton, Joseph Campbell, Raine Eisler, and Elaine Pagels, Senge thinks that Christianity insti-tutionalized this dualistic thinking. Obviously, Senge's critique of Christianity would need to be more carefully nuanced and solidly supported, but in its broad outlines it is consistent with the critiques made by lib-eration, feminist, and ecological theologians.21 The problem is not spirituality per se,. but the consequences of dualistic, hierarchical, and patriarchal spiritual-ities. Dorothee Soelle, for example, says: "The tendency to isolate Christian faith from the social order has meant, among other things, that mainstream theology has failed to address work in the context of creation and redemption. It has ignored the worlds of pain created by the structural organization of our work. It has unconsciously or often even cynically obscured our creation as workers in the image of 'the great artist.' Christianity has a long record of complicity in bad, meaningless, or harmful work. This is the result not just of insufficient ethical reflection, but also of the inability to perceive Christ's work in returning the world to its people. Resurrection from sin's power happens in good work. We still wait for good work. Through good work we are revealed, in our creative empowerment, as children of God.''22 Senge is one of many organizational-change experts who see a pressing need for a new, holistic spirituality of information-age work.23 Senge's comments about spirituality and organizational change are particularly striking both because of the wide accep-tance his approach to organizational change has gained and because of the scholarly foundation that supports his work. The "Christianity has a long record of complicity in bad, meaningless, or harmful work." September-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities fact that Senge and his colleagues stress spirituality so strongly, albeit clumsily, indicates that this area is being given more and more serious consideration by professionals in the field of orga-nization development. It is clear, therefore, that the only certainty amidst the turmoil in our workplaces today is that we must learn how to learn. A host of inexorable forces such as the explosion of information, the shrinking of the global marketplace, the reordering of social priorities, and the emergence of new technologies is reshaping every sector of the working world. Both the environment and our work requirements are changing, and changing more and more rapidly. In times of such pervasive change, neither individual workers nor work organizations are likely to be effective unless they can learn easily, quickly, and well. An important part of all knowledge work today is the transformation of our work organi-zations into learning communities. The Spirituality of Learning Learning is not only a critical issue for the information age; it is also a fruitful theme for spirituality. Learning has often been seen by the spiritual and religious traditions of the world as a path to holiness. Jean Leclercq's classic work on medieval monas-ticism, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, beautifully cap-tures one manifestation of this intimate relationship between learning and spirituality.24 We do not have space here to sample all the rich and varied ways theologians have interpreted the role of learning in spirituality. We will focus instead on just one the-ologian who has had a widespread effect on contemporary Christian theology, Karl Rahner. Epistemological concerns are at the foundation of Rahner's understanding of Christianity, and in that sense his theology is a theology of learning. His insights can readily be translated into a spirituality of learning which deep-ens the way we see the purpose, process, and products of learning. First, Rahner changes the way we see the process of learning by showing us that learning always involves self-transcendence.2s For Rahner, learning is an activity which is necessarily rooted in our nonconceptual awareness of God. We can know finite things only because we can transcend them and experience God. Learning is possible for us because we are embodied spirits (Geist-irn- Welt) capable of self-transcendence. We are able to learn about Reviezv for Religious our material, temporal world precisely because we can reach beyond it and open ourselves to the infinite horizon of absolute mystery. This preapprehension (Vorgriff) of God is the condition for the possibility of any and every act of learning. Every time we learn anything, we experience our transcendental openness to God. When we explore the spirituality of learning, we are not introducing a transcendent element to the learning process, but rather affirming one that is already there. This means that we can never entirely understand, much less hope to control, the process of learning. We generally think of learning as a skill that we can direct and develop, and it is. Most of us expend energy throughout our lifetimes not only learning but learning how to learn. As teachers, parents, colleagues, or friends, we are also regularly called upon to direct the learning of others. We even assume that some people are such proficient learners that they will inevitably be master teachers. But the fact that our ability to learn depends upon our transcendental open-ness to the horizon of absolute mystery means that the learning process transcends our control. All learning requires that we sur-render ourselves to our capacity for self-transcendence. And, if we want to help others learn, we have to support their self-tran-scendence. We will generate very little new learning if we restrict or manipulate the learning process. Ultimately, learning is not a skill to be mastered but a mystery to be loved. Practicing a spir-ituality of learning, then, means creating space for the experience of self-transcendence to happen. Second, Rahner's theology of freedom changes the way we see the products of learning by showing that learning always involves our free self-creation.26 Learning is an expression of the capacity we have as embodied spirits to act freely. The prod-ucts of our free acts are not simply choices between particular goods. Freedom is also a process through which we create our-selves. Whenever we exercise our freedom, we not only make a choice about a particular good; we also make a choice about our-selves. The decisions we make determine who we are as persons in relationship to God and the world. Some of our free acts so totally engage us that they constitute fiandamental choices about who we are. Other acts engage us less completely and serve to confirm or,deny the fundamental selves we have chosen to become. But every exercise of our freedom in some way is an act of self-creation. Septentber-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities Since we exercise our freedom whenever we learn, every act of learning is an act of self-creation. We usually assume that the products of learning are new ways of thinking and acting. But, for Rahner, our own self-creation is also a product of every act of learning. Whenever we learn, we not only learn about something particular; we also help determine who we will become as per-sons. Learning is not just a process through which we adopt new behaviors or ideas; it is a process of creating ourselves. Each choice we make about what, why, or how we will learn contributes in some way to our self-realization. The criteria by which we assess the products .of our learning, therefore, need to include the question of whether we are becoming more fully human, Measured by this criterion, learning which does not support holis-tic human development is fundamentally flawed. People who resist learning risk dehumanizing themselves just as much as those who resist loving. This is not to say that our value as persons is depen-dent upon how bright we are. Learning can no more be reduced to intelligence than love can be reduced to emotion. But learning and loving are critical to our self-realization because both are ways we fulfill our human potential for relationship with the world and the mystery of God. Practicing a spirituality of learning, therefore, means honoring this process of self-creati0n. Third, Rahner's theology of grace changes the way we see the purpose of learning.27 For Rahner, our transcendental orientation to the holy mystery has been universally graced by God's self-communication. Grace is not a gift from God but the gift of God, In our "natural" experience of transcendence, the absolute.mystery of God is present to us as the horizon which we can only approach asymptotically. We believe, however, that God has not remained the distant horizon of human transcendence, but has graciously drawn near to us as free and forgiving love. We never experience our transcendence, therefore, as purely natural and ungraced. The transcendence we actually experience has been radically trans-formed by God's self-gift, which is always present at least as an invitation made to our freedom. Grace is the fulfillment of our deepest human potential as embodied spirits to be filled with the infinite God. Grace makes possible for us the immediate experi-ence of God, which is always mediated by our historicity and mate-riality. But God becomes closer, not less of a mystery, in the experience of grace. Grace is the self-communication of God as the absolute mystery who remains absolute mystery. Review for Religious This theology of grace implies, then, that the ultimate purpose of learning is not to know more, but to be known more.28 When we learn, we do not simply gather new information or master additional skills; rather, we open ourselves to the self-communi-cation of God. The deepest purpose of learning is that it leads us to the point where we surrender to God's knowing of us. Learning is a privileged opportunity to enter more deeply into the abyss of the absolute mystery of God. Learning is at its best not simply when it is rooted in good principles of pedagogy or andragogy, but when it is a form of mystagogy. The process of learning, then, develops our potential to be mystics. Rahner believed that everyone is called to be a mystic.29 Mysticism is not primarily about paranormal experiences, but about attending to hidden experiences of the mystery of God in daily life. It is difficult to be a mystic, not because God is so distant, but because. God is so present. The challenge isto find ways to notice the gracious presence of God in the midst of everything in our lives, This is easier to do in some expe-riences than others. Oddly enough, our experiences of the goodness and beauty of life are not necessarily the best places to look for God. Rahner believed that we perceive the presence of God most clearly in those events in which we struggle with our limitations. Our experiences of lim-itation bring us right to the threshold of the presence of God. To the extent that we can attend to how we transcend the limita-tions we face, we open ourselves to the mystery of God. The pro-cess of learning offers abundant opportunities to struggle with limitations and experience God. Whenever we really attempt to learn, we strain to see beyond the limits of what we currently know. If we have the courage to face the limits of what we know, therefore, we invite God to enter more deeply into our lives. Rahner shows us that the process, products, and purpose of learning have spiritual depths that we normally overlook. Learning is not a neutral process of inquiry that only takes on a spiritual character when we choose to focus it on religious phenomena. Learning is intrinsically spiritual and is one of the most impor-tant ways we have to experience God. It is not surprising that tell- Learning can no more be reduced to intelligence than love can be reduced to emotion. September-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities gious traditions throughout the world have revered learning as a path to holiness. Whatever enhances our capacity to learn fosters our spiritual, development, whether we recognize it as such or not. Disciplines for Creating Learning Communities As the 20th century draws to a close, we are beginning to glimpse how our lives will be different in the information age. But, because this new age of work is only now coming into focus, it is impossible to see yet what all of its spiritual opportunities and challenges will be. Nonetheless, we can be certain that learn-ing will become increasingly important to the work we do. The growing significance of learning makes a new way of integrating spirituality and work possible. The most effective spirituality of work for the information age will be one based on helping us transform our workplaces into learning communities. We defined the spirituality.of work above as a way of work-ing which fosters the transformation of our work and our work-places so that together with our coworkers we may achieve our fullest development as human beings. This means that a spiritu-ality of work should be a way of working, not a way of practicing religi6us activities or enjoying esoteric experiences. It should sup-port our complete human development. And it should foster the transformation of our work communities, not just our growth as individuals. A spirituality of work which is based on creating :learn-ing communities meets these three criteria. First, since it focuses on learning, such a spirituality advocates a way of working which is not explicitly religious, and which is appropriate, even vital, to the information-age workplace. Second, since the learning process engages the fundamental basis of our human identity, our capac-ity for self-transcendence, the process of learning is a particu-larly powerful way of supporting holistic human development. Third, such a spirituality of work draws us beyond caring for our individual growth into building learning communities with one another. But, if it is to help us engage in the difficult process of con-version and growth,, this spirituality of work needs to be incarnated in particular disciplines. The major spiritualities of the West have generally encouraged disciplines such as meditation, prayer, fast-ing, reading, and service as concrete means of achieving spiritual growth. There is no qu~sti6n that such disciplines will continue Review for Religious to have an important role in a fully developed spiritual life. But, since the spirituality of work attempts to engage us in a different and more specific kind of transformation than that of traditional spiritualities, it will need to encourage some additional, new dis-ciplines. The disciplines for a spirituality of work in the infor-mation age will be the disciplines for developing organizational learning. Organizational-learning researchers have over the past fifty years advanced our understanding of what those disciplines are. Peter Senge, for example, has organized them into five sets: per-sonal mastery, shared vision, mental models, team learning, and systems thinking. Each of these disci-plines has to do with helping us develop the skills to learn effectively as individ-uals and groups. There are three distinct levels to these disciplines: practices, principles, and essences. The practices are the specific activities which con-cretely express the discipline. They are the primary focus for those beginning to follow the discipline. The underlying principles are the theoretical bases for the practice of the disciplines. Progressing in the disciplines requires following the practices and understand-ing the principles. The essences are the state of being which comes to be experienced by individuals or groups that have mastered the discipline. At this level Senge's learning disciplines are united by a common sensibility: that we are learners in an intrinsically interdependent world.3° Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. It involves learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire and to create an organizational environment that encourages all its members to develop themselves toward the goals and purposes they choose. The practices of this discipline include various techniques for clarifying our personal vision and for holding a creative tension between the results we desire and our grasp of current reality. Senge sees the discipline of personal mastery as the spiritual foundation for a learning organization. The disciplines for a spirituality of work in the information age will be the disciplines for developing organizational learning. September-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities The discipline of shared vision is the collective version of the discipline of personal mastery. The discipline of shared vision builds a sense of commitment in the groups we work with by developing shared .images of the future we seek to create and the principles and guiding practices by which we hope to get there. The practices of this discipline involve techniques for helping groups both acknowledge their current realities and develop a shared picture of their future that fosters sincere commitment. This discipline assumes that, when there is genuine shared vision, people excel and learn because they want to, not because they are told to. Like the discipline of personal mastery, the discipline of men-tal models is an individually oriented dis.cipline. Senge sees men~ tal models as the deeply ingrained assumptions and generalizations that influence how we understand the world and take action. The discipline of mental models helps us reflect upon, clarify, and improve these internal pictures of the world and see how they shape our actions and decisions. The practice of this discipline also helps us learn how to carry on "learningful" conversations that get us to expose our own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others. The discipline of team learning is the collective counterpart of the discipline of mental models. This discipline transforms conversational and collective thinking skills so that a team of coworkers increases its collective intelligence and its ability to take coordinated action. The heart of this discipline is the theory and practice of dialogue. Dialogue challenges team members to suspend assumptions and enter into genuine thinking together. Team learning also involves recognizing the patterns of interac-tion in teams that undermine learning. The most critical learning discipline for Senge is the disci-pline of systems thinking. He sees it as the discipline that inte-grates the other disciplines into a coherent body of theory and practice. Systems thinking is a way of thinking about and a lan-guage for describing ~he forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. It makes the full patterns of a system clearer and helps us see how to change them effectively. Systems thinking helps us shift from seeing problems as caused by some-one or something external to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience. Once we discover how we create our reality, we can then change it. Review for Religious When they are used together, the methods of organizational learning represented by these five disciplines have been proven to have great potential for transforming our workplaces into learn-ing communities. They provide us with the concrete theories and strategies we need so that together with our coworkers we can not only learn, but learn how to learn. By virtue of the fact that they expand our capacity to learn, these disciplines also foster our spiritual development. The disciplines of organizational learn-ing help us to learn in new ways and so broaden our opportuni-ties to experience the spiritual depths of learning. The most effective spirituality of work for the information age will focus on transforming our work organizations into learn-ing communities. It will do so by integrating disciplines of orga-nizational learning with insights from the spiritual traditions. This paper has contributed to this integration. New approaches to organizational learning such as the ones we have mentioned here provide the spirituality of work with the concrete disciplines it needs to develop learning communities. At the same time, the insights which our spiritual and religious traditions can provide deepen our understanding of what is at stake in the transforma-tion of work. We will be able to create meaning~l spiritualities of work in this new era only if we continue to engage in this process of integration. Notes ~ William E. May, "Work, Theology of," in The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, ed. Judith A. Duryer (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1994), pp. 991-1002; Karen Ready, "Work," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1987), vol. 15, pp. 441-444; Edward C. Sellner, "Work," in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), pp. 1044-1051; Francis Schiissler Fiorenza, "Religious Beliefs and Pr'axis: Reflections on Catholic Theological Views of Work," in Work and Religion, ed. Gregory Baum (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), pp. 92-102. 2 Marie-Dominique Chenu, "Work," in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. Karl Rahner (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), vol. 6. 3 Karl Rahner, "Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace," in Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961), vol. 1, pp. 297-317; "Nature and Grace," in Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1982), vol. 4, pp. 165-188; Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Chr#tianity (New York: Crossroad, 1978). 4Walter Principe, "Toward Defining Spirituality," Studies in Religion Septentber-October 1998 Skelley ¯ Learning Communities 12 (1983): 127-141; Sandra Schneiders, "Spirituality in the Academy," Theological Studies 50 (1989): 676-697. s Hans Kiing and Karl-Josef Kuschel, A Global Ethic: The Declaration of tbe Parliament of the World's Religions (New York: Continuum, 1993). 6 Joseph Holland. Creative Communion: Toward a Spirituality of Work (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), pp. 24-26. 7 Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper and Bros., 1911); Marvin R. Weisbord, Productive Workplaces: Organizing and Managing for Dignity~ Meaning, and Community (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987), pp. 50-69, 8 Peter Drucker Post-Capitalist Society (New York: HarperBusiness, 1993), p. 5. 9 "John Paul II, On Human Work (Laborem Exercens) (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1981); Dorothee Soelle with Shirley A. Cloyes, 7~ Work and to Love: A Theology of Creation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); Joe Holland, Creative Communion; Lee Hardy, The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into .Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990); Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work (New York: Oxford University, 1991); John C. Haughey, Converting 9 to Y: A Spirituality of Daily Work (New York, Crossroad, 1989). l0 Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, p. 5; Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1989), pp. 34-35, 50-51. *~ Drucker, "The Age of Social Transformation," Atlantic Monthly (November 1994): 53-80. ~2 Drucker, The New Realities (New York: Harper, 1989), p. 173. ,3 Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society, p. 49. 14 A large and important segment of experts in this field prefers to call.the discipline "organizational transformation." See John D. Adams, ed., Transforming Work: A Collection of Organizational Transformation Readings (Alexandria: Miles River Press, 1984). ,s Thomas G. Cummings and Christopher G. Worley, Organization Development and Change (Minneapolis: West Publishing, 1993), p. 2. ~6 Chris Argyris and Donald A. Sch6n, Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method, and Practice (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1996), ~7 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of Learning Organizations (New York: Doubleday, 1990), p. 3. 18 Peter Senge et al., eds., The Fij~h Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1994), pp. 9-12. 19Argyris and Sch6n, Organizational II, p. xvii. 20 Senge, "Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations," in The Learning Organization in Action: A Special Report from Organizational Dynamics (New 'York: American Management Association, 1994), pp. 9-15. Review for Religious 21 Holland, Creative Communion, pp. 18-42, and Matthew Fox, The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994). 22.Soelle, 7~ Work and to Love, p. 112. 23 Adams, Transforming Work; Peter Hawkins, "The Spiritual Dimension of the Learning Organization," Management Education and Development 22 (1991): 172-187; Peter Block, Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1993); Alan Briskin, The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996); Harrison Owen, Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organizations (Potomac: Abbot, 1987); and Tony Smith, Parzival's Briefcase: Six Practices and a New Philosophy for Healthy Organizational Change (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993). 24 Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961). 2s Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World (Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1968), pp. 57-383; Hearer of the Word(New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 1-54; and, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 14-23, 26-35. 26 Karl Rahner, "Theology of Freedom," Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1982), vol. 6, pp. 178-196; Foundations of Christian Faith, pp., 35-39; "The Dignity and Freedom of Man," Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon, 1963), vol. 2, pp. 246-263. 27 Karl Rahner, "Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace," pp. 297-317; "Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace," Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961), vol. 1, pp. 319-346; "Nature and Grace," Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1982), vol. 4, pp. 165-188; Foundations of Christian Faith,. pp. 116-133. 28 Parker J. Palmer, 7b Know as We are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993). 29 Karl Rahner, "The Experience of God Today," Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1982), vol. 11, pp. 149-165; "Experience of the Holy Spirit," Theological Investigations (New York: Crossroad, 1983), vol. 18, pp. 189-210; "Christian Living Formerly and Today," Theological Investigations (New York: Seabury, 1977), vol. 7, pp. 3- 24. 30 This and other ideas below are developed in Senge, The Fifth Discipline, and in Senge et al., The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. Septe~nber-October 1998 gnatian spirituality JOHN J. BEGLEY The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises This article~ proposes a contemporary understanding of Jesus' parables, and it shouts their importance for the dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises. Those familiar with St. Ignatius's book are aware that he does not propose the parables for prayer during the Exercises. Several reasons, however, prompt the exploration of this relationship. First, contemporary scripture studies stress the importance of the parables in the Jesus' teaching, and including them within the Exercises can enrich that experience. Second, we take the New Testament seriously as the starting point of our prayer, and we want that prayer grounded in the best understanding of the New Testament that solid con-temporary scholarship can provide; Third, the parables make up a full third of Jesus' teaching, and so any attempt to "put on the mind that was in Christ Jesus" (Ph 2:5) cannot afford to overlook them. Finally, for retreatants who are troubled by doubt concerning what Jesus really said, the parables deserve our close attention. As a pio-neer of modern parable study has said, "We are standing on a particularly firm historical foundation., part of the bedrock of tradition. We are standing right before Jesus when reading his parables" (Jeremias, p. 5). Later we will discuss the dynamic of the Exercises in some detail. For the moment it will be useful to recall John J. Begley SJ teaches in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies; University of Scranton; Scranton, Pennsylvania 18510. Revie~ for Religious both the purpose of the Exercises and the purpose of the parables. Their similar purposes will readily appear. The purpose of the Exercises is "the conquest of self and the regulation of one's life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment" (§21). Behind the somewhat archaic phras-ing is the understanding that the Exercises have as their purpose to lead "a person to true spiritual freedom, so that we make no choice or decision because we have been influenced by some dis-ordered ,attachment" (Fleming, Spiritual Exercises, §21). Similarly, the. parables' "purpose is to effect a change in the hearer, to lead to decision or action" (Boucher, p. 16-17). We begin with the parables. As Raymond Brown has remarked, "The study of the parables has generated an immense literature and sharp debates" (p. 132). We' will try to make the most of recent scholarship and to avoid controverted issues. Given the literature and the debates, it is difficult to capture the mean-ingof the parables in a single definition. J.R. Donahue in his Gospelin Parable (p. 5) cites approvingly C.H. Dodd's inductively derived definition; it will serve our purpose well. "At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leav-ing the ,mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought." As metaphor, the familiar and better known--a mustard seed, for example--is compared to the less familiar kingdom of God. The kingdom is compared to and illuminated by something bet-ter known and more readily imagined. In the context of a retreat, the astonishing growth of a tiny mustard seed into a large bush illumines the growth of the retreatant's relationship with God, which is God's work in the retreatant. As a metaphor, it moves people, to greater participation in the more obscure retreat mate-rial being described or explained. Metaphor talks of the familiar so that one can participate in the less familiar (Crossan, p. 16 ). We may note that there are parables in the Hebrew Bible: the trees (Jg 9:7-15), for example, and the ewe lamb (2 K 12:1-4). The rabbis used parables for the normal pedagogical purposes of illustrating and illuminating their teaching. The listeners of Jesus were familiar with the genre. Jesus subordinated the familiar uses of the parable to his primary purpose of proclaiming the king-dom, of sounding the call and challenge to embrace the conditions of living in the kingdom. The parables of Jesus transcend any September-October 1998 Begley ¯ The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises previous use, for he thereby expresses what cannot be expressed by any other means than symbol and metaphor: the kingdom of God. The parables, like other, symbolic expressions, are polyva-lent. No single meaning exhausts their content. Parables cannot be reduced to a proposition. Modern parable study begins with several commonly accepted suppositions. First, the early church supplied the context of the parables as they appear in the narratives of Jesus' ministry, and we must bracket off that context if we wish to hear the parable as Jesus spoke it. For example, the command "Go and do likewise" (Lk 10:37) presently concludes the parable of the Good Samaritan. The common judgment, however, is that it does not belong to the parable as Jesus taught it, and so we exclude it from consid-eration. As we will see, the bracketing changes the parable's mean-ing dramatically. Second, the tradition has at times changed a parable of Jesus into an allegory. For example, in Mark's Gospel the parable of the sower appears both as Jesus taught it (4:3-9) and as the early church preserved it as an allegory (4:13-20). This is not to say that allegory is improper. However, to recover the para-bles as Jesus taught them, we avoid the allegorical interpretation. Other parables, such as that of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37), have in their transmission become example stories. As the message about Jesus was proclaimed in a non-Jewish culture, its second generation non-Jewish listeners were unfamiliar with the mean-ing of Samaritan, priest, and Levite. The parable became an exam-ple story, lessening the challenge of the original parable. We are not suggesting a single interpretation to the exclu-sion of all others, whether that interpretation is traditional or contemporary. The parable of the prodigal, for example, is fre-quently understood as a parable of God's mercy. As the First Week progresses, a retreatant may suggest to her director, as the result of her own understanding and experience, that she would like to spend some time during the First Week praying over The Prodigal as a parable of God's merciful love. The director must respect the retreatant's freedom and the gift of her prayer. In days to come in the retreat, as discretion suggests, the director can pro-pose the parable once again with a different interpretation drawn from modern parable study. Both interpretations are valid. Retreatants find two contributions of J. Dominic Crossan particularly helpful. First is the manner in which he has located the parables in Jesus' own experience. To a previous observation Review for Religious that parables move people to greater participation in the matter a parable illustrates, it is important to add that "Jesus' parables are radically constitutive of his own distinctive historicity, and all else is located in them" (Crossan, p. 33). They proclaim and they establish the historicity of Jesus' response to the kingdom. There is an intrinsic bond between Jesus' experience and his expression of that experience in parables. Parables are cause and not effect of what Jesus said and did (Crossan, p. 32). Retreatants find it very attractive to pray over the parables and thereby to enter into the experience of Jesus. Second, Crossan's classification of the various parables as expressions of the kingdom's temporality (as advent, as reversal, and as action) is most help-ful. As we'will see, the parables of reversal in particular have an important role to play in the Exercises. One final observation is important. For some few commentators, Crossan among them, the urgency of the para-bles is related to the ever present now of the kingdom. While it would be interesting to consider the range of scholarly opinions on the relation of the kingdom to the end time, it seems better to avoid the confusion which could result. One scholar, Donald Senior, has preserved the urgency of the parables without enter-ing into the controverted question of eschatology. He writes, "The kingdom may be future but the choice is now" (Senior, p. 93). The temporality of the kingdom in terms of advent, reversal, and action appears in two paradigmatic parables which model all three modes of the kingdom. "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field" (Mr 13:44). "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; onfinding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it" (Mr 13:45-46). The parables are simi-lar in structure, as revealed by the three verbs common to both. To unpack but one, in the parable of the treasure hidden in a field, we hear of a man whose nor.mal past-present-future is rudely but happily shattered. The future, which he has presumably planned and projected for himself, is totally invalidated by the finding (advent) of the treasure, which opens up new worlds and There is an intrinsic bond between Jesus' experience and his expression of that experience in parables. September- October 1998 Begley ¯ The Parables of Jesus and the I~natian Exercises unforeseen possibilities. In the force of this advent, he willingly reverses his entire past and acts to sell all that he has. From this advent and this reversal, he obtains the treasure that now dictates his future history in a most concrete way. It gives him a new life that he could not have planned for~himself and a new world in which to live this life (Crossan, p. 34). Advent parables are fewer than parables of reversal, ~which in turn are fewer than those of action. The frequency distribution probably reflects later tradition's needs rather than the frequency with which Jesus spoke them. Later generations experienced the advent of God in the paschal mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus and so felt less need to preserve the parables of advent. Advent parables stress one or another of three themes: hid-denness and mystery, gift and surprise, discovery and joy. For example, in the sower and mustard-seed parables, there are sharp juxtapositions of two states. In The, Sower, three instances of sow-ing loss are contrasted with three instances of harvest gain. In The Mustard Seed the contrast is between the small seed sown and the ample shade of the fully grown plant. The parables are not concerned with growth but with miracle, "not the organic and biological development but the gift-like nature, the graciousness and surprise of the ordinary, the advent of the bountiful harvest despite the losses of sowing, the large shade despite the small seed. In these ways the kingdom is advent. It is surprise and it is gift" (Crossan, pp. 37-51, emphasis added). To turn now to the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises, con-temporary experience of both directors and retreatants under-scores the advent character of the First Week. It would be impossible to number the retreatants who have summed up their First Week experience by saying, "It is all gift." In whatever man-ner the topics Ignatius proposes for prayer are treated--topics such as sin and punishment in the history of the world and in the self, past and present--the result is not a self broken by sorrow and remorse, but rather a self healed and given new life and freedom. It is an experience of one's own sinfulness, to be sure, but it is much more an experience of God's love embracing me with all of my sinfulness. The darkness of my sinfulness is shattered by the brilliance of God's reconciling, healing love. The modern mind reading the Exercises understands Ignatius's "cry of wonder" (§60) to rise from the felt awareness of God's love as experienced in the wonder of creation, in the wondei" of Review for Religious others who have been sources of life for me, in the wonder of myself as gifted, graced, and loved. The retreatant realizes, in the phrase that has become a familiar experiential reality for those who have made at least the First Week of the Exercises, that she is a "loved sinner." Mthough memories of the past, or feelings of inadequacy, fear, or self-rejection may have gripped the retreatant, now the redemptive love of God has set the exercitant free, desirous of reordering her life more effectively "to the end for which we are created" (§23). At this point the retreatant has experi-enced what in Crossan's language is called advent. To the retreatant have been revealed the hiddenness and the mystery, the gift and surprise, the discovery and joy of the king-dom. One or another of all these parable themes describes the retreatant's experience as she concludes the First Week. What had remained hidden, the mystery of the self as loved by God, has been discovered with joy as the surprising gift of God's love. In the manner of the discovery of a pearl of great price--which cannot be explained by either the skill of the direc-tor, the dispositions of the retreatant, or natural psychological development--the retreatant experiences the sheer joy of one who is loved and affirmed in the depths of the self, not despite who one is but precisely as one is. This is the important meaning of the advent parables of Jesus, and the retreatant can profitably pray over them during the First Week. From the first meditation of the First Week, the retreatant's attention has been focused on the crucified Lord, whose love for-gives and frees. In his presence the retreatant has asked, "What ought I to do for Christ?" (§53). Having experienced advent, the retreatant is now in a position to consider what return she shall make to the Lord whose love has opened for her a new way of life, more abundant than she ever thought possible. The loved sinner desires to be a loving servant. The retreatant is ready for the Second Week, in which parables of reversal and action have an important part to play. These parables have. as their purpose "to effect a change in the hearer, to lead to decision or action" (Boucher, pp. 16-17). More To the retreatant have been revealed the hiddenness and the mystery, the gift and surprise, the discovery and joy of the kingdom. Septentber-October 1998 Begley ¯ The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises dramatically but not less surely, the parables of reversal look to the situation where "the last becomes first and the first becomes last, We have a polar reversal, When the north pole becomes the south pole and the south the north,, a world is reversed and overturned" (Crossan, p. 55) The world that is meant here is the inner world of values, priorities, and motives. It is the inner world of atti-tudes, dispositions, habitual judgments, This reversal is very much what Ignatius proposes to the retreatant at this point in the Exercises. The readiness to turn my familiar world upside down is the necessary predisposition for a good election. Ignatius underscores this in his singularly important consid-eration on the Two Standards. In an introduction to this medita-tion (§135). Ignatius reminds us that the following of Christ in loving service admits of various degrees; the sincere following of the commandments, which has been considered in meditating on Jesus' obedience to his parents, and the state of evangelical per-fection, which was considered in the youthful Jesus remaining behind in the temple. Now the retreatant, while continuing to investigate his life, is to begin to consider and to pray for a knowl-edge of the kind of life to which the Lord summons her. In the Two Standards Ignatius asks the retreatant to imagine Christ mak-ing an address "to all his servants and friends whom he sends on this enterprise." In his address he reverses the strategy of his adversary, "the chief of all the enemy," who stands beneath the first standard. As Ignatius sums up what the retreatant is, to con-sider, he says, "Hence there will be three steps: the first, poverty as opposed to riches; the second, insults or contempt ~as opposed to the honor of this world; the third, humility as opposed to pi'ide (§146, emphasis added). The .colloquy that concludes the Two Standards meditation is to be repeated at the end of each of the five periods of prayer every day until the election has been made. This threefold collo-quy addressed first to Mary, then to her 'Son, and finally to the Father is for the grace to be received under his standard, where the disciple of Christ can expect to bear poverty and humiliations in imitation of him. In a note to the subsequent Meditation on Three Classes of Men, Ignatius advises the retreatant: "It should be noted that when we feel an attachment opposed to actual poverty or a repugnance to it. it will be very helpful in order to :overcome the inordinate attachment, even though corrupt nature rebel against it, to beg our Lord in the Colloquies to choose Review for Religqous us to serve him in actual poverty" (§ 157). As Ignatius makes clear, such a disposition does not come easily: "We should insist that we desire it, beg for it, plead for it, provided of course that it be for the service and praise of the DiVine Goodness" (§157). At the critical time of making a decision that will define the self in relation to the Lord, to others, and to the contingencies of experience, the parables of reversal will serve the retreatant's need very well. It is helpful to recall that the parables represent a call which is absolute (the kingdom cannot be subordinated to any other concern) and that this absolute call is not specific (as the command to love is not specified for each particular circumstance of human life). Indeed, it is the absolute but nonspecific nature of the call of Christ to "follow me" (here and now, or later?) that requires discernment in order to come to a properly ordered deci-sion. The absolute but nonspecific call of the parables is empha-sized in the Exercises as well. The call of Christ in the Meditation on the Kingdom is abso-lute: "Whoever wishes to join me in this enterprise must be will-ing to labor with me, that by following me in suffering he may follow me in glory" (§95.). However, the manner in which one "labors with me" is not specified. Ignatius, in the oblation which concludes the Kingdom, speaks of poverty, humiliatiqns, and humility, but ~does not specify the manner in which "those who wish to give greater proof of their love, and to distinguish them-selves in whatever concerns theservice of:~the eternal King" (§97), will incarnate the proof of their love. The specification is the goal of the retreat and requires the prayer and discernment of the retreatant. Second, the change in the "world" of the retreatant, which the First Week begins and the Second Week develops, is precisely the retreatant's world of values and judgments, of desires and priorities, of hopes and dreams. The parables of reversal chal-lenge this world of the retreatant, who, through the reciprocal process of praying the parables and "reflecting on myself," begins to investigate and ask in what kind or state of life God wishes to make use of me (§135). The retreatant enters into "the mind of Christ" (Ph 2:5) and prays to make his mind her own. The parables, which communi-cate the experience of Jesus and not conclusions or admonitions, assist the retreatant to enter into her own experience of the Kingdom and to draw from that experience her own way of life. To accept the parables and the experience they offer is to take on September-October 1998 Begley ¯ The Parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises a new personal perspective, a new way of interpreting and valu-ing, of deciding and acting. In a word, the retreatant develops a different and more refined set of principles, insights, and critical judgments which can be termed a personal hermeneutic. It is to grow in faith. It is worthwhile to note that the theme of reversal is an essen-tial theme of the teaching of Jesus and of the parables. The beloved Good Samaritan parable (Lk 10:25-37) has tradition-ally been heard as an example of neighborliness. In the wake of Jeremias's study, commentators today suggest that the parable has been reconstructed in the course of transmission. The con-text (Jesus' conversation with a lawyer) and his concluding com-mand ("Go and do likewise," §37) have been provided by the early church and have to be removed from consideration if we are to .come closer to the parable as Jesus spoke it. At a distance both geographical and temporal from the world of Samaritans, priests, and Levites, the story lacked the immediacy that it had for the first listeners of Jesus, and this parable of reversal has been changed by the second-generation of Christians into an example story. Once the parable is allowed to stand on its own, it is no longer simply a story of the neighborliness that fulfills the law, but becomes a parable of reversaL Crc;ssan has brilliantly noted that, if the parable is primar-ily to provide an illustration of neighbor love or an indictment of heartless religious leaders, then help offered by a Jewish layperson would have made the proper point. The shock is that it is the Samaritan who stops. At the remove of centuries, it is easy for us to overlook the hatred that existed between Jews and Samaritans. During the period of the Exile, the Samaritans had intermarried with non-Jews, had opposed the restoration of the Jewish temple, and in the 2nd century B.C. had actually helped the Syrians in their wars against the Jews. The Jewish high priest had burned the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, and the Samaritans had scattered the bones of a corpse in. the Jerusalem temple, thereby defiling it and making it impossible to celebrate Passover. The Samaritans did not accept the whole of the canon-ical Jewish Scriptures. They refused hospitality to Jesus and his disciples because they were on their way to Jerusalem (Lk 9:52- 53). The Jews believed they had insulted Jesus by calling him a Samaritan (Jn 4:7-10), and Jesus himself warned his disciples to avoid the Samaritan territory (Mt 10:5). Review for Religious The shock of the parable, calling for a reversal of attitudes on the part of its hearers, is that the one who helps the Jewish victim and fulfills the law is the enemy and religious apostate. The parable reverses our understanding of who God is and whom God approves. It destroys a narrow, legalistic under-standing of the law and reveals the hatred and divisions which had become institutionalized. The world of the lawyer and his fellow listeners is turned upside down. They are to speak the unspeakable; they are to join the apparent contradictories "good" and "Samaritan." Another parable of reversal that can be useful during the Second Week is that of the Prodigal Son. It is lengthy (Luke 15:11-32) and so well .known that we need not retell it here. In Crossan's interpretation the reversal is located in the presence of the prodigal at the banquet while his dutiful older brother is out-side pouting (Crossan, p. 75). Merely to state the reversal in this way is to grip the imagination of the retreatant. It calls for a rever-sal of mind and heart that must be prayed over until it is interi-orized and can then move the retreatant toward her election/decision with gratitude and enthusiasm. Another approach to the Prodigal Son (Donahue, pp. 151- 157) may be even more helpful to the retreatant. Here the rever-sal is in our understanding, of what constitutes a relationship to God. Both sons define sonship in terms of servile obligation: "Treat me as one of your hired servants," says the younger son; "I have slaved for you," says his older brother. Each in his own way destroys the family. "As the younger son felt that the way~ to restore the severed relationship was to become a servant, the older brother maintained it by acting as a servant. Between the dutiful son and the prodigal is a bond much deeper than is visible on the surface . A relationship . . . worked out in terms of servility leads to destruction. The relationship as redefined by the father leads to joy" (Donahue, p. 157). Some women may find it difficult to pray with the images of "father" and "sons." Sandra Schneiders has captured the power of the parable from a feminist perspective: "Jesus' parable about the father actually constitutes a radical challenge to patriarchy. The divine father who has been understood as the ultimate justification of human patriarchy is revealed as the one who refuses to own us, demand our submission, or punish our rebellion. Rather, God is the one who respects our freedom, mourns our alienation, waits Septentber-October 1998 Begley * The Parables of yesus and the Ignatian Exercises patiently for our return, and accepts our love as pure gift" (cited by Donahue, pp. 161-162). The parable conveys the essential mindset for understanding discipleship and for making the decision that leads to more faith-ful discipleship. Crossan has expressed it perfectly in his discus-sion of the primary issue between Jesus and the Pharisees: "Obedience does not lead to God, God leads one to obedience" (Crossan, p. 80). The Two Standards! Ignatius focuses the retreatant's attention upon the activity of the poor and humble Christ, and so the prayerful consideration of the action parables may be somewhat less necessary than those of advent and reversal. The action parables, though, do portray cru-cial or critical situations that demand prompt and energetic deci-sion, firm and resolute action, that are very much in line with retreat purposes. They summon us to commit ourselves in response to the advent of the kingdom regardless of the reversal they demand, and so they, can prove helpful in the later days of the Second Week. They reflect the situation of the retreatant as she moves towards free self-disposition in response to her experience of the advent of the kingdom. Parables of action portray three different responses to the urgency of action (Crossan, pp. 84-85). As examples of one response (see the parable of the friend at mid-night [Lk 11:58] or the unjust judge [Lk 18:2-5]), we meet persons who accept the inevitability of what must be done and take action. In other parables (for example, the rich fool in Lk 13:16-20), the person fails to recognize the urgency of the situation and so fails to act. A third set of action parables (for example, the bridesmaids, Mt 25:1-13) describes those who respond adequately and those who do not. These parables of Jesus can effectively move the retreatant to overcome her natural hesitancy to choose what is beyond the strength of her own resources: to choose, with faith in the advent of the kingdom within her, what "would be more for his praise and glory" (§180). The explanation of the relationship between the parables of Jesus and the Ignatian Exercises has been long. A director may well question the advisability of proposing such an explanation when Ignatius expects the director to "adhere to the points, and add only.a short or summary explanation., for it is not much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but the intimate under-standing and relish of the truth" (§2). Despite the length of this article's explanation, experience has shown that it is possible to l~eview for Religio~a give retreatants a "summary explanation." Retreatants easily grasp the primary idea of the different parables, are comfortable with the understanding proposed, and experience an unexpected delight in praying the parables of Jesus. A Selection of Parables Advent parables: The leaven, Mt 13:20-21; the sower, Mk 4:3- 8; the mustard seed, Mt 4:30-32; the lost sheep, Mt 18:12-13; the lost coin, Lk 15:8-9. Reversal parables: The Good Samaritan, Lk 10:30-37; The Prodigal Son, Lk 15:11-32; the rich man and Lazarus, Lk 16:19- 31; the Pharisee and the tax collector, Lk 18:9-14; the wedding guest, Lk 14:1-24; the great supper, Mt 22:1-14; the sheep and the goats, Mt 25:31-46. Action parables: the wicked husbandmen, Mk 12:1-,12); the doorkeeper, Mk 13:33-37; the talents, Mt 25:14-3 O; the unmerciful servant, Mt 18:23-38; the unjust steward, Lk 16:1-7; the workers in the vineyard, Mt 20:1-16. Bibliography Boucher, Madeleine I. The Parables. Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1981. Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Crossan, John Dominic. In Parables. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. Donahue, John R. The Gospel in Parable. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988. Fleming, David L. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978. Henog, William R. Parables as Subversive Speech. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994. Jeremias, Joachim. Rediscovering the Parables. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989. Puhl, Louis J. (trans.). The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1951. Senior, Donald. Jesus: A Gospel Portrait, 2nd ed. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1991. September-October 1998 ANITA J. BALY St. Ignatius and My Piano One of the best things I got out of making the thirty-day Spiritual Exercises was learning I could play the piano. That is not all that I experienced in the long retreat, by any means. And Idid not know I was taking away that particular fruit when the retreat ended. At a distance of two years, however, I sense that that.gift of musical empowerment is closely linked with my spiritual journey. What would St. Ignatius think of my response to his Exercises? Would palm slap forehead in pained frustration at my lack of com-prehension? Would he laugh--or cry? Would he sharply insist that I had trivialized the meaning of his work--and knew it? Would he smile ever so slightly and nod approval? I would not presume to read back into the saint's mind. I am even clueless as to how oth-ers who have completed the Exercises would react. In the silent and solitary conduct of the Exercises, it is impos-sible to know for sure what other retreatants derive. One can make some guesses based on body language and apparent changes, but there is no way to check out assumptions orhlly. At the con-clusion of my retreat, half a dozen of us retreatants sat and tried to share with one another what had occurred for us. What impressed me that evening was how different the perceived fruits seemed to be for each participant! It was also pleasing to see how diverse outcomes seemed to comport with the Exercises. Anita J. Baly JD, MDiv, PhD, is interim pastor of the Lutheran Church of Our Saviour and an adjunct faculty member in theology at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and the Presbyterian School of Christian Education. Her address is 3001 Libby Terrace; Richmond, Virginia 23223. Review for Religious The Spiritual Exercises are not a map that points in only one direction via a single route. The end desired is surely the same for all Christians: that we grow continually in faithfulness to the Lord's person and work, approaching more and more the fullness of the fruits of the Spirit; that we grow in the capacity to attain, relish, and express the love of God. Or, as St. Paul says so suc-cinctly: the end (telos) the Christian seeks is "eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rm 6:22-23).~ The means to achieving that end, however, clearly differ according to God-given differences in per-sonalities, capacities, and experiences. No means are excluded automatically since "all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Rm 8:28). The Exercises affirm, support, and foster individual wrestling with God's individual graces, to attain the end that is at once universal and also particular. The Exercises, that is, attune to the fact that the Spirit blows how, as, and where it wills. Each exercitant's task is to meet that universal Spirit in the exact par-ticularity of who he or she really is. Were this not to occur, the positive effects of the Exercises in fostering "the salvation of souls and their spiritual profit" would likely be severely limited.2 Theologically this makes sense: incarnation is God's presence and manifestation only in what is really there. God does not meet us inthe past, in the future, or in the way we wish things were. Incarnation means that God meets us precisely here, immediately now. It is, I believe, out of respect for God's ways of working dif-ferendy with different individuals that St. Ignatius urges the direc-tor to be brief in explaining the meditations and contemplations (§2). The saint seems to find it acceptable that exercitants work out much of the matter of the Exercises alone, with God's help. In this way, inevitably, exercitants will surely miss some details and fine points. Ignatius's sense of the compensation for this loss is clear. He says: "It is not in knowing much, but realizing and rel-ishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul" (§2). My own journey with the Exercises involved the discovery that I could play the piano. As I see it, that was not just a nice My own journey with the Exercises involved the discovery that I could play the piano. September- October 1998 Baly ¯ St. Ignatius and My Piano thing--though it is wonderful! Studying piano has actually become a major support of my continuing spiritual journey. It was a dis-covery I in no way sought, envisioned, or wanted. It came about in response to the circumstances of my long retreat. I made the Exercises at one of the large houses that groups retreatants together with multiple outside directors for one or a few events each year) Our group of retreatants and directors numbered close to seventy people, with an overall director who is a musician. He wanted music provided for the daily liturgies and asked for vol-unteer music leaders. Although there were one or two profes-sional- quality musicians among the group, they, understandably, wanted to retreat from musical production. That left canvassing the rest of us for volunteers, and five or six of us agreed to "do something" according to our capacities. In my case that was to mean simply leading hymns and responses and functioning as a cantor. I could sing and read music, but I played no instruments. As the retreat went on, the strain of producing coordinated music in an atmosphere of total silence showed on some of the original musical volunteers, who quit. That left fewer of us respon-sible for more liturgies. So I was providing music leadership to liturgies every few days with nothing but voice--and boring myself. Besides that, the various celebrants wanted different set-tihgs of liturgical responses. In order to be able to lead those, I had to try to hear them. In the silence, no one could sing them to me beforehand. There was, however, a brief daily period when all retreatants had access to the lone piano. I managed to find the notes to plunk out the melody lines of responses. I knew where the notes were on the keyboard from years of finding singing melodies with a one-finger, hunt-and-peck .method. It was, however, a sort of desperation for variety and for beauty that prompted me to take the next step. I finally made a few attempts to play a melody line under a hymn or two and once even attempted to play something as postcommunion meditation music. Those attempts resulted in poor music that did not enhance the services, in my opinion, and embarrassed me. I suppose I would have quit trying and that would have been the end of it, were it not for the movements of a few people there. One of the directors saw my embarrassment at the poverty of my tries at accompaniment. He managed to honor that pain by helping me try again in a safer way. And, when the retreat ended and we could speak, I learned that a few of the retreatants actually assumed I was Review for Religious a professional music minister! I suppose it was that small amount of affirmation and the serendipitous discovery of pleasure in a new "skill" that prompted me to continue. Once home, I had access to a piano--through the grace of two other friends. For a year I tinkered with that piano on my own, trying to teach myself, sensing in some vague way that for me the piano was a way of continuing to connect with the graces of the retreat. A year after the retreat, I began taking formal lessons. Those have now con-tinued for over a year. The piano is one among those created things that Ignatius would urge using or discarding according to its effect--for the individual pianist--in fostering or detracting from the praise, rev-erence, and service of God (§23). Music can be perverted in var-ious ways. Of itself, though, it does seem to enjoy divine approbation. The Bible in many places, especially in the Psalms, enjoins us to sing to the Lord, to make a joyful noise, to praise our God with timbrel and trumpet, voice, dance--and strings.4 Why would music be so privileged? Maybe God just likes music. That is, the use of music for religious expressions may be linked to something in God's being. Maybe music is special because it is always a common expression, a community endeavor. Even solitary composers or musicians do not invent their instru-ments. Neither do they create the musical notes and their fun-damental relationships--though composers group in "new" ways and patterns the notes and chords they have .been given. The musical givens are built right into~the world. One who discovers them is in dialogue with God the Creator. Because I only play the piano, and do not compose music for it, I dialogue with the Creator about music at one remove. My communion with the composer provides a way for me to make my musical connection with the Directing Source. When I attend faithfully to playing that music as it is written down, I know something too of God's conducting. That faithful attempt to connect with the composer's aural "vision" helps me understand and even "hear" that my studying and playing piano is connected also with my spiritual journey. For me, both praying and piano playing seem more satisfying and closer to hitting the mark when I approach them with a certain kind of discipline. Ignatius illuminates the fact that successful meditation involves the integration of memory, reason, will, and feelings (§50). And the good progress of the Exercises seems to verify that pro- September-October 1998 Baly ¯ St. Ignatius and My Piano found insight. To me, it proves the saint was truly a spiritual genius, As one who .once scored a hundred percent on the feeling compo-nent of the Myers-Briggs Preference Test, my psyche is perpetually on the edge of drowning in emotion. Besides that, my imagination is so strong that I could almost live in it. Now, imagination and feeling are essential for getting through the Exercises. It is difficult to see how an Application of the Senses meditation, for example, could progress without them (§123). The same is true for music. Without feeling, it is lifeless and powerless. Imaginative hearing certainly helps in the process of learning music. Feeling and imagination are good things in moderation. As an extreme "feeler" and "imaginer," however, I cleave to the Ignatian system because of the constant pressure it exerts on me to think and to perceive what is actually there in the world. Overly enthu-siastic thinkers and sensers probably value the Ignatian system for the opposite reason: the pressure it exerts on them to feel and to imagine. One of the supreme marvels of Ignatius's method is the way it teaches, inculcates, presumes, and honors balance. Such balance and integration are often difficult, to keep up in daily life. They are particularly hard to sustain at times of stress when the temptation is to fall back into the ways of reacting that are most automatic and comfortable for us. Our customary responses may be too lopsided to be effective--or holy. It is aware-ness followed by practice, building habits of mind and heart, that can help us to redirect our responses away from the habitual and into more prudent directions. The practice of Ignatian prayer helps with this. In a very similar way, the study of piano also teaches me to strive for balanced, integrated responses. Playing piano, like praying in the lgnatian.mode, requires using memory to aid the intellect, engaging the will in the endeavor, and aligning feelings with the will. My teacher, thus, emphasizes for me the importance of learning chord relationships and learning and remembering proper fingering. In this way my memory assists my reasoning about how to play a new piece of music. And only when my will controls my~ feelings can I keep my enthusiasm from ruining the dynamics and phrasing of com-positions. For me it is truly useful discipline to have to count continuously, thereby exercising a form of reason. My teacher also patiently reminds me that I must play the piece as it is writ-ten-- not as I may prefer or wish it to be, nor as I would find it easier to play. Those reminders are echoes of incarnation! When Review for Religious I lose the balance and proper relationship of memory, reason, will, and feelings, the pieces do not sound right. They cease to please the ear. In a profound sense they are no longer "good." In turn, that reminds me that, when I lose the balance in my spiri-tual life, it too is swerving from the best direction. One particular place where Ignatius urges balance and indif-ference is in making an election (§179). The single criterion of election is that a given alternative seems to lead more to the glory and praise of God and to the salvation of one's soul. The ideal choice, thus, is very pure and very disciplined. In a similar way, the best choice in playing music will be to put aside any personal inclinations or biases or even technical insufficiencies. The goal is to play the piece as near as possible to the composer's intention. The search for that intention can be like discerning the will of God. Sometimes neither the one nor the other is apparent on the surface. It is in both cases openness, dialogue, respect, fidelity, and persistence that create the atmosphere in which disclosure becomes more likely. Within all the balance and indifference in prayerful elections, however, it does seem that reason takes primacy (§ 182). Ignatius seems almost to anticipate the Kantian ethical principle about acting in ways that would please you if they became universal law. The saint counsels us to imagine advising an unknown person whose sanctification we desire, within the context of our own sense of what best conduces to God's glory. Having determined that advice, we are ourselves to follow it (§185). So too in music, where it is hard to imagine advising anyone to play a work other than as it is written. Once reason has helped us to know the goal for living well or for playing music well, the honorable course is to set about engaging the other parts of the personality to col-laborate in moving to this end, and in practicing and honing needed skills for doing so. Relaxation and trust enhance both instrumental playing and prayer. At a recent lesson, my piano teacher watched and heard me struggle through a work white-knuckled, tight-shouldered, gri-macing, and gritting my teeth. She then inquired, sweedy, whether I found it easier to play tense or relaxed. That reminded me of the priest at my last directed retreat who kept urging me to pray in Imaginative hearing certainly helps in the process of learning music. Septentber-October 1998 Baly ¯ St. Ignatius and My Piano peace and serenity--until I finally did. Tension and trying to retain control do not facilitate progress in either prayer or piano. Humility certainly helps in both spheres. Ignatius specifically counsels cultivating the attitude of humility at those times we contemplate our sins. He says that we are then to "lessen" our-selves via various imaginative comparisons (§58). The whole envi-ronment of the Exercises, moreover, induces humility. Much in the system cooperates to encourage the exercitant to esteem God's control and another's direction over what comes from the self alone. For me the Exercises went best at those times when I was most teachable and directable. The same is true of piano study: I play better by attuning to what is there musically and to the teacher. Playing the piano and praying are complementary processes that call on remarkably similar skills. As I hone technique in one area, I also seem to position myself for advancement in the other activity. A kind of cross-leavening seems to occur. As I attend con-sciously to what happens, it seems as though piano learnings tend to foster px:ayer learnings, not vice versa. I think that is because progress in piano happens in an external realm where any who wish may hear, measure, compare, iudge, criticize, and so forth. The no-less-real results of prayer exist in' an internal sphere fully accessible neither to others nor even to myself. Whatever helps someone to understand more of what occurs in personal prayer and to be able to communicate that has to be a boon to progress in prayer. Piano does those things for me. Piano also intimates to me and gives me the hope that King Hezekiah expressed: "The Lord will save me, and we will sing to my stringed instruments all the days of our lives, at the house of the Lord" (Is 38:20). Notes 1 Scriptural citations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. 2 The quoted words are from the Papal Approbation of St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises in 1548, as given in David L. Fleming SJ, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978), p. xxiii. Other citations (§) are standard paragraph numberings used in this and other modern trans-lations of the Exercises. 3 Jesuit Retreat House, Los Altos, California. 4 Psalms 33, 68, 81, 92,144, 149, and 150 all direct the use of musi-cal instruments in praising God. Review for Religious JOSEPH A. TETLOW The Experience of God in Consecrated Life during the 20th Century In this article I try to describe the experience of God, not to prescribe for it. I begin, first, with the meanings of the terms spirituality and religion and the content of the term experi-ence. Second, I characterize modern times just before Vatican Council II under three headings: aggressive realism, methodi-cal universalism, and rugged individualism. I do this because modernity has marked consecrated life deeply and in some mea-sure still marks it, and because, when conservatives talk about the past, this is the past they mean. Third, about the council, I note only that the reform of church structures and the renewal of consecrated life brought out deep problems with authority and with our concept of the self. Finally, coming to today, I urge that we can appreciate consecrated life well in terms of the postmodern understanding of experience as constructed, derivative, intentional, and dialogic. I hope these somewhat scattered theoretical points will deepen our reflection on what the experience of God has been in consecrated life during the cen-tury that is now ending. Spirituality. For us spirituality means the experience of God in Christ. For others it means other things. The Communist government of China, for instance, has begun Joseph A. Tetlow SJ makes available here a talk that he pre-sented in Rome at a workshop attended by members of the union of major superiors of men religious; it retains something of that provenance. No newcomer to these pages, he is director of the Secretariat for Ignatian Spirituality; C.P. 6139; 00195 Roma Prati; Italy. consecrated life September-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience o[ God in Consecrated Life promoting what it calls a "spiritual civilization." Alcoholics Anonymous acknowledges only a "Higher Power" but has a spir-ituality. So has the New Age pseudo-philosophy. In this article the word spirituality is used in none of those vague senses. Here it means the experience of God in Christ, always incarnated in a tradition of prayer and interior discipline.~ A spiritual life, consequently,is the ongoing, cherished, fos-tered experience of God in Christ in one of the great consecrated-life traditions.2 Shifting "from the former stress on the rational to the experiential," serious theologians now recount "the in-break-ing God of personal experience.''3 Karl Rahner, certainly a spec-ulative theologian, was deeply stirred by Ignatius's conviction "that he had in fact experienced God directly and that others may do so as well.''4 Rahner wrote many prayers like this one.- "Thanks to your mercy, O infinite God, I know somethingabout you not only through concepts and words, but through experience . Yes, really you yourself, not just a concept of you, not just the name which we ourselves have given you.''5 John of the Cross experienced God, not an idea or a poem, and so did Don Bosco, St. Benedict, the author of the Cloud. Each experienced God in the specific way God chose~ All those who follow each of them adopt the perspectives, perceptions, and values of their masters, desiring and determined to know God as their tradition knows God. This is what we mean by spirituality. It differs from religion. Religion. Religion is the experience of creed, code, cultus, and culture and, in and through these creatures, the experience of God. Hinduism; Buddhism, Islam, even animism yield the expe-rience of God in the experience of creed, code, cultus, and cul-ture. 6 Islam, for instance, holds faith in Allah and in the prophet Mohammed, follows a moralistic code, practices cultus six times a day and a month each year, and has spread into a vast poly-morphous culture. Each Muslim experiences these creatures directly and, in them, God. The "ordinary Christian" who spent three hours worshiping in St. Peter's Square on Palm Sunday felt the presence of God in the liturgy. True, many ordinary Christians may have momentary "mystical experiences"; Andrew Greeley reported in one survey that perhaps eight in ten American Catholics have had such experiences, and we have no reason to think Americans more mystical than any other people. But those "mystical experiences" come as a surprise, for religious people Review for Religious experience God indirectly, through the created creed, code, cul-tus, and culture in their everyday lives. Religious leaders need to note two points connected with this: first, about the apostolate. The people we serve, the "millions in the middle," in Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's phrase, experience God in and through their religion. When the powerful or the super-spiritual despise these people's religion, the people suffer; for their special experience of God seems despised and degraded. Perhaps the church harmed them inadver-tently when it swiftly and almost wordlessly dismantled the liturgi-cal use of Latin and quotidian laws about fasting and communion on the tongue, Yet for centuries the church had called the full, whole-hearted living of religion, just reli-gion, "spirituality." Only a few centuries ago did theologians begin using the word spirituality for the life lived by an active, dedicated, religious elite, and only in the last two centuries did theologians begin separating the experience we call spirituality from the experience we call religion. We who find ourselves in this "elite" run the risk of so raising up spirituality as to depreciate religion. This is wrongheaded. The second thing superiors might note here concerns our own congregational lives. Are there not men in every congrega-tion who live the charism in wholehearted ways and yet cannot say they know God? We all know men who have pictures of the Holy Father, of saints and holy places, all over their rooms and offices. Perhaps they are living religion--creed, code, cultus, and cul-ture- as religion is embodied in a congregation's way of life, with all its pious practices. (Somebne told about a man who was watch-ing television and reading his breviary during the commercial breaks. He explained that Jesus had instructed us to "watch and pray.") Above all, perhaps we should consider whether the strongly conservative among us may live their interior lives in this way of religion. How do they experience God? Experience. Our topic is experience. As everyone does today, I have been talking about experience as though we all mean the same thing. But we do not. Some say experience includes just what Only in the last two centuries did theologians begin separating the experience we call spirituality from the experience we call religion. September-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience of God in Consecrated Life happens; some, that experience includes only what I am conscious of happening; some tinsist that human experience always includes language. Every one of. us, also, varies what he includes in the term. What does our topic mean, "The experience of God in con-secrated life"? Obviously, we cannot work out a perfect descrip-tion of experience here and now. Also obviously, we are probably not going to talk about it the way "scientific" philosophers talk about it. We are going to talk about experience, most likely, as Vita consecrata does.7 Perhaps, though, we need to notice, on a slightly theoretica,1 plane, that today people regularly talk about experience by using seven categories. A sort of common philosophy holds that each and every experience unfolds in seven dialogically inter-related elements: context, perspective, perception, value, desire, decision, and habit. We tend to think that any and every experi-ence is adequately described when each of these elements is accounted fo~, both in itself and in its relationship with each of the other elements. So, biographers get the concrete details of their subjects' time and place and recount how their context shaped their perspectives, how their values shaped their perceptions, and so on. Scripture scholars try to recapture the context of Jesus' life and the perspectives, perceptions, and values with which his context would have imbued him. When we look at a man's expe-rience to see whether he has the capacity to govern, we weigh his decisions and hal6its, how he perceives, what he values. Things like these constitute our view of his experience. So, at least for now, let that stand for what experience is. The description is hardly .satisfactory, so why did I raise the question? For two reasons. Fil:st, we whose main task is listening to .others must keep in mind that there is no such thing as a naive appeal to experience. The man who says, "Well, my experience tells me such-and-such" has not ended discussion, but just begun it. As philosophical theologiaJ~ John Smith argues, every appeal "carries with it a theory of experience, some principle indicating what expe-rience is and how much it is supposed to contain.''8 Conflicts between superiors and consecrated men, between individuals and their communities, commonly grow from different appreciations of experience. The second reason we need to be aware of the con-tent of experience is that the teaching church is changing its approach to experience, but is no more consistent than any of us in what content it puts into the word. Review for Religious Now let me turn to the three topics I mean to open: the pre-conciliar and modern, the council, and the postconciliar or post-modern. Preconciliar and Modern Times I begin with a story. In 1947 a young man of sixteen boarded a train on his way to a novitiate. Answering the questions of the novice-master, his back straight and shoulders squared, he explained his call. He felt drawn to a military life (his father had sent him to a military school). But he thumped the oak arm of his chair--absolutely, God wanted him to be a religious and a priest. Fifty years later, he remains both. The year 1947 came in the evening of modern times. What is modernity? How had it affected our experience of God in Christ? Intellectual historians generally concur on certain qualifies. Albert Borgmann, for instance, identifies as marks of modernity an aggressive realism (we experiment to know and we intend to con-trol life and nature with our knowledge); methodical universalism (any empirically established truth is true in every realm and in any culture); and rugged individualism (the person comes to be over against the community). Aggressive Realism. In the 1950s we perceived the modern uni-verse, unlike the medieval Christian cosmos, as impersonal and governed by regular laws that had to be understood mathemati-cally. We felt free to tear out forests, dig up mountains, and blow a hole in the earth's atmosphere. As we grew absorbed in this aggressive realism, in Richard Tarnas's words, "God was now dis-tantly removed from the physical universe, as creator and archi-tect, and was now less a God of love, miracle, redemption, or historical intervention than a supreme intelligence and first cause.''9 1 have the clearest recollection from the early 1950s of being instructed by a spiritual book written by a Frenchman and translated by a North American to turn at the end of a period of prayer and with whole heart and great fervor pray to "my First Cause." 10 This kind of realism seriously trammeled our experience of God, in part because that realism was magnified by a centuries-long failure in the church to develop anything like an adequate theology of creation,~ as John Courtney Murray argued in his book, The Problem of God. In modern times we spoke about God's Septonber-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience of God in Consecrated Life providence or God's will, both exercised, in some measure, in dis-tans. But we had lost the strong sense of God continually, con-stantly creating us and personally calling us.~2 Most religious are still surprised and delighted to hear that we are in an intimate relationship with God the ongoing Creator. In truth, our God had some of the aspects of the rationalists' Great Watchmaker who created the earth and spun it off to do its own work. Notice that the experience of God in consecrated life in the West has been countercultural and is an important gift to the Western church, as Vita consecrata points OUt.13 It also has to be the source of a renewed theology of creation for the church (one thinks of Teilhard de Chardin). Rugged Individualism. Just a century ago the West gave scien-tific sanction to individualism in social Darwinism's "survival of the fittest." So the powerful grabbed oil, railroad lands, monopolies in finance, and so on; the less than powerful were taught to blame themselves. Between Vatican Councils I and II, between the first automobile and the first manned space vehicle, the socioeconomic program of the West, in Roberto Mangabeira Unger's words, was "to turn all society into a world of patrons and clients.''~4 Furthermore, this was certainly the methodical program of the Communist elites (only six percent of China's population) and arguably the established program of the rest of the world. Princes and rich landowners lavished patronage; their clients begged help. Colonial powers favored a native elite (that now rules seventy-five new nations); the natives depended on them. Bosses ruled "their" workers; bishops had "their" priests; religious superiors had "their" subjects. All these were "clients," including the reli-gious, who leaned on (the Indo-European root of "client" is klei, to incline to or lean on). their superiors. This patron/client relationship flourished in the church, which Catholics were taught to conceive of as a "perfect" society, that.is, a visible society fully equipped for its purposes with autonomous rights and resources, with powers of jurisdiction, legislation, and administration, and, in words of Pius XlI in Mystici Corporis, a society lifted "above the whole natural order [by] the Spirit of the Redeemer, who., penetrates every part of the church's being and is active within it.''~s We religious exhorted one another to dependence on our superiors. I do not speak critically here. We must empathize with this earlier perspective on authority. Authority was felt to be, in itself, profoundly benevolent to the Review for Religious subject, creative, and ultimately successful in making people what God wished them to be, Modern people simply did what they were told by superiors, and if some of them acted immorally-- remember Eichmann--many others flourished under good lead-ership. And tens of thousands of consecrated men lived holy and productive lives by doing what they were told. It was in this con-text that a young man (just like the one who took that train in 1947), when told .by his master of novices to tie his hands to his bedstead to avoid nocturnal pollution, at first obeyed confidently. I say "at first," for there was a shadow side to this embrace of authority. As Donald Gelpi has written, "submission of one's own will to a superior [was] subtly trans-formed from a means into an end in itself." 16 The religious subjects had an. easy way to personal holiness, and, superiors could ask them to be instruments of our congregations, instruments, we confidently believed, in God's hands. Very commonly it is this instrumentalism that conservatives yearn to recapture. One man said as much to me as he was planning a par-ticularly egregious action against some liberal Christians: "I just want to be a hammer in God's hands." What did he think he is? Who had responsibility for his harmful activities? Authority, and its instruments, were experienced as univer-sally valid until the very late stages of modernism. This century's experiences--the Holocaust, the Soviet Union's Gulag, Idi Amin, My Lai, terrorism, governmental lying, the totalitarian habit of "disappearing" people---have changed our appreciation of author-ity. In earlier modernity it was perceived as benevolent; at moder-nity's end, it has come to be perceived as malevolent or at best deeply ambiguous. Even consecrated men may nowadays won-der, at a letter from superiors, What do they want now? At the end of modernity, as Hannah Arendt argued, we have to study what authority once was to come to any realistic appreciation of it. This situation is, in part, the fruit of rugged individualism. Methodical Universalism. If the secular world gladly embraced empiricism as a universal method, the church embraced scholas- We had lost the strong sense of God continually, constantly creating us and persona, lly calling us. Septentber-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience of God in Consecrated Life ticism as gladly. Before Vatican II, the teaching church was insist-ing on a unique philosopbia perennis, a single intellectual approach to meaning in human life. This insistence expressed a methodical universalism; it belonged more to modernity than to revelation. Scientists rigidly adhered to what they considered induction; Catholics rigidly adhered to deduction. One reviewer in 1949 called a masterwork by Garrigou-Lagrange "an outstanding exam-ple of the ability of a master scientist to draw a whole system of practical conclusions from a single principle.''17 The book was The Three Ages of the Interior Life, and the reviewer resonated with the book's methodical universalism.18 Integral to that methodical universalism was the firm con-viction that nature had an intrinsic order, put there by God and functioning flawlessly. Unaided reason could perceive this order with certitude (one of my philosophy professors liked to cite the Letter to the Romans). This modern trust in reason unrelated to God'.s "ongoing revelation transmuted the church's philosophical commitment to a "natural law." The trust in reason and law affected consecrated life, too: "Keep the rule, and the rule will keep you." As the 20th century progressed, we learned that nature ordered itself by evolution--having been so created by God at the time of the Big Bang. Catholics were quicker than most to accept that scientific theory as fact. Then we learned also that each person evolves, comes to be, grows, from some interior prin-ciple. The combination, grew to an insistence on "authenticity." Hence, as one author summarized the development, "in contrast with the medieval Christian worldview, modern man's indepen-dence- intellectual, psychological, spiritual--was radically affirmed, with increasing depreciation of any religious belief or institutional structure that would inhibit man's natural right and potential for existential autonomy and individual self-expres-sion." 19 He has caught most of the shibboleths of the 1960s, the pseudo-ideas, the decaying core convictions of modernity: inde-pendence, radical, institutional, structures, natural right, auton-omy, self-expression. These are the "plastic words" that many of us used when pushing far in the conciliar reforms.2° Vatican II and the Return to Roots Here is another story. Around 1967 a man from a religious com-munity made a workshop-retreat. He had been busy running a college Review for Religious and raising funds; he had never made a directed retreat or listened to one of the well'known spiritual gums. About a month a#er his expe-rience, he told another man in his community that the retreat had been powerful. He had never known, really known, that God accepts him, that God loves him as he is. He wept as he recounted the experience. In complex and varying ways, modernity had shaped the con-secrated life before Vatican II. Now we were called by the great decree Petfectae caritatis to return to our roots, to leave nature alone for a w, hile and go back to history. We needed to re-create our communities, an immensely conse-quential effort, which meant recovering ¯ our history. Some of us found that our communities were hardly living our full histories. I was astonished, for instance, to find out that St. Ignatius Loyola did not found the Society of Jesus all alone, but led a committee of friends in the Lord. to found the Company. (I have never been sure what that committee tells us about Jesuits.) One of the great consequences was a deep shift in leadership style from hierar-chical power to discerning authority, a genuinely splendid achieve-ment. Superiors decided that they were called, in Ann Ida Gannon's bold phrase, "for the service of [their] fellow religious.''~ They learned to be servant-leaders, adopting a leadership style that rejects power and governs by authority. So we began to reha-bilitate authority, and to reconnect the modern individualist to the community. Authority, which humankind always needs, is the ability so to arrange a lifeworld that those served by authority desire in great freedom to follow its decisions. Fully exercised, leadership by authority elicits and empowers the authority of every individual. For in its roots--note the Latin nounauct0r (originator, doer, author) and verb augere (increase)~authority names a human per-son's self-actualization and growth, which cannot happen to a person except in connection with a community. We need to pur-sue a difficult notion here: the concept of the self. Under the weight of modern individualism, we came to think of the self as isolated, estranged--all those anguishes of existentialism. We came to appreciate the self as having no extension, independent Fully exercised, leadership by authority elicits and empowers the authority of every individual. Septentber-October 1998 Tetlow ¯ The Experience of God in Consecrated Life not only of our bodies but even of our experiences. We have all heard people say that they can "use their experience," as though it were a computer program. We have heard that a woman "has a right over her own body" as though it were something like a suit-case. Charles Taylor summarized all this as "the punctiliar self.''22 The self has become like a little point floating through our life-world, our own life history, our experiences, convictions, body parts. For our topic, the important thing to notice is that, when the conciliar renewal arrived, we were all thinking of the self detached from our own experience and over against the commu-nity. When one of us said "I personally think." he really meant "I individually think"--that is, over against the rest of society. For person had come to mean individual and had been cut off from society. Only during postmodernity, with its search for commu-nity, did we recover the truth that no human person can exist apart from the human community. We are not angels. We might note one final rather abstruse but intensely conse-quential point. The modern concept of self, split off in Catholic life from any adequate theology of ongoing creation, let us conceive of our autonomy as almost divine. That concept entailed both the "denial of death" that philosophers have noted in some cultures and also an attempt at repudiating creaturehood. Thus, many could retract their permanent commitments and their priestly vows: "It was not my true self." At the beginning of this century, theolo-gians wrote of a triad: God, man, and creatures. Listen to the incompleteness of the modernist expression in Canon Four of the Roman Missal: "You have created man and set him over all crea-tures." Not "over all other creatures"; just "over all creatures." After the council we in consecrated life once again began to hear all other creatures "speak to us in 'their own right," and it is not an accident that consecrated men and women have been leading the so-called "ecological spirituality" movement.23 Postmodernism and Expe~ience A thirdstory. In 1987 more thanfifty men from oneprovince made a retreat together. They listened to briefpresentations during the day and prayed in silence. In the evenings they sat around and talked about themselves: How did I get my vocation, what was the hardest obedience I ever faced, where has the cross been in my life? Each said what he wished to say, the young and the 6ld; no one answered another; no one Review for Religious was forced to speak. Ten years later the men still remember that expe-rience. It drew them into communion. They even found out that they liked one another. Describing postmodernity is like describing where you are in a vast desert. There are markers, of course; but they are very hard to discern. I particularly like a triad developed by philosopher Albert Borgmann, whom I have already cited: "For each of the modern principles a counter possibility is emerging: information processing in place of aggressive realism, flexible specialization instead of methodical universalism, and informed cooperation rather than rugged individualism.''24 This is a description of global culture, but perhaps you recognize these emerging experiences: Information processing: Once we worked by the rule; now we read the signs of the times and discern. Flexible specialization: Once we legislated apostolic work; now we inculturate, make the option for the poor, and try to keep faithful to our charism. Informed cooperation: Once our ideal of obedience was the blind man being led; now we dialogue, discern, and even as we are given a mandate we remember that we are, each of us, free men. This is conse-crated life in a postmodern world. We are not likely to comprehend the experience in any seri-ous way unless we accept that postmodernity sees experience as a construct of many elements. This construct is intentional (of and by and for and with other persons and things); derivative (from other experiences and other things); and dialogic (moving in and out, back and forth, between old self and new self). Let me take each of these marks of experience and suggest a thought or two about consecrated life. Constructed. Experience is constructed. It incorporates a past and moves into a future; it combines social, cultural, intellectual, emotive, aesthetic; it entails sensations, memories, desires, and perceptions. Thus, even Descartes's insight Cogito ergo sum--one of the deepest roots of modern individualism--was in a language (Latin) that many past and present spoke. He had the insight with a brain incorporating DNA from two other persons. He felt emo-tions and conviction. Every experience is thus constructed, so that George Schner can correctly claim, "There is a sense in which no experience is strictly 'mine.'''25 The experience of living a consecrated life is also, quite obvi-ously, a construct. Each of us had a unique experience when tak-ing vows, yet we used a formul~ used by thousands before us. And September-October 1998 Tetlow * The Experience of God in Consecrated Life we promised to live these vows accordi

Issue 57.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1998. ; Review for Religious is a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all wbo find ~bat the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives~ Tge articles in the journal are meant to be inforntative, practical, bistorical, or inspirational, written front a tbeological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-mouthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone:314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOI~PI~MA@SLU.I~I)U Manuscripts, hooks for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Henderson, NC 27536 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious - P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for informatiou on subscription rates. ~1998 Review for Religions Permission is herewith gra,ated to cop}, any ,naterial (articles, poe,ns, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the li,nits outlined in Sectious 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this per,nission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for relig i ous Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial S~aff Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. FischEr SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth.McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm J~an Read James and Joan Felling Kathryn Richards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bis.hop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR ' Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1998 ¯ VOLUME 57 ¯ NUMBER 6 contents 566 578 religious vocations Common Threads: Are We Weaving or Unraveling? Catherine Bertrand SSN~D surveys the terrain of apostolic religious life regarding attitudes and concerns about future membership. The Decline in Religious Vocations: ¯ A Weberian Perspective Shanti P~beyasingha cssR looks at effects of the "routinizing" of a foundational charism and then peers beyond them with a hope that embraces new risks in changed circumstances. 588 595 ,life in the spirit Spirithil Maturity John Blake More reflects on some of the qUalities of a spiritually mature person. A "Spiritual Turn" for Catholic Moral Theology Dennis J. Billy CSSR explores some of the ways in which a deeper understanding of the relationship between spirit and reason has =oncrete implications for the_future of moral theology. consecr.ated life 605 ~ Consecrated Life: Anointed with Joy Regis J. Armstrong OFMCap presents.ways of understanding joy and its intrinsic relationship to consecrated life. Review for Religious 622 The Future of Authority in the Religious Community John Carroll Futrell SJ describes what authority needs today as it exercises its ministry of making an apostolic community of love. spiritual limitations 628 Ground of Grace Marie Beha OSC uses the parable of ~he seed in looking at the limits we bring to the transforming action of grace. 640 Guigo I 'on Avoiding Suffering Kenneth C. Russell offers us some of the homely wisdom of an early Carthusian regarding the ensemble of this world and the ,next. departments 564 Prisms 650 Canonical Counsel: The Evangelical Counsel of Obedience: ConcreteExpression and Practical Consequences 656 Book Reviews 666 Indexes to Volume 57 November-Deconber 1998 prisms T imagery of the Holy Spirit as an iconographer"holds an age-old place in the tradition of the Eastern churches. The Hol~ Spirit is painting us in the image and likeness of Goff~ But, of course, we acknowledge Jesus Christ as THE image of the invisible God (Col 1:15). Consequently, in working with us as a painter does with an icon, the Holy Spirit continues throughout our life to bring out in us another face of Jesus, As we enter the Advent preparation for Christmas, this way of understanding our relationship to the S'pirit seems especially appropriate. The Holy Spirit is always laboring to bring to birth within us a fuller identity with Jesus. Our life can be understood as an Advent season in which we are being prepared over the span of our earthly life for the reality of our life-with-God 'forever in Christ. At the same time, from our meditation upon the Gospels and from our following in Christ's footsLeps, our daily life can be seen as one spent living in imitation of the hidden and public life of Jesus. With every stroke of his painter's brush, the Spirit inspires, encourages, and strengthens us to live "like Jesus," to live as Christ-ians. For the Spirit, according to Jesus' promise, is the one who "remains" with us, the one who will "be within" us (Jn 14:17). From the Gospel of St: John, we learn that the Holy Spirit is a gift to us--Jesus' "gift to us of "another Paraclete" (that is, one who functions just like Jesus him-self, who is our first Paraclete) or, perhaps stated with more theological precision, a gift from the "us" of Father and Son. Fumblingly struggling to say something about Review for Religious the identity and life of our triune God, our theological tradition at times expresses it in this way: The Father gives himself over fully to the Son, and the Son gives himself over fully to the Father, and the fullness of the Love shared between them is a Gift-Person, a Love-Person. As a result, our Trinitarian God is caught up in a life of relationship, of total giving, of total sharing--a God who is Love, a God who is all Gift. The Spirit, whose very relational identity within the Trinity is Gift and Love, plays this same role in God's outreach to cre-ation- for example, the imagery of the brooding of Spirit over the waters of creation and the Spirit's overshadowing of Mary in the' an~aunciation scene. From revelation and from our experi-ence, we know that God relates to us through all of creation as "gifts"--gifts that are meant to help us to know, to love, and to serve God by our proper appreciation and use of these gifts. God relates to us through Jesus as gift of identity with us as human. jesus is called the new Adam because we human beings in the Jesus-Gift have .become truly new and original. God relates to us in baptism, confirmation, and all the sacraments and sacramentals of our Christian life in the gift of the one we~call the Holy Spirit. The process of our growing in grace or~ as the Eastern churches say it more daringly, the process of our divinization continues as God's Spirit-Gift stays with us. We CFiristians, made newly human in Christ, have come to understand God in a new and original way: a triune God, a Gift-God, a God of Love. At Christmas, then, we see again, with eyes of faith, God's gift of identity with us through Jesus. Year after year, all the won-der of this gift seen and remembered as a baby fills the heights and depths of our soul. But, in this year dedicated to the Spirit, we recall anew, especially in this Christmas season, how much the Holy Spirit--God-Gi~---keeps giving us the way to be Christ for our times. We pray to the Spirit to bring forth more fully in us the icon of Jesus each of us is created to be--~.made in the image and likeness of God. David L. Fleming SJ That the Spirit paint his icon more fully across the fabric of your life is the Chris~as wish fro,. all of us on the staff of Review for Religious. .November-Dece~ltber 1998 religious vocations CATHERINE BERTRAND Common Threads: -,Are We Weaving or Unraveling? In the last year, as I have traveled nationally and interna-tionally, tit has become clear that certain "threads" are shared, by a considerable number of congregations of women and men religious, especially those that describe themselves as active or apostolic. This article, examining some of these "threads," asking some questions, and offer-ing some answers, is not the last word. There are no sweeping statements to capture the experience of every religious. Rather, I hope to generate further discussion among congregational members as they together examine their own reality and explore what their own future might look like. Many active or apostolic congregations were founded one or two hundred years ago in .,response to particular ministerial needs in various parts of the world. The found, ing purpose often had'more to do with ministry than with a particular spirituality or rule. These congregations, with some help from Vatican Council II, are struggling with the articulation of their charisms and the interpretation of their founding purpose in light of today's church and world. This has often caused the various congregations to remark more' similarities than differences among them- Catherine Bertrand SSND is executive director of the National Religious Vocation Conference (5420 South Cornell Avenue, Suite 105; Chicago, Illinois 60615). Her article was first pub-lished in its quarterly journal, Horizon. Review for Religious" selves, Given this observation, what are some of the common threads evident in these congregations as they look toward, the future? Deepest Longings , Sociologists have noted that the two unmet desires of our age, the deepest longings expressed to~tay by peopl~ of all ages, are for.spirituality and for a sense of belonging. Vocation ministers in both. women's 'and men's congregations can validate these find-ings in their work with potential candidates. Consistently those considering religious life express their reasons as having to do ,with a longing for God and a desire for community life. Meanwhile, longtime members of these congregations seem to be asking themselves whether this in fact 4s .what religious are about, or what their life has to offer today. A thread common to English-spea.king countries worldwide is discussion of the need to take another look at quality community life. Some religious will contend that it is yet to be discovered what that means for active/apostolic congregations whose very foundation and history were overshadowed and strongly influ-enced by monastic rules and traditions. Be that as it may, not only are new members and potential candidates asking for quality com-mon life, but longtime members as well are saying they need to take another look at this. My guess would be that there are as many ideas of what community life could look like as there are people discussing it. There is no going back to what was, although some members ~ would desire that: Others, who have experienced community life in the past as uniformity and sameness, fear that this could become the case again. Some feel that"the struggle to be in a ministry that Is satisfying and in a living situation that does not take every ounce of energy has been long in coming: "Leave it alone!" Others, especially those who entered after Vatican 11,,came because of the common life and shared ministry, and continue to seek ways to have that happen. Some believe community can happen only under one roof. Others believe that such a configuration of community has nothing to do with the direction for the future. Some question~the value of vowed membership, while the expe-rience of others tells them that only when there is clarity about vowed membership does any other way of associating make sense. November-Decentber 1998 Bertrand ¯ Common Threads Although some oflthese concerns differ.in various communities, and may take on different nuances in men's and women's con-gregations, the common threads, the similar questions, are there. Fundamental Changes and Different Realities Over recent years, some definite realities in religious life have given community.life a whole new look. The following paragraphs attempt to describe some of those changes. Space, or how space is regarded, has changed how ~relikious live in community. Many local communities ofwomen'~ congre-gations suffer from limited living space. For a variety of reasons, including some very healthy ones, there.has been a move to smaller living spaces, with fewer people. Unfortunately, religious often end: 'up--mostly for economic reasons--in crowded places with little common space beyond their own bedrooms. There is no room for guest, s, potential new members, or even one's own community members. There is no space, for common prayer, and no room to welc0m~e groups of guests. Religious congregations are not family; they al:e communities of adults; for whom the family model is not helpful. To live simply does not necessarily mean that there can be .no space. Although men's communities may have more space, rJaey seem to be challenged to look at how eas-ily the members can become independent, developing a board-ing- house mentality. Governance, too, has changed how religious live together. Many local commtinities have been trying a more circular model of leadership wherein various responsibilities of leadership are shared. Men's communities seem to 'be less dialogic, to function more expeditiously. No form of governance, however, seems to go without challenge, and no one model is ideal. , Age has also made a difference in how religious live together and ~relate to each other. There are more older members, and fewer new ones. The tendency to settle in bectmes stronger unless deliberate efforts fire made to retain vitality, ' which has little to do with.,age. New members help a community to keep growing and changing. Difference in community size calls for different skills. The abil-ity to b~ self-discl6sing is critical. Where it may once have been considered the. greatest of virtues to be silent, now it is crucial in community to be able to articulate one's thoughts and feelings in Review for Religious an appropriate manner. The smaller the group, the more essen-tial to have healthy members who are able to enter into this kind of sharing. Professionalism and ministry demands certainly affect community life today. Because urgent needs demand responses and because mission is the ov~rriding concern for many religious congrega-tions, this is where most time and energy are spent. The nature of ministry, especially with many women religious now in parish settings, places new demands on quality time in community. Self-Definition Countless efforts among religious focus on the identity and image of religious today: who religious are and what they are about. It appears that often religious define themselves by the work(s) they do. They seem to fall sho~rt when it comes to know-ing how to share some of the other elements of their lives that grow out of the communal dimension: Is' there clarity about those essential elements? Are the spiritual and communal elements of their lives seen as having the power to attract others, not just to new vowed membership, :but also to the varibus ways people can be in part-nership with religious 4ongregations? To religious who are concerned that potential candidates seem to focus only on God and com-munity and have little Or no sense of mission, I offer this thread. From interviewing and assessing candidates for priesthood and religious life, I have found, that among them service is a given. They deeply desire to be of service~ They may not always understand how to direct that generosity within a particular congregation, but what draws them to religious life is a unique context in which to offer service. Most candidates come assuming that Jesus, the Eucharist, and a link to the universal church are foundational to religious lif~. The community they seek is not a warm nest or surrogate family, but a group that will help them serve in a way that they could'not do alone. New members ,help a community to keep growing and changing, What Attracts Young Adults When two hundred young' adults from all over the United November-December 1998 Bertrand ¯ Common Threads States joined more than five hundred vocation directors at the 1996 National Convocation of religious vocation ministers, they spoke to the questions of what was attractive and unattractive . about religious life today. On their application forms they were asked to describe any of their .current involvements in volunteer work, paid ministry, civic activities, and so~forth.Their responses were both amazing and impressive. The candidates that religious congregations would hope to attract are already engaged in ser-vice. They told us that ministry alone will not draw people to religious life. They come because of the community context in which the ministry is situated. They also see community life as happening under one roof. Many times they have no clear idea of w~hat they are asking for When they speaLof their desire for com, munity, but they clearly do not envision it as a "let's get together now and then" experience. Another thread I see in numerous congregations is the sincere desire of many religious to respond to that desire expressed by young people. Most congregations want to have a future and therefore are serious about attracting new members. A thread that is becoming more common in many congregations is being spun in conversations about being local communities of hospi-tality. Much as congregations would like it, this phrase does not describe every local community. Newer members are~well aware of struggles to find suitable, community situations to live in, Longtime members, too, know all too well thee feeling of panic when it comes to finding a local community upon Changing min-istry locations. Some congregations are creatively encouraging some of~their most "life-giving" members to consider housing situations that would allow for an extra room so that communities of hospitality become realities. These delibera~te efforts by some are invitations to all congregational members to take seriously the responsibil- -ity for hospitality. Community as Ministry Religious take seriously their commitment to ministry. Who can argue with that? But is mission understood as being synony-mous with the work they do? I 15elieve that one of the strongest sections of Vita consecrata deals with this very question. It states that community life plays a fundamental role in the spiritual jour- Review for Religious ney of religious, both for their constant renewal and for the full accomplishment of their mission In the world: [The church] wishes to hold up before the world the exam-ple of communities in which solitude is overcome through concern for one another, in which communication inspires in everyone a sense of shared responsibility, and in which wounds are healed throu~gh forgiveness and each person's commitment'to communion is strengthened. The life of communion in fact "becomes a sign for all the world and a compelling force that leads people to faith in Christ . in this way communion leads to mission and itself becomes mission"; indeed, "communion begets communion: In' essen~.~e it is a communion that is missionary." (§§45-46) Do religious believe that community life itself is key to the mission and their ministries? For active/apostolic congregations it seems to be an ongoing struggle. How do congregations arid individuals integrate or balance that healthy or not-so-healthy tension between ministry and community life? Have religious come to define active/apostolic religious life only by works, and often very individualized ministries at that? In many ministry situations there may b~ only one person of a particular congregation on the scene. A developing scenario seems to be that it is in ministry that one receives the greatest affirmation and.the deepest satisfaction, that one's affective needs are met, and that the most creative energy arises. This poses a sharp contrast to the less than life,giving local community situa-tion that religious often describe. Another dimension in this sce-nario is that today religious~ have less knowledge about or understanding of each other's ministries and therefore have fewer opportunities, to be supportive and affirming, ~ ~" : Another thread deserving further consideration is the amount of time and energy given to ministry. I have heard younger, newly professed religious comment that they came from homes where they were aware that everything, including family, always came second to their parents' dareers. They are often surprised to find that in religious life they have that same sense. They seem to respond in one of two ways. Either they quickly fal.1 into the work mode, or they choose to leave. On one occasion a speaker address-ing an audience of religious suggested that, if a congregation is serious about new membership, it may need to reevaluate its min-isterial commitments. Even to think about it brought an audible gasp from the audience. November-December 1998 Bertrand ~ Common Threads Often religious try to accomplish with fewer people what was once done by many more people. No doubt women and men reli-gious are responding to urgent needs in our church and world in creative and heroic ways. Many times, it seems, the very people who top the list as wonderful community members are also the most overextended in ministry. Where is the balance in all of this? What choices are congregations making in addressing these challenges, not just f~or the sake of new members, but for the sake of present membership? . . Some congregations are responding by honestly saying to each other and to others that they prefer to go onliving and working just as they are. Other congregations see a need for some changes. I have attempted to name some of the common reali-ties in religious life that have had an impact on community life. These include models of governance, ways of praying,' living space, aging members, and ministry demands. I would contend that, to the extent that realities in religious life have changed, religious are. invited to develop new skills for living contemporary religious life, giving new shape to religious community life. Skills Needed What are some of the skills to be considered?~ The following list is neither definitive nor exhaustive, but I offer it as a help toward further consideration and dialogue: ' ¯ The need for self-disclosure heads the list, in part because this element of religious life has changed radically in recent years. The change affects not only how one,share~ in dialogue, but also how one participates in prayer with one or more persons. There is an increased need both for sharing and for keeping a healthy sense of boundaries. . ¯ Skills for other-centeredness are key. It is no small challenge to be able to enter into the reality of another, to be generous, to listen. It means taking time for people and situations in commu-nity that may not always be one's first choice of how to use time and energy. It may mean not allowing ministry demands to always come first. ¯ Hospitality As an "in" word these days, but in some situa~- tions it may be as basic as developing social and conversational skills that make life better as occasions arise for religious to invite others into their homes and into their lives. This is particularly key Review for Religious in attracting new members. People cannot choose or ~upport what they do not know, unders(and, or experience. ¯ Skills for healthy sexuality and intimacy are critical elements in the life of any person, and these impact,community life. They affect the way individual religious express who they are, how "at home" they might be as loving, intimate, sexual human beings. They assist religious in having .a sense of self that can support o~hers in their celibate choice and can help still others under-stand celibacy as a viable option. A healthy sexuality includes developing friendsl~ips within and outside community life. It also involves doing whatever is necessary to be a physically and psy-chologically healthy person, someone with whom others would like to share community. ¯ A healthy spirituality is another key element in quality com-munity life, having both a communal and individual dimension. It means looking for ways to be supportive of the spiritual life of others in community, participating in the liturgical life of the church, and expressing the shared spirituality of a particular con-gregation. It also means finding ways to participate in the ongo-ing revelation of God through individuals and in community. ¯ Skills for shared living involve negotiating living space, being attentive to the little .things that can make or break community liv-ing, These skills make it possible for religious to choose to live with one or more fellow religious when it would be easier to live alone, or they may suggest ways of creatively sharing life with others if particular circumstances' demand living alone for a time. They help one to be open to sharing life with a variety of people, in a variety of ways, ways that are life-giving, not death-dealing. ¯ To be attentive to ongoing learning and enrichment demands that one strive to be updated about religious life, spirituality, the, ology, and so forth, in: addition to fulfilling~"professional" demands for ongoing education. It also means being attentive to one's development as an "interesting" person who can contribute.to community discussions and learning. It means taking time for enrichment, alone and with others. ¯ Friendship in community also involves skills, though no one can make friendship happen. One must look for ways to come to know the people .with whom one shares life, and must do whatever one can to create a community to.which people want to come home. Friendship skills include being able ~nd willing to cele-brate people .and events 4n the company of others. November-December 1998 Bertrand ¯ Common Threads ¯ Leadership ski'lls need to be nurtured in every community member even though such skills will be expressed in many dif-ferent ways on a variety of levels. These skills include taking indi-vidual responsibility within a community of adults, having a voice and being honest and up-front in using that voice for the good of the whole, getting involved in the workings of the congregation ~3n the local level and beyond, and keeping actively in touch with congregational leaders. ¯ Conflict-management skills invite the convictitn that each person is worth the time it~takes to live together well. They involve being honest as well as kind with feedback, being account-able for any effort or lack of effort at being a positive presence in a community. Conflict management calls for a healthy sense of self that allows one to deal with issues, not destroy persons. These are some skills that seem key to living contemporary community life. Some Other Threads .There continue to be questions. Are religious setting them-selves up for failure,and disappointment in taking another look at quality community life, another look at that particular thread? Is this a challenge beyond them? No one can make 'a significant responge alone, not the. congregational leader or any individual member, not a new member or potential candidate, not the voca-tion director. A significant response requires the efforts of as man, y as possible--many interwoven threads. There are people among us who lack either the desire, the aptitude, or both for living community life in this day and age. There are ministerial situations that demand different ways of being community. But in many congregations a substantial group of peo-ple have both the desire and the aptitude to make co.mmunity life work, even under one roof. Community life takes time and energy. There 'is no way around that, even in the best-case scenarios. If congregations want the future to be different, some radical decisions must be made in the present-'if not always big deci-sions, then some smaller ones that are no less radical: These are the ones that touch the day-to-day living of the entire community. How willing am I to be "inconvenienced" for the sake of our future, ~for the sake of not just new members, but also present members? This question is screaming for anoanswer.from indi=' Review for Religious vidual religious and from congregations. The answer may mean reclaiming community as ministry, community as mission. The final thread I will touch upon is perhaps stating the obvi-ous. Vocation ministers, who are some of the most hopeful peo-ple around, indidate time and again that in their work the greatest challenge 4s their own congregational members' lack of aware-ness and response. They do not assume ill will, for they see that people are very busy, involved in many things. How, then, are communitymembers to be made more alert to ways of promot-ing vocations? Congregational leaders are critical players 'in these efforts, b~t congregational members are no less important. Do we pas-sionately desire another generation of religious for the sake of God's people? Are we willing to invite new generations to consider religious life as a viable option, or by our silence have we made the decision for them? The responses to these questions cannot be postponed, to be considered at some other time, Our only time is ,' Questions for Individuals and Communities Something to do now is raise some of the ,following questions in the privacy of your o~n mind and heart--but also to raise them in discussion with other religious in your own congregation, in your own local community, or in any number of other settings.,~ Skills for Self-disclosure What in your life indicates that you have a sense of legitimate boundaries, your own and those of others? What enables .you to express your thoughts and feelings in dialogue and in faith shar-ing? How do you nurture mental and emotional health that allows you to be self-disclosing? How do yob develop healthy self-esteem, self-confidence that allows you to share yourself with others? What gives you the sense that others enjoy being with you? Skills for Other-cehteredness How do you balance self-maintenance with generous pres-ence and service? What gets most attention and energy in your local community? How do you foster local' community life that reaches beyond itself?. What enables you to enter into the re~ility of another? How do you present religious life as a viable option Noventber-Decentber 1998 Bertrand ¯ Common Threads for someone else? How do you share ministry with each other, even if you are in different settings? What sharpens your ability to be a good listener? Skills four Hospitality What do you do to develop social and conversational skills? How are you willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of wel-coming others? What do you do to encourage, potential new mem-bers and to invite them, and others as well, into yo~ur life and into your home? How do you cope with diversit'v? What prevents you at times from being hospitable and welcoming? Skills/:or Healthy Sexuality and lntimaey How would someone, describe your outlook on life? What helps you .to be happy and hopeful? How do you express that sense? How do. you express your celibate choice? How do you describe it? How are you generative in your celibate choice?. What steps do you take to develop and sustain healthy friendships? How does the way you live speak to health and wholeness? Skills for a Healthy Spirituality How :are you faithful to personal and communal'prayer? What other elements of your life indicate a seritusness about your rela-tionship with God? How do you participate in the liturgical life of the church? How does your prayer life reflect the .spirituality of your congregation? How does your spiritual life reflect and support a concern for others? ~ Skills for Shared Living How does the shared living space where you live facilitate quality community life? When are you~generous or territorial in your useof common space and, goods? How are you attentive to the "litde things" that can cause friction or tranquillity in a shared living space? How willing, are you to negotiate, and sometimes settle for conditions that are not to your liking? The persons you live with--what keeps your expectations of them realistic? Skills fo, r Ongoing Learning and Enrichment ~ What steps do you take to keep updated regarding religious-life trends, spirituality, theology? How do you make time for cur-rent reading, awareness of world issues, which can be shared in Review for Religious community? What do you do for enrichment and leisure, indi-vidually and as a local community? What are some of the best ways to "waste time" together? Skills for Friendship in Community What helps you to come to know and appreciate the people with whom you share community life? How do you reflect an openness to potential friendship in community without demand-ing it? What about you would give other people a desire to live in community with you? What about local community makes it a situation to which you want to come home? How do you make choices for quality community time in the face of ministerial demands? How do you celebrate people and events in your local community? How do you share your family and friends with your congregation? How do you give yourself and others a sense of freedom in community relationships? Skills for Leadership What is the role and understanding of leadership in your local community? How do you participate in those responsibilities? What is your expectation of those in congregational leadership in relating to local communities? In what ways do you take ini-tiative in your local community? Sk(lls for Conflict Management , What helps you to be honest and up-front in dealing with conflict in community? How do you give helpful feedback to peers, and how, do you receive it from them? To whom do you hold yourself accountable for trying to live quality community life? For you, what elements of local community can become sources of conflict? What are the most effective ways for you to resolve conflict in your local community? Are you, are we, weaving or unraveling? November-December 1998 SHANTI ABEYASINGHA The Decline in Religious Vocations: : ,A Weberian Perspective y-783 _ religious life, that many who join religious congregations give up halfway, and that some leave even after final profession are things that merit inquiry. For many a religious congregation, vocation questions and vocation promotion are top priorities. A superior of a women's religious congregation told me that she and the sis-ters were trying desperately to get young girls to join because comphter statistics had shown that the congregation would die out if a hundred or more new persons did not come in every year. Deaths each year were outnumbering the entrants, and, accord= ingly, aging.itself had become a more serious~problem too. There are instances where some congregations in the West have come to Asia, Africa, and Latin America (places with more .vocations) in search of candidates. The phenomenon of men;'and women religious coming from the West to work as missionaries also seems to be a thing of the past. In fact, the reverse process seems to be taking place. Religious congregations with branches in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are asking them to come up with volunteers for missionary work in other lands. These instances and others would seem to indicate that religious life is in disarray. Shanti Abeyasingha CSSR has held administrative positions in his order, has done socioeconomic development work in Sri Lanka, and has con-ducted retreats and missions in Sri Lanka, India, and Malaysia. His address is: Redemptorists, Santa Maria; George E. de Silva Mawatha; Kandy, 20000; Sri Lanka. Review for Religious The interesting thing, however, is that the problem of a lack of vocations, which many modern-day religious congregations are facing, was seldom an issue for the founders and foundresses ofireligious congregations~ They do not stem to have had diffi-culty getting people to join their ranks. As their histories often tell us, .people were attracted to the particular work they started and to their commitment and deilication. Many a °person was ready to give up everything and join them. God's Fidelity and Religious Congregations' Continued Existence The Bible speaks again and again about the faithfulness of God. Evenothough we humans are unfaithful, God is shown as the one who is ever faithful to his pr~mises. Along with his faith-fulness, his caring love is always there, ever ready to come to our aid. This' love is brought out clearly in the Exodus experience. The words "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry 'because of their taskmasters; I know their suffering, and I have comedown to deliver them" (Ex 3:7- 8) expresses it all. vWhen God makes his covenant with the Israelites at Mount Sinai, the people experience and~ understand their God precisely as one who always intervenes on their behalf to alleviate suffering and oppressiom All through human history we encounter human suffering and misery. These are vestiges df sin and .are manifest in the self-ishness of persons who do not care 'for their brothers and sisters. God continues to care for these unfortunate persons all through history. He continues to prove his faithfulness .and concern by raising up women and men who dedicate their lives in the ser-vice of people whom others oppress or ignore and even history forgets. These charismatic personalities emerge especially in moments of, crisis and,decadeffce in society. They, like Moses, are inspired to do God's bidding on behalf of his people. They are in line'with ~the prophets, who denounced oppression while at the same time announcing to the people the good news of liberation and deliverance. In the line of the prophets, these founders of congregations interpreted the signs of the times and responded vigorously. They highlighted something ~hat answered a need in society. They manifested through their actions the faith~lness andthe ¯ November-DecembD" 1998 L -79 Abeyasingba * The Decline in Religious Vocations caring presence of God as he continues to come down and deliver his people from their bondage. Here we have the actual reason for the beginning and the continued exi~stence of religious congre-gations, namely, t~o be extensions of God's presence in the world. The "Routinization" of a charism Max Weber has something to say about such charismatic lead-ers. He says that charismatic leaders are creative and do things that are not in line with the normal run of things in society. He is quick to add, however, that such charismatic leaders do not last. They are a passing phenomenon in society. They appear at cer-tain times in history to answer particular needs of the time. In the course of time, especially after the death of the charismatic leader, his or her original insight becomes traditi~nalized or ratio-nalized or both.~ Weber adds: "It is only in the initial stages, and so long as the charismatic leader acts in a way which is completely outside every day social organization, that it is possible for his followers to live communistically in a community of faith and enthusiasm.''2 Thus, according to Weber, it is only a question of time before the initial charism of the leader becomes "routinized.''3 Usually this takes place after his or her death. In this transformation into a permanent routine structure, one of the first things altered is the anti-economic character of the original charisma.4The followers pursue security and economic stability (as part of security) to. make up for the absence of the founder. Everyday needs and the ordi-nary details of administration necessitate such an adaptation. This process took place even in the church after the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. With routinization comes an attempt to preserve the leader's thought and way of life. Normally this takes the form of pre-serving his or her letters, instructions,- documents, and sayings, along with eyewitness reports, accounts from the~first companions, and so on. Guidelines are set for the training of future followers. These are usually spelled out in documents such as rules, consti-tutions, and statutes, which are updated from time to time by general chapters and by special commissions appointed by them. The result is a system of organization different from that which existed during the time of the charismatic leader. During the leader's lifetime, the way of making decisions, the way of act- Review for Religious ing, and in short the whole way the group functioned could be said to have been somewhat arbitrary and unpredictable. There was no formal or well-defined way of doing a particular thing. The leader's personality was the key factor, and it overshadowed what-ever structures and procedures were already in place, regarding the community and its mission. Max Weber says that "the routinization of charisma also takes the form of the appropriation of powers of control and of eco-nomic advantages by the followers,or disciples and of regulation of the recruitment of these groups.''5 In other words, the rou-tinization process in a congregation includes the manner and the basis of choosing leaders, the training or tests of eligibility of the new recruits, the way of governing the members, their rights and duties, and so on.6 Also, it is very much akin to the adaptation that constantly takes place in economic life--for the economy is on~ of the principal and continually operating forces in everyday life. In the whole question of routinization, the economic condi-tions play a leading role'and do not constitute merely a dependent variable.7 Bureaucratic Org.anization and Religious Life From the foregoing it will be clear that accompanying the whole process of the routinization of a charism is the attempt to coordinate activities. Weber calls this the process of rationaliza-tion or the process of bureaucratic organizatipn. He goes on to say that this is a distinctive mark of the modern era. Bureaucracy has shaped modern politics, the modern economy, modern technol'- ogy, and modern church life and religious life too. Max Weber considered the bureaucratic organization to be technically supe-rior to all other forms of administration. He says' also that only through this device, namely bureaucracy, has large-scale planning of the modern state and the modern economy become possible,s The main characteristics of a bureaucratic organization are: ¯ It is organized according to rational principles: rules, con-stitutions, and statutes. (This is something that developed in religious congregations.) ¯ The offices are ranked in a hierarchical order. (Religious congregations, too, have a hierarchical order, that is, gen-eral, his or her consulto~rs, the different secretariats, provin-cials, vice-provincials, and so on.) Novetttber-December 1998 Abeyasingba * The Decline in Religious Vocations Efficiency has hhd the effect of making religious congregations inefficient in answering the changed needs of the times. ¯ The operations (of offices) are characterized by imper-sonal rules. (The various offices in religi~ous congregations, too, have clearly defiiaed procedures.) ¯ The members are governed by methodical allocation of areas of jurisdiction.(Today the members of religious con-gregations fire allocdted 'into provinces, vice-provinces, regions, and so on.) ¯ Appointments to offices are generally made according to specialized qualifications. Those who can fit into the bureaucratic administrative set-up are the ones who are normally considered for s~h offices. Just as bureaucracy has its advantages, it also has its draw-backs. Its very strengths are also its weaknesses. Because of its rationalized organization, bureaucracy sometimes becomes unwieldy and even stultifying in dealing with individual cases. Modern rationalized and bureaucratized systems find themselves incapable of dealing with particularities. In other words, the individual's initiative and creativity are submerged under a deluge of reasons that are derived mechanically from the 0 code of behavior.~° Depersonalization is another result of bureaucratization. The organization seems to take precedence over the personhood of the individual." In the last analysis, although bureaucratization and rationalization may have increased the efficiency of the o.r, ga: nization, this very efficiency threatefis to dehumanize its ere-ators. 12 In such a setup, 0there is little room for charismatic personalities to emerge. , From what has been said, one sees the implications of bureau-cratization for the functioning~of religious life. While on the one hand it has organized and systematized administration, on the other hand it has stifled some new initiatives and new thinking. Persons who propose changes in hitherto :accepted ways of doing things could very well find themselves isolated or labeled rebel-lious or considered excrescences that need to be removed because they are a hindrance to the smooth running of the ihstitute. Worse still would be the sad refility of some finding themselves outside the institute because their ideas do not find acceptance with the Review for Religious administration. To put it in another way,. this very efficiency has had the effect of making religious congregations inefficient in answering the changed conditions and changed needs of the times. Understanding Vatican II's Renewal Guidelines Something that should not be forgotten is that the intention of these charismatic leaders was to answer particular needs in society. They were answering a local need. What took priority was the need of the people, not the organization of a group with rules and. regulations. Only much later, as numbers increased and in some cases lived far from the original local area, did the group give ,special attention to its own formation. This fact should be kept in mind when we speak of the inspiration of the founder or foundress. As has been explained, with the death of the charismatic ,leader, the routinization process took. over,' bringing .to the now more organized institute a corresponding sense of securityoand stability ,among the members. This in turn created a certain insen-sitivity to the actual needs of the people, espec!ally the poor. It is in this context that one has to understand the appeal made by the Second Vatican Council: The appropriate renewal of religious life involves two simul-taneous pr%cesses: (I) a continuous return to the sources ~ 9f all Christian life and to the original inspiration b~hind a given community and (2) an adjustment of the community to the changed conditions of the times. Clearly, the council envisaged two simultaneous processes for the renewal of religious life. It went on to enumerat.e certain princi-ples in accord with which such renewal was to proceed: to follow Christ, to participate in the life of the church, to seek to identify the institute's,particular character and purpose, and to be aware of contemporary human conditions and of the needs of the church. Renewal in the Context of Max Weber's Routinization With such an impetus given by the council, one could have noticed certain initiatives taken by various communities. Many congregations set up commissions to study their roots, going into the history of their founding inspirations. General chapters made it their chief objective to redraft their respective rules and con- Novonber-Dece~nber 1998 Abeyasingba * The Decline in Religious Vocations stitutions according to the mind and spirit of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. That the various congregations made a sincere effort to adjust themselves to the changed conditions of the times cannot be denied. In the renewed constitutions one could notice that provision was made for individual initiatives. Furthermore, units of the congregation in various countries were given the freedom to adapt and change according to their par-ticular situation. These were praiseworthy changes indeed, which by and large were done after a general consultation of all the members. One could not help noticing, however, that the final outcome was worked out within a bureaucratic setup.which was hierarchical in its composition. Any new efforts were to be tried out within a certain organizational framework of the congregation. Furthermore, the starting point of such ventures was a position of economic security. This meant that the inSecurity, the uncertainty. the risk--very much a part of the life and experience of the fouflders when they first set out to answer the need of the hour!- was not there. Also~ the Vatican Council's guidelines for adjusting the com-munity to the changed conditions of the times were not followed fully. There was a general move towards a more simple lifestyle. Institutes made changes in their religious garb, in food customs, in their cloister regulations, and so forth. There was, however, no sign of a change of structures in keeping with what the founders had had during their lifetime. Changes took place only within confines that ensured that the boat would not be rocked too much. It had to be so, inasmuch as the process of roudnization was firmly entrenched. Adjusting to the changed co.n.ditions of the times (at the coun-cil's direction) was, then, not an easy task. In practical terms, con-gregations, in spite of all their goodwill and efforts to be relevant in the present day, found themselves up against a bureaucratic system incapable of providing room for the charismatic figures who might have renewed them by making the necessary paradigm shifts. By and large this could be attributed to the routinization of the charism that religious congregations underwent after the death of their founders. As a result, the religious-life renewal that the council proposed could not be realistically achieved. If the needs of people in the various areas had been met, there would have been no dearth of vocations in the religious congregation. In Review.for Religious other words, there is no need for advertising a product that is selling and is in demand in the market. Efficiency or Effectiveness ~Max Weber's sociological observations, when applied to a reli-gious institute, do indeed seem to throw some light on the reasons for the'almost universal decline in religious vocations. As long as a bureaucratic way of life governs religious congregations, they will almost always manifest a certain efficiency in whatever work they do. The work, however, ma3i not be effective, for such a system of administration does not always respond in a vigorously prophetic manner to the urgent and crying needs of the people. ' The history of the church shows that ~hange has often come from areas off the beaten track, where some indi-viduals had found a way for themselves. In modern religious cong.regations, organized in the way they are, it is almost impossible to accommodate such trailblazing elements. It can be noted historically that only the dark eras of history witness the emergence of new religious congregations. Critical times almost always bring about a breakdown of existing systems, but it is .in these chaotic and confusing situations that charismatic per-sonalities seem to apEear out of nowhere. The late Mother Teresa's Missionaries of:Charity were such a response to a chaotic situation in one of the most populated and crowded' cities in the-world, Calcutta. Her prophetic voice of compassion and kindness to the poorest of the poor cut through such barriers as caste, religion, and class. Her living witness and work proclaimed to all people the dignity of each and every per-son, which a world had lost sight of in its quest for power and wealth. Her response had a universal and global character. Her message is clear, something that religious congregations could ponder as they rethink their charisms while they and the world step into the 21 st century. The decline in religious vocations is not an entirely negative thing. A search through the crisis will make us see the reasons It is in chaotic and confusing situations that charismatic personalities seem to appear out of nowhere. L5"_S.5"__ Noventber-December 1998 Abeyasingba ¯ The Decline in Religious Vocations why such a situation has come to pass. Instead of looking at pres-ent- day confusion with tunnel vision, one should see it in.a global perspective and as a precursor of growth. Mother Teresa's e~tam-pie could help towards such a rethinking. So also could the obser-vations made by Max Weber. They can facilitate taking stock and analyzing the present situation of religious congregations. From thls starting point religious congregations could proceed to make the drawbacks and weaknesses that are found in current struc-tures irrelevant. They could make themselves ready to face the challenges of tomorrow. Weber's.Ansights, by helping us learn the truth about ourselves, can ready us to proceed to generatiye and creative actions. They can challenge us to do some honest and humble soul searching about our present situation, In St. Paul's words (2 Co 12:10), "When I am weak, then Iam strong." Notes l Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organizqtion, trans. A.R. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (U.K.: William Hodge~ and Company, 1947), p. 334. :2 Weber, Theory, p. 337. 3 "Routinization" is Max Weber's term for the phenomenon of an original idea (here, that of the charismatic leader) becoming organized a~d conceptualized in the course of time. This is the result~of the interpret-ing, analyzing,, rationalizing, and so forth that take place when congre-gations study the writings of their founders, the accounts, of' their immediate companions and a.ssociates, the recollections of others Eho knew them, and so forth. 4 In their initial insight, almost all charismatic leaders are anti-eco~ nomic; they set t~p almost no economic system for collecting or raising funds. It is the personali.ty of the leaders that attracts others~' td them and also brings in donations and gifts. The aim of charism~itic le'aders is to achieve a special goal (filling a need of the society at that time, usually serving the poor), not to meet their own day-to-day needs. SWeber, Theory, p. 337. 6 The original basis of recruitment was the founders' personal charism. A .charism is something that can only be ;'awakened" and ".tested," not something that can be taught and learned. Novitiates arid houses of for° marion, however, tend to assume a teaching stance. See W~eber, Theory, pp. 337-338. 7 Weber, Theory, p. 342. s When religious congregations spread beyond their original geo-~ graphical area and the routinization process had been set in motion, there was no preventing a bureaucratic organization. Review for Religious o Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), pp. 230- 231. 10 Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber, An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, N Y.: Doubleday, 1960), p. 421. ~ Bendix, pp. 421-422. 12 Coser, Masters, pp. 231-232. ,3 Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life (Perfectae caritatis), §2. the departed say we are not dead see ohr faces hear ohr voices when you leadt expect like neighbors visitihg unhnnounced we are'some~lace ~ withih view within earshot like others in your house but we are, at liberty to come and go without weight.or circumscription like winds in harp strings like real answers to your real questions Avis Kunca Kubick Novetttber-Decetttber 1998 JOHN BLAKE MORE Spiritual Maturity ife.in the spirit Reading my first Thomas Merton book back in my early twenties, I came across the phrase "spiritual maturity," an expression that delighted and fascinated me even though I had no clue of what it was designed to express. I won-dered about it for several months and even reflected on its possible meaning, but then it receded into the less acces-sible regions of my consciousness and enjoyed untroubled slumber for some time. But not forever. Over the years, as I have become more life-mature and more di'scernibly chronologically mature, the phrase "spiritual matur!ty" has--through reading, conversation, and simple observa-tion- returned to my sight and consciousness many times, to haunt me but also to stimulate me to explore further its possible meanings and its probable connections to every-day life. What would.a spiritually mature person look like or act like? Am I a spiritually mature person? Is it possi-ble for me to become one? Do I know any spiritually mature persons? All this questioning and thinking over the years has led me to formulate tentatively some answers, some ideas that I think have helped me and that I want to share with others. Some of these ideas are derivative: I got them from other folks. Others are either original or synthetic, fash-ioned from items found in reading and conversation and from observing the behavior and attitudes of people I meet. John Blake More, new to our pages, writes from Tejtn 34 - Sm. 20; Cancfin Quintana Roo; 77500 Mexico. Review for Religious A spiritually mature person is probably creative. At least one religious tradition holds that we are made in the image and like-ness of God, and, if we ask ourselves in what this image and like-ness really consist, we naturally come up with the notion that we are like God because we are creative as he is creative. We are ere- ~tive because God made us that way. He made us free and there-fore creative. As humans we show our creativity in at least three 'important spheres (and here I follow Paul Ricoeur): having, power, and valuing. Having. In the exercise of creativity all people, even the spir-itually mature, need to have some material.goods for their own use. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. But the major religious tradi-tions and the spiritual values they represent do not seem to place much importance on the acquisition of wealth, do they? In fact, they see great riches as a disvalue. So spiritually mature persons are not much concerned with acquiring wealth and possessions beyond what they need to get along decently in life. On the other hand, people who have lots of possessions have greater opportu-nities to be creative. They can create new jobs for others, build libraries ~nd museums, or Simply give some of their excess money to .people who need it to survive. In itself; possessing wealth really seems to be spiritually neutral. If one sees possession as steward-ship, it can be something positive. If, however, people believe they are the outright owners without considering that God has entrusted them with these possessions and that they must appor-tion them responsibly, then they are probably not much con-cerned with growth in the Spirit. ~ 0 Power. Spiritually mature persons are probably aware of their own need for power, but are also conscious that everyone else has the same need. We need, in the first place, power over ourselves: self-determination to decide where to live or work, who our friends and associates will be, what kind of lifestyle we will adopt or develop for ourselves. We also need to be able to exercise power over others, but this must be legitimate power, the kind of power society assigns to us and expects us to exercise intelli-gently for the cbmmon good. We have to make choices for, our children. We have to determine the ~activities of our employees if we have any. But, in these activities and others like them, if we allow strength and power to become force and coercion, we can be pretty sure we are not much interested in becoming spiritually mature. We are dismayed when we read of dictatorial aggression, November-December 1998 More ¯ Spiritual Maturity ruthless kidnappings, tribal wars, but force and coercion can occur in little things of daily life and they can have the appearance of being extremely civilized and in the best of taste. :Valuing. In the sphere of valuing, we show our creativity by making determinations about the relative worth of things and activities. Nowadays it is out of fashion to be what people call "judgmental" "because, if you tell p6ople they are doing some-thing wrong, like putting a round peg into a square hole, the~ may feel threatened or embarrassed, feelings which may be owing to a kind of paranoia rather than to comments one may offer con-structively. Spiritually mature persons seldom if ever "condemn," but th.ey must in certain situations be judgmental.Th'at is why ¯ we':haSte crii:ical faculties: to make decisions about what is worthy and what is not, to be ab!e.to distinguish between the junk and the good stuff. And that is what prophecy is all about: shouting from the housetops when you see injustice and abuse.The spiritually mature person, then, distinguishes between healthy and modest criticism done in a spirit of love, and foolish or malicious remarks made in some other spirit. We must evaluate or criticize our cul-ture, our government, our friendships, and of course ourselves. While smiling permissiveness is no virtue, it is also true that unwavering tolerance and spiritual maturity have .always been on the closest terms. One good sign of spiritual growth is a weakening of our most cherished prejudices. When we hate, fear, or feel threatened by another person simply because he is different from us, then we are failing to appreciate the image and likeness of God in that person. These are three general areas that merit consideration as we ponder the nature of spiritual maturity, but other things, too, should be looked at. Frie.ndship is of great importance in the spir-itual life. All the grea( figures of the .important religious tradi-tions, those who had the ,primal mystical experience that gave .rise to those traditions, had friendships with other people. They loved their friends dearly and openly. We, too, are right to treat, our friends lovingly, with tenderness. We look forward to seeing them and spending time with them. We talk with them about'our desires and aspirations, and we confide to them our fears and failures. We inspire them and corisole them.Sometimes we revive ~them when their spirits droop. ,Some people who are mature in the spirit experience some' difficulty in maintaining, friendships for reasons of transport, distance, or schedule, but such difficulties are ! Review for Relig4ous not insurmountable. People can ha-be a firm and meaningful frien'dghip by correspondence. Sure, by mail. Why not? If you know someone whose values and outlook are compatible with yours, you can have an ongoing correspondence with him or her that will be significant for both your live~, and also enriching. You do not have to write anything world-shaking or mind-bog-gling. Writing takes a little more time and effort than a face-to-face chat, and it does not offer the same consolations and pleasures as real face-to-face togetherness, but it is still something of great worth. Growth in the spirit is closely connected to skill in the ~ine art of listening. When I told a friend that some-one had said I was a good conversationalist, he answered that what she really meant was that I am a good listener. I wonder how right he was.'The plain fact, though, i~ that people do like to be listened to, and the spiritually mature person is a master at listening lovingly, corn-" passionately, but also selectively. By this I do not mean the kind of selective listening that'~ filters all I hear through my own ego supports in order to register only those things that satisfy or interest me. Although an interchange between friends may involve a recounting of events or a descrip-tion of facts, when I listen to a friend I am not trying to acquire factual information. I am trying to get a sense of his or her state of mind and soul. This is not always easy, in view of personality differences and of people's varying ability to articulate their inner dispositions. But~ When we listen, we need to care mostly about the person we are listening to. Spiritually mature persons have a delightful sense of child-like wonder that makes everything new. Sophisticated people who have seen it all and done it all, or just do not want to get involved, area lov less fun to be with than men and women who have a deep spiritual sense of wonder. Wonder leads to openness and surprise, contentment and faithfulness, curiosity and enthusiasm. It also brings an appreciation of the uniqueness of each person along with a sense of brotherhood and equality. " Surprising as it may seem, spiritually mature people are hardly ever highly disciplined people. This is because they are loving persons. They do everything that has to be done, they do it at the appointed time, and they 'do it right--not because they have discipline, but because they have love. They are.motivated to read Friendship is of great importance in the spiritual life. November-December 1998 More ¯ SpiritualMaturity Surprising as it may seem, spiritually mature people are hardly ever highly disciplined people. books and wash floors and get to work on time because they live out Augustine's dictum "Love and do as you please." A sullen-faced p4rson probably has too much discipline and too little love. When the persons I am talking about look out at the world, they-see a lot of ambiguity and they embrace it heartily as a major component of human life. If the Creator is good, why does he allow us to suffer so much? Why should I help the poor if poverty is not eradicable? This kind of ambiguity is embraced and accepted by mature .persons of all spiritual tradi-tions, and in the case of Christian spir-ituality there is the model of the ambiguity of the cross. Why should I forgive these people if they are killing me? Why should I ask my Father for help if he has abandoned me? And, putting the two questions together, why should I ask my Father to forgive these people who are killing me if my Father has already abandoned me? For the spiritually mature these are actually non.questions, even as they represent realities that have to be faced. Not because maturity pro-duces historical or social blindness, but because serious consider-ation of such issues leads to acceptance of reality. Such questions, when formulated as questions, are not answerable. And even here ~here is a further ambiguity: how can I accept the reality of drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, rampant poverty and ignorance, and on and on, and still work to change all these social ills, to provide some alleviation to all the suffering they cause? Does "That's the way the world is" mean "why try to change it!"? Language use, too, has to be considered in connection,with spiritual maturity. As little children we learn to use language as an instrument to further our own designs and to get others to behave in ways that promote our own interests. If we learn this skill well as children and then refine it as adults, we become wonderful manipulators or even politicians, and this is why. spiritually mature people hardly ever go into politics. They lack skill in using lan-guage instrumentally. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. They use language to inform or to persuade, but never to.manipulate. Modern societies view independence as a positive andhighly desirable virtue. Mos't parents say they want their children to Review for Religious become independent. We admire the "independent spirit." Actually, such independence is a fiction and a most undesirable one. In reality, each of us is highly dependent on at least a few other humans, and we should be. Living in human society means being interdependent: I depend on you and you depend on me. This is an important ingredient in the cement that holds human society together and promotes the development of culture. Instead of~insisting on their independence, spiritually mature persons consider themselves autonomous--which suggests the ability to live and act in freedom from outside control, coercion, or manip-ulation. That is different from independence because in my free-dom I acknowledge that I depend--sometimes radically--on others, and they on me. In our day most of us are aware (sometimes painfully aware) that the subject matter of life (the real business of human exis-tence) is change and that, in the best case, change takes the form of transformation of the person into an ever more human creature. Being human is a good thing and does not mean, as the cynic 'believes, unremitting egotism and venality. Before he started feel-ing hi.s oats, Adam was so perfect that he had conversations with God as they walked "in the cool. of the day." Being human should mean changing arid becoming perfect, as our Father is perfect. Since most of us consider such perfection an unrealizable ideal, persons who think about becoming spiritually mature prob-ably have a set of unattainable goals that they take quite seriously and adhere to assiduously. They have probably formulated a set of precepts which relate to these goals and which articulate their creatureliness and humanness during their inner conversations with themselves and with' the Spirit of God. In my own thinking about becoming mature in the Spirit, I have come up tentatively with three precepts that reflect my own human creatureliness, but are also ordered toward my capacity to become a "partaker of the divine naturE." I use them to talk to myself. Let me offer them here. Deepen your understanding of reality. Try to get a good grasp of reality by asking the ~right questions. The right questions always have three distinguishing characteristics: they.are unanswerable, they always lead to other and better questions, and they almost always begin with why. Acquiring knowledge requires study and learning from good teachers and good books, along with the will-ingness to undergo the suffering involved in replacing stale beliefs November-December 1998 More ¯ Spiritual Maturity with new data. It also dem'ands increasing connectedness to the culture in which I live and awareness of how life is lived in other cultures. What I should be looking for are meaning and connec-tion: the ultimate unity of all being and its essential oneness with the Absolute. ' Refine your tastes. Begin by distinguishing the merely attractive or pretty from the truly beautiful. If you were brought up on rock music, Mozart probably leaves you cold. Praxiteles probably has little to say to you if you think Schwarzenegger and Stallone are beautiful, Biat we should perhaps not consider ourselves less wor~ thy humans if we are drawn.to the merely attractive or pretty. ' This happens in the best of families, doesn't it? As young peo-ple, when we are most curious about the world and our place in it, we are bombarded with sounds and images and esthetic val-ues from the popular culture. Butwe eventually grow out of that; we ~"put away the things of a child," as St. Paul says. Evil is, of course, the ultimate ugliness, and our involvement in it dimin-ishes our humanity and tarnishes the image of God in us. ~ Formalize your ethics. Here we make a distinction between for-mal and material moral norms. Material norms deal with specific actions and decisions such as killing, steal!ng, and lying (not rec-ommended); and with praying, respecting authority, and being faithful (highly approved and even urged). There is only one norm for those who follow the way of formal ethics: Always seek the good and avoid what is evil. This norm is assimilated and interi-orized by spiritually mature persons to the ext~nt that it becomes part of their nature. In all their decisions and actions, attitudes and dispositions, they keep both eyes on the truly good: good for themselves, their family, their society, their nation, their 151anet: The more this single norm gets imprinted on their souls, the less they have to run through a mental checklist of material norms (do's and don'ts) to see what is prohibited and what is approved. "Seek what is good and avoid what is evil." 'Finally, spiritually mature persons are surely happy persons who radiate to o~hers their joy at living in this world with other people and at spending periods of time in prayerful silence com-muning with the Absolute. Their joy is increased by the knowl-edge that whatever spiritual maturity they may have attained is in fact a free gift from a loving and gracious God. Review for Religious DENNIS J. BILLY A "Spiritdal Turn" for Catholic Moral Theology MGY first encounter with Bernard H~iring,'ithe renowned erman Redemptorist who wrote such significant w. orks as The Law of Christ (1954)~and Free and Faithful in Christ (1978- 1981) and whom many have hailed as the father of contemporary Catholic moral theology, came during a' congress of Redemptorist moral theblogians held at Aylmer; Quebec~ 26-30June 1989. Or/ the second day of the congress,, after he had given an insightful presentation to the general assembly on the state of moral theol-ogy since Vatican Council II, I found myself sitting next to him at lunch as hemused out loud in his weak, barely audible voice (from his long and difficult battle with throat cancer) on the future of moral,theological reflection within the Catholic tradition. Then, as now, a single thought stood out from all the rest: "We have lost sight of the Holy Spirit. In the future, moral theology must give more emphasis to the role of the Spirit. Otherwise, all is lost." Hiiring was so insistent on ~his point that he stated it out-right .at a later session in a rare personal intervention from the floor, For more than eight years, I hav~ been p~ndering the mean-ing of these quiet, unassuming words perhaps in ways which he himself might not have accepted. Retrieving the Spirit Given the vast varieties of pseudo-mysticism in the history of Christianity and the great facility with which the name of the Dennis J. Billy CSSR, a frequent contributor, writes again from Rome, where his address is Accademia Alfonsiana; C.P. 2458; 00100 Roma, Italy. November-December 1998 Billy * A "Spiritual Turn" for Catholic Moral Theology Spirit can be and has been invoked as a way of avoiding critical moral reflection, it is easy to understand how, quite early on, within orthodox circles a latent (and sometimes overt) suspicion grew of anything that even vaguely resembled a charismatic ren-dering of truth by a small "Spirit-filled" elite. To a large extent the church's magisterial structure (that is, its emphasis on apostolic succession and the role of tradition) took shape as a result of its struggle against the esoteric (and sometimes laxist) tendencies of Gnostic mysticism, on theone hand, and the rigorist tenets of Montanist spiritualism, on the other (to name two of the more prominent examples). Historians point to the church's institu-tionalization of the Spirit in the office of the episcopacy and its subsequent control of the sacramental life of the Christian faith-ful as the predominant means by which, down through the cen-turies, it has safeguarded itself from similar threats. One of the unfortunate by-products of this process of insti-tutionalization was the gradual marginalization of the Spirit from the inner workings of Catholic theological reflection. As the mag-isterium became more and more centralized, it consolidated its hold over what it considered the "authentic" utterings of the Spirit and helped to create an atmosphere in which theologians were constrained to pursue their goals within increasingly limited notions of rationality. The gradual shift in Western hermeneuti-cal thought from allegory to syllogism to induction gives evi-dence to this effect, as does the roughly parallel movement in rational theory from analogy to univocity to equivocation. By most counts, this momentous restructuring of the rational pro-cesses of Western thought was as much a function of rising mag-isterial control of the sacred as of an ever changing philosophical terrain (as witnessed in the successive preeminence of Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, and Nominalist thought patterns). Localizing spiritual authority in ecclesiastical institutions, in other words, had the unforeseen .effect of gradually .disassociating ratio-nal discourse from its roots in the intuitive dimension of human existence, that side of human nature most likely to sustain a close experiential rapport with the Spirit. To speak in broad historical terms, the "despiritualization" of human reason had barely begun in the patristic and monastic traditions of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages (when the centralization of ecclesiastical power was hardly underway in Rome), had made recognizable progress during the early Scholastic period (near the time of the Gregorian Review for Religious Reform and the Investiture crisis), was in full swing with the rise of Nominalism in the early 14th century (not long after Boniface VIII's proclamation of Unam sanctam in 1302), and had reached its highest stage of development during the Age of the Enlightenment (just before Vatican Council I's proclamation of papal infallibility). Putting aside the more difficult task of discerning which histor-ical progression was influenced by which, and recognizing the probability of a circular relationship between the two (as well as the likely involvement of other discernible historical factors), one cannot help wondering if the present-day postmodern disillu-sionment with human reason--itself a reaction against the failed hopes of Reason's .coming of age--will herald an attempt to retrieve reason's lost association with the spiritual. If so, one would also have to wonder if the present tendency in the governing structures of Roman Catholicism toward increased centralization is nothing more than a momentary stay in a larger process of decentralization, the forces of which were at work long before the opening of Vatican II and will probably continue. An Anthropological Turn t Such a retrieval or "reinvestment" of reason's ties with "things spiritual" must proceed from the ins'~ghts of a sound Christian anthropology. In the present circumstances, the Pauline body/soul/spirit arrangement as formulated in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 proves especially helpful: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your ~spirit and soul and' body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Here Paul provides an anthropology that construes the human person as a union of three distinct (albeit intimately related) ele-ments: body (soma), soul (psyche), and spirit (pneuma). These ele-ments exist together in the human person and cannot be isolated one from another (as if a human body can be separated from the soul and spirit and still be examined intact). So closely are they related, in fact, that one cannot speak of spirit outside the context of soul and body, and vice versa. Since Paul proposes these anthro-pological terms while addressing the community of believers in the church at Thessalonica, care must be taken not to isolate his understanding of human existence from either its inherent social context or the life of faith. Account must also be taken of the fact that, although he insists on their intimate union in the human m Noventber-Decentber 1998 Billy * A "Spiritual Turn" for Catholic Moral Theology person, he actually says precious little about how body, soul, and spirit relate to one another in the concrete circumstances of daily living. Given these significant contextual details (or lack thereof), the following claims appear generally continuous with the main lines of Paul's anthropological vision and offer correctives to pres-ent- day exaggerated emphasis on the rational. (1) In addition to body and soul, a person can also experience his or her spirit. ,(2) A retrieval or "'reinvestment " of reason's ties with "things spiritual" must proceed from the insights of a sound Christian anthropo!ogy. The mutual relationship between body. and soul suggests a similar rapport between soul and spirit. (3) The spirit touches ~he body through the medidtion of the soul.~(4) Generally speak-. ing, the Holy Spirit touches an individual by communicating its grace first to a person's spirit and then through the .spirit to the person.'s soul and body. (5) God and the human person can enjoy a close interpersonal rapport by.virtue of their communing spirits. (6)People relate to one another on the level of body. soul, and spirit. (7) The Spirit unites the Body of Christ, the church, not only theologically (that is, to God), but also anthropologically (that is, among its members). (8) It does so primarily on the .level of human spirit and only secondarily on the other dimensions of human existence. Elicited from the Paulin4 anthropology of 1 Thessaloni~ns 5:23, these anthropological claims provide the parameters by which a discussion abo,ut reason's "spiritual renewal" may pro-deed. Key to this discussion is the need for all theologians (and moral theologians in particular) to recognize the competence (and the limits) of reason's rule. Just as reason extends to the body through its ordering of the passions (and is thereby "enfleshed"), so the spirit extends to the soul (the seat of the rational faculty) by means of its quiet in.tuiting presence. Clearly, both movements have moral significance that must be taken into account for the future of moral theology. The Criteria of Reason's Spiritual Rebirth What,might such limits be? Without exhausting the possi-bilities, the following list provides some guidelines for discerning Review for Religious the genuine ways in which reason and spirit mutually influence one another. 1. An anthropological relationship of circularity exists between spirit and reason; that is, the insights of one complement the scope and competence of the other in such a way that, when taken together, their interaction generates a field of understanding unique to themselves and which neither would be fully capable of penetrating on its own. Spirit .brings intuition and moments of keen insight to the movement of discursive thought; reason artic-ulates through language something of the inexpressible utterings of the human spirit. Authentic theological reflection taps into this relationship of circularity and allows it to open up for each succeeding generation the meaning of the symbols of the Christian faith, ~. 2. The spirit influences the mind through prayer, and vice versa. When a person.'s spirit communes with God's Spirit, there is a natural reverberation (however slight) in the other, anthro-pological dimensions of human existence. This subtle influence, which will become a veritable overflowing (redundantia) in the beatific vision, strengthens the transcendent orientation of an individual's rational operation. A "spiritua!" person tends to Con-centrate on holy things and seeks to view all things with th'e mind of God. The person?s prayer (contemplative prayer in particular) plays a transforming rather than merely ancillary role in reason's spiritual homecoming, 3. The human spirit is not "irrational," but "supranational." It does not ask reason to go against its own internal principles, but seeks continually to broaden reason's, scope by providing intu-itions that challenge previously unquestioned (and possibly falla-cious) arguments. When reason is in tune with wholesome human spirit (and even more so whefiit is in touch with God's Spirit), it is. constantly prompted to reach beyond itself and to stretch the boundaries within which it normally functions. This extended x~ange is a welcome corrective to that narrowing univocity which nowadays often masquerades as the sole legitimate face of ratio-nal inquiry. ~ 4. Theologians who reintegrate spirit and reason demonstrate a guarded yet profound respect for church authority. The gradual marginalization of spirit from the center of theological reflec-tion, which came at least in part as a result of magisterial cen-tralization and control of the sacred, does not mean that a November-December 1998 Billy ¯ A~'Spiritual Turn"for Catholic Moral TheoloKF .--7- 600 "respiritualized" reason will ignore or, worse, openly disdain the valuable hermeneutical role the magisterium has played in the history of the Catholic tradition. On the contrary, a reintegra-tion of spirit and reason should bring about an even closer work-ing relationship between theologians (in. their concern for reasoned clarity and the e.xploration of' the faith) and the magis-terium (in its concern for the preservation and purity of the faith). While neither will always agree with the other, a close working relationship between them will provide helpful correctives against the extremes of overrationalization and pseudo-mysticism that can all too often get in the way of and even obscure sound theo-logical reflection. 5. A closer working rapport between spirit anal reason will require a reintegrated understanding of the various theological disciplines, especially dogmatic, moral, and spiritual theology. The unfortunate breakup of theology in recent centuries into sep-arate and highly specialized disciplines can itself be understood as a symptom of reason's ongoing despir, itualization. A renewed or "respiritualized" understanding of reason will operate success-fully only in a context ~at seeks to preserve the unity of theology in the midst of its highly specialized and sometimes .seemingly disconnected parts. 6. Renewing reason's link with the spirit will also move a per-son's sense of vocation to the center of theological reflection. No longer will theology, be construed as something existing "in the abstract," as if proceeding outside the theologian's own personal and communal faith experience. Any presentation and consequent systematization of the symbols~of the faith will be valid only to the extent that it remains faithful to and. authentically expresses the deepest sense of a,person's call in life before God through the church and in the world. One's reflection on God, in other words. must tak~ place in the context of one's sense of self in the presence of God and the community of believers. 7. The reason/spirit relationship sheds greater ligh~ on the importance of there being a continuity between theologians' pro-fessional work and their moral behavior. Sound theological reflec-tion stems from a stable interplay between spirit and reason. It reflects the contours of individuals' calls from God in this life and reaches its fullest expression when it is enfleshed in the con-crete circumstance~ of their daily existence. This cannot happen, however, if reason is deprived of all access to the nourishing roots Review for Religious of the spirit, where the human person communes with the Spirit of God through a grace that is freely given and freely received. Sound theological reflection challenges the theologian to int~- grate reason and spirit, theological discourse and personal sanc-tity. The church needs theologians who want to be saints, who admit this desire without false humility, and who bring this desire to the forefront of their theological inquiry. 8. Finally, a reintegration of spirit and reason would sustain within theological reflection a healthy tension between "theol-ogy as science" and "theology as art." Reason's desire to ver-ify corfipl~ments the spirit's yearning for m3?stery, and vice versa. Together they provide useful correctives to the ten-dencies of overrationalization and exaggerated rhetoric, which lessen theology's scope by seekings to turn it into something it is not and should not be, Theology is more than science and mole than art, It Future moral,theological discussion will have to develop a greater sensitivity to the ethical content of humanity's symbolic xpressions. is science and.art, a rare "field-encompassing" discipline which touches all areas of human knowl-edge in its attempt to convey the meaning of the Christian faith to each successive generation.1 By preserving this tension, theo-logical reflection retains a ~.ay of expressing the faith ever anew yet always ina~cord with th~ church's theological tradition. New and creative insights emerge from the tradition precisely in this way, .thereby allowing it to expand its theologic.al horizons and to move 'forward. Implications for Moral Theology The above criteria represent just some of the ways in which a deeper understanding of the relationship between spirit and reason would change ~he way in which theology itself is conceived and carried out. As one might expect, they have very concrete implications for the future of moral theology. 1. Moral theology would be challenged to break out of its hylomorphic rendering of the human (that is, moral) act that has "get the parameters for serious discussion within the Catholic tra- Noventber-December 1998 Billy ¯ A "Spiritual Turn" for Catholic Moral TbeoloKF ~dition since the time of Aquinas. A human action is more than just an expre~ssion of body (as the object of the external action) and mind (as the internal movement of deliberated will). Greater sen-sitivity mu~t be given in futur, e moral-theological reflection to the influence which a person's spirit brings to moral action. A good place to begin would be to apply the insights of Aquir~as's teaching on grace (which, intere~stingly, he considers under the New Law at the end of his treatment of the fundamental princi-ples of morality, that is, Summa tbeologiae, I-lI, qq. 109-114, to the Pauline rendering of 'human anthropology as body (soma), soul (psyche), and spirit (pneuma). 2. Eor ~this to occur, a shift must take place in the under-standing of the nature and role of rationality in current moral-the-ologiEal reflection. In its attempt in recent years to model itself after the empirical and social sciences, theology in general (and moral theology in particular) has adopted a univocal understand-ing of rational inquiry that prevents a balanced interplay of rea-son and spirit from entering into the legitimate bounds of serious theological refledtion. The result has been an unfortunate nar-rowing (some would say "impoverishment") of theology's rightful scope. The current deadlock in the deontologist/proportionalist discussion is but one symptom of this reductive theological under-taking. 3. Since the spirit expresses itself more .through images than in the "clear and distinct" ideas of rational discoul:se, future moral~ theological discussion will have to .develop a greater, sensitivity to the ethical content of humanity's symbolic expressions. To modify Aristotle's definition: Man is not just a rational but also:a symbolic animal. In developing this sensitivity, moral theology will draw closer to the arts than ever before (at least within recent memory) and begin to effect a transformation of the genres and literary style in which it expresses itself. It will also spark a renewed interest in the ethical Content of the images and sym-bols found in the Scriptures and the church's liturgy. 4. Future moral-theological discussion will develop close ties with the three levels of Christian spirituality: (1) the experien-tial, (2) the sapiential, and (3) the analytical.2 Ethical kngwledge will be understood as something to be-garnered from the whole of human experience (that is, throughout the body/soul/spirit continuum) with special emphasis given to the social .aspects of human moral-spiritu.a! discourse and to the role of prayer and~ Review for Relig4ous discernment in moral decision making. This heightened awareness Of the spiritual aspects of its theological heritage will give moral theology a deeper awareness of its own most distinctive traits and enable it to make serious contributions in discussions with other ethical traditions. 5. Given its decision to approach moral knowledge through a reintegrated understanding of the rapport between spirit and rea-son, Catholic moral theology would do best to enter into future dialogue with other ethical traditions--be they philosophical or theological--not by seeking a least common methodological denominator (usually fully acceptable to neither side), but by maintaining without compromise its position on the close anthro-pological (and hence ethical) connection between human reason and human spirit. It is precisely on this level that an answer to the question of the existence of an autonomous Christian ethics will be found. An I~tegral U, nity, a Spiritual Turn" No longer can the Christian life be artificially divided into the way of the law and the way of ~erfection. Precept and coun-sel, .commandment and beatitude, virtue and gift are,all bound together in an integral, inseparable unity. If moral theology is to give more emphasis to the role of the Holy Spirit (as H~iring sug-gests), it must first retrieve' its lost ti~ with the inner movements of the human spirit--the place within the person where the divine and human meet. Only by including th~s neglected anthropolog-ical dimension in moral-theo!ogical reflection will the human perspective of those concerned be broad enough to allow foFa proper discerfiment of the divine. The future orientation of Catholic moral theology will depend to a large degree on how its spokesmen, both magisterial and pro-fessorial, construe (or perhaps "reconstrue") the relationship between rationality and spirituality. Reintegrating these key aspects of the tradition would have two important theological and institutional effects. On the one hand, moral decision making would evidence a notable swing toward prayer and spiritual dis-cernment in helping to solve the dilemmas of conscience that arise among the faithful. This marked "spiritual turn" would move Catholic moral theology away from its present fascination with the problem-solving machinations of quandary ethics to a relational November~December 1998 Billy ¯ A "Spiritual'Turn"for Catholic Moral Theology paradigm rooted in the divine-human encounter. Bishops and theologians, on the other hand. would move away from their all too often adversarial positions to a more collaborative, mutually supportive stance. The changed dynamics would show the impor-tance of rooting moral-theological reflection in the fullness of human experience (that is, body, soul, and spirit) while at the same time highlighting the complementary ways in which the magis-terium and church theologians elucidate the tradition. What is the future of moral theology? The answer to this question is as elusive as time itself. For the moment, let it simply be said that, while the moral theology of the~future will invariably include many things, it cannot afford to exclude or marginalize "the life of the Spirit." In the present context the latter phrase refers to rational theological reflection rooted in a profound awareness of the human spirit as it opens itself up to God's Spirit and allows the word of God to take shape and utter itself, however softly, within the cor~fines of the limited words and deeds by which ¯ we construct our human exp, erience. Such a word, however spo-ken, would resonate with authority and not return in vain. Notes t The notion of a "field-encompassing" discipline comes from Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: The Morality° of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief(Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1966), pp. 81-82. A similar application to spirituality appears in Sandra M. Schneiders, "Spirituality in the Academy," Theological Studies 50 (1989): 692. 2 These levels of spirituality are developed under a slightly different nomenclature in Walter H. Principe, "Toward Defining Spirituality," Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 12 (1983): 135-136. See also The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), s.v. "Spirituality, Christian,", by Walter H. Principe. Review for Religious REGIS J. ARMSTRONG Consecrated Life: Anointed with Joy A passage once "noted with pleasure" by the New York Times Book Review was one by Albert Camus, whose writings express a strong current ofthe, pessimism in EuroPe in the wake of.World War II. It contains these words: "One of the temptations of the artist is to believe himself solitary. But this is not true. He stands in the midst of all, in the same rank,' neither highe~ nor lower, with all those who are working and struggling. His very vocation is. to give a voice to the sorrows and the joys of all."~ . Artists whose vocation is "to give a voice to the sor-rows and joys of all"--this could well be a description of consecrated persons standing with "all those who are working and struggling." It is a description of people called to identify deeply with the mission of Jesus, who came among us and stood in. the midst of all,,.giving voice to their sorrows and joys. How does one assume the stance of "artist" of some-thing so elusive, inexpressible, paradoxical, and fragile? To become such an artist demands entering into the pathos of life and experiencing compassion deeply, that is, as com-passio, suffering or feeling deeply with another. How does one give voice to joy at all? "Silence is the perfectest her-ald of joy," Shakespeare's Claudio says wisely in Much Ado Regis J. Armstrong OFMCap presented this paper (here some-what revised) at the annual conference of vicars of religious held in San Antonio in March 1998. His address is St. Fidelis Friary; 7790 Country Road 153; Interlake6, New York 14847. consecrated life November-Decentber 1998 Armstrong * Consecrated Life About Nothing.2 Joy, thenl is perhaps best ex~pressed transparently, whether one's focus on so paradoxically universal and personal a subject be psychological, sociological, cultural, philosophical, the- 916gical, spiritual, or liturgical. Perspectives From a biblical perspective'~ joy is an incredibly rich theme. In the Old Testament, profound joy is the chosen people's response to Yahweh's redemptive presence or, in the lager tradition, to Yahweh's ever present hesed or lovi'ng mercy. Various forms of the word joy appear in the Old Testament well over a hundred times, giving an inkling or anticipation of the New Testament, of Mary's proclamation of joy in "God my Savior'; and Paul's dramatic exhortation to the Philippians "Rejoice in the Lord always." Over and over agaifi Luke colors his Gospel and Acts with joy:'"To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation . and to those in sorrow, joy." If Yahweh is the supreme joy and the greatest delight for the pegple of the Old Testament, the self-giving of God in Christ provides those of the New Testament an essential quality of life, joy. The Holy One of Israel is now incarnate in the person of Jesus: the unfathomable, ineffable joy at the heart of God is now tangible. The Dictionnaire de Spiritualit~ Asc~tique et Mystique offers a variety of perspectives from which to reflect on joy. In its entry on joie, the reader can find, in addition to biblical considerations, summaries of the different theologies.3 There are considerations ' of people such as the early theological giants Origen .and Augustine, the. medieval mystics Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi, and the much later doctors of the church Francis' de Sales and Thdr~se Of the Child' Jesus. Each of these writers, the author maintains, offers a different interpretation of the same reality. For Origen, knowledge of the gospel was a source of joy, a joy epitomized in the reaction of the aged Simeon when hd had the Infant in his arms.4 Augustine found joy in the Lord's ever-for-giving mercy, but saw its fullness in the eternal bliss of heaven;5 while Bernard repeatedly disEovered it in God's love.6 Francis of Assisi sang its praises in' hiE descrip.tioia of True Joy,7 and Francis de Sales urged his audienc~ to find joy by putting aside the plea-sures of this world and focusing on those of heaven,s Thdr~se wallowed in the joy of faith when her Beloved seemed most Review for Religious absent,9 From that vantage point alone, Franqois Bussini, author of the Dictionnaire's study, offers a variety of rich ways of study-ing joy, that is, through, the different traditions of,spirituality that provide insights into the meaning and gift of joy. ~' Gaudete in Domino Bussini might easily have added one significant name to his list of "theologians of joy": Paul VI, the author of the first papal doc-ument on the mystery of Christian joy, Gaudete in Domino, 9 May 1975., From his days as cardinal archbishop of Milan to the address of hi~ very last audience on 2 August 1967; four days before his death, joy was a leitmotif of his, a theme to which he continually returried. He offered an insight into the reason for this when he rhetorically asked the people of Milan:: "Have you ever met a saint? And, if you have, tell me: What is the characteristic you found in that soul?" His response to those questions suggests how closely he associated joy with~ the pursuit of happiness: "It will be joy [that you have found], a happiness so tranquil, so pro-found, so simple, but so true. And it is this transparency of joy that makes us declare: That is truly a good soul, because he has joy in his heart.''1° It is not surprising that as pope he took the opportunity to write a major statement on the Christian pursuit of joy. In addition to being an exhortation to pr~y for tile gift of joy, Gaudete in Domino expre~ssed in the mid- 1970s the pope's firm belief that peoples throughout the world desperately desired this "fragile and threatened" gift. ¯ Paul VI introduced his apostolic exhortatiori with a simple description of the need for joy in the contemporary ~orld (GD §1) and con'cluded with three others describing the cry of humanity, especially of the young, for the gift of joy. "We should be atten-tive to the appeal tliat rises from the hearts of humanity," Paul exhorts, "from the age of wondering childhood to serene old age, as a presentiment of the divine mystery" (GD §1). From this atten-tiveness or focusing on the joys of our hearts, Paul discovers an While never losing sight of the fact that joy is a ~timension of human life, Paul Vl found that the mystery of the Incarnate Word transformed its meaning. November-December 1998 Armstrong ¯ Consecrated Life energy and enthusiasm to share the reason for our joy with oth-ers. "In no way," he says, "can [joy] encourage the person ~vho enjoys it to have an attitudd of p.reoccupoation with self. [It] is the result of a human-divine communion, one that aspires to a com-munion ever more universal." In retrospect, Gaudete in Domino provided an insight into the call of Evangelii nuntiandi issued seven months later, which many. consider the Magna Carta of Paul VI'S papacy. There he dramatically exhorted all Christians, and espe-cially religious: "The privileged means of effective, evangeliza-tion" is to proclaim with joy "the joyful news of the fulfillment of the promises of the covenant offered by God" (EN §§69 and 6)~ At the core of the seven brief chapters of Gaudete in Domino, written in his elegant poetic style, Paul sketched the biblical foun. dations of both the Old and New Testaments and the enduring heritage bf Christian joy found in the lives of the saints. The pope may well have had Bussini's article before him,.-especially as he reflected on those saints who expressed joy in their lives and writ-ings. But it is striking how, in addition to Francis of Assisi and Th&~se of L!sieux, Paul draws special attention to the joy of the Conventual Franciscan Maximilian K01be, whom he had canon-ized a few years earlier: "His interior peace, serenity, and joy somehow transformed the place of suffering [Auschwitz]--which was usually like an image of hell--into the antechamber of eter-nal life, both for his unfortunate companions and for himself" (GD §4). While never losing sight of the fact that joy is a dimension of human life, Paul vI found that the,mystery of the,Incarnate Word transformed its meaning: Jesus himself knew, appreciated, and celebrated a whole range of human joys. More wonderfully, how-ever, Jesus revealed the s'ecret.of the unfathomable joy of.the "secret life of the Trinity," that is, the joy of living in God's l~ve (GD §3). "The ~ather is seen here," Paul teaches, "as the one who gives himself to the. Son, without reserve and without ceas-ing, in a burst of joyful generosity, and the Son is seen as he who gives himself in the same way to the Father, in a burst of joyful gratitude, in the Holy Spirit" (GD §3). The joy revealed by Jesus of Nazareth, then, "is the reverberation in human consciousness of the love that he has always known as God in the bosom of the Father" (GD §3). As the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus revealed a new, infinite dimension of joy, one that makes the human soul restless and ever eager to partake of its fullness. "In essence," Review for Religious t Paul e~iplains, "Christian joy is the spiritual sharing in the unfath-omable joy, both divine and human, which is in the heart of Jesus Christ glorified" (GD §2). But, more ~than reflecting on the rev-elatory dimension of Jesus' joy, the pope accentuates its paschal dimension as he underscores that by his death and resurrection Jesus poured the Spirit into the hearts of believers. "The Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son and is their mutual love, is henceforth communicated to the people of the New Covenant and to each soul ready for his secret action. Together with him the human heart is inhabited by the Father and the Son" (GD §3). This, then, is experience of a joy that is truly spiritual, the fruit of the Spirit's presence and a characteristic of fill Christian virtue (see GD §3). Shortly before his death Paul VI shared with John Magee, his secretary, "the secret of my spirituality": .I have to recognize God the Father's action in his Son in my regard. Once I acknowledge that God can work in me through his Son, he gives me grace, the grace of baptism. After the grace of being reborn to God's life, my life becomes a tension of love with God drawing me to him-self. Always, in all of us, there is this tension betwe.en my mise-ria and God's misericordia. The whole spiritual life of every one of us lies between these two poles. If I open myself to the action of God and the Holy Spirit and4et them do with me what they will, then my tension becomes ioyous and feel within myself a great desire to come to him and receive his mercy; more than ever I recognize the need to be for-given, to receive the gift of rnercy,l~ This passage offers a m~arvelous insight~in,to'Paul's preoccupa-tion with the gift of Christian joy. That "tension of love" that stretched or expanded his entire life and made him continually aware of his sinfulness and the overwhelming love of God became joyous and made him ever more desirous to possess the joy of God's presence. Evangelica testificatio, Paul VI's apostolic exhortation on the renewal of the religious life, was significant in this regard. It expresses his conviction that the joy radiating from religious com-munities would be proof of the validity Of religious life. Joy, he maintained, would be "proof to everyone that the state of life which [religious] have chosen is h~lping [them] to realize the greatest possible expansion of [their] life in Christ." Moreover, November-Decentber 1998 Armstrong ¯ Consecrated Life it would be a magnet attracting the young to understand the appeal of Jesus, and be "the most effective invitation to embrace ttie religious life" (ET §55). Vita Consecrata Twen~ty-one years later John Paul II published his postsyn-odal apostolic exhortation Vita consecrata. Curiously, Vita conse-crata contains only scattered references to joy, fourteen in all. There are certainly echoes of Paul VI's Evangelica testificatio in phrases such as "the joyful witness [of consecrated life] to [God's] loving concern for every human being" (VC §16). Unlike Paul vI, however, John Paul II seems more concerned with the dwelling on the foundations of consecrated life. He only touches on the joy that the consecrated life brings through monasticism (VC §§6, 2.7), virginity (VC §7), and common life (VC §51), rather than off the dynamics of a spirituality of joy. Does .this mean that Vita con-secrata does not assist us in understanding consecrated life as being anointed with joy? No, but Michael Novak's observatior~ into the thought of John Paul II is apropos. The pope, Novak claims, is an artist at home in the world of the intellectual as well as in.that of the poet. To understand these dimensions of his thought, it is important to remember that he is a phenomenologist. "Simply put," Novak maintains, phenomenology is a sustained effort to bring back into phi-losophy everyday things, concrete wholes, the basic expe-riences of life as they come to us. It wishes to recapture ~those quotidian realities from the empiricists, on the one hand, who analyze them into sense data, impressions, chem-ical compositions, neural reactions, etc., and from the ide-alists, on the other hand, who break them 6p into ideal types, categories,and forms.12 -.To understand his thought, then, demands being attentive to both his language and the underpinnings of his thought. In addressing religious communities and consecrated persons "in the introduction to Vita consecrata, the pope writes of the "dif-ficult and trying period" .and of the "time of tension and struggle" in which they live. By referring to,Acts 15:31, he expresses his hope that consecrated women and men will receive the document as 'the Christians of Antioch did; by being joyful at the hope and encouragemen't which it gives. Immediate!y, however, he turns Review for Religious his attention to the entire people of'God and expresses his hope that the document will increase their joy as they become more aware of the consecrated life and, as a result, "thank almighty God for this great gift [of consecrated life]" (VC §13). Does this mention of consecrated life as a "great gift" provide a hint at the underpinnings of John Paul's understanding of what it means to be "anointed with joy"? Even a superficial reading of ¼"ta consecrata reveals John Paul's view of the consecrated life and the evangelical counsels as gifts. This perspective undoubtedly flows from his per-ception of Vatican II's emphasis on the profound reality of ecclesial communion, "in which all gifts ¯ converge for the building up of the Body of Christ and for the church's mission in the world" (VC §4). Seventy-three times he writes in Vita conse-crata of the gifts of consecrated life, of the evan-gelical counsels, of the radical gift of self for love, of the gifts of consecrated communities that com-plement one another, and so on. From John Paul's perspective, then, an awareness of the great gift of consecrated life, an awareness of being gifted; is a source of joy as well as a reason for thanksgiving". Thus Vita consecrata clearly offers an under-standing of conse, crated life that clearly supports seeing it as "anointed with j6y," for consecrated women and men have been gifted, have been sin-gled out as recipients of a special love tha~ brings joy. Fourteen times these gifts are specifically attributed to the Holy Spirit, a reminder that adds an extra note of joy~ Joy'flows from a conscious-ness of being loved--and thereby gifted. The joy of consecrated life flows from a consciousness of being '.'plunged into the fir~ of love which burns in them and which is none other than the Holy Spirit" (VC §26). It implies being gifted with an energy that pushes them beyond any joy this world offers. Like all joy, it leads to two things: a fuller.dove or union and a more profound eagerness or restlessness tha't this love be expressed and known. The joy of consecrated life demands, in the pope's words, that consecrated life "become one of the tangible seals which the Trinity impresses upon history, so that people can sense with longing the attrac-tion of divine beauty" (VC §20). From J~ohn Paul's perspective, then, an awareness of the great gift of consecrated life,. an awareness of being gifted, is a source of joy as well as a .reason for thanksgiving. Novetnber-Decen*ber 1998 Armstron~ ¯ Consecrated Life Were we to attempt a summary of John Paul's understanding of the consecrated life, we might choose this one sentence of Vita consecrata: "This special way of 'following Christ' expresses in a particularly vivid way the Trinitarian nature,of the Christian life and anticipates in a certain way that eschatological fulfillment toward which the whole church is tending" (VC § 14). Expressing those two dimensions of consecrated life--the Trinitarian and the eschatological--seems to form for John Paul lI the challenges of consecrated life and the foundations for joy. To live that conse-crated life as anointed with joy implies doing the same: reflecting in a joyful way the inner life of God in which we are caught up and, at the same time, expressing our restless pursuit 'of the full-ness of joy that will be achieved only in heaven. Our contempo- "rary struggles in rethinking the role of consecrated life in the mystery of-the church suggest two fundamental questions. First, have we plumbed the depth of the gift of the Holy Spirit that ¯ consecrated life is? And, second, have we developed a passion for the ~onsecrated life that makes it "a daring adventure of love" driving us to "that eschatological fulfillment toward which the whole church is .tending.''13 Answering those two difficult ques-tions has not been an easy enterprise. The answers seem to be as elusive as the full meaning of "anointed with joy." The Trinitarian Nature of Consecrated Life The contemporary sensitivity to inclusive language has under-scored a fundamental problem of contemporary Christian spiri-. ,tuality, namely, the failure to pay adequate attention to its Trinitarian underpinnings.14 If this is the case, focusing on the joy inherent in consecrated life through the prism of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which demands reflecting on the Trinity, might bor-dernot on being risky, but on being reckless. Language becomes a mjnefield not only because of images, for example, masculine and feminine, but also because of the elusive, transparent, incon-spicuous nature of the Spirit itself. Wind, power, light--these are some of the poetic images used to express its presence. Never pointing to itself, the Spirit cries,out "Abba!" and "Jesus is Lord!" While it is our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit pos-sesses us and catches up our unique spirits as its own. Following the teaching of Augustine, medieval theologians remark that within the mystery of.the triune God there is an Review for Religqous energy or quality expressed in two words: esse ad, "to be to" or "to be for" the other.~5 The phrase is undoubtedly another way of expressing that God is love, but it implies that that love means being present to or for another. Richard 6f St. Victor and the relation-oriented theology of the 12th century paved the way for Bonaventure, who identifies the Holy Spirit as the nexus or the bond joining the Father and the Son, the power of mutually being to or for the other. The Spirit is the love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. Therefore, the Spirit brings to both Father and Son the fruit of its presence, joy. It makes them esse adl present, to and for one another. Bonaventure goes a step further. The Spirit, he maintains, is the love with which the Father and Son love us: It is that power of love or, as Paul vI describes it, that "tension of love" which draws us into the infinite love of the triune God. It is that which enables us to respond to that divine love with the same love. Being overwhelmed by and responding to love--that is the meaning of a graced or gifted life; It makes us restless for the perfectioh of love. It is that which lifts us above ourselves, challenges us to let go of everything and be filled with love. Of necessity it calls all J Christians to a mystical embrace'of God', one that flows from the knowledge that the gift of the Spirit sweeps those who are gifted into the very heart of God. As Thomas Merton writes in Life and Holiness, "To be a Christian is to be committed to a largely mys-tical life,., to live within the dimensions of a completely mys-tical revelation and communication of the divine being." 16 What this means, of course, is dependent on the mystery of the ~ncarnate Word, for he is the revelation of the triune God. What it means to be loved by God is dependent on our knowledge of h~ow Christ reveals he is loved. As John Paul II tells us, "In the countenance of Jesus, the 'image of the invisible God' (Col 1:15) and the reflection of the Father's glory (see Heb 1:3), we glimpse the depth of an eternal and infinite love which is at the root of OUl~ being" (VC ~ 18). What it means to respondto that"love depends on our awareness of the kenosis, the self-emptying of Jesus. It makes our struggle as Christians--and, more to the point, as con-seerated women and men--to be essentially this: being Christ-centered. Understandably, then, Vita consecrata speaks of those called to consecrated life as persons called to "let themselves be seized by this love [to the point of] abandoning everything" (VC §18). He speaks of them devoting themselves "with undivided 1-6-1"November-December 1998 Armstrong ¯ Consecrated Life heart" (VC §1), making a "choice of total ~elf-giving to God in Christ" (VC §2), and expressing themselves "in a radical gift of self for love of~the Lord Jesus Christ" (VC §§.3,.12). This becomes a never ending recognition of philokalia, or the love of the divine beauty revealed in Jesus, and a progressive following of the Spirit's lead,to conformity with Christ (see VC §19). E~chat~logical Dimensidn of the Consecr~ated Life This ~focus onthe revelation of God's love in.the person of Jesus, however, leads John Paul to the secon~d dimension of con7 secrated life: its eschatological charhcter. "It is the duty of,the consecrated life," he maintains, "to show that the incarnate Son of God is the eschatological goal toward which all things tend, the splendor before which every other light pales, :and the infinite beauty which ~alone can fully satisfy the human heart" (VC §16). Here. too the gift of the Spirit is of quintessential importance. It enables "new men and women;to recognize the appeal of such a demanding choice, . . . awakens .the desire to respond, fully, . . . and guides the growth of this desire" (VC §19). "By allowing them-selves to be guided by the Spirit on an endless journey of purifi-cation," the pope maint~ains, "they become, day by day, conformed to Christ, the prolongation in history of a special presence of the risen Lord" (VC §19). In Vita consecrata John Paul II speaks of the Holy Spirit ninety-five times. The Spirit of Vita consecrata is power unlimited (VC §25), ,works without ceasing (VC 921), continually animates (VC §25) and gives strength (VC §30), and shapes and molds the hearts of those who are called (VC §19). The work of the Spirit as it guides us on its purifying journey is clearly one of calling, us beyond ourselv~es and beyond our limited experience of God's love~ Although ¼"ta consecrata clearly expresses this traditional, oth-erworldly spirituality, the pope also sees that the ardent expecta-tions of those consecrated persons demand an expression in the world in which~they live. Since "here we have no lasting city" (Heb 13:14), their longing "expresses itself in work and mission through a spirit capable of giving rise in human society to effec-tive aspirations for justice, peace, sglidarity, and forgiveness" (VC~ §27). These are the ones who "bring.hope to their brothers and sisters who are often discouraged and pessimistic about the future, . . . ~ hope founde~ on God's promise con~tained in the revealed Review for Religious word: the history of humanity is moving toward 'a new heaven and a new earth'" (VC §27). The hope they have discovered in the mystery of God's love, in other words, makes them eager to encourage others. And so their eschatological spirituality calls for active and renewed involvement in programs of systemic social change that are sensitive to the signs of the times, to the prefer-ential option for the poor, and to the promotion of,justice (see VC, §§81, 82). "Eschatological expectation becomes mission," John Paul teaches, "so that the kingdom may become ever more fully established here and now" (VC §27). Above all, however, this eschatolog- ~ ical thrust is oriented toward the future, a theme the pope introduces fourteen times in his exhortation. "By their charisms," he states, "consecrated per- ,~ sons become signs of the Spirit point-ing to a new future enlightened by.faith and.by Christian hope" (.VC §27), Thus the gift of the Spirit:is always prompting (VC §§1, 19, 22, 25), guiding (VC §§19, 63), awakening desire (VC §19), and teaching the hearts of those who are ca!l.ed, ~for it is the "educator par excel-lence of those who are consecrated" (VC §60). The Spirit's role in shaping the~future of consecrated life is perhaps best captured in the phrase "the creative guidance," in a section that speaks of the future (V.C §63). The phrase is similar to another, "creative fidelity," found earlier in the. document where the pope invites consecrated women and men to propose anew and with courage the enterprising initiative, creativity, and holi-ness of their founders and foundresses in response to the signs of the times,emerging in today's world" (VC §37). The Spirit's creative energy, then, flows throughout ¼"taxonsecrata, as the pope sees it, fashioning new expressions of consecrated life (VC §§ 10, 12), pointing to a new future (VC §27), and rejuvenating the Bride of Christ by the consecrated life (VC §64). "You haveonot only a glorious history to remember and recount," he declares, "but also a great history still to be accomplished" (VC §110). There is a built-in dynamic here. Rahner called it "The Dynamic Element in the Church" and suggested that it could very easily be a point of tension between the hierarchy and consecrated religious. Recent The Spirit's role in shaping the future of consecrated life is perhaps best captured in the phrase "the creative guidance.'" November-Decentber 1998 Armstrong * Consecrated Life history has shown us that it can easily be a point of tension among consecrated religious themselves, especially between the more traditional and the more creative brothers and sisters or between those without grounding .in the tradition, frequently older mem-bers, and those willing to "try anything" new without the tradi-tion's guidance. "Proposing anew the initiatives, creativity, and holiness of founders or foundresses" or developing "a dynamic fidelity to their mission" is easie'r said than done. Nevertheless, it is this very energy of the Spirit that John Paul II understands as revitalizing consecrated life and enabling new men and women to recognize its appeal. In this context, too, itis striking that John Paul writes of "the perennial youth of the church" and sees it integrally tied to "the new spiritual and apostolic impulses" of "new or renewed forms of the consecrated life" (VC §12). VChere is joy in all this? Perhaps it is found best in John Paul's image of "the perennial you. th of the church." No one could ques-tion the pope's concern for the young; his repeated meetings with and addresses to young people throughout the world are proof of that concern. The prerogative of the young, he frequently reit-erates, is to be concerned about the future, to dream about its unfolding, and to be excited about its shape. Is it not precisely in their dreaming and excitement that they find joy, a joy that is contagious and that enlivens even the more depressed? An echo of"ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam" may be heard here, "to God who gives joy to my youth." As G.K. Chesterton observed, "The ~arpe diem religion is not the religign of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw. Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendor of youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in." 17 The pope's eschatological vision wisely notes the perennial youth that flows from the energy of the Spirit and keeps it ever young. With that alone comes joy! Tucked away among the more mystica! passages of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets is one that is appropriate here: "The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation." 18 Eliot reminds his readers that the incarnation, is the only prism through which "to apprehend the point of intersection of the timeless with time ¯. something given and taken." A marvelous description of Con-secrated life! The Johannine tradition undoubtedly offers' the strongest Review for Religious :hints about the mystery of joy. The term chara, joy, occurs nine times in the Gospel of John and once each in the three Letters. Of all the references to joy in the Gospel, all but one are in the Last ~Supper discourse (15:17; 16:20-24; 17:13), where it is a future possibility opened up for Jesus' followers by his victorious death and th

Issue 42.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1983. ; REVIEW FOR R~.L~c, lous (ISSN 0034-639X), published evcry two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428:3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. Rv.vw.w FOR REI.IGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1983 by R~.v~Ew ~:oR REIAG~OUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis. MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year: $17.00 for two years. Other countries: add $2.00 per year (postage). For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVI~:W I.'OR REHC.tOIIS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor July/August, 1983 Volume 42 Number 4 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REWEW ~'OR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. "Oul of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms Intergational; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Trends in Religious Life Today John M. Lozano, C.M.F. On the evening of June 16, in joint sponsorship with St. Louis University's Department of Theological Studies, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS launched the fi~st of an annual series of lectures and colloquies on a subject of pertinence to religious life as such. The first lecture in this series, the basis of the present article, was given by Father John Lozano, already known to our readers as an author specializing in the history and theology of religious life. Father Lozano has taught at universities both here and abroad; he is presently superior of the Claretian house of studies in Chicago and teaches at the Catholic Theological Union there. He may be addressed at his residence: Claret House; 5540 S. Everett; Chicago, IL 60637. The following reflections are offered as a sort of aerial photograph of the most prominent features emerging on the landscape of the religious life. We will take a look at some of the main trends that seem to be shaping the future .of this landscape, and examine some of the main difficulties that its terrain presents for the religious traveler today. Many of these trends and difficulties seem to be closely interrelated. At the end of our survey we will concentrate on one major difficulty that seems to arise from causes that are more general than is sometimes supposed. I will be speaking mainly from the viewpoint of the northern hemisphere (North American and Europe), but my work in some other parts of the globe (Latin America, Australia and the Philippines) has shown that the same trends are emerging in broad areas throughout the Church. The rapidity of modern communications and the international outreach of books and reviews has tended to hasten the spread of ideas and attitudes from one continent to another. I base these reflections on my personal experience. During the last twenty years, which I have dedicated to studying the religious life and working with a broad spectrum of men's and women's religious communities, I have always striven to relate a theological vision of the religious life to the experiences that I 481 4119 / Review for Religious, July-August; 1983 and those I worked with were undergoing at the time. I have also had to pay close attention to what others were writing on these subjects. Naturally, my nearness to the phenomena I deal with (my own present) has been a somewhat mixed blessing: on the one hand, it has given me the immediacy of an "insider's" experience of these phenomena; on the other, it has been a real test of objectivity, since I had to write about them with a degree of passionate involvement. For this is a history we are all enjoying and suffering together~ In the exposition that follows, I have chosen not to separate trends in theology from trends in life, since common sense and all my previous work have shown them to be intimately related. There is no need to dwell on the particular circumstances that lead us to reflect on the present state of the religious life. It is a well-known fact that it is currently undergoing a serious crisis of growth and adaptation. Many are wondering if it really has a future,~ while a number of religious communities who have felt a sharp decrease in membership are worrying whether they will manage to survive. In view of these facts, it makes little sense to try to lay the blame for them on individual failures. What we are going through is a failure of institutions as such? This is not surprising if we bear in mind the profound technological and cultural changes that have taken place in our society, as well as the rapidity with which they have occurred and will continue to occur. The Second Vatican Council spoke of our times as a new epoch in history and tried to make the Church face up to it. In a memorable address to the Wes~on School of Theology, Karl Rahner stated that "the second Vatican Council is, in a rudimentary form still groping for identity, the Cl~urch's first self-actualiza-tion as a World Church.'~ Thus the third great epoch of the Church's history is beginning to open up, after the. very brief Judeo-Christian Epoch and the Occidental Epoch that started when Paul brought the gospel to the Gentiles and began incarnating it in their culture. The deep changes which this new epoch will bring, although they will surely be of great consequence for the Church, can as yet hardly be glimpsed. If the Church is already witnessing some of these profound changes, then the religious life, which in its various forms has always tried to respond to the needs of the Church, will itself have to undergo a necessary crisis of readjust-ment. That is why we simply have to reflect on what is going on. In dealing with the mosi general trends observable in the religious life today, it seemed appropriate to group them under the following six headings: 1) the centrality of the person, 2) the growing advocacy of women's rights, 3) the predominance of life over institutions, 4) ministerial openness to the world, 5) the reinterpretation of religious life, and 6) the problem of lifelong commitment. Finally, we will consider a single issue of great concern: the scarcity of vocations. 1. The Centrality of the Person The frequency with which certain aspects of religious life are discussed, and Trends in Religious I~fe / 411~ the way in which certain concrete situations are handled, reveal a growing tendency to regard the religious person as a central criterion. This theme has been the object of deep philosophical reflection by Christian thinkers during our century. In France, it was first dealt with by Jacques Maritain and then in a quite different way by Emmanuel Mounier. In Europe generally, the trauma of modern dictatorships--which made party or national loyalty the life-or-death criterion for the individual--also helped us see the dangers latent in the way some religious families viewed issues of solidarity and obedience. The trauma was a salutary one, because both the theoretical authoritarianism of anti-democrats like Charles Maurras and the practical authoritarianism of dictators like Mussolini, Salazar, Franco and Peron had no small influence in some ecclesiastical and religious circles. But since the time of John XXIII, a new definition of the common good has begun to leave its mark on magisterial teachings and statements.4 This definition regards the common good not as the sum of common goals (to which individuals are sacrificed), but as an environ-ment of freedom, peace and solidarity where persons may more readily achieve development and fulfillment. Even in the darkest hours of the past, no matter how much we conformed, somewhere in the back of our memory we could never quite let go of the Loi'd's saying that "the sabbath was made for human beings, not human beings for the sabbath," or of the pastoral axiom that "the sacraments are for persons." But clearly, our more democratic milieu and the institutional images it projects, together with the spread of the new psycholo-gies of personal development in Europe and North America, have made us more sensitive to this theme. 1.1. The Development of One's Own Talents. This is not only an important concern for individual religious, but also figures in a whole series of renewed constitutions. In the past, constitutions ordinarily asked community leaders to watch over the spiritual and physical welfare of their sisters and brothers.5 The new texts ask them to facilitate the overall growth of their sisters and brothers, whether on the level of psychological health, education or professional prepa-ration. 6 In fact, a number of the new constitutions speak of the overall growth of the religious, and make the community co-responsible with the individual in achieving this growth.7 The now-common secretariats and programs for con-tinuing formation and education point in the same direction. But individual religious share this concern. There is a general tendency to affirm oneself and develop one's gifts. This has had its effect on spirituality, which is viewed as a means for achieving one's full potential (holiness/whole-ness), and on the theology of the vows, which are viewed dynamically, as means to personal growth.8 The achievement of personal fulfillment was already a goal in the teaching of Aquinas and Bonaventure, who treated the vows as means for arriving at the perfection of charity,9 although greater stress is laid today on the overall aspect of maturity. One difficulty felt by many religious and frequently echoed in religious chapters and congresses, can be summed up in the question: How are one's 411~ / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 personal fulfillment and gifts to be related to the common good, aims and ministries of the institute?10 Theoretically, the issue seems clear enough. On the one hand, the members of every religious community share a common voca-tion and have received from God the same charism that was first given to their founder or foundress. On the other hand, each member is a different personal-ity, with different gifts that he or she has a duty to cultivate and make bear fruit. In short, it is a matter of a diversity of personalities being united in communion. We should perhaps note in passing that actual, absolute liberty, that is, the real possibility of developing one's personality to the maximum, simply does not exist. Every adult, even one who is single and free, has to build his or her existence within a limited gamut of possibilities, and always with some attendant sacrifices. No one, let alone a person committed to one or more persons in a family, in matrimony or in a celibate community, can work out his or her own development without reference to solidarity to others. Anyone who persists in trying to evade solidarity will end up psychologically warped or stunted. Individual religious must always be ready to make sacri-rices, and these sacrifices will definitely make them grow. However, on its part, the community cannot pursue its common good or goals through a systematic policy of sacrificing its members. The development and happiness of individual members carries over into the common good of the group. The concrete solution to this problem is to be sought and found in a sense of communion and real dialogue between the group (its representatives) and the individual. 1.2. Freedom. Isaac Hecker, with fine American sense, wrote that "a great and large freedom of action should be the spirit" of the Paulist community.~1 It is significant that the terms "freedom" and "liberty" occur so frequently in revised constitutions.'2 Of course, individual freedom of choice has always been required for acceptance into community. One was--and is--in community, out of a desire to be in community. But community and obedience were commonly seen from the viewpoint of sacrificing one's individual freedom. In the new type of community there is ample room for individual freedom and initiative. We have referred in passing to the disappearance of the disciplinary type of community that began forming in the 19th century, with its peculiar stresses in reaction to the French Revolution: a type of community dominated by uniformity in dress, in timetables and, in lay communities of women and men, in the kind of ministry practiced. The new constitutions contain few disciplinary regulations. The local community can now, ordinarily, determine its own internal norms and make its own decisions. The number of community acts, which were excessive in many communities founded in the last few centuries, has been reduced to a minimum. Not only religious men, but reli-gious women as well, now have to seek out their own ministerial works, rather than receive them passively from the community. Recently a sister told me: "We ourselves have to create our own jobs and living conditions." Obviously, this kind of freedom has its price. A religious must now make a real effort to maintain communion with his or her own group. Today's community tends to Trends in Religious Life / 4115 be seen in the light of unity in essentials, liberty in what does not affect the common values of religious lifeor the charism and spirit of the institute, and a definite effort at establishing a communion of love. Initially, the downfall of restrictive norms and community acts, together with the broadening field for autonomous, individual decisions, left a good number of religious with the impression that community life had all but disappeared. However, after a period of personal search, religious began to feel the need to return to a more intensely lived form of community, this time based on interpersonal relationships. More spontaneous and creative acts of common prayer began to appear. Nevertheless, there are quite a few men and women religious who have kept their liberty without managing to create com-munion. Of course, many religious live in community, in the sense that they come home to sleep under the same roof, share meals together and treat each other with respect. But the number of religious who are living alone, when they could be living in community, is somewhat notable. The fact that more women than men are living alone may be traced to a number of factors. For one thing, the number of men whose work is tied to institutions (parishes, schools, retreat houses) is proportionately greater. Moreover, women religious may have a greater psychological need for living alone. In the past, women's communities were far more restrictive than men's, and thus the reaction of the former has been that much stronger. Besides this, as we shall see in more detail later, all women, and religious women in particular, are struggling to emerge as persons, against the restrictions still imposed on them by the ecclesiastical community. 1.3. Pluralism in Community. This brings us to the subject of pluralism, which was so warmly debated in not a few chapters of renewal. In the past, there was a strong tendency toward uniformity. Everyone studied the same theology and followed the same methods of prayer. Each institute had a uniform theological or spiritual language. Today the great variety of theological positions in the Church is reflected within religious families, and often within the same reli-gious house. This affects the way we view the religious life and its objectives, and these different views are translated into different life-styles. Pluralism can immensely enrich our communities, provided it does not jeopardize essentials, thus weakening or undermining spiritual cohesion. But pluralism has now reached a transitional phase in which it can give rise to considerable suffering. Those who are inclined toward a more traditional type of life, to a distinctive habit, or to a more devotional form of piety, may suffer and feel lost among others who are leading a different type of life. Those who are inclined to a more personal life-style, with a more modem sensibility, often feel that they are the object of suspicion and insinuations. Theological plural-ism, above all for initiates, can cause acute moral suffering. We may some-times be offered an image of Christ, or a paradigm for relationships with Christ, that wounds our feelings. We might do well to recall that pluralism in freedom caused serious prob-lems for the tiny ecclesial communities of Paul, both on the theological level 41~6 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 (the role of the Law) and on the practical level (eating food offered to idols). Paul's recommendation was that all should practice a delicate charity toward one another. Those who felt more restricted should respect the conscience of others, while those who felt more free in these matters should exercise their freedom without inflicting unnecessary wounds on those of a different persua-sion. "Each of you should regard, not your own interests, but the other per-son's" (I Co 10:24). There are religious who worry too much about what others are saying or doing. And there are religious who speak and act without regard for the sufferings they may be causing others. After all, what good will our theology or our achievement of practical freedom do us ifthey are done without love? 1.4. Personal Ministries. In the past, congregations with the most priests prac-ticed two different types of ministries: one, institutional, in which the religious collaborated in a common work (schools, retreat houses, parishes), the other, personal (teaching in centers outside the institute, preaching, conferences, books). Lay communities of men or women were limited to working within their own institutions (hospitals, schools). In many women's communities and in some brothers' institutes, there is now a trend favoring personal ministries: counseling, spiritual direction and giving conferences. This has fundamentally modified the type of community life led in these institutes. We read also, for example, that the Franciscan Province of Santa Barbara has adopted, as a criterion of priority in assignments to ministries, the talents and availability of individual members, rather than the needs of existing institutions.13 This trend can be noted with lesser force in institutes that have a greater number of institutions (schools, parishes, hospitals). 1.5. Emphasis on Local Community. Partly because of this affirmation of the centrality of the person in societies and institutions, and partly because of the current stress on the Church as a communion that is realized above all in the local church, greater importance is being attached to the local religious com-munity. Many constitutions have changed the vertical presentation of their governmental structures from the once-common descending order (general government, provinces, local communities) to an ascending order (local, pro-vincial, general),~4 while even more constitutions affirm the primary value of the local community. In contrast with the mainly disciplinary content of former texts, the new ones bring out the theological and ecclesial meaning of the local community as a community of faith, worship and mission, and as the privileged locus of Christian communion.~5 1.6. Small Communities. Starting very soon after the Council, there was a growing emphasis on a trend that had already appeared in religious institutes founded a few decades earlier: the formation of small local communities with a family-like structure. Large communities that staffed various institutions (schools or parishes), or were at the service of some large institution (a univer-sity), began dividing up into small groups. Many factors motivated this shift: a Trends in Religious Life / 4117 desire to establish closer interpersonal relationships, an attempt to lessen the difficulties inherent in large-group interaction, a tendency to live closer to the people, and an endeavor to free the group from quasi-monastic structures. Paul VI dealt with this trend in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelica Testif!- catio,~6 noting that this type of community makes greater demands of its members. For one thing, in this setting the individual constantly emerges in face-to-face relationships that strongly reveal his or her good points and short-comings. Small communities demand better communication, greater respect for individual differences, and a more thoroughgoing effort to adapt oneself to others. In large communities it is easier to avoid communication and, above all, confrontation with certain community members. Interestingly enough, it is not just older persons accustomed to a more institutionalized type of life, but also younger religious less inclined to intimate communication, who prefer to live in larger groups. 1.7. Authority and Obedience. The Second Vatican Council, in its decree Perfectae Caritatis,17 clearly established principles for a deep renewal of the practice of authority and obedience as we had heretofore known it. Doubtless, the concepts expressed in this decree belong to the tradition of the religious life in its richest moments. Nevertheless, the emphasis on certain aspects of this tradition, such as "active collaboration," the service rendered by the commu-nity leader, the recommendation that the leader respect his or her fellow religious as sons or daughters of God and as human persons, the insistence on dialogue as an integral part of the unifying process of obedience (and not just as a last resort in facing difficult decisions)--all of these paved the way for a theological and practical reinterpretation of the leader's role, and of the nature of common obedience.~8 Even those institutes that have not modified their vertical structures of government have had to reread their constitutions with a new sensitivity.~9 The Council stated that the manner of governing religious institutes had to be examined and brought into harmony with the physical and psychological conditions of today's religious, with the needs of the apostolate, with cultural requirements, and with socioeconomic realities.20 The great majority of the revised constitutions of institutes founded in an age when another image of authority prevailed, have modified their systems of govern-ment by introducing dialogue prior to decision making, or have even left certain decisions to the group itself. Some constitutions have made the group the ordinary decision-making body in matters important to the local commu-nity. In Practice, there has also been a tendency to allow a wide margin for individual decisions and initiatives in matters that do not touch upon the life of the group. 2. The Emancipation of Women Closely related to the preceding theme (the value of the person as such), another trend has had a growing impact on religious life: the progressive 41111 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 emergence of the religious woman, and her assumption of a public mission in the Church and in civil society. We are touching here on a painful topic: the struggle of women (and the Holy Spirit with them) to liberate themselves from a situation of confinement and subordination. No need to go into the details of Mary Ward's way of the cross, or the fate of the Ursulines after the death of Angela Merici, or the changes forced upon the Order of the Visitation, or the tremendous difficulties that Louise de Marillac and her Daughters of Charity had to face. As late as the 19th century, especially in France, every women's institute was forced to have a male ecclesiastical superior with powers equal and sometimes superior to those of the mother general. Some institutes were arbitrarily divided, and some foundresses were practically expelled from their own communities (Clara Pfaender, Bonifacia Rodriguez, Maria Rosa Zangara), or deposed (Jeanne de Lestonnac, Alix Le Clercq, Alfonsa Cavin, Rafaela of the Sacred Heart). Fortunately, circumstances have changed radi-cally and will continue to do so, as we shall see. 2.1. Emancipation. A large number of religious women are more or less fully committed to the feminist movement, and still more are deeply affected by it.2~ In the past every religious woman, upon reaching maturity, had to bring her femininity to bear on her milieu so to speak implicitly, by letting it shine through in her life and work (think of Teresa's influence on her theologian friends, or the changes Jeanne de Chantal brought about in Francois de Sales). Nowadays, however, the condition of women is explicitly posited and vindi-cated. In affirming their identity, religious women are bringing a new dimen-sion into spirituality and religious life in general: the feminine perspective?2 They not only are setting up a feminine symbology to counterbalance the overstated male symbology of religion (a function always at work in women like Clare of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Jesus and Margaret Mary Alacoque), but are also discovering the feminine aspects of God (something rarely done in the past, although one can always point to the example of Dame Julian of Norwich). The arrival of large numbers of women in the once segregated halls of theology is bound to give rise to deep changes in the task of interpreting the experience of God. The theology of the religious life will surely have to take much more serious note of this phenomenon. 2.2. The Revision of Constitutions. Today, religious women are revising their own constitutions, sometimes with the help of outside experts, both men and women. We are getting farther and farther away from the days when men could write rules for women (Pachomius, perhaps Augustine, Caesarius of Arles, Leander), or when women had to adopt and adapt rules written for men's communities (Benedictines). There is an exquisitely feminine style and sensibility in not a few of the new constitutions. 2.3. Personal Ministries. With growing frequency, women are taking on per-sonal ministries not connected with their own institutions. They are teaching in outside centers, writing books, doing spiritual direction, directing retreats and Trends in Religious Life / 489 spiritual exercises, counseling, ministering in parishes, and so forth. Their influence is beginning to be strongly felt in male formation communities, by the balance they bring to young men who receive their information in an otherwise strictly masculine environment. This gives these men a more positive and educative,perception of the feminine image. 2.4. The First Apostolic Community. In our judgment, the women religious of North America have built the first fully apostolic feminine community in history. Many of them live in small groups not bound to institutions, and are dedicated to personal ministries. While men religious are frequently tied down to an ecclesiastical institution (parish, college), women religious, by the very fact of being non-ordained ministers, enjoy a greater freedom of movement. 2.5. Economic Dependence. This freedom is very relative, however, because many women religious are faced with the anguishing problem of economic dependence. Adding to the painfulness of this situation is the fact that the work they do is usually underpaid. Moreover, those women who do not have their own institutions must either depend on other institutions, or else become free-lancers at the mercy of fortune. A few.years ago, one mother general told me that her institute was unable to implement an option for the poor and the marginated because they depended for their sustenance on the salaries they received from the diocese, which did not allow enough for it. 3. Life Over Institutions Another clearly perceptible trend in today's religious life seems to be a distinct prevalence of a concept and an experience of a life lived simply, freely and creatively, over against more institutional forms of living. Significantly, the first schema on religious life submitted to the Second Vatican Council was overloaded with canonical-institutional vocabulary, reflected in its title: status religiosus--the religious state. It had obviously been drafted by.a group of conservative canonists and theologians. When this text was brought to the floor for discussion, the Council gave it h change of direction and chose to speak of the religious life, understood not as a sort of entity that could be classified and regulated, but as a life that is really lived. This trend is more apparent in Perfectae Caritatis (October, 1965) than in Chapter IV of Lumen Gentium (November, 1964~). But even in Lumen Gentium, the basis stated for both the religious state and form of life are the charisms of the Spirit,23 and the movement leading a Christian to consecrate his or her life to the service of God is described in similar terms.24 Perfectae Caritatis describes various con-crete aspects of this life which must be renewed and adapted to conditions as they really exist. This has been a recurring trend throughout history, especially during peri-ods of creativity. Basil and Macrina created fraternal groups, free of the unwieldiness of the Pachomian institutions that had formed in Egypt. Francis of Assisi was very traditional in his concept of the religious life ("to live 490 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 according to the Gospel"), yet he launched a project of profound renewal by distancing himself from existing monastic institutions. The Dominicans origi-nally followed this same trend. The first Jesuits and the Daughters of Charity, each in their own way, were simply Christian companions committed to serv-ice. A few decades ago, the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus returned to this simplicity, to a lived life and to creativity. The phenomenon we have been describing is now appearing under various forms. 3.1. The Fall of Structure. In most communities many structures have disap-peared. The 19th century left us a legacy of methods and detailed regulations for prayer, for the organization of our day, for work, etc. In Europe,.a number of founders went so far as to include a basic menu in their constitutions. As the monks of Solesmes had striven to unify liturgical rubrics against a welter of national liturgies, religious superiors strove to unify religious life with regula-tions and timetables. In today's ~onstitutions and community discussions, the emphasis is on the quality of life. Religious are concerned about the extent to which their real life constitutes a witness, now that neither uniform habits nor characteristic buildings nor special timetables distinguish them from the rest of the citizenry. Religious tend to "value more the influence of their life attitudes and personal witness than they do the impact of service to an institution.'~5 To put it another way, there is a sort of diffuse Franciscanism in our times, representing a desire to connect with the original and fundamental sense of the religious life: a life-style that is significant in itself. 3.2. Prayer. This same trend can be felt in the prayer life of religious. In the not-too-distant past, communities imposed numerous acts of community prayer, many of them devotional in character. Even personal meditation and spiritual reading were made into community acts. Some quite detailed methods of meditation were very popular. Apostolic communities have largely done away with these numerous community acts and have returned mental prayer to the responsibility and initiative of the individual. Initially, more than a few religious felt left in the lurch by all of this, so that one often heard the complaint, "We aren't praying anymore!" Others, on the contrary, looked upon the new approach as a license to improvise, and began to forget the lessons of the spiritual masters, lessons that were themselves the fruit of pro-longed experience. We believe that this situation has been largely corrected. Left in greater liberty, religious themselves have had to face up to their respon-sibility. But even here, some exaggerations exist. One sometimes gets the impression that some people regard prayer as a strictly private responsibility, despite the fact that constitutions clearly represent it as an essential life-trait for all members of the institute. Our prayer-life is a commitment we make to the community, and other members of the community have every right to be concerned when we give the impression that we are failing in prayer. 3.3. A New Understanding of Law. Another commonly observable trend is the new way in which the revised constitutions and rules of life are presented. A Trends in Religious Life / 491 little background may clarify this trend. In many texts submitted to the Holy See by 19th-century founders and foundresses, there was an overload of asceti-cal exhortations and a dearth of canonical structures. In reaction to this, the Roman Curia, around the turn of the century, issued its Normae secundum quas, excluding all these ascetical passages and adding the necessary structural sections.26 This had the unfortunate effect of reducing most constitutions to the bare bones of a canonical and disciplinary text, containing an abundance of precise norms on how to do things, on the practice of mortification, and on rules for cloister and silence. We were left with a code of precepts. In the new constitutions and rules of life, few norms remain, and those that do are canon-ical, almost to the exclusion of those of a purely disciplinary nature. In con-trast, these new texts give us a description of the vocation and spirit of the religious who belong to each institute. We have passed, so to speak, from a "decalogue" code of observances to a "beatitudes" rule of life; from a minimum we must observe, to a maximum toward which we must strive. Instead of observance, we now tend to speak of growing fidelity. Saint Thomas observed long ago that the twofold gospel precept of love (with all one's heart) is not something we fulfill here and now in an instant, but is rather a goal toward which we must constantly strive and tend. This is the evangelical vision to which the new rules of life invite us. Hence, for all their dearth of precepts, these new rules are on the whole more demanding. 3.4. Individual and Community Discernment. The greater freedom allotted to individuals and to local communities, the reinterpretation of the fundamental law as a description of vocation and spirit, and the relative absence of discipli-nary norms have all placed a greater burden of responsibility on local com-munities and their members. Local communities must frequently assume the role of discerning what is here and now God's salvific will for the group and its members. In this respect, the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus has set a good example for us all. Speaking of the mission of the Jesuits today, the Congregation stated: "We must undertake a thoroughgoing assess-ment of our traditional apostolic methods, attitudes and institutions with a view to adapting them to the new needs of the times and to a world of rapid change. All this demands that we practice discernment, that spiritual discern-ment which Saint Ignatius teaches us in the Exercises. Moreover, discerning will yield a deeper grasp of the movements, aspirations and struggles in the hearts of our contemporaries."27 A little later, the decree restates the same idea: "What is required is not so much a research program as a process of reflection and evaluation inspired by the Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment."~s The Ignatian practice of spiritual discernment, once largely restricted to circles of the Society of Jesus, has now become generalized to the point that it is present in all schools of spirituality. Recent bibliography abundantly bears out this development,~9 and we should all be glad of it. 3.5. A Blurred Image of Church. As we round out this section, we can hardly 492 Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 avoid mentioning one painful fact: the disinterest or distaste that some reli-gious feel toward the ecclesiastical institution. Francis of Assisi, who was called to rebuild God's tottering house, was distinguished from other leaders of poverty movements in his day by his fidelity to the Church's leaders.3° Saint Ignatius Loyola, another great religious reformer, recommended that we "feel with the hierarchical Church.TM Today, although most religious are strongly attracted to the Church as communion and mystery, a number of them tend to experience the Church institution as something alienating. The fact is that the image of the Church projected by Leo XIII, Pius X1 and Pius XI1 has largely disappeared, and new images are struggling to emerge. There is a significant amount of writing on various "models of the Church."32 We all know that institutions, in this earthly phase of things, are as necessary for the Church's presence and action as the body is for the self's. We must of course take care of the body and control it, since here, too, an overly heavy body can impede the action of the individual spirit. 4. Ministerial Openness to the World Another group of factors that seems to constitute a characteristic trend in today's religious life is the positive reevaluation of the world and of the reli-gious life as service to the Church and the world.33 Isaac Hecker introduced a typically American sensibility into spirituality by underscoring the positive character of the encounter of grace with our humanity, and by consistently speaking of this encounter in positive terms.3a The classic synthesis of Thomas Aquinas began to reappear with new accents. In the United States today, there are many spiritualities which evaluate the created world positively, and asso-ciate spiritual progress with overall progress (holiness/wholeness). In Europe, Louvain accustomed us to a theology of earthly values.35 In France, where great stress had always been laid on the Incarnation, a high value was placed on Christian presence among the masses (the priest-worker movement). Vati-can II, above all in Gaudium et Spes, gave us a realistic vision of the world that was rich in positive traits. John XXIII's Pacem in Terris decidedly opted for democratic social values. All of this has had its impact on the life of the Church. Secular Institutes are precisely secular institutions that aim at enliven-ing the human and civil "world" from within. The charisms of the religious life are now spoken of, not as gifts to help us flee from the world, but rather as gifts that enable us to penetrate the world more deeply, in order to transcend it. We no longer speak of afuga mundi, but rather of a penetration of the world, in order to induce it to return to its Creator, and transcend itself. Thomas Merton personified this "return to the world" movement in almost paradigmatic fashion. His early works, written at a time when he regarded the Abbey of Gethsemani as "the only real city in America,"36 reflect the critical reactions of a convert, as well as a somewhat elitist monastic theology. In Seeds of Contemplation (1949), the theme of a holy person's positive outlook on the world alternates with a negative view of the secular city from which the Trends in Religious Life / 493 Christian must strive to escape.37 In The Inner Experience (1959), his attitude toward contemplatives is more realistic, and the possibility of a lived expe-rience of God in the world emerges more clearly,as One can notice an effort to situate contemplation in the living context of everyday life. Contemplation means an indepth look at reality not in order to evade it, but in order to transcend it;39 it supposes a reading of events.4° The new chapter, "Solitude is Not Separation," added to New Seeds of Contemplation,4~ reveals at last a total contemplative openness to the world. Thomas Merton would soon become a prophet of peace and justice. The contemplative--as Teresa of Jesus had experienced long before Merton--is someone who brings the world, its agonies and its ecstasies, before God.42 This phenomenon has occurred frequently in the course 0~" history. We might, in fact, speak of a phasic alternation between periods of Incarnation and periods of Transcendence, although we should add that each swing toward the Incarnational pole has left us definitively closer to the world. The 12th century witnessed a cultural rebirth in which "nature" began to lose its sacral, symbolic value and gained some measure of autonomy.43 The married laity ceased being referred to as "children and weaklings who simply cannot embrace celibacy" (an oft-repeated phrase in earlier ecclesiastical texts),4~ and were instead spoken of as persons who profess the "common rule," that is, the Gospel. The Third Orders of the 13th century owe their existence, in part, to this change of mentality. In an early Franciscan legend, Madonna Povert~ (Lady Poverty) asks a group of Friars to show her their cloister. They lead her to the top of a high hill and show her the whole world, telling her: "This, Lady, is our cloister.-45 Then came what we generally call "the Renaissance," and we fell in love with the philosophers, writers and heroes of the Greco-Roman world. A positive and overly innocent view of the world infiltrated our con-sciousness. Jesuits made their residence in the midst of cities. More than a few institutes of the time chose not to take vows (Oratorians and Eudists). The Daughters of Charity dispers+d through the streets in peasant garb; for them, the world was the space in which the sons and daughters of God were suffer-ing. But there was also Luther's teaching on our "corrupted nature," and Bishop Jansenius and the Port Royalists held the dark view that every human value not explicitly elevated by a supernatural intention is simply sinful. Jansenism, with its excessive moral demands, had a baneful influence on the spirituality of religious. Finally, the trauma of the French and socialist revolu-tions filled religious leaders with fears and misapprehensions, so that they tended to stress the deep incompatibility between the Church and modern society. We were in urgent need of a return to the world. 4.1. A More Positive Vision of the World. For religious, too, the world is the ager dominicus, the Lord's field. It is the creation wounded by our sins, yet fundamentally good; the place where we must live our faith, hope and love, and in which we must work and suffer. This more positive, yet realistic vision of the world has positive consequences and gives rise to its own problematic. 494 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 The distance between the religious and secular worlds has been shortened. The barriers of habits, special buildings and institutions filled with religious sym-bols, have largely fallen. This explains a number of recent developments. In the past, new forms of religious life inexorably fell under the influence of forms that had a longer and more prestigious history: Pachomians and Basilians became monks; canons regular and mendicants adopted a monastic or quasi-monastic way of life; apostolic congregations of women imitated cloistered nuns, etc. In our times, the trend seems to be running in the opposite direction: the traditional forms of religious life are getting closer to the life-style of secular institutes. We are referring here not merely to the absence of habits or the irrelevance of details that were once considered very important in Europe (such as not being allowed to enter a movie-picture theater), but to such truly important items as the near absence of community life or its reduction to a minimum, and to the growing trend toward working in secular institutions. The fact remains, however, that religious life, precisely because its witness is aimed at helping the world transcend itself, must not only incarnate itself in secular culture, but also act as a counterculture.46 Religious life accomplishes this essentially by actualizing the charisms that distinguish it as a form of Christian life: celibacy and community, with a public witness of poverty. Note that we say celibacy, not bachelorhood or the single state, since celibacy is understood as an exclusive commitment to the concerns of the Lord, and as a life lived for the love of the Lord. And this is extremely demanding. So also is the radical self-divestment which characterizes the Christian poverty of a reli-gious: a self-divestment that makes no sense at all except as an act of solidarity with the poor and the outcast. All of this must be reflected in our life-style, attitudes and options. 4.2. An Open Community. Our communities have opened up. The practice of hospitality has been greatly enlarged. Religious are praying and working with groups outside the community proper, thus creating a network of relation-ships. Many of us belong to prayer groups (charismatic or otherwise) or to pastoral teams.47 Monastery guesthouses, especially in the United States, are usually filled with other religious and laypersons who come there to pray. Some contemplative monasteries have opened up to share their prayer life with others on a more permanent basis. The Trappists of Our Lady of Guadalupe have established a Center for Contemplative Studies. The Carmel of the Resurrection in Indianapolis has opened its prayer life to a group of the faithful who pray there. Many small apostolic communities practice an aposto-late of presence by living among the poor. This is something that the mendi-cants strove to do in the 13th century, and which the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus reintroduced some decades ago. Obviously, such groups have to manage the difficult task of balancing their openness toward the rest of the Church with the special communion of charism and spirit they must keep among their own members. Trends in Religious Life / 495 4.3. Celibacy and Friendship. One effect of this more optimistic vision of the world and of the human person in the world has been the rediscovery of the positive and fully human vision of celibacy expressed in the New Testament. Although Jesus, in his logion about eunuchs (Mt 19:12), was defending a spiritual impotence caused by a strong commitment to the Kingdom, Paul tells us, .in a positive way, that being celibate for the sake of the Gospel consists in living lives exclusively dedicated to the concerns of the risen Lord (his Church, his poor), and for his love (1 Co 7:32-34). Celibacy is both a commitment and a relationship of love in which we can grow, and not simply a state defined by non-bonding to another person in matrimony,as The focus of today's religious has shifted, significantly, from chastity to celibacy as a way of life. From yet another point of view, the modern notion of the human being has highlighted (sometimes excessively) our sexual condition. Sexuality is rightly understood as a positive reality,49 in which affective balance plays an important part. Thus conceived, sexuality is being incorporated into a positive and inclusive vision of celibacy. It might be noted, in passing, that religious, like others in this rich culture which is concerned with overeating, also engage in sports and look after their body and physical appearance. But it must be admitted ihat the fall of barriers in this context (locked doors, permissions to go out, opened mail, the habit, etc.) also eliminated a series of social pressures aimed at protecting celibacy. Just as the permanence of marriages is now left to married couples themselves (since urban and indus-trialized society, unlike rural societies of the past, undermines rather than upholds the stability of marriage), so celibacy is left to the grace of God and the responsibility of the individual. The community can offer little help to those in crisis, except prayer and friendship. A positive evaluation of friend-ship has important consequences in this area. The husband-wife relationship is beginning to pale as the only model for male-female relationships. Friendships between religious and persons of the opposite sex (whether priests, religious or laity) are now more feasible and frequentP° This is, of course, not something completely new: a good number of saints, especially founders and foundresses, seem to have come in pairs. But now there is a greater awareness of the implications and values of friendship as a help toward celibate balance, which it indeed can be. But this is still fragile ground, because of the possibility of being "carried away," and because the word "friendship" often covers a number of relationships of diverse intensityPI The celibate is committed to live exclusively for the concerns of the Lord and for his love, and this rules out not just physical relationships, but also exclusive affective commitments. This means that certain affecfive needs of the celibate cannot be satisfied directly, but must be diverted into channels of loving service. 4.4. The Poor: the New "Desert. ,~2 Religious feel a lively interest and concern for the world of which they are part. This is quite apparent in questions of justice. In a host of ways, religious have been associated with works of charity 498 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 throughout history. But today there is a clearer consciousness that not a few evils have social roots, and that religious in a democratic society have a great opportunity to work collectively and individually in defense of the weak and the oppressed. Most of us (even religious dedicated to social works) inherited a vision of poverty that did not have much of an express or lived relationship to the poor of the world. It was a poverty fit for a neoplatonic or neopythagorean community: a poverty understood as a form of personal purification and as a means for arriving more readily at contemplation. The important thing was dependence on the superior, and great individual austerity. On an analogy with the Synoptic saying of Jesus, "Sell what you have and give to the poor" (Mk 10:21 and par.), one might say that the monks of the desert, who worked hard to support the poor, fulfilled the second part of the saying ("and give to the poor"), whereas later religious stressed the first part ("sell what you have"). In Evangelica Testificatio, Paul V1 brought the Church's teaching on religious poverty back to its origins by beginning the section on poverty with a call to hear "the cry of the poor.'~3 If all Christian poverty is a descent with Christ into the hell of human suffering--a participation in his kenosis (cf. 2 Co 8:9)54--then the testimonial poverty of religious should signal an abandonment of the world's logic and a crossing over its borders into the new desert which, especially in today's materialistic society, is constituted by the poor. A number of religious have abandoned their houses in middle-class neigh-borhoods and have gone to live with the poor in ghettoes. Whole institutes have declared in their chapters a preferential option for evangelizing the poor. Religious men and women have joined other Christians in their struggle for the liberation of the poor, especially in Latin America and the Philippines. In the United States, some religious have run for national or state office in defense of minorities, while others have been appointed to posts of particular social significance. Many U.S. religious are committed to a variety of social causes: disarmament, human rights in the Third World, the fights of the unborn, the rights of homosexuals, ecology, the struggle against a capitalism that would sacrifice human lives for economic gain (the Nestle boycott), and so forth. Here again, there are problems and difficulties. For one thing, it is easier for those living in well-to-do environments to protest abuses (as they must) than it is to protect themselves against the contagion of a consumerist society. Those who are truly and deeply committed to the defense of the poor know that they can carry out their work only by becoming poor themselves. Our poverty is also a protest against a materialistic interpretation of life, and hence must be manifested in personal and collective simplicity and austerity. Those who personally commit themselves to poverty run the risk of mere improvisa-tion, or of being manipulated by others. One thinks of the way certain reac-tionary thinkers have tried to use Mother Teresa of Calcutta, proposing her as an example of what all religious should be doing--which they interpret as "athering up the dying from the sidewalks (which is undoubtedly a heroically ~eautiful act of Christian love), and then leaving the world to the powers that Trends in Religious L~fe / 497 be (which would undoubtedly be an act of unChristian cowardice, since the one behind the "powers that be" is often Satan, the first murderer). Manipulation, though, is also practiced from a revolutionary viewpoint. There is a danger of becoming involved in partisan politics that pursue a determined type of society. The religious and the Christian as such do not have a distinctive political model, but only a set of fundamental principles (Pacem in Terris), according to which they raise their voice in protest against all forms that oppress and manipulate the sons and daughters of God. Great maturity is requi~ed for a commitment of this kind. One must be prepared to lose one's life: witness the example of our martyrs in Central America. 4.5. Serving in a Secular Milieu. With growing frequency, religious men and Women are making a commitment in various types of human service that are not specifically religious in nature, and are performed in a secular environ-ment. We are r~ferring here mainly to those religious who are engaged in the investigation and teaching of profane disciplines. Religious have been doing this for centuries, of course, but as an integral part of a ministry of Christian edui:ation that was meafit to culmin~ite in catechesis. Now, we encounter a new element in that these services are being carried on in the heart of secular centers. The impact of this environment and the great demand for professional preparation it calls for can profoundly affect the spirit of a religious. This is perhaps most true of religious who practice psychotherapy in its various forms. Here,/he "secular environment" is internal. The religious has to operate with a series Of symbols, vocabularies and techniques in which religious experience is often treated either in the Context of psychological aberration, or else (as with .lung) in that of a psychic activity that neither includes nor excludes grace. Helping one's neighbors in their psychological problems, or contributing to their overall growth as persons, is just as religious an activity as helping cure their bodies, but it can create difficulties for religious therapists. Oftentimes they are living in an environment quite different from a traditional religious community, which was pervaded by religious symbols and community acts. In such cases, religious will often have to struggle in order to integrate their professional service into the framework Of their community's proper spiritual-ity. Service also tends to change meaning for religious who work as medical or nursing personnel in modern hospitals, with their intense activity and the difficulties they present for establishing personal relationships with the sick, since there are so many to attend, and the turnover is so rapid. 5. Religious Life Reinterpreted 5.1. A More Profound Notion of the Religious Ltfe. The Second Vatican Council, by setting its teaching on the religious life squarely in the context of the life of the Church and of the universal call to holiness, forced theologians to rethink this particular vocation. A significant index of this rethinking is reflected in a change in the bibliography on the religious life. During the first half of this century, it focused on canon law and ascetical conferences or 49~1 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 retreats for religious; from the Council onwards, bibliographical entries of a theological character began to multiply. New Testament exegesis began to put question marks after the texts on which some founders had based their move-ments. Often enough, disturbingly, exegetes answered these questions in the negative: "This is not what these biblical texts were saying." Moreover, the full incorporation of the secular laity into the life and holiness of the Church obliged us to rethink the relationship that exists between the call to the reli-gious life and the general call to perfection, as well as that which exists between religious life and secular life. In more than one case, the Council had felt obliged to use categories drawn from Scholasticism, in a clear effort at expanding its teaching. Concomitantly, however, scholars were at work compiling critical studies of the sources of the religious life (Pachomius, Basil, Augustine, the anonymous author of the Regula MagistrL Benedict, Francis, early Jesuit texts, etc.). These historical investigations have given us a much better knowledge of the development of the religious life. The works of Tillard, Boff, Sebastian, Moloney and others, as well as the publications of the Religious Life Institutes in Rome and Madrid, and those of the Claret Center for Resources in Spirituality (to all three of Which I have made my personal contribution), are developing a work of synthesis that has become necessary. 5.2. Religious Life: a Parable of Discipleship. In Lumen Gentium and Perfec-tae Caritatis, the Second Vatican Council abandoned the notion of "state of perfection," which had somehow crept into Sacrosanctum Concilium (the Constitution on the Liturgy), written in the period before the council began to reflect expressly on the religious life.55 All Christians are committed to growth in the perfection to which they are called in baptism, confirmation, the Eucha-rist and reconciliation, and (for some) eventually in matrimony. The religious life is no longer to be thought of as the only state in which one professes to be tending toward perfection. In Discipleship: Towards an Understanding of the Religious Life, I tried to demonstrate how religious life is a form of disciple-ship, and that the significance of the religious life consists in its being a living parable of the Gospel for all. As a form of life, the religious life is summoned to remind all Christ's disciples of the demand to follow him. It is a type of prophetic life, neither more nor less. This leaves room for secular Christians to achieve the full stature of their incorporation into evangelical spirituality. For the important thing is not the parable, but the lived life of the Christian way, to which the parable points. 5.3. Return to Charism. Another important aspect of contemporary religious life is the fact that, thanks mainly to the invitation of Perfectae Caritatis, religious institutes, especially in their chapters of renewal, have set about reflecting on their own charisms. These institutes now seem to have a far better knowledge of their vocation and spirit in the Church. The Church itself is enriched by this variety of charisms. The popes have frequently referred to this Trends in Religious L~fe / 499 theme in discussing the identity of religious families. 5.4. Turning Toward Others. Nevertheless, something new is happening. A few years back, religious institutes often gave the impression of being overly exclu-sive in promoting their own interests. There was too much insistence on "our own." Today, religious communities collaborate with one another in common novitiate programs. There are theologates (the Central Theological Union in Chicago and the General Theological Union in Berkeley are obvious exam-ples) in which students from various institutes study, pray together and inter-relate in many ways, thus mutually enriching one another without losing their identity. And there are numerous religious institutes collaborating in apostolic works, both with one another and with lay team members. The sense of belonging to the one Church of Christ is thus manifested in a forceful manner. 6. Lifelong Commitment One aspect which involves considerable suffering for many religious, and which is brought up with some frequency in public meetings and private conversations, is the meaningfulness of a perpetual commitment to the reli-gious life, and even the legitimacy of norms that impose this sort of commit-ment toward the end of one's initiation or formation. Obviously, the discussion of this theme is less related to the influence of any specific philosophy than it is to the fact that our society seems to be much more sensitive to change than to continuity. In our society, for several different reasons, it is not rare for persons to change careers at a certain age. Even marriage seems to be becom-ing more fragile.~6 6. I. A Personal Commitment. In contradistinction to a one-time or short-term commitment to do some thing, a commitment to a type of life is a personal project that requires a certain amount of time to make. Human beings develop gradually. A promise or decision to be celibate or to live for the love of someone else for just a fewdays or weeks would really be tantamount to a commitment to do some thing, rather than a life decision to be a determined type of man or woman. The commitment to love is, of its very nature, indefi-nite as to time. It tends to be projected over a whole lifetime. The fact is that, when a human being loves or chooses to give himself or herself on a deep level, he or she cannot include the idea of a temporal limit in such a choice (although there may be an implicit recognition of the possibility of failure), since this would be restricting one's love or self-gift. By making a commitment of one-self, a person aims at putting his or her love above time and its changes. 6.2. A Commitment to God. A commitment to the religious life entails a commitment to build one's life with an orientation toward certain religious ideals: living in a particular way, in celibacy and in community. Here, the depth of human commitment is at its greatest, since it is gauged by a relation-ship with God. In this case, understandably, our intention must exclude every temporal limit, even when we are making a temporal commitment. We want 5lll~ / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 to be this type of Christian and human being on the deepest level, before God and in the Church. This is a quite different kind of commitment than that made by a person who would simply like to be associated with the life, spirituality and ministry of a religious community for a set period of time. One thinks, for example, of the existing practice in Thailand whereby all boys, as a sort of analogue of military service, must spend several months in a Buddhist monastery. This sort of procedure might well be adopted, in a more systematic way, for certain types of associates of Christian religious communities. But this kind of temporal commitment, even when made on a more conscious and voluntary basis, would never suffice to constitute the person making it a religious. Our temporal vows are truly vows, to the extent that the person making them has the intention of orienting his or her whole life in this manner. 6.3. A Statement of Commitment. The real problem here refers to the public formulation of this intention to make a perpetual commitment. To express ourselves publicly and socially is an essential trait of our human nature, which never exists in a vacuum of pure interiority, but tends to unfold itself in explicit relationship with others. We already made our perpetual commitment when we responded to our vocation, before entering a community. We made it with a certain tension, with some misgivings, and sometimes even with anguish; yet we entrusted our weakness to the grace of the God who called us. On profess-ing, we renewed this response to God, but this time we did so publicly, before God and through the community, we committed ourselves to God through this community. Our commitment, then, took on an ecclesial character. This was normal and as it should be because promising to be celibate, to live in evangelical poverty and in community is not just an act that relates us directly to God. Rather, it is an act that relates us to God in his Church. Celibacy is not just the love of God, but also a great love of his sons and daughters. This does not rule out our foreseeing possible failures, or even the hypo-thetical possibility that certain experiences and circumstances might make us change. This commitment is made by human persons, with the understanding that they are expressing their actual intention, in the hope that this intention will perdure. But since fidelity in this matter is the work of grace, we place all our forces in God's hands. A religious vow or promise is at once a manifesta-tion of our intention and a petition for grace: "This is what I intend to be, so help me God." The person who makes a vow can change, can fail, or can discover that this was not to be his or her permanent vocation. There are canonized saints who, after years of profession, left their communities when they discovered that God was calling them along another way. For all these reasons, the Church wisely grants dispensations from these commitments. A dispensation dissolves the canonical aspects of one's commitment, leaving the person with his or her responsibility before God intact. Upon receiving their dispensations, these Christians remain in God's presence, just as they did at the time they believed Trends in Religious Life they had received a call from God and answered it. 7. A Prophetic Minority? The aerial photograph we promised at the beginning of this survey is not yet complete. We still need to include in it one of the most visibly preoccupying concerns for many religious and for the Church's ministers: the scarcity of vocations to the religious life which we are presently experiencing. There is no need for us to go into statistical details. All we have to do is to look at the inexorably upward trend in the median age of the members of most religious communities in the northern hemisphere. We can only suppose that what we are looking at is precisely a lack of vocations (God is calling fewer men and women to the religious life), and not a lack of correspondence to a wider call. We must suppose this, both because we do not have access to the heavenly archives, and because we find it hard to believe that human beings are cur-rently putting up a greater resistance to grace than they did in the days when our houses were filled to the rafters. One fact confirms us in our rejection of an unduly pessimistic view of the present generation: the growing number of vocations to the ministry outside the clergy and outside religious institutes. People continue to cite a whole litany of causes in order to explain the current dearth of candidates for the religious life: economic reasons (greater opportunities exist elsewhere today); social reasons (secularized environment, lowered prestige of the religious state, easier relations among young people of both sexes, sexual liberation, smaller families of the "one girl-one boy" type); psychological reasons (the identity crisis of religious makes religious life less attractive; pessimism or a lost sense of belonging leads religious to work less at promoting vocations); theological reasons (the religious life is not the only state for attaining Christian perfection). We would not like to indulge in a discussion of the many reasons alleged to explain this phenomenon. We would, however, like t.o point out that we are not talking about a scarcity of persons who want to enter a religious community, but about the considerably smaller number of persons who show clear signs of having a true vocation to the religious life. All you have to do is run a few ads in the right publications, and you will soon be swarming with requests. Some of these aspirants very soon reveal data that indicate their unfitness for the religious life. A few more serious cases must be rejected somewhat later, either after psychological testing or afte~ a few days of shared life. Present-day religious life requires stronger and more balanced personalities than was the case in the past. Formerly, less well-balanced personalities could be kept in line by a tougher practice of authority and by the more disciplinary type of community that then prevailed. Permit me to make a few observations. Until two or three decades ago, becoming a priest or a religious was the only route that enabled a Christian to consecrate his or her life to ministry in the Church. Of course, there were many Christians who were dedicated to charitable Works and catechesis on a part- 502 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 time basis. But if they wanted to orient their whole life to one of these minis-tries, they had no recourse but to become priests or religious. The need was even greater in the case of women, since they did not have a choice between secular priesthood and the religious life. Any woman who wanted to commit her life to a ministery of charity or catechesis, had to become a religious. The call to one was automatically interpreted as a call to the other. But today it is possible, though at times difficult, for a Christian to be committed to a minis-try without becoming a priest or a religious. In the past, every time a new form of religious life, better adapted to the conditions of the time, appeared, there tended to be a diminution of candidates for the forms that had prevailed up to that time. Before the 12th century, Europe had numerous monasteries; next, it witnessed the rise of whole armies of mendicants; at length, the mendicants had to share the scene with clerks regular. Also in Europe, until about the middle of the last century, there were cloistered convents in most middle-sized towns. But with the foundation of numerous apostolic congregations for women, the number of cloistered con-vents diminished considerably. Today, secular institutes and other associations of Christian life have appeared on the scene. Moreover, the Church has begun to open up its ministries to laypersons who have no connection with any institution. This must necessarily lead to a reduction in the number of candi-dates for the religious life. Hence, we should not be talking about a lack of vocations in an unquali-fied way, because the Spirit of the Lord is continuing to call Christians of all sorts to a whole gamut of commitments. We should joyfully accept the Spirit's will. It is quite possible--given our inveterate resistance in this respect--that the only way the secular laity will be able to take their rightful place in the Church's ministry will be through a considerable reduction in the number of priests and religious. Hard as some of us may find it to accept these persons on equal terms, despite their manifest charisms and responsibilities, the Spirit of the Lord may oblige us to accept them out of necessity. Does this mean that religious life in its traditional forms is destined in the future, even more than in the present and the past, to become a minority life-style? That is certainly a possibility, although we would not like to hazard such a prediction. Because history has passed through so many ups and downs, turns and returns, visions and revisions, it ill becomes a historian, who has a hard enough task sorting out the vagaries of the past, to presume to know the future. But if things did happen to turn out in the way we have hypothesized, there would be nothing to be surprised at. After all, we have described the religious life as a prophetic calling. And isn't a truly prophetic mission always and essentially a minority calling? Trends in Religious Life NOTES ~Thomas Dubay offers one answer in What is Religious ~fe? Questions Religious are Asking (Denville, N.J.: Dimension Books, 1979), pp. 32-34. See C. Maloney, "Evangelization and Social Change," Religious and the Evangelization of the World, Donum Dei Series, no. 21 (Ottawa: Publications of the Canadian Religious Conference, 1974), p. 63. See also B. Boyce, C.SS.R., "A Sociological Appraisal of the New Trends," New Trends in Religious L~fe, Donum Dei Series, no. 14 (1969), p. 135. 2Thaddre Matura, O.F.M., The Crisis of Religious l_zfe (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974). 3Karl Rahner, S.J., "Toward a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican I1,~ Theologi-cal Studies 40 (1979), p. 717. 4John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, AAS 53 (1961), p. 417. Gaudium et Spes, no. 74, Vatican Council I!: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1975), p. 981. ~Constitutions S.J., ch. IV, 10, no. 5; Claretian Constitutions (1865), I, no. 31. sViatorians (1979), no. 52; de La Salle (1976), no. 140. I; Precious Blood Sisters, O'Fallon, p. 54; Combonians (1979), no. 103; Christian Brothers, (E. Rice), no. 247. 7Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, no. 26; Marianists, Rule of l_zfe (1981), no. 39; Stigmatines (1977), no. 17. See especially Sisters of Mercy, Covenant, Fellowship and Total Growth, pp. F 4-5; Combonians, no. 42. 8This idea forms the background for the sections on the vows in many revised constitutions. 9St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2-2, q. 184 a 3; q. 188 a 2; St. Bonaventure, Apologia Pauperum, ch. 3, no. 3. See Lumen Gentium, no. 44, Flannery, pp. 403-.404. ~0The theme of varidus personal gifts appears frequently in the new constitutions. See Sisters of St. Joseph, Core Constitutions, no. 38; Combonians, Rule of Life, nos. 38. I, 42; de La Salle (1976), p. 36; B.V.M., no. 3; Marists (1968), no. 51; Stigmatines (1977), no. 17; St. Joseph of Peace (1981), p. 6; Ursulines of Belleville (1982), no. 33; Sinsinawa Dominicans, no. 10. ~Cited in Paulist Provisional Constitutions (1970), no. 9. ~2Society of the Precious Blood, no. 39; Sisters of Mercy, Core Constitutions, p. 27; 31st Congre-gation of the Society of Jesus, Decree 17, no. 7 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), p. 161. ~3Quentin Hakenewerth, S.M., ~lllustrations of Fundamental Choices and Their Consequences," Religious Life Tomorrow, Donum Dei Series, no. 24 (1978), p. 187. ~4Claretians, no. 102 ff.; Piarists, no. 131 ff.: Combonians, no. 105 ft.; School Sisters of Notre Dame, II, no. 8 ff.; Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, no. 25 ft.; Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, no. 138 ff. ~Scalabrinians, no. 10; Society of Mary, no. 34 ff.; Society of the Precious Blood, no. 6 ft. 16No. 40, Flannery, pp. 698-699. 17No. 14, Flannery, pp. 619-620. ~SThe vocabulary of the revised constitutions on this theme, and the very horizons on which they move, reveal a new sensibility. When one compares them to the relevant sections in Petfectae Caritatis, one sees that the latter opened but a single door. A smaller number of constitutions chose to remain within the limits in which the conciliar decree moves. tgSee Jesuits, 31st General Congregation, Decree 17, pp. 157-166. z°Perfectae Caritatis, no. 3, Flannery, p. 613. 2~J. Doyle, B.V.M., "Choose Life," Religious Life Tomorrow, Donum Dei Series, no. 24 (1978), pp. 28-31. ~2See M. Linscott, "The Religious Woman in the Church,~ Way Supplement 19 (1973), pp. 45-62. 23No. 44, Flannery, pp. 402-403. ~lbid., pp. 403-405. Z~Hakenewerlh, art. cit., p. 186. 26"Normae secundum quas S. Congregatio Episcoporum et Regularium procedere solet in approbandis novis lnstitutis votorum simplicium." Published by Ladislaus Ravasi, C.P. in De Regulis et Constitutionibus Religiosorum (Roma: Desclee, 1958), pp. 188 ft. To be excluded 504 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 from the constitutions: quotations from the Holy Scriptures, Councils and Fathers. (n. 27), ascetic instructions, spiritual exhortations, mystical considerations (no. 33). 27Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1979), Decree 4, nos. 58-59, p. 413. 2sPoid., no. 74, p. 436. ~9Scanning the bibliography on discernment during the last 15 years (published by the Religious Formation Conference), I have counted I I articles in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, ! I in Way Sup-plement, 3 in Sisters Today, and 2 each in The Way and Spiritual Ltfe. 30Saint Francis of Assisi, Rule 1221, Foreword and Cho 19; Rule 1223, ch. I; ch. 9; Testament. See Writings and Early Biographies (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), pp. 3 I, 46, 57, 63, 67. 3~Saint Ignatius of Loyola, "To have the true sentiment which we ought to have in the Church Militant," Ist Rule. See David L. Fleming, The Spiritual Exercises (Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978), p. 230. 32See Avery Dulles, S.J., Models of the Church (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1974). 33Cardinal Suenen's The Nun in the World (Westminster: The Newman Press, 1963), an invita-tion to the renewal of women's religious life issued during the Council, started with a chapter on the world, followed by a chapter on women and their emancipation. The book was highly successful in its time. ~See Martin Kirk, C. M. F., "The Spirituality of Isaac Thomas Hecker: Reconciling the American Character and the Catholic Faith" (doctoral dissertation, Saint Louis University, 1980). 3~See Gustave Thils, Theologie des Realitbs Terrestres (Bruges: Desclre de Brouwer, 1946). An epoch-making book. By the same author: Christian Attitudes (Chicago: Seepper, 1959), 96 pp. 3rThe Secular Journal, April 7, 1941, (New York: Noonday, 1977), p. 183. 37Seeds of Contemplation (Norfolk: New Directions, 1949), pp. 20-23; 60-61. 3gTexts from the Inner Experience published by William H. Shannon, Thomas Merton's Dark Path, The Inner Experience of a Contemplative (New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, 1981), pp. 136-141. 3gIbid., p. 131. 4°Ibid., p. 124. a~New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1974), pp. 52-63. 4~Saint Teresa of Jesus, Way of Perfection, 1,2; 3, I; Mansions, Epilogue, 4. 43M.-D. Chenu, O.P., Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century (University of Chicago Press, 1968). 44See John M. Lozano, C.M.F., Discipleship: Towards an Understanding of the Religious Life (Chicago: Claret Center for Resources in Spirituality, 1980), pp. 49-53. *s Sacrum Commercium, no. 63, St. Francis of Assisi: Omnibus of Sources (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), p. 1593. 46John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., has given particular attention to this theme in his Following Christ in a Consumer Society (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981), pp. 131-142. ~TThe Constitutions of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first chapter, contain this significant text on the new attitude: "Since we participate simultaneously in various communities--the world community, the Christian community, the entire B.V.M. community and the local community--it is the responsibility and privilege of each sister to'contribute to each of these communities according to her gifts and circumstances" (no. 3). ~See Lozano, op. cit., pp. 142-170. ~9Marc Oraison, The Celibate Condition and Sex (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967). See D. Goergen, The Sexual Celibate (New York: Seabury, 1975); K. Clarke, O.F.M. Cap., An Expe-rience of Celibacy (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Mafia, 1982). ~°Also significant is the number of articles published lately on friendship between religious and persons of the opposite sex they are oriented to. In Sisters Today, M. Neuman, O.S.B., has published two articles (October 1974 and November 1976), and J. Becker has published one (May 1979). In REVIEW FOR RELIGIOrdS. 1 counted four: C. Kiesling (July 1971), T. Dubay (November 1977), B. O'Leary (March 1980) and V. Peter (March-April 1982). There is another by Y. E. Raguin in Way Supplement 19. Trends in Religiou~ Life / 505 s~Some constitutions and complementary statutes now speak positively of the relationship between friendship in general and celibacy: Marianists, Rule ofl_zfe, 11, no. 2.4; Piarists, no. 57; Sisters of Charity of the B.V.M., no. 33; Sinsinawa Dominicans, no. 13; Sisters of Saint Joseph of Lagrange, Working Document (1979), no. 42. Some texts treat of the relationship between celibacy and friendship with Christ: Jesuits, 31st General Congregation, Decree 15, no. 8, p. 152; Combonians, no. 26.1. Or they speak of friendship as the fruit of celibacy: Jesuits, op. cir., pp. 152-153; Brothers of the Christian Schools, 5d. Or they view friendship as a defense of celibacy: Jesuits, ibid. Other texts restrict their remarks to friendships within the community: Stigmatines (1982), no. 15; Holy Cross (men), no. 65; Scalabrinians, no. 80. s2Sce A. Cussianovich, S.D.B., Religious Life and the Poor (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1979). S3Evangelica Testificatio, no. 17, Flannery, p. 688; Sacrosanctum Concilium, nos. 98, 101. ~See Lozano, op. cir., ~Poverty and the Kenosis of Christ,~ pp. 191-192. ~SSacrosanctum Concilium, no. 98, 101 (December 4th, 1963), A. Flannery (pp. 27, 28) translates "religious. ~ ~6On this theme, see T. Matura, O.F.M., op. cit., pp. 72-78. The Religious as Witness The new society of love cannot be built in the future if the quality of love does not change. You are the privileged sign of this new love destined to change the world. Your love, "different" from other loves, is the image of God's love. And so your life, evangelically lived and donated, becomes, through your sincere and pure love for mankind, a convincing witness of the love of the Father who is in heaven. Here is your role in the Church. your most authentic vocation. And it is in this way that you, like Mary who believed in the word and the love of the Lord, contribute to the mission of Jesus to create the new world. And that you may live and give Christ's charity more fully, the Church exhorts you to return to the authentic spirit of the founders, to their intentions and to wholesome traditions.--John Pdul 11, To the Women Religious in Albano, 19 September, 1982. L'Osservatore Romano, 11 October, 1982, p. 5. Constitutions and the Revised Code of Canon Law David F. O'Connor, S.T. Father O'Connor is Chairman of the Department of Church Law at The Washington Theologi-cal Union. He resides at Holy Trinity Mission Seminary; 9001 New Hampshire Ave.; Silver Spring, MD 20903. On January 25, 1983, Pope John Paul II promulgated the revised Code of Canon Law, effective as the universal law of the Church for the Latin Rite on November 27, 1983, the First Sunday of Advent. While the revised Code contains nothing startling or surprising in its treatment of the consecrated life, it does bring a needed stability with its clearly stated practical ecclesial expecta-tions concerning post-Vatican II religious life. The canons reassert many of the things stated already by the Fathers of Vatican 11 and in the documents of the post-Conciliar Church. An examination of the canons and their b~i~kground manifests a fidelity to the theology of these ecclesial documents. The 1983 revised Code states in canons 578 and 587 that the constitutions must faithfully express and preserve the mind of the Founder, the spirit and character of the institute, its nature, purposes and wholesome traditions, as part of its patrimony. The constitutions must also contain those fundamental norms required by the Church for the governance of the institute, the discipline of its members, the content of the vows, as well as those norms necessary to express the formation and incorporation of its members and the proper order-ing of the institute. They should fittingly combine both spiritual-ascetical ele-ments with the practical-juridical ones (canon 587 § 3). Once approved, this fundamental code can not be changed without the consent of the proper ecclesiastical authority (canon 587, § 2). Ecclesial Approbation of Religious Institutes and Their Constitutions Through the formal ecclesial approbation .of the constitutions or funda- 506 Constitutions and the Revised Code / 5117 mental book of each institute, the authority of the Church brings into existence the institutes as an ecclesial body or confirms it if it is already established. Constitutions have always been of great importance to institutes because they are particular and specific to each religious family. They help articulate the identity, mission and life-style of the institute and its members. Unfortunately, in the early part of the century this uniqueness was often overshadowed and submerged when constitutions were forced into an excessive conformity with other norms. As a result, there was an inappropriate similarity between many of the constitutions because they were saddled with details, secondary ele-ments, minutiae and multiple regulations which made them all somewhat identical in style and content and overly rigid in form. This was due principally to the Normae of 1901. Consequently, constitutions appeared to be only a verbatim repetition of those norms so that their individuality was lost. This pattern was altered by the Vatican II revisions required by Perfectae caritatis, 3 and 4, and Ecclesiae sanctae, If, 6-11. Fundamentally the revised Code reaffirms the place of religious institutes as progeny of the Church and gifts of the Holy Spirit (canons 575 and 577). In accordance with Lumen gentium, 43, the Code states that it is the authority of the bishops which, recognizing the work of the Spirit, brings into ecclesial existence the various religious institutes (canon 573). It is the right and duty of the pastors of the Church, the bishops, to interpret the evangelical counsels and determine how they are to be practiced and lived by those in the conse-crated life (canon 576). It is this hierarchical recognition which guarantees that the members are living a gospel life which contributes to the building up of the Church (canons 576 and 577). Historically, those groups of pious and well-meaning people who did not receive, or lost ecclesial approbation, often ended up in some form of spiritual aberrancy, schism or heresy, such as the followers of Peter Waldo or the Fraticelli of the middle ages. Today, those religious who are inclined to question the necessity of their affiliation with the pastors of the Church may risk a similar fate. Effect of the Revised Code With the revised Code going into effect, the 1917 Code and all other general or particular disciplinary laws of the Church which are contrary to or treat the same matter as the 1983 Code are abrogated (canon 6, § l) as of November 27, 1983. Therefore, many of the things which were in the 1917 Code no longer are part of the revised Code and are not required to be in the constitutions or the proper law of institutes. For example, nothing is required regarding a period of postulancy, a dowry, or the necessity to have the local Ordinary or his delegate at the election of certain superior generals, as was required in the 1917 Code. This means that institutes will have to determine for themselves whether or not they want to retain some of these things as part of their own law. The retention of some period of"postulancy" may seem to be a prudent and wise one. However, each institute is free to determine this for 508 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 itself. If an institute decides to do so, the matter becomes what canonists refer to as praeter ius, something that is required by the proper law of the institute which goes beyond the requirements of the universal law of the Church. Competency of the Roman Congregations Even though the 1983 Code abrogates all existing disciplinary law when it concerns matters which are treated in the revised Code, this does not imply that the dicasteries of the Apostolic See cease to enjoy a certain authority to make requirements not contained in the universal law. For example, the Sacred Congregation of Religious and Secular Institutes could require some-thing the 1983 Code does not require. In the approval of new constitutions, the SCRSI can require that the essential profession formula of an institute appear in the proper law of that institute. Simply because the universal law does not require this to be done does not imply that it is beyond the competence of SCRSI to do so. Also, the SCRSI certainly retains some competence to make exceptions to requirements of the universal law. Possibly, even though the new Code requires that religious profess vows and not promises (canon 607, § 2), the SCRS1 may be able to grant an exception to a particular institute which can make a good case for retaining a practice which it had during the post- Vatican II period when experimentation was permitted. The Principle of Subsidiarity and the 1983 Code of Canon Law One of the outstanding characteristics of the revised Code is its application of the principle of subsidiarity. As a principle, subsidiarity means that matters should be treated and decisions made at the level which is the most appropriate one. The most appropriate level may not be the lowest one. Whatever level is judged to be the most appropriate will also be the level of responsibility and accountability. The revised Code, therefore, unlike the 1917 Code, very fre-quently states that certain matters are to be determined by proper law. In regard to institutes of the consecrated life, the canons of the Code often state that a specific matter be treated in the constitutions or in the ius pro-prium, the proper law, of the institute. While the proper law will often be, in fact, the secondary or complementary books (Directory, Statutes), the term proper law does not exclude the constitutions or the fundamental book. There-fore, when the canons state that the proper law is to determine the matter, it means that the institute can decide to treat the matter in the constitutions and/or the directory. However, when the canons state that the matter is to be treated in the constitutions, it must be in the constitutions, even though it also may be elaborated upon in the directory. What follows is my paraphrasing of excerpts from the canons of the revised Code from the section on Institutes of the Consecrated Life (Book II, Part III, Section I, Titles I and II, ChaPters 1-6), which require, or leave the option for, complementary legislation in the constitutions or the proper law of-an institute. They are meant to be of aid to those religious institutes which are Constitutions and the Revised Code / 509 preparing their constitutions for submission to ecclesiastical authority for approbation, as well as those institutes which have their constitutions apiaroved already, but may have to make adjustments to bring them into harmony with the revised Code. The reader is advised that these do not attempt to paraphrase the complete canon in every case, but only that part which refers to material which must or may be treated in the constitutions or proper law. Canons Requiring Complementary Legislation in the Constitutions or Proper Law 1. Canons Concerning Norms Common to All Institutes C. 578. The mind of the Founders and their plans, ratified by the competent ecclesiastical authority, about the nature, purpose, spirit and character of the institute and its wholesome traditions, all of which constitute the patrimony of the institute itself, must be observed faithfully. (These are among the things which must be in the constitutions according to c. 587, § 1.) C. 581. The constitutions are to determine the competent authority who may divide the institute into parts, join parts, erect new ones or make other such arrangements. C. 587, § 1. In order to protect more faithfully the particular vocation and identity of the institute, the constitutions or fundamental code of an institute must contain and preserve, besides those things stated in can. 578, the fundamental norms about governance of the institute and the discipline of members, the incorporation and training of members, and the proper object of the sacred bonds. C. 587, § 3. Spiritual and juridical matters are to be suitably joined together; moreover, norms are not to be multiplied unless it is necessary. C. 587, § 4. Other norms established by the competent authority of the insti-tute may be appropriately collected into other books which are to be reviewed and adapted to the needs of times and places. C. 596. The authority of superiors and chapters is to be defined in the consti-tutions as well as by the universal law of the Church. C. 598. The constitutions are to define the manner in which the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience are to be lived in the institute. Members are to live the counsels according to the proper law of the institute. 2. Canons Concerning Religious Houses C. 609, § 1. Religious houses are erected by the competent authority as deter-mined in the constitutions, after having received the consent of the diocesan bishop in writing. C. 613, § 1. A religious house of canonical regulars and monks under the authority and care of its own superior is autonomous, unless the constitutions state otherwise. C. 616, § 1. The suppression of a religious house by the Superior General must ~i10 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 be done according to the constitutions and only after the diocesan bishop has been consulted. 3. Canons Concerning Government in the Institute C. 617. The role of a superior is determined according to the proper law of the institute, as well as the universal law of the Church. C. 622. A superior general has power over the whole institute, its provinces, houses, and members, exercising it according to the proper law of the institute; other superiors have power within the limits of their roles. C. 623. In order that members be validly nominated or elected to the office of superior, it is required that they have a fitting time after perpetual profession in the institute as determined by proper law. For major superiors, it is determined by the constitutions. C. 624, § I. Superiors should be constituted as such for a certain and con-venient period of time according to the ~aature and necessities of the institute, unless the constitutions determine otherwise for the Superior General or superiors of autonomous houses. C. 624, § 2. The proper law of the institute should provide suitable norms so that superiors constituted for a definite period of time do not continue for a long time without an interruption in offices of governance. C. 624, § 3. Nevertheless, superiors can be removed from office during their term or transferred to another office for reasons stated in the proper law of the institute. C. 626. When superiors confer an office or when the members participate in elections, they should observe the norms of the universal law and the proper law of the institute, abstaining from any abuse or acceptance of persons, choosing those who, before God, seem most worthy and suitable, having only God and the good of the institute before them. They must not attempt to procure votes, directly or indirectly, for themselves or for others. C. 627, § 1. According to the norm of the constitutions, superiors should have their own council, whose assistance they ought to use in carrying out the work of their office. C. 627, § 2. Besides the cases prescribed in the universal law, the proper law of the institute should determine those cases in which it is required that they seek their consent or advice for the validity of an action according to canon 127, and any other determination of proper law. C. 628, § I. Superiors who are designated for this purpose by the proper law of the institute should conduct visitations of the houses and members entrusted to them at the times designated according to the norms of the proper law. C. 629. Superiors are to reside in their own houses and not absent themselves from their house unless it is according to the norm of the proper law. C. 63 l, § I. The general chapter, which has supreme authority in the institute according to the norm of the constitutions, should be so formed that, repre-senting the whole institute, it should form a true ~ign of its unity in love, and so forth. Constitutions and the Revised Code C. 631, § 2. The composition and ambit of a chapter's authority must be defined in the constitutions. The proper law of the institute should determine the order to be observed in the conduct of the chapter, especially in regard to elections and procedures. C. 631, § 3. According to the norms of the proper law, not only provinces and local communities, but also any member at all has a fight to send freely his wishes and suggestions to the general chapter. C. 632. The proper law determines accurately those things which pertain to any chapter of the institute and to similar bodies, concerning their nature, authority, composition, mode of proceeding and time of meeting. C. 633, § 1. Organs of participation or consultation (committees and commis-sions) should faithfully carry out their duties according to their mandate and the norms of universal and proper law. In some manner, they should express the care and the participation of all members for the good of the whole institute. C. 633, § 2. In establishing these means of participation and consultation and in wisely adhering to them, discretion should be exercised so that the manner of carrying them out may conform to the nature and end of the institute. C. 634, § I. Institutes, provinces and houses, as juridical persons, have the capacity for acquiring, possessing, administering, and alienating temporal goods, unless this capacity is excluded by or limited by the constitutions. C. 635, § 2. Every institute should have appropriate norms for the use and administration of goods so that its poverty is properly fostered, guarded and expressed. C. 636, § 1. Every institute should have a treasurer, distinct from the superior, according to the norms of proper law who will care for the administration of goods under the direction of the superior. Also, every local community is to have a treasurer (bursar) distinct from the local superior. C. 636, § 2. Proper law should also determine the time and the manner for rendering an account to the competent authority. C. 638, § 1. Proper law, within the limits of universal law, determines when an act exceeds the limits and manner of ordinary administration and when an act of extraordinary administration may be placed. C. 638, § 2. Besides superiors, officials designated for this purpose according to the proper law may validly incur expenses and perform other juridical acts of ordinary administration according to their office. 4. Canons Concerning Admission of Candidates and Members of the Institute C. 641. The right to admit candidates to the novitiate belongs to the major superiors according to norms of proper law. C. 643, § 2. The proper law can place additional impediments or conditions to the valid admission of candidates beyond what is required by the Code. C. 645, § 3. The proper law can require other testimony concerning the suita-bility of the candidate and his freedom from impediments besides what is required by the Code. 512 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 C. 648,§ 2. The constitutions can require time for one or several apostolic experiences outside the novitiate community. However, these are not calcu-lated as part of the twelve months required for the validity of the novitiate. C. 650, § 1. The scope of the novitiate program, under the direction of a novice master, is defined by the proper law of each institute. C. 653, § 2. The novitiate being completed, a novice makes temporary vows or leaves; if there is doubt as to his suitability, he can be given a longer time of probation but not beyond six months. This is done by the major superior according to norms of proper law. C. 655. The time for temporary profession is determined by proper law, but it is not to be less than three nor more than six years. C. 657, § 2. If judged opportune, the period of temporary vows can be extended by the competent superior, according to proper law. But the whole period of temporary vows should not exceed nine years. C. 658. Proper law can also add to the appropriate requirements for the validity of perpetual profession beyond' those stated in this Code. C. 659, § 2. The proper law must define the duration and program of training after first incorporation, being always mindful of the goal and character of the institute, as well as the needs of the religious. 5. Canons Concerning Rights and Obligation~ of Members C. 663, § 3. According to prescriptions of proper law, religious should also celebrate worthily the liturgical hours and other pious exercises. C. 667, § 1. The proper law determines the character and extent of the cloister according to the nature and mission of the institute, always reserving some part of the house solely for religious members. C. 668, § 1. Before first profession, unless the constitutions provide otherwise, the members, animated by the spirit of the gospel, should cede the administra-tion of their temporal goods to whomever they choose, freely disposing of the use and usufruct thereof. C. 668, § 2. With permission of the competent superior, according to norms of proper law, religious may, for a just cause, change the disposition. C. 668, § 3. Pensions, assistance, insurance of whatever kind received by the members are acquired by the institute, unless the proper law states otherwise. C. 668, § 4. With the permission of the superior general, according to the norms of proper law, a member may renounce his goods. C. 668, § 5. If a member does so, anything that comes to him after this belongs to the institute according to the norms of proper law. C. 669, § 1. Religious should wear the habit of the institute, according to the norms of proper law, as a sign of their consecration and witness to poverty. C. 670. The institute ought to supply the members with all that is necessary according to the norms of the constitutions for achieving the end of their vocation. 6. Canons Concerning the Separation of Members from the Institute C. 684, § 4. In the case of the transfer of a professed member to another Constitutions and the Revised Code / 51:3 institute, the proper law of the new institute will determine the time and manner of probation. C. 696, § 2. For the dismissal of a member in temporary vows, even less serious reasons suffice according to the statutes of the proper law. Conclusion While religious institutes are ecclesial bodies subject to the authority of the Church according to the norms of the Code of Canon Law, nevertheless, each institute enjoys a certain autonomy in respect to its own internal life (canon 586). Once the constitutions and the proper law of each institute are approved by ecclesiastical authority,.the institute is expected to go about its internal life without the need for interference from outside agencies. Without doubt, the proper Roman dicasteries have a right, within their competency, to exercise a certain authority and vigilance over institutes of the consecrated life, especially in their relationships to other groups and persons in the Church. However, the particular style of life and the patrimony of each institute will be fostered and safeguarded more surely because of the fact that the revised Code requires (or leaves option for) each institute to determine for itself the specifics of many aspects of its internal life. Over forty canons, in application of the principle of subsidiarity, shift responsibility for the determination of certain matters to the constitutions or proper law of the institute. Therefore, the uniqueness of each religious institute will be made more evident. The rigid conformity, which was the unfortunate consequence of the Normae of 1901 and--to a certain extent--the 1917 Code, will be a thing of the past. The revised Code of Canon Law represents a significant advance in the implementation of the theological understanding which the post-Vatican II Church has of the consecrated life. While no human law is without its limita-t~ ions and deficiencies, the 1983 revised Code should help to foster the devel-opment of a vibrant religious life. Evening Prayer As gently as gravity pulls objects Toward the deepest center of the earth, From my first dawn You exerted this pull. Like a magnet, You attracted me away from other energizing forces And drew me closer and closer in Your magnetic field. Come sunset-- And I hover here, this strong power magnetizing me Even closer within the circle of Your love, The center of Your being Where I belong. Carmelita McKeever, CSJ The College of Saint Rose 432 Western Avenue Albany, NY 12203 Everyone Who Has Left Father and Mother. When a New Missionary Arrives Barry Malone, S.M. Father Malone has set forth his reactions soon after arriving in Lahore from his homeland of New Zealand. Much of this is in the experience of every radical response to Christ. Father Malone teaches at St. Anthony's High School; P.O. Box 61; Lahore, Pakistan. When you get there, you will, of course, experience quite a culture shock. Be prepared for that. It was kind of them to warn me. I had heard already of this "culture shock" and had observed it in others once or twice. Just the process of adaptation--or so I thought. What I am writing now will not, I suppose, be anything like what I will write in six months' time. But, then, part of the experience seems to be being anything but confident about next month, much less about six months' time. Is what I am feeling "culture shock"?. Does the giving of a label to an experience like this help me to own the experience? Or is such a label an aspirin, to help minimize the pain--and maybe even prevent the change that has to take place within me? Culture shock or not, there have been times of joy and excitement as I notice new sights and sounds. There have been moments of wonder and disbelief at finding myself in the midst of Asia and of Islam, in an area steeped in history and saturated with people. But there have been times, too, of being the complete stranger, times of confusion, of disorientation, of fear, of the absence of anything familiar. I can be walking jauntily along the street and be approached by someone: I cannot speak his language, and he cannot speak mine. I can be cycling along 514 Everyone Who Has Left Father and Mother / 515 (guided by my tattered map) only to discover that I'd forgotten I was in the Northern Hemisphere now, and here the midday sun lies to the south--and I am lost yet again. I, so used to school, have to ask my pupils ("Speak very slowly please, boys!") "What is this application? What is checking? What is Basant? Why do you remain standing like that?" I have biked (accidentally) into the middle of a bazaar area, and felt trapped and helpless, until a kind stall-owner had to shift his whole shop to help me squeeze past. Surely you can cope with all that? Yes, but I feel I'm not learning very fast; each confusing event seems to upset me more. The excitement and the novelty of it all has begun to evaporate but the confusion remains. Sometimes just knowing what is going on helps one to accept it all with tranquillity and confidence. But what is going on? What if all that makes sense is the image of the rough and confused underside of a tapestry? But you trust in my guiding hand and the wisdom of my purposes, surely? Surely. But how shallow can such trust be! How glib those remembered phrases from sermons I delivered or counsel I offered. The fragility of an eggshell is not obvious amid the straw of the nest. There seems to be a great desert that lies between the theory of hope, of mission, of pilgrimage, and the reality of this situation, of these people, of this particular phase. Human reasons (and sometimes motives deeper still) are tried: "You're here to replace Father X. He's the ideal person for the important tasks at Y." Of course he is. He would just be marking time here, and his gifts, his many gifts, must be used. But why me? You volunteered and when word came you had months of peace at the very prospect. I had no real idea. Really? Well . You're here to support the others. Fine. They deserve all the support they can get. They've had a rough time of it. But how can 1 support men of such inner strength when I feel the way I do? Anyway, what has been changed by my arrival--except another bread on the paten at Mass each morning, another bowl of soup on the table each evening and, for a few weeks, the laughter at my small repertoire of jokes? Come on! Now you know why the affirmations of farewell flooded in. It was to strengthen you with memories for days like these. But what about the other farewells: "What are you running away from?" "How do you know you're doing the right thing by going?" "Weal be one short here next year: there'll be no replacement for you." It's a year of preparation for the next step. What for,-exactly? Preparation for a real culture shock, when poverty is not just seen but is my lot too, when the language barrier cannot be avoided by staying with an English-speaking community and teaching in an English- 516 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 speaking medium school? Preparation for a land where even cricket is un-known, and to be a priest is to be suspected? What sort of preparation anyway? If I said purification, how would that sound? It sounds awful! But then again it sounds right. What else but purification to describe this sudden and traumatic state with nothing visibly significant to do? Was I still so chained to the merry-go-round of activity for its own sake? Was I really so reliant upon success in tasks and relationships that the lack of any prospect of success is so sour? Was I .(who read so much and reveled in change) really in such a rut that these different people, this strange place, these foreign tongues are so unsettling? Purification. Yes, that's it. One thing has to go, I know, and that is the spirit of giving a performance. Didn't I feel only yesterday, halfway through prayer, that it was a performance for God? And didn't that realization stop me dead and make me ask him to lead me? But purification for what? What kind of purification is it that involves an irritation at the discovery that the English wording of the Our Father here is different from the one I learned thirty-six years ago? What kind of purification is it that makes me so annoyed at the mistakes I made at a game of draughts last night? At draughts, for heaven's sake! What kind of purification is it that makes me feel so awkward when the teachers call me "Sir" and want to shake my hand each morning; when every one of fifteen hundred boys seems to want a personal answer to his "Good morning, Sir"?. What kind of purification is it that makes me feel I'm not coping as I was so used to coping? Why do I feel so suspicious and afraid? Ah, do you hear what you are saying? You were so used to coping! The one who is coping doesn't usually ask for help. Or so l~ve noticed. OK. I need to trust more. I walked the streets of this city; I landed at that chaotic airport; I passed those first homes of the very poor and turned to you and said: "In you, O Lord, I place my trust." Sure you did. Incidentally, I prompted that, you know. But trust now means to let go of that crumbling cliff-face that you're perched on and to hold on to me as l find a path to real safety. But what is this crumbling cliff?. Do I have all that much to let go of?. What do you think? Would my naming things just now really help? Or would it just add to the theory? Let me just gently release those fingers of yours one by one and transfer your weight onto me. It's sort of traumatic and gentle at the same time. Look down if you like, because your part'of the cliff will be down there shortly. So what do I do? Even at prayer I find my requests are selfish and I doubt my sincerity at any noble petition. That's another thing. Why do youpray as if l were unable to speak? Who was it who changed your prayer from "Gift me" to "Please continue to bless me and guide me in your service'? Who prompted your praise for all the good you see in this land of poverty? Is it just a matter of time, then? Everyone Who Has Left Father and Mother / 517 Well, time is not the enemy. I, too, shared the experience of waiting. I endured those sterile sermons in the synagogue and waited for the time when I myself would speak, l know what it's like to wait. l also know what it's like to have to change plans. Do you remember when I was in the Temple, aged twelve? Remember the results of my long retreat in the desert? Then I, discovered my mission was to be done in weakness not comfort, in powerless-ness not power, in ordinariness not in the spectacular. Didn't you preach on , that once? So what do I do? Should I write, read, visit, wander the streets and bazaars? What? What you do is less important than doing whatever it is with humility and love and with me. I find that fine for a while, but the days can become long and empty. That means you are waiting. Remember once you doubted if I wanted you to come here and you offered to call it off?. I said whether I wanted you to come or not, I would always be with you. I remember. I never looked back after that. Or have I? We'll talk again sometime. I have no intention of guarding you from the truth of these people, of yourself, of our real mission together. Keep in touch. Sure. thanks. From Tablet to Heart: Internalizing New Constitutions I and I! by Patricia Spillane, M.S.C. Price: $1.25 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 The Fourth Vow of the Jesuits John R. Sheets, S.J. Father Sheets, a frequent contributor, is a member of the Department of Theology of Creighton University (Omaha, NE 68178). His topic is one of recurring media, interest, especially in view of the Jesuits' upcoming 33rd General Congregation. The recently published article on the Jesuits' fourth vow by Father John O'Malley, "The Fourth Vow in Its Ignatian Context: A Historical Study,"I has more than academic interest at this particular juncture in the history of the Society of Jesus and its relationship to the Holy See. Beginning with the Jesuits' Thirty-second General Congregation (December l, 1974 to March 7, 1975), there has been a series of unfortunate contretemps between the Society and the pope. Pope Paul VI's final appraisal of the work of that congregation, as conveyed in Cardinal Villot's letter (May 2, 1975), was not enthusiastic: "From an examination of the decrees, it appears that well-known circum-stances prevented the General Congregation from achieving all that His Holiness had expected from this important event . " Nor was the Society's own appraisal of itself that positive. The first item on the agenda of every general congregation according to the statutes is the election of a commission to review the state of the Society. This commission, after reviewing the material at its disposal, issued its report to the assembled delegates. | was one of the delegates. We felt that the report was too negative. We remanded it to the commission. If my memory serves me, we voted to disband the commission itself. However, the tone of the report found its way into a decree called "Jesuits Today." It begins with the words: "What is it to be a Jesuit? It is to know that one is a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus." After the commission's report, and the response of the delegates, Fr. Arrupe took up the topic in an address to the congregation: Two images he 518 The Fourth Vow of the Jesuits / 5"i9 used stand out in my memory. He compared the Society to a ship that has come through a storm, battered, but intact. He also described it as a person who is ill, but not mortally. Another series of events is more recent. In October 1981, to the surprise of e~,eryone, Pope John Paul II, in an unprecedented action, replaced the man chosen by Fr. Arrupe as his personal vicar. In his place, the pope named an Italian Jesuit, Fr. Paolo Dezza, who has had a long history of service to the Society, as his personal delegate to the Society. Predictably the reaction among Jesuits ran the gamut. On the part of many the reactions were negative: feelings of anger, resentment, indignation, confusion, suspicion, hurt. Some, on the other hand, saw it as a special sign of love and concern the Holy Father had for the Society, intended to help us prepare more fruitfully for the upcoming congregation at which a new general will.be elected. The initial bristling reaction was in large part quieted by subsequent events. The week-long meeting of the provincials from all over the world with Fr. Dezza, then their personal conference with the pope brought a great deal of mutual understanding. Finally, Fr. Dezza's letter convoking the next General Congregation to take place in September of 1983 set our faces toward the future. Fr. O'Malley's article on the fourth vow assumes, then, a special impor-tance in the light of the events just mentioned. Its implications for our collec-tive awareness of our relationships toward the Holy See merit serious attention. In what fol~lows, after an analysis of Fr. O~Malley~s article, I shall pose questions expressing my misgiving with his argumentation and his conclusion. Then I shall present Fr. Arrupe's treatment of the fourth vow in some of his recent writings. Needless to say, even in my disagreement with Fr. O'Malley, I respect him as a scholar and personal friend. The Fourth Vow However, even before I begin, I should say something about the Jesuits' fourth vow for the benefit of non-Jesuits who might read this. In establishing his religious order, St. Ignatius took over, of course, many traditional aspects of religious life. In other points he was creative and innovative. He took over, for example, the idea of the final vows that a member would make after a period of probation. But he also introduced an innovation in what arecalled "grades" in the Society~ Those who are admitted to last vows would be admitted on two grades (or levels). The first grade comprises the spiritual (priests) and temporal (lay brothers) coadjutors. The second grade is that of the professed. Besides the regular vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the professed took a fourth vow of obedience to the pope. The description of this fourth vow is found in The Formula of the Institute, the document in which Pope Julius IIl in 1550 gave his full approbation to this new congregation. 520 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 The pertinent sentences from the formula are the following: "We are obliged by a special vow to carry out whatever the present and future Roman pontiffs may order in what pertains to the progress of souls and the propaga-tion of the faith; and to go without subterfuge or excuse, as far as in us lies, to whatsoever provinces they may choose to send us . , The motive for the vow is "for the sake of our greater devotion in obedience to the Apostolic See, of greater abnegation of our own wills, and of surer direction from the Holy Spirit." Further declarations are found in the Constitutions for the Society written by St. Ignatius. "The Fourth Vow in Its Ignatian Context: A Historical Study" I come then to Fr. O'Malley's article. He describes in the Introduction the particular question that focuses his study: "The most specific and urgent ques-tion raised in the past few years is how the vow relates to the papal magiste-rium. Does the vow obligate Jesuits to an adherence to that magisterium that is different from that of other Catholics, especially Catholic theologians, and is 'special' to the members of the Society? That question, we must note right off, is asked regarding an obligation imposed by the vow" (p. 1). The article is prompted then by the problem facing Jesuits, particularly teachers, writers, editors. Does the fourth vow oblige them to support papal teaching if they judge there is room for legitimate disagreement? In Part I. St. Ignatius and Doctrine, upon examining the relevant sources, Fr. O'Malley draws the conclusion that St. Ignatius had no interest in doctrine qua doctrine, but only in its pastoral implications. "Is it too much to state that Ignatius had no real interest in doctrine or theology in the conventional sense of those terms today? A strong case can be made for that position" (p. 9). "Ignatius conceived doctrine almost entirely with a view to pastoral effective-ness" (p. 11). "The behavioral and attitudinal components emerge much stronger in this 'horizon' than do more strictly dogmatic issues" (p. 11). Part II. St. Ignatius and Orthodoxy deals with doctrine as the object of faith. Here he takes up St. Ignatius' "Rules for Thinking with the Church." He addresses himself mainly to Rule 13: "What seems to me white, I will believe (creer) black if the hierarchical Church so defines, believing (creyendo) between Christ our Lord, the spouse, and the Church, his bride, there is the same Spirit which governs us and directs us to the salvation of our souls." Rather than se.,eing this rule as applying to doctrinal orthodoxy qua orthodoxy, O'Malley interprets it more as a practical directive: "His 'rule' emerges, therefore, more as an indication of a disposition of soul (sentir) than as a practical instrument for theological discourse. It thus reflects the attitudi-nal and affective intent that pervades Ignatius' writings" (p. 15). "But, again like the rest of us, Ignatius was cautious, conventional, and even undiscrimi-nating in areas where he had no deep inte~rest. One of these areas was academic theology, and even the relationship of that theology to orthodoxy" (p. 16). According to O'Malley, then, Ignatius had little interest in academic theology, The Fourth l,'ow of the Jesuits / 521 or the relationship of theology to dogma, or interest in dogma itself, except as providing some kind of pastoral orientation. O'Malley begins Part III. St. Ignatius and the Church with a statement which seems to moderate what he said before: "If there is one exception to this vagueness on dogma in Ignatius' thinking, it lies in ecclesiology" (p. 21). But he goes on to correct this impression. What was Ignatius' idea of the Church? Not primarily a "school of doc-trine," nor a hierarchical and sacramental reality, but as a locus for ministry. "Ministry, quite ~imply, is what the Church is about. As one conceives minis-try, therefore, so does one conceive Church" (p. 24). "Rather than 'school of doctrine,' therefore, a less ambiguous term of Ignatius' idea of the Church might be 'school of the affections' or 'school of affectivity'" (p. 25). What is the identifying role of the papacy then? Since the Church is to be conceived as the locus of ministry, the pope is conceived as the universal provider for ministry in the Church. "The consensus was., that the pope was the universal pastor with certain prerogatives that made him the ultimate judge in areas where equitable settlement could otherwise not be achieved. He resolved disputes and thereby was the ultimate guarantor of order in the Church. 'Pastor' and 'judge' would be the two best words to describe his function" (p. 28). Was there such a thing as papal magisterium at the time of Ignatius? Not in the sense in which it exists today, according to O'Malley. "The pope is rarely described as 'teacher,' at least as we would be inclined to understand that word today" (p. 29). "They were very far, then, from exercising a teaching office in any regular and positive sense" (p. 29). What was it, then, that led Ignatius to conceive the fourth vow? According to O'Malley, it was mainly his sense of order. This came from his temperament and background, as well as from the contemporary world view that saw hierarchy as the natural order of the universe. "It was inevitable that he would ascribe this same structure to the Church" (p. 31). Was the vow a one-sided promise that the Society be totally at the service of the pope? Not exactly. It was a quidpro quo: "They needed the Holy See as badly as they believed the Holy See needed them . In defending the Holy See. the Jesuits were also defending their own charter to exist" (p. 32). "The relationship between the Jesuits and the pope was mutually advan-tageous" (p. 33). However functional this whole arrangement was, O'Malley concedes that Ignatius did, nevertheless, have a special regard for the Holy See. But one should not read back into his devotion to the Holy See the personalistic fervor that grew up around the person of the Holy Father in the nineteenth century (p. 33). In Part II/. St. Ignatius and the Fourth l,'ow O'Malley argues against the position of two Jesuits, a German and a~ Spaniard, who hold a position contrary to his. He feels they go too far in expanding the scope of the vow. He 522 / Review for Religious, July-August, 1983 grants that "the symbolic character of a vow, as an expression of a religious ideal, should be expansive, but the proper object of a vow must., be clearly localized" (p. 38). He then states again the specific question he is addressing: "Can the pope bind a Jesuit by virtue of his vow to some 'special' defense, say, of Veterum sapientia, or Populorum progressio, or Humanae vitae, or Laborem exer-cens?" (p. 40). His answer is "No." There is no indication that Ignatius or his companions ever considered this as a likelil~ood or possibility (p. 40). He rules out, then, the possibility of the pope comman~ding some specific teaching by reason of the

Issue 54.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1995. ; Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ P.O. Box 29260 ¯ ~,Vashington, DC 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1995 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Adv#o~y Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read Joann Wolski Conn PhD Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living No\qt~MBER/DECEMBER 1995 ¯ VOLUME 54 ¯ NUMBER 6 contents 806 apostoJJC Witness Dorothy Kazel OSU: An Eternal Flame Cynthia Glavac OSU draws a portrait of Dorothy Kazel OSU with its spiritual implications for us today. 825 833 future church Opportunity. of the Jubilee Year 2000 Nesto~ Gregoire OMI alerts us to some actions that we might take in r~sponding to Pope Jo]m Paul's apostolic letter on the third millennium. The 1994 Synod: Uniqueness and Challenge Cassian Yuhfius CP gives a perspective on six differences present in the 1994 synod of bishops and three challenges for consecrated life. 851 868 leadership From Usefui Instruments to Willing Agents: Transforming.Leadership for the New Millennium Joseph A. Tetlow SJ reflects on the transformation of leadership through the perspective of five dimensions Religious Life Governance: Personal and Organizational Experiences of Power Beatrice M. Eichten OSF reshapes and reclaims power as a religious reality in view of authority and obedience. 802 Review for Religious 881 904 reJigious life Attachment, Belonging, and Membership: Commitment Style in Male Religious Communities James Halstead OSA draws a picture of the different lived mean-ings of membership in a r~ligious congregation. A Time of Blessing for Brothers Joel Giallanza CSC interprets the present moment in the church as an opportunity to act on the need for the word and witness of male, lay religious life. 913 918 mission The Missionary Heart Regina Siegfried ASC reflects on Precious Blood spirituality as a wellspring of a missionary heart. The Logic and Irony of Success in Mission A. Paul Dominic SJ ponders the Christian meaning of success when it involves missionary efforts. departments 804 Prisms 934 Canonical Counsel: The Potestas of Religious Superiors: Background for Canon 596 941 Book Reviews 950 Indexes to Volume 54 November-December 199Y 803 prisms One of the striking aspects of the pope's recent encyclicals, apostolic exhortations, and papal audience presentations has been their focus on a reconciling or unifying theme. Orientale lumen clearly is a call for even greater efforts in seeking a reconciliation between the Orthodox churches and the Latin-rite Roman church and the Eastern rites in communion with Rome. Ut unum sint looks to a time of unity for all Christian churches, founded on the reconciling role of the bishop of Rome. Justice for past wrongs is not a precondition, only forgiveness. Where liberation theology, in particular, helped the Christian community to see more clearly the necessary relationship of our baptismal faith and justice, the move-ment for human rights in all of its ramifications now appears to be entering a new depth. In the Christian dis-pensation, reconciliation is the heart of divine justice. God's just judgment in the face of human evil and sin takes shape in the reconciling life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Only through Christian revelation do we find that justice finds its center in reconciliation. That is why St. Paul could exuberantly proclaim that we as ministers of Christ truly are ambassadors of reconciliation. Since the 1971 synod's document on "Justice in the World," there has been a certain amount of turmoil in the church, especially in Latin America, over the shape and direction of justice efforts. Religious life communities wholeheartedly took up the challenge of faith and its rela-tion to justice in their chapters of renewal and in their 804 Review for Religious production of mission documents. Mixed signals of encourage-ment and disapproval came forth from Roman dicasteries, from national episcopal conferences, and sometimes even from a divi-sive foment within a religious congregation itself. For those church congregations and religious life groups which had grown all too comfortable with a Western world middle- and upper-class lifestyle, living a faith that does iustice (and does not escape into a charity-alone approach) is to heed the call to conversion found at the start of each of the gospels. Necessary as this call is for every age, it took on a crucial importance in the post-World War II development of nations, particularly between northern and southern hemispheres. But as our past quarter-century experi-ence has brought home, the human sense of iustice runs inde-pendently of Christian faith, and for lay Catholics as well as for women and men religious iustice efforts can break off from faith roots. Then the result appears as a burnout activism, deeper divi-siveness, and greater iniustice. The call coming to us as we prepare to enter into the new millennium is not a reversal of our Christian efforts to work for a world in which there are more iust relationships among all peo-ples. The call is for us to keep our attention fixed on the heart of all iustice efforts which Christians exercise. An emphasis on righ-teousness only has led in our experience to conflict and further iniustice. Just relations in human living are doomed to frustra-tion and failure without a centering in forgiveness and reconcil-iation. If we ultimately are not about a ministry of reconciliation in our iustice efforts, we are not about a Christian ministry. Perhaps that is why each year we need to hear anew voices from heaven singing out "peace and good will" as we welcome God's own Ambassador of reconciliation. The Review for Religious staff prays that the gift of Christ's peace be given in abundance to all our readers in this Christmas season. David L. Fleming SJ November-December 1995 805 CYNTHIA GLAVAC Dorothy Kazel OSU: An Eternal Flame Note: December 2, 1995 ~narks the l Yth anniversary of the murder of four North American churchwomen, Dorothy Kazel OSU, Jean Donovan, Maura Clarke MM, and Ira Ford MM in E1 Salvador. When people discover that I am a member of the Cleveland Ursulines, the congregation to which Dorothy Kazel also belonged, they usually ask me if I knew Dorothy. Before Dorothy died on 2 December 1980, my association with her had been minimal, even though we had lived six houses apart on the same street in Euclid, Ohio for a few years. However, when Dorothy moved to our street in 1955 as a sixteen-year-old teenager, I was only a year old. And although she might have remem-bered me as "one of the babies on the street," I certainly would not have "remembered her! Five years later she joined my congregation. My first re.collection of actually meeting Dorothy dates back to late spring 1973. At this time, she was min-istering as a guidance counselor at Beaumont School, one of my congregation's high schools, and I was a postulant who had been sent there to experience what we then called Cynthia Glavac OSU presented the substance of this article in a talk at the Second North American Convocation held at Owensboro, Kentucky in July 1995. She is an assistant professor of English at Ursuline College in Cleveland, Ohio. Her address is 137 Ruth Ellen Drive, Bldg. K, Apt. 316; Richmond Heights, Ohio 44143. 806 Review for Religious mission life, as well as to help out in the school until the end of the semester. So, for about five weeks, Dorothy and I lived and worked together as any members of the same local community would. A year later, in July 1974, Dorothy left to begin her missionary min-istry in E1 Salvador. Between that time and December 1980, I saw Dorothy only briefly on several occasions, and the reason why I even saw her was because in 1977 I had been assigned to teach at Beaumont, Dorothy's home base when she came to Cleveland for her yearly vacation. It was not until ten years after Dorothy's d~ath, however, that I really began to get to know her and develop what I now consider a fairly close relationship with her. In late 1989, as I was nearing completion of the coursework and preliminary exams for my doctorate in lit-erature, a iCriend in my congregation, Eileen Collins, suggested I investigate the possibility of writing Dorothy's biography for my disser-tation. The topic of women's biography--that is, biographies of women by women--certainly related to one of my areas of concentration, women's literature, but the members of my dissertation committee told me that I had to write Dorothy's biography within a theoretical framework. Consequently, I chose to research contemporary women's bio-graphical theory and then ",~rite a biography of Dorothy based on these theoretical findings. Two years later, in May 1992, I completed my dissertation, "A Biography of Dorothy Kazel OSU, from the Perspective of Contemporary Women's Biographical Theory." Because I plan to expan.d my dissertation into a full-length biography of Dorothy and l~ublish it, hopefully within the next two years, I have con-tinued my research of Dorothy's life these past three years. The deeper I delve into Dorothy's life and reflect upon it, the more I realize her connectedness to us as religious. Surely she plays an important role in the history of the church, but more significantly, she is a religious for usj'br thefiaure. In this context, I liken her to a flame,~ steadily glowing and unquenchable in its brilliance: What we can learn from the way Dorothy lived her life can light our way, like a beacon, into the twenty-first cen-tury; her words can fire our imaginations to the possibilities of What we can learn from the way Dorothy lived her life can light our way, like a beacon, into the twenty-first century. November-December 1995 807 Glavac ¯ An Eternal Flame religious life and of our lives as religious, even beyond the next century--or the next millennium. This article focuses on three aspects of Dorothy's life from which we can draw inspiration and thus fuel the fire of our vision and commitment to the future as religious: 1) her missionary min-istry; 2) her spirituality; and 3) her personal struggles. Within the context of these three aspects or themes, I also weave the par-ticulars of Dorothy's life as a Cleveland Ursuline, which encom-pass the years 1960-1980. Please understand, though, that these qualities alone in no way render a complete portrait of Doroth~c's character. There's much I have left out! Missionary Ministry On 4 February 1980, for Bartholomew McCaffrey, General Superior of my congregation at the time: Dorothy c6mpleted a congregational questionnaire on personal ministry choice. The statements and questions included on the form asked for infor-mation regarding the past ministry experiences of an individual sis-ter, as well as her preferences for future ministry assignments. In response to the statement, "Check the areas in which you have worked," Dorothy indicated, "disadvantaged, sacramental prepa-ration, individual program, parish school of religion, special edu-cation, deaf, and so forth, adult education, and renewal programs." Following this statement on the form is the question, "In which of the areas mentioned would you like to work or continue to work?" Dorothy's answer is "disadvantaged." A major realization I had about Dorothy after I finished writ-ing her biography and could then clearly see in great detail both the beginning and the final years of her life was that she was able to leave behind the sheltered environment in which she grew up and ultimately extend herself to a distant third-world country. To clarify, Dorothy was born and grew up in a predominantly Lithuanian neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. She socialized primarily with family members and neighbors and attended St. George parish elementary school and then Notre Dame Academy with the same classmates. However, at some point, even before she considered religious life, Dorothy ~hought about working with people whose cultures and life experiences were different from her own. She explained this desire herself in the letter she wrote in which she volunteered to go to E1 Salvador as a missionary. 808 Review for Religious This letter is dated 4 November 1967, and is addressed to Annunciata Witz,.my congregation's General Superior at the time: I have always been of the nature of a person eager to be on the move--to go to new places, to meet new people, to learn to understand these people, and to help them. Before I entered, I traveled to the West Coast four times; it was then that I was first impressed with the Spanish and Indian people. I wanted to stay, get to know them, and help them. I had even "day dreamdd" that ~ny parents would disown me and leave me there. Dorothy never gave up her desire to be a missionary. I real-ized this fact when I closely examined the nine years preceding her ministry in E1 Salvador when she served as a teacher at two of my congregation's high schools, Sacred Heart Academy and Beaumont School. During this time, Dorothy transformed her missionary vocation and transferred it not only to students but also to people outside the two schools. But all of these people were marginalized for some reason. From 1965-1972, Dorothy ministered at Sacred Heart Academy, which was located in the economically poorest area of the three high schools my congregation sponsored at that time. During Dorothy's years at Sacred Heart, she consistently taught business and secretarial courses, but as early as her second year at the school, she began to travel beyond the boundaries of her high school ministry to persons marginalized by physical handicaps, poverty, or race. For example, from 1966-1969, Dorothy taught Catholic doctrine to the deaf on Saturday mornings at a nearby parish and served at the Martin de Porres Center, located in one of the poorest sections of Cleveland; during the summer of 1969, she taught Catholic doctrine to Native Americans of the Papago Tribe in Topawa, Arizona. In 1970, Dorothy began work on a master's degree in guidance and counseling so that she could help yet another sector of the marginalized. Because of financial difficulties, Sacred Heart Academy closed in June 1972. Dorothy was then assigned to teach and do coun-seling at Beaumont School where she remained for the next two years. Although most of the girls Dorothy counseled at Beaumont were from upper and upper-middle class economic levels, and therefore not materially poor, they had their own set of unique problems that included drug and alcohol abuse and difficult fam-ily situations. Because of Dorothy's compassion, understanding, November-December 199~ 809 Glavac ¯ An Eternal Flame and natural ability to relate to young people, many of these girls turned to her for direction at all hours of the day and night. When she was not counseling Beaumont students, Dorothy volunteered her services at the Workhouse, a women's correctional facility, and at Sunny Acres, a hospital for chronically ill patients. Although Dorothy was a fine classroom teacher at both Sacred Heart Academy and Beaumont School, I believe that working with the disadvantaged and the marginalized was a natural thing for her to do. By the time she got to E1 Salvador, then, in July 1974 with Martha Owen OSU,2 Dorothy fit in very well with both the seasoned missionaries and the na.tive people. And she quickly understood how to minister to the Salvadoran people, as is evi-denced by the following excerpt from a letter she wrote to the sisters of Beaumont Convent: We know perhaps better than any Ursuline how important these contributions are3 to the lives of our 51,000 parish-ioners whom we are trying to help realize their full dignity as persons, new persons capable of reaching full develop-ment through their ability to read and write. This will make accessible to them the ways of learning and the rich pos-session of truth, both human and divine, that we enjoy. W'e hope to help them become people who can "rule the earth," that is to say, people who are able to tame the land and put it at the service of humanity (hereafter cited as L2). Dorothy loved and was dedicated to the people of El Salvador, as another section of the same letter reveals: So we continue, living through earthquakes, eating beans and tortillas in the cantones, taking attempted suicide vic-tims to the hospital, walking in dust or water up to our ankles (depends on the season), removing knifed victims from the main streets, building houses, demolishing and rebuilding churches, enduring the heat and mosquitoes, fighting malaria and dysentery and just generally having a great time in the name of the Ursulines and the Christ who is Lord! (L2). That Dorothy loved her ministry in E1 Salvador is further apparent by her desire to remain there, during the late 1970s and 1980, in the midst of increasing government oppression and vio-lence. In order to fully comprehend the nature of Dorothy's mis-sionary ministry, particularly during her last year in E1 Salvador, and ultimately, why she was murdered by the Salvadoran mili-tary, one must be generally familiar with the historico-political background of the country during the 1970s. What follows is a 810 Review for Religious brief sketch of this background. But because E1 Salvador's polit-ical situation, both past and present, is very complex, my expla-nation is in no way complete or definitive. Although E1 Salvador has had a long history of domination by a ruling oligarchy, a military government had been in power since 1932. In the early 1970s, resistance to this government began to appear. Left-wing opposition groups con-sisting of militant peasants, students, teach-ers, and workers, supported by the Salvadoran Catholic Church, emerged to campaign for basic social and economic reforms.4 The members of these groups were viewed by the government as anar-chists, terrorists, fanatics, and communists. Among the latter group, the communists, the government included priests, sisters, and lay catechists. At this time, organized left-wing ter-rorism also appeared as guerrilla groups formed throughout the country. The Salvadoran government responded to this and other types of rebellion with increased acts of violence and repression. This government sponsored violence grew to epi-demic proportions in 1977 (Carrigan, p. 10). The first attack against the Catholic Church was delivered in March of that year with the murder of Rutilio Grande, a Salvadoran Jesuit. Organized, systematic persecution of union members, profes-sionals, and teachers, as well as of laborers and campesinos,s began in the spring with the appearance of the first professional death squads. Composed of former and present members of the security forces, these roving squads kidnapped and brutally murdered any-one, including children, who they suspected had supported or expressed sympathy for any of the left-wing opposition groups. As a fright tactic, the death squads published death lists and disfig-ured and dismembered the bodies of their victims. To these muti-lated bodies, death squad members attached notes which claimed, "If you bury this body, ydu, too,will be tortured and killed." Despite reports of these atrocities and other government-spon-sored barbarisms, the United States government approved a 90 million-dollar loan to the Salvadoran government in November 1977 (Carrigan, pp. 89-90). As a fright tactic, the death squads published death lists and disfigured and dismembered the bodies of their victims. November-December 1995 811 Glavac ¯ An Eternal Flame By late 1979, increasing conflicts between the Salvadoran army and guerrilla groups developed into a full-blown civil war. To root out members of the popular leftist organizations and guerrilla groups from their rural bases, the army conducted "anti-subversive campaigns," which evolved into systematic programs of terror, aimed at depopulating regional villages and burning crops in order to create starvation conditions. At times, entire villages were bombed by the Salvadoran Air Force (Carrigan, p. 169). Such oppressive tactics, and the regular skirmishes which occurred between the army and the guerrilla groups, produced large numbers of refugees fleeing from their villages, often with little more than they could carry. A particular area or town was frequently the scene of confrontations between the fighting fac-tions. One such town was Chalatenango. Because the guerrillas had established bases in the mountainous terrain and the sur-rounding mountains of this northern town, it was victimized by the counterinsurgency tactics of the security forces. During all of this political upheaval and violence, Dorothy and the other members of the Cleveland Latin American Mission Team continued their pastoral ministry to the suffering salvado-ran people as unobtrusively as possible by planning and organiz-ing celebrations of the Eucharist and other liturgies, preparing adults and children for the reception of the sacraments, and man-aging food distribution programs. However, by 1980, the team's ministry expanded to include recovering and burying the mutilated remains of death-squad victims and transporting food, supplies, and sometimes refugees, to refugee centers around San Salvador. By this time, Jean Donovan had been a member of the Cleveland team for a year. She and Dorothy lived and ministered in the southern coastal town of La Libertad, where the Cleveland diocesan mission team had a parish, but they spent a portion of their time transporting refugees and supplies in their white Toyota van throughout the Chalatenango area for Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford who were ministering there but had no means of transportation. On the morning of 2 December 1980, Dorothy and Jean pur-chased and transported supplies for refugees, which, unknown to them, would be the last time they would ever perform such a min-istry. That evening they drove to the Cuscatlan International Airport, located about a half hour from La Libertad, to pick up Maura and Ira who had returned together from a regional meet- 812 Review for Religious ing of Maryknoll sisters in Nicaragua. Because it was too late and too dangerous to make the four-hour trip to Chalatenango from the airport, Dorothy and Jean had decided that Maura and Ira would spend the night with them in La Libertad. Shortly after they met Maura and Ira, however, all four women were abducted by five members of the Salvadoran National Guard. The women were later raped, and finally shot execu-tion- style by the same guardsmen in a deserted field, one hour from the airport. From Dorothy's missionary min-istry- all the different forms it took---I think we can learn several valuable lessons that are especially relevant for us now and in the future. First of all, Dorothy went where there was a need, even when she did not want to go. For example, she did not want to teach on the secondary level. Before Dorothy joined the Ursulines she had earned an elementary teaching certificate and had taught third grade for one year. So, when she was assigned to teach high school, she was confused and disap-po. inted. Nevertheless, Dorothy taught high school for nine years and taught typing and business courses, something she also did not want to do. And when the time came for her to go to E1 Salvador, Dorothy had serious doubts about whether or not she really wanted to go, because at the time, she was involved in her counseling at Beaumont School and had grown to love the girls there. Another aspect of Dorothy's ministry that is particularly valid for us is her desire to find marginalized persons wherever she ministered and to take care of their special needs. Surely we can do the same in a society fraught with so many victims of poverty, abuse, and discrimination. Finally, in her ministry--actually, in whatever she did-- Dorothy took risks. Breaking her yearlong engagement to join the Cleveland Ursulines, venturing beyond the familiar walls of her high-school classroom to minister to Native Americans in Arizona, trying a recipe for chocolate chip cookies in E1 Salvador's Another aspect of Dorothy's ministry that is particularly valid for us is her desire to find marginalized persons wherever she ministered and to take care of their special needs. November-December 1995 813 Glavac ¯ An Eternal Flame 100÷ degree weather, or experimenting with new prayer styles-- Dorothy did them all, including, of course, the ultimate risk of remaining in E1 Salvador. One of Dorothy's final acts of ministry there--feeding and transporting refugees with Jean Donovan in the wartorn, guerrilla-infested area of Chalatenango--was a par-ticularly serious risk because she fully understood that the Salvadoran military considered any alliance with the poor a "sub-versive" act against the government. She and Jean also realized that they could be accused of consorting with guerrillas. Even their association with Maura and Ita entailed some risk, as both of the Maryknoll Sisters had received death threats and were being closely watched by a Salvadoran army colonel stationed in Chalatenango. The many risks Dorothy took throughout her life give me much pause to consider my own amount of risk-taking and to evaluate it. In our world today, and certainly in the future, I think that we have many opportunities to take risks. Spirituality For me, the most inspiring part of Dorothy's life is her spir-ituality. Before I began doing detailed research for Dorothy's biography, I assumed that she must have had a developed spiritual life simply because of her desire to remain in E1 Salvador. Living daily in the midst of a civil war and witnessing the brutal killing of many innocent people would require gospel-centered motiva-tions, a strong faith, and a consistent prayer life, I reasoned. But when I began reading Dorothy's journals, I discovered the foun-dation of that deep spirituality she had attained by the time she arrived in E1 Salvador. After meditating myself now for some years on Dorothy's spiritual life while she ministered as an Ursuline in Cleveland (diaries from her time in E1 Salvador sur-vive but no prayer journals),61 can describe various qualities of her spirituality at that time focusing on three that have particular appeal to us as religious now and for the future. The first quality is prayer. From the time Dorothy was a child and throughout her young adulthood, prayer was an important part of her spirituality. She attended daily Mass and said her rosary and other prayers daily. VVhen she became an Ursuline, however, prayer formed the backbone of her spiritual life. What she wanted to gain from prayer--and these ideas can be gleaned from read-ing her journals and her spiritual-reading notes--was develop- 814 Review for Religious ment of her relationship with God, imitation of Jesus, and response to God's will for her. Dorothy's personal written reflections reveal her fidelity to prayer as well as her belief in its importance in her life. The ear-liest account of Dorothy's opinion regarding devotion to prayer appears in retreat resolutions she made prior to her first profes-sion on 13 August 1963: How must I act as an Ursuline? ¯ As one who knows and loves God, for this is my specialty and can be a'chieved through prayer. ¯ All I do must show this, for this is my life! Resolve ¯ I desire to acquire a "spirit of prayer" . . . which will help me prove myself as an Ursuline--a true lover of God. Shortly after Dorothy moved to Sacred Heart Academy in August 1965, she kept a written record of her prayer life for sev-eral days before she began to teach. In most of the entries, she lists each of her prayer praF.tices and briefly evaluates her participation in them. Below is an example, dated 27 August: 1. Mo~'ning Office: distracted, drowsy 2. Mass: half awake 3. Examen: not pinpointed 4. Office: carelessly said 5. Stations: too fast 6. Recollection through day: poor--very distracted! In later journal entries, Dorothy makes resolutions regard-ing prayer. The following are from June 1973: "to make an avid study of' ChriSt through reading scripture daily SO that I may learn of His attitudes and make them my own; to do my half-hour meditation daily without failure" (hereafter cited as J6). The few diaries Dorothy kept while she was in E1 Salvador contain little comme~nt about her prayer life. However, Martha Owen, who ministered with Dorothy in E1 Salvador for five years, recalls, "Especially in th~ later years, Dorothy. took her Bible, and she meditated, every single day. She always wanted to know God's will, and she always prayed about it. She never made deci-sions for herself without getting some input from prayer." ~ Another quality of Dorothy's spirituality I noticed is that it constantly grew and evolved because, of her openness to new prayer styles and cbncep!s. Again,' when I examined Dorothy's November-December 199~ 815 Glavac ¯ An Eternal Flame writings, I initially saw a preVatican II spirituality. In notes she recorded from retreats she made from 1961 through 1966, Dorothy wrote: "vows and rules: means of perfection" (2 August 1961, hereafter cited at J 1); "exterior mortification: silence, mod-esty, self-denial; interior mortification: discipline of mind, will, imagination, and control over passions" (3 August 1961, J 1); and "offer now your death to God! (3 August 1963, hereafter cited as J2);Joy follows death to self!" (9 August 1963,J2). When she first arrived at Sacred Heart Academy in August 1965, Dorothy wrote: "Examen better than yesterday; if I can but become more con-scious of all I should be striving to perfect myself in." The subject and tone of Dorothy's writings change dramati-cally, however, in 1967 when they acquire a definite postVatican II flavor. That summer, during retreat, Dorothy wrote: A real Christian is: ¯ dominated by the presence of the Risen Christ (knows that the living Christ is here; knows that the living Christ is real) ¯ a person with a mission to the world of 1967: loves the world; is caught up with the world; must be equipped with solid learning and mature love; makes use of natural history and philosophy of our time; listens with an open heart ¯ a person who lives in the here and now. Listen to others--don't think about what you will answer. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dorothy became involved in the charismatic movement. Her manner of praying, expressed in her journals, reflects this new style. In June 1973, Dorothy wrote: "to remainfi'ee and open to the Spirit; to listen to what He speaks and then act on it" (16 June 1973,J6). On 20 March 1974, she wrote: The more you love Jesus and the more open you are with Him--the more lovable and beautiful all the rest of mankind becomes. Praise you, Jesus, for showing yourself so vividly and openly. I love you more because of all the love I expe-rience in people (hereafter cited as J8). Although Dorothy's spirituality grew steadily and evolved during the twenty years she was an Ursuline, there was a con-stant about it, something that did not change. This is her desire for union with God. Again, I saw this lifelong desire reflected in her personal writing. For example, in September 1970, Dorothy wrote: 816 Review for Religiotts Heavenly Father, I place myself in your hands. Lavish your love on me as I need to be strengthened. I am weak--I need you . I feel empty--void. Fill up this chasm with you. Lord, that I may be one with you and in you . Open my eyes, my ears--all my senses--so that they may draw you in so that I may more and more become you. Rid me of myself, Lord--it is not an asset, for it often gets in the way of you. Purify me--make me single-minded--all for you. Four years later, Dorothy wrote: I keep watching these two wooden pieces, Jesus. My theory did not seem to hold true--they did not burst into a flam-ing holocaust for you. No, they slowly, quietly became filled with the heat and burned through the center. Maybe that's more real, Lord. Maybe we just slowly become filled with you, and when it reaches the core of our being, and there is no more we can absorb, we transcend to another being; to another way of unity; to the way for which we are longing to be with you; to the way for which we came into being. Praise you, Jesus, and thank you for such a total consuming love. Envelope me in it now. Make me one with you (19 January 1974, JS). The older I get, the harder it is for me to believe that Dorothy was only 41 years old when she died. She was whole in so many areas of her life, especially in terms of her spirituality. She knew the essence of religious life, I believe, and was therefore not caught up in exter-nals. God truly was the center of her life. Her efforts to make God her center were not half-baked or mechanical. I am reminded here of something Dorothy wrote in her journal in November 1970: Overcome J?ar of. ¯ going into deep waters: Be courageous, open. ¯ going into the depths of the V~rord: Meditate in the morning. ¯ living the crucified, disciplined life: Accept suffering graciously, willingly. ¯ submitting to one another: Listen, be open. ¯ laying down [lmy] life in very service to others. ¯ letting the cross of Christ cut into [my] very soul: Love the cross--accept it totally--it is He. And Dorothy did much in her brief life, and there was much change in her life. But the stillpoint in all of this movement was her spiritual life. I think that this is her message to us--I know it is to me--that in such a quickly changing world as ours is today, in which few things are stable or permanent, our spirituality is our only stillpoint. November-December 1995 817 Glavac ¯ An Eternal Flame If I have learned anything about Dorothy, it is that she struggled throughout most of her life. Personal Struggles As a biographer, when I look at Dorothy's life, I see it lin-early: There are many parts that form a whole, and most of the parts seem related, and they therefore seem to fit together. When I look at her life from this perspective, I am very tempted to say, "Hmmm--she must have had a plan for her life; surely she must have known what she was doing at just about every step of the way." But any biographer, me included, who delves into the character of her or his subject, which cannot be mapped linearly, knows that this supposition simply is not true. If I have learned anything about Dorothy, it is that she struggled throughout most of her life. Some of Dorothy's struggles involved decisions she had to make, such as should she marry or follow a call to religious life? Soon after she began to attend St. John College in 1957, two important events happened to Dorothy: She met Cleveland Ursuline Sisters for the first time (she had had Franciscans in elementary school and Notre Dame Sisters in high school), and she also met Don Kollenborn, a youhg soldier from Bakersfield, California, who was stationed in Cleveland. She and Don began dating shortly before Christmas of that year. In the spring of 1958, Dorothy met more Cleveland Ursulines, this time at St. Robert's elementary school where she did field work for her education courses. One year later, in the spring of 1959, Dorothy and Don were engaged. They planned, to marry on 5 August 1960 and pro-ceeded to make wedding plans. That summer Dorothy got a job teaching the third grade at St. Robert School. In the midst of all this activity--and nobody knows exactly when--Dorothy began to feel attracted to religious life. In March of the following year, 1960, she made a retreat for engaged women; and ironically, this experience convinced her that she might indeed have a religious vocation. By this time, Don had returned to California, ~o Dorothy called him and told him what she was con-sidering. He flew to Cleveland immediately, stayed at the Kazel home for a week, and he and Dorothy spent thousands of hours (as he told me) discussing her desire to enter the convent. The months that followed were difficult, certainly for Don, but also for Dorothy, who, naturally, questioned herself and her 818 Review for Religious motives. As Don told me, "Dorothy worried about whether she would be able to follow the rules that she had to live with and was she really supposed to be a nun or not.''8 Apparently, Dorothy found the answers to her questions, for on 29June, she applied to my congregation. She returned Don's engagement ring in July. Another decision Dorothy had to make was what type of min-istry would she do in Cleveland when she returned from E1 Salvador? She was considering ministering to Hispanic people in Cleveland, but she is not certain about this, as she explained to Martha Owen in a taped (cassette) "letter" of January 1980: I probably would like the Hispanic work . I don't know. You know, I just don't know what my problem is--I just don't know--I have no inclination to any special area . I feel obliged and probably feel more inclined toward Beaumont simply because that's where I have come from, and I have at least some security there. But I don't know-- I just don't know. Isn't that terrible? I've been like this for so long, and I keep praying about it, but I just don't know what the Lord has in plan (hereafter cited as L3). Dorothy was also concerned about adapting to large-group community life again. Later, in the same letter quoted above, she clailns: I got a note from Sister Bartholomew at Christmas, and she said, "You really shouldn't feel an obligation to have to go to Beaumont." After talking to Sheila [Tobbe, one of our sisters currently ministering in El Salvador], there is so much to do there, and . . . it's not that it wouldn't be interesting, but the whole house structure does worry me, and it's been a problem . That's my biggest thing: I don't know if I'm going to be able to put up with this living in community business either (L3). Some of Dorothy's struggles involved situations about which she felt helpless, such as her father's alcoholism. Because Dorothy and her father shared a close relationship, when he drank, she got especially hurt and upset. As a young person, Dorothy also got angry at her father and would then experience guilt for feeling this way. When she got older, and particularly after she began working on her master's degree in guidance and counseling, Dorothy better understood her father's behavior and her reac-tion to it. However, his dependency on alcohol was a lifelong source of sorrow for her. Dorothy also certainly felt helpless about the political situa-tion in E1 Salvador during her final years there as she witnessed November-December 199~ 819 Glavac ¯ An Eternal Flame unrelenting violence and the slaughter of many innocent people she had come to love. In an effort to help alleviate the suffering and bloodshed, Dorothy appealed to our United States govern-ment to discontinue sending military aid to the Salvadoran gov-ernment. On 23 September 1980, she wrote a letter to then President Jimmy Carter. After she described scenes in which Salvadoran soldiers had terrorized innocent villagers, Dorothy wrote: Now I realize these soldiers are looking for "subversives," and they may have a right to do that--but do they have a right to do it in this manner? Do they realize how many really innocent people they kill because they have received wrong information? Do they investigate the information they received before they come and kill people? And the most appalling thing to me is that I am a North American, and MY government gave them money for the "durable equipment" they have so that it's relatively easy to get into the worst cantones9 without much trouble and kill innocent people because of the wrong information they have received. I really would like to know what you think of this sit-uation, Mr. President, and whether you really realize how many innocent people we are helping to kill. How do you reconcile all of this? About a month later, in another taped (cassette) "letter" to Martha Owen, Dorothy describes the great difference in artillery strength between the Salvadoran military forces and the guerrilla groups: It's like Indians against the United States Marines today. Really, I don't know how these guys are ever going to win this war. These guys are nothing but campesino guys . . . they all either have rifles or pistols, but the rifles are like overgrown BB guns. I just wonder how this is all going to turn out . And, you know, nay heart just aches for these people when I see what they've got to work with. And they're really hoping to win. I just don't know how these guys think they're going to do it when we're giving money ¯. so they [the military] can get up there easier to kill these guys . It just makes me ill when I see us doing this kind of garbage. In early November, Dorothy received a reply to the letter she had written to Jimmy Carter. John D. Blacken, Director of the Office of Central American Affairs, signed the letter dated 7 November 1980. Portions of it read: 820 Review for Religious We deplore the violence in El Salvador which is continuing at a high level . In such situations involving widespread violence from a variety of sources, it is tragic that innocent people become the victims. Nevertheless, the government's plans for elections and reforms are moving forward and may succeed in alleviating some of the conditions which have spawned the violence. The letter completely sidesteps the issue of American military aid to the Salvadoran government, as Dorothy must have noticed. We will never know what she thought, however, for less than a month later, Dorothy was dead--shot, most likely, with a bullet that had been manufactured in the United States. At various points in her life, Dorothy questioned her own self-image as well as her self-confidence. At the end of her retreat before her final profession in August 1968, Dorothy wrote the following resolution: "to accept the person I am with all my weaknesses and not to pretend that I don't have them." Several years later, when she was at Beaumont, Dorothy wrote in her journal, "I still wonder why people don't like me. Do I come on too strong?" (4 January 1974, JS). Another entry reads, "Sometimes I feel totally incapable of doing anything. Many things that I want are not what God wants for me. I have not fully accepted myself and my limitations. Sometimes I feel I do not belong to this community--I feel people 'like' me--they do not love me because I do not have much to offer." Because of all I have learned about Dorothy in these past few years, I have found much to admire about her. But her insecuri-ties and struggles endeared her to me even more and brought her down a few notches on Before her final profession in August 1968, Dorothy wrote the following resolution: "to accept the person I am with all my weaknesses and not to pretend that I don't have them." that pedestal that she had been slowly ascending since her death. Here was a human, ordinary person, I discovered--one to whom I as well as many others could relate, for who does not struggle today? In what other ways has Dorothy personally touched me? In her I have found a role model for my own life. I look to Dorothy mainly as an example of a courageous woman whose particular November-Deconber 1995 821 Glavac ¯ dn Eternal Flame brand of courage included risk-taking. When I fear taking risks, I contemplate the many risks Dorothy took, in particular the one which ultimately led to her death, and I am encouraged to travel beyond the familiar into unknown territory. During my times of complacency and passivity, I am bolstered by Dorothy's spirit of adventure and independence. For me, too, Dorothy is an exam-ple of a faith-filled religious woman who strove to make central what she felt was most important in her life: her spirituality. In short, for me and my life as a religious, Dorothy is an "eternal flame," and I will look to her wisdom and guidance to light my way into the future. Epilogue Although fifteen years have passed since Dorothy and her companions were murdered, my Ursuline congregation, Dorothy's family, and the American people in general, have never learned what happened on the night of 2 December 1980, and who is actu-ally responsible for the women's deaths. However, there is evi-dence that our government and the Salvadoran government covered up the crime within days of its occurrence.'° Information about the murders uncovered by our government's investigation was either never released to us, such as the manufacturer of the bullet fragments taken from Dorothy's body or only partially released to us--that is, two-thirds of the reports sent to us from the State Department and the FBI were edited with heavy, dark lines. Three-and-a-half years after the murder of the women, and only because our government conditioned its economic and mil-itary support to E1 Salvador on the resolution of this case, a trial was held on 23-24 May 1984, in E1 Salvador, and five national guardsmen were found guilty and sentenced to thirty years impris-onment. They remain in prison today because the Salvadoran Supreme Court ruled that the killings of the women were not political, and therefore, not covered by the amnesty passed by the Salvadoran National Assembly in 1992.'~ Although there is sufficient evidence to prove that high-ranking officers in the Salvadoran military planned in advance and then ordered the murder of Dorothy, Jean, Maura, and Ira,'2 nothing has been done by the United States or the Salvadoran government to implicate and punish these officers. Currently, our government continues to 822 Review for Religious supply military aid to E1 Salvador as well as train members of its military at the United States School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia.'3 If the truth of Dorothy's life and death has spoken to us, we will tell this story of ongoing violence and oppression, and the flame will surely continue to burn.14 Notes ~ I choose fire as a metaphor for Dorothy because of her outgoing per-sonality, zealous attitude toward whatever task she undertook, involvement with the church's charismatic movement (see "Spirituality" section of article), and of course, the crucible of her martyrdom. The image of fire was also a favorite one of Dorothy's when she wrote about her growth in spirituality (see journal entry of 19 January 1974, also in "Spirituality" sec-tion of article). 2 Dorothy and Martha were the second pair of sisters my congrega-tion sent to El Salvador. The first pair had gone in 1968. 3 In 1976 my congregation's silver jubilarians donated their gift money to the diocesan mission in El Salvador. These are the contributions Dorothy refers to here. 4 Ana Carrigan, Salvador Witness: The Life and Calling of Jean Donovan (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), pp. 81-82. s A campesino is a landworker. In Latin America campesinos own so very little land that they are unable to support their families and conse-quently become dependent on nearby landowners. 6 Martha Owen OSU claims that Dorothy was keeping a personal journal up until her death. The journal was lost, however, in the trans-ference of Dorothy's personal effects from El Salvador to the United States after her murder. 7 Martha Owen OSU personal interview, 15 Oct. 1990. ~ Donald Kollenborn, telephgne interview, 17 Sept. 1991. 9 The term cantone means outpost. The villages and casarios (little group of houses) were cantones or outposys of the larger towns and cities. l0 Although it had been chronicled in various newspaper and magazine articles in the early years following the murders of the women, the story of the cover up of this crime had also been well-documented in a series of reports entitled Justice in El Salvador: A Case Study, A Report on the Investigation into the Killing of Four U.S. Churchwomen inEl Salvador which was published by The Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights from December 1980 to May 1984. Ana Carrigan also wrote about the cover up extensively in her Salvador Witness: The Life and Calling of Jean Donovan (Simon and Schuster, 1984). *~ I mean not political in an ironic sense; existing evidence, especially that evidence which was deliberately withheld leads to the conclusion that the murders were political. November-December 199Y 823 Glavac ¯ An Eternal Flame ~2 The United Nations-sponsored El Salvador Commission on the Truth ("Truth Commission"), whose purpose was to investigate human rights abuses during El Salvador's twelve-year civil war, published a report in March 1993 which confirmed the involvement of high-ranking Salvadoran officers in the murders of the four women. ~3 Three of the national guardsmen who murdered the four women are graduates of the school. ~4 For more information on the School of the kanericas, contact School of the Americas Watch, P.O. Box 3330, Columbus, Georgia 31903; Phone: (706) 682-5369; Fak: (706) 685-0280. A Different Spirit I want to tell you this: The moment will surely come when the Holy Spirit will be within you: a wild goose stretching and straining through storms with her taut body, determined. For that moment there will be nothing dove about the Spirit as she fiercely leads you through wholesome refusals and undreamt-of surrenders out into those wonderfully clear choices within the boundaries of which you will land so awkwardly; but you will be like her: exhilarated in your every part by such strong-wingdd full-feathered single-hearted fligh!! Bernadette McCarrick RSM 824 Review for Religious NESTOR GREGOIRE Opportunity of the Jubilee Year 2000 Immersed in my cultural sense that time is almost exclu-sively quantitative, I shared much of the cynical touch that was brought to any discussion of the year 2000. This appeared to be much ado about one more calendar year. A serious reading of Pope John Paul's apostolic let-ter Tertio Millenio Adveniente (10 November 1994) which launched preparations for the Great Jubilee changed all this. This document offers the opportunity to celebrate and share our faith within and outside the church. We have been given a piece of sheet music; now it is time for all committed Christians, religious and lay, to make the music that the vision of the jubilee year 2000 scores for us. Be Bold The great gift of this apostolic letter is its strong, pos-itive tone and encouragement for all of Christianity (cer-tainly not limited to the Catholic Church) to celebrate the entry into the new millennium as a time to celebrate and deepen our share in the Incarnation of God among us. Even though a strong academic background can give the tools of serious literary analysis, the mere under-standing of words, phrases, and sentences is always incom- Nestor Gregoire OMI can be addressed at: Box 1438; Battleford, Saskatchewan; Canada S0M 0E0. November-December 1995 825 Gregoire ¯ Opportunity of the Jubilee Year2000 plete when an official document is studied. All official documents have a "spirit" that may be imprecise, but it is very real and effec-tive within the life of the church at large. Nowhere in the apostolic letter is a command for the church to celebrate this jubilee. Everywhere there is a strong encour-agement; "Rejoice. Make real the great graces God has done among us." The letter does not set limitations but rather offers positive motivation to enter more deeply into the salvation of God among us. This is not a uniform program designed by people in the high levels of church bureaucracy. It is rather an open-ended invitation to become more what God wants to happen in Christ Jesus in our world today. The letter wi'ites about joy: The term jubilee speaks of joy; not just an inner joy but a jubilation which is manifested outwardly, for the coming of God is also an outward, visible, audible, and tangible event, as St. John made clear (1 Jn 1:1). It is thus appropriate that every sign of joy at this coming should have its own outward expression. This will demonstrate that the church rejoices in salvation. She invites everyone to rejoice, and she tries to create conditions to ensure that the power of salvation may be shared by all (§16). As I read through the letter I found myself stopping for a few moments: Now, how can I make this tangible in our parish com-munity? What can the parish do to express joy in the jubilee.year? The challei~ge broadens our imagination. Christ Centered The letter of John Paul seeks to bring the church to a deeper appreciation of the unique importance of salvation brought by God, past and today. "The fact that in the fullness of time the Eternal Word took on the condition of a creature gives a unique cosmic value to the event which took place in Bethlehem two thousand years ago . . . and it is .the same Word who, by taking flesh, renews the cosmic order of creation" (§3). The vision of the jubilee year is that Christ continues to give meaning, hope and direction to humanity. God is as much at work within our history in the latter part of the 90s as he was at the birth of Jesus. God's activity does not slow down and cease with the accumulation of the calendar years. 826 Review for Religious The Objective of the Jubilee The letter describes the jubilee in these words: Everything ought to focus on the primary objective of the jubilee: the strengthening of faith and of the witness of Christians. It is therefore necessary to inspire in all the faithful a true longing for holiness, a deep desire for con-version and personal renewal in a context of ever more intense prayer and of solidarity with one's neighbor, espe-cially the most needy" (§42). The turning of a millennium offers reflection on the meaning of time. Time is not merely chronological. It has salvific meaning. "In Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, time becomes a dimension of God" (§10). Time is never empty of God's purpose. "From this relationship of God with time there arises the duty to sanctify time" (§ 10). With this sense of God's redeeming power in time, the move-ment to the third millennium is the opportunity to celebrate and enter more deeply into the eternal plan of salvation. The prepa-rations that we are called upon to begin are a specific means to deepen the participation of all humanity in God's redemption of humanity. Rooted in the Church All the preparations and the actual jubilee are clearly linked with the best efforts of the church to renew itself. There is no breaking new ground here. Rather the letter offers new energy to the renewal sought by the Second Vatican Council. "The best preparation for the new millennium, therefore, can only be expressed in a renewed commitment to apply, as faithfully as pos-sible, the teachings of Vatican II to the life of every individual and of the whole church" (§20). Repentance as the Door Some Catholics may be surprised at the openness to past fail-ures and sins within the church expressed in the document. Repentance is a necessary partner in the jubilee year. "She cannot cross the threshold of the new millennium without encouraging her children to purify themselves, through repentance, of past errors and instances of infideli~, inconsistency and slowness to act" (§33). November-December 1995 827 Gregoire ¯ Opportunity of the Jubilee Year 2000 Our parish communities will be asked to cover new ground if they take to heart the teachings of this apostolic letter. "The church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal" (833). A parish commu-nity might spend prayerful time identifying the ways that we have It is a time for the church to continue seeking for what is just and truthful in the world, even if the church herself is made uncomfortable by her own questions about justice. failed as a church and publicly ask for-giveness, even it is be only within the local parish community. It will take a brave spirit to openly admit past sins. Repentance does not stop with the evils of our history. We are seriously chal-lenged to be responsible for the evils of today. "Many cardinals and bishops expressed the desire for a serious exami-nation of conscience above all on the part of the church today. Christians need to place themselves humbly before the Lord and examine themselves on the responsibility which they too have for the evils of our day" (836). How do we identify and take owner-ship for our complicity in the shadow side of society and the many troubles in the world? Timid or polarized parish communities may not be able to handle this one. It could become too explosive. Mature parish communities will be able to speak to the ways that Christians are a source of oppression and sin in today's world. Risk Taking The spirit of the document clearly shows that the church and the preparations for the jubilee are anything but timid. It is a time for the church to continue seeking for what is just and truth-ful in the world, even if the church herself is made uncomfortable by her own questions about justice. A thoughtful reading shows that the church herself will be challenged by many of the questions that she asks of the modern world. 828 Review for Religious Preparations for the jubilee year involve taking risks within the church. This can happen in three ways: 1. Christianity is making great strides in understanding and building new bridges to the great religions of the world. Not everyone is comfortable with the official position that hopes "the eve of the year 2000 will provide a great opportunity, especially in view of the events of recent decades, for interreligious dialogue. In this dialogue the Jews and the Muslims ought to have a preeminent place. God grant that as a confirmation of these intentions it may also be possihle to hold joint meetings in places of significance for the great monotheistic religions (§53). Will this hope meet with sharp criticism from within the church? How do we enter into interreligious dialogue when we have been in such sharp opposition for centuries? This is cer-tainly breaking into the new territory. 2. The jubilee will certainly be a time to give strong empha-sis to the "church's preferential option for the poor and the out-cast." But will anyone be brave enough to go further with the teaching of this document? Are the people of the church willing to deal with the following challenge? "Christians will have to raise their voice on behalf of all the poor of the world, proposing the jubilee as an appropriate time to give thought, among other things, to reducing substantially, if not canceling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations (§51). The third risk involves women and family rights: 3. "The jubilee can also offer an opportunity for reflecting on other challenges of our time, such as the difficulties of dia-logue connected with respect for women's rights and the promo-tion of the family and marriage" (§51). 1997 - Year One: Jesus Christ The letter proposes a three-year period of reflection on the Trinity. The jubilee is clearly Christological in spirit. The general theme proposed for the first year is: "Jesus Christ, the one Saviour of the world, yesterday, today and forever" (§40). During this first year there is to be a renewed appreciation of Christ and a "deeper understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation and of Jesus' birth from the Virgin Mary" (§40). As November-December 199Y 829 Gregoire * Opportunity of tbe 3~ubilee Year 2000 part of this year of preparation there is a desire that there be a renewed interest in the Bible and the sacrament of baptism. 1998 - Year Two: The Holy Spirit This second year "will be dedicated in a particular way to the Holy Spirit and to his sanctifying presence within the commu-nity of Christ's disciples" (§44). The focus of this second year will be to "include a renewed appreciation of the presence and activity of the Spirit who acts within the church" (§45). Hopefully this year will help the church to become more sen-sitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit to evangelize our soci-ety with the Gospel and bring new hope for the gift of eternal life. 1999 - Year Three: God the Father The scope of this final year of preparation is large. "The third year., will be aimed at broadening the horizons of believers, so that they will see things in the perspective of Christ; in the per-spective of the "Father who is in heaven" (§49). The third year links all our the Christian life together. "The sense of being on a journey to the Father should encourage everyone to undertake, by holding fast to Christ the Redeemer of man, a journey of authen-tic conversion" (§50). Practical Applications The document does not give any concrete directives about what should be done. Each parish, diocese, religious community, and family will have to plan how it will prepare for and celebrate this great jubilee. Some might groan that this is another program which will mean more work. It is not meant to be an additional burden; rather it is to be integrated into the spiritual works and ministry of the parish. The preparations and actual celebration should be incorporated into what is already in place but also allow us to be open to creative suggestions. It certainly cannot be a uniform celebration of the faith. As each parish community studies the document it may find that cer-tain parts will have more influence on their life as a faith com-munity than other sections of the document. 830 Revie~v for Religious I thought of several practical suggestions after I read the letter. 1. Gathering community members together this year to study the document will bear great fruit. The importance of this study will be ~o glean the "spirit" of the jubilee. 2. Religious communities and parishes might seek to link the season of Advent each year with their preparations for the year ~000. Advent would give focus to the coming of the Messiah and thd future coming of Christ in the next millennium. Since Advent is a time of joy and anticipation, preparations for the jubilee could share that same joy and anticipation. 3. Other communities might seek to have a spiritual event each and every year. As an example it might be a parish retreat, a parish mission or other form of spiri-tual renewal that has continuity over the three years of immediate preparation for the jubilee. .4. As a sign of our willingness to come to grips with the sins of the past we Each parish, diocese, religious community, and family will have to plan how it will prepare for and celebrate this great jubilee. might have acts of prayer and repentance. In my parish our church building is located within a short walk from the site of Canada's largest mass hanging. Although this terrible event happened a hundred and ten years ago it still is a sorry mark of our treat-ment of Canada's native peoples. Every faith community could find similar instances of past sins. 5. A diocese might organize a special time for prayer for each of the parishes throughout the year. For example, there may a spe-cial time of pr~yer that rotates from parish to parish. After fifty-two weeks each of the parishes has participated in this prayer time. 6. Happy the parish community that will be able to have a special spirihaa! event in each of the households of the parish. A parish might organize a special family prayer service that is passed from household to household until all in the parish has taken part in this prayer service within their home. J~ach suggestion must try to link all ages and groups within the parish. No one should be left out. We must be creative and enter into the vision that this apostolic letter calls us to have. The document is packed with possibilities. This one article cannot hope to do justice to its vision. No one should expect November-December 199Y 831 Gregoire ¯ Opportunity of tbe ffubilee Year 2000 everyone to become involved in every part of the document. Christians will have to do what is possible in their own situation. At this point in time no one individual has a plan of how to accomplish this. When the pope gave final approval to this doc-ument he did not have the concrete details worked out. The chal-lenge rests with the people of the church. They will not be disappointed by this jubilee. The members of my parish council encourage me: "Let's try it!" Rainbow of the Years Red the beginning with sharp pains of birthing, then childhood softly oranged into you th's yellow lesson that life holds its promise, its dreams and spring. Greening years bear hope of buds turned blossoms, only to be blued with challenges and tears. Indigo deepens to violet's quiet ache of aging. An arch of muted glory spanning life-to-death time now fades into the heavens, the rainbow's work complete. Maria Corona Crumback IHM 832 Review for Religious CASSIAN J. YUHAUS The 1994 Synod: Uniqueness and Challenge SninCe October, 1994 I have been happy to share with large umbers of religious, some diocesan clergy, and even a few bishops something of the experience of the synod. This I have done frequently along with Sr. Doris Gottemoeller RSM and Fr. Gerald Brown SS who were personally invited to the synod by the pope. It must be said clearly that these are my own personal reflec-tions. They have no other value than that. I do not speak for the synod; only the pope can do that. I speak of the synod, and that we all can do and should do. The Uniqueness of the Synod on the Consecrated Life There have been fourteen synods. None of them contains the uniqueness expressed in this the ninth ordinary synod of October 1994. There are at least six reasons why this synod can claim such distinction, all having to do with the theme, "The Consecrated Life and Its Role in the Church and the World of Today." The first reason stands alone in importance and impact. Never before in its nearly 2000-year history has the entire church throughout the world been called to concentrate with such depth and persistence on the very nature, the meaning and the func-tioning of religious life: What is it? Why is it? How does it work? Cassian Yuhaus CP served as a peritus at the 1994 synod of bishops, con-vened to study The Consecrated Life in the Church and the World. His address is Ministry for Religious; 631 Griffin Pond Road; P.O. Box 2567; Clarks Summits, Pennsylvania 18411. November-December 199~ 833 Yuhaus * The 1994 Synod Nor was this concentration limited to hierarchy or certain mem-bers of the church. The entire church was asked to reflect, to s~udy, to speak, and to pray on the consecrated life. A further dis-tinguishing note is that this study was to be done simultaneously. In reality the Holy Father called upon th~ entire church to pause and take a good look at what by every measure is one of the most fascinating faces the church turns to the world: the consecrated life--the tens of thousands of her faithful on every continent who vow to live poverty, chastity, and obedience perpetually. Secondly, this pause was not a mere passing glance or token recognition of sisters, priests, brothers, and members of secular institutes. Every bishops' conference and every conference of major superiors in every nation was to study and respond to a carefully prepared and lengthy statement on the theme of the synod. To this worldwide group were added other individuals and agencies such as curia cardinals and heads of departments of the Holy See and experts throughout the world. The statement each was asked to respond to is entitled Lineamenta which strictly means, outlines or guidelines. This doc-ument is prepared by a special group of carefully chosen individ-uals who would present what they see as the "Status Questions," the state of the question. What is it we are to talk about? What is the situation we face? What are the issues? What problems as well as what achievements and values? The response was to be confidential so as to assure maximum freedom. A third claim to uniquene.ss was the rumble, the agitation, the anxiety the synod caused throughout the woi'ld and not only among those most immediately concerned, the religioias, but beyond the confines of the Catholic communion, among other Christian faiths who boast numbers of their faithful who likewise embrace a particular expression of gospel life in community. The interest spread beyond the borders of Christiaiaity among those most ancient orders of monks within the oriental religions who desired to be and were represented at the synod. Never before have so many experts, so many writers, so many leaders of religious/monastic life dedicated themselves to such a thorough examination of the path to which, in their conviction, only God could have called them. And only God could have sus-tained them in what became at times a hard, bitter and demand-ing response even unto blood. We have yet to make a taxonomy of this outpouring of books, articles, lectures, symposia and con- 834 Review for Religious ferences. It is rich in the extreme, numbering in the thousands. An international conference of major consideration took place in Rome in November 1993 at which some 500 leaders, experts, and consultants gathered to reflect on religious life and to prepare a response for the synod. A fourth reason for uniqueness should not be overlooked. I refer to the length of this "pause." It was not a matter of a hur-ried response and be done with it. The dialogue and research, the con-sultancy and response went on for more than four years. The synod on the Consecrated Life was announced by our Holy Father, for only the pope can designate a theme, in 1990. The synod was to take place in 1993 but because of the already important special synod for all Africa, the date was postponed to October 1994. This was to turn to the advantage of the entire church because in this final year of study an enormous amount of more precise and insight-ful work had been accomplished. This extra year highlights the fifth reason for the uniqueness of this synod: the critique of the response to the Lineamenta, the pre-liminary statement on religious life. This document was thoroughly ana- Never before have so many experts, so many writers, so many leaders of religious/monastic life dedicated themselves to such a thorough examination of the path to which, in their conviction, only God could have called them. lyzed, particularly by the conferences of religious throughout the world. For the most part it was rejected as unworthy of the synod. Despite the prohibition, many of these critiques were released in whole or in part to wide groups within the church and even to the public. The Lineamenta, or preliminary document, was seen to be in many areas an inaccurate expression of the reality, more backward- than forward- looking, more negative than positive, and insufficiently expressing the ecclesiology and theology of the Second Vatican Council. We must keep in mind that the document was a preliminary statement. It gave proof to the effectiveness of the synod process. The synod works. And works well. All these responses were wel- November-December 1995 835 Yuhaus * The 1994 Synod corned. Each was carefully studied and an entirely new document was written, in itself a monumental task. This new document, Instrumentum laboris, the working paper for the synod, shall remain one of the finest products of the entire synod process. Even though at present it is no longer accessible, it will become one of the more significant references on the consecrated life in all future study. Perhaps the sixth reason why this synod is rightly claimed to be unique should have been mentioned first. In and by itself it is The participation of the women at the synod was active, dynamic and effective. They were welcomed warmly. sufficient to verify the claim of distinction for the ninth ordinary synod. I speak of the presence of women, the women religious, members of the monastic traditions, East and West, and mem-bers of the secular institutes. How they got there is in itself a fascinating story. At first there was no mention of women. Their fears were well expressed. Would they be subject to yet another manifestation of patriarchy whereby the strongest and most powerful group of men in the world would determine the mean-ing and the way of life of women without their having a word to say about it? The women reli-gious themselves made strong protestations, par-ticularly underscoring the fact that of all the religious in the world, women comprise some 72 %. The women's voices were joined by a large majority of male religious and by many bishops. The entire matter was presented to Pope John Paul II. Many alternatives were suggested. Finally the Holy Father invited the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) to elect twenty members from throughout the world to represent women religious. To this number he personally invited some thirty more women religious. The representation was by no means min-imal or token. Altogether sixty-one women were active in the synod. Seventeen percent of the synod membership were women. Nor did the matter rest with representation. The further issue had to be faced: What role would women have? How active and real would their participation be? It was clear they would not vote. Neither did the male reli-gious vote, except the twenty superiors general of male congre-gations who, as ordinaries and by the canon law of the synod, are permitted to vote. The vote belongs to the bishops. 836 Review for Religious But the women did have voice. Each was free to speak in the general assembly. Each could likewise submit a written interven-tion. The participation of the women at the synod was active, dynamic and effective. They were welcomed warmly. They received equal treatment and were listened to carefully. Their effectiveness was in the small linguistic group discussions where they could debate the issue, represent their convictions and actively share with the cardinals and bishops in formulating the final proposals which, after all, contain the meaning and intent of the synod and are its principal result. It was these proposals, fifty-five of them, that were finally voted upon in the last session. In the general assembly each one passed by near unanimity but they had already passed the scrutiny and the approval of the working groups in which the women vitally participated. Three Challenges Challenge One: New Styles, New Forms, New Expressions of the Consecrated Life The face of consecrated life has changed profoundly since the call to renewal of the Second Vatican Council. Based on the five renewing principles expressed in Perfectae caritatis--the pri-macy of the Gospel, the rediscovery of charism, insertion into the mission of the church, solidarity with the real world, and gen-uine renewal of spirit, religious institutes globally have embarked courageously on a new way, leaving old ways aside. Conventional apostolates, primarily education and health care, have given way to a variety of new ministries. Internal structures of common life and governance have become radically transformed for most insti-tutes. Meantime, in the young churches a~ well as in the long-established churches, entirely new forms and expressions of religious life have arisen. Instrumentum laboris, the working paper and agenda of the synod, while continually acknowledging the pneumatological and prophetic nature of the religious life and its rightful need for a cer-tain autonomy in the safeguarding and development of its proper charism within a life-giving ecclesiology, nonetheless, recognizes the extent and depth of current challenges that have affected, and continue to affect, the expression and experience of the conse-crated life. These challenges are discussed under a threefold prevalence: Noven~ber-Decenzber 1995 837 Yubaus ¯ The 1994 Synod 1. As related to culture and special changes of modern times: "In this final decade of the 20th Century, society is marked by great technological and scientific progress., the oppor-tunities offered to Catholicism today are great, responding to the deepest aspirations of the consecrated life" (IL §16). 2. As related to specific geographic differences: "In the countries of the Northern hemisphere, members of the institutes of consecrated life are aging and decreasing in number. In the countries of the Southern hemisphere, the opposite is happening--they are becoming younger and more numerous. In geographic terms there is a shift from north to south, from west to east" (IL §22). 3. As related to particular forms of religious life: "A com-plete treatment of the consecrated life, however, demands that we take into account some specific problems concern-ing certain forms of the consecrated life., not in order to exclude other realities, but to look at some meritorious aspects in the context of a universalism of the church which does not ignore forms that may be less significant in size but no less deserving of proper attention" (IL §30). In his excellent opening address, Cardinal Hume presents an admirable and provocative summary of the challenges in this tran-sitional period of the religious life: ¯ challenges to the episcopal ministry (nos. 17 and 18) ¯ challenges of spirituality (no. 19) ¯ challenges of fraternal life (no. 20) ¯ the place of the consecrated women (no. 21) ¯ challenges of mission and inculturation (nos. 22 and 23) ¯ relationships to other states of life and to vocation (nos. 25 and 26). A large number of synodal fathers have likewise addressed the issue of new and different expressions of the consecrated life. These interventions for the most part have been positive, recog-nizing the reality of the transformation taking place, and praising the courage and daring with which religious have approached new and often conflictual situations. Other synodal fathers have addressed the issue of entirely new beginnings of religious life, especially in the younger churches. Nonetheless, a significant number of interventions have likewise expressed fear, anxiety, and serious concern that new and divergent lifestyles and expressions leave much to be desired and give rise to serious concerns about relationships between religious and hierarchy, religious and laity and among and within religious institutes themselves. Very many 838 Review for Religious of these interventions are concerned with the problem of the identity of consecrated life today. Briefly put, new and divergent lifestyles, as indicated by var-ious synodal fathers, have a fourfold expression: 1. from an inward to an outward movement; from forms readily recognized and uniform manners and expressions, including the religious habit to a pluralism in lifestyles; 2. from a hierarchic and readily identifiable structure of government to collegial and highly participative forms; 3. from conventional, corporate and very effective min-istries, primarily in education and health care, to a large variety of autonomous ministries, addressing new and demanding ecclesial and societal needs which frequently depend upon the daring and initiative of individual reli-gious; 4. from fixed forms of fraternal life and prayer in common to freely-elected lifestyles and disciplines of prayer and penance, even within and among members of the same com-munity. Besides these major transformations taking place in the well-established institutes, entirely new forms of apostolic and com-munity life are appearing that reflect and/or contain many elements of the consecrated life. The synod recognized the pastoral care bishops must have for all religious. In the rightful exercise of their office to enable religious sisters, brothers and priests to maintain their conse-cration and mission in the church, two questions need to be addressed: 1. In the face of the major transformations in the lifestyle and ministries of established religious institutes, responding to the mandate of the Second Vatican Council, and subse-quent directives of the supreme pontiffs and the Holy See, what words of help and encouragement may be given? What cautions may be expressed? What hope for the future? 2. With careful precision, what norms need to be expressed whereby new forms of the consecrated life may be identified and recognized by the local ordinary so as to, at an oppor-tune time, present these to the Apostolic See to whom alone it belongs to institute a new form? Moreover, will these forms be distinguished from other ecclesial movements and associations of the faithful? In responding to these questions, the working paper is help-ful in its reflection that: November-December 199~ 839 Yubaus ¯ Tbe1994 Synod The renewal of all the People of God is brought about by the Spirit through the re-invigorating of the forms of life that already exist, and through the raising up of new ones in the course of history in response to the needs of the church. If new groups fit into already sanctioned forms, according to the original inspiration of the founders, they are approved as such (IL §37). In responding to the first question above, on the major trans-formation in long-established institutes, two cautions should be expressed: 1. It cannot be a question of returning to the past and insist-ing or imposing forms or styles that seemed so efficient, effective, and unambiguous in a different milieu. 2. It seems one would want to be careful not to exclude these new and, at times, radically different expressions of religious life from the identity of consecrated life, as several synodal fathers indicated. Most contain very apt and appro-priate expressions of the new evangelization. In responding to the second question regarding entirely new forms, the following considerations will be helpful. "It must be taken into consideration that only those who assume all three evangelical counsels can be considered members of an institute of consecl:ated life" (IL §38). Nonetheless, it is possible that newer forms of the consecrated life may be emerging. The working paper further cautioned: A primary discernment is necessary consisting in weighing whether or not the new forms are in continuity with what is essential to the consecrated life through the profession of the evangelical counsels. Another aspect to be clarified is whether or not it involves groups of evangelical life which fit into one of the existing canonical forms . It would then be a question not of new forms, but of new institutes or societies (IL §37). To clarify the issue of new forms, two other points were made: 1. The Apostolic See alone can institute a new form of con-secrated life; 2. Groups must discern whether they want to be recognized and constituted as a new expression of the consecrated life or as associations of the faithful with the character of an ecclesial movement. Whether we are speaking of the major transformations in both lifestyle and ministry of long-established institutes or of entirely new forms and expressions of religious life, the synodal 840 Review for Religious participants offered a large number of incisive reflections. Some of these follow: 1. While the fundamental characteristics remain essential to the consecrated life, there is broad scope for legitimate diversity. The failure to recognize diversity as legitimate, indeed, as a gift of the Spirit, can result in unnecessary ten-sions, fear and accusation. 2. New expressions are to be studied in the light of the essential elements and the charism of specific Congregations so as not to stifle them but to discover the creative move-ment of the Holy Spirit. 3. Religious address the underlying causes of social distress to eliminate injustice where ever it is found. 4. Religious lobby political leaders to improve situations that deprive people of rights to basic human dignity. 5. Religious life will only have meaning and a future if it is clearly experienced as being directly involved in the truly critical issues of our time, not of the past. 6. Some religious congregations may perhaps die out in this process of insertion into the present . . . new forms or expressions of evangelical living are coming into being in the church and will continue to do so because the Spirit will always call people committed to the reign of God to live the Gospel in changing contexts. 7. The hierarchy should not be afraid of being challenged by the questioning and the searching of religious in their quest to be faithful to their fundamental options for the poor . . . religious must also discern how their insertion and witness can be "pastorally fruitful." . . . The central challenge both for religious and hierarchy is the ability to prayerfully discern together in the Spirit. 8. The charismatic structure is not to be placed against-- opposed to--the hierarchic structure as if they were two separate entities. Proceeding from the one source, the Spirit, they belong to the one and same church. They are insepa-rable. 9. As in the case with the initial authentication of a new charism, there is a concomitant need for prudent discern-ment in new expressions of diversity and interpretation of charism. '10. While the fundamental characteristics remain essential to consecrated life, there is broad scope for legitimate diver-sity. The failure to recognize diversity as legitimate, indeed as a gift of the Spirit can result in unnecessary tensions, fear and accusations. Noventber-December 1995 841 Yubaus ¯ Tbe1994 Synod 11. There is need to develop a better process of dialogue so that at every level, from the Holy See to the particular church, bishops may acquire a better understanding of the many dimensions of authentic consecrated life and the diverse ways it is continually impacted by the historical-cultural context in which it is lived. 12. A major transformation of the consecrated life is already under way; newer movements are emerging today. Religious communities are responding in a radically newer way to the cry of the poor; a new expression of religious life is required. Challenge Two: Consecrated Life and the Laity Instrumentum laboris makes frequent reference to the new awareness on the part of the laity regarding the role and devel-opment of the consecrated life in the church and the world today and speaks of the ways in which there can be a mutual enrich-ment of both ways of Gospel life. Experiencing the church as an organic communion through a complementarity of the gifts of the Spirit, in the light of the mystery of the call to holiness of all those reborn in Christ in virtue of baptism, has generally lead to construc-tive collaboration between the lay faithful and the faithful consecrated through the profession of the evangelical coun-sels. Consecrated persons are united more profoundly to Christ in the paschal mystery of his death and resurrection, profess the evangelical counsels and offer their whole being to God. In this way, they remind all the faithful--but espe-cially the laity--that this world can be transformed only through the spirit of the beatitudes (IL §80). In the "Relatio Ante," the opening address, Cardinal Hume further elaborates on this relationship and the advantages that may accrue to both: Spirituality experienced by consecrated persons !s also nec-essary for others who search for ways and teachers of spir-ituality in our pluralistic world. This search is not only strong in cultures of traditional religions as in Asia, but also in the West and for this reason spirituality is a new are-opagus of mission (see RM 38) . Consecrated persons must be witnesses of spirituality, capable of speaking about the things of God based on their own experience and become guides of interior progress; and religious centers ~aust not only be strategic points of missionary irradiation but also practical schools of spirituality. Today, the laity expect from the consecrated above all an 842 Review for Religious example of holiness and accompaniment in a way, generi-cally and specifically, that is according to the spirituality of the charism. "There is a desire to participate in the spirio tuality and the very mission of the institutes in a comple-mentarity of vocations" (IL ~80; see §98). Such condivision of the spirituality and the mission of the Institutes is not only for the good of the associated persons, but for the whole church (Art. 19 and 25). Many synodal fathers expressed their conviction of the value and importance of this conjunction between the consecrated life and the laity. The consecrated life is seen as bringing a new impulse to the faith expressions of the laity, responding to their thirst for God, leading them to a deeper meaning of their proper secularity as a vocation-fulfillment and engaging them in a mutual sharing of charism and spirituality. It seemed altogether proper that the synod should continue the expressions of praise and encouragement contained in the working paper for a closer and more enriching relation between religious and laity. At the same time some cautions may need to be expressed: 1. Is there the danger of obscuring or confusing further one or other or even both vocations? 2. How would this increased relationship affect a distinctive call to the consecrated life? 3. What effect may this relationship have on perpetuity of commitment to the consecrated life? A growing concern, not only in the western world but else-where, a concern already brought to the attention of the Apostolic See is what has been given the broad title of "associate" partici-pation in the life and mission of various Institutes of religious life. This refers to ways in which members of the laity, Catholic and Christian, may become more closely allied to an institute even by way of contractual agreement and paraliturgical initia-tion or acceptance. In many instances these forms of association with religious institutes arise and take form without any knowl-edge of the local ordinary. The question arises as to the timeliness of recognition of such forms of association and, perhaps, a pre-liminary statement of some guidelines or norms. The following statements of various synodal participants illus-trate strongly the importance of a new and deepened relation-ship between members of the institutes of consecrated life and the laity: November-December 199 ~ 843 Yuhaus ¯ The 1994 Synod ¯ Religious must invite, encourage the laity to join hands with them as by baptism and confirmation the laity too are committed to the same cause. It is vitally important to ban-ish any lingering suspicions of each other or rivalries between the different vocations of the People of God. ¯ Religious are a gift, not only to the church but to the world. Their dialogue of communion must go out to all God's people including members of others faiths and those of no faith. ¯ Laity expressed the need for religious to keep people informed of changes and of different forms of ministry and the need to participate in faith-forming communities. Religious should be inspired to invite laity to share and express the spirit and spirituality of their congregation. ¯ The validity of religious life in the church and in society will be experienced in its charismatic power to call indi-viduals to be with others who are similarly committed to a life in the Spirit. We are looking for consecrated persons to move out radically from their own internal concerns into a way of living with the people where they are. They see that their first witness is to these (the people): a witness of being rather than doing. This way of being in touch with the world and of taking that world seriously needs to be further encouraged. ¯ It is not enough to be close to the laity but religious must invite laity to become closely involved with them so that the "Spirit of the Beatitudes"--which is the substantial wit-ness of the consecrated life--will become the spiritual cli-mate in which the laity fulfill their proper secular vocation. ¯ Catholic monasteries and religious houses should do more to help Catholics engage in personal prayer. The Catholic Church needs many more spiritual masters of prayer, of meditation, of contemplation who will make the riches of Catholic prayer and mystical tradition available to more Catholics. ¯ Numbers of people everywhere in the world are longing for a deep, personal experience of God to find meaning in their lives. Challenge Three: The Future: Participation in Decision Making and Pastoral Planning The indispensable union of the consecrated life with the life and mission of the church and its intimate bonding flow through-out the working paper particularly under the ecclesiology of com-munion. Post-conciliar ecclesiological reflection has brought about a renewed awareness that all the components of the eccle- 844 Review for Religious sial fabric are called to work together to build up the one Body of Christ. On the one hand, the ~nembers of insti-tutes of consecrated life, in conformity with their own charism, have been led to give greater value to the partic-ular church, seeking their own manner of active presence in it. On the other hand, the bishops, with due respect for the proper autonomy of life and government of the institutes, have often made an effort for greater joint planning. From the responses it is seen that, generally, there is a sincere desire to build authentic relationships of communion and collaboration among bishops, institutes of consecrated life, secular clergy and laity. Consecrated persons on their part are becoming more aware of their duty to be promoters of communion in the particular church through the meaning of their consecration in the church and their witness to the universality of the Gospel message, which goes beyond differences of any kind based on race, culture, tribe, and so forth, and through their solidarity and availability to all, especially to the very poor. In such a manner, they create bonds between the church and those marginalized groups which frequently are not reached by ordinary pastoral activity (IL §73). In his opening address, Cardinal Hume devoted the entirety of Part I to "The Role of the Apostolic College Regarding the Consecrated Life," stating: We are here to deal with consecrated life as the synod of Bishops and therefore above all as pastors in union with the Pope. The reality of consecrated life is our concern and part of our episcopal duty. We are in fact pastors of every-one in the churches confided to us and of all the members which make it up. This role of the episcopate in consecrated life can be assumed also by its ecclesial dimension. In fact, there is no consecrated life outside of the life and mission of the church. This comes from the Spirit for the good of the Mystical Body of Christ, it is recognized and erected as a consecrated state to God from legitimate pastors, it lives only as the branch attached to the trunk, participates in the mission confided to the church. In the final section of his provocative discourse, his Eminence put the challenges of the consecrated life to the episcopal ministry in the form of two questions: ¯ How can one understand and make all God's People understand the meaning, the place and mission of conse-crated life in the variety of its charisms? November-December 1995 845 Yubaus ¯ The 1994 Synod ¯ How can one find suitable ways and opportune means not only to promote real ecclesial relations between bishops and consecrated persons, but also to fulfill our duty as priest in relation to consecrated life, respecting the right autonomy and different charisms? No other point had been more frequently made by the synodal fathers in the general congregations than the importance of clar-ifying some points within the document Mutuae relationes, par-ticularly at the time of major transformation within religious institutes and the coming to life of new and diverse forms of reli-gious vocation. Several interventions have called attention to one specific and exact form of relationship, namely pastoral planning. The presumption is that the local church is itself engaged in serious pastoral planning with the forecasting of needs and uti-lizations of resources. Where it is not, religious institutes feel bound to move by themselves in this important task. However, where pastoral planning is accepted, it would indeed, as one syn-odal father explained it, "Be absurd for religious to do parallel planning." The question arises that, following upon and enlarging on Mutuae relationes, is it opportune for this synod to insist and per-haps list some norms to assure: ¯ that religious fully integrate themselves within the local church situation and culture; ¯ actively participate in decision making and effective pas toral planning; ¯ assist in the analysis of local needs and ¯ express alternatives to meeting discerned needs of the local church. Surely one of the more certain and successful ways to assure a healthy interdependent and continued relationship is by way of pastoral planning, that is, by preparing norms whereby religious participate actively and continuously in the development of the pastoral plan for the local church. Some indications of suitable norms were contained in the fol-lowing interventions: I. The pastoral planning of and by religious must be inte-grated with the pastoral planning of the local church under the guidance of the bishop, its unifying source. It is absurd to parallel pastoral planning. Full collaboration of religious 846 Review for Religious with the bishop, priest and laity is necessary in the devel-opment and implementation of a pastoral plan. A commu-nications aspect should be part of every pastoral plan of every community. Every congregation should develop a b~sic plan for communications to make the Gospel known and to present a positive image of the consecrated life. 2. The response to Vatican II has led to radical changes in lifestyle and in ministry; these changes need to be reflected upon in the light of Scripture and Tradition as we develop a vision of the future of religious life. 3. Many religious complain that they are not invited to actively participate in the pastoral planning and decision making of the diocese. But, not seldom, religious especially those of pontifical right, set up their own programs and plan withotit even corisulting the bishop. 4. The synod should insist that: ¯ ~:eligious truly integrate themselves within the local situ ation and culture; ¯ be'open to the real and actual needs of the faithful in the local church; * be willing to involve themselves and actively participate in pastoral planning and in the decision making of the diocese. 5. Members of consecrated life often draw attention to the lack of opportunities for them to be involved in the decision making processes for the life of the Church. It is impor-tant that they be listened to and encouraged to participate when discussions take place concerning the pastoral respon-sibilities and activities o'f the church in a particular country. The Synod and the Future of Religious Life The s3inod has already had a significantly strong impact on religious life sifice its convocation in 1990. More has been writ-ten on religious life, its meaning, its role, its manifold expres-sions in the past five years than in the fifty preceding. And much more will come. It would be a service to the church and to religious universally were we to have an interpretive analysis of all that has been said according to the major geographic regions such as Africa, the Americas, especi~ally Latin America, East Europe, North and South Pacific. My conjecture is that while we would expectantly find ~ertain marked differences, there would be much more of a colaverg~nce on central themes, many of which were lucidated earlier. November-December 199~ 847 Yubaus ¯ Tbe1994 Synod The synod will have an important role to play in this inter-pretation of the consecrated life. Whatever will be written or said tomorrow will find necessarily a reference point in this synod. While as yet we do not know the size, the shape, the emphasis of the final document, we can say from the experience of the synod and the enormity of study and research preceding it, that the final document will have considerable weight. It cannot be expected to resolve all the issues raised during these synodal years. More than likely it will be the beginning of a series of more profound studies regarding the consecrated life and its role in the church and in society. Some of these areas of research we already know, such as deeper research into the meaning of consecration as it applies to all persons in the church and more specifically to those called to the profession of the evangelical counsels in an approved way of life sanctioned by the church and revelatory of its mys-tery and mission; the need to restudy and rewrite the important document on mutual relationships; the norms for distinguishing various new expressions of the consecrated life from other eccle-sial movements and groupings; the role of women religious in the proclamation of the Gospel and in decision-making positions. It may well be that the 1994 synod may be the turning point in the evolution of religious life. The synod did not look back-ward. Those who expected it to require a return to past and fixed forms and styles and yes, even dress, were bitterly disappointed. The final remarks of Cardinal Hume, the relator of the synod, are very insightful and encourging: A number of questions concerning some of the negative aspects of religious life were mentioned by some members of the synod in their interventions. There were but few such interventions. Problems, however, ought not be allowed to over-shadow so much that is positive and good in consecrated life . And there is much good. It see~ns to me that the synod fathers, being well aware of problems, nonetheless felt that they should concentrate on the ideal rather than on the difficulties and abuses. The synod has produced a fine ideal of consecrated life. I am grateful for this synod. Cardinal Hume went on to say that there is much hope in the synod but it will depend upon the way it is accepted, stud-ied, and seriously implemented. The enthusiasm, the study, the concern for the consecrated life engendered prior to the synod must continue after. If we were to take the Instrumentum laboris 848 Review for Religious alone as a basis of further discussion and increased understanding we would all be enriched. But we have much more. ~re will have the final report from our Holy Father and we have thousands of excellent articles, reflections, books, and reports that will enrich us and challenge us for decades to come, well into the third ~nillennium. This synod inaugurated a search for the fuller meaning and the clearer identity of the consecrated life. That search will con-tinue. A new awareness is dawning throughout the church of the precious-ness of the gift God has given the world and the church. The greatest good that can come from this synod is that this awareness so evident in those October days will reflect throughout the church. We are appalled when we recollect how very little had been said about religious life in the post-conciliar church. Little effort was taken topromote a positive image, to encourage and sustain the vocation to the consecrated life. Years went by without one intelligent and meaningful word being uttered in parish after parish; confusion and misconcep-tion even misrepresentation was allowed to cast a gloomy shadow across the path The synod will have an important role to play in this interpretation of the consecrated life. Whatever will be written or said tomorrow will find necessarily a reference point in this synod. that leads to the cloister. All that is about to change. We look to a reanimation of this gift to all the people of God when children will talk to one another about the mystery and wonder such a gift evokes, when schools will not eliminate the consecrated, life as a career opportunity, when parishes will call forth the giftedness of all its members and when the family shall again pray to God to be blest with a vocation to the consecrated life. Two signs of this new awareness are already evident. Throughout the church in the younger churches and in the well established churches, in East and IATest, new forms, new expres-sions of the consecrated life are budding forth. They are not a few. They number in the hundreds and they are attracting zeal-ous followers. Alongside this is the phenomenon of a variety of forms of associated membership whereby laity, married and sin-gle, young and old, Christian and nonChristian desire to align November-December 199Y 849 Yuhaus ¯ The 1994Synod themselves with the charism, the contemplative spirit and the apostolic zeal emanating from religious communities that were thought to be on the way out. I hazard to say that the October synod of 1994 will be the turning point in the evolution of that incomprehensible phe-nomenon, that elusive mystery, that Spirit-filled gift which hence-forward we shall refer to as the consecrated life. Stretch Out Your Hand! (Mark 3) In the Gospel Jesus initiated the cure, told the man to "Come here" and performed magical surgery on his shriveled hand so its fingers unfolded into flesh. Perhaps the man wasn't grateful. The Healer had snatched away his excuse for the random pities and coins of others. Now this hand couldn't remain unemployed; would be expected to find work. You're never completely grateful for being 9ured. Knowing your impairments snag you kindness, put you in the spotlight so others cringe at their fully functional selves. It's a kind of power. So you pray with ambivalence for your own healing, half frightened at the compassion God may feel for whatever is withered in you, half frightened at how you'll handle being whole again. Patricia Schnapp RSM 850 Review for Religious JOSEPH A. TETLOV~z From Useful Instruments to Willing Agents: Transforming Leadership for the New Millennium As an historian of American Catholic sph'imality, I have grown convinced that leadership of our religious con-gregations during the last half of the twentieth century has been better than ordinary, perhaps even historically outstanding. Conside,; then, how much a privilege I consider it to be addressing you men and women who are that leadership at the millennium. I am going to talk about your leadership in te,'ms of American social and intellectual histo,~y and American Catholic spirituality. That makes the task difficult enough, and to add to it, I cannot stop to distinguish contemplative and active lives, or to say much about the rich divergences between men and women. So I hope I am on target. My concern reminded me of a sto,:y in my family's lore about the day my mother picked up the phone and a little voice said, "I want to talk to Judy." "Well, honey, there's no Judy here." After a pause, the little voice said again that it wants to talk to Judy. "Well, darling, no Judy lives here; you must have dialed the wrong numbe,: " No pause this time: "Aw, lady, you answered the wrong phone." I hope you haven't dialed the wrong numbe,; and 1 hope I haven't answered the wrong phone. Joseph A. Tetlow SJ gave this presentation at the joint assem-bly of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) and Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in August 1995. His address is Jesuit Hall; 3601 LindeH Blvd.; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. Noventber-December 1995; 851 Tetlow * From Useful Instruments to Willing Agents Between Vatican I and Vatican II, between the first automo-bile and Apollo I, the socioeconomic program of the West, in Roberto Mangabeira Unger's words, was "to turn all society into a world of patrons and clients."' Robber barons like Vanderbilt lavished patronage; their clients begged help. Bosses ruled "their" workers; bishops had "their" priests; religious superiors had "their" subjects. All these subjects were "clients," including the religious, who leaned on--the IndoEuropean root of client is klei, to incline to or lean on--their superiors. This patron/client relationship flourished in the Catholic belief that the Church was a perfect society? It offered religious superiors ready apostolic choices, for the most part shaped by realities in an immigrant church; it offered religious subjects ready obedience for their own holiness. The patron/client relationship made us instruments of our congregations--instruments, we believed, in God's hands. With the sociocultural revolutions of the sixties, our con-temporaries turned from the patron/client structure to the form of the personal.3 Even unskilled workers personalize production lines through "management circles." We want no longer to be instruments; we want to be personal agents--of company, church, congregation. The implications of this secular shift in the relationship between religious leadership and companions (which has super-seded the superior/subject relationship) are great. For we can be agents only as members of a community, enacting personal desires that are somehow the community's desires. In religious congre-gations as elsewhere, this demands that we form what Josiah Royce in The Problem of Christianity calls communities of memory. The women writing in Ann Patrick Ware's Midzoives of the Future were keenly aware of this.4 A community of memory grows from a foundational event which the community interprets through and throughout its his-tory. From that event, interpretation, and history, each commu-nity's charism, mission, and identity grow. Here are the roots to which we return in the postconciliar generation--foundational event, interpretation, history. We have discovered in our roots that religious leadership has all along been for the sake of finding out What God hopes not only in us and but also, emphatically, in our lifeworld. Yet we are severely challenged, even daunted, by the thought of finding what 852 Review for Religious God wants, because of several failures. The most operative at pre-sent is the church's failure to proclaim an adequate theology of creation, a failure John Courtney Murray identified in The Problem of God forty years ago. Our only dogma about creation affirms that God directly creates the human soul, insinuating that God does not directly create any other creature. We conceive of cre-ation as happening in the past: "Who made me? God made me." A long time ago; the Big Bang.5 This absent Creator proves a grave failure: For the earth--we tear it up since God has left it merely to us.6 For humankind--we do not know God passionately, momently, creating us and our lifeworld in all con-creteness. Even for many Christians, God is the watchmaker God of the Enlightenment rationalists. For us reli-gious- what is the point of "discernment" beyond trying to find out how I feel, if I know no God busily working in all things, me included? A more adequate theology of creation is rising from the personal experi-ence of God in consecrated life, for in our contemplation we come to know God's pas-sionate hopes in the world, not as abstract ideas, but as our own authentic, concrete desires. In this pursuit of God's hoping, leader-ship at the end of the millennium achieves two things. First we have been doing well: Leadership now listens openly and deeply, bravely and discerningly, to the desiring and dreaming of every member of a congrega-tion. Secondly, we have not been doing so We have discovered in our roots that religious leadership has all along been for the sake of finding out what God hopes not only in us and but also, emphatically, in our lifeworld. well: Leadership identifies among all those desires and dreams the charism, mission, and identity of the congregation. Leadership in the new millennium, then, will draw companions to grow in their charism, solicit them to set aside all self-deception, and even invite them to die to many good hopes and individual dreams. Leadership, therefore, is not just for community, the holy bond-ing of those who seek God. It is also for communion, the mutual strengthening of those who courageously enact God's hopes in the world. November-Decentber 1995 853 Tetlow ¯ From Useful Instruments to Willing Agents My remarks fall into five sections: 1. from power to author-ity; 2. from submission to discernment; 3. from God's plan to God's project; 4. from instruments to agents; 5. from community to communion. 1. From Leadership of Power to Leadership of Authority Father provincial wanted Robert Drinan to believe that wisdom lay in resigning from Congress and that his submission would promote holiness. Father Drinan publicly expressed his hope that God wished him to do something else and better, and said no I do not contest this decision, or any more recent ones like it. I recall it only to point out that this was governance by power, a governance which is needed in occasional crises. The problem has been its seeping into everyday governance. "The eternal dream of power," in Roberto Mangabeira Unger's dictum, "is to rule by a reverential fear that systematically confuses prudence and piety as motives for obedience" (p. 107). In preconciliar days, prudence urged acquiescing to a higher wisdom; piety urged submission in humility. These are not good motives for obeying, and power is not now (if it ever was) a safe mode of command in religious life. With today's communications and mobility, power, like enor-mously high voltage, easily destroys, as it did in the uneven con-test between the Roman Congregation of Religious and the vital IHM Sisters of California in the late 1960s. Power is the ability so to determine a lifeworld that those under the power will have to do what they are told whether they want to or not. As long as twentieth-century modernism endured--inexorable progress, certitude, universal judgments, relentless control--the church governed consecrated life in the mode of power. Modernism survived in the American Catholic church right through Vatican II.7 In our confidence that we knew--the power of the keys and of the philosophia perennis--we divided all things into three: God, humankind, and creatures. Eucharistic Canon Four reads: "You have created humankind and set us over all creatures." Nor "all other creatures." In that modern church, the function of leadership was to declare the will of God. As it happened, this will of God coin-cided neatly in most cases with church order and with the press- 854 Review for Religious ing needs of Catholic immigrants in a Protestant nation. The function of subjects was to submit to command: Teach sixth grade, work the neonatal ward, move to another house, resign from Congress. Our submission itself was virtue, a good and holy thing. At the same time, Donald Gelpi argued a generation ago, "sub-mission of one's will to a superior [was] subtly transformed from a means into an end in itself.''8 Modernism is now fading and its imperatives--progress, cer-titude, universal truth, control--have become hollow cries in a dark alley. Postmodernism now spreads everywhere and its imper-atives- information processing, flexible specialization, informed cooperation, and pluralism--are giving shape to even emerging societies and they are re-forming leadership.9 Those of us in consecrated life, where the shift is a generation old, already.know this post-modernism and its shift in leadership style. Women like Mercy Sister Elizabeth Carroll and BViVl Ann Ida Gannon, and men like Benedictine Rembert Weakland and Franciscan Regis Armstrong decided that authority is given (in Gannon's bold phrase) "for the service of [their] fellow religious."~° They learned to be servant-leaders. Servant leadership is gover-nance by authority. Authority, which humankind always needs, is the ability so to arrange a lifeworld that those served by authority want to follow its decisions. Fully exercised, leadership by authority has rediscovered the authority of every individual. For in its root meanings--the .Latin noun auc-tot and the verb augere--authority names a human person's self-actualization and growth from within. Centuries ago we could say this clearly, as in the Jesuit Constitution: "Thus it is that from the general as the head flows all the authority of the provincials, and from the provincials that of the local superiors, and from that of these local superiors that of the individual members." That authority "of the individual member" had been honored in eremitic wisdom and monastic rules, and it was even honored in nineteenth-century congrega-tions, but throughout in a hierarchic concept of creation, as in the constitution just cited. Power is the ability so to determine a lifeworld that those under the power will have to do what they are told whether they want to or not. November-December 199Y 855 Tetlow ¯ From Useful Instruments to Willing Agents We can no longer imagine hierarchically; our imagination depicts reality as organic, evolutionary, and democratic. We once again hear all other creatures "speak to us in their own right," requiring us to author a green, peaceful, shared earth for God's sake.~1 Our task now is to locate the authority of each individual within community. This is the move from power to authority; with it comes the second shift. 2. From Submission to Discernment t~VM Sister Ann Ida Gannon, suffering in fidl habit in midJune in St. Louis in 1966, read her paper on leadership to the Institute on Religious Life in the Modern World, which the New York Times called a "pioneering attempt." She spoke of "accidentals and essentials" of religious life, but not philosophically, though she couhl have; she spoke fi'om experience, her own and other sis-ters'. On that hot day, she was breaking the ground of discern- ~lent. In the first half of this century, leadership in religion pre-supposed "a model of human coexistence that saw power, Leadership of authority presupposes a model of human coexistence that sees all personal encounters as mutual self-expression reaching toward self- transcendence and community. exchange, and communal allegiance as naturally and properly merged in the same personal encounters" (Unger, p. 177). The superior gave a command, and the subject gave obe-dience; they exchanged protection and loyalty; both swelled with alle-giance to the institute. This was leadership of power with its correl-ative, submission. Leadership of authority presup-poses a model of human coexistence that sees all personal encounters as mutual self-expression reaching toward self-transcendence and com-munity. The model is still taking form in a socioeconomic order of remarkable instability. It has provoked destabilizing changes in consecrated life; I mention two as particularly pertinent to trans-formed leadership. First, religious are now blessed with learning, something which was not always the case. Remember the Sister Formation 856 Review for Religious Program in the fifties, and think of the number among us now who hold graduate degrees. That fact ranks us with the privileged class. The main class division in our nation today is caused by the deep chasm between those who have learning and those who have not, between those who can keep on learning and those who cannot. Our efforts therefore embody the self-donation of the privileged for the not-privileged. Yet--here is the second destabilizing change--in an odd inver-sion, we also belong to the laboring classes. The reason is that we have to keep on learning: for our lifeworld, how gracefully and intelligently to erode the "violence and vacuity that charac-terizes the modern relation to reality"'2; for our communities, how to deconstruct and reconstruct our own charisms. Hence, we belong to the new "laboring class," for as labor historian Shoshana Zuboff has said, the labor of our day is learning. Why are these important to leadership? Power could instruct subjects on God's will (recall: we knew); authority has to search for it. As Donald Gelpi wrote prophetically in 1966: The authority of the superior appears, not as a species of extrinsic divine sanction which automatically transforms [the superior's] will into the objective norm of [the] sub-ject's perfection, but rather as a necessary and providential means whereby superior and subject are enabled to coordi-nate their efforts in pursuit of a concrete apostolic end to which they commonly aspire (p. 84). Authority, then, requires both having and searching for com-mon apostolic aims. In the ruckus of Catholic American life, how do we come to common apostolic aims and purposes? We have learned to call the process discernment. It means a great many things in different congregations, but it has common elements.'3 Discernment begins and continues through mutual listening. It succeeds among those who maintain the necessary conditions of a discerning heart, for as Roberto Mangabeira Unger writes, we know both from human history "and in our own intro-spective experience., that our predispositions and longings may be as misguided as our ideas.''~4 Discernment ends, consequently, for all of us, not in certitude about "God's will," but in hopeful enactment of God's hopes. So we have moved from submission to discernment. It is a risky enterprise, reminding me of a tombstone in Brooklyn: across the top, "Never sick a day in my life" and in the middle, "Now Noventber-Decen*ber 1995 857 Tetlow ¯ From Useful Instruments to Willing Agents this." If leaders cannot give absolute commands in God's name, where in God's name is God's will? 3. From God's Plan to God's Project "I don't think you should be dean," the older Jesuit told Joe Tetlow in 1969 as they drank coffee the morning aJ~er his appoint~nent. "You wear a tie. If you can ignore God's will that way, what will you do to the school?" As this millennium ends, the West is caught in a crisis of authority and a crisis of community. About authority: ¼7e must talk, Hannah Arendt once said, not about what authority is but about what it used to be. Americans (like all peoples) have wit-nessed authority incessantly prostituted in this century: a sev-enty- five-years' war, not over yet perhaps; seventy-odd democratic revolutions decayed into tyranny; noble-seeming ideologies yield-ing bitter fruit in torture and genocide. We are unnerved as sec-ularist humanism, dominant for half a century, unravels, and middle-mind Aanerica renounces its brief trial of the belief that "all goods which are not anchored in human powers or fulfillments are illusions from a bygone age.''~s Americans are back to angels, death, and other fundamentals, and we do not know what author-ity is or can be. We Catholics also have to talk about what authority once was; we lost the propositional certitude of dogmatic theology and immemorial patterns of praxis. [Historian John Padberg SJ loves to say, "I knew all this would happen the day they made us take off the maniple."] We still feel the scorching conflicts that whooshed in through good Pope John's opened windows; and now we suffer dark confusions as the church's European captivity draws to its end. One victim of these many shifts is what our gr~at-grand-fore-bears called "God's will." It meant a great deal to them: a fixed and infinite plan for the cosmos, an almighty God, transcending time and dwarfing human wisdom. Our forebears perceived God's plan in terms of neoscholastic essences and imperatives, which of course remained eternally the same; hence, the Roman collar and the wimple were nonnegotiable parts of the essence of religious life, as my old priest friend felt. And bells, cloisters, prayers, all "God's will." In the American Catholicism at this end of this century

Issue 35.1 of the Review for Religious, 1976. ; Review ]or Rehg~ous ~s edited by faculty members of the School of Dwmlty of St Lores Umvers~ty, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Braiding. 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute: St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copy-right (~) 1976 by Review ]or Religious. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.75. Sub-scription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year; $11.00 for two years; other countries, $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two years. Orders shot, ld indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to Review /or Religious in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent Review ]or Religious. Change of address requests should inclt, de former address. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Miss Jean Read, Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor January 1976 Volume 35 Number 1 Renew',ds, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to Review for Religious; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to Review for Religious; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for .answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsyl- ¯ vania 19131. Review for Religious Volume 35, 1976 Editorial Offices 539 North Grand Boulevard Saint Louis, Missouri 63103 Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Miss Jean Read, Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant EditOr Review ]or Religious is published in January, March, May~ July, September, and November on the fifteenth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edi-tion of Review 1or Religious is available from University Microfilm; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106. Copyright (~) 1976 by Review ]or Religious. What Does. the New Expect of the Priest? Ritual of Penance Rev. V. Joseph Finnerty Father Finnerty teaches theology at Cathedral College of tl~ Immaculate Conception, the college seminary for ~the dioceses of Brooklyn, New York and Rockville Center. The seminary is located at 7200 Douglaston Pkwy.; Douglast0n, NY 11362. The problem with the sacrament of Penance is not about to be solved merely by external ritual changes. A new liturgical book though critical and long overdue is not an instant panacea for this problem. What is needed is a change of mind and attitude on different levels because the problem of Penance has many dimensions. Many topics sliould be dis-cussed prior to the prorriulgation of the new rite especially: a definition of sin, an understanding of conscience vs. superego, a rediscovery of the virtue of Penance, an emphasis on the e~:clesial aspect of the sacrament, a per-s0nalization of the ritual, an honest evaluation of devotional confession, a study of thi~ forgiveness present in the Eucharist, a look at the~ relationship between Penance and baptism. Most important of 'all is the change of atti-tude asked of the minister of the sacrament. What the Ordo requests of the priest-confessor is more demanding than any of the recent reforms relating to other sacraments. The Ministry of Jesus Let us look first at the ministry of Jesus since it is paradigmatic for our own. Scripture reminds us that a work of the Spirit is the shaping of a prophet. Jesus is that proph,et~ announcing a word of reconciliation, but He does not begin without first having received the Spirit's anointing. His first sermon began with the Isaian theme: The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor . (Lk 4, 18) 4 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 The Lord's preaching was not especially intellectual: the Father loves us; men are brothers; the kingdom is at hand; life continues. It is not so much what Jesus said but what He did that is significant for us priests. He con-stantly reaches out to the riffraff. With scandalous ease Jesus is at home with a publican, a tax-col'lector, a prostitute. Jesus is a friend of sinners. That's the message. The message so upset the Pharisees that they wanted Him dead. It is hard to imagine anything that would be more offensive to the religious leaders of Jesus's day than to have meal fellowship with the riffraff who were considered beyond the pale. Yet this is what Jesus did. He risked being ostrasized, alienated or contaminated so that He could eat with sinners and minister to them. He did all of this joyfully? ~ Christianity is a-sinner's religion. He was given the name Jesus because He would save men from their sins (Mt 1:21). When John saw Him, he cried that here is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus gave His life so that men's sins might be forgiven. Before He died He took bread and wine, proclaimed these to be His body and blood, broken and poured out for the forgiveness of sins. The mystery of forgiveness of sins stands at the very center of the Christian kerygma as the sign of the king-dom. Do~es not the great prayer of the kingdom unite these two concepts "Thy kingdom come" and "forgive us our trespasses"? Simply put, if we priests fail in our celebration of the mystery of forgiveness, we fail at what stands at the center of the Christian message. The Minister as "Healer" " One of the first things to be said about the minister of reconciliation is that the model of priest as judge is inadequate. For too long Penance has been dominated by one image, that of the courtroom, with a judge and a defendant. The sinner accused himself, listed number and species, pleaded guilty, and. requested a pardon from the judge. The Ordo Paenitentiae is dis-satisfied with the image of priest as an examining magistrate. The priest is not primarily a judge who sits in judgment about another's misadventures. The dynamics of the courtroom offer a poor example of what Jesus did. The pries[ is a judge, but he is more than that. He is a physician who exercises a ministry of healing. It is not those who are well.who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the virtuous but the sinner. (Lk 5:31-32) The Rite of Penance refers to sin as sickness and the sacrament as a healing ministry more than twenty times; it uses the image of judgment only twice. The image_of "Physician of Souls" has a long tradition in Scripture, in early Christian sources, and qspecially in the liturgies of the Eastern Churches. 1Joachim Jeremias, Rediscovering the Parables (New York: Charles Scribner, 1966) p. 97. New Ritual o[ Penance ahd the Priest / 5 The theology of forgiveness contained in the ritual is a challenging one. There is no one-sided emphasis on the sacrament working ex opere operato; no top,heavy statement on priestly power; certainly n,o min!st~y that can be exercised in a mechanical or perfunctory manner. First of all the setting for this healing ministry is less formal and more personal; No reference is made to the "confessional," the ritual speaks only of the place for the sacrament (~12) which national bodies of bishops are asked to define even more precisely (~38). It is not the purpose of the ritual to deny people their right to anonymity in the confessional dialogue. It is wrong to insist that people only experience the ministry of priestly reconciliation in a face to face situation. Pastors and liturgical experts must prepare creative sacred space for the sacrament in sucha way that it re-spects the option of being seen or unseen by the confessor. We must meet our people where they are, but God help us if we do not bring them any further. A thoroughg6ing personal exchange in the sacrament of Penance is x~hat is called for. The directive which says, "the priest welcomes him (the penitent) warmly and gr~eets him with kindness" (~41) reminds~ us of the para~bles of Luke where Jesus teachi~s that God takes 'the initiative. Metanoia, comes from the penitent's heart, but, it is first of all a response to the overture of the father's loving kindness. He searches out the sinners; he looks for us. One warning! This is a friendly greeting, not a slap on the back. The dynamics of this ritual are not those needed to get class reunions off to a gQod start. The celebrant of Penance must not hesitate to be him-self but he must not communicate only himself he must'communicate the Holy One of God. The minister of healing must not act as though he has nbt experienced healing in his own life. He must know that he himself is a man forgiven. He cannot announce Church doctrine in a cavalier (take it or leave it) atti-tude. He never loses respect for the penitent while not condoning his sin.ful actions. A year ago an article.in L'Osservatore Romano highlighted this healing work of the priest: ¯ . . no sacrament involves the personal action of the minister so much as the sacrament of confession. The believer seeks a minister who will devote time to him; he seeks a patient man who will listen to him and believe him; he seeks a charitable man who will not pour salt but balm on'his wounds. He seeks a wise man who will not place on his shoulders burdens that he cannot carry; he seeks a serious and experienced man who will understand and then apply the yardstick of the Lord of conscience. He seeks a prudent~ ,discreet man, who will not delve where it is not necessary, who will teach where he is certain and will ask only for an upright conscience in cases, where the com-plexity of life makes it impossible to give a peremptory definition of obliga-tions and solutions . It is not unusual to hear the complaints of penitents whose feelings have been hurt in the very act of seeking Christ through the painful and dignified accusation of their sins . A not unusual complaint, 6 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 due--let us be clear--not to criminal or juridically blameworthy behaviour on the part of the confessor, but to acts of carelessness, impatience, arbitrari-ness, and sometimes--to be frank---~f t~ndue and incomprehensible pressure of one man on another, in the most sacred realm of conscience. Is it not too much to ask every priest, who is a minister of forgiveness about his usual attitude to the ministry of the confessional? Does he devote to it, joyfully or at least patientlyi all the time it requires? Does .he receive every penitent with Christ's mercy, without discrimination? Is he prepared to listen rather than holding forth sententiously?. Does he bring to the confessional the spirit of a friend, a brother, a'father, who does not judge the other more severely than the Lord would? Does he endeavor to discover extenuating cir-cumstances and to see the good that always exists in a soul alongside the bad? . . . Those whose primary obligation it is to save confession from a crisis that seems to be threatening it, are first and foremo:~t .the priests, to whom it has been entrusted by Christ through the Church.: The Holy Spirit and the Ministeroof Forgiveness A study of the journey and route taken by the Ordo Paenitentiae on its way to the Vatican printing press over the past ten years is very interesting for many reasons. Such investigation reveals that a major sou. rce from which the new rite draws its inspiration is ,the Eastern churches. It is a fact that the role of the Holy Spirit in the liturgy of the W~st has not received due attention. The most :striking and far-reaching reform has been to bring the Holy Spirit into the center, to the heart of the sacramental happening, thereby fulfilling the mens of the .,council, even if this was not voiced in lettera. The Cons'titu-t! pn on the Sacred Liturgy helped us to rediscover Christ; the post conciliar liturgical reform will help us to rediscover the Holy Spirit.:~ The rite~,~attempts to do for the West what the East has never forgotten, namely to unveil' the primordial link established in the gospel of John be-tween the Spirit and forgiveness. Receive the~ Ho.ly Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained. (Jn 20:22-23) Time and ~time again' this theme is presented in the rite itself. Just as the penitent is moved by the Spirit to seek forgiveness (:;q:6), so too the minis-ter acts by the power of the Holy Spirit to declare and grant forgiveness. Whether it be the c6mmunal rite or the rite for the reconciliation of the indi-vidual penitent, the minister and the penitent are told to pray together for a few moments asking for the gifts of the Spirit (#!5). Many of the .sug-gested Scripture selections emphasize the role of the Spirit. Finally all of this reaches a climax in the prayer, of absolution spoken by the minister -""The Minister o~ the Sacrament of Penance" L'Osservato~re Romano, February 7, 1974. ¯ aGodfrey Diekmann,'"The Laying on of Hands" Proceedings o] the Catholic Theo-logical Society o! America 29 (1974) p. 349. New Ritual o[ Penance and the Priest / 7 who announces the reconciliation accomplished "by the Holy Spirit sent among us for the forgiveness of sins." Imposition of Hands--Sign of the Holy Spirit The proclamation of forgiveness is accompanied by the ancient gesture of the imposition of hands. For centuries the sacrament of Penance was known as "the laying on of hands ad paenitentiam." Charles Borromeo tried to restore the penitential laying on of hands but he also introduced the con-fessional. He could not have it both ways, so only the remnant of the solemn gesture remained, namely the vertical extension of the right hand. The laying on of hands is not a peripheral rite restored by liturgists who have a bizarre archeological mentality. The renewal of this ancient sign tells us that it is the sacramental gesture par excellence. It reminds us of the healing ministry of Jesus who so often cured with a touch of the hand. But most important of all, this basic sacramental gesture, reinstated now in the liturgy of each of the sacraments, teaches that an epiclesis, a calling on the Spirit to effect change, is not restricted to the Eucharist. During an earlier age when the liturgy of reconciliation had no specific formula of absolution this gesture was never eliminated. It had a power all its own. It meant that the forgiveness of sins was the work of the Holy Spirit. One 0t~ the problems with Penance has been its symbolic poverty (this is true not only of Penance but of much of our liturgy a baptismal bath that is'not a bath, Eucharistic bread that is not real bread, etc.). We are great with words but weak on symbolic action. Henri Nouwen says that even young clergy who should know better are systematically eliminating every trace of symbol in favor of more and more verbal discourse, chatter, explanation, endless and infuriating pedagogy. That this is liturgy's death should be, by now, apparent." Too often our liturgy ~s wordy beyond toleration. The ges-ture of the imposition of hands, a_t_ the climax of the liturgy of reconciliation, speaks more eloquently than a thousand words about the meaning of Sacra-ment. At first many priests will find the imposition of hands strange and un-comfortable. It demands of the physician of souls closeness, gentle.ness, and communication of strength. It will not be easy for us to overcome a training that emphasized reserve and distance in dealing with penitents. It will take time and a great deal of common sense. At this point in the liturgy the penitent should kneel as the priest stands to impose hands and proclaim the words of forgiveness. Naturally the gesture is impossible except in rooms designed with the new ritual in mind. Much depends on the i~articular penitent and the mood of the moment. For some, this physical gesture would be a wonderful sign of forgiveness, rec-onciliation and acceptance. For others its newness could cause some mis- '~Henri Nouwen, Reachit,g Out (Doubleday, 1975) p. 30. Review [or Religious, I/olume 35, 1976/1 understanding and create further tension in a sacramental situation already filled with anxiety. The confessor open to the Holy Spirit and sensitive to the disposition of the penitent must judge each person se!earately . Certain priests may need to push themselves into a more physica~l, touching manner of healing sinners. Others may find they must restrain a natural effusiveness which can alienate . Both types of confessors obviously should be on guard in these charged circurhstances when a troubled penitent might mis-construe the laying on of hands. Lonely, injured spouses or sexually immature individuals could see this as a kind of advance. Whiie a sympathetic priest may feel compelled to comfort and console, he should be aware that his well in-tentioned action may instead confuse and complicate,r' The Priest as "Spirit Bearer" The initial key "needed to unlock the theology of the minister of recon-ciliation found in the Ordo is the idea of the priest as "Spirit bearer." This was a frequent description of the priest in the early church (Hippolytus, Cyril of Alexandria, Didascalia). Gerald Broccolo remarks in Concilium that for years we have considered the priest as alter Christus--someone wholly configured to Christ. While this is true, alter Christus seems to be the com-mon vocation of. every Christian, every member of the priestly people of God. Perhaps, he says, it might be more fruitful to view the priest as "a sacramental personification of the Holy Spirit." There is a great similarity between the. function and mission of the Holy Spirit and the role of the priest. The priest personifies the spirit when he consoles, encourages, gives guidance and support, convicts the world of sin, and teaches the Christian vision of human existence. Even though other Christians can frequently minister to the human family :in some of these same ways, the priest has been given the special charism of office to do so.'; Discernment of Spirits The celebrant of the liturgy of Penance must'possess the quality of spiritual, discernment (:~10A). He has the key function of raising the penitent's consciousness about gospel values. The confessor's manner should lead the penitent into an experience of discovering the truth about himself°on a deeper level. He is the catalyst who helps the penitent recognize the root causes of sin. He helps in the discernment of hidden sins, unsus-pected'offenses, and unrepented deeds that escape secular man today but which rip at the fabric of every community. Too often we pray for the wrong "things, we confess the wrong sins, we deal with symptoms and never treat the real illness. Why is it that go many settle into mediocrity and become lukewarm in a search for union with God? The monotonous cata-logue of sins that routinely comes to the penitent's lips keep him from ¯ ~Joseph Champlin, Together in Peace (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1974) p. 145. ~'Gerald Broccolo, "The Priest Praying in the Midst of the Family of Man," Concilium 52 (1970) 56-72. New Ritual o[ Penance and the Priest seeing his true self. To know one's tru'e sins is grace. To have a healthy sense of guilt is gift. It,is-the result of prayer. A prayerful and mutual dis-cernment in the dialogue of confession under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is the first step in a process of discovery. "The Spirit Js the first step in a process of discovery" (1 Co 2:10). We need the Spirit to help us face the truth about ourselves. The Confessor as "Pray-er" The more ancient phrase, "Spirit bearer," says a.great deal not only about who the priest is but also about how he should act. If he is "Spirit bearer" in the midst of the penitential assembly or for that matter in the Eucharistic assembly, he must act in a way that stimulates the faithful to pray~ A primary presupposition of all liturgical reform, and most especially of the sacrament of Penance, is that the sacrament is prayer. John Gallen r(marks that "What the contemporary reform of the Church's liturgy needs most in this~moment of its history is the rediscovery of liturgy as prayer.''z It is no accident that the first request made by the ritual' is for the priest and the penitent(s) to pray together (:#: 15, 16). Familiarity with the many suggested .prayers in the ritual is important but free prayer in one's own words is called for as well. The minister of reconciliation is not conducting a counseling session,. nor is he giving a conference on spiritual direction (:#:7B). While it is frequently necessary to give a word of counsel and direction, any serious situation which demands extended attention might~more profitably take place ¯ ¯ elsewhere. The ,ministry of reconciliation cannot be effective unless the confessor is a good "pray-er." Whether it be in a communal liturgy of penance or in the rite for the reconciliation of individual penitents, the priest is the celebrant who truly prays. The priest is "Spirit bearer" by public deputation of office, so that when he prays among men he must do so in a way that stimulates others to pray. His manner of prayer must engender the gift of the Spirit in the people around him. This cannot remain merely an intellectual conviction for the minister, rather he must endeavor to communicate this conviction in a humanly tangible manner. It is unfair to make tran'slations and texts bear the brunt of negative criticism with regard to liturgical reform. The even more commonly voiced disappointment with the r~sults of contemporary liturgical renewal can frequently be traced to the lack of a celebrant's internal dynamism of the Spirit being communicated to the assembly. The liturgy~cannot be rushed, it demands preparation, it rakes time. In an earlier age, canonical Penance was presided over by the bishop with the assistance of his presbyters and deacons who were joined in this act 7Johrl Gallen, "Liturgical Reform: Product or Prayer?". Worship 47 (1973) p. 587. Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/1 of worship by a community of 6elievers interceding on behalf of the penitents. The penitents themselve3 did not appear at this assembly without having spent months (even years) in prayerful preparation. Make no mis-take, we have no desire to slavishly imitate a sixth century liturgy in the twentieth century, but the Ordo Paenitentiae does have every intention of recapturing an understanding of reconciliation as a profound prayer ex-perience of the Holy One of God. In this act of worship, we attempt to communicate the incommunicable. Reconciliation cannot be mass produced. The-practice of "frequent confession" or "confession of devotion" will need redefinition so that the Sacrament will not be reduced to superficial ritual observance. After seven centuries of unbalanced emphasis on causality to the neglect of the signs, the Ordo Paenitentiae is another example of Post Vatican II's rejection of an unthomistic stress on causality that led in the past to a more or less mechanistic view of sacraments. Whittling down a penitential liturgy or any other sacramental celebration to what is abso-lutely essential for validity can erode its prayer context. More is required for fruitful celebration than a basic minimum. If celebrants use emergency rubrics as the normal procedure for the parochial experiences of the Sacra-ment, no translation, no text, no liturgical book will be of any help in solv-ing the problems of Penance. The American Bishops put it well. "Faith grows when it is well expressed in celebration. Good celebrations foster and nourish faith. Poor celebrations weaken and destroy faith.''~ :The Protestant community will be less likely to dismiss the sacrament ¯ of Penance if it sees it as a prayerful experience between minister and penitent(s) who stand under the word of God with faith prior to a procla-mation of!forgiveness. It is not magic. It is not over and done with in a few moments. It is now, as it was in the early Church, a process, an event that takes time. If Penance in our time has hit rock bottom, it will rebound only if we rediscover Penance as prayer. For this critical ministry the Church needs charismatic men at ease with situations which permit a free flowing prayerful exchange with penitents under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Tension Between Ecclesial and Individual Elements The Ordo Paenitentiae reminds the Church of the~ diversity of ways in which a Christian obtains forgiveness (prayer, Eucharist, works of mercy, Scripture, etc.) (:~4). The ritual of Penance now includes a rite which in-corporates general absolution after only a general confession of sinfulness. Kenan Osborne in a report made to the Catholic Theological Society of America remarks that with the Ordo "a definite break has been made; a door has been opened officially, and although the document takes a strad- SMusic in Catholic Worship" Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy, 1972. New Ritual of Penance and the Priest dling position, the openness to new forms cannot be saddled or bridled . ,,9 With regard to the limited use of general absolution the Ordo may be termed a transitional document, an important first step. Pastors anticipate an openness from the National Conference of Bishops ~ for expanded use of this rite in the years to come. However in age of personalism, being ministered to as "a face in the crowd" is no instant cure for the problem of Penance. True conversion, real change of heart, a new direction to one's llfe, and authentic reconciliation with God and Church does not happen more easily by eliminating a personal meeting with a sensitive minister of the Church. The second rite integrates the ecclesial and individual dimension of rec-onciliation. It must be said that with large congregations, even when many priests are available, it will prove awkward. At other times, with small congregations it may pose no real problem. However, in the lives of busy people it may prove impractical to expect everyone to wait until the entire group of penitents has confes~sed individually before concluding the ceremony. It will be pastorally and practical!y better in many parishes to conclude the. Penance service first and then invite the participants to individual confession and absolution. This will prevent truncating the. dia-logue of prayer" which is confession. Over the past ten years it is understandable that priests have spent most of their time attending to liturgical renewal as it relates to Eucharist. However during this same period many ~ther prayer services once familiar to Roman Catholics have disappeared. As a result we feel we have little choice when we come together for prayer. Is it not true that most Catholics labor under the false impression that the word "liturgy" means "Eucharist"? The Eucharist is the preeminent liturgical action, it is the "summit" of our worship, but it is not the entire mountain, We have placed too heavy a burden on the Eucharist to answer eyery .spiritual need of all the people all the time. We misuse the Eucharist by overuse as though it were the only prayer form that our people know. The rite,for the reconciliation of many penitents with individual confession of sins and the suggested non-sacramental penitential services in the Ordo are part of the answer to our prayer needs. These? rites (even when all do not individually confess) must be highlighted as important ways of. reinterpreting what is meant by our~ traditional concepts of "frequent confession" and "confession of devotion." Further, these rites are a good response to Vatican II's request for a. less individualistic liturgical piety. Liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church, which is the 'sacrament of unity,' namely a holy people united and :,Kenan Osborne, The Renewal o] the Sacrament o! Penance (Washington: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1975) p. 48. Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 organized under their bishops. Therefore, liturgical services pertain to the whole body of the Church; they manifest it and have effects upon it; but they concern individual members of the Church in different ways according to the diversity of holy orders, functions, and degrees of participation.~° It is to be stressed that whenever rites, according to their specific nature, make ~provision for communal celebration involving the presence and active partici-pation of the faithful, this way of celebrating them is to be preferred, as far as possible, to a celebration that is individual and quasi-private,it Every sacrament must' be celebration of Church. In an earlier age, the bishop presided over a penitential~liturgy that literally included every-one, priests, deacons, and laity. Today the priest is asked to work with liturgical committees in the formation of ministers of the Word, readers of prayers and examinations of conscience, musicians, acolytes, etc. In addition to this collaboration, the priest must ~sense that each l~enitent actually celebrates with the Church in the rite of individual con-fession and absolution. "Thus, the faithful Christian, as he experiences the mercy, of God in his life, celebrates together with the priest the liturgy of the. Church by which she continually renews herself" (~11). Since the penitent is in dialogue with the confessor in this rite, it is appropriate to encourage him to read the passages from" Scripture, to allow him time to make an act of sorrow, and even have him suggest an appropriate penance. Although not every Catholic is capable of such participation and we should not burden people who are not prepared, neither should we patronize or underestimate the ability of many American Catholics who desire from their priests "something more." Standing Under the Word of God Finally, it might be helpful to remember the bishop's mandate given to all priests moments before ordination: "Share with a~l men the word of God you have received with jby." Like Jesus the minister is anointed by the Spirit to bring the Good News of forgiveness to his people. HiS min-istry of "breaking the bread" of God's word in teaching the people by means of the homily is an essential part of the liturgy of Penance. Even in the rite for ~the reconciliation of individual penitents the priest should be reluctant to omit those few verses of Scripture and subsequent words of encouragement. Karl Rahner says that there are forgotten truths about the sacrament of Penance that need to be rediscovered. The homily within the ritual of Penance is a privileged opportunity "to teach as Jesus did" about the true meaning of sin and about the need for reconciliation with God and with the Church. Almighty and merciful God, you have brought us together in the name of your Son 1°Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy #26. 11Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy #.27. New Ritual o[ Penance and the Priest / 13 to receive your mercy and grace in our time of need. Open our eyes to see the evil we have done. Touch our hearts and convert us to yourself. Where sin has divided and scattered, may your love make one again; where sin has brought weakness, may your power heal and strengthen; where sin has brought death, may your Spirit raise to new life. Give us a new heart to love you, so that our lives may reflect the image of your Son. May the world see the glory of Christ revealed in your Church, and come to know that he is the one whom you have sent, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. (Ordo Paenitentiae :~99 Opening Prayer) Bibliography' Alszeghy, Zoltan. "Reform of the Rite of Penance,"~Theology Digest 23 (1975) 100- 106. Buckley, Francis. "Recent Developments in the Sacrament of Penance:' Communio I (1974) 83-93. Champlin, Joseph. Together iJ, Peace Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1975. Colborn, Francis. ',Psychotherapy and Conversio9," American Ecclesiastical Review 167 (19:.73) 75-90. Curran, Charles. ~'The Sacrament of Penance Today," Worship 43 (1969) 510-531, 590-619; 44 (1970) 2-19. Diekmann, Godfrey. "The Laying On of Hands: The Basic Sacramental Rite," Proceedings o/ tire Catholic Theological Society o[ America 29 (1974) 339-366. Donnelly, Doris. "The Problem of Penance," America 129 (1973) 324-327. Duffy, Regi'~i ~'Concelebration of Penance and a Therapeutic 191odel," Worsl, ip 48 (1974) 258-269. Gallen, John. "Liturgical Reform: Product or Prayer?" Worship 47 (1973) 580-591. -- "The Necessity of Ritual," Tire Way Oct. 1973, 270-282. -- "A ~PastoraI-Liturgical View of Penance Today," Worship 45 (1971) 132-150. Poschman, Bernard. Penance attd the Anointing o[ the Sick, New York: Herder, 1964. Prieur, Michael. The Sacrament o] Reconciliation Today, Bethlehem: Catechetical Comtnunications, 1974. Rahner, Karl. "Forgotten Truths about the Sacrament of Penance," ~Theological vestigations Volume II. -- "Problems Concerning Confession," Theological'Investigations Volume II. -- "Penance as an Additional Act of Reconciliation with the Church," Theological Investigations Volume X. Schillebeeckx, E. Sacramental Reconciliation New York: Herder, 1971. Sottocornola, F. A Look at the New Rite o] Petratrce Washington: U.S. Catholic Conference, 1975. Vogel, C. "Sin and Penance," Pastoral Treatment b] Sin ed. P. Delhaye New York: Descle6, 1968. Renewed Religious Life: The Dynamics of Re-discovery George Kosicki, C.S.B. Father Kosicki is on the staff of Bethany House of Intercession, a center of spiritual renewal that emphasizes intercessory prayer on behalf of all priests. His address is: Bethany House; Seminary of Our Lady of Providence; R. R. No. 1; Warwick, RI 02889, Six years ago, my superior general, Father John C. Wey, C.S.B., released me from University teaching and research in the field of biochemistry to work full time with prayer groups and to give retreats. He asked me to experiment with prayer groups and communities and bring back what I could for the renewal of our own religious ~ommunity, the Basilian Fathers. He advised me to search out various approaches and not to get. tied down to one thing too quickly. In following his advice, I have experienced a variety of communities and traveled extensively giving retreats, mainly to priests and religious these last years, searching for some understanding and some answers. It has been a time of being a pilgrim and I have found some in-sights and factors that I think need to be part of renewed religious life. Experiences by Decades My experience of religious life began after high school with the no~,itiate in 1946 in Rochester, New York. I remember it as a joyous time; a time when I wanted to give myself to the Lord without reserve. I felt ready to give whatever was asked of me with generous heart. There were no agoniz-ing questions, no searching for answers; all was there in the community and the rule, In 1956, two years after ordination, I was director of our scholastics (college seminarians) at Assumption University, Windsor, Ontario. It was a time of intense activity: studying, teaching, research and counseling. Con- 14 Renewed Religious Li[e / 15 cerns with the scholastics centered about the rule, spiritual exercises, aca-demic achievements, work with the boarding high school students and sports. Ten-years °later in 1966, as director of the. scholastics, I was involved in seminars on the documents of Vatican II and deeply immersed in the construction of a three-quarter-million-dollar house of studies. We had more novices than we had rooms! One of the concerns was the right layout and atmosphere that would "form community," such as the color of brick and the arrangement of rooms. .~ By the time it was opened we could not fill it. Now, approaching 1976, I .am searching for ways to renew religious life. I am trying to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the communities. There are no scholastics at the university and neither am I there. During these past years I have.been exposed to a variety of communities' experiments that have added to both my experience and non-experience of community. While traveling to many parts of the world giving retreats on faith renewal, I made my home base in various living situations. At the university I lived with fellow Basilian priests in an academic atmosphere where many were of one mind on our work, but so many of our hearts were off in different directions; in different theologies, different psy-chologies, different styles of living. ' During the summer of 1970 in Detroit I was part of a seven week program of sharing and prayer with a group of priests. It was a temporary community that inspired us to continue the searching. During the academic year of 1970-71 a group of students and a few priests came to live together as a community, using a former convent in the inner city at Santa Maria Parish. ,We were of one heart but never made cl~ar our agreements and found that we were not of~one mind. We thought that our common involvement with the large central prayer group at Gesu Parish, Detroit, would form us into a community; but we had no clear headship and a random pattern of living developed. In the beginning of 1971 a nucleus of five priests was attracted to a vision of a community committed to ~he renewal of priests. They joined,me at Santa Maria and on several retreats. We spent the summer together in sharing and prayer. It was a strained situation because the focus began with our interpersonal relationships, dealing with areas of trust and lack of trust, and seemed to continue at that level. In a sense, we were our own first customers; we were the ones who experienced healing, but there was so much more needed for so many brothers. The two priests, who stayed on with me (1971-72) in the retreat work with priests, found it increasingly difficult to work with the renewal of priests. Our community experience was good but not good enough. ,We tried to be of one heart and one mind but diversity of interest, of calling, and of talent seemed to dominate. Our temporary commitment worked against our making the needed agreements. For the next two years I moved to the Word of God Community in 16 / Review ]or Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/1 Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a base of operation. The leaders of the com-munity asked me to come and live with them and receive the Christian support I needed for the retreat with priests. The Word of God is an ecu-menical lay community of more than 1200 people living in extended family households. It is a life ~of prayer and common worship that over-flows in service. The bond of unity is commitment to the Lord and to one another. I came to experienc6 the pattern of their community life and to see before me re-discoveries of many basics of religious life. In living with a family household, I came to appreciate the enormity of the love and fidelity of the parents, at least thirty-six hours a day. I came to be aware of the devastating impact of the school, peer group pressures~ TV, movies and .advertising on the lives of the children, I realized the need of a Chris-tian space to be free to be Christian and the need of common worship to support the members. Then, in living with a household of young menocom-mitted to a single life as brothers, I came to experience the rediscovery of poverty, obedience and celibacy. I watched before my eyes young men committing their whole lives to the Lord, to one and another and to service of the community with an eagerness and simplicity that I knew many years ago. There is no lack of commitment among the young; it is being directed toward these vibrant communities. These community cells are the remnant clusters that,.~are rediscovering the basic elements of religious life in our times. They are rediscovering: commitment, prayer, obedience, sub-mission, ~order, celibacy, poverty, forgiveness and confessing of sins to one another, healing, admonitions, service, brotherly affection, and love. ~ During the past year I~have been living with a small group of Basilians attempting to apply some of these re-discoveries into our "Basilian Way of Life." It is a simple, experiment: (an we live our Basilian way of life in a simple way? We came to experience the support of each other in regular faith-sharing of God's movements in our day, in praying together daily, in our Eucharists and meals and in our weekly hour of intercession for the needs, of our fellow Basilians and the Church. We found ourselves of one heart.We could freely share and pray together and for each other, but our different apostolic works took us in different directions, limiting our time together, At the present. I am preparing for another community experiment: a house of intercession for priests by priestsl As a result of the power of heal-ing and unbinding we experit~nced in a forty-day period of intercession for priests last summer (1974), six of us have been released by our major superiors to form a core-community of intercession. We are inviting others tO join us for a week or mori~ of thisoministry of prayer for our brothers. The six of us (two Basilians, a Maryknoll missioner, a Trappist, a Jesuit, and a diocesan pastor) want to live as a community putting into practice some of the re-discoveries of religious life. We want to be a healing com-munity that will help unbind our brother priests. Renewed Religious Lile / 17 It is interesting to note that a parallel change took place in our seminary in Toronto during these same decades. In 1946 St. Basil's Seminary con-sisted of some fifty theologians and faculty housed in an old orphanage, A great emphasis.was placed on the theology of St. Thomas and on teaching. In 1956 the classroom extension on the new seminary marked the beginnings of the "New Theology." By 1966 the new freedom expressed itself in new patterns of studies, small group encounters, and a general ~democratization of life style. Now, approaching 1976, a remnant of Basilians is part of a theological union at St. Basil's College. What can be said about 1986? What will religious life be like? I have some. questions that concern me and some re-discoveries that have given me hope. Questions about Religious Life What can I say about the renewal of religious life in light of this back-ground of experience? I wish 1 had the answers. What I do have. is the anguish of many concerned questions and the insights of some re-dis-coveries. Will religious life, as we have known it, die out? Isoa remnant to preserve this way of life for a future restoration? Can the new wine of renewal be put into old wineskins? I would like to answer these questions with the surety that would give hope, but I am confronted with the reality of dying communities--empty novitiates, closed seminaries, the average age of membership increasing dramatically, continued resignation of mem-bers. Another question that concerns me is the :nature of the apostolic work usually done by religious communities; such as, schools, hospitals, and social work. Where does the religious community enter a government controlled structure and how does it survive as a work of mercy and charity in the midst of a bureaucratic system? A related question confronts religious com-munities: Do we dare sell our institutions or are we secure in them like the young rich man in the Gospel? Can we be secure in insecurity? Another concern ~about religious life is its isolation from the full ecclesial community. Have religious communities become churches unto themselves? Have they been more interested in their self-perpetuation and the advancement of their own apostolic endeavors than in the welfare of the people of God and the proclamation of the Kingdom? Another concern is that many religious communities have attempted renewal by a single directional thrust; that is, the lessening of discipline and order. The usual result has been the lessening of the time given to prayer by the individual and by the community. This type of renewal was not an experiment; it was just a change. There was little, if any, evaluation and no time limit set for the termination of the change. A greater emphasis was placed on personal responsibility and initiative, but so many of us have come to realize how much we need the mutual support of each other that is expressed through order. Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/1 Another thrust has been on pluralism within the community. I, among others, was a strong proponent of pluralism at our renewal chapter of 1968, but now I see the need of unity, of unanimity, of being of one heart and mind in our community and apostolate. What has been the effect of these changes? The drastic changes in .the last decade have been devastating to the morale of many older members. Nonverbal communications came across: that what was done before~was not good and what we are bringing in is better. The renewal has ushered in new and good things. But have we discarded some of the treasures of the old? From my experiences of living in various communities, I have come to some insights into re-discovering some of these discarded treasures. Insights into Re-discoveries I have come to see that there is no lessening of cofnmitment among young men and women. It is being directed, however, to new styles of life, to the lay communities and not to the traditional forms of religious life. Religious communities and leaders in the Church need to take a sincere look at what is happening in these lay communities, not with a stance of "wait and see" or of tolerance, but of active participation and encourage-ment. The Spirit is speaking to these communities and .the Church needs to hear wtiat the Spirit is saying. ~, Religious communities will find that the basic practices that have been rejected in our renewal process are now being "re-discovered" by these lay communities. What richness they are finding in common and private prayer (what used to be called office, meditation, holy hours), in Scripture reading, in teachings (conferences), in an ordered life under headship (obedience and rule), in support, encouragement and admonitions, (moni-tions, spiritual direction), in confessing their sins to one another and praying for one another (examen, chapter of faults), in times of sabbath (grand silence). But, above all, the basic commitment to ~the Lord Jesus is made explicit and is freely, talked about and regularly renewed. The reality of Jesus as Lord of their lives together is what makes these com-munities vibrant and alive with new members. I have come to be less discouraged with the conflict experienced in religious communities, realizing that the source of the conflict is often the Holy Spirit Himself. The Holy Spirit convicts us so that we would get off dead-center, so that we would not be self-satisfied with our security. The message of the Spirit to religious communities may well be the message of the Spirit to the Church in Laodicea: You keep saying, "I am so rich and secure that I want nothing." Little do you realize how wretched you are, how pitiable and poor, how blind and naked! Take my advice. Buy from me gold refined by fire if you would be truly rii:h. Buy white garments in which to be clothed, if the shame of your nakedness is to be covered. Buy ointment to smear on your eyes, if you Renewed Religious Li]e / 19 would see once more: Whoever is dear to me I reprove and chastise. Be earnest about it, therefore, repent! Rv 3:17-19. The message of the Spirit is to repent, to be renewed. It is not a call just to a change, but ,to a change for the better, to a renewal. I see that religious communities need tO keep searching and re-discover their founda-tions. Experimentation I would encourage religious communities to cbntinue experimentation; that is, to try what is possible with agreed-upon limits. The difficulty with many experiments is that they were tried without an understanding of the nature of experimentation. It was not experimentation but change. Experi-mentation means actually doing something with pre-set limitations that allow evaluation. For instance, so often an "experiment" is attempted with no termination date and, when it finally does terminate, it is usually because it just fails due to the nature of the situation and the members feel the failure as frustration and/or guilt. A'termination date allows an evaluation of positive and negative features. Also, experimentation calls for oneness of heart and mind. The members of the group need to agree on their ideals and on the practical' steps necessary to achieve them; such as, time commit-ment, prayer schedules, work assignments, finances, order and headship. Experiments in community life fail so often because of the lack of agree-ments among the members; agreements are needed on the ideals as well as on the practicalities of day to day living and on the authority to call: one another to fulfill the agreements made. Agreements are the limitations set on the experiment that allow evaluation. The professor who directed my ~dissertation research in biochemistry insisted on two principles in regard to experimentation: One, "Don't talk about it, do it;" and the .other, "An experiment never has enough controls." ~(Controls are the fixed limits set on the experiment that make possible its evaluation.) And so~.in regard to experimenting With renewal of religious life, I would encoutage religious communities to "try and try again" and to ¯ "set specific agreements on what is to be done." I would encourage experi-mentation not just change, o ~ The Church needs many examples of what can be done. We need living models of renewed religious communities that can be a sign ot~ hope to other communities. We need religious~communities to be living witnesses of the Risen Lord Jesus. It would only take a few t6 spark a spiritual revolution in the Church. The Charismatic Renewal and Religious Life The charismatic renewal cannot be igno~'ed; it just won't go ,away by not paying attention to it. The message of the charismatic renewal is to the whole Church and in a special way to religious communities. We need to Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 hear what the Spirit is saying no matter what our experience of the charis-matic renewal has been. There are a variety of messages spoken directly to religious communi-ties, some of which can be easily accepted and others causing tension. The many people who have been renewed by a new fullness of this Spirit challenge religious to be renewed and have their hearts set on fire with the love and the power of the Lord. This fire expresses itself in the ways that should be part of religious life: by the presence of God, in the prayer of praise, in the power of ministry, gifts of prophecy, healing and discernment, in the love of Scripture and speaking of the Lord. This new fire is available to all religious for the asking, that is, if we ask with hunger for the Lord and the expectancy of faith. The challenge of the charismatic renewal is not only to the individual member of religious communities but also to communities themselves to rediscover the essential factors of their life together. This kind of challenge causes tensions. Many religious as individuals have experienced the power of their "baptism of the Holy Spirit" and have been set on fire with new life but confronted a tension when they returned to their home community. For many, the prayer-meeting with people not of their own community is the occasion of love, fulfillment, and prayer; but when they return home they find bickering and superficiality. Others, on returning home are confronted with the challenge: Why can't you find your fulfillment at home? I see that the major cause of the tension is the Holy Spirit Himself; He is healer but He also is.judge This is true of the individual and of the community.This tension is good and from the Spirit Who brings the sword. We are being challenged to be renewed. Are there any religious communities that have been renewed by the charismatic renewal? Some~have been founded anew, such as, St. Benedict's Abbey, Pecos, New Mexico. But we need more models of renewal. People are waiting for a community to say, "Here we are!" We need some :.real evidence of the Lord's work and we are waiting. We need to be patient and wait for the Lord's time-table. Some religious communities are experi-encing a charismatic renewal by "osmosis," that is, a gradual absorption of ' various aspects, such as, shared and spontaneous prayer,,a greater rever-ence for the Word of God, renewed interest in the Lord. But we also need the direct renewal of deeper conversion to the Lord Jesus. The greater yielding to the power- and ministry-gifts of the Holy Spirit and the deeper relationships of love for one another in full community, What can an individual religious do when there is tension within the community over the charismatic renewal? Love much and love still more. It is the witness of love expressed in daily service, care, forgiveness and patience that melts tensions. Only by asking for this love in daily prayer will we be able to love in this.way. ~n addition, the individual religious will need to find support in a praying-healing community. For a while this may Renewed Religious Life have to be outside the "religious" community! What a contradiction that a member of a religious community would have to go outside that community to find spiritual support. And yet I have seen far too many religious who have had to do just that. There are many lay communities that are experiencing a renewed li~e in the Spirit and are challenging religious communities to drink deeply of the new wine and be what they are called to be. Religious communities are being challenged to be leaders of renewal in the Church, to be an integrated part of the whole Church, to be a believing, confessing witness to the world, a charismatic witness to the Church. Religious communities ought to be charismatic communities with all the gifts of the H01y Spirit operative; including wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discern-ment of spirits, tongues and interpretation (cf. 1 Co 12). Religious com-munities need to make use of all the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are given for the upbuilding of the Body of Christ. Religious communities have been challenged to renewal by the Second Vatican Council to look to the charism of their founders. Such a looking to, and renewal of, their original charism may in some cases be a "re-discovery" and in others a restoration. Com-munities do have a charism that identifies them. It may be a ministry or a life-style but always it is a fire. It is the fire that enkindled the founder and set on fire the hearts of those who followed. The characteristics of this fire can be seen in the early Church itself, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. Surely the whole Church needs to experience its founding charisms and it will if religious communities become charismatic. Factors in Renewed Religious Life From my experiences of failure and success in a* variety of community experiments, I see that there are basic factors to be taken into account in any renewed community. The factors I would like to stress include: common commitment, agreements, headship and submission, sin and forgiveness, prayer in private and together, Eucharist, celibacy and mutual support, poverty, discipleship, :apostolate and brotherhood (companionship) and witness. The order of importance of the various factors depends on the nature and state of the existing community and apostolate. There needs to be a dynamic equilibrium of being disciples, apostles, and brothers (com-panions). 1. Common Commitment: The common commitment to Jesus as Lord is the fundamental factor of Christian life. Each of us, individually and together, needs to profess Jesus as Lord. He alone can be the center and reason for our lives together. We need to allow Him to be the Lord of our lives. It is His Spirit dwelling in our hearts that binds us into one body. This dimension of community exists prior to us and we enter into it, that is, the community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit pre-exists. As we enter into the Spirit of the Lord Jesus we enter into a pre-existing community. Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 We do not "form" community in the sense of giving it birth~ but rather we allow it to grow the more deeply in each of us as we enter into the Spirit and allow Jesus to be the Lord of our lives. As we enter into a relationship with the Lord, we enter into a common-union with Him and so with all the others who also have entered into this union. Our common-union-in-Christ is the bond that forms community. This is the bond that needs to be made explicit, public, vocal, and regularly renewed. Many religious communities continue to assume ,,that this basic rela-tionship is real in their members. My experience.,testifies that this assump-tion cannot be made universally and needs to be made explicit. We need to make explicit our relationship to Jesus as the Lord of our lives, that is, we all need to support one another in continued conversion. One way of supporting each other in this relationship is by our daily prayer support and faith-sharing (see below for further development) which gradually begins to counteract the domination of other "lords" in our lives. And we have been deeply influenced by "lords" other than Christ in these past decades: by the dominance of success, by the fallacy of numbers, by the influence of materialism, by the ideals of self-fulfillment, etc. We need to renew our basic commitment to the Lord Jesus. 2. Agreements: We cannot assume that we are of "one heart and one mind" (Acts 4:32); we need to re-discover how to make agreements and come to oneness of heart and mind. It is a process that takes time and listening to all the members but it also involves laying down our own pre-conceived ideas and desires to achieve a unanimity but not a uniformity. It means that we want to be reminded of our agreements so that we may keep them. Agreements need to be clear and even written down so that we do not have misunderstandings. The agreements that are not clear are usually the source of "double expectations." One person expects to do B and another C and neither is fulfilled. We need to agree on our expectations, our ideals, and on the daily, practical ways they are to be achieved. Agreements are the "controls" of the experiment; they set the limits of what can be done together, limits of time commitments, involvements and duties. When evaluation is done, we need to look to our agreements. They will show us how the experiment is working. 3. Headship and Submission: Each member needs to be under the authority of another, not in the sense of being under a superior~ as we knew it in the past, but in the sense of being a part of the body. Each member of the body needs to be in submission to and in support of the whole, body if the body is to function as one. In the past we had separated the roles of superior, confessor and spiritual director so that the superior was not to involve himself in the spiritual life of the individual and the spiritual director or confessor was not to involve himself in the daily life of the individual. We need tore- Renewed Religious Li[e / 23 discover the role of a "spiritual elder" who would take responsibility for the whole welfare of the person. Each person needs such a "head" to reflect his needs, to challenge him, to confront him with his agreements, to foster his total growth. Such a "head" has the responsibility to see that the individuals and the community are growing; he is to see that decisions and agreements are made and problems are faced up to but he does not have to make the decisions himself. Such headship means support and submission of all the members of the body to one another, not just to the head. This re-discovered concept of headship would extend obedience beyond the vertical relationship to the horizontal as well. It would mean a submission and reverence to one an-other as members of the same body. It would mean that members iaf a brotherhood would not be just keepers of their brothers, like Cain, but rather be brothers to their brothers in the Lord. ~" 4. Sin and Forgiveness: One of the major factors in the. daily living of Christian community that needs to be re-discovered is the effect of sin and the need of forgiyeness. Sin has a drastic effect on community. The sin of any one member of the body affects the whole body. My sin of resentment or anger affects you and your sin affects me. Sin is a communal responsi-bility. In the recent past we have made sin. a private matter mainly to pro-tect the privacy of conscience. We have relegated sin to the privacy of confession or to the spiritual director and have separated the office of confessor, spiritual director and superior. We~ need to reconsider the effect this has on community. Sin is not a private matter. We need ways to confess our ~ins to one another, forgive one another and pray for one another s6 that we be healed (cf. Jm 5: 16), In the past religious communities have had ways of confessing sin to one another; in chapter of faults and in monitions, but these became stylized into dead rituals and were dropped by many communities. There are simple ways of confessing our sins to one another that should be in-corporated into our daily life. Sin will continue to be a reality that we need to deal with daily. Seventy times Seven times a day we will have to forgive one another. 'Community exists not when sin disappears but when we learn to forgive four hundred and ninety times a day. We need to learn to ask for forgiveness, to give forgiveness and to receive it. When we exchange forgiveness we acknowl-edge sin but ~ve also'acknowledge that our love is greater than sin. To the extent that we have forgiveness--to that extent we have~ community (Bon-hoeffer). If there is any one single factor that needs to be present in com-munity, I think, it is forgiveness. Sins against our.relationships are the major factors that destroy community. Forgiveness, as we ourselves have been for-given in Christ, is our mission of reconciliation and restores community. 5. Faith Sharing: One of the ways that our common commitment to the Lord Jesus is supported is by faith-sharing. Daily we need to share our 24 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 faith experiences and how the Holy Spirit is working in our lives. In the past we had examen as a time to review our lives, but the emphasis was on ourselves, our sins, our virtues; it became a time to make a list ot~ our faults. The daily sharing at the end of the"day can become a new form of common examen. For example, beginning with a period of silence we can let the Spirit reveal to us where He acted today so that we could recognize His action in our lives; then each in turn can share two or three moments when they recognized the action of the Spirit and corresponded to it or did not correspond to it. In listening to one another we come to hear how the Spirit works in each of us. We can respond with joy, prayer and en-couragement. Daily faith sharing becomes a very special time of closeness in the local communities. We come to know and support each other; we come to know ourselves and the delicacy of the movements of the Holy Spirit. Our faith grows as we hear the faith of our brothers expressed. Faith comes from hearing and we need to hear the faith of one another as well as see it. As trust grows among the group, the confession of~.our weakness and sin becomes possible. It is in this kind of sharing that we can confess to another, pray for one another and so be healed. 6. Prayer: To be a Christian community, each member needs to be faithful to daily prayer. I would place the minimum for each person at an hour of private prayer each day. We need a block of an hour to be before the Lord, to let Him love us, heal us and teach us. If we are to work with Him, we must know Him and this takes time. There is no substitute for this daily time of drawing nourishment from the Lord; it would be better to miss a meal than to miss this time of being apart with Him. To be Christian, the community needs to pray together. The prayer of the' Church Calls us together several times a day, But over and above that, I have come to see the power of hours of prayer spent together in inter-cession for the needs of the Church. In interceding for others, we join Jesus before the throne of the Father. The Father waits for us to ask for our needs in the name of Jesus. Prayer is the time of drawing spiritual nourishment for life. Without prayer we are inviting death to reign in the community. Each individual needs to feed the community with his prayer and, in turn, the communal prayer strengthens the individual. It may well be that the lack of prayer in religious comn~unities, both~ private and communal, has been the major factor in the increased signs of death--decrease in commitment and decrease in vocations. If I were to venture a guess at the major factors among those listed, I would point to the lack of prayer and lack of forgiveness. We need to rediscover prayer--not a return to reciting prayers, but truly praying. We can make use of every form of prayer available to us: the official prayer of the Church, shared prayer, spontaneous prayer, prayer in Renewed Religious Life / 25 the spirit, silent contemplation, lectio divina, holy hours, litanies, the rosary, novenas, and any other form. In this time and state of the Church, we need to make use of every channel of power to cry out in our need for mercy. The prayer of Our time is just this: lamentation. To weep with Jesus forthe ChurCh and the world. ~' 7. Eucharist: The celebration of the Eucharist, I have come to experi-ence, does not "form" community in the sense of giving it birth, but it rather is the cause of growth of community. It nourishes the life that is there and celebrates it. The Holy Spirit gives birth to community and He must be dwelling in our hearts in order that we be nourished by the Eucharist. This means that we need to approach the altar with forgiveness and conversion of who we are. If we do not recognize the assembled body for what it~is as the body of the Lord, we eat and drink to. our own judg-ment and "that is why so many among you are sick and infirm, and why so many are dying" ( I Co 11 : 30). The Eucharist can be an escape from facing the real 'issues that divide us.,On the other hand, the Eucharist can be and should be the source of healing of our divisions. To be healed we need to confess both our sinful-ness and our faith in the two-fold presence of the Lord:' The Lord is present as spiritual food and as the assembled body. Our faith is expressed in,the invisible presence and our submission .and obedience is expressed to the visible presence of the assembly. To be truly one we are to be one in faith and one in obedience. Is the real source of divisions over this obedi-ence? Do we approach the Eucharist "listening to" (the real meaning of obedience) the Lord and one another? Do we approach the body of the Lord with reverence, submission and obedience? When we celebrate the Eucharist, confessing who we are and confessing who Jesus is, we truly will recognize the Lord in the breaking of the bread. He will open our hearts and minds and heal us so that we might be one. Eucharist ought to be and can be th~ summit and source of our life to-gether when we approach the table of the Lord as a, "confessing com-munity." 8. Celibacy: Mutual Si~pport o[ Love--Consecrated celibacy is a way of living for the Lord in a singular way. It is a gift of the Lord for the upbuilding of community by which we are freed to love more broadly and serve with greater commitment. In a sense, celibacy is a gift of time for the community; it frees us to give time to love and service. On the one hand; celibacy is freeing but, on the other hand, it limits us to be served and be loved by the community. To live as celibates we need to receive the support of community. This involves mutual 16ve and concern. It is a marriage to the bQdy of the Lord, His Church. I have come to re-discover the need of small celibate communities within the larger ecclesial communities because it is in the small com-munity that this mutual love, concern, and support is expressed in a daily Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 way. The mutual support of love can be expressed in a number of ways: praying for each other and over each other for support, healing and deliv-erance from various kinds of bondage, sharing of faith experiences, con-fessing our sins and .forgiving, speaking to each other the tru~th in real love, facing our fears fearlessly, sharing the daily events of work, recre~ation, meals and the special events of celebrations, submitting to one another so that each person is under headship, expressing our affection for each other in visible signs. "Greet all the brothers with holy embrace" (I Th 5:26). This sign of affection may seem like a small or silly thing but it is not. We cannot embrace a brother with a resentment against him.It has been a fascinating discovery for me to realize that the very signs of affection that were so definitely discouraged in novitiates and seminaries because of the fear of homosexuality, are the most effective way of avoiding the problem. A warm affectionate community is not only the greatest antidote to homosexuality but also is needed to live out our consecrated celibacy. 9. Poverty: Poverty needs to be re-discovered. I see that poverty has two fundamental aspects: possession and dispossession. The first movement of poverty is to be possessed by the power and the presence of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we are possessed by Him we are rich and truly free. The second movement of poverty is to be dispossessed---of all that is not of Christ: of things, attitudes,, and relationships. To me this means that we. may become poor in new ways as well as in the old: poor in the extent of involvement, poor in the use of our time, poor in productiv-ity, poor in successes; as well as poor in material goods, food, clothes, housing and transportation. When we are dispossessed, we stand weak and stripped before the Lord and man, and allow ourselves to be posSessed with the richness of the Lord; He becomes our power and joy. Religious communities are called to be poor, not just in spirit, but also in fact. Our sign to the world is that we are rich in the Lord, Can re-ligious communities be the sign of contradiction that confronts the "lords" of our age: materialism, competition, and ~ivarice? 10. Disciples-Apostles-Brothers: I am coming to rediscover the need of a dynamic equilibrium between three aspects of religious life. We need to be disciples, apostles and brothers (companions), that is, all three need to be renewed, not just one or the other. As religious, I see that we are called by Jesus as His disciples to follow Him, and sent by Jesus as His apostles with His power to do the work of the Father, and united as His brothers by His love to be a witness to the world. In renewing religious life we need to emphasize the word ltis; we are to be ltis disciples, ltis apostles, l-lis brothers (companions). Have we attempted to renew our communities according to our own patterns, making ourselves disciples of our founder, or apostles of our own brand of apostolate? Or have we attempted renewal of our communities by approaching the renewal of just one aspect, such as, Renewed Religious Li]e / ~17 the apostolate or the community? Community life cannot be renewed with-out the renewal of discipleship and the apostolate; they are all inter-related. I have experienced, however, that the aspect that is most easily passed over: is discipleship. We have a tendency to assume that all our mem-bers are undergoing continous conversion and all are praying.and know Jesus Christ in a personal way as Lord and Savior. My experience bears witness that this assumption cannot be made. To put it in another way, many religious need to be evangelized. Many more than we like to admit need to come to experience the presence and power of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. l 1. Ecclesial Witness: The religious community ought to be and can be the living witness of what it means to be Christian. It ought to be able to say to those in need: "Come and see." "Come and live with us that you may know how to live." The religious community ought to be and can be the yeast that leavens the Church with a ferment of new wine, bringing new joy and hope to the Church and a world that so needs new vision and good news. The religious community ought to be and can be a confessing com-munity; confessing both its sinfulness and that Jesus is Lord and Savior. The confessing community speaks the truth in love: we are in need ot~ help and Jesus is given for our help. The world needs to hear this truth spoken in great love. The religious community ought to be and can be a poor and praying community 'that is the sign to the world that Jesus is alive in our day. The religious community ought to be and can be charismatic and serve the body of Christ with all the ministries of the Holy Spirit., Steps Toward Achievement What can be done if, in fact, we are not experiei~cing the ideal? I would suggest some practical steps that could be taken to work toward it. These steps are possible at any time. 1. Ask the Father in Jesus to send Their Holy Spirit of love and power to draw men together; 2. Forgive, forgive, forgive and remove the obstacles to our being one; 3. Share to the extent possible; sharing our burdens, our prayer, our faith experiences, our goods; 4. Listen to the Spirit revealing Himself to each of us and through each other. We need vehicles of communal listening in otieying the Lord. If we want to know what the will of the Lord is, we need to look with discernment to what He is in fact doing and saying. A further step then follows: as the Lord calls together a core of leaders who are similarly drawn to meet (step 5) on a regular basis, even Review Ior Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 daily, to carry out steps 1, 2, 3, and 4, this calling will lead the leaders to commit (step 6) themselves to one another. Around such a core of committed leaders, a believing and witnessing community can grow. There are some Christian communities who have grown in this way. We need to look to them for the message they are speaking to the Church in our day. They are living and speaking a radical message. Do we darer listen? Pastoral Ministry. For those who want to more. Trinity College offers a unique program integrating scripturel theolog~ and professional skills to 15elp you be of greater service to your fellow man and A combination of theoretical and 'practical preparation offers opportuni-ties for specialization in health care, the aging, correctional work, the parish or education. Choose from a 4 semester MA degree program, a 2semester non-degree program, or a 5 week Summer Institute starting June 28, 1976. Fc~r more information write or call Sister Mary Louise Norpel, S.N.D., Director, at (202) 269-2276. Trinity College Dept. 02 Washington. D.C. 20017 Please send me more informalion. narr~ address dry state__ZIP___ TR N H[NGTON The Art of Religious Leadership Sister Noreen Murray, F.M.M. Sister Noreen resides at 225 East 45th St.; New York, NY 10017. As a student at St, Louis University, School of' Social Service, I had the opportunity to participate in a Values and Ethics course that helped me to take a closer look at who I have become because of the values I hold. I selected the topic of leadership for ~'ne Of our assignments because I be-lieve that good leadership is essential for the growth of individuals. The emphasis of this paper is on the role of religious women who have assumed the responsibilities of leadership. As used in~ this paper, the term, "leader" is synonomous with the terms of "superior" or "coordinator" that are presently being used by many religious communities. The art of religious leadership is the creative process which unravels as an individual accepts responsibility to help other persons or organizations, strive to achieve the goals or ends for which they have come together with a shared vision. A religious leader is an individual who responds to life with her whole being; aware that every person she meets and every breath she takes is a gift from the ;Father for her. The discovery of God in her life has brought new insights and .meanings to everything she does~ She has been able to come,to a deeper understanding of' who she is, as she reflects on her womanhood, religious commitment and responsibilities. God has gently touched her and whispered her name, beckoning her to assume the office of leadership. I believe that a religious woman has a lot to contribute as leader, both within her own community and also in public organizations. The focus therefore of this paper will be on the various dimensions of creative leadership which are applicable to both settings and will be indi-cated by reference made to a leader with responsibilities in community. The importance for a religious leader to be aware of the reasons why her community was founded cannot be stressed enough. For when a leader 29 30 / Review [or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 is able to step back in time and become immersed in the history of her :ommunity, she is able to have a better perspective of where the community has come from and what is its potential for the future, In doing this, the leader may have to call the community to accountability because over the years they have become so involved in "doing" that they have lost the freedom of "being." The call to accountability is sometimes a painful one for the leader to initiate and yet if the community is to be viable, it must be one of life rather than of technological necessity. As a religious leader looks at the community, she realizes that it is a dynamic interaction of individual women who have come together with a shared vision, in the hope of one day attaining their goal. The uniqueness of each woman in the community gives a richness to the life of the com-munity, when she is allowed to be herself and grow to her potential. Com-munities that have been in existence for years have sometimes become so involved in their Work and apostolate that they get further and further away from the real meaning of their existence. The encouragement that a religious leader is able to give to women in her community to become sensitive to the roots of the community and see how the roots can remain firm as they branch out into various works, will often be a bond of unity for all.'involved. Personal reflection on the community enables the women to have a better understanding of what part they play in its growth and de-velopment. With this enriched insight, there is often a renewed dedication and commitment that occurs in the life of each woman. Although the religious leader cannot escape the complexity and magni-tude of the work she is confronted with each day, she can approach the situation responsibly. An awareness of who the women in her community are, may be one means she can use to delegate some of her work. In dele-gating work to an individual, the.leader is giving her ~the opportunity to utilize her talents and gifts and expand her potential. Once the leader has delegated what work can be done by others, she is then in a better position to see what she has to do. By taking time to list' in a priority sequence the things that are to be done, she,~will have a more realistic perspective Of what can be achieved. As this priority list is developed, the religious leade'r realizes the possibility of frustration has been lessened when she is not able to cover all the work that is before her because the demands that she has placed on herself are more realistic and in line with what can feasibly be accomplished: A religious leader is as human as the next person and like the rest of mankind, she must take time to step aside from her work and be re-freshed. It is important for the leader as well as the community to realize this because unknowingly in her desire to help others, she maybe over-doing things and stifling her own potential for growth. The community can be very supportive to her by respecting her humanness and acknowledging the efforts she makes to bring them closer to their goals. While the religious The Art o] Religious Leadership / 31 leader shares with her constituents the proposals and decisions that are to be made, it is often she alone who bears the brunt of mistakes and failures that have occurred. I believe that it is important for the women in community to accept the responsibility of our failures, as well as our suc-cesses with our leaders. We are human beings and any one of us is capable of making mistakes. We must learn to accept ourselves with our weaknesses as well as our strengths. The creativity of a religious leader to initiate new dimensions for change is often met with resistance from the community members. The stability and comfortableness that has existed for years does not want to be shaken. The question of "Why is it necessary to have these changes?", is often posed by some of the sisters to the religious leader. The prayerful preparation that has gone into formulating these changes gives the re-ligious leader the openness to listen to each one and respond in such a way that all have a better understanding of what is involved in these changes. The element of risk is often involved in any decision and one must be willing to pay the price for that risk, if one is going to be true to herself and her calling. To step into the unknown can be a frightening experience and yet as one begins the journey and stumbles and falls along the way, she is often in a better position to pick herself up and proceed onward. The channels of communicationthat are accessible to all the women in the community, is a very important consideration to which' the leader should be sensitive. If'the leader is to speak to the members of the community, it is important that she realizes there is more than one way of expressing our ideas, and if we are to speak to a group, we must see what method will be most receptive by this particular group. The ability of the women to com-prehend what is being said is important, and the leader must make every endeavor to make the arch of distortion ever smaller. The arch of distor-tion is affected not only by the acoustics of the room, its physical situation in the comm._ unity, but also by the importance and relevance that this com-munication will have on the individual sisters. The growth of community is not a one-sided effort but rather the interaction and exchange of all the women in the community. Because of this, it is imperative that the means of communication be accessible and used by all the members. Even though the religious leader may not have personal expertise within the area of financial management, it is important for her to be involved in the formulation of the budget and other financial expenditures. This principle highlights another aspect of leadership and that is the ability to select .persons who have expertise within a given field and the capability of utilizing this expertise on a broader scale. Once the leader is able to share various leadership responsibilities with qualified persons, she is relieved of many pressures and is therefore able to extend herself in a more human way to others. Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 The vision of a religious leader often extends beyond her immediate community to the larger community of the neighborhood,, city, nation or world. If her community is to be a dynamic witness to others, it is impera-tive that it has interaction with others. The call to leadership does not stop at one's doorstep, rather it calls one forth to become responsible in new and varied ways. Leadership is dynamic, if we-will allow it the freedom to be creative and responsive. When a religious leader knows what her beliefs are, it is important that she stands up to be counted. Christ's call to discipleship was never one of ease but rather self-giving. The truth and sincerity of religious leaders speak loudest in the silence of their presence and the beliefs to which they give witness. The emphasis of this paper has been on religious leadership in both communities and public organizations and was expressed from the view-point of religious leaders in community. I believe that the responsibilities for a religious leader in a public organization would basically be the same. By substituting the word organization for community in the paper, I think one can understand the validity of this statement. The presence of religious within a public organization can be a very powerful force in helping the organization grow to a new dimension. Change does not happen overnight in any organization but the influence that a religious can have on an organi-zation by her presence and convictions may stimulate the organization to have a greater accountability for its existence and policies. I believe that it is a challenge and responsibility that religious have to step out of our comfortable environments and into the realm of risk and venture forth into the unknown. Religious leaders do not have all the answers; they are striving as best as possible to encourage a great degree of collegiality in decisions that are made, for they recognize the ability that each woman has to enrich the community by sharing her ideas and insights. It mfiy seem as though I pre-sented an ideal type of leadership that is not very real, however I believe that it is very difficult to jud.ge or criticize another for mistakes when I am not totally aware of all the intricacies that are involved. My presen-tation was one of potential, something that should be strived for by all leaders. When we open ourselves to the humanness of our leaders, we ha~,e a greater appreciation for their efforts and stumbles they have made as they try to enrich our shared vision. The creativity that is involved in leadership brings each of us to new dimensions and possibilities. Are we willing to accept the guidance of religious leadership that may lead us into the unknown, facing us with the possibility of taking risk? If we do not have all the answers, are we willing to pursue that truth which will lead us to its discovery? Shall we take this journey through life, or shall we sit by the shores and watch the waves come in? The response that is to be given to these questions is a personal one. Are we ready to make that response and live with the choice we make? The Holy See, the Society of Jesus and the 32nd General Congregation Vincent O'Keefd, S.J. Father O'Keefe, past president of Fordham University, has been an Assistant General resident in Rome since 1966. He has frequently acted as Vicar General during Father Arrup¢'s absences from Rome. His address is: Borgo S. Spirito, 5; C.P. 9048; 00100 Roma, Italy. Introduction The modesty of that title reminds me of a course we had as novices. It was entitled, "From Adam to Pius XII." Anyone studying the 32rid General~Congregation now or at some future date will place its distinctive note in the deep and continuing concern and the decisive intervention of the Holy Father. I'd like to reflect on this with you and follow this order: first of all, a brief outline of the sequence of events which will provide a kind of framework of reference and indicate the essential documents; then a consideration of what happened at the congregation to bring about the personal inierventi0n of Pope Paul VI; this will enable us to look into the concerns of the Pope, and the stance and approach of the congregation; and finally, we'll try to sum up and indicate where we go from here. Sequence of Events 1) On Easter of 1972, Fr. General wrote to the pope of his intention of convoking a general congregation "during 1974 or in early 1975, and thus was cancelling the Congregation of Provincials which would have been held in 1973. Cardinal Villot replied, on April 18, 1972, in the name of the Holy Father, who was pleased that a general congregation would be convoked 33 34 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 and indicated what he considered to be important orientations. 2) On September 8, 1973, Fr. General issued his letter of convocation, setting the date of the 32nd General Congregation for December 1, 19~74. On September 15, 1973, Pope Paul VI sent an autograph letter to Ft. General in which he indicated the lines of authentic renewal in the spirit of Vatican II. 3) On November 21, 1974, Pope Paul VI received Ft. General, who gave him a copy of the postulata, along with a memorandum listing the topics which the general congregation would probably treat in accordance with the postulata and the preparatory period of the congregation. 4) The members of the 32nd General Congregation were received on December 3, 1974, by the pope, who pronounced a lengthy discourse which is the key document of the Holy See with regard to the general congregation. 5) Cardinal Villot sent a letter, dated December 3, 1974, in the name of the pope. In his meeting with the Holy Father on November 21, 1974, Fr, General had raised the possibility that the congregation in the course of its discussions might ask that the fourth vow be extended also to non-priests. Cardinal Villot's letter said that such an extension could present grave difficulties that would prevent the necessary approval of the Holy .See. 6) On January 22, 1975, the general congregation, .after serious and prolonged discussion, held an indicative vote, a sort of straw ballot, with regard to extending the fourth vow. More than two-thirds of the assembly voted affirmatively, and this was conveyed to the Holy See on the same evening. ~ 7) .P.ope Paul VI sent an autograph letter to Fr. Ge~neral on February 15, 1975, saying that the~e could be no innovation in the fourth vow and requesting that all the decrees of the congregation be forwarded to him before their publication. 8) On February 20, 1975, the pope received Fr. General. 9) On March 7, 1975, the pope received Fr. General ~nd the recently elected general assistants, and gave them a comrdunication for the con-gregation. 10) On May 2, 1975, Cardinal Villot wrote to Fr. General in the name of the pope, to authorize the publication, of the decrees of the general, con~ gregation. Along with the letter were some general norms of interpretation and particular observations on several of the decrees, The official edition of the documents of the 32nd General Congregation will contain those documents which the Holy See considers necessary .t0 evaluate: the congregation, and to assure that our religious and apostolic activities, are in conformity with the Ignatian Charism and obedient to the fatherly orientations which .the pope gave to the general congregation on different occasions. These documents are: 1 ) The H01y.Father's discourse of December 3, 1974 2)~ Cardinal Villot's letter of the same date The Holy See and~the 32nd General Congregation / 35 3) The autograph letter of Pope Paul VI on February 1 ~, 1975 4) The communication of the pope to Fr. General and the general ~. assistants on.March 7, 1975 5) The letter of Cardinal Villot on May 2, 1975, authorizing the pub- =~ lication of the documents of the congregation o The" Congregation With this background, let's consider what happened at the congregation. In its initihl stages it determined~its approach: and modus operandi. Right from the start, .it' wanted .to determine its agenda in the sense of what matters it should, treat, before launching into any particulhr question. This led to the drawing up of .a list of priorities--those matters to which the congregation wanted to direct its immediate attention. This was not meant to indicate the absOlute importance of any issue, but was rather an effort to select those items which the congregation as a whole felt it should0treat at the outset. One of these priorities dealt with the nature of formal membership in the order and such related ques~tions as differences in "grade" or official .status among members. One of the commissions formed dealt with the. matter of the grades and presented several reports to the congregation. It is to be recalled that Pope Paul VI alluded to this matter in his discourse of December 3, 1974, where he said, You are likewise priests: this too is an essential character of the Society, without forgetting the ancient and established tradition of enlisting the help of Brothers who are not~ in Sa~red Orders and who have always had an honored and effective role in the Society. Priesthood was formally required by the Founder for ali professed religious, and this with good reason, be-cause the priesthood is necessary for the Order~he instituted with the special purpose of the sanctification of men through the Word and the sacraments. o- Effectively, the sacerdotal character is required by your dedication to the ,active life--we repeat--pleno sensu. .~ In Cardinal' Villot's letter of December 3, 1974, he mentioned that the Suprrme Pontiff had studied the possibility raised: by Fr. General in the audience of November 21, 1974, of extending the fourth vow of special obedience dirca missiones to all Jesuits, including flon-priests. The Holy Father said that, after having studied the matter, such an innovation. seemed to offer grave difficulties which" would prevent the necessary ap-proval of the Holy See. This communication was sent so that it~ would be kfiown during the disCusgions of the congregation.' The congregation discussed the matter of grades seriously and at length. Several ,options were possible, e.g., make no Changes; ektend the fourth vow 'to all priests but not to .brothers; simply accept no more as spiritual coadjutors; abolish ~the distinction of grades, etc. In order to aid the com-mission in its arduous work of preparing a definite report, the congregation voted to hold an indicative vote, a straw ballot, The vote was held on 36 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 January 22, 1975, and a vote in excess of a two-thirds' majority in favor of suppressing the grades was the result. This was communicated to the Holy See on the same day by means of a personal messenger, Fr. General had arranged to keep the Holy See fully informed on the proceedings of the congregation. In addition to a personal messenger from the congrega-tion, the Acta and the news bulletins were sent regularly to the Holy See. The news of the indicative vote proved very disturbin~ and upsettin~ to the pope. After a report was sent to him of the reasons which led to the indicative vote, the Holy Father sent an autograph letter to Fr. General on February 15, 1975: He repeated what was in Cardinal Villot's letter of December 3, ~1974, and said that there was to be no. innovation with regard to the fourth vow. He. wanted ~no change in the Formula of the Institute. He also expressed doubt about certain .orientations and attitudes that emerged from the work of the congregation, exhorted it to reflect profoundly on its responsibilities, and asked that the decrees be sent to him before publication. ~ The congregatibn was deeply unsettled by this turn of events, and confused, It was a time that called for spiritual insight, humility and cour-age, and these qualities were not lacking. There was a situation of difficult communication and misunderstanding; a painful situation since the Holy Father himself was involved. The congregation tried to explain to him what it had intended in all loyalty. The Holy Father stated what he expected of the congregation. ~ Why Did the Congregation Treat This Matter? The question of the fourth vow is connected with the distinction of grades. It is a problem that the 32nd General Congregation had inherited from the 31st General Congregation. This latter congregation had mandated the constitution of a commission to examine the whole problem of the suppression of the grade of Spiritual Coadjutor, and also the advantages and disadvantages of granting solemn profession to Temporal Coadjutors. The commission was set up and prepared a first report which the secre, tary of the Society sent to all the provinces in 1970 as a helpful factor in deciding the VOte for calling or not calling a general congregation. Replies were expected from the province congregations on the possible options proposed in the commission's report. After the province congregations, the commission completed its work and presented a second report to the congregation of procurators in Sep-tember 1970. The 31st General Congregation had recommended the constitution.of another commission, w~ich sought to aid and stimulate the execution.of its seventh decree on Temporal Coadjutors, and also sought to clarify the profound theological aspect of the vocation to the Society of a religious who is not a priest: A complement to this activity was an International Congress The Holy See and the 32nd General Congregation / 37 of Temporal Coadjutors, the results of which were presented to the congre-gation of procurators. The congregation of Jprocurators discussed this question fully and underlined it as one calling for an urgent solution. Thus also for this pur-pose, it was fitting,that Fr. General convoke a general congregation within three to four years. After the convocation ,of the general congregation, the question of the grades, was the object of much work and study by special' groups in prepa, ration for the province congregations. The result of this intense work was the presentation of 65 postulata which directly treated the distinction of grades; and of these,,41 postulata from provinces called for the abolition of this distinction. The Commission set up by the 32nd General Congregation to deal with this question felt it was committed to study this matter, keeping in mind the letter of Pope Paul VI of September 15, 1973,,his discourse of December 3, 1974,.and Cardinal Villot!s letter of December 3, 1974. ¯ Since the problem of the distinction of grades in its totality and in the variety of its possible solutions went beyond the concession of the fourth vow, the.commission offered the congregation an accurate analysis of the postulata and the different .options possible which derived from them. Two reports were submitted which included the reactions and observations of tlie delegates. When the congregation voted on whether they should treat this question, 228 voted in favor of treating it. The commission presented its document for an initial discussion and an indicative vote on all the options. The results of the presentation and discussion were these: 1 ) ,the congregation was aware of the mind of the pope; 2) any decision of the pope would be accepted in full obedience; . 3) the congregation .wanted a full discussion of the matter, to arrive at an awareness and knowledge of the real state of the Socii~ty on this question, of the real difficulties involved, and of the possible remedies; 4) the congregation felt that if it should conclude that the only way to meet the difficulties was by the abolition of the grades, it would not only be possible but would also be.a duty on its part, in view of its responsibility to the Society, to present these difficulties to the Holy See by means of a genuine Ignatian rep.rese.ntation; 5) the congregation intended such an Ignatian representation to pre-cede any kind'of definitive act or action. The elements of a" genuine lgnatian representation were brought out. In the lived experience of the Ignatian life style, it is a primary feature of the fatherly mode of governing proper to the Society. It doeg not imply a will contrary to obedience, but rather a desire for common collaboration in the search for and discovery of the divine will.(Cf. Ex. Gen. 131; Const. 38 / Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/1 292, 543, 627.) It presupposes always an authentic spiritual discernment, a disposition of interior indifference, and a total openness to the ultimate decision of the superior who in this way will be better informed. The discussion in the Congregation Hall was prepared by discussions in 18 small groups, The discussion itself was long and full; some 57 speakers aired their views. The meaning of the indicative vote was solely that of giving the future work of the commission and the subsequent action .of the congregation a more concrete orientation, and avoid long and useless work. No one could predict with-any degree of probability, however, what the end result of the vote would be. This, then, was the background of the congregation's indicative vote. The pope's reaction showed that there had been a misund~rstanding,,that he was displeased, and that there was a difference of approach and stance between him and the congregation. Fr. General was received by the Holy Father on February 20, 1975, who evidenced how grieved and concerned he was at the action of the con-gregation, which did not seem to be responding to his expectations. The pope was surprised that the congregation had not understood that he had meant to exclude discussions on the fourth vow right from the beginning. His discourse of December :3rd, 1974, did not seem to have received the careful attention it should have gotten. The congregation was following a line quite different from the one he had indicated. The pope showed by concrete reference that he was reading the Acta and the bulletins. He also mentioned specific~ally that he was praying every day for the congregation and offering Mass for its success. Fr. General expressed the regrets of the congregation that the Holy Father had been so grieved, and assured the pope of the obedience of the congregation. The pope insisted on the necessity of continuing discussions with him and said he was. ready to receive the general whenever he wished. The congregation then went on to follow the pope's wishes in com-pleting the decrees. A special group of delegates was named to study the different communications of the Holy See and to see whether the points mentioned in .these communications had been treated in the various de-crees of the congregation. This led to the formulation, discussion, and en-actment of the Introductory Decree as well as to a careful treatment of the other decrees. On their completion, the decrees were submitted to the Holy Father be-fore publication and promulgation. The congregation ended on March 7, and the last of the documents reached him just after mid-March, On May 2, 1975, Cardinal Viilot wrote to Fr. General in the name of the Holy Father, authorizing the publication, of the decrees, and including general norms for interpreting,the decrees properly ~as well as particular observations on five of the decrees. The Holy See and the 32nd Geheral Congregation Against ,this background let's look into the concerns of the Holy Father, and the stance and approach of the general congregation. The Pope's Concerns 1) The pope looked beyond the Society to the effects of the congrega-tion on all religious orders and congregations, and on the whole Church. In his .letter of Septerfiber 15, 1973, he said he was well aware of the.im-portance of the congregation, which could be an hour of decision for the Society, for its future destiny and work in the Church, as it is also an hour of decision for other religious families. He repeated this in his discourse of December 3, 1974, and added, You are at the head of that interior renewal which the Church is facing in this secularized world, especially after the Second Vatican Council. Your Society-is, We say, the test of the vitality of the Church throughout the centuries; it is perhaps one of the most meaningful crucibles in which are encountered the difficulties, the temptations,, the efforts, the perpetuity and the successes of the whole Church. This view of the Pope, embracing all religious families and the Church, is a constant theme in his dealings with the 32nd General Congregation. 2) The Holy Father wanted no changes in the Formula lnstituti lulii III, and describes himself as the guardian of the essentials of our institute. In his eyes it is 'fidelity to the Formula and to the basic documents of the Society' that make it the fit instrument of service to the Church that it has been for so long a time. He favors an updating and adaptation of our insti-tute, bUt.~always in conformity with the spirit and charism of our founder. 3) The pope considered a change in the so-called "grades" as a dam-aging mutation in our Formula, one that would change the nature of the Society, particularly in its distinctive note as a presbyteral order. In his eyes it would affect our lgnatian charism. For the Holy Father, the question of the grades was connected with a thrust for promoting justice, and'this could lead to an undermining of a direct priestly ministry, could stress a political and social involvement, and bring about the involvement of more lay peopl6 in our endeavors. The tluestion of the grades was what provoked the first intervention of the pope after his initial discourse, but his concern clearly went beyond this issue, which was a manifestation of certain orientations and tendencies in the congregation which were the' real concern of the Holy Father. 4) The pope feared that the"notion of priesthood inothe congregation would not sufficiently underline the distinction between a common priest-hood and an ordained, ministerial priesthood. The move would be away from the notion of priests, "who administer the grace of God with the sacraments; priests who recei~,e thepower and have the duty to share organically in the apostolic work of sustaining and uniting the Christian community, esp'eci~lly with the celebration of the Eucharist; . . " This 40 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 could represent a drift from. a priestly order to a type of secular institute. 5) The same danger is present in the discussions on the relation between evangelization and justice. In the letter of Cardinal Villot, of May 2, 1975, there is a particular observation, about the decree on Our Mission Today: "Human development and social progress in. the temporal order should not be extolled in such exaggerated terms as to obscure the essential significance which the Church attributes to evangelization and the proclamation of the full Gospel." (This is a quote from the closing remarks of the pope to the Synod of Bishops in October 1974.) There is a danger of looking at the promotion of justice solely or most importantly in its economic, social, and political aspects. This applies to the Society in a special way since it was founded for a particularly spiritual and supernatural end. Every other undertaking should be subordinated to this end and carried out in a way appropriate for an institute which is religious, not secular, and priestly. Moreover, we must not forget that the priest should inspire lay Catholics, since in the,promotion of justice theirs is the more demanding role. The tasks "proper to each should not be confused. 6) The pope felt that the general congregation gave less attention and importance to problems touching the renewal of spiritual and religious life which is an indispensable condition for a fruitful apostolate, whereas recent years show the effects of a widespread secularization on the Society. 7) In the matter of fidelity to the Holy See, something proper to the Society, the pope felt that the congregation tUrned its attention to restricting the limits of a necessary fidelity rather than to correcting certain regrettable deviations in doctrinal and disciplinary matters during the last decade with regard to the magisterium and the hierarchy. 8) The pope felt~ that the publicity about the congregation's indicative vote on the grades put him in an unfavorable position, could seem to place him before a fait accompli, led him to a disagreeable correspondence. It should be noted here that the reports in the public press did not manifest an understanding of what the extension of the fourth vow would entail. In fact, most of them spoke of an attempt to lessen or weaken obedience, and this in spite of serious attempts to give accurate information to the press. 9) The pope had intended his December 3, 1974, discourse to serve as a program for the congregation, and was disappointed and felt that it had not received sufficient attention from the congregation. To express the matter in the spiritual shorthand of our day, the Holy Father felt that the congregation was over-emphasizing the horizontal di-mension and that there should have been more emphasis on the principles of religious and ascetical life. 10) Ultimately, the pope's concern was that the congregation and the whole Society which it represented, should be faithful to Ignatius and to itself. He judged it to :be a decisive moment for helping the Church, so prone The Holy Se'e and the 32nd General Congregation / 41 to deviations in these days, when the vast task of doing great things is still reserved to the Society of Jesus~ His concern was that we should be men of the Church. The Congregation's Stance and Approach Turning now to the congregation, the following should be noted: 1') For the congregation, the matter of the grades was a mandate from the 3 Ist Congregation, was something of real moment and interest to many in the Society, as shown by the postulata, and could.be presented to the pope in the form of an Ignatian representation. The indicative vote was no more than that. The information that was given out on the indicative vote was in the context .of informing the Society of the. work and progress of the congregation since the whole Society had been called to participate in the preparation of the congregation. As the only legislative body in the Society, the congregation felt it could supply to the Holy See, ~better than anyone else, the iinformation needed to judge the status of the grades' question in the Society. 2) In the indicative~vote for the abolition of the distinction of grades, the congregation's fundamental motivation was.based on the conviction that it'was possible t6 distinguish between the fundamental~ lgnatian charism and its concrete realization in history. The charism looked to the creation of a group capable of a generous and effective commitment to the Supreme Pontiff by an aprstolic service centered in a zealous and continuing priestly work. Its concrete realization was in a juridical structure, created by Ig-natius~ which was the distinction of grades. A decisive number of the delegates thought it possible to maintain the fundamental charism but with a different structure. The abolition of the dis-tinction of grades was 'desired, but with the conviction and under the con-dition that. the Society should remain a religious, apostolic, and sacerdotal order bound in a special way to the Supreme Pontiff. The arguments in favor of the abolition had a common presupposition, and that is the development of directives and concrete norms for a severe selection process, starting from acceptance into the novitiate andcontinuing through the~succeeding probations. Along with legislation for the future, transition~ai norms would have been required to provide for the juridical and personal situation of those already in th6 Society. 3) The congregation looked on its response to the Holy Father's reply on the grades as an act of full, mature obedience given by a group of men acting according .to Ignatian obedience, predisposed to accept whatever the decision of the pope might be. 4) It is true to say that the congregation considered things .from the point of view of the apostolate and apostolic needs, but this did not entail a neglect in treating the principles of religious and ascetical life, or rele- Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/1 gating this to a secondary status. When examining the questions of religious and ascetical life, the congregation found that its predecessor, the 31st Congregation, had done this very well and felt no need to ~'epeat.what had been well articulated. The 32nd Congregation would confirm what its predecessor had enacted. 5) The congregation felt that horizontalism is indeed a central note, but need not oppose a vertical dimension. It would rather express an enduring consciousness of the needs of man and a desire to respond to them. In its initial stages, the congregation discussed a so-called "priority of priorities., Some, unfortunately, thought that the congregation had chosen the promotion of justice as the "priority of priorities," for the Society and her apostolate. ~ This was not true and led to misunderstandings. The con-gregation chose as the priority of priorities the criteria for the apostolic service of the Society and the promotion of justice, per modum unius. The congregation accented the "service of faith. The promotion of justice is intimately connected with this, but it is quite different from transforming the whole end of the Society into the promotion of justice. It is true to say that ~oncern for the dimension, promotion of justice, accompanied the work of the congregation whether it dealt with our life or our apostolate. The congregation underlined and emphasized the dimension, service of faith, precisely to correct and counteract a socioeconomic tendency in an exclusive sense. The thrust of the congregation was towards a healthy inte-gration of the religious and social dimensions of our Jesuit mission. 6) As an aid to understand the actions of the congregation, it is important to recall that there is little continuity from one congregation to the next as far as the participants are concerned. Each general congregation has a substantially different membership. In the group from the United States, only two or three had previous experience at,a general congregation. The role of the general at a congregation not called to elect a new general is not understood by all. He has an obvious leadership function, but he is subordinate to the congregation, is a member of ,it, and cannot impose his views on it. ~ It should be noted that Fr. General's example during the congregation was as of a tower of strength, a real source of unity for the participants. The activities of the congregation .forged a bond of solid t~nity between Fr. General and the members of the congregation. In spite of some groundless rumors, there was never any mention of resignation during the congrega-tion. 7) The congregation did obey the Holy Father in what were ~difficult circumstances, aggravated by an absence of dialogue and a growing fatigue. Obedience was shown by integrating into the texts of the decrees and declarations, suggestions and amendments in line with the pope's directives. 8) The special group set up to study .the communications of the Holy See to see whether the principal points were covered in the documents of The Holy See and the 32nd General Congregation / 43 ,the congregation, judged that they were covered, but the congregation went on to draft ano Introductory Decree due to the work of this special group. , .9) The,congregation sought a document which would put in modern-day terms~what the Formula lnstituti means today. This meant translating the propagation and defense of the faith, and the works of mercy, into what these t~rms mean" for us today. It was in this way that the congregation showed its commitment to and interest in the Formula lnstituti and our other basic documents. The congregation's approach was to study this matter during the con-gregation and put together a document little by little in the light of the dis-cussions. To some this could seem to be relegating this matter to a gecondary role,-but the congregation's mind was to make it a more meaningful docu-ment, to present the Formula in a vigorous statement ]or today's Jesuits .and today's mission. 10) The congregation was a lived experience of the complexity of relations with theHoly See. The ai~alysis we have been d6ing can seem clear and easy now. It was not quite the same during the congregation-itself. The clarity has ~come through prayer, reflection, soul-searching, and a form of frank exchange that was not always this way iw the past. Let me attempt to sum up something of what we've seen, with a few pointers for the future. -- Interventions of popes in general congregations are not unheard of. What is unusual with regard to the 32nd General Congregation is the per-sonal and continuing aspect of the intervention of Pope Paul VI. We have seen that, as far back as 1972, the pope was interested in the general congregation; his interest increased as the congregation grew nearer and continued right through the sessions of the congregation. He read the documents personally before allowing them to be published, and he shall certainly be interested in the implementation of the decrees. His statement, .given at different times, has been, "Show your fidelity by your actions." This~has~been a personal and direct interest on the part of the Holy Father himself and 'not handed over to one of his staff. In his eyes the congregation was to fulfill 'a: very important function for religious life. In his letter of September 15, 1973, and in his discourse .of December 3, 1974, the Holy Father's idea was to.set out a program and an approach for the congregation. There 'should be an effective renewal and proper adaptation in accord with Vatican II, but this could not follow a line that would be alien t6 the very character of the religious family, un-faithful to the charism of the founder, or that would lead to the abandon-ment of the primary values of a life consecrated to God. The common elements of religious life should be confirmed, and allowed to grow and develop. These elements are the following: the imitation of Christ as pro-posed in the gospel; the renunciation of worldly things so that the religious 44 / Review ]or Religious, l/olume,35, 1976/1 might live for God alone, and for the building up of the Church; a joyful and constant observation of the vows which should lead to the heights of the spiritual life, where contemplation is joined with magnanimous action. For the Society of Jesus this means a fidelity to its tradition based on Christ, the Church, and St. Ignatius. The congregation, therefore, was to attend to those principles of the spiritual and apostolic life which for cen-turies formed the structure holding the Society of Jesus together and made it a most serviceable instrument for the pastoral, missionary, and educa-tional apostolates, involving a cultural formation, of the highest excellence. The source of strength for the Society should be the foundations of religious formation, laid in the past. These are: a diligent, dedication to prayer; austerity of life; supernatural strength by which apostolic effective-ness is increased; complete observance of the vows, especially obedience, which 'is peculiar to the Society and a condition of its religious discipline; the ascetical value of community life and the advantage.s it offers for the formation of character; and, in a special way, fidelity to the Holy See. This was the program that Pope Paul VI traced for the.general congre-gation of an order that is religious, apostolic, sacerdotal~ and bound to the Holy Father by a special bond of love and service. ~ It was not clear to the majority of the delegates that this was intended to be the lines of a 'hard and fast program. It gradually became clear, after the ditiiculties arising from the treatment of the question of the grades, and after a good bit of discussion and reflection, Some had felt this from the beginning, but they were few in number. The congregation found that the 31st Congregation had treated the matter of prayer, the vows, and the principles of religious, and ascetical life, very well. The problem was one of execution rather than of articulation, and the 32nd General Congregation decided to confirm and renew the 31st Congregation. But this could seem to be neglecting these principles, or relegating them to a secondary place. Through his interventions, the Holy Father impressed on the congrega-tion the direction he wanted to be' followed. The congregation obeyed and followed this direction; and in his communication of March 7, 1975, the pope said that it was comforting to see that the congregation well under-stood the force and meaning of what he urged and that they accepted .his intervention in a spirit of cooperation. In all his communications; the Holy Father ,underlines the point~ that his actions are motivated by his deep affection for and attachment to the Society, and by his appreciation .of the role that the Society has played in the past and is to play in the future. Thus, he feels, that.he can,be frank in his remarks. I think that most preferred a frank and open exchange, rather than the circumlocutions of a diplomatic style of writing, Cardinal Villot's letter of May 2, 1975, conveyed the pope,s own observations on the decrees~ These are meant to assure the faithful imple- The Holy See and the 32nd General Congregation / 45 mentation of the decrees. When several articles appeared in the Italian press which put the May 2nd letter in a negative light with regard to the congregation, the Holy See sent the Italian text of the letter, to help correct these false impressions, The pope could truly say that the congregation had not achieved the global result expected of it. When we realize his plans for the congregation, we can understand this. But it does not express a negative vote on the congregation. It indicates that there is work yet to be done; the decrees are to be put into execution, and this should be in accord with the pope's directives, especially those in the discourse of December 3, 1974. As Cardinal Villot says in his letter of May 2, 1975, the pope directed that the decrees be returned to Fr. General so that they can be put into effect according to the needs of the Society, with the hope that Jesuits may draw strength from these decrees as they continue their progress in genuine fidelity to the charism of St. Ignatius and the Formula of the Institute. We are called on to enter into the views that animated Pope Paul VI. The quality of our religious life is to be such as to serve as a safeguard against a continually threatening secularism. The priestly character of the Society is of particular and enduring importance and must be a part of all our apostolic choices. There is much work to be done in reflecting on the integration of our priestly nature and evangelization in religious life, in reflecting on our specific way of living and being apostles. ¯ We are called to reflect on and' revise our behavior with regard to the service of the ecclesiastical magisterium, to revise the sense of our presen-tation and faithful explanation of the declarations of the magisterium and o1~ the hierarchy. We are ca/led to be men of the Church. The work ahead of us is to study, assimilate, interiorize, and put into action the decrees of the congregation, with an eye to the pope's fatherly observations . and directives. We must avoid two extremes: not attending to the Holy Father's observations; .and dismissing the validity and relevance of the decrees of the 32nd General Congregation. The final word belongs 4(0 Pope Paul VI. He told us to carry on in nomine Domini, Evolution in Chapters William F. Hogan,, C.S.C. Father Hogan is an Agsistant General of his congregation, as well as Procurator General. He lives at Via Framura, 85; 00168 Roma, Italy. The last fifteen years have seen great differences in the general and pro-vincial or regional chapters of most religious communities; in fact, for many of them, this period has seen the real beginnings of .chapters as such. In not a few congregations, indeed in most, the Opening and closing° dates of chapter meetings were decided before the capitulants assembled, thus often precluding any real in-depth study of issues and evaluation of the religious life and mission. Frequently the chapters were conducted like superiors' meetings, with decisions being handed down from the president as faits accomplis for information or perhaps ratification. The principal business was usually the election of major superiors and councils, .and it was more common than rare that provinces or regions'~did not have their own pro-vincial or regional chapters outside participation in the general chapter. Chapters evolved slowly in religious institutes from the time of Pacho-mian cenobitism when the monks gathered at Pabau in the month of August and the superiors gave a report on the condition of their houses and new superiors were appointed. St. Benedict instituted the local or con-ventual chapter in his rule, although he doesn't use this term; the whole community of the professed was to be consulted on important matters and was involved in the choice of the abbot. Other monastic groups followed suit and there eventually arose the policy of "what touches all is to be approved by all," a principle later included in the Rules o/Law at the time of Pope Boniface VIII. Regional and general chapters find their formal beginnings in the Carta Caritatis (1119) of the Cistercians, even though there had previously been regional meetings of abbots in order to have uni- 46 Evolution in Chapters / 47 formity in the religious life. The Cistercian order by rule was obliged to hold annual meetings of the abbots of the order and to regulate

Issue 35.2 of the Review for Religious, 1976. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS IS edited by faculty members of St Louis Umvers~ty, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building, 539 North Grand Boule-vard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copyright (~) 1976 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $2.00. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $7.00 a year; $13.00 for two years; other countries, $8.00 a year, $15.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor March 1976 Volume 35 Number 2 Renewals, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to Review for Religious; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to Review for Religious; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsyl-vania 19131. Mary, Model of the Church Paul VI December 8, 1975, marked not only the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception but also the tenth anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. This is the text of the Pope's homily in St. Peter's on that occasion.* Venerable Brothers and Beloved Sons! and all of you, special guests at this pious ceremony, Teachers, Research workers and Students of the Pontifical Roman Universities, you P~upils in our seminaries, you Members of the Ecclesiastical and Religious Colleges of the City, or associhtes of the Secular Institutes. And you, beloved Daughters in Christ, Religious, Novices, Probationers and Pupils of the Houses of formation for women in Rome. And then you, too, our Roman faithful, and you pilgrims of the Holy Year and visitors to this holy City. And finally you (we wish to gather everyone in the multiple value of the rite we are celebrating), you, we say, former members and protagonists 'of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, convened here to commemo-rate with us the tenth anniversary, which falls today, of those great ec-clesiastical sessions! Listen to us, all of you! and let us invite you to a moment of contem-plation, spiritual and almost visual, as if the appearance of her whose ex-traordinary feast we are celebrating today were present in the background of this Basilica, as if-hovering in the unique splendour, proper to herself (even if reflected from the divine source of light); and we were to see her with the prophetic eyes of the evangelist of the Apocalypse: *Abstracted from Osservatore Romano, 12/18/75, pp. 6-7. 161 162 / Review [or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 Behold! "A great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Apoc 12, 1; cf. Cant 6, 4 ft.). What is it? Who is it? We are amazed and absorbed by the Bible vision; and in our dazzled astonishment we lose the sense of reality. We do not forgo expressing as best we can the value of that mysterious image; and without continuing, for the present, with the scene in the Apocalypse, we are satisfied to know the double name that has been superimposed on that heavenly figure by the masters of Holy Scripture, as if exclaiming, in an-swer to our anxious curiosity: it is Mary, it is Mary, that Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and the mysterious crown of stars on her head! It is the Church, it is the Church! the scholars inform us, studying the secrets of the figurative and symbolical language of the world of the Apocalypse. Perhaps they are right. As for us, we are happy to honour Mary and the Church, the first the Mother of Christ in the flesh; the second the .Mother of his Mystical Body, and she herself part of that Mystical Body. All Brothers and Sons! For a moment let us fix our thought, dazzled and happy, on the first meaning of the bewildering vision; and let us say to ourselves, with the intention of celebrating the mystery of the Immaculate Conception: that is what Mary is like! Her aspect is heavenly and tri-umphal~ but if closely observed, it is that of a Woman "humble and lofty more than a creature" (Par 33, 2). So humble, in fact, that she banishes all our respectful trepidation (cf. Lk 1, 48), and almost invites us to see in her a beloved Sister. At the very moment that we dare to address to her a trusting word, no other words come to our lips than those of the Gospel: Blessed art thou! (Lk 1, 45 and 48). Yes, blessed! And for how many reasons! One among the many we are celebrating today, and we would like to put it at the peak of our devotion to Mary: her Immaculate Conception! That is, God's preferential thought for this creature of his; the intention to 'see in her again the original innocence of a being conceived "in the. image and likeness" of himself, God (Gen 1, 26-27), not disturbed, not contaminated by any stain, by any imperfection, as are all the children Of Eve, all mankind, except Christ and except her, the Blessed Virgin. An idea; a divine dream] a masterpiece of human beauty, not sought in the formal model only, but realized in the intrinsic and incomparable capacity of ex-pressing the Spirit in the flesh, the divine likenes~ in the human countenance, invisible Beauty in the physical figure. Mary, All Beauty Tota pulchra es, Maria.t You are beauty, real, pure, holy beauty, oh Mary! This should be the real and ideal image of the Blessed Virgin, re-flected, luminous and illuminating, in Our individual souls, today, oh Faith- Mary, Model o] the Church / 163 ful; as the synthesis of our admiration and devotion to the Blessed Virgin, whose feast, eminently theological and eminently ecclesial, we are celebrat-ing. Theological, because we deduce it from revelation and from the most vigilant and loving reflection, with which the most candid and virginal piety dared, certainly with her assistance, to fix an enraptured and exPloring gaze on her pure, humble face, the perfect face of sacred and human beauty~ Ecclesial, because from being a mirror of divine perfection, speculum iusti-tiae, she offers herself to us as a mirror of human perfection, in which the Church, venerating the Blessed Virgin, "joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless model (it is the Council speaking; Sacr. Cone., n. 103), that which she herself wholly desires and hopes to be"; a nuptial beauty which St. Paul, as we all remember, describes in a stupendous way: "in all its splen-dour, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish" (Eph 5, 27). The Church's holiness, in its state of becoming, has its model, its "typus" in Mary, as St. Ambrose will say (in Lucam, II-7), and St. Augustine will comment: "figuram in se sanctae Ecclesiae demonstravit" (De Symbolo, I; P.L. 40, 661), Mary represented in herself the figure of the Holy Church. ¯ A model, a specimen, an ideal figure of the Church; is that enough? The theological truth goes further, and enters the frontiers of that subordinate causality, which in the divine plan of salvation inseparably associates the creature, Mary, the Handmaid of the "Fiat," with the mystery of the In-carnation, and makes her,: St. Irenaeus writes, "a cause of,this salvation for herself and for the whole of mankind" (Adv. haereses, III, 22, 4). "Mother of the Church" We will rejoice, then, to have in St. Augustine the conclusion which at the end of the III section of the Council we made our own, explicitly recog-nizing the unquestionable right of the Blessed Virgin to the title of "Mother of the Church." If, in fact, Mary is the mother of Christ in the flesh, and Christ is the head of the Church, his Mystical Body, Mary' is spiritually the Mother of this Body, to which she herself belongs, at an eminent level, as daughter and sister (cf. St. Augustine, de Sancta Virginitate, V and VI; P, L. 40, 339; and cf, H. De Lubac, Mdd. sur l'Eglise, c. IX) . To you, Teachers, Research workers and Students of our Rbman Uniz versities; to you, young Seminarian~, to you, Religious men and women, goes particularly a cry from our heart: love, invoke and imitate Mary Immaculate, the Mother of Christ and the Mother of the Ctiurch, and make good use, for the present and for future generations, of the treasure of wisdom that the second Vatican Ecumenical Council was and is. The Spirit Speaks: When and How? Thomas Dubay, S.M. Father Dubay, a frequent contributor to our journal, is engaged full time in lecturing and writing in the area of religious life. His home address is: Marist Seminary; 220 Taylor Street, N.E.; Washington, DC 20017 "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening" (1 Kgs 3:10). ¯ One need not emphasize the point that a vibrant sector of Christian life at this point of history is the sector of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The charismatic renewal has been promoting with no little success a whole life-style patterned on and growing out of a program centered in the Spirit's activity in the midst of God's people. This renewal is by no means restricted to "the release of the Spirit'? or the gift of tongues or the healing ministry. It is felt that the Holy Spirit is speaking today not only to saints but to sinners, not only to officialdom but to the lowly placed. To some considerable extent, but not with an entire coincidence with the charismatic movement, the Spirit movement' has been prominent in renewal efforts carried on in religious life. Books, articles, lectures, chapter documents often refer to the Holy Spirit, especially under the rubric of openness to Him, listening to Him. The central thrust here is not so much prayer experience, speaking in tongues or engaging in a healing ministry as it is in detecting what God is saying to us, both to the individual and to the community. This thrust toward listening to the Spirit is readily noted in the popularity of discernment methods, techniques, processes~ Although one begins to sense an incipient, weariness with discernment talk, the interest remains noteworthy. The reality surely is of crucial importance in an age struggling to find the mind of God and to read the signs of the times. If God does speak to His people--and Scripture insists that He does--it can never be unimportant to listen. 164 The Spirit Speaks: When and How? / 165 An Anomalous Situation But this ."listening" is where .our problems begin, problems that press for solution. Before we can intelligently explain how one listens to the indwell-ing God, we should first understand something of how He speaks. The literature of our day, issuing both from the charismatic renewal and from religious life circles, says almost nothing on this subject. As a matter of fact, I must. candidly add that while speculative theologians often refer to the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church, they seldom discuss how He acts and enlightens the individual through a personal contact. They do, of course, rightly point out that God speaks to His people through Scripture and through the representatives He has established in His Church: "he who hears you, hears Me" (Lk 10:16).1 But this is not the question at hand. People both in the Pentecostal movement and in religious life have in mind a personal (individual and!or communal) encounter with the Holy Spirit, and in this encounter they "listen to Him." Our situation, therefore, is odd. On the one hand many persons rou-tinely speak of "listening to the Spirit" as though He were as familiar as a friend speaking over one's right shoulder. Yet on the other hand almost no one explains how He speaks--even though we all know He does not speak in sound waves. Nor are we told how one can be so sure it is the Spirit speaking. Until we provide satisfactory answers to the question, "How does the Spirit speak?" we are left with some embarrassing problems. How can anyone be so sure he is listening to the Spirit and not to his own desires? We hardly need to debate the observation of Aldous Huxley: "The untutored egoist merely wants. Give him a religious education, and it becomes obvious to him, it becomes axiomatic, that what he wants is what God wants.'"-' Does God speak in diverse ways? If He does, how can we know the differences? What are we to think of,serious and sincere people who are convinced that they are receiving special messages from the Holy Spirit? Is good will enough to insure "listening to the Spirit"? Who Can Answer Our Questions? If it is true that the popular and theological literature on the con-temporary scene seldom discusses the title questign of this article, one may rightly wonder who can answer it? I know of two sources: Scripture and the mystics? We shall in this article explore both of these sources that we may discover on solid grounds when and how the Holy Spirit speaks in our own day. ~See also Jn 13:20; Jn 21:15-17; Lk 22:31-32; Tt 1:7; 1 Tm 3:15; 2Tin 3:14-16 and many other like texts. ~The Devils o] Loudun, p. 18. ZBy "mystics" here I do not refer to the recipients of extraordinary phenomena such as levitation or the stigmata. The word in Catholic theology indicates those men and women who have a deep experiential encounter with God. 166 / Review Jor Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 Scripture on the Experience og God ~ ~ We may acknowledge at the outset~ ~that the Lord God did speak to select representatives in biblical times~ and in :extraordinary ways (Heb l:l ). However, we shall not be primarily concerned here with the divine messages addressed to public personages, to a Moses or to a Paul. Rather we shall direct our attention to the usual, frequent, routine ways God speaks to the inner heart of anyone close to Him. Our tasks will be three: a) Introductory observations b) What does one experience when he experiences God? c) Implications of the .biblical account. When we complete our biblical study, we shall~ investigate the mystics' message. They have a great deal to say about listening to God: when and how it happens and does not happen. a) Introductory observations Just what is experience? We use the word constantly both in popular speech and in scholarly articles, but seldom does .anyone .suggest its mean-ing. The best synonym I can think of is awareness, Without awareness one cannot experience. A genuine experience is an awareness of something, even if that awareness focuses on one's self. An illusory experience is subjectively real but it has no objective correlative. Experience for human being .implies a passivity, a being affected by the object (tapioca, .coldness). In sensory experiences affectivity (pleasant, unpleasant, cold-hot, smooth-rough, sweet-sour) predominates over knowl-edge, whereas in intellectual experience the cognitive and the affective are closer to,.being equal partners because they more intimately interpenetrate each other. - Although it is obvious on ~a moment's reflection that ,19od cannot be experienced as though He were a material object somehow palpable, some seem to assume that He must be absent if.He does not manifest His pres-ence in human ways. He is God, and we should be .content to allow Him to operate in a divine manner. We may speak of an experience-of-God continuum tl~at runs from reasoned conclusions about Him (the weak. end of the continuum or spec-trum) ~,to the face'to,face vision of Him in. glory (the strong end). In be-tween we can locate the poetic, ,artistic and infused mystical experi~n(es, In this article I shall be concerned chiefly with the last, the divinely originated, mystical encounters with our God revealed in Christ. We need to emphasize that the experience of which we speak here comes from God, not from what we do or feel or will. It is not our idea which we like and and then baptize as being His idea. When God speaks, it is God who speaks. b) What does one experience when he experiences God? ~ Divine ~xperience is not one sole awareness. The reality is rich and is expressed in many ways, each of which brings out an element or emphasis found in the whole. I wiil distinguish and number these elements not to The Spirit Speaks: When and How? / 167 separate them but to clarify the richness. Our usual human way of under-standing is through concepts ,and distinctions. One who is impatient with reasonable distinctions does not understand that he could not utter his sentence of objection except by distinguishing each word of it from every other word. In what follows, however, we must understand that the reality is not a series of chopped up pieces but a flowing whole of diverse strands and richness. 1) PRESENCE-AWARENESS. The experience oLGod includes an aware-ness, a sense of His divine presence. One is aware that God is with him, be-fore him, at his'right hand (Ps 16:8). The Holy Spirit is given to "be with" the disciple of the Lord (Jn 14:15-17), and Jesus' name is Emmanuel, God-with-us (Mt 1:23). He promises to be with His disciples all days, even to the end of the world (Mt 28:20). One who loves possesses an abiding presence of God within himself (I Jn 4:16). We shall see further on how the mystics elaborate on this presence-awareness. 2) ~ SPIRITUAL AWARENESS: SENSE-LIKE BUT NOT SENSE-LIKE. Because God is purest Spirit no .one can attain Him through sense knowledge. Yet Scripture is not reluctant to use sense knowing to bring out the reality and richness of a divine-human encounter. We are to taste and see for ourselves the goodness of God (Ps 23:8). Jeremiah felt an inner touch, a burning in his being (Jer 20:9). Paul speaks of the fragrance of Jesus' offering (Eph 5:2). The Song of Songs refers to the hearing of a voice (Song 2:14). The mystics repeatedly refer to the five senses to explain a deep meeting with God. St.-Augustine,~offers a classical example when in the Conjessions he brilliantly denies that a profound experience of,God is sense-like but then immediately turns around and affirms that there is a sense-likeness in it: ~' Not with doubtful but with sure knowledge do 1 love you, O Lord. By your Word you have transfixed hay heart, and I have loved you . What is it then that I love when I love you?'Not bodily beauty, and not temporal glory, 'not the clear shining light, lovely as it is to our eyes, not the sweet melodies of 0many-moded songs, not the soft smell of flowers and: ointments, and per-fumes, not manna and honey, not limbs made for the body's embrace, not these do I love when I love my God. Yet 1 do love a certain light, a certain voice, a certain odor, a certain food, a certain embrace when I love my God: a light, a voice, an odor, a food, an embrace for the man within me, where his light, which no place can contain, floods into my soul; where he utters words~that time does not speed away; where he sends forth an aroma that no wind can scatter; where he provides food that no eating can lessen; where he so clings that satiety does not sunder us. This is what I love when I love my God.4 St. John of the Cross at one time uses music to suggest how a person can "hear" God in His creation: "Creatures will be for the soul a-harmonious 4Con[essions, Ryan translation, Image edition, Bk 10, c. 6. 168 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 symphony of sublime music surpassing all concerts . She calls this music 'silent' because it is tranquil and quiet . There is in it the sweetness of music and the quietude of silence.'''~ At another~ time the saint describes the experience of God as a fragrance: "Sometimes the fragrance is so abundant that it seems to the soul she is clothed with delight and bathed in inestimable glory.'''~ While both the biblical writers and the. later mystics know well that God is infinitely beyond our realm of sensation, yet they speak in this fashion in order to bring out the reality of the experience of God and the richness of it. 3) NEW K.NOWINO, D.IVINE AND DARK. When one advances into a depth relationship with God he grows in knowing his Lord without knowing how he knows. He perceives this hidden God in darkness (Is 45:15), and yet the Son manifests Himself to the person who loves and keeps His word (Jn 14:21). The Father, says St. Paul, radiates in our minds His own glory, the glory that shines on the face of Jesus (2 Co 4:6). Angela of Foligno observed that the more the supreme Good is seen in darkness the more does one know He surpasses all goods~ Listening to the Spirit, there-fore, does not usually mean listening to a clear message. God does not dictate idle details about one's friends, family, enemies, oneself. The man or woman listening to the Holy Spirit is learning most of all about the three divine persons, darkly beautiful. 4) YEARNING FOR GOD. God often speaks a thirsting for Himself into the human person. It is a thirsting that purifies the recipient for deeper union and love, a thirsting that widens capacity and "bestows humilityi The psalmist seeks and thirsts like parched earth (Ps 63:1) or like the deer panting after the running waters (P~ 42:1-2). Isaiah longs for his Lord and keeps vigil for Him through the night (Is 26:8-9). St. Augustine sighs for God day and night,r All available evidence indicates that the Holy Spirit communicates this divine thirst far more frequently than He does concrete messages that satisfy curious eyes and itching ears. God. has nothing better to say than Himself. That is why in the incarnation the Father spoke His Word into the world of human flesh. When one listens to the Father, he hears mostly the Son. 5) PEACE AND COMFORTING. Our God is a healing God, a God who l(~ves and therefore comforts us in~ all our sorrows (2 Co 1:3-4), a God who gives a peace that surpasses understanding (Ph 4:7), a G~)d who re-freshes the wearied soul and gives rest (Jr 31 ~25-26; Mt 11:28). While our own selfishness begets conflict and factions (Ga 5:19-21), what the Spirit r'Spiritual .Canticle, Stanzas 14-15, #25; I am using here The Collected Works o[ St, John o] the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavan~augh, O.C;D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D., New York, 1964, p. 472. ~lbid., Stanza 17, #7; p. 480. rConfessions, Bk 7, c. 10. The Spirit Speaks." When and How? / 169 brings.is very different: love, peace, harmony. (Ga 5:22). The Hebrew shalom was not a mere absence of conflict. It implied a fullness, a rich integrity, something akin to our word, prosperity. God speaks peace, shalom, to his people. His word makes individuals and communities inte-gral, whole, loving. 6) INPOURED LOVE. The divine gift par excellence is love: "the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Rm 5:5) Those who divide the community into factions, who disregard their leaders are not listening to the Spirit who brings unity (1 Co 12:12-13; Ep 4:3-6) and an obedience to those overseers whom he Himself has placed to rule the Church of God (Ac 20:28). This love is a sign of the genuine disciple, one who loves as the Lord Himself loves (Jn 13:34-35). The Spirit speaks love (Ga 5:22). 7) UNION-POSSESSION-BURNING. This love of the Holy Spirit centers especially.on the three divine persons and it grows to a point where it can overwhelm one (2 Co 5: 14). It.can make one's heart.burn: "there seemed-to be a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones," said Jeremiah. "The effort to restrain it wearied me, I could not bear it." (Jr 20:9) The disciples on the road to Emmaus felt this burning as they listened to the word of the risen Kyrios (Lk 24:32), and the mystics commonly speak of it. Augustine~could write of being set. on fire for God by the psalms and of burning to repeat them.s Further on he declared that love was his gravity: "By your gift we are enkindled, and we are borne upwards. We glow with inward fire, and we go on. We asc(nd steps within the heart, and we sing a gradual psalm. By Your fire, by. Your good fire, we glow with inward fire:'''~ St. John of the Cross could speak simply of the perfect "who burn gently in God.''1" Once again we emphasize that when God speaks it is not a narration of idle details that satisfy curious expectations. God mostly speaks love. ~ 8) BEAUTY OF GOD AND JOY IN HIM. The experience of God is a growing perception of His goodness and beauty. We are to taste and see for ourselves how good He is (Ps 34:8). The one thing, the top-priority sought by the psalmist is to°dwell in the Lord's house all the days Of his life and thus to "gaze on the beauty of the Lord" (Ps 27:4). Augustine puts this in his own inimitable language: "All things are beautiful because You made them, but You who made all things are inexpressibly more beautiful . Too late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient and so new, too late have I loved You!TM Our joy is to become so deep that it is radiant (Ps 34:5), complete (Jn 15:11), unending (Jn 16:22),.always and every- 81bid., Bk 9, c. 4. '°1bid., Bk 13, c. 9. 1°Dark Night of the Soul, Bk 2, c. 20, :~4; p. 337. 11Confessions, Bk 13, c. 20 and Bk 10, c. 27. 170 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 where (Ph 4:4), beyond description (I P 1:8). This, too, the Bishop of Hippo heard from the indwelling Lord: ",Sometimes You admit me," he said, "in my innermost being into a most extraordinary affection, mounting within me to an indescribable delight, If this is perfected in me, it will be something, I know not what, that will not belong to this slife.''r-' This'is what the Lord God especially speaks, and this is what they hear who deeply listen. 9) POWER, STRENGTH, FREEDOM. God speaks 'not only words but power itself.-It would seem correct to say that worded communications from Him are~comparatively rare, while bestowals of power and freedom . are comm.on, common that is to people who are mature in prayer. Paul came to the Corinthians not with human philosophy but with the power of God (1 Co 2:5). He explains that God,s kingdom.does not consist only of words--it~is power (1 Co 4:20). The apostle himself experiences "an overwhelming power" from the Father (2 Co 4:7). All he wants to know is Christ and the power of His resurrection (Ph 3:10). This power is a liberating dynamism: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom" (2 Co 3:|7). c) Implications of the biblical account. Perhaps the most striking note of this New Testament picture of how God speaks is that He does not ordinarily speak specifics. It is true that public persons or those closely related to them do occasionally receive particularized directions. This is true, for example, of Peter (Ac 10:9-16), Cornelius (Ac 1'0:3-6), the "Council of Jerusalem" (Ac 15:28), Paul (Ac 9:3-6: Ga 2:2; 2 Co 12:8-9), Ananias (Ac 9:10-16). In the Christic economy when specific divine messages are given, they must be submitted to human authorities. This has long been the practice of spiritual directors and it is rooted in revelation itself. Even St~ Paul sought the .approval of the "leading men" in Jerusalem for the mission he had received directly from the risen Jesus (Ga 2:2, 6, 10). The New Testament gives no. com-fort to visionaries who deem themselves exempt from any structural guidance. What God usually does speak to the ordinary person is inner trans-formation. He speaks goodness in a general manner. He speaks his pres-ence ~. spiritual awareness., divine-dark knowing of himself., yearn-ing for his presence . . . peace and comfort . . , inpoured love . . . union-possession- burning., beauty and joy . . . power and freedom. This may come as a ,surprise to devotees of private revelations~ but it does not surprise experienced spiritual directors. Those who listen to God most genuinely are not those who believe they have received many detailed messages, but rather those whose minds have been fillhd with everything true, noble, good, pure, virtuous, worthy of praise (Ph 4:8). r"Ibid,, Bk 10, c. 40. The Spirit Speaks: When and How? / 171 Further Development, s: St. ~Iohn of the Cross While Sacred Scripture is rich in its variegated ways of dealing with the experience of God, it does leave, us with the need to unfold the richness further. We ,may therefore ask several qi~estions. Does the Holy Spirit speak in varying degrees of intensity? If so, what are they like? Does He add His own peculiar light to our human reasonings and searchings? If so, how does this happen? Can we know when it .happens? Is it possible to be mistaken regarding a genuine communication from ,13od? Were the saints ever mistaken? What does one do if he thinks (or is even convinced) that God has enlightened him in some specific way? In looking through a considerfible amount of the literature produced on these questions rI can think of no one more competent to respond to our questions than St. John of the Cross. That this Carmelite saint experienced the deepest, most magnificent encounters with the ,living God is beyond debate. If anyone~ has known what knowledge through infused love is all about, John has. If anyone has been capable of analyzing and synthesizing the sundry, elements in the experience of God:in all their varieties and de-grees, John has. If any mere man or woman has listened to the Spirit, John has. We shall, therefore, take this theologian of mysticism as our guide. In an area in which the Spirit-structure tension in the Church occupies center stage we need a master. "' Types of Communication God does not speak to,man as man speaks to man. He speaks as God; and consequently we should be wary Of our preconceived ideas as to how the communication ought to be carried: off. Moreover, He does not speak in one way only. Nor should we assume that His speaking is always unmis-takable: The indwelling God leads us into all truth (Jn 14:26; 16:13) in diverse ways and degrees. St. John.~of the Cross discusses these ways and degrees under the caption of what he calls supernatural locutions.13 It seems to me that this expression, "supernatural ,locution," is equivalent to what we mean in saying that the Holy Spirit speaks to us. John's'"locution" is a type of "apprehension," a knowing.It is a type that is "produced in the souls of spiritual persons without the use of :the bodily senses as means."14~,These are not sensory orqmaginary visions. They are "produced," that is, received from God. One does not originate the locution. God speaks and enlightens. Man receives. The saint reduces the many ways in which God speaks to three types. There are, in order of ascending value (and using the saint's terminology), a.~See Ascent o] Mt Carmel, Bk 2, cc. 28-31. 141bid., c. 28; p. 203. 172 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 successive locutions, formal locutions and substantial locutions. I will speak of them in my own language as well as John's. a) Assisting enlightenment (successive locutions). This .first type of divine speaking always occurs when one is "recollected and attentively absorbed" in some thought process. The.,enlightenment al-ways concerns the subject on which one is meditating?~' During this time, says John, the person is united with the truth and with 'the Holy Spirit who is in every truth, and yet he is thinking, reasoning in the usual, human man-ner. The Spirit aids him in forming his concepts and judgments. There is so great a clarity and ease in this activity thatqt seems another is teaching him, as indeed is the case. In this communion with :the. indwelling Spirit about a particular matter the person goes on to "form interiorly and suc-cessively other truths.''1' John supposes that this enlightenment occurs dur-ing prayer, that is, while one "is '!recollected" and "communing with the. divine Spirit?' It seems, therefore, that this type of speaking does not usually occur in dialogue sessions but in the midst of prayerful communion. The recipient of this assisting enlightenment "is unable to believe" that it originates with himself, but he has the awareness that it derives from another. And yet the knowledge received (it cannot be. attained by personal industry) is so delicate that the natural intellect by its own activity "easily disturbs and undoes" it.lr This point is important. Even when God does speak in this manner, he does not exclude our human activities with all their limitations, preconceptions, biases, errors. Even when he enlightens, he' permits men and women to be what they as a matter of fact are, fallen men and women--redeemed, yes, but still wounded and. deficient. We may conclude that this assisting enlightenment is not merely human reason proceeding under its own steam and deriving from the Holy Spirit only in the sense that anything true and good derives from him. The divine speaking is something over and above the gift ,of native intelligence, even though in the successive locution lit works closely with that intelligence, b) Independent-ideational speaking (formal locutions). Whereas the assisting enlightment occurs only when one. is prayerfully meditative, this divine speaking can happen at any time. In the first the locution accompanies human activity, while in the second it is uttered in-dependently of what the recipient is doing: "They are received as though one person were speaking to another.'''8 One may receive this locution while he is working, conversing; playing or praying. "Sometimes these words are very explicit and at other times not. They are like ideas spoken to the l~'lbid;, c. 30, #1; p. 208. ae'lbid., c. 29, #1; p. 204. ~rlbid., c. 32, #4; p. 213. aSlbid,, c. 30, #2; p. 208. The Spirit Speaks." When and How? / 173 spirit. At times only one word is spoken, and then again more than one; . . .-19 Although the recipient is clearly aware that this locution comes from another and thus has no reasonable doubt abou~ the otherness of origin, he can only too easily be deceived aSotO who this other is. It may be God or it may be the devil,o-" and the discernment is not always easy. Of this I shall speak later. c) Dynamic-effective speaking (substantial locution). It is now well known that the Hebrew idea of word, dabar, was not a mere intellectual representation of reality but a dynamic power. Just as the rain and snows come down from the heavens and produce food, so God's word comes down and achieves its effects (Is 55:10-11)~ The divine ~ord acts; it does things. It is like fire and a hammer that sunders rocks (Jr ,23:29). It is active, alive; it judges, divides and cuts like a two-edged sword (Heb 4: 12). Yahweh's word alone caused all creation to be (Gn 1 and 2). Jesus' words are spirit and life (Jn 6:63). This dynamic-effective speaking (substantial locution) is not merely an assisting enlightenment (the first manner) nor an ideational speaking (~the second manner). It is a powerful producing-in-the-soul of what it says. St. John of the Cross calls this communication substantial because it im-presses its meaning in the very substance of the recipient's being. The word does what it says. "For example," notes the saint, "if our Lord should say formally to the soul: 'Be good,'oit would immediately be substantially good; or if He should say: 'Love Me,' it would:at once have and experience. within itself the substance of the love of God; or if He should say to a soul in great fear: 'Do not fear,, it would without delay feel ample fortitude and tranquillity.''zx These dynamic~effective communications are the most excellent for several .reasons. One is that deceit, is impossible, since the devil cannot pro-duce this .goodness within one. Another is that these locutions impart "incomparable blessings" of life and goodness to the person who receives them. There is consequently nothing to fear or to reject. The recipient need do nothing about them "because God never grants them for that purpose, but He bestows them in order to accomplish Himself what they express.'':2 Divine Message and Human Fallibility We approach now a problem whose solution is anything but apparent. As a matter of fact it appears on the surface that the union of two factual 191bid. o-°ibid., c. 30, #3-5. °-1Ibid., c. 31, #1; p. 210. °'°'Ibid., c. 31, #2; p. 210. 174 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 premises is impossible. Fact number one: God does speak to certain men and women and He speaks with unfailing truth. Fact number two: these same men and women are often (not just rarely) mistaken in what they hear or think they hear or in what ihey conclude from what they hear, We immediately wonder what the sense of fact number one would' be, given the existence of fact number two. Why would or should God speak to people who often are mistaken in what they hear? One answer to this question is obvious on a momentrs reflection. A fruitful source of error in this area is a simple mistaking of the source of the locution. People often think they are listening to the Spirit when lie is .not speaking at all--or at least He is not saying what they think He is saying. We may not hold God responsible for what He did not say. Yet a problem remains: even when God does speak, the r.ecipient may either not hear or distort what~ he did hear or conclude invalidly from it. Why, then, should God speak when this may be the likely result? One response is identical to what we would say about any human speaking to a fellow human: failure to hear or distortion of the statement or invalid conclusion are always possible. Anyone who has lectured knows this from personal experience. It is remarkable how many people do not hear what you have said (or read what you have written). Yet we do not for that reason cease :speaking or writing. God .speaks to His people for the same reason we do: many do hear, and hear rightly. A lecturer or writer admit-_ tedly takes risks in sharing his thoughts publicly. He knows some will miss the message, while others wittingly or unwittingly will twist it. Yet he also knows that others will hear rightly. God loves us so much that He 'al-lows some to distort His word so that He may communicate intimately with those who will not. There are two reasons according to St. John of the Cross why a divine communication, even when perfectly authentic, can be the occasion for the recipient to be misled regarding it. The first reason is our crude way of understanding the divine mind. Explaining why not all revelations turn out as we expect them to turn out, that is, in their literal sense, the saint notes one reason to be that "since God is immense and profound, He usually embodies in His prophecies, locutions, and revelations other ways, con-cepts and ideas remarkably different from the meaning we generally find in them. And the surer and more truthful they are, the less they seem so to us."'-'~ The saint goes on to illustrate our usual "extremely literal method" with biblical examples. In making His covenant with Abram the Lord God promised that he would give the patriarch a new land. The latter understood this literally of his own personal possession and inquired what the sign of it would be (Gn 15:7-8). However, Abram died before .his possessing the land and "~.~lbid., c. 19, #1; p. 163. The Spirit Speaks: When and How? / 175 so one might have supposed' the divine promise mistaken. But it is the supposition that was mistaken .because it was based on a literal under-standing. Abram was given this land in his descendants as was explained a few verses further on (vv. 18-19). When God's people read that the Messiah was to rule from sea to sea, that His foes would bow down before him and lick the dust of the earth (Ps 72:8-9), they had a true prophecy but they misunderstood His rule to be temporal, whereas it was inner and eternal. So also the disciples on the road to Emmaus were reproved by the risen Lord for being dull and slow in failing to understand what the prophets had announced concerning the Messiah (Lk 24:25). St. John of the Cross concludes~ that "evidently, then, ~even though the words and revelations be from God, we cannot find assurance in them, since in our understanding of. them we can easily be deluded, and extremely so.''24 If this could happen in biblical times with genuine divine communications, it surely can happen in our times. The Carmelite points out that in divine words "God always refers to the more important and profitable meaning,'''5 whereas we tend to see in those same words something less important,' something perhaps merely temporal, even trivial or selfish. This is why the man of the flesh, to use Pauline terminology, the worldly man, cannot (not simply, does not) understand the things of God.(1 Co 2:14). He is too materialistic, too crass, too literal to grasp the divine meaning. One must undergo a con-version, get rid of his worldliness, says Paul, in order to come to know the perfect will of God (Rm 12:2). The second reason why an authentic divine communication can be mis-applied by the recipient is that God's judgment may be~conditional, and that without the knowledge of the human person. God's word or promise may so depend on some contingent event that when that event does or does not occur, so also the divine degree does or does not take~ effect. John cites Jonah's proclamation that Nineveh shall be destroyed in forty days (Jon 3:4). Yet the city was not destroyed because the people repented and did penance: The cause of the decree, human sin, was removed by penitence and so was the decree itself. They especially who do not understand the unfathomable abysses of the divine mind easily suppose they do understand. John of the Cross, who surely experienced God as few others have, supposed otherwise: "Be-lieve me," he concluded, "a person cannot completely grasp the meaning of God's locutions and deeds, nor can he determine this by appearances without extreme error and bewilderment.~''z5 Z4lbid., c. 19, #10; p. 167. God does not necessarily prevent even a genuine mystic from being mistaken in his understanding of an authentic communication. z~Ibid., c. 19, # 12; p. 168. ~ Z~lbid., c. 20, #6; p. 171. 176 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 Assisting Enlightenment and Human Fallibility What we have thus far considered regarding the divine message and human fallibility St. John of the Cross applies to visions as well as to locu-tions. We may now turn our attention specifically to what he calls suc-cessive locutions and I have termed God's assisting enlightenments. When the Holy Spirit aids us in prayerful pondering, is it likely that we can be mistaken in our conclusions? In itself the light of the Spirit can never be mistaken. He who is the tyuth can do nothing but illumine with the truth. However, the light He bestows is often so delicate and lofty that it leaves considerable room for human activity. And when we have room for human activity, we have room for error--unless there be a special divine intervention as is the case with the charism of infallibility given to the Church herself. The possibility of error is present especially in what we deduce and conclude from the divine enlightenment. The light of the Holy Spirit, says John, "is often so delicate and spiritual that the intellect does not succeed in ~being completely in-formed by it; and it is the intellect that of its own power, as we stated, forms the propositions. Consequently the statements are often false, or only apparent, or defective.'':~ This is important. Many of us seem to assume that "listening to the SpirW' means listening to neat, specific conclusions that God somehow inserts into the mind. And we further assume that if we have .an idea we think good it must be He who inserted it. Not so. That sort of neat "formu-lation- insertion" I would call an extraordinary private revelation, not a usual assisting enlightenment. In the latter case it is we who draw the conclusion, and it may be true or untrue, wise or unwise, loving or unloving. History bears out the solidity of this analysis. All through the ages there have been men and women who have expressed a profound conviction that their messages, even the most bizarre and untenable messages, have been spoken by God Himself. They seem not to suspect that they have them-selves contributed anything to their conclusions. John was able to write of this problem in terms that may startle us by their relevance: "I greatly fear what is happening in these times of ours: If any soul whatever after a bit. of meditation has in its recollection one of these locutions (succes-sive), it will immediately baptize all as coming from God and with such a supposition say, 'God told me,' 'God answered me.' Yet this is not so, but, as we pointed out, these persons themselves are more often the origin of their locution.''-~ P. de Letter is of the same mind. Remarking that even genuine charismatics can add human particulars of time and place to an authentic divine message, he notes that "they themselves are generally ~-Tlbid., c. 29, #3; p. 204. '-'Slbid., c. 29, #4; p. 204. The Spirit Speaks." When and How? / 177 unable to make a distinction between the divine and human elements."~"' A. Poulain and K. Rahner speak of the commonness of,human errors added to divine communications.:'" At this point one may ask how our intellect may be more completely informed by the light of God and thus be less subject to its proclivity to adulterate the delicate divine light with its own human shortsightedness. The answer is gospel goodness in general and the light of deep ., faith in particular. According to St. Paul the only way to attain to God's mind and know His perfect will is to put aside worldliness and.undergo conversion (Rm 12:2). The judgment of St. John of the Cross is the same: "The purer and.more refined a soul is in faith, the more infused .charity it possesses, and the more charity it has the more'the Holy Spirit illumines it and com-municates His gifts, because charity is the means by which they are com-municated,'''~' We see the truth of this in everyday life. Simple people of much love far surpass unloving intellectuals in basic wisdom. Diverse Origins of "Inner Lighls" There is yet another aspect to our problem, namely the origin of the enlightenment. Thus far we have supposed the light to come from God. Our theology of discernment of spirits speaks in the plural: spirits. St. John is of like mind. "Manifestly, then, these successive locutions can originate in the intellect from any of three causes: the divine Spirit, Who moves and illumines the intellect; the natural light of the intellect; and the devil who can speak to it through suggestion.":"-' While ~most people are willing to grant that .their own biases and preferences may suggest ideas to their minds, a goodly number may me~ely smile at the suggestion that the devil may be their origin. Even though this is not the place to adduce the ample biblical and magisterial evidences for diabolical reality and activity, it may be useful to point out that we do not pick and choose among, the data of divine revelation. Sound exegesis by all means. But nonetheless one accepts the whole Christ message or he shows that his criterion of acceptance or not is his own judgment rather than the divine word. After a review of biblical evidences, the Scripture scholar, Leopold Sabourin, concludes that "whoever reads"the New Testament with-out pr.econceptions or myth phobia should easily agree" that there is clear evidence of the existence of a personal hostile power and that this is an essential element in New Testament teaching. Sabourin also refers to e:,p. de Letter, New Catho'lic Encyclopedia, 12:446-447. .~oSee their works~ respectively Graces o[ Interior Prayer and Visions attd Prophecies. I also have touched on this point in "The Problematics of Discernment," Spiritual Li[e, Summer, 1974, pp. 135-147. .~lSt. John of the Cross, Ascent o] Mt Carmel, Bk 2, c. 29, #6; p. 205. .~-lbid., c. 29, :~ 11; p; 206. Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 Lyonnet's judgment regarding St. Paul's assertions on the devil: "To con-clude from these passages that Satan is for the Apostle a pure personifica-tion of the forces of evil would be to contradict as a whole the biblical and Pauline doctrine.''33 Our best theologians'write in the same vein. "The existence of angels," observes Karl Rahner, "cannot be disputed in view of the conciliar declarations (D 428, 1783). Consequently it will be firmly maintained that the existence of angels and demons is affirmed in Scripture and not merely assumed as a hypothesis which we could drop today.''34 If inner enlightenment may originate in other than divine sources, the question of discernment immediately arises. Can we know in a trustworthy manner the origin of our inner lights? Does the Spirit make Himself known? How do we detect Him? Whaf would be the signs of His activity as dis-tingnished from diabolical ,activity? Scripture, and especially the New Testa-ment, says so much about these questions that a mere article could not be adequate to report it all. Even less can a part of this article suffice. I may touch, however, only briefly on a number of considerations. Testing of the Spirits Jesus Himself leads the way to the later New Testament insistence that the spirits must be tested by the structural elements in the Chui'ch. The signal importance of this testing occurs, for example, in His prayer for Simon Peter. Significantly, this prayer centers on disturbances among the faithful caused by Satan. And the disturbances occur in the area of faith commit-ment. Jesus prays that after Peter's conversion he will strengthen his brothers and keep them firm despite satanic influences: "Simon, Simon! Remember that Satan has asked for you, to sift you all like wheat. But have prayed for you that your faith may n~ver fail. You in turn must strengthen your brothers" (Lk 22:31-32 NAB).3~ Jesus' prayer is always efficacious: what he prays for happens. Thus Peter's service in the Church is an effective faith service. While the devil does his best to disturb and dis-rupt, Peter tests him, unmasks him, overcomes him, protects the brothers and sisters in: their commitment to the Lord. It is obvious that Peter can confirm and strengthen in the faith only those who accept and listen to him. God forces no one. This is why St. Ignatius of Loyola, a leading figure in the history of discernment practice, considered the Successor of Peter the first tester of spirits and thus the last word on earth. This is why Ignatius (and other saints are of like mind) did not consider an important ~aLeopold Sabourin, "The Miracles of Jesus (II). Jesus and the Evil Powers," Biblical Theology Bulletin, June, 1974, p. 153. 34"Angels," Sacramentum Mundi, I : 32. aSSee Raymond E. Brownl Karl P. Donfried and John Reumann, editors, Peter in the New Testament, pp. 119-125. The Spirit Speaks." When and How? / 179 discernment process c.omplete until the Holy Father had approved the communal decision Ignatius and his companions had reached. St. Paul himself who received a direct commission from the risen Jesus nonetheless submitted his work to "the leading men" in Jerusalem to obtain their approval (Ga 2:2). Outer testing of the inner spirits is absolutely crucial if authentic enlight-enment is to be kept free of illuminist counterfeits and their bizarre conse-quences. o~Whatever else may be said about the illuminist, there is no doubt that no one can correct him. He is so sure of his privileged access to the mind of God that no other, not even Peter, can successfully point out to him that he is straying. Yet the very Spirit who speaks in our inner hearts has Himself established the outer structure to test the inner message. "Keep watch over yourselves," said Paul to the overseer-bishops of Ephesus, "and over the whole flock the Holy Spirit has given you to guard.' Shepherd the Church of God . . ." (Ac-20:28). The saints instinctively live this principle. St. Teresa of Avila, for example, a woman clearly led by the Spirit, strongly desired that, her works be examined and corrected and approved. Reaction Patterns It is interesting to observe the widely differing reactions people preseiat to the allegations that the Holy Spirit has spoken to someone or that He commonly enlightens from.within. We can speak of a reaction spectrum. At one end of it are those who ridicule the whole idea. They may be theists;~' but they just do not accept that God says anything particular to anyone. The objectivity of divine revelation is enough for them (though they may forget that the prophets and apostles had subjective experiences of God), .and so they look upon the charismatic renewal as a subjective enthusiasm. These people would probably pass up the present article because the title of-it indicates that the Holy Spirit does speak to men and women today. At the other end of the spectrum are those who readily believe that the Holy Spirit speaks. The~e people believe that ,He speaks often and that it is easy. to be in touch with Him. They tend to be uncritical and so are easily persuaded that their thoughts and desires and aspirations derive from God Himself. They would probably be attracted b3~ the title of this article but would tend to reject what I have said about the errors and illusions that abound in much of alleged "listening to God." Thus our subject is a touchy one. The Church's position lies somewhere in the midst of the two extremes of nothing or all. There are valid experi-ences of God and they are to be valued. He does enlighten those who are purified sufficiently to perceive His light. But there are also illusory experi-ences that are nothing more than unfounded persuasions. These can be found among people who are convinced that God is speaking to them, when as a matter of fact nothing of the sort is happening. Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 Practical Suggestions Supposing then that they are sons of God who are led by the Spirit of God (Rm 8:14), and yet that all things are to, be tested (1 Th 5:19-22), we may ask what this biblical position requires in everyday life. How does one tread the path of the golden mean between two extremes? 1 ) Hard-nosed evidence. While we should value the divine interven-tions in everyday life, we should not suppose them unless the biblical con-ditions are fulfilled. We do not presume, for example, that a proud or vain person is listening to the Spirit. Jesus has made it clear that the Father does not reveal His mysteries to the conceited but only to the little ones (Lk 10:21). A competent spiritual director looks for gospel holiness before he accepts that his client is "listening to the Spirit." This is why for centuries knowledgeable priests have discounted alleged divine phenomena in proud or disobedient people. Those who reject the outer word cannot be hearing the inner word. God does not contradict Himself. 2) No finite idea expresses God adequately and "thus we ought not to cling to it. One of the most valuable contributions offered by St. John of the Cross to this question of listening to God's voice can be missed even in a careful study of his work. It is that the most important element in most di-vine communications is not the clear idea, the detailed course of action to be followed. It is the love-penetrated touch of the divine in dark faith, a touch that itself communicates humility, love, prayer, strength, peace, joy. The most valuable gift God can communiqate to anyone is Himself, and He is no thing, no idea, no pattern of action. The Love Who is God is poured out0into our hearts by the Holy Spirit Who is given to us (Rm 5:5). Once we understand this we have gone a long way in understanding .John's severity in making so little of locutions and visions. The~saint recommends that the recipient of divine communications pay little attention to them, because if he gets attached to them, he feeds on them rather than on God.36 One likewise' begins to consider himself especially favored by God and,to look down on others who, in his opinion, do not enjoy this same enlighten-ing by the Spirit. The attachment can become a stubborn refusal to listen to anyone who may disagree because "I am listening to God." Clinging .to a finite communication, this person fails "to soar to the heights of dark faith.''3~ And in pilgrimage it is only in faith that we journey to the father-land (Heb 11"13-16). 3) Little attention is to be given to inner communications. I suspect that many people are surprised if not shocked at the attitude St. John of .~6The total renunciation demanded by Jesus is applicable here: "Unless a man re-nounce all he possesses he cannot be My disciple." (Lk 14".33) Even an idea about God is not God. '~rSt. John of the Cross, Ascent o] Mt Carmel, Bk 2, c. 18, #2; p. 160. The Spirit Speaks: When and How? / 181 the Cross takes toward inner enlightenments. He repeatedly advises the recipient to pay little attention, even no attention to them. The saint is so strong on this point that unless one is well acquainted with his whole teaching and life, he might conclude that John scarcely believed that God does communicate with the human person. Yet the saint, deeply believed in this .communication and in his own person enjoyed the very loftiest favors. Because his teaching is surprising to many of us, it may be well to offer here"a summation of it. We may first see two examples typical of the saint's statements of rejection, and then we will consider several reasons for the advice. Speaking of imaginative visions or "other supernatural communi-cations" received by the senses and independent of one's free will, John asserts 'q affirm that at whatever time or season (in the state of perfection or one less perfect) an individual must not desire to give them admittance, even though they.come from.God.''~s Later on in the same work as he discusses successive locutions the saint again says that "we should pay no heed to them, but be . . . content with knowing the mysteries and truths in~- the simplicity and verity~ with which the Church proposes them.'':''' This advice admittedly runs counter to what most of us. would expect. We would think that if God speaks,, we should pay attention, close atten-~ tion. We would consider a rejection of.the communication an insult to the speaker of it. Why is ~John (and other saints) of this mind? The first reason is the likelihood of illusion, deception. St. John o[ the Cross would surely agree that when God speaks, we listen carefully. This is precisely why the saint clings so tenaciously to Scripture and the teaching Church. Public revelation is sure and free from illusion and so is the teach-ing of the divinely commissioned Church, pillar of truth (l Tm 3:15). Private revelation is often not sure, that is, what is commonly thought to be revealed by God is not revealed at all. St. Paul was of this mind. He told the Galatians in no uncertain terms that even if .an.angel from heaven were to teach them something contrary to what they learned from human lips, they were to reject it (Ga 1:6-9). In other words, Paul was saying that such private "~revelation" was not revelation from God at all. When one pays much attention to "communications" he leaves the sure path of faith for the unsure path of "what 1 heard, what I received, what I see." History tells a 10ng and sad tale of the illusions that abound in this second path. Secondly, p,eop.le who are much concerned with God speaking within tend to neglect clear duties without. "On judgment day," says our Carmelite guide, "God will punish the faults and sins of many with whom He com-muned familiarly here below and to whom He imparted much light and 3Slbid., c. 17, #7; p. 158.- :~.~lbid., c. 29, -#:12; p. 207. Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 power. For they neglected their obligations and trusted in their converse with Him.''.'° John then illustrates his idea with. the words of Jesus, "When that day comes, many will plead with Me, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name? Have we not exorcised demons by its power? Did we not do many miracles in Your name as well?' Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Out of my sight, you evildoers!' " (Mt 7:22~23). Doing the Father's will (Mt 7:21) is more important than receiving special .favors from God. St. Paul repeats this truth when he tells the Corinthians that their most marvelous charisms (including the gifts of healing, miracles, tongues) are of,no value without love (1 Co 13:1-3). The Carmelite explains how spiritual directors shouldguide people in faith, not in supposed special communications. These directors "should explain how one act done in charity is more precious in God's sight than all the visions and communications possible--since they imply n~ither m~rit nor demerit--and how many who have not received these experiences are in-comparably .more advanced than others who have had many.''~1 This last remark is both sobering and comforting. A third reason is a core reason. I have said above that the deepest value in a. divine communication does not lie in clear concepts or blueprints for future action. It lies in a deeper drinking of the divine, a drinking that is general, dark, non-ceptual, love-immersed. If a person pays much atten-tion to the clear words or ideas he has "heard" at prayer, he is absorbed in finite particulars rather than with the God who ,is infinitely beyond even the best concept. In pilgrimage we' journey to God best not in clear ideas but .in dark faith; Paying little attention to "communications" is wise, fourthly, because a subtle vanity easily seeps into persons preoccupied with "listening to the Spirit" in a self-conscious way. Like the pharisee in the parabl.e (Lk 18: 9-14) they may begin to consider themselves unlike the rest of men. Need-less to say, this attitude is not one conducive to growth in love.'~ Fifthly, giving attention to inner communications carries with it the need to discern their origin, whether they come from God, the' devil, or' one's own unrealized desires.":' While the work of discernment is. advisable for important matters, one can hardly seek out a spiritual, guide and/or engage in long prayerful study for routine everyday affairs. If one is an avid "listener to messages,", the alternatives are a preoccupation with analysis or ¯ ~Olbid., c. 22, #!5; p. 185. ~'lbid., c. 22, # 19; p. 187. ~ '~-°"They think something e~traordinary has occurred and that God his spoken, whereas in reality little more than nothing will have happened, or nothing at all, or even less than nothing. If an experience fails to engender humility, charity, mortification, holy simplicity, and silence, etc., of what value is it?" Ibid., c. 29, .#5; pp. 204-205; "albid., c. 17, #7; p. 158. ' The Spirit Speaks: When and How? an unfounded assumption that "it all comes from the Lord." Even a saint does not assume the latter. Finally, the recipient of an.authentic communication from God does not need to pay attention to it in order to derive its benefits. This many people do not realize. God produces the good effects of His communication with-out the recipient being able to prevent it. "A person," says John, "cannot hinder the goods God desires to impart, nor in fact does he do so, except by some imperfection or possessiveness.''44 By renouncing all divine communications° (and John includes visions, locutions, fragrances, pleasures, words) "a. person takes from these apprehensions only what God wants him*to take, that is, the spirit of devotion, since God gives them for no other principal reason.''4'~ The same is true of the lesser assisting enlightenment.4~ Paying little attention to inner enlightenments' is for all these reasons a sensible reaction that combines a vivid faith in the indwelling Trinity with a sober refusal to succumb to a credulous illuminism. These reasons also explain the remaining bits of practical advice. 4) Use of reason as a source ~of light. God expects us to use ordinary means~ to achieve ordinary ends. If I break a leg, he expects me to get it set by a doctor. I may pray for divine healing but not at the expense of refusing ordinary medical help. We should surely pray for divine enlightenment but not at the expense of refusing to study and consult. Where .human reason is sufficient to solve problems "usually God does not manifest such matters through visions, revelations, and locutions, because He is ever desirous that man insofar as possible take advantage of his own reasoning powers. All matters must be regulated by reason save those of faith, which though not contrary to reason transcend it.''47 This is a mystic with his feet on planet earth. 5) A divine Message needs human approval. This advice is shocking. It seems the reversal of the truth: a human message needs divine approval. A distinction is in order. When the divine message° is public, it needs no approval other than that~ required by Christ Himself. That is, it needs the acceptance of no merely human court. St. Paul explicitly declared that it made not the slightest difference to him whether any human tribunal found him worthy or not (1 Co 4:3). Yet the same apostle submits his divinely received commission from the risen Lord to the authorities in Jerusalem (Ga 2:2, 6, 10). All the more when a divine message is a private revelation must it be approved by due authority. 441bid. "t51bid., c, 17, #9; p. 159. 46"The profit produced by a successive locution will not be received from focusing one's attention on it. Through such behavior a person instead would be driving away the locution." Ibid., c. 29, #7; p. 205. ~ ~ 4"rlbid., c. 22, #13; p. 184. Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 The New Testament.consistently requires supposedly divine communi-cations to be submitted to the approval of the Lord's representatives. This we already find in the earliest,New Testament document. The gifts of the Spirit are not to be suppressed but they are to be tested (1 Th 5:1.9-22). They who want to hear Jesus must be prepared to hear~His representatives; otherwise they are rejecting Him (Lk 10:16; Jn 13:20). The heretics at the close of the first century are known to be false prophets because they refuse to listen to the leaders of the ekklesia ( 1 Jn 4: 1, 6). St. John of the Cross, therefore, is asking no more than the New Testa-ment when he teaches that one ought not to do what a locution tells him un-less he receives a human approval. The saint does not tire of insisting on this biblical point: "We must be guided humanly and visibly in all by the law of Christ the man and that of His Church and of His ministers. This is the method .of remedying our spiritual ignorances and weaknesses. One should disbelieve anything coming in a supernatural way, and believe only the teaching of Christ, the man,~as I say, and of His ministers who are men . (In the Old Testament) the people were to believe that God spoke to them through the mouth of these prophets and priests and not through their own opinion.'''s John supports his teaching from St. Paul who demanded that the Galatians set aside whatever they think an angel from heaven might say in favor of what human teachers have taught (Ga 1:6-9). In tile. work of spiritual direction I consistently find that persons who give every sign of genuine prayer development and authentic holiness in-stinctively follow this practice, The Holy Spirit gives them the inner in-clination, even a felt need to submit the apparently divine communication to a priest in whom they can confide.4'~ This inclination may be taken as a sign of a genuine communication from God, whereas its absence suggests otherwise?° This advice is, of course, consistent with all else we h~ve studied above. Christ did not establish an angelism, an invisible Church. He takes our "bodyliness". seriously. He operates now both immediately through His Holy Spirit working invisibly and mediately through His human representatives ¯ ~Slbid., c. 22, #7, 8; pp. 181-182. ~.'~"God is so content that the rule and direction of man be ihrough other men, and that a person be governed by natural reason, that He definitely does not want us to bestow entire credence upon His supernatural communications, nor be confirmed in their strength and security until they pass through this human channel of the mouth of man. As often as He reveals something to a person, He confers upon his soul a kind of inclination to manifest this to the appropriate person." Ibid., c. 22, #9; p. 1.82. .~0The saint connects this'trait with humility: "This is the trait of a humble person: he does not dare deal with God independently, nor can he be completely~ satisfied without human counsel and direction." Ibid., c. 22, :~11; p. 183. The Spirit Speaks: When and How? / 1:85 worki.ng visibly. So great is the likelihood of illusion and misinterpretation in the subjective realm that an objective evaluation is indispensable. What should be done when a competent guide is not available we consider next. 6) Competent spiritual direction. A qualified and experienced guide when faced with alleged divine communications sees them, of course, in their context. He considers the recipient's lifestyle, whether it is character-ized by love, joy, humility, detachment, obedience. The Father and the Son do not reveal themselves to the unloving and the proud (Jn 14:21; Lk 10:21). St. Paul told the Galatians that what the Spirit brings to His own is not self-indulgence or temper or fa~ctions or impurity but rather love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self-control (Ga 5: 19-22). I find repeatedly in spiritual direction that a deep prayer life, a genuine communion with God indwelling, is invariably.accompanied by these New Testament criteria. The spiritual director usually does well not to make much of the com-munication reported to him (although he belittles neither the person nor the report). If the communication is from God, its chief good effects are already achieved. If it is not from God, the less attention paid to it the better. Religious still complain, as did St. Teresa of Avila four centuries ago, of the lack of knowledgeable spiritual directors. What should one do if he cannot find a competent guide? It is my opinion that in the area of advanc-ing prayer as also in this matter of alleged communications, no direction is preferable to probably incompetent direction. A great deal of damage can be done by well-intentioned but faulty guidance. St. John of the Cross seems to have been of the same mind. After advising that formal locutions should be manifested to "an experienced confessor or to a discreet and wise person," he adds that "if such an expert person cannot be found, it is better not to speak of these locutions to anyone, but simply pay no attention to them, for a soul can easily fall into the hands of some persons who will tear it down rather than build it up. Souls should not.discuss these locutions with just anyone, since in so serious a matter being right or wrong is of such importance.TM 7) Growth in ]aith. A pilgrimage people travels not by vison but by faith (Heb 11:13-16; 1 Co 13:12). Toward the beginning of this article we considered that when God deals with private persons (as distinguished from the publicly commissioned heralds of His revelation), He usually com-municates with them in the general know!edge of dark faith. Even when He may offer a specific message, He wants it confirmed by the appropriate human authority. The proximate means by which we are united to God is nothing finite and created. It is the adherence to God Himself revealed in His Word. The 51Ibid., c. 30, :~5; p. 209. 186 / Review lor Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 stronger this clinging to Him, the more readily He communicates with the one clinging?-~ For St. Paul only the converted, the holy can detect the mind of God and know His perfect will (Rm 12:2). The more one is transformed by faith andlove the more God can pour out' additional light and love into his heart and mind. In this way we are transformed from one glory to an-other by the indwelling Spirit (2 Co 3:18). r"-"'The Holy Spirit illumines the intellect that is recollected," says John, "and He illumines it according to the mode of its recollection, and the intellect can find no better recollectt0n than in faith, and thus the Ho.ly Spirit wili not illumine it in any othei" recollection more than'in faith. The purer and more refined a soul is in faith, the more infused charity it possesses, and the more charity it has the more the Holy Spirit illumine it and communicates His gifts."lbid., c. 29, #6; p. 205. To A Benedictine Were you a dawn-rising monk in a black-robed hood Meditating in a Kansas winter wood? As you shuffled to chapel in bare, black sandals Lighting beeswax tapered candles-- Did you gaze into Christ's~bleeding eyes On His altar crucifix? And soul-long as all souls long for an unearthly Paradise As your hand touched His candlesticks? Later in your journeys all around the U.S.A.-- Did you study, thought-penetrate all people's problemed way? Did you want to reach the people when the people turned away? Did you find it very difficult sometimes to even pray? For God is ~never lost or ever far away . " But sometimes our paths seem hid and crossed, With clouds hiding tomorrowt darkening our future's way. Yet we know Redempti,on's garment must be woven By our own hands this very day, woven in Christ's design and way. Christ has a certain design, one that's yours, one that's mine, With His holy gift of time, He'll teach us to weave His way. If we don't forget to love Him, listen to what,His voice will say, He'll lift us up, overflow our cup. We'll find a brighter day. Mary Ann Putman 4422~.42nd Ave., S. West Seattle, WA 98116 Reflections on Our Congregation Sister Cecilia Murphy~ R.S.M. Sister Cecilia is Director General of the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh. On the oc-casion of last All Souls~ Day, she reflected with her sisters on the "'many saints of our Congregation" and on the meaning of the Congregation itself. She resides at 3333 Fifth Ave.; Pittsburgh, PA 15213. We as a Congregation have some penetrating questions to answer. Among these questions are: What are we as a religious Congregation? What are we to each other? What is-our Congregational apostolic presence? What witness do we give as Sisters of Mercy? Does our life style reflect that of Christians who believe in the beatitudes and who strive, to live lives of ~simplicity? Do we feel the cost of being consecrated to God or do we dilute the suffering in our lives by compromises? Are ,we joyful people who live other-centered lives? Do we wish to grow and attracL new members? My most vital concerns about the Cqngregation center around questions like these. We must answer these questions as individuals and as a Congrega-tion. No General Director, no Council, no Policy,.Board can answer these questions. Each of us must assume the responsibility ,, to answer these ques-tions. ~ Our Decrees acknowledge the primacy of interior renewal. Are we really attentive to interior renewal? Our focus on external renewal is evident. Our external appearance,, our life style, our behavior patterns have changed greatly since 1966. What has happened to us interiorly? During the past nine years, many of us have suffered intensely from change. Through this suffering we have grown individually and as a Congregation. But, we now need to focus on some aspects~of our lives which need attention from each one of us. Personal prayer, without question, is an absolute necessity for each Sister. Never in our history .has the need for personal prayer been greater, 187 Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 and never have our distractions from prayer been greater. Prayer, as we all know, is not an obligation that we clock of[ at one-half hour periods; it is a way of life; it is a giving of ourselves to the Lord day by day despite the noises of our work and our relaxations. Why did we come to religious life? We must constantly seek to answer this question--not for some other Sister, but for ourselves. Do we as a Congregation witness to the value of prayer in our lives? Do people sense in me, an individual Sister of Mercy, that prayer is a priority? Do I ever take time for a day of retreat? Con-sidering the challenges to our life and to our spirit, these are not questions we can afford to ignore. These are questions that each of us must answer. I am firmly convinced that if we as a Congregation renew ourselves in-teriorly and face the question of personal prayer, we will not be predicting a rate of growth of one new member each year. We must be renewed in our commitment to personal prayer. Prayer presupposes some time for quiet. We live in a noisy world of TV, chatter, and many other noises, but we must remember that we need time and space for prayer. External stillness can help dispose us to God. This quiet cannot be imposed, but I ask eacfi Sister to contribute to a spirit of quiet and calm in her living situation. Thr6ugh this we can better stand before God, be ready for His word, and become more attuned to Him, more in touch with ourselves, our strengths, weaknesses, and potentialities. While we must pray alone, we must also pray together. Communal prayer t~or many Sisters is a source of concern and a disappointment. That in itself is a hopeful sign. I feel that there is a growing concern within us as a Congregation that we want and need to pray together: No one form of prayer will satisfy every Sister at all times~ But we have a right to expect communal prayer from each other. Each group of Sisters living together must continue to'be concerned and to make serious'efforts to pray together. It has been frequently said that communal prayer cannot be a forced situation, in which those who seldom communicate meet to*recite the same words. Prayer requires some union of mind and heart among its partici-pants. Thus, the need for rehewal in prayer touches on vital questions of community, of what we are to each other. By membership in the Congregation we share a bond of religious dedi-cation and a commitment to common ideals~ Sisters of our Congregation should be "special" to us even though we may not share their life Style or dress. We MUST be kind to one another. We cannot destroy each other. We must begin to 'realize that our conversations, our attitudes of hopeful-ness and joy or of complaint and negativism can cause 6thers to be strength-ened and rejoice in their vocations or to lose heart 'and wonder what re-ligious life has done for us. Our attitudes are conveyed in subtle 'ways; our words also tell others how we feel about them and what our values are. We must, if we'are to survive or deserve to survive as a Congregation, take careful account of our attitudes toward each other and toward the Congre~- Reflections on.Our Congregation / 189 gation. Catherine McAuley gave us a legacy of union and charity.Thus, we cannot spend our waking hours, our phone and table conversations gather-ing information ,about other Sisters, judging each other, and using leisure time in pettiness. There is NO time for this. We have;been called to be apostles, to spread, the "good news," to be "good news" to others. None of us, regardless of age or occupation, is exempt from this responsibility. Each of us needs to ask herself: Am I good news to others? Do Sisters consider me a strengthening factor in Congregational life? None of us has a perfect record in this regard. But let us begin again. Let us try to be more aware of our words and attitudes, more supportive of each other, not just as we do so well in times of death and sickness, but every day. Let us likewise reflect upon our attitudes to others outside the Congregation. Are we prejudiced? Are we concerned about others who lack the necessities of life? Are our values really Christian? Living religious life is not easy. It costs a great price. In the New Testa-ment we learn from Christ the cost of discipleship. He was hated, con-fronted, and crucified. He was, for all human purposes, the greatest failure the world has ever known. He did not come to bring us suffering but to teach us how to live with it. To His~ disciples He said: "Take up your cross and follow me". "Unless the seed die, it remains alone". "Un-less you deny yourself . . . " Christ did not igreach an easy message. He did not call His disciples to a life of comfort and security. He said: "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head". "the servant is not greater than his Master." It is never easy to be a disciple. It we are comfortable, satisfied and complacent, we have great cause for concern about our Con-gregation. No one who tried to fulfill the will of God did so with comfort and satisfaction. I see in our Congregation some need for each of us to reflect on the meaning of the cost of discipleship. Have I personally lost sight of who I am called to be? Have I compromised and rationalized so that I can have the best of two worlds? I cannot look at another Sister and judge what she has done. I must look at myself. When the Church abrogated the Lenten fast, she intended that we impose new personal penance upon our-selves. Do we do this? The human condition has not changed, nor has our need for self-denial. Each of us is, a sinner and the more we know of God, the more we know how sinful we are. None of us is perfect nor can we forget that we need to make conscious responses in self-denial. Catherine McAuley founded her Congregation on Calvary to serve a crucified Master. Each of us has a share in that mission by our member-ship in this Congregation. Catherine McAuley held ideals of service like: "God knows I would rather be cold and hungry than that His poor should be deprived of any consolation in our power to afford." Is this a reality in my life? Am I willing to be hungry, even occasionally, that others may eat? These are the kinds of questions we must face if we are to be true to the 190 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 spirit of Catherine McAuley. We need God desperately and we need each other desperately. We need to 'be willing to experience conversion personally and as a Congrega-tion. We must be willing to pay the price for this conversion. ~ We can and must be a tremendous potential for good in the Church and the world. We can and we must witness to each other and the world that material goods are NOT the source of our joy nor the values on which we spend our "energies. We need to reflect simplicity--not in a judgmental or self-righteous way but in a spirit of who we are called to be. We can~and we need to reflect a joy'that comes from living with Sisters of joy who belong to God and who are free to be faithful in celibate love. We must focus on what we are to each other in community, We must share not only our goods but ourselves. If we have any struggles today and. are to attract new members to our Congregation, I am convinced we must experience interior renewal and unity of purpose. We know that God is faithful and that He will help us in this. Let us unite together as a Congregation, renewed in our purpose to pursue conversion. May God grant each of us light, strength, patience, and courage so that individually and corporately we will be strengthened to spread the good news, to further God's Kingdom, to be vital Sisters of Mercy. A More Authentic Poverty Horacio de la Costa, S.J. At the time of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, Ft. de la Costa was one of~the four General Assistants to Fr. Arrupe. Subsequent to the Con-gregation, he was able to return to his beloved historical studies and writing, center-ing on the history of the Church in the Philippines. He resides at Xavier House; P.O. Box 2722; Manila 2801; Philippines. A consideration of the D~cree on Poverty of the 32nd. General Congrega-tion of the Society of Jesus must begin with a word about its background. The General Congregation immediately preceding, the 31st, decided that Jesuit legislation on poverty should be brought into conformity with the dispositions of. Vatican II, but at the same time perceived that this would be better done not by itself but by experts reflecting on the matter over a period of time. It therefore elected what are called definitores to draw up Statutes on Poverty which would become Society law, on the authority of the General Congregation itself, upon approval of the. Superior General. In 1967¢ Father General Arrupe approved these Statutes. The 31st General Congregation had provided, further, that the 'Statutes thus adopted be submitted for review to the next General Congregation. Ac-cordingly, Father General Arrupe, having decided after the Congregation of Procurators of 1970 to convene the 32nd General Congregation, ap-pointed a study commission to go over the Statutes and ~:ecommend possi-ble improvements. Some of the delinitores sat in this commission also. Most of its members were moral theologians, jurists, or administrators. Some months before the Congregation convened, Father General expanded the *This article is :being published simultaneously in the current issue of Jesuit Studies (The American Assistancy Seminar in Jesuit Spirituality) entitled: "On Becoming Poor: A Symposium on Evangelical Poverty." 191 Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 membership of tffe commission to include experts from other disciplines and areas of experience. The 32nd General Congregation constituted from among its member-ship its own Commission on Poverty: Commission III. Some of the mem-bers of the pre-Congregation commission, being also congregati, were elected to Commission Ili. Very broadly speaking, it can be said that for the jurid-ical aspects of the' present Decree, the Congregation relied chiefly on the work of the pre-Congregation commission; for its pastoral aspects, on its own Commission III. The Decree itself is divided into three sections. Section A is a declara-tion of what Jesuit poverty should be today in the light of prevailing con-ditions in the Church and in the world. This declaration sets forth the as-cetical and pastoral principles on which is based the dispositive part of the Decree, Sections B-F. Section B, "Norms," gives the prescriptive guidelines for a revision of the Statutes on Poverty, to be undertaken by a commis-sion appointed by Father General, who is to approve and promulgate the revised Statutes. Sections C-F are supplementary provisions concerning certain aspects of the new juridical structure which is being given to the Jesuit practice of poverty. A prinCipal objective which the pre-Congregation commission set for itself was to simplify Jesuit legislation on poverty. It was observed that over the years numerous alterations had been introduced into the primitive legis-lation of the Ignatian Constitutions, usually by obtaining an indult, that is, an exception to the law, from the Holy See; for instance, the indult whereby Jesuits are enabled to accept Mass stipends. Another~ kind- of deviation from the primitive legislation was that of certain accepted anomalies; for :instance, houses of writers.: A house of writers is not, strictly speaking, a "college" in the sense of the Constitu-tions. It is not a house of formation, the only Jesuit institution to which St. Ignatius allowed fixed revenues. Later, however, houses of writers were also permitted fixed revenues, on the grounds that they cannot otherwise carry on their valuable apostolate, since the kind of books Jesuits write are very seldom best-sellers. Similarly, there was no provision in the primitive legislation for the care of the sick and the aged. These were therefore assigned to the same juridical category as the Jesuit seminarians ("scholastics") supported by the colleges. In effect, those retired from the active apostolate were equated with those who had ~not yet begun it, and the arca seminarii, or formation fund, did double-duty as a social-security fund. . There were also accepted ambiguities which amounted to legal fictions. For instance, missionary priests in the Spanish colonies--at least up to the time the Jesuits were expelled therefrom (1767)--received fixed yearly stipends from the government. In the Philippines, this stipend was 100 silver pesos and 100 [anegas (bushels) of rice a year. This was by no means A More Authentic Poverty / 193 a pittance. A silver peso in those days was really made of silver, and its purchasing power was probably a hundred times that of the present metal-alloy peso. At any rate, each missionary priest was able to support with his stipend a missionary ~brother,~and still have something left over toward building a parish church and a parish, house. Now then: this stipend can, with a little stretching of meaning, be called an alms. But the government, and almost everybody else, considered it a salary--so.mething which the Constitutions did not allow for, especially with reference to spiritual min, istries, the normative maxim for which was. to "give freely what you have freely received." A more recent example of ~this ambiguity is the~ salary received by military and hospital chaplains. Military and hospital chaplaincies are certainly valuable, even necessary apostolates, But in many countries of the world, 'the civil law does not allow anyone to become a military or hos-pital chaplain unless he accepts a salary. It does not allow him to give freely what he has freely received. Finally, there was what looked like downright violations of th~ law to those Who ttid not understand or appreciate the need from which they arose. How, ,for instance, was the glorious Japanese mission of the Old SoCiety, founded, by Xavier himself and so fruitful in martyrs, supported?~:Why, by the fantastically .lucrative Macao,Nagasaki silk trade. ,.Portuguese inv~estors in the trade would invest sums for, or on behalf of, the Jesuit Provin(~'of Japan, and the profits from these investments were. what supported' the Province's catechumena~es, houses of formation, mission station~, printing press. Were they alms? Were they fixed revenues? Or were they negotiatio vetita, commerce forbidden to clerics? All these complexities seemed to arise from the fact that thoroughly ~alid and even absolutely essential apostolates could not be undertaken or main-tained without such departures from the primitive legislation. And 'the reason for this was the difference in economic, social, and juridical struc-tures between the modern world, the world that emerged from the Indus-trial Revolution, and the late-medieval world, the world of St. Ignatius. There are all-pervading socioeconomic realities we must take into account today which St. Ignatius and his first companions almost certainly did not foresee. Here are some of them. In many parts of the world, Western and non-Western, capitalist and socialist, there is a decline in the witness value of mendicancy. Living on aims is rarely if at all considered an effective witness to iapostolic fi'eedom and trust in divine Providence, Accompanying this decline is a correspond-ing appreciation of the ethical and social value of work, and of wh.a.t are generally considered to be the natural adjuncts of working for a living, such as the provident setting aside of savings for the future, and the invest-ment of such savings in economic enterprises that generate income. Another difference to be noted between St. Ignatius' time and ours is 194 / Review lor Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 the decline in the modern world of the temporal power .and wealth of the Church,-and the dissolution of medieval forms of union of Church and State. It is no longer possible,for large-scale apostolic enterprises to be financed by endowments granted by pope or prince, by cardinal or'con-quistador. How are large-scale apostolic, :enterprises financed today? Mostly by smal! private donations derived chiefly from the middle class: the people; neither rich nor poor, who enable o religious institutes to train,their seminarians and establish foreign missions. It is a fact, to be acknowledged with gratitude, that in the world as it now is we, depend almost entirely on the bourgeoisie for the financial viability of our apostolic enterprises. On the other hand, we r~eligious are called to live not precisely as bourgeois but as poor men and women. How do we do this, in the world as it now is? How do we set up a structure~for our poverty that will be simple enough and practical enough to enable us to carry on our ministries effectively, and yet live poor? ~ ~ The pre-Congregation commission on poverty mentioned earlier pro-posed that one way of doing this was to accept the basic distinction be-tween communities and apostolic institutes, .a distinction already Sketched out by the definitores of the Statuta of 1967. The 32nd General Congrega-tion ac6epted the :distinction, along with the juridical implications spelled out by'the commission.1 In fact, the Congregation made that distinction the "keystone" of its "reform of the structure of temporal administration.":-' There are, of course, preblems raised by this revision of structure, or foreseen as'following upon it. That is why the Holy Father directs that the Decree be put into practice ad experimentum, so that the. next General Congregation "can re-examine the entire question on the basis of the .experi-ence acquired in the years to come.''3 But ~where the religious life is.con-cerned, juridical structure is usually consequent on a spiritual discernment. In the present case, that discernment is set forth in the expository portion of the Decree (Section A), to which we now turn. The 32nd General. Congregation confirms the findings °of its predecessor on the basis of a review of the Societyrs experience during the decade inter-t" By the law of ~the Society there is to be established a distinction between com-munities and apostolic institutes, at least with regard to the destinatibn and usu-fruct of 'their goods and between the financial accounts of each."--Decree of Poverty B III 1. Apostolic institutes are defined as "those institutions or works .belonging to the Society which~ have a certain permanent unity and organization for apostolic pu,rposes, such as universities, colleges, retreat houses, and other such in which Ours cai'ry on their apostqlic work."--ibid. B I 2. "Th~ goods of apostolic institutes of the Society may not be diverted to the use or profit of Ours except for a suitabl~ remuneration, to be approved by the Provincial, for work in such institutes or for services rendered to the same."--ibid: B IV. ~-lbid. A IV I 1. '~Jean Cardinal Villot to Father General Arrupe, 2 May 1975, n. 5. A More Authenti¢ Poverty / 195 v~ening between them. These findings are chiefly three. First, that our pres-ent pra~ctice of evangelical poverty, falls short of. the norms .established by St. Ignatius and the first companions, and hence, that we must resolutely and perseveringly undertake a renewal of the spirit of poverty according to the specifically Ignatian inspiration. Second, that while we must~ by all means keep the primal norms of~.our poverty intact as far as their substantive de-mands are concerned, we must also adapt them to,the socioeconomic and juridical conditions of our time, very different from those of the time when St. Ignatius and the first companions established them. In other Words, our renewal of the spirit of poverty must be accompanied by a certain adaptation of structures and procedures; it must be a renovatio accoramodata. Third, that in the matter Qf poverty, as in other matters, ,spirit and structure are intimately interdependent; that while the spirit of poverty needs a structure to support it, safeguard it, and make it operative, the structure wilPnot work, will become dead-weight and dead-letter, unless those involved in the structure are imbued with the spirit of poverty and are resolved to make the structure work. The determination of the surplus income of 'a community might serve to illustrate this third finding, namely, the interdependence of spirit~and structure. The surplus income of a Jesuit community cannot be retained. It must be disposed of annually.4, By surplus income iS o meant what is over and-above the expenses and the contingency fund. provided for in the annual budget of the communit~y as determined by its "responsible administrator" with the appr.ovai of the provincial superior.~ The norm for estimating the annual budget is a community style of.life "removed .as far as possible from all infection of avarice and as like as possible to evan-gelical poverty.''6 Ultimately, therefore, this whole rrgime of placing the community on a budget and disposing of annual surpluses will depend on the style of life adopted by the community. It will depend oi~ how seriously the community tries to live up to the norm set by the Congregation, namely, that "the standard of living of our houses should not.be higher than that of a family of slender means whose providers must ,work. hard for its support.''r In a word, it will depend on how much alive the spirit of poverty is among us. For, as the Congregation. says; "While law can support spirit, no legal re-form will profit anything unless all, .our members elect evangelical poverty with courage at the invitation of .the Eternal King, Christ our Lord.,8 , 4Decree on Poverty B VII 1. 51bid. B VI. ~Ibid. B VII 1. rlbid. A llI 7. 8Ibid. A V 13. 196 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 The norm for our standard of living just ~ited may in ~turn serve to illus-trate the second 'of the findings mentioned above, namely, the need for adaptation. It is stated that our standard of living can be lower, but not higher than that of "a family of slender means." Yes; but what are "slender means"? What does "slender" mean? One particularization of the term follows immediately: a family of slender means is one whose providers must work hard for its support. This would seem to exclude unearned in-come, that is, income from'invested funds, at least as a principal source of support for our communities. It would seem to imply that our communities should derive their day-to-day support from the earnings of the day-to-day work of their members. Here is one example of the adaptation to the changed conditions of the times noted earlier. The Congregation itself calls attention to it: "For cen-turies, the perfection of religious poverty was found in mendicancy . He was .counted poor who lived on alms, placing all his hopes in the provi-dence of God operative through benefactors. With growing clarity the Church invites religious to submit to the common law .of labor. 'Earning your own living and that of your brothers and sisters, helping the poor by your work--these are the duties incumbent upon you.' '''~ This may possibly explain why the Congregation does not have'recourse to the gauges or measuring rods of religious poverty devised in times past. Such ~as, that religious poverty is a poverty of dependence~. dependence, in the first instance, on the superior, but through him, dependence on the providence of God "operative through benefactors,'--that is, dependence on alms. The emphasis today is not on alms but on work. Or again, that our poverty should be assimilated to that of honesti sacerdotes, reputable secular priests; for while the reputable secular priests of former times did live very slenderly, they were nevertheless supported by "livings,~' that ig, stable revenue derived chiefly from landed property. However, it must not be thought that the Congregation excluded mendi-cancy-~ dependence on alms for support--altogether. Neither did it sup-pose that religious who live on alms do not work. We should give it credit for a certain measure of realism. It is a fact that many of our, hardest work-ers are dependent~ on alms for their support; for instance, missionaries. It is also a fact that in certain regions of the world today, for instance, in those countries behind the Iron Curtain where the Church is permitted tO exist~ Jesuits can live and work only i~ supported by free-will offerings. And it is equally a fact that even in those regions of the world where the right of the Church to exist is recognized, much of the work we have to do as ministers of the Gospel does not have a financial remuneration attached to it. Thus, while we should by all means adapt ourselves to the work-ethic of our time, we should guard against pressing too closely the work-income ~'lbid. A II 4, citing Vat. II, PC n. 13, ET n. 20. A More Authentic Poverty / '197 nexus. It is my impression~ that the Congregation was fully .aware of the dangers of doing so; fully aware that it could introduce among us what usually accompanies the work ethic, namely the market orientation. It is not too far-fetched to foresee an evolution of attitude after this fashion: One begins by looking around for compensated.work in order to be able to contribute to the support of .one's community. One goes on to. prefer compensated to non-compensated work, the apostolic value of the Works being roughly ~equal. A gradual, perhaps a very gradual, an almost imper-ceptible reversal of values then takes place, whereby the value of apostolicity becomes Jsecondary to the value of marketability. Such a process might even end up with an alternative version of Surplus Value, namely, that wages represent an apostolic "surplus" over and above the apostolic value of the work itself, and hence that the better compensated work is the more apostolic work. Besides vitally affecting our choice of ministries, a too rigid interpreta-tion of the duty of ~"earning your.own' living and that of your brothers and sisters" could introduce in the Society--int~ormally, to be sure, but palpably another system of grades, one based not on presbyteral function but on earning capacity. Those engaged in gainful employment and thus con-tribute to the,support of the community would, for all practical purposes, be the professed; those not thus engaged, and hence are supported by the community, °would be the coadjutors. Such a stratification would tend to bring our c"0mmunity life down to a purelyhuman level, and may well have disastrous consequences: assumption of privilege by the ~gainful workers, frustration and resentment on the part of the "unprofitabl~ servants." Are these purely conjectural hypotheses, or do we perceive them even now, in certain parts of the Society, as a~ cloud no bigger than a man's hand? At any rate, we have from the'Congregation a reminder that the adoption of the work ethic--as, indeed, the adoption of any valid principle of action--involves risk. "The frequent engagement of Ours in professions and salaried offices it not without dangers, not only for the spirit of gratu-ity, but even, for the observance of common life itself. SuCh work is to be chosen only as a more effective means to the communication of faith, with-out thought of remuneration or of the privileges attached'to an office.''1° But to get back to the slender-means norm. Besides the fact that it.is means acquired by work, present hard work, rather than a stable income from invested funds, what other nuances can give it sharper definition? Perhaps this, that it should be a deliberate renunciatibn of consumerism, of "the appetite for enjoyment and consumptign of material goods" which, as the Congregation points out, "spreads everywhere and verges on a prac-tical atheism.''11 At least that. "At the very least, religious poverty should lOlbid. A III 8. 111bid. A II 3. 198 / Review ]or Religious,~ Volume 35, 1976/2 try hard to limit rather than:, to expand consumption,!~ :says. the Congrega-tion. 1-° ,.~ Another. nuance of the :slender,means norm is that our style Of life should be pitched at a level which enables and encourages us not only to work for t.h.e, poor but with ithe poor. In order to do that~ we need to i"acquire some experience of their condition;" and even of their "miseries and distress." This, the Congregation says, is a necessary consequence of the basic option we have made regarding our apostolate today, namely, "comniitment to the cause of justice and to the service of the poor.''13 It is with this nuance that the Congregation repeats ,St, 'Ignatius' injunction "to love poverty as a mother and, within the measure of holy discretion, experience some of its effects as occasions arise. Here, then, are some of the specifications that might make the slender-means norm of our voluntary poverty less abstract, more applicable to real, life .situations: Our style of life should be that of the worker rather than the rentier;.it should put out: of our reach the open-ended self-indulgence of . the consumer society; it should afford us some~direct experience of what the involuntarily poor of today have to put up with, so that we can the more realistically and effectively help them to help themselves. I must con-fess, however, that even so, for me personally, the slender-means norm remains somewhat 'fuzzy around the edges. And I think I see:the reason why in ~a statement in obliquo of the Congregation itself. It expresses regret that we have no other word.to designate the poverty of ~the.~)religous life except the word "poverty." This is regrettable ~because "poverty means very different things to different people.''.~ Indeed it does. Not only that; different people (and therefore different Jesuits) can hold their different views of poverty honestly and sincerely, without hy-pocrisy or cynicism. Further: the reasons why they hold these different views are not always myths but often realities. Thus, a Jesuit style of life really and truly considered poor in Australia or West Germany may well be considered really and truly :affluent in Ecuador or Indonesia; not neces-sarily because Ecuadorian and Indonesian Jesuits are religious of strict ob: servance, while Australian. and West-German Jesuits are religious ~ of lax observance; but simply because of~ the .difference between "a family of slen-der means" in the developed world and the corresponding family in the underdeveloped world. ~ Consider, too, the fact, or at least the possibility, that the type of apos-tolate to which a Jesuit is sent has, perhaps should have, an influence on his style of life; an influence that leads, perhaps inevitably, to a difference ~Z.lbid. A III 7. ~. ~'~lbid. A II 5, A III 10. ~Const. [287]. ~SDecree on Poverty A I11 7. A More Authentic Poverty / 19,9 in standard of living. Thus~ it might be asked whether the:style of life of Jesuits teaching in the Gregorian University~ in Rome should be, or can be exactly that of Jesuits working among the marginados in Venezuela. The classical.: precedents invoked by those who favor a difference are will known. Among ~he missionaries of the Old Society in India, was there not a sign~ificant difference in style of life between those who worked among the brahmins and those who Worked-among the pariahs? And what about the drastic change in style of life adopted by Xavier in Japan, when .he learned that the Japanese paid scant attention to mendicants but might possibly give a hearing to an hidalgo? Equally-familiar are the precedents brought forward by those opposed to recognizing such differences. Ignatius' instructions to Lainez and Salmer6n, papal theologians at the Council of Tre~nt, that they should not follow th.e life style of the Council Fathers, but should work in ,hosEitals as orderlies, preach in city squares without a Stipend, and beg their meals fromo, door. to. door. The example of Ignatius, himself, when, he returned to Loyola from Paris: refusing to stay in?.the ancestral castle with his brother, he chose to dodge in the town infirmary, considering it a better platform from which to. persuade his fellow citizens to the service of faith and~ the promotion of justice. There is, then, an ambiguity--a necessary ambiguity, as ,iLseems--in the general norms proposed .by the Congregation; and the Congregation. admits it. Not only does it recognize that poverty can mean different things. to different people, but in ;recommending "the insertion of communities among the poor" as '.'a testimony of love of the poor and of poverty to which the Church encourages religious," it calls attention to the fact that "implehae.ntation of this proposal will have to be different in our widely. diff,ering circumstances.''I~ What it is saying, in effect, is that the slender-means~ norm can mea.n different things to different communities., o Thp practical conclusign that follows from this is that it is up t'o the discernment of local and provincial_ communities to ensure that, taking into account differences in socio-economic context and apostolic commit-ment, our poverty is, and is .seen to be, the poverty of Christ. It is to the same practical conclusion that the Congregation comes in the other major areas of our life and apostolate.17.The crucial role which the Congregation assigns to discernment, personal, and communitarian, in the process of translating its decrees from paper to practice,~, clearly appears in that it recognizes discernment as an, ingredient of Jesuit identity,18 _.and giyes,~ex~, t.ended treatment to it as a feature of our community life.1:' ~ This brings us to what was mentioned earlier, as the first of the~ findings ~lbid. AIlI 10. ~TGC 32, "Our Mission Today," n. 71; "The Formation of Jesuits," n. 22. lsGC 32, "Jesuits Today," n. 19. ~ ~:~GC 32, "Union of Minds and Hearts," nn. 21-24. ~ 200 / Review 1or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 of the Congregation on Jesuit poverty, namely, the need for a renewal of the spirit of our poverty as conceived by St. Ignatius. A first observation and an Obvious one is that we h~ave vowed ourselves as religious to evangelical poverty, that is, the poverty proposed by the Gos-pel as a counsel of perfection~ and adopted by Christ~ himself. Hence, a first distinction, equally obvious, must be made between our voluntary poverty and the involuntary poverty that afflicts so large a portion of the human race. This inhuman and dehumanizing poverty, frequently imposed by in-justice, is an evil. It cannot be the object of a vow. It is not the poverty we embrace, it is the poverty, we must fight. Religous poverty is evangelical, not necessarily sociological. Not necessarily; which leads to a second observation. All religious in-stitutes are followings of Christ, but each religious institute follow~ Christ in its own way, according to the charism of its founder. Of St. Ignatius it may be said that his way of following Christ is pre-eminently the way of service, of apostolic service. We belong to a Society which~"'is founded for this purpose above all . the defense and propagation of the faith" :and any kind of ministry whatgoever that shall be "for the glory of God and the common good.''~° Our poverty, then, as everything about us, is-~or is meant to be apostolic. We embrace poverty not for its own sake, as another religious institute well might, but in function of the apostolate. St. Ignatius' phrase praedicare in paupertate--to preach in poverty--must, I think, be ~understood in this sense. We are to be poor that we may all the more effectively preach. The images in which St. Ignatius embodies his notion bf poverty seem to suggest as much. For Francis of Assisi, poverty is the Lady Poverty, the lady of a troubadour, a loveliness to be loved for itself alone. For Ignatius of Loyola, on the other hand, it is "the firm wall of rrligion"; fortifications designed to defend an intra muros, an area of peace in which to build the City of God. And we must love poverty, ~ertainly; but "as a mother": a mother who gives birth to a .life, nurtures and trains it, not to keep for herself but to send forth: a life that will be something of value in the world of me'n.21 In the world of men today, that something of value is, for us Jesuits, a commitment to "the service of faith, of whii~h the promotion of justice is an absolute, requirement.''z2 Hence, if the promotion of justice should i'equire in-some place, at some time, the "insertion of communitiesamong the poor," if it should summon us "to live among the poor, serving them and sharing something of their experience," something of their "miseries and Z°Form. Inst. n. 1. 21Cf: Const. [287], [553]. Z2GC 32, "Our Mission Today," n. 2. A More Authentic Poverty / 20_1 distress,'''-''~ then we .must. by all means do so, but with a clear understand-ing that such poverty is a degradation not an enhancement of the"human condition, and that we embrace it for the sole purpose of h.elping our fellow-men to free,themselve.s from it. In a word, ev.angelical poverty is not neces-sarily sociological poverty, but may demand acceptance of it in.function.of the apostolate. This brings us to a third observation, na~mely, that if our poverty is in function of the apos_tolate, then it is what might be called a "functional?' poverty. It is, in level, form and style the poverty that best serves our apos-tolic ends. Its measure is the tantum-quantum of the Exercises.-"4 That is why the Congregation begins its declaration on poverty with a "reflection on the Gospel in the light of the signs of our times"; or so it seems to me. It seems to me that the Congregation, faced with the task passed on to it by its predecessor of answering "the demands of a real and not pretended poverty," did not begin by asking the question "What should our poverty be?" but by asking the question "What should our poverty be ]or?'''~'' From its reading of the signs of the times, the Congregation brings for-ward certain apostolic objectives which our poverty should by preference bear witness to or serve. At a time when nations, groups, and individuals ha~,e come to realize that .the material resources of this planet.are limited, and have reacted to that realization by accepting as a fact of life that the race is only to the swift and the devil takes the hindmost, vowed poverty should be, and be a witness to, sharing. "On fill sides there is felt a desire to discover new com-munities which favor a more intimate interpersonal communication, com-munities of true sharing and communion, concerned for the integral human development of their members. Our lives, our communities, our very poverty can and should .have a meaning for such a world.'''-''~ That meaning and message will be effectively conveyed by "a poverty pro~foundly re~ newed . . . happy to share with each other and with ,all.'''7 In fact, "our communities will have no meaning or sign value for our tim.es, unless by their sharing of themselves and all they possess, they are clearly seen. to.be communities of charity ,and~ of concern for each other, and all others.''-~ Secondly, at a time when human .fulfillment tends to be equated with the possession, enjoyment, and consumption of material goods, vowed poverty should point in the opposite direction. It should point to. simplicity: :.~Decree on Poverty A II 5, A III 10. :4Cf. 'Spir. Ex. [23]. '-"~Cf. Decree on Poverty A 1I 3-5, A III 7. '-'Olbid. AlI 3. "-'Zlbid. A V 14. "-'Slbid, A II 5. 202 / Review [or Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 a "simpler way of 'life," ~"simple in community expression and joyous in the following of Christ," and by this witness openin~ up to men "a new liberty and another happiness.''-~'~ Finally, at a time when the struggle for justice often means a~ struggle against unjust establishments, a disengagement from the affluent and power-ful elites from which we have received, and perhaps continue to°receive beriefacti6ns, vowed i56verty must have and be-seen to have a detachment that makes it credible. "It will be difficult for the Society everywhere to forward :effectively the cause of justic~ and human dignity if the greater part of her ministry identifies her with the rich and powerffil.'''~'~ That most be the touchstone of our credibility: detachment. "The attitude of the So-ciety should b~ that of the Third Class of Men. fully as ready to abahdon as to retain, to the greater service of God,''3~ manifest' in a povei'ty that is "apostolic in its~active indifference and readiness for any service; in-spiring our selection of ministries and turning us to those most in need?':~°- In sum: the,selfless sharing of a simplicity of life that leads to integral human developm6nt and, by its realism, gives credibility to our efforts to remove the obstacles tO that development--this is what the Congregation proposes our poverty should be today, as discerned frorri the Signs of the times: ~But in qchat'~sense is this a renewal, a making,new again, a return to what the Society was when it was new? This brings us back to'a point which came up earlier: the crucial role given by'this Congregati~on to discernment. For if it 0is admitted that ours is a functional poverty, a poverty in function oLthe apostolate,~then the authentic practii:e of that~poverty will depend at any given moment on what we discern to be,the Conc?ete objectives~of our apostolate at that moment; in short, on "our mission today." And this adap-tation is truly a renewal--so, at least, it is argued because it is precisely what St. Ignatius did. ~ ~. What Ignatius did was to giv meaning and structure to" the practice of' voweff poverty which was in function of what he discerned: to be the apos-tolic needs Of his time. He then wrote Constitutions which not-only do not forbid but demand that we practice our poverty in the light of a' similar discernment. What was his discernment? We might illustrate how concrete it was by its apparent c6ntradictions, for it is a'well-known fact that the concrete and its demands do not always meet the requirements of abstract logic. Ignatius made Jesuits in professed houses live from day to day and "-'albid. A II 3, A V 14. :~°Ibid. A II 5. 3~Ibid. AIII 9; cf. Spir. Ex. [155]. :*°-Ibid. A V 14; A More Authentic Poverty / 203, even beg from door to door; but he allowed fixed revenues for colleges, that is, the houses where Jesuits were being trained to live from day to day and beg from door to door. He would not permit the sacristies of our churches to be supported by such revenues, but-the churches themselves, Works of art which might be considered verging on the lavish,.he accepted from, or consented to be constructed by, benefactors belonging to the affluent establishments of his time. He did not favor our men going on horseback, even if they were on a mission and in somewhat of a hurry; yet he decided that professed houses should have a garden for our men to walk in. A garden! Why, certainly; a garden in cities where the ordinary citizen took the air in open sewers 'which, by an exaggeration of courtesy, were called streets. But, after all, was not Ignatius following in this matter the example of Christ himself? Christ, who regularly skipped meals because of the poor, the sick, and the bedevilled who pressed around him, but who told treed Zacheus to come down from his perch and give hil~ lunch in his house, the ~ather well provided house of an officer,of the internal revenue. Christ, who did not even have a foxhole or a bird's nest where to lay his head, but who, on his way to or from Jerusalem, regularly stopped_ at Bethany, in the house of the opulent Lazarus; who did this at lehst once with his entire entourage, seemingly unannounced, for he sent Mhrtha into a tizzy trying to figure out how may courses to lay on for dinner. Christ, who told the Seventy-two he was sending out on mission not to bring a purse or an extra pair of sandals, but who also told them that wherever they found accep-tance they should eat and drink what was put before them, because the laborer is worthy of his hire. Christ, who had a rather expensive robe, woven without seam from top to bottom, as the soldiers gambling for it immediately recognized; but who died naked on the cross. What then? Is there a fixed poverty line calculable in currency values,~ valid for all times and seasohs, to which we must keep? It ~ems not. But~ in that case how do we make, how can we be sure that we are making our poverty authentic? It would Seem that our po~verty is~authentic in the hi'eaT sure that it is really and truly in function of our apostolate--as it was in the case of Ignatius, as it was in-the case of Christ. And because it is in func-tion of the apostolate, our poverty, is, in sum, a basic insecurity: the basic insecurity of men who can.be sent and are willing to. be sent on any mission, even without provision for the jou~rney and with no assurance of provision at the end of it. Our poverty level is the minimum required to enable a Jesuit theologian to enlarge the frontiers ~of~ theology. It is also the maximum allowable "~for a Jesuit engaged in~ the "lSedagogy of the oppressed" to.be credible to. the oppressed. And it is a willingness on the part of the theologian to be sent to the oppressed, and a corresponding willingness ~n the part Of the peda-gogue of the oppressed to join a theological faculty. ,Let u,s, g~ve the last w~rd 204 / Review for Religious, l/olume 35, 1976/2 to the 32nd,General Congregation: "The authenticity of our poverty, after all, does not consist so much in the lack of temporal goods, as in the fact that we live and are seen to live from God and for God, sincerely striving for the perfection of that ideal which is the goal of the spiritual journey of the Exercises: 'Give me only a love of you with your grace and I am ~rich enough, nor do I ask anything more.' ":"~ a31bid. AV 14; Spir. Ex. [23~,].' * * Saint Louis University Accent '76 Summer offerings of The Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University June 22 - July 30 Accent: Spirituality Continuing SLU's tradition of summer institutes in Spiritu~ality, . Institutes: The~ New Testament and Traditions of Spirituality; Assimilating the LitUrgical Reform: Pastoral Ministry in Th, eological Focus Inaugural Institute: June 7 - June 17 Toward An American Spirituality (Herbert W. Richardson) Accent: °Religious Studies Continuing SLU's on-g0ing M.A. Program in Religious Studies. 12 Courses: Contemporary Doctrihe, Biblical Studies, 'Theology of Religious Life. Accent: Religion arid American Culture Continuing SLU's tradition of exploring the relationship between religion and culture. Workshops: Alternate Futures For Religious Education In The United States; New Interpretations of American Catholicism. Plus: Study Tour To lsrael All institutes and workshops can be separated into two-week segments. For complete information write: Department of Theological Studies Attn: Director of Summer Programs Saint Louis University 3634 Lindell Blvd; ' Saint Louis, Missouri 63108 Our Servant Song to Yahweh: The Radical Yes Sister Mary Catherine Barron, C.S.J. Sister Mary Catherine is an English teacher at Rome Catholic High School. She had p~blished earlier, in the November, 1975 issue. Sister resides at 808 Cypre.ss St.; Rome; NY 13440. In a poem of soul-shattering dimension, D. H. Lawrence, a very ~sensual man, poses a series of very spiritual questions.,He asks: Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled, ~ made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing? dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change.1 His interrogation embodies the central Christological inquiry asked long before Jesus answered with His life. For throughout the centuries of salva-tion history it has been the haunting refrain of all who embrace the reality of the Servant Song. No matter where we turn in the Old Testament or the New, we find ourselves faced with its harsh delineations. ,Abraham must go through the annihilation Of family ties and holdings in order to found a nation from the child he nearly slays. Moses suffers privation, loneliness, and betrayal as he leads Yahweh's people to a land he never enters. David bears for-ever the searing knowledge of his sin as he witnesses its effects' upon his household and his kingdom. Hosea suffers the painfilled prostitution of his love; Jeremiah preaches renewal amid interior desolation; Isaiah witnesses 1D. H. Lawrence, "The Phoenix," The Complete Poems o[ D. H. Lawrence (New York: Viking Press. 1964). 205 206 / Review for Religious, Volume 35, 1976/2 to the emptiness of the Servant Who is to come. John the Baptist loses his disciples; Mary loses her Son; Jesus loses His life. What do we lose? In a past issue of Bible Today, Father Stuhlmueller reflects on the two-fold aspec't of vocation. He says: "Every vocation has an occasion, that which gets it started. Every vocation has a long search for the deeper mean-ing of what one started out to do.'' Somewhere between the ~'starting oc-casion" and the "deeper meaning" resides a radical "yes" on the part of the servant to what is so graphically outlined in the "Phoenix" poem. How do we say it--that radical "yes"? How did Jesus utter it? Through a total rendering of Himself, in faith, to His Father. He tells us: "Whatever the Father does the Son does too" (Jn 5:19). The Father's "radical yes" to His creation is manifested through the gift of His Son. The Son's "radi-cal yes" to His Father is manifested through the gift of Himself. There was nothing glorious about the human life of Christ. He paid dearly for every sign of spiritual power shown. He labored long and hard for infinitesimally small results. He traversed the length and breadth of His country only to learn that a prophet is never accepted by His own. He was condemned by leaders of the religion He fulfilled. And He

Part one of an interview with Matthew, Sarah, and Anna Colangelo. Topics include: Matthew attends school at Applewild in Fitchburg, MA. What it is like growing up in a house with parents who immigrated to the United States from Italy. Matthew's Italian identity while living in America and American identity while visiting in Italy. How life is different in the U.S. as compared with Italy. Matthew's thoughts on immigrants coming to the U.S. Matthew's grandmothers: one lives in the U.S. and the other is in Italy. The importance of carrying on Italian traditions. Matthew's religious beliefs and practices. The importance of education. Sarah discusses her education and area of study. Sarah gives a family history and discusses how life is different in Italy from life in the U.S. What it was like for Sarah being in Italy during the September 11th attacks. ; 1 INTERVIEWER: Kelly [unintelligible - 00:00:02]. It's Wednesday, December 26, 2001. We're at the home of Anna Canlangelo. First interview is with Mathew, her son, at 42 Leominster Road in Lunenburg. Tell me a little bit about yourself as far as when you were born, where you were born. MATHEW: I was born in America in [1997]. My parents both come from Italy. They both come from the town of [Corfinio] in [el Bruto] in Italy. I've gone to Applewild School for 10 years. We go to Italy every summer to see relatives there. I have probably -- three-fourths of my family live in Italy. So… INTERVIEWER: Tell me a little bit about the Applewild School. MATHEW: The Applewild School is in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. It's a private school from kindergarten to ninth grade. After ninth grade, usually kids apply to other private schools [unintelligible - 00:01:10] schools. But… I mean, there are foreign languages you take at Applewild; they're usually French and Latin. There's no Italian. But… INTERVIEWER: Do you speak Italian? MATHEW: I wouldn't say I'm fluent in it, but I can definitely get by, usually. INTERVIEWER: Dialect, or…? MATHEW: No. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Father speaks Italian in the home? MATHEW: Well yeah. They -- my parents speak it in the home. I mean, they speak it with my relatives all the time. Especially going to Italy, you know, I've really picked up the language. So yeah, I guess over 14 years, I picked up a little bit. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Can you write in the language, or is it really just speaking? MATHEW: It's just really the speaking. [Unintelligible - 00:01:58] either. INTERVIEWER: Uh-huh. Oh, I understand that your, your grandfather is an immigrant. He was born in Italy. Your father was born in Italy. And so how long has your father lived here in America? 2 MATHEW: He's lived here ever since my parents got married. I don't know the exact year, but I'd say… about 23 years, I'd say. He obviously speaks English. He picked it up fairly quickly. He went to school in the US for a little while. INTERVIEWER: Okay. So getting back to Applewild, I just wanted to ask you a few more questions about that. Is that a boarding school? MATHEW: No. It's not. That's a day school. INTERVIEWER: A day school. MATHEW: But usually after Applewild, kids go to boarding schools. INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm. But you are [Unintelligible - 00:02:49]? MATHEW: Yes. I would like to go boarding school too. [Unintelligible - 00:02:53] in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. INTERVIEWER: Top choice? MATHEW: Top choice. Probably St. Paul's or Exeter. INTERVIEWER: Exeter, is that where your uncle went? [Unintelligible - 00:03:05] MATHEW: He went to [unintelligible - 00:03:06]. INTERVIEWER: Okay. All right. So your sister went to Exeter? Tell me a little bit about growing up in Lunenburg as the son of really immigrant father. Do you think you had a different experience than your friends who maybe their parents are…? MATHEW: As opposed to friends that parents aren't immigrants? INTERVIEWER: Right, mm-hmm. MATHEW: Well, I mean, it's not as different as maybe one may think, but it's a whole -- in that cultural aspect, it's very different just for the simple fact that I go to Italy over the summer, and I travel maybe more than other kids might. But otherwise, it's not very different, because of course you're surrounded by a lot of people that are not from such a cultural background, they're not from -- parents are non-immigrants. So my life wouldn't be different. Maybe inside the house it could be different, but outside the house with other friends and just in society, it's not different at all.3 INTERVIEWER: Not different. What about in the house? How is it different? MATHEW: Well, in the house, I mean, you're talking Italian sometimes. Other families might not. Most of the families only speak English. Maybe someone else speaks another language, but they won't speak it in the house. So you kind of have that, like, dual side of the family. You have an English side and an Italian side, but when you put it together, inside the house, it makes the whole atmosphere very, very different than just a family that only speaks one language, only communicates in one language. INTERVIEWER: As well, the different traditions and the fact that your father did grow up in Italy, he obviously must have different notions of family life, of how a teenager should act, what a teenager should do. MATHEW: Well, it's funny. When he came to America, his whole idea about a teenager going -- because he pretty much was a teenager when he came to America. I mean, he was 20 some odd years old, okay? But pretty much plus or minus, like, five years, so he was still teenager, post-teenager age. So he really developed his notion of how a teenager should act in America. He's more open to the fact that teenagers should talk about different things just like adults should talk about them. So he's not a very restrictive parent, I should say. Maybe some other American parents are, but… INTERVIEWER: Do you see any differences though between your parents, your mother growing up here, all of those years growing up in America compared to your outlook? MATHEW: His outlook on…? INTERVIEWER: Maybe just on family. MATHEW: Well, in Italy, family is, like, really strong. They're all together. Like for instance, in Corfinio, all my family lives within, say, even like an acre, like really close together. I mean, immediate family, like grandparents, aunts. I mean of course, some other aunts live 4 in other parts of Italy, but it's very close family. In United States, maybe families could live across the country. There's no like boundary almost in United States for a family, different parts of the family could live. I think that's pretty important about Italian families is that they all are very closely -- all live very close to each other. INTERVIEWER: I guess I was wondering too—this is kind of what I was thinking of—is that your dad growing up in the confines of that small village. Here he is with aunts and uncles and grandparents and extended family living practically on his land when I [unintelligible - 00:07:30]. And the potential of his son and his daughter going away to private school; that must be very, very different thinking. MATHEW: Well, he's pretty open to the idea. He's always encouraged me and my sister to go to boarding school and to live away from home. I think that's pretty important for him to see us live away from home. I think it's important to us as well because we're never going to be able to live with our parents for such a long period of time, so I think it's important for us to go live outside the house. And of course, I think us, as a more Italian-American family, we're almost prone to spread away from the family when we grow up as opposed to an Italian family in Italy living really close together. It's kind of different in America. It's like we're the first generation of people who would take away from this Italian culture, I guess you could say, just for the simple fact that we're not full-blooded Italian. INTERVIEWER: That's interesting, because you really are full-blooded Italian, right? You're an American citizen. MATHEW: American citizen, but -- full-blooded Italian, but in the sense I'm not considering all of my principles are based in America. But yes, I'm full-blooded Italian. 5 INTERVIEWER: I think that your mother had mentioned that you used to [unintelligible - 00:09:08] Fitchburg, or Lunenburg, you -- Leominster right now? MATHEW: Lunenburg. INTERVIEWER: Lunenburg, okay. That you consider yourself, but you're an Italian; but when you're in Italian, you're an American. MATHEW: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Yeah? Can you explain that a little bit? MATHEW: Well, in America there's so many different cultures. There's so many different backgrounds of people from so many different countries, people come to America. It's funny that no one in America is actually considered American. I'm considered an Italian, or someone else an Irish, or whatever. But when you go to Italy, most of the people in Italy are considered Italian. So, when you go there, especially for me because I don't really speak Italian fluently, so I can't communicate, like, every single time to say something. So in that aspect, I am considered an American. It's hard to say if I'm really an Italian or really an American. So I think that's where you consider yourself an Italian-American from standpoint. INTERVIEWER: When you go back to Italy -- first of all, do you have cousins in Italy? MATHEW: Mm-hmm. INTERVIEWER: Do you ever wonder…? MATHEW: Oh, definitely. Life would have been much different. As I said before, your family, you would all be really close together; but in America, you're more spread out. I mean, just a whole life in America as opposed to in Italy, and I think that's why my grandparents came to America is that the whole point is that in America, you're free to do so much more and you have so many more windows of opportunity than in Italy. I'm not saying that 6 Italy is in any way like a Third World country or anything, because it's not in any way. It wouldn't be better or worse, you could say, because there's also many good things about living in Italy. But I'd say that living in America, it's just more open, and you're free to roam wherever you like, I guess, is a good way to say it. INTERVIEWER: Your family would probably have different expectations of you. Do you have someone that's about your age and male? MATHEW: Sure. Male? No. INTERVIEWER: No? Oh, so… MATHEW: I mean I have friends there. INTERVIEWER: So how were the expectations different? What are their goals compared to…? MATHEW: Well, especially in Corfinio nowadays, they don't really set a high bar for themselves, especially the males around my age. The education can be compared. It's not horrible, but like, it seems to me that they don't really strive for good education. Like for my cousin that's like a female per se, it can be like very opposite. They strive for like a good education, and they try to, like, do something with their life, I guess. But… yes, I mean the education in Italy is they pinpoint, you know. You go to a high schools that's for languages, or you go to a high schools that's for math and science. So that's just another way that you can say that in Italy, you're not really free to do what you want as much as before. INTERVIEWER: Is that because the jobs, there aren't as many jobs available? MATHEW: Well, there definitely are jobs available, especially in the north, but no, I wouldn't say that. I think they're just trying to push the kids towards a specific trade so that they can do much better. INTERVIEWER: Do you think that your cousins would stay in Corfinio [unintelligible - 00:13:11]? MATHEW: If they had the chance to move to the US? INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm.7 MATHEW: Right now, I'd say they definitely would not, considering their whole family lives in Italy, but -- and also they don't speak English that well. They have courses in English, but they don't speak it that well. They've grown up in Italy, but if you would say, like, if they had a chance to grow up in America as opposed to growing up in Italy, probably, I would say. Just for the fact that like America over there seems to be this whole big deal, coming to America is considered like -- America is something they don't know about, so I think, yeah, definitely. They would choose to love to grow up in America. INTERVIEWER: And do you think that they have hopes to stay in the village, or they want to move to the north where the opportunity…? MATHEW: Well, I think -- I mean, the size of the town is dwindling. It kind of used to be -- the population used to be as high as about 3,000. Now it's about 900. I mean, it's hard to say. You see a lot of kids around my sister's age moving out of the city, going to, like, Rome, places like that. You also see a few of them staying in the town and working in, like, little shop, like little restaurants or something. But I think, yeah, I think many people had kind of moved away from the town as opposed to staying in the town and preserving the traditions of the southern or the central… INTERVIEWER: Have any of your cousins had the opportunity to travel to America just to visit? MATHEW: Yes. My older cousin, Francesca, has come twice. My younger cousin, Augusta, she's about my age. She's 14. She has never come to Italy. My aunts have come twice. I mean, yeah, definitely. They come back and stay. They like coming to America. I mean, it's certainly different from living in Italy. But I think they would choose to live in Italy at this point rather than 8 coming to America, and I don't blame them. I mean, if I was in their shoes, I would also rather live in Italy than live in America. INTERVIEWER: Tell me why. MATHEW: Well, as I said before, your whole life you lived in Italy. If I was them, I wouldn't really feel ready to move to America; because in America, then you have to set up your whole life to get, like, find a house, just to find everything, whereas in Italy, you have everything all set up for you. INTERVIEWER: But beyond that, what about lifestyle? MATHEW: Lifestyle? I'd say that… I mean, if you live in Italy for that long, the lifestyle, you get used to it. For instance, at night, you're always outside. You're walking around there in the piazza. You're always doing something, whereas in America, at night you're always in the house. So in that aspect, social life, Italy would be more open; but in many other aspects, it would be really [ripped in], really closed off in a way. So for the social aspect, yeah, definitely I think at the end of the day, it's much more free, definitely. It's really comforting, and you get to see your relatives only for a month in a year. I would choose the social life in Italy over the social life in America just for the simple fact that it's much more involved and you can go outside and not worry about anybody doing anything to you or anybody getting in your way or anything. In Italy, they're all outside. Everyone is outside at night, and it's normal for them; whereas in America, it seems like no one goes outside anymore. INTERVIEWER: [Unintelligible - 00:17:41] events of September 11th. MATHEW: Sure. Yes, especially my father. My sister came back from Italy a couple of weeks. Of course, they feel bad about it, but I don't think their ideas… I don't think they stray much from the whole world aspect of what happened on that day. I mean, they're 9 certainly not only afraid but disgusted at Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden. And I think on a world [political] stage, Italy is becoming very forceful, and they've become a stronger nation in the world platform, I guess you can say. On their views, they're being heard much more. And, like, Italy actually sent in about 2,000 troops to Afghanistan, so they're actually pushing and working. They're taking initiative to create a stronger nation. So I think that's good. But their ideas about September 11th though stray much from ours. INTERVIEWER: What is your viewpoint? How did you feel? Do you and your friends [unintelligible - 00:19:08] and how the world has changed? MATHEW: Sure. Definitely. I mean, I personally don't worry a lot about going on airplanes now, but you realize how so many people would worry and be afraid, especially what happened a couple of days ago with the flight going to Miami. But it's definitely a scary thing. But I don't think you can really worry about it that much. You can't help that cause. They're doing that just for that simple reason. The terrorists are doing that just [unintelligible - 00:19:49]. So… yeah, I mean, my feelings about it are pretty strong, I believe. I definitely feel that United States took the right action against the terrorists. And I guess we just have to feel [unintelligible - 00:20:11] from there. I mean, we're in the process of it. We're not looking back on it yet. We have to wait a little longer to look back on it because we're still in the middle of it. INTERVIEWER: [Unintelligible - 00:20:25] what life must have been like for your grandfather [unintelligible - 00:20:30]. MATHEW: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Do you speak about that?10 MATHEW: Sure. Well, life was much harder then, especially during World War II. Especially for my grandfather coming to America and living, like now, it's a total change for him. I think that was the reason for why he came to America. I mean, you don't realize it now because Italy has improved much over the years. But if you look back and how life is in Italy back then and you compare it with the life in America back then, coming to America is a big step. And also like an economic and socioeconomic background standpoint, definitely. I think that's just the will to improve and the will to thrive in America when you're coming in as an immigrant, because if you're an American back then, you could take things for granted or you could say, "Oh yeah, I'm an American. I can see all these people coming in." It's like nationalism. These people shouldn't deserve this, but them coming in, they think, "Oh yeah, we really have to work," because they know that's what the people are thinking, the Americans that have lived in America for a longer period of time. INTERVIEWER: Well, that brings up an interesting point. How do you feel? Or are you complacent, do you think, than someone -- let's say, a father at 14? MATHEW: Well… I wouldn't say complacent, but I obviously have a much different life than he did. I'm living in America, and I've lived in America. And America itself has also grown over, like, these 60 years. But I wouldn't consider myself the people from America back then, when my grandfather came to America feeling that these people shouldn't be here or whatever, simply because I'm a grandson of a person who came to America. So it's kind of different for me to be more complacent or less complacent. In a way, I'm very similar to him, like, if thinking lies about the whole subject. 11 INTERVIEWER: So what about coming from nothing basically, and he wanted to secure money just to live, but now he's become viably successful? How does a grandson get that drive by that much? MATHEW: I guess the drive to succeed would obviously be less than maybe him coming to America, but you kind of have to build that up as you go along, and you can't let it be less. You can't -- you have to motivate yourself to do something. And you can't just say that just because he was more motivated, he would do better things than a person that would stereotypically be less motivated, because that person could motivate themself to be more driven to succeed. So I myself would obviously consider myself less driven to succeed than he was at that stage. INTERVIEWER: So getting back to your grandfather though, what kinds of stories has he shared with you about living in Italy and how difficult it was? MATHEW: It's funny, he never told me. He never exaggerated or said anything about how difficult it was. He was always talking about family, always talking about the good things about living back there. But then you looked back upon it and you say no, it couldn't have been that good. Okay. Or else why else would you come to America, you know? But yeah, his stories are usually good and not denouncing Italy, or not saying anything bad about Italy or the social life. I mean, his stories really form a foundation in my thinking about living back then in Italy in the '40s and even the '50s. I would say that it definitely has changed over the past 60 years, and that it's not as bad as people might have thought it to be. INTERVIEWER: Back to your friends or your grandfather when he [audio glitch 00:25:42] things like that, and you said you may have a different view of that; and the recent immigrants the people you may either hang out with or associate [audio glitch 00:25:50] thinking your grandfather coming over and having those… 12 MATHEW: You mean other people coming over? INTERVIEWER: Other people coming over. MATHEW: Sure, definitely. I'm not in the position to say that these people have a better chance than I do. There's no reason for me to be angry at these people from coming over especially if my grandfather went through that when he came to America. But I think it's a totally different world these days. You can still have your place with all the immigrants and all the people coming to America now—not that there's as many as before, but there are more opportunities in America today, so you still have the same amount of chances as you would have back then as an American living in America. I mean, even more. So I'm not sure you should really afraid that these people will take your jobs. You have just as much jobs open, just as many windows of opportunity open for you. INTERVIEWER: But there's also a segment of the population that they feel as though maybe [audio glitch 00:27:05] education, welfare, all kinds of social programs. MATHEW: That's tough to say. I mean, could you specify or be specific? INTERVIEWER: Well, I guess what I'm getting at is—and you may not know this because of course you're living within [audio glitch - 00:27:21]. If I were to interview another 14-year-old immigrant, parents, grandparents, maybe not going to a private school, they would have a totally -- they may [audio glitch 00:27:30] different perception of ethnic growth, most probably have a different attitude [audio glitch 00:27:37] they lived in. MATHEW: Yeah, sure. It's very similar to that last question of -- you know, you can't really say anything bad about the people coming in because they're coming for the same reason that my grandparents came to America. So you almost think that they should have this same right as any American living in America now. So I wouldn't 13 say that most Italian-Americans my age would think that they're, like, inferior or would think that they government is giving them too many opportunities, too many rights, because I couldn't speak for all of them. I personally don't think that they're being given too many rights. INTERVIEWER: [audio glitch - 00:28:26] grandmother like? MATHEW: My grandmother? Well, she's one of the Italian grandmas. She cooks. She's really nice. Italian grandmothers don't really stray. They're not very different from… She's funny. [Unintelligible - 00:28:50] adjectives. INTERVIEWER: Go ahead. Now, this was your mother's mother you're talking about. MATHEW: Yes. They're living in America. She's just, like, happy to be around. She's never down. She has a good attitude about things, I would say. It's exactly the same for my grandmother living in Italy. INTERVIEWER: I was going to ask you to compare them. MATHEW: Yeah. They're very similar, and you would think that considering they both come from Italy. She thinks that there's no reason to be angry at anyone. There's no reason to be mad. She's… INTERVIEWER: How do they spend their days? I mean, is there a difference in how they spend -- let's say their leisure time, your two grandmothers? MATHEW: Yeah. They cook a lot, spend time cooking. They're usually around the house. My grandmother in America goes out a little more, but usually they stay in the house and don't go very far. They'll move around. INTERVIEWER: [Unintelligible - 00:30:05] your grandmother in Italy have a lot of people coming in and out and more associations than possibly… MATHEW: No. INTERVIEWER: No?14 MATHEW: Definitely not. My grandmother in Italy I would say has more. Most of the people coming in and out of my grandmother's house in Italy are the relatives, or especially -- that's what I see when I go over there. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. MATHEW: But that could also just be because the relatives are brought together more because we're there. But I would say that my grandmother in America, she sees more people than my grandmother in Italy, or has more connections to social life, you could say, other people her age. INTERVIEWER: Or they're socially the same? And what about your mother, how can you compare your mother to your American grandmother? MATHEW: Well, I would say my mother is more American than my grandmother. Her ideas about life are just more, I guess, American. And I use the word "American" saying, almost like a stereotype of the first generation, second generation of immigrants coming in. She doesn't think in an Italian sort of way, like my grandparents, or my grandmother, especially. But I think she has kind of transformed in a way to the more open and more… I'd say open and… not as… it's kind of like redundant [audio glitch 00:31:57] mind, and not as specific and restricted way of thinking. Because in Italy, everything is the way it is, and nothing really changes. Whereas in America, with all the different cultures, there's so many things that change over the course of the year, so you can't really be thinking the same way throughout all your years. INTERVIEWER: Do you mean in the tradition? MATHEW: Old traditions. Yeah. Well, I mean just the fact that there's so many different cultures in America that you can't think in one way. You can't just think there's only Christmas because there's Hanukkah, whereas in Italy, it's mostly like yeah, just Christmas, 15 just like this and just that. So yeah, I would say my mother is the first generation of a family that's starting to think in the more American way, a truly diverse aspect. INTERVIEWER: And I interviewed many, let's say, elderly; and they either came over here for -- most cases they tell me that their parents worked so hard, or what happened is that their kids went on to school, they got better homes; but with that progress also comes kind of disassociation, and they're no longer at grandma's house sort of thing. So I'm wondering, how do you feel about that progress that your family has made? Or maybe you don't really see it? MATHEW: We talked about it a little before, at how, like, in Italy you're very close together. Coming to America, you kind of -- someone said before disassociate yourself from the family and from the traditions that it holds. I mean, I can't say a lot because I'm not my mother in that sense. I won't have a firsthand view, that view of that. But from viewing what I can view, I would definitely say that that is true. You kind of disassociate yourself from the Italian society, the whole Italian traditions. Whether or not you become richer, you have bigger cars and bigger houses, that's one thing. That can be true and that can't be true; but anyway, to think that you disassociate yourself whether or not you become richer or poor. INTERVIEWER: Oh, it's important to yourself to keep the traditions going on? MATHEW: Sure. I mean, there's no reason why that they shouldn't be continued. But they're no longer men traditions, the whole [unintelligible - 00:34:45] so long ago. Of course we still go to my grandmother's house for dinner once in a while, whereas in Italy they go every single night. INTERVIEWER: Every night?16 MATHEW: Yeah, definitely. Every night. Now, there's just not as many traditions to hold onto as there were back when my grandparents came to America… INTERVIEWER: [audio glitch 00:35:08] family hold on to? MATHEW: Well, we still go to my grandmother's house for Christmas. We used to go for Easter. Once in a while, we'll go for dinner. But that's not very often. I would say maybe a couple of times a month. INTERVIEWER: A couple of times a month. MATHEW: A couple of times a month. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. MATHEW: A month, like a few times a month. But I think our family is pretty close as opposed to other families of different cultural backgrounds. INTERVIEWER: How about religion? Do you go to church or belong to a parish? MATHEW: Well, it's hard to say I belong to a parish because I've been to about three different churches in the area; and I think it's an important thing to say too. This generation, my generation, I think we're not being pushed as much—or at least, I am not being pushed as much to go to church; whereas if like my grandmother, most likely because she goes to church every Sunday, pushed my mother to go to church, and I kind of get that from my mother because my mother wants me to go to church, but then you're just like, you know, "Why am I going to church?" And I think that's also from other kids living in America now. They also think, "Why do I want to go to church?" So it kind of rubs off on you, I guess. I mean, religion played a much bigger part before than it does now. INTERVIEWER: Do you consider yourself Catholic? MATHEW: I consider myself a Catholic. I don't consider myself an atheist. I definitely believe in some figure, some dominant figure out there, 17 but I don't go to church a lot. But I don't think that matters whether you call yourself Catholic just because you don't go to church every Sunday. I mean, they don't go to church as much as they did 60 years ago also. Now, over the summer when I'm there, I almost never see them go to church. Of course, some people still will, but it's not the norm to go. Maybe I'm not the one to be asked that question because I don't know so much about it because I'm not there all the time. I'm only there during one season. It's the season that no one has school, and everyone is just out doing things. No one has anything to do. Maybe certain questions like that might be better answered by my grandfather. INTERVIEWER: When you go back to Italy, I get the impression that your grandparents are there too? Do they travel back every summer? MATHEW: Usually every summer. INTERVIEWER: How's your grandfather treated in the village? MATHEW: He's not treated bad at all. He has friends just everyone else has there, and he has [unintelligible - 00:38:17] friends from a long time ago. He does hang around them all the time. He's treated as one of them when he comes back. He's not treated as anything different [unintelligible - 00:38:27]. But yeah, he's not treated any differently as if he just stayed in Italy for his whole life. INTERVIEWER: You talked a little bit about your grandmother and then your mother, and obviously, there's some rejection of values from one generation to the next. You talked a little bit about religion, possibly rejecting a little bit… MATHEW: Not really rejecting, it's just more like -- I mean there's a difference in rejection and just, like, it feels disassociation from it. I mean, I'm not rejecting religion. I'm not saying that I don't want to ever go to church anymore, but it's just more like it's almost 18 more natural than that. It's like we don't go because it's not our tradition. INTERVIEWER: Well, are there other values that perhaps you think differently than…? MATHEW: Sure. I mean, just the whole lot of things, I guess. On a more, like, social background I guess, maybe my grandparents—and you must hear this a lot—I mean, they would be more, like, strict as opposed to now, parents, especially my mother, are more lenient. They let you do more things, and I think that compensates for the fact that in Italy, you can go outside and do whatever you want but then your parents are so strict and saying you have to do this, that, do this, whereas I say -- yeah, it compensates. I mean, for specific values, I mean, it's hard to say because it varies from family to family. But to give you, like, specific values, I wouldn't be a good one to answer that because I can't compare it with anything, because I don't really know how life was like back then. INTERVIEWER: Do you feel as though your grandparents may have different expectations? MATHEW: Not at all, nowadays. Before, maybe, especially my other -- they would expect the male to do more with his life, I guess, you can say. Do more and just be more proactive and take the initiative and just go forward. But I can't speculate on it and say that all the time, males are favored and females aren't favored. And today especially, that's not the case. INTERVIEWER: So is your father's father is still alive? MATHEW: No. INTERVIEWER: Do you think your grandmother in Italy has… MATHEW: No. Not at all. INTERVIEWER: No?19 MATHEW: She's open to like new ideas, and I didn't know her and I haven't heard as many stories about her growing up way back 50 years ago, 60 years ago. But what I see from her is that she's no different than any grandmother living in America. [Audio glitch 00:42:00] speaking in the language, she doesn't differ from other grandmothers, especially my grandmother living in America now. [Unintelligible - 00:42:12], like, combine and become one. The Italian culture is starting to, like, disintegrate in Italy. Now, you see McDonald's coming to Italy, and just the culture is slowly and gradually becoming, like, destroyed. [Unintelligible - 00:42:28] as much as Italy, but France and Germany. INTERVIEWER: Are there certain things in this area that are considered Italian but then when you go to Italy… MATHEW: Italian food. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. MATHEW: Like if you go to an Italian restaurant, like in Leominster or whatever, maybe people -- especially people that aren't Italian, like, think it's an Italian. But in Italy, it's just not that they think it's not Italian. They take it [unintelligible - 00:42:54] as an insult to Italy. They're saying like, "Oh yeah, this food is Italian or whatever," or just like shrimp scampi or something, or just something like that they'd kind of be insulted. But I mean, in another country, if they try to serve American food, there's nothing to be insulted with because they don't really have a specific culture in America, because America pretty much, as I said before, is like a whole bunch of cultures just combined together, different sects and different parts of the town. INTERVIEWER: Anything else? Not just food, but… MATHEW: Not just food. But that's the one I can relate most with. INTERVIEWER: Okay.20 MATHEW: Of course, they want me to do well. No other parent, I mean, no parent would not want you to do well. But they don't -- yeah, I mean, that's their main focus. They want me to succeed. They want me to do something with my life and… INTERVIEWER: What would that be? Does that mean in your profession or your social life? MATHEW: I mean everything, especially growing up. They don't want me to just, like, be down and not do something with my life. They want me to succeed not only like a professional, like that standpoint, focus, but a whole range of things in life. It's pretty general. But take it for what it is, just life. They want me to succeed and become a better person. INTERVIEWER: What about educationally? MATHEW: Education is very important to my parents. They want me to have a good education. I myself, I want to have a good education. I think it's really important. It's almost like it gives you a certain power. It's pretty cliché when you say, like, knowledge is power. I don't take my education for granted. I want a good education, so I strive and I'm applying myself to what I'm doing more than things that doesn't focus on education throughout their life or throughout their childhood. INTERVIEWER: I think that you'll just keep going, but what do you feel that -- are there any expectations for you to work in your grandfather's business? MATHEW: Maybe for him, he might expect me to work there, but I don't expect myself to work there just for the simple fact that I'm not very interested in something like that. If I was, sure, I might work there; but it's like some things won't interest you so you just have to think of something else to do. I don't want to have to rely on that. I'll do something for myself and I'll do whatever. I'll work 21 for myself and I'll do something. I don't want to have to rely on him to provide me a profession. INTERVIEWER: Do you ever go in and learn anything about the plastic industry? Does he bring you in and give you a tour to show you how things work? MATHEW: Sure. I've been on tour for the facility. Both in Leominster—I haven't been to Dallas or Georgia. But I've been to the ones in Leominster, both the holiday and the [unintelligible - 00:46:31]. He shows me around. He showed me how things work. I think he wants me to be involved with the plastic company, like that's what he says to me. He's kind of like pushing me to go in there, but I'm not very interested in it. Sure, it could be a part-time job or something, but I wouldn't rely on that. But definitely, he gives me tours and he shows me around. Yeah, sure. INTERVIEWER: So what are your interests? MATHEW: European history. I wouldn't say modern European history, like World War II, but I would say more like 19th century or 18th century; English, and I'd say Math. I'm very interested in theater. I do a lot of theater outside of school, but I wouldn't want to become an actor. I wouldn't think it's very reliable to become an actor. Plus, also I'm very interested in other things, not just acting. But I think acting is more fun for me when I do other things, something else besides what you're doing for yourself, especially now, like education doing in school. We covered just about everything. INTERVIEWER: [Unintelligible - 00:47:54] your sister. I think so. Thank you. SARAH: Sarah Calangelo. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Hold on. This is the second interview with the Calangelo family. This is Sarah Calangelo and sister of Mathew. You're only here until the first of January and then you're back to Italy? SARAH: I leave the 3rd.22 INTERVIEWER: Leave the 3rd? What are you doing in Italy? SARAH: I got a Fulbright grant after my graduation from Brown. INTERVIEWER: No, it was. It was on standby. I'm sorry I have to ask you about it again. SARAH: Sure. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SARAH: I got a Fulbright grant to go to Italy and about culture, women's art, movies, that kind of stuff as well. Well, it was definitely part -- it sprung from both my studies during college, which -- I studied history, modern history; definitely also from stories about both my grandparents, all four of my grandparents, told me pictures that I saw. INTERVIEWER: [Unintelligible - 00:49:02] soft voice like myself, but you have to keep testing this to you. So what is the most interesting thing that you found best? I'm sure that there are many. SARAH: Right. I guess my argument is that although women were very much oppressed during the regime, there was a lot of space for women to have social clubs to create art, to read literature, to really create their own subjectivity in a sense. That's pretty much what I've been planning out, but a lot of it is through stories of women, no one that I know. INTERVIEWER: Do you have family journals or diaries? SARAH: It's mostly pop culture items, like I haven't really interviewed anyone because that's not really what my research is about. It's not about women's life during the war necessarily. It's about, like, beauty magazines, films, novels, pop literature during the regime. Not necessarily about interviewing the women that participated in the [unintelligible - 00:50:30] or any of that kind of stuff. I grew up in Leominster. We were in that house [unintelligible - 00:50:36], and then we moved here, maybe [unintelligible - 00:50:40]. 23 INTERVIEWER: It's the house that you lived in for 19 years. SARAH: 130 Grove Ave. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SARAH: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Fitchburg? SARAH: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: And then you went on to… SARAH: When I boarded for two years at Exeter, [unintelligible - 00:50:53] Exeter, and then I [unintelligible - 00:50:55], and then I transferred to Brown. INTERVIEWER: Tell me about your maternal grandparents. SARAH: They came here in -- they immigrated in [unintelligible - 00:51:04] exactly, but… INTERVIEWER: It's okay. Just tell me about them personally. What are they like? SARAH: My grandfather is very much like a working man. Everyday he's in the office, maybe even Saturdays as well. He comes home for lunch or does lunch at some of these three or four restaurants in the Leominster area, the same ones usually. But pretty much the way I've seen him during my life is very much like a routine sort of life going to the office, very active, working a lot. My grandmother is also really active for a woman her age, I think. [Unintelligible - 00:51:58] drives the car even now. Even if she has sort of pain or whatever—she just went through a surgery. She used to walk, really doesn't feel bad for herself ever, sort of -- doesn't work, but she did, I believe, when she first came here. But when my mom and my uncle were… INTERVIEWER: Always lived in Italy. SARAH: I guess first of all I would say my grandparents here have seen much more of the world, out of different countries, moved along a lot of different continents as well, whereas my dad's mom has pretty much stayed in not only her town, but I mean, not only her 24 region but her town. She's come here maybe, I don't know, once or twice. There's a major difference in just -- it's one side have seen more of the world than the other. My maternal grandmother has also worked hard, and I think she's like my other grandmother. She still has the sort of -- not really complaining when you have pain, keeping oneself busy. A lot of those things are definitely similar. Also, the importance of family, family gatherings, I mean, I think maybe the differences I see may have to do with just modes of transportation that are available here, financial resources, that kind of stuff. But a lot of the cooking, family, these sorts of things are definitely similar. INTERVIEWER: [Unintelligible - 00:53:46] your grandmother coming here to visit? SARAH: I do, but through photos, not from my own memory. The last I have [unintelligible - 00:53:53]. One is 19. There's a lot more pressure here probably with getting into a good college, [unintelligible - 00:54:03] of the resume, is pushed here not there necessarily. I feel like here you're expected to travel by either after high school or after college. A young person would have gone in some sort of trip, colleges offer exchange programs. They too have pretty much led not an insular life, but just travelled a little bit less. But I don't know if that has to do necessarily with their being from Italy. It's hard to put my finger on what that could have been. But usually when -- I mean, they may not have money to go on luxurious trips over the summer or to see other countries often, but they definitely -- I mean, they've been to Switzerland. They've been to France. The expectations aren't -- I mean, I feel like here we're expected to by 18 or 20 to go out with friends, to travel the world. There, it's a lot different. You may 25 travel with family or you travel with your class. Because Europe is so small, their class trips are actually to other countries. INTERVIEWER: What about the expectations for college? SARAH: They're definitely different because college there is a completely different phenomenon. It's usually a seven- or eight-year process, and it actually has much higher value than the American BA. It's pretty much equivalent to an MA. So it's different. It's considered much more intense. It's not privatized in Italy. You have to really do your work independently. You have to almost fight to make it through the seven years, where here you go to an American college -- but even a college that's big, pretty much your teachers are watching you. They're taking roll class in class. It's definitely much more cozy and easy in the sense that if you're slipping, someone's going to catch you. Here. There, no one normally cares. I mean, I'm taking classes there and you don't have to pay for them, you just sit in. I've never [unintelligible - 00:56:31] being around accounting university student that a lot of them do go back home almost free weekend that they have, which is really different from my experience here. American campus is one that sort of provides social activities, movies on the main green, these sorts of things. So you want to stay there during weekends. I even remember teachers maybe during orientations they say, "Parents, let your kids stay the first two weekends here on campus." It's really different in Italy. Most kids do go home because they have also a lot more ties to their village or to their small town, whatever. They almost can't wait to go back. I mean, I think it's changing. I don't want make Corfinio all of Italy. Do you know what I mean? INTERVIEWER: But it's a village except… SARAH: I mean, it's an incredibly small village, just like 900 people. But I've noticed just being in [unintelligible - 00:57:30], a lot of kids 26 are starting to move out now, got their own apartments by the time they're 25. Definitely, it's not to such an extent as here, you're expected to be out of the house at 18 and sort of -- I mean, I guess they know that it's a thing that exists mostly in France [unintelligible - 00:57:54] such schools. But yeah, I don't think they could have -- I think it's something difficult themselves going through. They are a lot more tied to their family I guess. Yeah, I think so. I feel sort of caught in the middle too, because I don't feel quite Italian-American either, because I consider that really different than just Italian. I feel like they're two different cultures. The Italian-American way of life has almost created its own, like, myth, its own idea of what Italy is like. But, like -- I don't know how to explain, I guess I can go to Italian-American events here but knowing that I guess just having that experience Italy firsthand, almost living there during the summers too, so I see the differences between Italian-American people here but what Italy really is now there. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe it a little bit more? SARAH: Like I feel like stuff in Leominster, like [unintelligible - 00:59:08] is sort of like very stereotypical Italian, and obviously are completely different from the reality in Italy. I feel like people that have been in the States their whole lives they've, never seen Italy, only heard stories from great grandparents or great grandparents, are going to have a skewed vision of what Italy is sentimental-wise, I guess. Or I mean, something I've noticed is that what people say is Italian-American or the Italian -- I don't know exactly where I'm going with this, but I'm just saying that it's a major difference, like two cultures are incredibly different. That for sure. Yeah. They 27 expect less of me because I may not know the language as well, but I feel like I'm competing with Italian [audio glitch 01:00:17]. INTERVIEWER: I'm thinking more of… SARAH: It's a lot. It's definitely much more strict there in terms of -- gender differences are much more… I mean, even liberal Italian women still have [unintelligible - 01:00:38] in their head of how to do certain things, how to behave. It's definitely a lot more sort of loose in the city than it is in the village, I've noticed. Definitely in Corifinio it's very limiting. As a woman, I feel that I can't really do much there. [Unintelligible - 01:01:02] late, if you're out with a big group of kids, there should be at least one or two other girls there with you because if you're only with guys, that would be strange. So there's definitely little rules like that. I feel like in the village especially, the men sort of control the social center. They control the piazza. They play cards there. It's sort of their space. And if I'm there past 2 or 3 o'clock, it's a little strange, like I should be home. [Unintelligible - 01:01:36] Yeah, I always sort of pose, like, hypothetical to myself, I guess— what would I be like if I lived my cousin's life? I mean, I guess I see the actual results from my cousins. I feel like I could have easily been them. INTERVIEWER: So what was the… SARAH: I mean, I don't think I would like it. I think when I was young I really liked the village. They give me freedom because you can stay outside until midnight. Everyone knows each other. It's completely safe. You like it until you're maybe 17 or so, and you realized that it's almost suffocating. It's always the same stuff going on every year. I felt like it would be too [audio glitch - 01:02:32] to leave the village, like the transportation systems aren't necessarily [audio glitch - 01:02:36]. 28 And you form most friendships there, which are really great; but at the same time, the loyalties are so strong there that you feel like you need to stay there. I mean, I understand why a lot of these Italian kids go back to their small town. So much of their personalities were shaped there. So many of their friends are there, like everyone knows each other so there's that very comfortable feeling there. I don't think I would like to live that kind of life. INTERVIEWER: Generally speaking… SARAH: Oh, I think they feel [thankful] as well. Definitely, my older cousin is starting to at this point branch out, have friends in bigger cities near the town. She definitely wants to go away to college. I mean, I think the entire -- all of this globalization that's taking place as well is affecting young people in these small towns too because they're on the Internet. They ponder their own sort of isolation too, so they see that they can -- they say, "Oh geez, well, that looks neat. I want to go to [unintelligible - 01:03:57] here. So maybe I'll go to this big city," or "Maybe next weekend I'll go to Rome." So they're starting to definitely have more options. INTERVIEWER: And how do their parents…? SARAH: I mean, I feel like my aunts are pretty open to that kind of thing. They [unintelligible - 01:04:10] go places that they can. I mean, my grandmother didn't want me to come back to the States for this vacation, because she was really scared about the terrorist hijacking, probably planes in general. So my grandmother is definitely much more -- because she hasn't travelled too much, she has a lot more fears about traveling because maybe she hasn't really [unintelligible - 01:04:34] very much. So she's a lot more, sort of, nurturing and scared about younger family members traveling. But I think she accepts it as well. She understands it's a natural part of my life to move around like this. INTERVIEWER: … certain age that you're expected to get married, or even if you…29 SARAH: I don't think so. I think the village – people that stay in the village their entire life are people that haven't… that did not get a university diploma. But stay there now—I'm talking now because this wasn't the case 20 or 30 -- that they stay there now are probably going to get married with other people either in a nearby town somewhere in the [unintelligible - 01:05:27] area, probably going to work. If the woman doesn't work, she'll be a housewife, just have kids. But it's the same as a small town in the States too. If you didn't go to college, you're going to work or just going to start a family for the hell of it, because you're bored, because it's just the way things are. I don't think there really is any different from a small town here. I think that actually, a lot of women there are starting to marry later. Most kids are marrying in their early thirties, whereas here, I'm seeing a lot more early marriages among even my friends. Now, in Italy the [mortality] rate is negative or close to negative. A lot more kids, even kids from the village, are getting married later. They're enjoying their single life for a period of much longer. I have a lot of friends that are 27, 28, and they're in relationships but they're not married; and they're going to think about having a family later on. Definitely, these people are in long -- like for instance, these people are in long relationships that span, not going away to Bologna or Rome or Milan for school. So kind of in this town and this is your boyfriend, and you're going to get married in five years to this person and start a family, but may have to live in here as well. It's definitely strange. I felt really out of the loop, and I mean, I was reading in my room and got a phone call from a journalist. And it must have been maybe 45 minutes after the first time hit. Well, I want to know an American response to [audio 30 glitch 01:07:30]. I want to know what Americans think. I don't have any problems with other Americans. I had no idea, and of course, that's not something that you would imagine. You wouldn't sort of actively think of as -- so I said, "What do you mean? Do you mean like the embassy attack the past year in Africa? What are you talking about?" And she goes, "Oh wow, you don't know. I don't even want to tell you over the phone. I feel so bad. Why don't you turn on your television and just watch TV? Something horrible had happened." So I was sort of scared. I turned on the television and watched, and then she called me back in about two hours' time and wanted to get my response. I mean, I immediately felt more American than Italian when it happened. You sort of -- it was a time when I sort of realized my loyalty's to the States, and I sort of wished that I had been with my family at the time. I told her that it was terrifying. I told her that I was trying to track down friends in New York, but that my family members were all safe. In Italy? The Italians are very sympathetic of what happened. They were constantly talking to me about it; they wanted to know how I felt about it. And from the beginning, they're very much a part of the war effort, if you want to call it that. But there were a lot of [unintelligible - 01:08:59] left the city. There are a lot of peace demonstrations, anti-war demonstrations. But generally, the people around me were very sympathetic asking me, "How do you feel exactly? Are your friends okay? Is your family okay?" I definitely want to come back to the States and I don't think I would -- living in Italy has been great, but it's also sort of opened my eyes to a lot of things that I don't like about Italy, or don't like being a woman in Italy, for instance. I think right now I'm ready to come back here. I mean, after July, after my grant is over. I 31 think my place right now is here for at least a couple of years and then work and other things. But I wouldn't mind doing -- who knows what the future holds? I may live in Italy. I may live somewhere in Europe or elsewhere, but I think definitely right now, I'd like to live in the States. I don't think it really had much to do with September 11th. If anything, I feel safer in Europe than I do here. I felt incredibly safe in Bologna, whereas I was worrying about my family here, especially with bioterrorism and getting scared about water [unintelligible - 01:10:16]. There, I really wasn't too worried about it. Yeah, I mean I feel like the way I grew up and the values that my parents have are definitely slightly different from other people's parents. I feel like, especially my dad, pushing the whole independence thing far less than other parents do. I have a lot of friends that really -- they go home, but their bedrooms had been changed into a parent's office. I know that my bedroom here will pretty much always be my bedroom and that all of my old clothes will be in the closet, and I won't have to ever really clean out. I feel like most of my friends have moved all of their junk out of their rooms and set up an apartment elsewhere. But even when I do have an apartment -- say, I had an apartment in Providence. Even when I do have an apartment, like, my home is still here, and my home address is still 42 Leominster Road. That will probably change in five years or so, or less, but it was far later than my friends. INTERVIEWER: Do you think your friends [unintelligible - 01:11:35]? SARAH: About me? INTERVIEWER: Yes. SARAH: I mean I think some of them, my very close friends, certainly see that parenting has been maybe a little different in this house. But a 32 lot of my friends are also [unintelligible - 01:11:51] Chinese immigrants or Russian immigrants or et cetera, et cetera. So they have had similar experiences. So we may get together and just talk and laugh about the different values that they have. But my dad is very like family-oriented. When I do come back home, he wants me to stay home. He doesn't want me to immediately take off and go to New York with friends or back to Providence to see old college friends. He wants me to talk to my brothers and to sort of get back into the groove of maybe family life before I left to go to boarding school. He wants to sort of prove that kind of -- I feel like both of my parents are a little protective. If I take a car out or if I go out with friends, they still want me to call when I've arrived. That's a little difference from some of the things that my friends do. My friends don't necessarily have to call once they arrive at their destination points. I mean, small things, I probably take them for granted. That's why it's so difficult to kind of list them, but we eat dinner together at the same time usually most of the time here. That's changing now a little bit as everyone, as my dad is becoming a little bit more Americanized. My mom has started busying herself with the museum, with Fitchburg State, so she's often out of the house. But definitely when I was younger, we would eat lunch and dinner together. And we talk and would be a time for us to talk to go over each of our days. INTERVIEWER: What are the…? SARAH: … the holidays. Like Christmas is incredibly important in our house, what we eat. Pretty much they're trying to -- I feel like they're trying to preserve what they had in Italy; and in the end, it's not very different than -- I mean I spent the New Year's and Christmas in Italy with my dad's side of the family, and it's very similar. The meals are almost exactly the same. The fish, I've 33 eaten [on then], the dinner on Christmas is pretty -- they're all for sure. INTERVIEWER: Anything else… SARAH: It's like religion, we have much more part of daily life. The calendars there, I mean just the small detail, the calendars there have all the saints' days written on them. The saints, definitely the saints. And so I mean, that's a perfect example of just like every day you wake up and you look at the calendar, you see like a saint's name. It's just part of -- it doesn't mean that they're more religious. It's just a much more a part of their daily life. I would even say that because it's so a part of their just daily fabric, the fabric of their daily life, a lot of them, it's almost become they take it for granted. It's becoming much more of a cultural thing but not necessarily a spiritual thing for many. I mean, I know friends in Italy -- I mean, from my experience the youth don't necessarily go to church. They go through the motions, but they don't talk about religion. Here, I feel like it's your -- because you have much more of a choice in what religion you choose to follow or just -- your options of worship are more vast here. I feel like once you do choose that path, you're going to do it with a bit more intensity. But maybe [unintelligible - 01:15:50] because I don't really go to church. I haven't gone to church. [Unintelligible - 01:15:54] something and when I do, unfortunately it's only to really make everyone -- my dad's mom is religious, but she doesn't go to church every Sunday by any means. They say prayers at night. I mean, I feel like she feels the religion very much, I can tell. She'll have, like, pictures of little saints arranged in the house with little religious house frames. But she doesn't necessarily go to church. And I feel like people here in the States sort of want to equate going to church with religious fervor or with Christian morality or Catholic 34 morality. I think there, a lot of people, especially the older women, may not go to church necessarily, but it's so part of their way of thinking. I feel like here, it's become like a community thing, Church [unintelligible - 01:17:09] events, like, that people do to kind of get all the youth together. It's almost forced here. In Italy, it's very natural, a way of life. I feel like the youth now in Italy is less involved than my parents or my grandparents. I don't think so. When I was younger, I definitely thought that I should, because gosh, if I married an American, then how would everyone understand each other? But as I'm getting older -- I just thought that. It wasn't -- I don't think, a pressure. But I just thought, "Well, if everyone is speaking Italian at this table, and when my husband's home, you know, what's he going to do?" Now, I don't feel that way, not really. I feel a little pressure to marrying an Italian. It would be nice, especially for my dad's side of the family, to understand what any sort of husband is saying, my future husband would say. But it wouldn't change my plans to… INTERVIEWER: It was working, and then all of a sudden it slipped to the… SARAH: Both my grandmothers were never necessarily dependent from their husbands. They went from being [unintelligible - 01:18:50] by their fathers to be [unintelligible - 01:18:52] by their husbands. That doesn't mean that they were unhappy by any means, but I feel like my mom is very different from my grandmother. And she makes more financial decisions. And I'm even more independent than that in the sense that I travel around, [take life] here and there, visit friends, things that probably my mom didn't do when she was immediately out of college. I mean, I feel that -- I don't feel any pressure to get married even. I mean, that's how, I guess, extreme things have gotten around here now. 35 Really, because that sounds a little harsh, but I learned how to make -- like I know the cooking at this point, like I know how to cook meals. And I love Italy. I'm there studying for a year. It's not that I don't like Italy, but I don't have this obsession to…/AT/jf/fu/es

Issue 52.6 of the Review for Religious, November/December 1993. ; Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone:314-535-3048 ° FAX: 314-535-0601 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ° 5001 Eastern Avenue ¯ P.O. Box 29260 Washington, D.C. 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ° P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Single copy $5 includes surface mailing costs. One-year subscription $15 plus mailing costs. Two-year subscription $28 plus ~nailing costs. See inside back cover for more subscription information and mailing costs. ©1993 Review for Religious review for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Ass#tant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Michael G. Harter SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Sefin Sammon FMS Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1993 ¯ VOLUME 52 ¯ NUMBER 6 contents 806 feature Religious Life and Conversion Language Dennis J. Billy CSSR provides a language of conversion so that religious might more readily integrate their individual lives with their corporate existences. 817 828 835 842 spirituality Are We Relating to God in a New Way? Gerald M. Fagin SJ proposes five polarities which are always present in our spiritual lives. Desire, Asking, and Answers A. Paul Dominic SJ emphasizes the importance of praying from our desires by exampleg from the Bible. Companionship Spirituality in Ruth Judette A. Gallares RC explores covenantal faith through the symbol of companionship portrayed between Ruth and Naomi. The Spirituality of Surrender John P. Mossi SJ proposes three models of a spiritual surrender-ing as a means of coming home to God. 849 865 ecumenism The Ecumenical Vocation of Religious Jeffrey Gros FSC highlights the importance of ecumenical for-mation and collaboration for women and men religious. The Religious Call of Ecumenism Jude D. Weisenbeck SDS suggests ways in which the needs of the ecumenical movement can well be met by the resources of religious communities. 802 Reviezv for Religious 870 875 ministry Frustrations--Jesus' Ministry and Ours James Martin SJ seeks a fresh perspective on dealing with frustra-tions arising from ministry to the poor. Jesuit Spirituality and Catholic Higher Education Claude N. Pavur SJ stresses the importance of an Ignatian spiritu-ality, invigorating the efforts of educators in the Jesuit tradition. poverty 886 Option for the Poor: God's Pedagogy Marcello Azevedo SJ analyzes the meaning and life-applications of the phrase "option for the poor" in terms of our faith. 893 Who Evangelizes Whom? The Poor Evangelizers John F. Talbot SJ explores the evangelizing potential of the poor. 898 a life of promise Two Cheers for Celibacy William McDonough clarifies the meaning of prie, stly celibacy by combining Robert Bellah's use of institution and Thomas Aquinas's moral vision. 911 Charismatic Renewal and Consecrated Life 920 Susan Rakoczy IHM reflects from a r~ligious-life experience of twenty-five years on the blessings of the charismatic renewal in regard to consecrated life. Death as a Community Event Annette Frey SC shares the stqry of a friend's illness and death as an integrating factor in community life. departments 804 Prisms 927 Canonical Counsel: Lumen Gentium's Chapter 6: Religious 933 Book Reviews 951 Indexes to Volume 52 November-December 1993 803 prisms ~oho are the people by whom you have been most influenced? Many of us must at one time or another have tried to answer this question for ourselves or at the inquiry of others: Precisely which people have strongly influenced my life? Some may quickly name their fathers and mothers; others go on to name favorite teachers or special friends. Still others may name people in world affairs or in the worlds of sports, the arts, or medicine. Probably not very many of us spontaneously turn to the men and women whom the church has declared holy and named as outstanding members of the communion of saints. Yet the reason why the church calls our attention to these people is to allow us to see in other followers of Christ what we hope to become. Just as the church of the Eastern rites emphasizes icons that give us a glimpse of the world of the holy, so the Latin-rite church proposes the study of the lives of ~aints so that we may be inspired by them and formed and then moved along a path of holiness as Jesus' apostles. Perhaps at one time many of us did not appreciate how the more medieval theology of mediators needed updating like so many timebound ways of expressing our faith and its practices--the process mandated by Vatican II. Now it seems that we stand more ready for and in need of the kind of influence which our fellow Christians, can-onized and otherwise esteemed, can exercise in ore: lives. No longer do we, almost superstitiously, look to Mary or other chosen saints for special favors. Instead we take our direction from the Vatican II understanding and descrip-tion of Mary's place in the communion of saints under the 804 Review for Religious specially privileged titles of mother and first disciple. And so we look to our favorite men and women saints particularly in their relationship to us as brothers and sisters and as our fellow disci-ples. If Christians in general are exhibiting a greater need for this kind of influence in their devotional lives, even more might men and women religious look to the holy ones special to their con-gregations for living the kind of discipleship charismatically appro-priate to their following of Christ. ~;Vhether it be the contemporary retelling of saints' lives or recapturing their spirit in new artistic portrayals or recovering prayers of theirs that are appropriate to our times--there still are ways for holy men and women to touch us in our daily living. We may more readily find light coming to us in dark moments of our experience from the uncovered lamp of these human lives than from any theoretical studies or documents. We may also find ourselves more energized for entering into the evangelizing mission of Jesus through the radiance of their inspiration and example. Probably even more surprising than our slowness in naming saints as major influences in our lives is the not infrequent omis-sion of even the name Jesus. As we enter into the Advent and Christmas seasons, maybe more fully than Jesus being "the reason for the season," we might say that the reason for the season is for us to remind ourselves that Jesus is the unique influence upon our lives all year long. Jesus is the one who has influenced how we live, how we pray, how we interact, how we die. Jesus is the one who calls us to a way of following; Jesus is the Teacher, and we all remain the lifelong learners, the ones in continuing formation. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves another question. Is it true that for us not to name Jesus as the great influence of our lives is more than just a memory slip? Does our answer uncover for us that our everyday, busy lives are being spent on behalf of lesser gods than the God Incarnate? The question is worth more than a Christmastime reflection. That the peace and grace of God, Emmanuel, be richly yours is the wish of all the staff of Review for Religious. David L. Fleming SJ November-December 1993 805 DENNIS J. BILLY Religious Life and Conversion Language The crisis faced by many of today's religious goes beyond the breakdown of their founding myths and the resulting lack of purpose in their corporate existences. While many (I daresay most) are at least peripherally aware of having lost in recent years something of great importance for their lives as professed religious, they usually have no idea whatsoever of how to retrieve it or what to put in its place. Nor are they very articulate about just what it is they have lost and why precisely they want it back. Confronted by their own aging, a steady flow of ygunger members from their ranks, and fewer and fewer vocational prospects, many have become disillusioned and desire some sort of immediate respite from their mount-ing misfortunes. They pursue it in any number of ways. Some display a nostalgic desire for the not too distant past--"the good old days," as.they are called, which were probably never quite so good as they now seem. Others resign themselves passively to their "inevitable corporate extinction," an increasingly attractive choice for many. Still others sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of confusion and doubt about the relevance of religious life in the postmodern world--which does nothing but com-pound an already complex and. difficult situation. Regardless of the motivations behind them or their point Dennis J. Billy CSSR is author of the recently published Evangelical Kernels: A Theological Spirituality of Religious Life (Mba House, 1993). His address is Accademia Alfonsiana; Via Merulana, 31; C.P. 2458; 00100 Rome; Italy. 806 Review for Religious of origin, none of these responses are adequate to the crisis at hand. In order to move forward, today's religious must choose a path other than that of denial and escape. At this critical point of their history, what they need is a language of conversion that will enable them to give an honest account of themselves, will help them to integrate their private lives with their corporate existences, and will show them how they, as a group, can con-front the cynical doubts that writhe beneath the surface of their professional respectability. Conversion Language A language of conversion must speak to both the mind and the heart. It must make sense to.people in a way that will satisfy their intellectual longings. It must also motivate them to exanaine their situation in life with renewed strength and vigor--as if with dif-ferent eyes. More importantly, it must reshape their interpretation of experience so that, through the action of divine grace, they see their denial for what it is and then find it possible to realign their personal powers of commitment with those of the religious insti-tute to which they belong. Only from such a realignment will dusty and creaky institu-tional structures and the people who stubbornly inhabit and main-tain them have any hope of being refurbished for a brighter future. Failure to achieve this renewal of human heart and human social structure will result only in more of the same problem: individ-ualism amid corrosive social ills; continuing loss of confidence in and commitment to one's religious community; the persistence of the "double life" syndrome that has plagued so many first-world congregations since the Second Vatican Council. By most assessments, the very future of religiou~ life is at stake. The thesis is clear: the circular relationship between individ-ual and corporate change must come to the fore in any further dis-cussions about authentic conversion, particularly with respect to those who have dedicated their lives to following the evangelical counsels. "The whole cannot be understood without its parts; nor the parts without the whole." This fundamental problem of inter-pretation-- the so-called hermeneutical problem--lies at the root of the present crisis in religious life. To deal with it effectively, a language of conversion must address both the individual and the November-December 1993 807 Billy ¯ Religious Life and Conversion Language group, as well as their ongoing mutual relationship. It can do so, however, only if it encompasses (1) a sound Christian anthropol-ogy that stresses the dignity of human persons on every level of their existence, (2) a persuasive philosophical link between the personal and the corporate wholes, and (3) a recognition of its own inherent limitations with a corresponding openness to the re-creative presence of God. Without these important ingredi-ents of change, no language of conversion, regardless of how elo-quent or comprehensive it may appear, will be adequate to the enormous task at hand. A Sound Christian Anthropology The connotations of the phrase "a sound Christian anthro-pology" need some explaining. An "anthropology" may be described as a specific and coordinated assessment of human exis-tence. It is "Christian" insofar as it receives its inspiration from the insights of Christian traditions. To the extent that there are numerous interpretations of the meaning of Christianity, there are also varying Christian anthropologies. In this essay, a "sound" Christian anthropology is understood as one which integrates four fundamental dimensions of human existence: the physical, the rational (or mental), the spiritual, and the social. All of these are found ih the teaching of St. Paul and are made explicit in the juxtaposition of his doctrine of the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12- 31) and the tripartite understanding of the person found in such verses as this: "May the God of peace make you perfect in holi-ness. May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body (soma), irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Th 5:23). Together these verses express the Pauline understanding of the complexity of human existence and qualify as a solid basis for further theological reflection. Of what do these basic dimensions consist? People's spirit (pneuma) is the deepest part of their being. It yearns for God with unutterabl.e groanings (Rm 8:23) and has the potential to be lifted up into intimate communion with the very Spirit of God. Ever elusive and difficult to describe, it is that aspect of human exis-tence which affirms each human person as capax Dei, that is, capa-ble of God. People's soul (psyche), by contrast, is their animating principle of life. It encompasses, not only the rational, but also the emotive, nutritive, and reproductive sides of human existence. 808 Review for Religious Rational activity, the soul's highest and noblest function, enables people to wonder about the meaning of life and to think criti-cally about its problems. People's bodies (somata) are the material extension of their existence. Unlike the Pauline term for "flesh" (sarx), which has close associations with a life of sin leading to death, soma can be used for good or for ill and is hence a morally neutral concept. Finally, people's social dimension is a constituent part of their anthropological makeup. A human per-son. arises out of and exists in a social context and cannot be understood apart from it. For Christians, the primary social arena in which they live out their lives is that of the Body of Christ as it exists in its various expressions such as the family, the parish, the diocese, and the church universal. The interrelated nature of these various dimensions of human existence cannot be stressed highly enough. Spirit does not exist apart from a person's body, soul, and social relationships-- nor vice versa. Not one of them can be separated and treated in isolation from the others, as if a person were an arti-ficial composite of four disparate parts. A continuous and unbroken anthropo- For Christians, the primary social arena in which they live out their lives is that of the Body of Christ as it exists in its various expressions such as the family, the parish, the diocese, and the church universal. logical relationship exists among all of them. So strong are these bonds that not even death can sever them completely and pre-vent their ongoing functioning. To do so would mean the ulti-mate dissolution of the human person and the corresponding passage from being to nonbeing which the Christian faith so strongly rejects as a possibility of human destiny. That is not to say that a certain priority of relationships does not exist among these various anthropological factors: spirit relates to soul as soul to body. Balanced and healthy relationships among these affect the way in which a person interacts with others. A sound social environment, in turn, produces profound healing effects on a per-son's bodily, spiritual, and mental well-being. This circular rela-tionship is important for understanding the present crisis of religious life, which now can be understood as involving not only November-Deconber 1993 809 Billy ¯ Reli~ous Life and Conversion Language the vast array of dysfunctional social structures, but also a deeper relational imbalance operative on the most basic levels of human existence. Linking the Personal and the Corporate Social structures are both products of the mind and a means through which human intelligence and human spirit are shaped. ' When functioning according to justice, they give all people their due and educate them in virtue. At other times they work to the benefit of a privileged elite at the expense of an oppressed under-class. The interests of justice are not adequately served when existing social structures help to perpetuate a mentality of control that legitimizes the unjust treatment of other human beings. Such structures are sinful and need to be changed. When they are not (as can be the case in religious life), it may very well be simply because those involved feel overwhelmed by the immensity of the task before them. Such feelings can easily lead people to a sense of helplessness or even indifference about their ability to influence their surrounding social structures. An implicit dualism then arises in the private and social spheres of religious life: individuals grad-ually lose ownership of their ruling structures; the latter go on unchallenged more out of a paralyzing lack of interest than any-one's stubborn resistance to change. One way to overcome this implicit dualism is to introduce the related concepts of microcosm and macrocosm into the cur-rent vocabulary of religious life. Rooted in the primitive Greek idea of the human person as a small-scale model of the cosmos, this distinction was eventually adapted by Plato as a way of describing the relationship of individuals to the society (see Republic, 441c). According to this adjusted version, the underlying structure of human society is nearly the same as that of the human soul. The rational element corresponds to the republic's govern-ing class; the irascible (or spirited), to its martial orders; the con-cupiscible, to its productive masses. As "the human soul writ large," society offers individuals not only a particular place in the " social hierarchy, but also the opportunity of seeing themselves projected onto the collective whole. Individuals find their reflec-tion in the whole; the whole, in the individual. Plato's application of the microcosm/macrocosm distinction is not relevant in all its details to religious life in its contemporary 810 Review for Religious ¯ Western setting. His assertion, however, of an underlying struc-tural continuity between individuals and the society to which they belong has much to its credit: (1) it preserves the circular rela-tionship between individual and social functions; (2) it allows for certain structural similarities between human beings and their primary social environment; and (3) it maintains the distinctive-ness of individuals in the face of the larger community. When combined with the Christian anthropology outlined in the pre-vious section (as opposed to the Platonic one with which it is nor-mally associated), this seminal idea can help individuals in today's religious communities to regain their sense of identity with the larger whole. The analogy would go something like this: both the human person and the religious community possess spiritual, mental, physical, and social dimensions. The relationships among the various dimensions within the human person are proportion-ate to those in the religious community (for example, human spirit / human soul = community spirit / community soul, and so forth). Cross references also remain proportionate, but only with regard to corresponding terms (that is, human spirit /communal spirit = human soul / community soul, and so forth). In all cases the rule of proper proportionality applies (a/b = a'/b'). The strength of this approach is that it maintains a fundamental continuity between the underlying anthropological structure of individuals and that of their religious community. And it is able to do so even when taking into account the limitations of the language it uses to describe the quiet, abiding presence of God in the life of the . community. The Silent Presence of Grace One of the underlying dangers in the current discussion about the future of religious life is the tendency to substitute lengthy theories for the simplicity of God's intervening grace. Uneasiness about their present situation in life has led many religious into a quest for the perfect plan that will explain in fine detail (1) why they find themselves in their present situation, (2) how they can get themselves out of it, and (3) where they should be going. Search as they may, they will inevitably end up frustrated. No magic elixir of man-made theories can satisfy expectations of such exalted heights. To achieve its ends, a theory of refounding or revitalization must place God, not itself, atthe center of attention. November-Deconber 1993 811 Billy ¯ Religious Life and Conversion Language To do so, it must first recognize that conversion on any level--the personal, the communal, the societal--comes directly from God's own initiative. And since God is not limited to the narrow confines of human theorizing, the theory in question can propose nothing but one of many possibilities of how God's transforming action may occur. By placing itself on the periphery (not at the center) of divine action, such a theory acknowledges its inherent limita-tions and places itself more readily at the disposal of God's re-creative activity. "The wind blows where it wills" (Jn 3:8). The movement of God's grace is capable of transforming both individuals and the social structures they inhabit. What God does or how is not always discernible to the human eye. What is important in any of life's sit-uations-- and, in this case, in the present crisis facing many reli-gious communities--is that people (both as individuals and as a group) expand their awareness of God working quietly in the cir-cumstances of their daily lives. Where is God in the present cri-sis facing religious life? What is God saying in the graying of once thriving religious communities, in their steady loss of younger members, in their failure to attract vocations, and in their overall decline in numbers? Why does God permit the cur-rent lack of identity and firmness of purpose which characterizes so many of today's religious communities? Where is God lead-ing them--if at all? And to serve what purpose? When sincerely reflected upon, such questions lead people either to affirm or deny God's active involvement in their own life and in the life of " their religious community. The answer, however, may not end up in the shape of a simple yes or no. In a matter of faith, a believer's response must involve more than a facile determination of whether God is with this particular community or has abandoned it. Such a reply may evade the issue altogether. An authentic outpouring of God's grace will foster a deep sense of listening in the life of a religious community. Most peo-ple, religious included, are more ready to give their own opinion than to hear that of another. They are usually so heavily interested in what they themselves have to say that they talk past those around them or, at best, tolerate what is said until the next oppor-tunity arises for them to speak. What passes for conversation is often nothing more than a continuous chain of vaguely connected monologues. Such is not the case with God, the preeminent lis-tener, nor should it be the case of those stirr.ed by the free gift of 812 Review for Religious grace. Those who listen carefully--to their own hearts, to those around them, to the needs of the community, and to those outside the community--are able to discern more clearly the voice of God in their own lives. When they nurture this quiet witness of faith, religious create a space in their community where others know that their presence will be gratefully recognized and their stories listened to with interest. To empty oneself so that others may be heard is an important quality in authentic Christian living. The language of conversion cannot be spoken, let alone heard, apart from the re-creative silence of God's transforming grace. R.eligious and the Language of Conversion The rudiments of an authentic language of conversion are now in place: a sound Christian anthropology, a way of bringing together individuals and corporate wholes, and a recognition of God's creative initiative in the process of conversion. The inte-gration of these elements and their use as an active, functioning language will enable religious to find greater insight into their present difficulties and will lead them to a deeper awareness of the proper course of action to be taken. To further advance this claim, a number of observations are in order: 1. A language of conversion such as the one suggested above will challenge religious to remove the "problem solving" glasses that regularly color their current outlook. Rather than poring over "what must we change in order to secure our institutional viability," they will focus on questions about the authenticity of their reli-gious lives. A religious community, in other words, turns its life more completely over to God, not out of any ulterior motives (for example, to get more vocations, to stem the exodus of disenchanted members), but simply because that is what God asks of them. 2. Religious need to examine, in their common spiritual out-look, the relationship they maintain between "being" and "action." Informed by an anthropology that draws strong bonds between the bodily, mental, spiritual, and social dimensions of human exis-tence, they will be more apt to be sensitive to how their actions-- both private and corporate--are expressions of who they are and sensitive as well to how their actions affect their being as human persons. 3. Religious must articulate in their daily lives a deeper appre-ciation of the basic human elements of community living. November-December 1993 813 Billy ¯ Religious Life and Conversion Language Membership in a religious congregation involves more than mere physical presence. It also entails a shared commitment to common goals and values, a general sense of how these ends are to be achieved, the fostering of community spirit, and a network of sound spiritual and social ties. Since these elements are them-selves all intimately related, care must be taken that members manage to relate well on all of them. Structures must be set in place to facilitate this process. 4. Particular emphasis should be given to the community's spiritual well-being. Just as the spirit is the deepest part of the human person--that part which yearns for God and which affirms oneself as capax Dei--so too is it the truest, most authentic part of the religious community. When the spirit of a religious commu-nity suffers, the other dimensions cannot help being affected. Efforts must be made to heal the wounded spirit of religious com-munity life. Among other things, this will mean working through such difficult issues as human intimacy, vocational crises, mourn-ing the loss of members, and dealing constructively with members who display dysfunctional and addictive behaviors. Only through healing of the spirit of religious community life is there any hope of recovery. 5. One way of healing a community's wounded spirit is for its members to reserve time and community space for genuine listening. By being attentive to the words of others--the stories they tell, the experiences they wish to share--people enter into the thick of life and allow for the possibility of God's presence to break into ordinary daily events. When a religious community fosters this attitude of respect for the need of people to share themselves openly without feeling threatened, it begins to go beneath the superficial ways of relating by which its members all too often relate hardly at all. One of the great sins of religious life is that people can live together for years and barely know each other. 6. It is also sad that a person can live the religious life for yea~rs without ever developing a close relationship with God. Addressing this problem, the language of conversion places God at the center of attention. The whole purpose of life, and of reli-gious life especially, is for a person to enter into a deep and last-ing friendship with God. This purpose must not be lost sight of in discussions about the future of religious life. Religious vow to live the evangelical counsels in order to walk more closely along 814 Revie~ for Religious the way of the Lord Jesus. They do so, if for no other reason, in order to enter more closely into union with him and the One who sent him. 7. People cannot know God, however, if their spirit (or the spirit of the community, for that matter) does not commune with the Spirit of God in the quiet groves of contemplation. Many religious, unfortunately, have forgotten all about what it means to seek the Lord in prayer. Having lost the incentive to pray, they merely go through the motions of living out their evangelical commitments; their lives, as a result, can easily become devoid of all meaning. Religious need to see through the self-deceptions that have gradually led them to compromise their vows. To retrieve the meaning of their religious life, they must return to a balanced regimen of prayer whereby they can gather in God's name and continually invoke the divine presence. 8. Finally, no one undergoes conversion outside a specific community environment. Religious must develop a keen sense of boundary definition that will enable them to distribute their time appropriately between their own religious community and the people they serve in the apostolate. While benefiting from the authentic sharing that goes on within their communities (an essential priority of a well functioning community), they must take care not to become inordinately introspective and so lose all desire to reach beyond their immediate circle. The apostolic orientation of all religious communities (even those with a strictly contem-plative lifestyle) must always remain a primary concern. With this orientation religious supported and energized by their communi-ties will be able--both individually and together--to do great work for both the church and for society at large. Just as the spirit is the deepest part of the human person-- that part which yearns for God and which affirms oneself as capax Dei--so too is it the truest, most authentic part of the religious community. Conclusion The present crisis in religious life is largely a lack of balance between the individual and the community. In many respects the November-December 1993 815 Billy ¯ ReIigious Life and Conversion Language crisis is a scaled-down version of the age-old philosophical prob-lem of the one and the many, an issue which has always lurked behind the scenes of Western philosophical thought and which remains, even today, largely unresolved. In recent years the pen-dulum has swung from one extreme to the other, with the indi-vidual being either submerged in the collective (as was often the case before Vatican II) or much removed from it (as has often occurred since the council). While nearly everyone agrees that a healthy balance needs to be struck, there is little consensus con-cerning just what must be done to achieve it. These pages have used certain categories from the Western religious and philosophical traditions in an effort to nudge reli-gious communities gently toward a prudent--even though pre-carious- balance. The categories include (1) a Pauline anthropology that emphasizes the four basic dimensions of human existence (spiritual, mental, bodily, and social), (2) a philosophi-cal link between individual and corporate wholes (the micro-cosm/ macrocosm distinction of the ancient Greek philosophers), and (3) a deepened awareness of the inherent limitations of lan-guage (and by extension all theories) with a corresponding focus on the creative initiative of divine grace. While none of these cat-egories are entirely disregarded in current discourse about reli-gious life, rarely have they been used in conjunction with one another and certainly not in what has been termed "a language of conversion." By assimilating these categories of conversion, religious can begin to change some of their dysfunctional ways of relating and nurse some of the open wounds that their communities now endure. First of all, they must get beyond claiming that the call to conversion extends only to individuals and not to the social struc-tures they inhabit. An awareness of the circular relationship between the human heart and the human social structure is ~un-damental to any serious discussion of religious life's future. Without it the dissatisfaction of many of today's religious with their institutional structures will continue to grow. 816 Review for Religious GERALD M. FAGIN Are We Relating to God in a New Way? When I entered a Jesuit novitiate thirty-five years ago, I was introduced to a way of relating to God deeply rooted in the tradition of the church and in the Society of Jesus. It was a way of experiencing God and of responding to God that was shaped by a clearly defined theological understanding of God, the church, and the human per-son. What characterized that spirituality was what char-acterized the spirituality of most Catholics, both lay and religious, in the years before Vatican Council II. What has emerged in the last twenty-five years is a new way of relating to God, a spirituality rooted in a plurality of the-ological understandings of God, the church, and the human person. We might describe it as a shift in model or simply as a shift from one pole of the necessary tension in our spiritual lives to the other. What is important is that we describe and understand what has happened, for too often a lack of understanding has led to confusion, guilt, and quarreling among Christians. I offer five tensions or polarities that are always pres-ent in our spiritual lives. What has happened in lived Christian spirituality can be described in terms of these tensions. spirituality From Objective to Subject-Centered The spirituality of thirty-five years ago was an objec- Gerald M. Fagin sJ, professor of theology, can be addressed at Loyola University; 6363 St. Charles Avenue; New Orleans, Louisiana 70118. Noven~ber-Decen~ber 1993 817 Fagin ¯ Are We Relating to God in a New Way? tive spirituality measured in terms of laws kept, mortifications and virtues and devotions practiced, prayers said, and Masses attended. A typical day in a novitiate was structured around an early morning Latin Mass, an hour of meditation, the rosary, the stations of the cross, examination of conscience, spiritual read-ing, and an instruction on religious life. The spiritual life of the Catholic laity was measured and identified by similar norms and practices. This way of life was supported by a clearly defined Catholic culture that gave Catholics a sense of identity rooted in unambiguous doctrinal and moral teaching and distinct rituals and practices. It was the world of the Baltimore catechism, Friday abstinence, fasting in Lent, First Friday and First Saturday devo-tions, benediction, indulgences, and St. Jude devotions. It demanded discipline and obedience and self-sacrifice, but it offered clear expectations and a structured and measurable way of living out a committed Christian life that led to sanctity. Such objectivity is an essential element in any relationship .to God. Rituals, practices, and devotions are at the heart of a gen-uine experience of God and a faithful response to God. We need clear guidelines and traditional structures if we are to be account-able and if we are to guard against the kind of subjectivity that is open to deception and divisiveness. What has emerged, then, is not a total rejection of this way of relating to God, but a new emphasis on the human person as a free and developing subject in the spiritual life. This subject-centered spirituality is a spirituality measured in terms of people's inner growth and actualization, the quality of their prayer and personal affective development. The spiritual life is described in terms'of a growth in trust and love and openness and freedom and sensi-tivity to the Spirit. Religious experience rather than religious practice is central to this approach. The focus is growth in peo-ple's personal relationship with God and on God's call addressed ¯ uniquely to individuals in their specific life circumstances. In con-sidering fidelity to God, the language of conformity and obedience to rules gives way to discernment and dialogue. Prayer becomes less a meditation on the truths of Christianity and more a lan-guage of the heart, an affective prayer that centers on God's ini-tiative more than our initiative. The role of the spiritual director puts less emphasis on teaching and guidance and more emphasis on facilitating the directee's relationship with God. The didactic gifts of the director become less important than a listening and 818 Review for Religious discerning heart that can clarify the movement of God in the directee's heart. Thirty-five years ago my spiritual director asked me about my fidelity to my spiritual exercises, the subject matter of my meditation, and the resolutions from my latest retreat. Today my spiritual director asks me about the movement of God in my heart and the consolation and desolation that are the signposts of my discernment. The presupposition is that God is at work in the individual soul and that this movement of God can be observed and discerned. The shift to a subject-centered spirituality is clearly seen in the rediscovery of the directed retreat. Conference-style or preached retreats focus on a common teaching or subject matter for reflec-tion. Everyone responds to and prays over the same material, often more doctrinal than scriptural, and not selected as a specific response to the needs and grace directions of the individuals. The subject matter of the directed retreat is each individual's experience of God, the movement of the Spirit within that person. Scripture is chosen to focus and highlight the graces of the retreatant. There is not one set program for everyone. It is pre-sumed that each person will experience and respond to God's grace in an individual way. Underlying this shift to the subject is a different under-standing of revelation. Revelation is imaged not primarily as propositions to be affirmed but as God's self-communication. Revelation is not first a series of statements about God and the human condition, but a series of experiences of God that reveal who God is and how God deals with us. Jesus is the fullness of God's revelation so that our faith life is a response to someone rather than an assent to propositions. God's self-revelation in Christ calls us to a new relationship with.God. Experience, both individual and communal, precedes articulation; and our rela- This subject-centered spirituality is a spirituality measured in terms of people's inner growth and actualization, the quality of their prayer and personal affective development. November-December 1993 819 Fagqn ¯ Are We Relating to God in a New Way? tionship with God begins in an experience of God that then finds words in doctrines and expression in rituals. From Perfection to Process The novice of thirty-five years ago set out on the road to per-fection. Every imperfection was to be weeded out, every virtue practiced. The ideals were clear, even if unattainable. The goal was set: "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." The perfec-tion model envisioned our spiritual lives as a striving for an ideal, a state of perfection that was never attained. Too often our spir-itual lives were evaluated in terms of our failures to reach the ideal or the degree to which we had failed to attain perfection. As in the objective model, the focus was on an observance of laws and duties. Novices were told, "Keep the rule and the rule will keep you." This approach tended to be legalistic and Pelagian and to generate undue fear in our relationship with God. We were always aware that we were not measuring up to the ideal. No matter how fervent our spiritual lives and how detailed our obser-vance, we remained unworthy servants who had yet to reach per-fection. We placed much more emphasis on what we had failed to do or achieve than on the level of our desire and hope and love and our moments of fidelity. This perfection model focused on the goal, not the process to the goal. God's love and affirmation were often thought of as the reward for our completing the process, for our faithful observance. A corollary of the shift from objective to subject-centered is the shift from this perfection model to a process model in our relationship with God. The process model envisions our spiri-tual lives as a journey that can be measured not only in terms of how far we have to go, but especially in terms of how far we have come. Besides sorrow for our failure to attain perfection, there is gratitude for all that God has accomplished in us, the work of God's grace in our lives. Our spiritual lives are viewed as a rela-tionship with God that grows, not as a project that needs to be accomplished. Such a model is sensitive to the adult stages of growth in the human process. Conversion is emphasized as an ongoing process of discovering and purification and commitment. Creative fidelity in the midst of new challenges and opportunities replaces perseverance in a static commitment. The love of God is experienced in the midst of the process as an abiding source of 820 Review for Religious support and inspiration. God loves us where we are and invites us to a fuller life. We find God, then, where we are and not where we would like to be. We pray out of our present experience, not out of as-yet-unrealized goals. At the root of this shift from perfection to process is a renewed understanding of grace. Grace is defined not primarily in ontological terms and categories, certainly not as a quantity to be gained and lost by observance or lack of observance. Rather it is understood as a growth in a relationship of love with some-one, a growth into a richer and fuller life. Our relationship with God is an invitation to friendship and intimacy with God, a gift of new life. God's grace is the giving of Godself that transforms us and empowers us to live God's life. From Private to Communal The novitiate of thirty-five years ago was highly structured and programmed. With rare exceptions, everyone followed the same order of the day, listened to the same conferences and instructions, and even read many of the same books. The reality of large numbers of novices made personal attention less available, even though the novice master was concerned for the well-being of each novice. At the same time, the spirituality proposed was very individualistic. People's relation with God was private and expressed in personal devotions and practices. They found God in the solitude of their'own heart and gave little emphasis to a com-munity of shared faith and communal discernment. There was a strong sense of corporate identity, but one's own spiritual life was private and to be shared only with a spiritual director or supe-rior. The support came from the awareness that everyone was praying at the same time in private, not from any ~hared sense of what was happening in the prayer of individuals. This personal piety that privatized one's relationship with God followed upon an understanding of the church as an insti-tution from which grace flows from the top through a hierarchi-cal structure to the individual. God spoke through superiors and religious leaders, not through the members of the community. Sacraments too were privatized. They were channels of individ-ual grace and a personal relationship with God. Confession was an experience of forgiveness of my sins with little sense of reconcil-iation with the community. Eucharist focused on the offering of November-December 1993 821 Fagin ¯ Are We Relating to God in a New Way? Christ's sacrifice and my reception of Communion, followed by my private thanksgiving with .Jesus. Often Eucharist was a pri-vate Mass with a single server symbolizing a broader community that was not evidently there. All of this, of course, reflected a the-ology of church and sacrament that shaped and reinforced a sense of a private relationship with God. A communal model, on the other hand, emphasizes that we encounter God in community. It respects the personal and unique aspect of one's relationship with God and the areas of religious experience that are shared only with a spiritual guide or a close friend, but it images our relationship with God in the context of a community of faith. The Spirit speaks through all, and we grow in our faith life with, in, and through others. We are one body. We are branches on the same vine. Shared prayer and communal dis-cernment are important means of developing our relationship with God. This derives from an understanding of church as pri-marily a community of believers called together in faith. The church is an institution with visible structures and offices, but it is first the gathering of disciples that find and celebrate God's presence in their midst. Liturgy is experienced as ecclesial, as the coming together of God's people to hear the word in common and share the meal of the Reign of God. Jesus is present, not only in the consecrated bread and wine, but also in the assembly. We find Jesus in the community. Sacraments, then, are experienced as communal moments Of celebration that bind us together and deepen our corporate identity as the people of God. Christians share a common story of salvation and live out that story as mem-bers of the one body of Christ. That sense of a common story deepens our awareness of God's self-revelation to us in commu-nity and our need to listen and respond as God's people bound together by a covenant relationship. From Dualism to Wholeness From its earliest days Christianity has struggled with a dual-ism that put a wedge between the spiritual and the physical, the body and the soul. Gnosticism, Manicheanism, and Jansenism are only historical surfacings of a constant and strong undercurrent of thought that considers the physical to be evil and the source of temptation. Not surprisingly, the novitiate of thirty-five years ago put little emphasis on emotional growth and psychosexual devel- 822 Review for Religious opment. The prominent role of physical penances and the pro-hibition about novices touching one another dramatized not only a needed asceticism, but also a distrust of anything relating to the human body. Holiness was often identified with a flight from the body and from the emotions. The body was seen as a hin-drance to the spirit, and the emotions were dismissed or sup-pressed as irrelevant and debilitating. Reason and volition were the only reliable means of directing our spiritual lives. Discernment was reduced to a rational process or replaced by. logical analysis. Faith was seen primarily as an act of the intellect and holiness as an act of the will. In the end, the spiritual life was often per-ceived as set apart in a higher realm divorced from the growth of the whole person. Contemporary spirituality is more clearly holistic. It respects and encourages the growth of the whole person. The process of human-ization is an integral part of spiritual develop-ment. Spiritual maturity presupposes a certain psychological health as a foundation. The role of affectivity and an appreciation of our phys-icality become important elements of our growth to spiritual wholeness. Discernment is appreciated as noticing and evaluating the affective as well as the rational movements of God within the soul, sifting through experiences of consolation and desolation. Faith is the response of the whole person to God's self-revela-tion. A renewed value is given to human desire as a place where God touches and inspires the soul and calls a person to fuller life. Contemporary spiritua~ty knows well that something of this holis-tic approach can be found in a fresh reading of many of the mys-tics and spiritual classics, but modern awareness and appreciation of the complexities of the human person have insisted even more that holiness is a developmental process of integrating all aspects of the human person. The shift from dualism to wholeness is rooted in an under-standing of the human person as a unity rather than a duality of spirit and body. Psychology and religion can work together to transform and sanctify every dimension of the person. The Enneagram, Jungian personality types, dream analysis, Intensive Journaling--all these and more can enrich our appreciation and Christians share a common story of salvation and live out that story as members of the one body of Christ. November-December 1993 823 Fagin ¯ Are We Relating to God in a New Way? understanding of the human psyche and be positive helps to our spiritual growth. There is, of course, an element of truth in the dualistic approach. Physical and even psychological wholeness are not indispensable to Christian holiness. God can and does work through our brokenness. The ideal of self-actualization and human growth must always be relativized by the gospel call to self-emp-tying surrender. On the other hand, the dualistic approach, when taken to an extreme, can produce an impoverished human per-son insensitive to the riches of imagination and affect in relating to God and other people. In such a case, little or no value is given to the affective movements of the heart in the search for God. The ordering of affectivity is reduced to the suppression of affec-tivity, and an ascetic ideal is proposed that allows little room for human emotion. From Other-Worldly to This-Worldly "Just a little while and then eternity." These words attributed to St. John Berchmans set the tone for my novitiate experience thirty-five years ago. At the heart of the relationship with God was a call to renunciation of the material world. The world was a place of temptation and trial. We were pilgrims on a journey to salvation in the next life. Sanctity demanded detachment from the world. Matter was evil, the source of sin. Penance was a way to punish the flesh and control its appetites. The novitiate was in an isolated place far from the allurements of the world. There were no newspapers or magazines or movies or TV. The harshest judgment passed on any novice was that he was "worldly." At the root of this approach was a negative vision of the world as cor-rupted by sin. Flight from the world was the road to sanctity. Even apostolic religious orders tended to propose monastic ide-als that emphasized separation from the world. A special impor-tance was given to the words of Seneca (Letters, no. 7) quoted in the Imitation of Christ (I, 20): "As often as I have been among men, I have returned less a man." No one can deny the truth in this approach to the world. Growth in a relationship with God demands a radical detachment and renunciation. We live in a world of obscured values and dis-torted perceptions, a world infected with sin that stands in oppo-sition to the values of the reign of God. The world is groaning for 824 Review for Religious redemption, and Christianity must stand as a countercultural force in a broken and wounded world. Contemporary spirituality, however, takes a more positive view of the world, seeing it as the product of God's love and the locus of God's redemptive presence. The Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) proposed a world-affirming vision that recognized the value and autonomy of human society and culture and that took responsibility for the world. A renewed theology of creation takes seriously Genesis's declaration of the goodness of creation and the dignity of humans as images of God. Such a creation-centered spirituality rejoices in the world as a gift.from the hands of a loving God. Our relationship with God is expressed in a concern for the earth and a sense of stew-ardship for the resources entrusted to us. The reign of God is already a reality "bud-ding forth," and our human efforts are an essential element in building the final reign of God. God, then, is found in human experience and human achievement, and this world becomes a sacred place for encountering God. A genuine apostolic spirituality recognizes that we work out our salvation by involvement in the human struggle for justice. The desert invades the marketplace and the monk speaks a prophetic word in the city. The reason for the shift to a this-worldly spiritua'lity is, then, a more positive view of the world and a renewed understanding of salvation. An important corollary of this new understanding and appre-ciation of the world is a reevaluation of the relation between reli-gious life and the lay vocation. In the other-worldly view of the Christian life, monastic spirituality was considered normative, and so the life of a single or a married person in the world was necessarily a less radical commitment to a relationship with God. Lay spirituality was at best a watered-down adaptation of the higher calling of religious life. Vatican II, by contrast, speaks of a universal call to holiness. All Christians are called to the per-fection of charity and commitment to Christ. Religious life and the A genuine apostolic spirituality recognizes that we work out our salvation by involvement in the human struggle for justice. November-December 1993 825 Fagin ¯ Are V~e Relating to God in a New tVay? lay vocation are two different ways of responding to the radical gospel call to discipleship. At best one can speak of religious life as a more explicit and unambiguous lifestyle that witnesses to the common vocation of all Christians. Conclusion The tensions just described are an enduring part of our rela-tionship with God. Our spirituality will always be a balance between objective and subjective, perfection and process, private and communal, dualism and wholeness, other-worldly and this-worldly. As Richard McBrien has pointed out frequently, Catholicism is not a matter of either/or but of both/and. There is no question of rejecting one way and replacing it completely with another, but rather of claiming a new richness that respects the older way and opens new ways of living our Christian lives. My novitiate experience of thirty-five ye~ars ago focused almost exclu-sively on the objective, perfection, private, dualistic, and other-worldly dimensions of our relationship with God. Contemporary spirituality has swung the pendulum dramatically to the other pole. The challenge is to move beyond a reactionary position and to integrate the truth of the previous way of relating to God with a new and rich experience of God and the human person. The swing of the pendulum, as we have seen, comes from a new under-standing of revelation, grace, and the church and of the human person, the world, and salvation. Developments in theology and new dimensions of religious experience continue to enrich one another and open new possibilities in our relationship with God. Each age in the life of the church struggles to define Christians' relationship with God. Christian spirituality is a lived experience shaped by life, culture, and theology, but above all by the graced invitation of God. I conclude by suggesting four char-acteristics of a Christian spirituality that is responsive to the invi-tation and challenge of the contemporary world. We need an incarnational spirituality that finds mystery and the sacred in the midst of a radical affirmation of the giftedness of the world, that finds God not only above us but also with us. We need a holistic spirituality that integrates more fully into our spiritual growth the nonrational dimensions of our person, fostering a healthy sense of sin and forgiveness and respecting the human psyche's limitations and possibilities for growth in God's life. We need a 826 Review for Religious prophet# spirituality that integrates the mystical and the political and sees a passion for justice and solidarity with the poor as inte-gral to contemplative union with God. We need an ecdesial spir-ituality that lives out our relationship with God in the community of disciples, harmonizes discernment and religious authority, and responds to the call to ministry that baptismal grace enables us to hear. In the end, Christian spirituality will always remain a response to the gospel call to conversion and discipleship. In every age it promises a growth in a personal relationship with God and demands a commitment in the context of a community of faith, but in the midst 6f these constant elements Christians will con-tinue to be attentive to the movements of the Spirit in their lives and to explore new ways of relating to God. Holofrosts The offerings to God this winter's morning Are holofrosts, not burnt but frozen;fruit Of the vine hangs shriveled as nuggets of ice, The works of human hands .are noughted out By whiteness of snow. Offering God of his own From the elements given us, we lift up As gifts at his altar: his earth, air, Water, hard-touched by December, challenging Us to be devout in our changing seasons Of spring-weather faith, frost-withered doubt. Nancy G. Westerfield November-December 1993 827 A. PAUL DOMINIC Desire, Asking, and Answers porayer, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, is the articulation of ur desire before God.~ That is the way we teach our chil-dren their first practical lesson in religion: we teach them to ask God for what they want. As people grow in spiritual life, they can never outgrow the spirit of their beginnings, if for no other reason than that the highest reaches cannot exist without the low-est attainments. There is reason, then, not to abandon altogether the early, petitionary stage of spiritual life, but to continue to experience its varying moods and movements. Here biblical personages at once spiritual and earthy can be illustrative and illuminative. The recorded experiences of Hannah, David, and Job are relevant. They are all apparently of marked spirituality, notably above the ordinary. Yet in their dealings with God they do not remain always ethereal. Possessed of human desires, too, as down-to-earth people, they approach God openly with the desires of their heart. That is to say, they are simple enough not to be shatmning but to move with the tide of their life. Spiritually oriented people will neglect this basic lesson only to their cost. Not much is known of Hannah, surely; but the little that is known of her reveals her womanly spiritual fiber. Her husband, Elkanah, less known than herself, is religious too, but in the usual way, performing the regular practices like yearly pilgrimage. Perhaps part of his routine spirituality is his seeming resignation A. Paul Dominic SJ, author of God of Justice (Bombay: St. Paul Publications), is well known to our readers. His address is Satyodayam; S. Lallaguda; Secunderabad 500 017; India. 828 Review for Religious to God's disposition regarding Hannah's barrenness. But Hannah herself would not be resigned to her situation. She burns with desire for a son as much as, or even more than, she is resentful and in distress because of the taunts of the other wife, who is not bar-ren. All this compounded desire of her heart she pours out to her God, completely oblivious of her surroundings, and she keeps on beseeching him for a son till--that is the important point here-- she is assured that she will get what she has painfully longed for. She has not supplicated in vain. No wonder she knows peace in her heart. David is great in every way, in particular in his spiritual gifts. He attains spiritual heights on certain occasions when God sur-prises him with choice favors. But he also knows low spirits and even falls. Then he prays, staying where he is. One such occa-sion is when he realizes that he has to pay for his adultery by the death of the child of adultery. Though he owns his sin, still he wants the son his sin produced. How he prays for the life of the child, struck by God with a grave illness! He pleads with God for his child, fasting and lying on the ground for days together. He prays with all his energies, hoping against hope till he realizes that the child has died. He has supplicated in vain and still, sur-prisingly enough, seems to find unusual peace in his heart. Job is an exceptional figure who manages a happy blend of his wealth in the world with his godly life. If he has enjoyed all the prosperity in the world, still he seeks and humbly keeps his integrity before his God. Such a man, however, meets with one disaster after another. Even then he allows no curse to cross his mind or lips; on the contrary, he walks humbly with God, bless-ing him still. However, in the prolonged anguish of his final dis-aster, made worse by his three friends preachifying to the effect that every sufferer must be necessarily a sinner, he is stung to the quick and so driven to defend his honor. He argues with them point by point, personally convinced that there is no sin that would explain his suffering. In between he puts the matter before God, too, quite unafraid, now lamenting his plight, now com-plaining to him, now appealing to him, now reasoning with him, now challenging him, then yearning to reach him, all the while wanting to vindicate his stand that he is innocent, whatever the traditional doctrine of retribution may be. He has supplicated alone and in company, aloud and in silence, passing through the struggle of it all, only to be surprised at the end by the mysteri- Nove~nber-Decen;ber 1993 829 Dontinic ¯ Desire, Asking, and Answers ous and yet overwhelmingly peaceful vision of God clearing up all the aggnizing questions and difficulties. The three biblical episodes ~nay be compared to one another as regards three elements common to them. First, the three pro-tagonists experience an urgent desire. Second, they take it up in their prayer, making it indeed their whole prayer, however long drawn out it may be. Third, they attain something positive. First, then, they are alike in experiencing desires, however various the desires may be. Hannah desires a son. Her desire is natural, normal, proper, appropriate, and worthy inasmuch as she wants only the full enjoyment of her marriage as willed by God right from the beginning. David desires that the son of his passion, born of another man's wife, should live and not die. His desire, too, is natural and normal and yet perhaps not especially worthy, if only because the circumstantial will of God is for the child of adultery to die. Job desires an answer to the puzzle of his unde-served suffering. His desire, too, is nor~nal and natural and yet only dubiously proper against the background of the common traditional belief that every suffering implies some sin in the suf-ferer. While Hannah's desire is in every way agreeable, David's and Job's are not particularly so. David resists the apparent mind of God regarding the fruit of his sin, and Job's honest and frank desire is naively bold because it seems to put God in the wrong. Second, however one evaluates the three desires, they are nevertheless real and candid; the persons know and feel their desire as only they can. They find it so urgent that they do not fight shy of voicing it before other "people and even before God. They do not simply pray about it, but make it their sole and con-stant prayer. Without any distracting self-consciousness, they sim-ply present themselves before God as they experience their desire consuming them, not minding or caring whether they might come across to casual observers as strange or surprising or suspect. Possessed by their sole burning desire, they beseech God persis-tently without any thought of circumspection or shame or seem-ing propriety till something good happens to them--which leads to my third point. In Hannah's case, what happens is just what she has desired and prayed for. She gets a son and calls him Samuel since, as she says, "I asked Yahweh iCor him" (i S 1:20). In David's case, what happens is just the opposite:of his lingering desire and prayer. His ill-gotten child whom he wants to see saved dies of illness. But 830 Re'view for Religious David--note well--comes alive after the whole ordeal of pray-ing, pining, and fasting. He bathes, anoints himself, dresses up, goes to the sanctuary, then sits down to a meal, and finally even consoles his forlorn Bathsheba. In Job's case, what happens is not just what he agonizingly wanted to find, for he finds far more than he has dared ask. He has asked only for a vindicating proof of his undeserved suffering, but he is given to see God himself, the answer of all possible problems and puzzles. It may appear at first sight that the prayer arising from and suffused with unquenchable desire turns out to be a success for Hannah, a fail-ure for David, and a mere struggle for Job. But further reflection would show that the reality or radicality of their experience is not that simple. The feverish desires of David and Job may not have ended in natural, ordinary, and expected satisfaction as in the case of Hannah. But they too have their definite, unmistakable denouement, with their desires set at rest. Indeed, they attain what may be called the res-olution of their desires, a positive ending to their experience of desire in and through and by means of prayer. Here is a lesson for life. Despite the obvious differences in their desires, Hannah, David, and Job all end up with positive experiences through prayer. Their prayer experience has some-thing in common: making their desire transparent to God or, bet-ter, living their desire before God in all its urgency. The experience of any urgent desire is itself a sort of struggle till its ful-fillment. This is only accentuated when the fulfillment of desire depends, not on oneself, but on the good pleasure of another--in the present context, God. So Hannah prays in an unusual manner, speaking under her breath, giving room for suspicion that she is drunk. So too does David, to the surprise of his officials, covering himself with sack-ing, lying on the bare ground and keeping a strict fast. So too does Job, confounding and shocking his onlookers by his unortho-dox stand that, though he has been afflicted with the worst of Despite the obvious differences in their desires, Hannah, David, and Job all end up with positive experiences through prayer. November-December 1993 831 Dominic ¯ Desire, Asking, and Answers sufferings, he cannot be accused of having really sinned. Even if he occasionally concedes, for the sake of argument, that he has sinned, he challenges God outright: "Suppose I have sinned, what have I done to you?" (Jb 7:20). But the burden of his prayer runs now and again in such words as these: "I shall say to God, 'Do not condemn me, but tell me the reason for your assault. Is it right for you to injure me, cheapening the work of your own hands and abetting the schemes of the wicked?'" (Jb 10:2-3). He ends his apologia daringly with no apology whatever: "I have had my say, from A to Z; now let Shaddai answer me" (Jb 31:35). How acute must be the struggle of the man who, in his dire straits, makes bold to speak to God without mincing words about what he wants. If Hannah and David, too, definitely pass through quite a struggle in their prayer seeking what they want, theirs would seem to be nothing compared with the struggle of Job for God's own vindication of his innocence. Generally speaking, the struggle experienced in prayer as peo-ple keep on imploring God for what they want is proportionate to the intensity of their desire. The surpassing struggle Job goes through in his prayer reveals how hard he desires. There is, if one may put it this way, truth in his desire. That is to say, his desire is so true and so truly possessing and consuming him that he needs must seek its fulfillment by every means possible, even if it should entail a gigantic struggle. Here may be raised a very important question concerning prayer. If people pray and complain that they do not get an answer to their prayer, it may be asked whether their prayer arises out of truth, the truth of their desire in the sense suggested above. People may be accustomed to and satisfied with bland preferences, with mere velleities, and thus ,nay not have true desire even if they know, or seem to know, what they desire. Certainly velleities are palt~ desires. It is worth noting in this context that Job with his ruling desire and passionate prayer is a fictitious figure, unlike Hannah and David. From this may one not infer that people like Job are seldom found in real life, that rarely are real people moved by strong, ardent, fervent, and in a word true desire? But without desire there can be no prayer, for desire is part and parcel of prayer. St. Thomas said so (as I have indicated above), and St. Augustine had said something similar much ear-lier. Writing to Proba on prayer, he pointed out that, if the Lord wants us to pray even though he certainly knows independently 832 Review for Religious our wants and needs, it is because "he wants our desire to be exer-cised in prayer, thus enabling us to grasp what he is preparing to give.''2 He added: "We pray always in faith, hope, and love, with uninterrupted desire. Btit at certain hours and seasons we also pray with words. We use these signs of realities to rouse our-selves, to become aware of the growth of our desire, and to strongly move ourselves to increase it . What do the Apostle's words, 'Pray constantly,' mean, if not that we must constantly desire. ?-3 Of course, one may remark quite correctly that in the context Augustine had in his mind a constant desire for the blessedness of eternal life. One may observe just as correctly, however, that what we do in prayer--namely, exercise our desire--may reach out not only to eternal life, but to present life as well, with aH that we want here and now. Anyhow, the very prayer that Jesus taught explicitly is not confined to holy desires connected with God and his kingdom, but, in the phrase "daily bread," makes mention of ordinary human desires and material needs. The Lord's Prayer certainly includes the gamut of human desires, from the lofty to the lowly. Other teachings of Jesus on prayer also focus on desire expe-rienced and expressed before God. The parables of the importu-nate friend and the widow (Lk 11:5-8; 18:1-8), for instance, emphasize the keenness of desire without which prayer would flag and falter. Apart from desire there can be no meaning in prayer of peti.tion; and it is this sort of simple, straightforward prayer that Jesus mostly speaks of. His injunction regarding effec-tive, infallible prayer is to "ask. search., knock" (Mr 7:7); and this really means that one should go on asking and searching and knocking with the growing impulse of intense desire. This real-ity of glowing desire may throw light even on the basic require-ment-- namely, belief or faith--in all such prayer. For instance, in the saying of Jesus that "everything you ask and pray for, believe that );ou have it already, and it will be yours" (Mk 11:24), the action of belief is as much an activity of desire as it is anything else.4 When belief comes into play in prayer, it invariably brings desire into the foreground, the desire which was already there in the prayer right from the start. All this is not a matter of theory but of practice, as may be seen in dealings of Jesus wifla people to whom he grants favors. In the case of the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus senses right from November-Decentber 1993 833 Dominic ¯ Desire, Asking, and Answers the beginning how badly she desires the healing of her daughter. His apparent reluctance to accede to her request only brings out all the more her desire, at once insistent and persistent, regard-ing her daughter's welfare. He takes note of it and refers to it with pleasant surprise when he finally' gives his word of favor to her request (see Mk 7:24-30).s Just the opposite is the story of the sick man at the Pool of Bethzatha (Jn 5:1-6). When Jesus sees him and knows how long he has been ill, he asks him, "Do you want to be well again?" It is a surprising question at first, but on reflection very revealing. Jesus cannot heal the sick man unless he first desires it. As the man had been ill for so long, perhaps he no longer has any desire for healing. It is precisely to awaken this desire that Jesus puts the question to him. Today, too, neither Jesus nor his Father can hear any prayer unless it arises in real desire and is poured out in ardent desire and sustained in unabated desire. It matters how much and how far we desire whatever we desire. As I conclude, I find myself won-derii~ g if social activists have an idea how much they can effect by prayer that is sharpened by the "violence" of desire. When I say violence here, I am thinking of that intriguing logion: "The king-dom of God has been subjected to violence and the violent are tak-ing it by storm" (Mt 11:12). Notes ~ See Simon Tugwell, Prayer in Practice (Springfield, Illinois, 1974), p. 75. 2 See The Divine Office, vol. 3 (London, Glasgow, Sydney, Dublin, 1974), p. 662. 3 Letters of Saint Augustine, ed. and trans. John Leinenweber (Liguori, Missouri: Triumph Books, 1992), p. 172. 4 The Markan version lends itself to such an interpretation, unlike the Matthean parallel 21:22 with its connotation of faith as a matter of not doubting about what is prayed for. s Here again Mark is different from Matthew. Mark tells the plain story of the woman with her heart's desire whereas Matthew stylizes it in terms of faith (Mt 15:21-28). 834 Review for Religious JUDETTE A. GALLARES Companionship Spirituality in Ruth Te Book of Ruth is one of the immortal love stories in the ble. It takes as its characters and events ordinary people and mundane life situations to which we can easily find parallels in our world today. The book's primary purpose, however, is not to entertain and delight its audience with plot complications, sus-pense, and a satisfying denouement, but to hold up to its readers and listeners authentic models of covenantal faith? What is this covenantal faith, and how does companionship enter into its perspective? What does the spirituality of compan-ionship teach us in our experiences of change, life transitions, and emptiness? To glean some answers to these questions, it is beneficial to allow to sink into our consciousness Ruth's words to Naomi, her mother-in-law, which have become an immortal prayer of companionship. Let us look at her words within their context as summarized here. During the time of the judges, Elimelech of Bethlehem, together with his wife Naomi and his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, migrated to Moab to escape a famine in Judah. Elimelech died in Moab. His sons married two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. The two sons also died, however, leaving two childless wid-ows with their widowed mother-in-law. Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem, and her daughters-in-law, set off with her. While they were on the road, she urged her daughters-in-law each to return to her mother's house, for she was unsure of what future Judette A. Gallares RC is involved in spiritual direction and retreat work in the Philippines and conducts courses on biblical spirituality and spiritual direction for lay and religious formators. Her address is Cenacle Sisters; 217-G.D. Jakosalem Street; Cebu City 6000; Philippines. Novetnber-Deconber 1993 835 Gallares ¯ Companionship Spirituality in Ruth they would have with her. Orpah sorrowfully returned to her fam-ily, but Ruth clung to her mother-in-law in spite of Naomi's prod-ding that she follow Orpah's decision. Instead, she responded in these words: Do not press me to leave you and to stop going with you, for wherever you go, I shall go, wherever you live, I shall live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I shall die and there I shall be buried. Let Yahweh bring unnameable ills on me and worse ills, too, if anything but death should part me from you! (Rt 1:16-17). Realizing that Ruth was determined to go with her, Naomi stopped urging her. Both went on their journey until they reached Bethlehem. Migration was rather typical of ancient Palestine. Families often migrated because of the frequent occurrence of famine in the area. The country of Moab, with a narrow strip of well-watered and fertile land running north and south in its center, was an attractive refuge, and so Elimelech, Naomi, and their two sons migrated there. This scenario is familiar even today. To escape economic dif-ficulties caused by drought or increased militarization in third-world rural areas, people flock to the cities and towns seeking either the pot of gold or refuge from military oppression. Professionals continually migrate from third-world to first-world countries in search of better opportunities even though, regret-tably, this slows down socioeconomic development in their own countries. Migration for the sake of survival and a better life is an undei'- standable occurrence in any generation and culture. Biblical lit-erature records a number of such departures. We recall Joseph and his famil)) moving to Goshen (Gn 47:27) and a widow fol-lowing Elisha's advice and moving to the land of the Philistines (2 K 8). So Elimelech's decision to leave Bethlehem of Judah together with his family is understandable. To alert us immediately to the development and historical probability of the story, the author also gives the characters names which in Hebrew have symbolic meanings. Elimelech means "my God is king"; Naomi means "pleasant"; the two sons' names, Mahlon and Chilion, .mean "sickness" and "wasting," respectively.2 After they have settled in Moab, death strikes the male members 836 Review for Religious of Naomi's family. Elimelech dies first. Naomi is left with her two sons, who later marry native women. But after ten years the sons also die without leaving any sons. Naomi, a widow of advanced age with no sons but only non-Jewish and childless daughters-in-law, is therefore destined for a life of destitution and social oppression. In her emptiness and poverty, Naomi decides to return to the land of her birth because the famine there is over. Perhaps she thinks her own townspeople will be kinder to her in her poverty than if she were to remain in Moab as a widowed foreigner. Her two widowed daughters-in-law initially go with her, but she urges them to return to their own families. She just cannot impose her desire and longing for her own land and people on her already suffering daughters-in-law, nor can she deprive them of the small consolation that their own homeland would provide them. Besides, she knows that it would be much more dif-ficult for them, being foreigners, to remarry in her homeland than in theirs because Hebrew laws discourage marriage with foreigners.3 Here Naomi is projected as a practical person. She uses the time, not for grieving, but for doing something in a situation that needs a practical solution. Naomi's use of the unusual phrase "mother's house" is to be noted, for a house is usually designated as one's father's.4 Some com-mentators believe it is used to symbolize or to emphasize the absence of men in the women's lives.5 From another perspective it can also be seen as words of consolation to the suffering women, for the word "mother" evokes images of the love, care, and nur-turance one would long for in a time of brokenness. Orpah heeds Naomi's advice and returns to her people: Ruth refuses. Mthough the motif of ~mptiness is strongly accentuated here, by Naomi's saying that her womb will have no more sons, we see that she is not totally bereft, for Ruth would cling to her and not allow her to return to her homeland alone. Responding to her mother-in-law's pleading send-off with words of loyalty and devotion, Ruth vows to accompany Naomi through a per-ilous journey into an uncertain future. Migration for the sake of survival and a better life is an understandable occurrence in any generation and culture. Novevnber-Dece~nber 1993 837 Gallares ¯ Companionship Spirituality in Ruth Ruth pledges covenant fidelity and claims as her own Naomi's place, people, and God.6 In her beautiful and moving response, Ruth clings not to a past but to a present--not to a male through whom she may achieve power and access, but to a female, one who needs her, one for whom she will provide protection, care, and access.7 Ruth thus gives to her mother-in-law the only thing she possesses, her very self. Even if society destines both of them to a life of extreme poverty as widows, they still have each other. We can still see this kind of attitude among simple poor families. They are extremely loyal to their own members and sacrifice for and protect one another in good times and in bad. Together the two widows now turn their faces resolutely toward Palestine and the city of Bethlehem. The distance between Moab and Bethlehem is only about 120 miles, but this stretch represents a long, fatiguing, and dangerous trek in this period, especially for two women who have neither money beyond their barest needs nor protector.8 It is this journey through barren places that will perhaps bring them closer to each other and cause them to cling more closely together for protection, comfort, and support. Covenantal Faith amid Emptiness in Life Transitions The contrast between emptiness and fullness runs through the entire book. This is seen, not only in the setting itself, but also in the lives of the women characters. The famine or the emptiness of the land that sets the story in motion drives Naomi's family to seek greener fields. Leaving one's country and culture as Naomi did is an experience of emptying, an experience of loss: food, rela-tionships, property, land. It is a recurring motif in the life of Israel and throughout salvation history, beginning with God inviting Abraham to leave his clan and his ancestral home for a promised land. In Abraham we see that God's promise and blessing are indissolubly bound up with a departure, an emptying of anything that prevents one from setting out on an adventure with God. For Naomi, however, Moab turned out to be a place of empti-ness, not a land of promise. There she lost not only her husband but her two sons as well. Her emptiness seemed irreparable, her life hollow deep within. These words of the psalmist could have echoed in her heai't: "How could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?" (Ps 137:4 NAB).)It would be difficult indeed for 838 Review for Religious anyone in Naomi's predicament to sing a song to God amid feel-ings of alienation from God, life, others, and even self. Grief has a way of devouring our spiritual life, leaving us in the desert to feel parched, empty, depleted, lonely, and alienated. Naomi could attribute the cause of her incurable emptiness only to God: "Yahweh's hand has been raised against me." Thus, only God also could fill it. Beyond her empty feeling and sense of God's absence is perhaps a fragile hope that God will also cause her misery to cease. Perhaps this was in her mind and heart when, "having heard that Yahweh had come to help his people by giving them food, Naomi prepared to return home." Her poverty and her emptiness are so basic that they can be intimated by an unadorned reference to food. Beyond a need to fill her physical hunger, she perhaps has a keen desire to reconcile herself with the past, to catch a glimpse of home and of who she is meant to be. John Dunne once wrote9: At every turn in the road a new illuminating is needed to find the way and a new kindling is needed to follow the way. Dunne seems to speak here of moments of transition in one's life when one needs to search within to find illumination or guid-ance to continue going forward on the road to life. This search involves returning to the past, to one's home and roots and being reconciled with them. Naomi, in her poverty and emptiness, thinks of home not only as a place where she could experience God's blessing again' (having heard that Yahweh had come to help his people), but also as a place where she can find peace and acceptance of her painful situation ("Do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for God has made life bitter for me"). Her words reflect a deep longing that is present in every human heart. A part in us is always yearning and quietly crying out for the true homeland where life is no longer painful and unfair,l° Undoubtedly Naomi's two Moabite daughters-in-law are also experiencing emptiness and grief at losing their husbands. In their loss their initial response is to cling to what is familiar (to continue living with Naomi and to remain in her clan) even if it does not seem to give them any kind of future. Orpah is practical minded in dealing with her emptiness. In spite of the pain of saying good-bye to Naomi and Ruth and to matters that have become famil-iar to her, she heeds Naomi's advice and returns to her mother's November-December 199~ 839 Gallares ¯ Companionship Spirituality in Ruth house. Perhaps she feels hopeful that life can still offer her a future in her own homeland, and perhaps she, like Naomi, has a renewed glimpse of home and the possibility of who she can still become. Companionship in Time of Transition On the other hand, Ruth clings to her mother-in-law and takes the risk of embracing, her, her land, and her God even if the future is uncertain and seemingly bleak. Although she too is going through ~ransition, she offers Naomi her presence and com-panionship. She feels for her mother-in-law because she too knows the pain of loss and the difficulty of adjusting to a new reality. But, unlike Naomi, she is not allowing this life transition to dis-courage her or to embitter her. For her a return to her mother's house has seemed to be a movement away from what and who she is meant to be. Instead, she follows the movement of Israel's first patriarch by leaving her homeland and venturing into the unknown. Like Abraham she departs from her homeland and empties herself of anything that prevents her from setting out on an adventure with Abraham's and Naomi's God. But, unlike Abraham, she does not perceive the God of Israel as giving her a promise and a blessing. She has none of these assurances. She leaves relying only on Naomi's God and the strength of her love for her mother-in-law. She deals with her emptiness by further emptying herself s~ she can embrace totally the God of Abraham, of Naomi, and of Israel. She lets go of the past in order to embrace the future with great faithfulness. And in these b~autiful words which have become an immortal prayer of fidelity, ~he accompa-nies Naomi through her life transition: Wherever you go, I shill go, wherever you live, I shall live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I shall die and there I shall be buried. Let Yahweh bring unnameable ills on me and worse ills, too, if anything but death should part me from you! (1:16-17 NJB). As we have seen, biblical fidelity recalls the faith of Israel that began with the departure of Abraham and led to the Mosaic covenant with God. It remembers the unique friendship estab-lished between God and Israel that is echoed in the entire Book of.Ruth and is exemplified by Ruth and other people in the story. 840 Review for Religiot~s At the heart of this covenant fidelity is the people's faith that Yahweh is the God of life who calls them to greater life. In the language and setting of today, faith calls us to face the light and to choose life. It enables us to look upon each letting go with optimism and prepares us to face other more painful relin-quishments that commit us more fully to God's service. It enables us to catch a glimpse of who we are meant to be. As with Ruth and Naomi, faith urges us to move forward and embrace the God of life. Notes L Alice L. Laffey, "Ruth," in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990), p. 553. 2 Ibid. 3 Intermarriage was prohibited, not on ethnic grounds, but to avoid religious syncretism and to foster the worship of Yahweh (see Ex 34:15ff). See Madeleine S. Miller and J. Lane Miller, Harper's Bible Dictiona,7 (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1973), p. 422. 4 Ibid. s Ibid. 6 See Laffey, p. 555. 7 Ibid. 8 Edith Deen, All of the Women of the Bible (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1983), p. 84. 9 Quoted byJoyce Rupp OSM in Praying Our Goodbyes (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1988), p. 77. ~0 Ibid, p. 24. Novonber-Decentber 1993 841 JOHN P. MOSSI The Spirituality of Surrender Losing, whether it is losing a friendly bet, an important argument, or a business contract, is a difficult pill to swal-low. We detest losing. The same is true for tiny diehard sports fan who endures a hometown rout. We walk away replaying the game, blaming the unfair referees, or creating strategies that "would have" favorably altered the score. When the defeat entails greater stakes, there is higher resis-tance to a surrender. To address a serious problem like addiction is personally painful. Implicit in such reality is a pervasive sense of failure. One has lost control over life's direction. The only way to regain control is to surrender what has not worked and seek a new way. This process is replete with difficulty. This article will examine the spirituality of surrender as a means of comin.g home to God? Surrendering to God will be looked at in three ways. The first involves an understanding of how surrender is operative in twelve-step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. The second involves a look at the life of Ignatius of Loyola and the surrender components of the final prayer of the Spiritual Exercises, the "Suscipe," or "Take and Receive." The third considers Jesus' act of surrender on the cross in Luke 23:46. Each of these three different "ways" of surren-dering involves putting our ultimate identity and confidence in God. John P. Mossi SJ, a member of the Religious Studies Department at Gonzaga University, facilitates courses in pastoral counseling, spiritual mentoring, addiction and pastoral approaches to recovery, and Catholicism. His address is Gonzaga University; Jesuit Residence; Spokane, Washington 99258. 842 Review for Religious Let Go, Let God At Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or twelve-step recovery retreats, the expression "Let go, let God" is often used. These four important words constitute the core spirituality of A.A. and similar recovery programs that have adapted the twelve steps to their particular addiction. "Let go, let God" is an invitation to surrender one's umnanageable life to God. "Let go, let God" is a gentle conversion reminder, a kind of mantra, which assists us both to admit the addiction and to hand it over along with its various forms of com-pulsions to God. The long form of the prayer would be something like "Let go of alcohol (or whatever the specific substance or non-substance addiction might be) and let the hand and grace of God guide my life." The prayer is not magic. Saying "Let go, let God" does not instantaneously bring about recovery. Its first purpose is to assist the recov-ering addict to keep to the daily partnership task of surrendering the addiction to God. The second purpose of "Let go, let God" is. to be a prayer of liberation, to call on the greater power of God to help one escape from destructive lifestyle patterns. In this way the creative resources of the individual and the action of God are focused on together. The prayer also serves to silence those addic-tion- related inner-committee tapes and voices of doubt, loneli-ness, fear, and caustic shame that can interfere with a person's slow recovery. These, too, need to be handed over to God. I have the greatest admiration for all who enter the surrender process of a twelve-step program. For many, it is the difference between death and life, the difference between barely existing as a human and participating in community, between dysfunction-alism and experiencing the serenity that only God gives with amazing grace. The first three steps of Anonymous programs set up this "Let go, let God" dynamic. The language of the twelve steps is straight-forward and simple. This is part of their wisdom and wide appeal. The steps make sense to a lot of people. Since A.A. began in 1935 at Akron, Ohio, Anonymous recovery programs have multiplied to treat various forms of addiction.2 These include Narcotics "Let go, let God" is an invitation to surrender one's unmanageable life to God. November-December 1993 843 Mossi ¯ The Spirituality of Surrender Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Emotions Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, M-Anon, and Adult Children of Mcoholics. Let us examine these first three steps. 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [or the other specific addiction], that our lives had become unmanageable) The first step is crucial. You admit you have a serious prob-lem. There is no denial of the fact. The blunt reality is your life is out of control, in fact, unmanageable. Furthermore, you are powerless to do anything about it. At Anonymous meetings, this first step is handled in an up-front manner. When members speak, they state their first name and their addictiveness: "I'm John. I'm an alcoholic." "I'm Susan. I'm a recovering overeater." In formal religion we might refer to this acknowledgment as group confession. In recovery programs it is simply admitting what can no longer be denied. Step one is an honest, vulnerable beginning place. Owning and naming the unmanageable addiction is essential to the surrendering process. When one is aware o£ a specific uncontrollable disease, one can effectively pray "Let go." But to whom does one surrender? Steps two and three look at the second part of the mantra: "Let God." God is the significant associate in restoring harmony. To appreciate the spirituality of the twelve steps, it is important to reflect that the existence and action of God are mentioned seven times in the twelve steps. The par-ticular addiction is only mentioned once, and that is in the first step. The activity of surrendering one's addiction and life to God becomes the spirituality cornerstone of the remaining steps. 2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.4 Step two admits the need of an outside corrective authority, a Higher Power, to bring about a stability in one's life. This is the first glimpse of light that invites God in as the restorer of sanity. There are two other important spirituality elements opera-tire in the second step: (i) the belief that a Higher Wisdom exists and (2) a disposition of humility on the part of the believer. These two qualities counterculturally work against the arrogance of the ego that craves to cling to the addiction. Step two indicates that the recovery process entails an attentive listening to a new Teacher, which means that the addict has to take on the attitude 844 Review for Religious of learner. There is a major shift in trust: from addiction to God. 3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.s Step three is where the capitulation actually occurs. First, a concrete decision to surrender has to be made. Second, this deci-sion is total. It includes the will making conscious choices, and it affects one's entire being and journey. Third, the whole person is placed in the care of God according to the individual's faith back-ground. The spirituality of "Let go, let God" is a conversion process. Conversion of its nature has two basic movements: the surren-dering of the compulsion, shame, and destructive addictive pat-terns which reduce freedom; the turning to the care of God and the Holy Spirit to be one's permanent resource of wisdom and identity. Matthew 11:28-30 speaks of a "letting go, letting God" pro-cess: "Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.''6 These three verses contain the confirmation signs that accompany a true surrender. A learning will occur, the process will be gentle and humble. Rest will be experienced. A new relationship arises, a companionship with the Master, which will be nonaddictive, easy, and light. The Surrender of Ignatius of Loyola Another way of surrendering one's life to God comes from the spirituality of Ignatius's surrender as expressed in his prayer the "Suscipe," or "Take and Receive." On his pilgrim journey Ignatius was called to surrender on several notable occasions. The first was during the defense of the city of Pamplona, Spain. In 1521 Ignatius, wounded by cannon shrapnel, reviewed the illusions of his life as sober death approached. But he did not die. His long convalescence became a conversion process. He gradually yielded up his stubborn self-preoccupation, bravado, and ambition and began to discover a new self in God.7 The spirituality record of Ignatius's surrender to God is found in his classic work, the Spiritual Exercises. Today, 450 years after its first published edition, it is still considered a significant theo-logical work noted for its integration of Scripture, guidelines for Nove~nber-Dece'mber 1993 845 Mossi ¯ The Spirituality of Surrender discernment, sense of mission, and themes of justice. The Exercises' developmental stages of growth in discipleship and intimacy enable a person to come home to God. The last prayer of the Exercises is called the "Suscipe" or "Take and Receive." I invite you to spend some time contemplating the components of this prayer. What is Ignatius, the once vain soldier-at- arms, now a mystic, asking us to do? Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will-- all that I have and call my own. You have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me.8 The "Suscipe" is a deceptively profound prayer. It invites us to acknowledge the primacy of God in our totality; it answers the humbling question "What aspect of our being is not a gift of God?" In the light of this answer, Ignatius invites us to surrender all to God. The last part of the prayer is a seeking of the purer gifts: "Give me only your love and grace. That is enough for me." Ignatius does not compromise in the process of "letting go of self and letting God in." I recall a forceful experience in praying the "Suscipe." It hap-pened fifteen years ago during a retreat. I attempted to pray and could not. I realized I had not surrendered anything, certainly not my liberty, memory, understanding, and will to anyone, much less to God. I told my director that I could not pray this prayer at all. As a consequence, I seriously questioned remaining a Jesuit. The director gave sage advice. He invited me to return to the chapel and pray the "Suscipe" with my own words in my own way. I prayed, "Lord, I give you my sins which I know so well, those many areas of my life where I am not obedient, poor, and chaste. I give you my pride, my negativity, my hatred and vin-dictiveness, my compulsive rebellion and addictiveness to self. I am overly familiar with these dark recesses. And I truly need to sur-render these to you. Send forth your Holy Spirit to guide, anoint, ¯ and heal with a love that I am most in need of, your grace." 846 Review for Religious Like an ambush, the opportunity to surrender can appear at unlikely moments. Do not let the occasion pass by. The benefit of letting God in always outweighs whatever is surrendered. Jesus on the Cross We turn to the spirituality of Jesus and the particular way he has taught us to surrender. He, too, had to face a special moment of surrender. His prayer in Luke 23:46 is a powerful expression of letting go: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.''9 Here on the cross Jesus is still the master teacher. He models for us how to pray and hand over our daily experiences and our life to God. Notice the key elements: (1) The prayer is addressed to the Father; (2)Jesus urges us to surrender, to commend, to let go; (3) Jesus specifies what is to be handed over. He gives what little is left, his spirit and last breath. In the daily minor or major surrenders of our own pilgrimage, we can pray in the spirituality of either the twelve steps, Ignatius, or Jesus. Specify in the "Let go, let God" mantra and the "Suscipe" whatever needs to be named and yielded: "Let go of addiction and manipulation. Let God in." "Take, Lord, my dis-honesty, my hurts, my doubts and sinfulness." God can handle and work with these blighted areas quite well. Adapt the prayer of Jesus to your immediate concerns: "Father, into your hands I commit my grief, my sense of failure, my disappointment, my pettiness and vulnerability." Commend these regions of brokenness to the higher compassion and under-standing of God. It is clear that not only our joys but also our sorrows must be offered to God. Our ability to be powerless allows God to meet us and tenderly heal us on our journey, embracing us as we truly are. Moreover, the art 6f surrendering involves a lifelong process. Some days we succeed better than others. If we post-pone learning the spirituality of surrender, we will face it unpre-pared at death, when .the surrender is sudden. Perhaps we can learn to surrender to the care, to the heart, of God in advance. Notes ~ For more information on this topic, see Gerald G. May, Addiction and Grace (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 162-181. Nove'mber-December 1993 847 Mossi * The Spirituality of Surrender 2 Ernest Kurtz, Not-God: A Histo~7 of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, Minn.: Hazeldon, 1991), pp. 37-57. 3 Anonymous, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1952), p. 21. 4 Ibid, p. 25. ~ Ibid, p. 34. 6 The New Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1985). 7 St. Ignatius' Own Story, trans. William J. Young sJ (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1956), pp. 7-27. 8 David L. Fleming SJ, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980), p. 141. 9 The New Jerusalem Bible. Retreat: A Flight The gulls are going wild over the waters; dipping, zooming, swirling over the wild waters. Far away, at horizon's edge, two ships imperceptibly inch against a purpling sky. I look up and see clouds playing charades before my eyes; straight out, the waves, wind-tossed, chase the dunes relentlessly. It is December at Mantoloking, and my Advent prayer has taken off with the clouds and the winds and the waves. I surrender, like a Maid of long ago to a time of begetting: in Mary, a Word made Flesh. in me, a sign become Faith. each a way of holding Beauty as a born-for-us Savior in a free-for-all world where the gulls (and my heart) go dipping, zooming, swirling with the wild of wonder. Anna Marie Mack SSJ 848 Review for Religious JEFFREY GROS The Ecumenical Vocation of Religious When Pope John emphasized the unity of the church and its openness to the world in inaugurating Vatican Council II, few realized the cost that such conversion would exact. Some felt euphoria, expecting the whole Roman Catholic Church to be zealous for reunion among Christians and hoping for a quick resolution of the theological, sacra-mental, and historical problems dividing the churches. Others, even some receptive to conciliar reform, had the superficial expectation that ecumenical openness would settle for a warm but noncommittal outreach, diminishing hostilities but not calling for the radical conversion and institutional reform outlined in the conciliar decree on ecumenism. The last twenty-five years have been a reward-ing and challenging pilgrimage for the Roman Catholic Church and for its Christian partners on the road toward full visible unity. Those who would consider the ecu-menical movement dead have not been following the lit-erature nor have they felt spiritual bonds of communion becoming stronger as many ofhers have. The Holy Spirit has been very much at work, but not all have yet been vis-ited with the gift of conversion. It is small wonder that, as the Roman Catholic Church assesses its ecumenical involvement and charts its course for the future, its Directory for the Application of Principles Jeffrey Gros FSC works in the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. His address is 3211 4th Street N.E.; Washington, D.C. 20017-1194. ecurnenJsrn November-December 1993 849 Coos * The Ecumenical Vocation of Reli#ous and Norms on Ecumenism (June 1993) gives special emphasis to ecumenical formation.~ Indeed, the ecumenical movement has been so successful that a whole genre of literature has emerged, resulting from the ecumenical dialogue, that calls for both spe-cialized study and incorporation into the spiritual life of all Catholics, including religious. Twenty-five years ago it was pos-sible to be ecumenical merely by being open to and supportive of the general conciliar position and by praying for the unity of the church. Today ecumenical commitments have become a richer and more complex spectrum. Most religious-formation programs gave emphasis to ecumenism a decade or two ago. They need evaluation today to see if they continue faithful to the develop-ments of this part of Catholic identity. In the new Directory there is for the first time a specific section devoted to institutes of con-secrated life and societies of apostolic life, not only laying out principles, but also proposing delegates and commissions for ecu-menism at the highest levels in religious institutes.2 This Directory is a help towards renewal. It covers such top-ics as the basis in Catholic theology for ecumenical commitment; the structures in the Catholic Church--including religious com-munities- to support the ecumenical commitment; ecumenical formation of the laity and the clergy, and within specialized min-istries and institutions; spirituality as it pertains to common bap-tism, marriage, and sacramental sharing; and cooperation and common witness. After a short introduction this essay will be lim-ited to some rather general comments on two issues: ecumenical formation and collaboration. Religious have been instrumental in Roman Catholic ecu-menism- such pioneers as Congar, Tavard, Rahner, and Dulles. Some religious communities have prayer and work for the unity of the church as their charism, like the Graymoor friars and sis-ters and the Paulist fathers? Others have set up special supports for the ecumenical movement, like the Jesuit Society of Ecumenists and the Benedictine centers at Collegeville, Chevetogne, Turvey, and Niederaltaich. Outreach programs to incorporate lay people in, for example, Jesuit, Mercy, or Lasallian spirituality and apostolates have been thoroughly ecumenical in their membership and formation. Schools, hospitals, and other institutions animated by religious in leadership positions have pioneered the ecumenical program of the Catholic Church. Among diocesan ecumenical officers are many religious. Where 850 Review for Religious shared mission is a priority, the baptismal basis and commitment to full ecclesial communion are central to the common forma-tion of the fellow Christians who are brought into collaboration with Roman Catholic religious according to their particular charisms. These developments, like the other elements of renewal, have been adapted according to cultural context and the quality of vision provided by ecclesiastical and religious leadership. The Context Certainly many bishops and religious superiors will use the occasion of the publication of the Directory as an opportunity to train specialists in ecumenical leadership, much as retraining in canon law developed after the publication of the 1983 Code.4 As in biblical, social, and liturgical renewal, expertise is necessary in ecumenism. It is essential, however, that all religious, lay, and clerical members of the church be formed ecumenically as part of their spiritual and apostolic life. The Second Vatican Council clearly asked Catholics to reach out in love to all other Christians with a charity that desires and works actively to overcome in truth whatever divides them from one another. For the council, Catholics are to act in hope and in prayer to promote Christian unity. They will be prompted and instructed by their faith in the mystery of the church, and their ecumenical activity will be inspired and guided by a true understanding of the church as "sacrament or iristrumental sign of intimate union with God, and of unity of the whole human race.''s In this sho~'t essay attention will be called to the ecumenical dimension of Roman Catholic spirituality and identity in its pres-ent challenges. Among the institutional supports to religious involved in the ecumenical movement is the National Ecumenical Consultation of Men and Women Religious. This .group's publication of Religious for Christian Unity as an ecumenical resource and direc-tory and its sponsorship of a national ecumenical conference under the theme "Toward a Communion in Faith Life and Witness" are indications of a certain maturity.6 Although there has been an international ecumenical consultation for twenty years, the United States consultation is only nine years old. It is sponsored in part by the Conference of Major Superiors of Men and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. With the publication and the November-December 1993 851 Gros ¯ The Ecumenical Vocation of Reh~ous May 1993 conference, the specific ecumenical contribution of religious begins to have a higher profile. For the first time, the Directory proposes a structure within religious congregations to assist in the ecumenical activity of com-munities at all levels: It is very opportune that the various institutes of conse-crated life and societies of apostolic life establish, on the level of their central authorities, a delegate or a commis-sion charged with promoting and assisting their ecumenical engagement. The function of these delegates or commis-sions will be to encourage the ecumenical formation of all the members, aid the specific ecumenical formation of those who have particular offices, and act as advisors for ecu-menical affairs to the various general and local authorities of the institutes and societies, especially for initiating or carrying forward the activities described [in the Directory].7 This initiative will elicit considerable work on the part of major superiors, general councils, and chapters. The implications of this proposal will need to be developed in writing for the var-ious institutes. For this project the Directory will be useful. Elements of the Ecumenical Spirituality At the root of loyalty to Christ's will for the church and for church unity is the process of conversion, personal and institu-tional, s There are cultural dispositions that make the formation for such a conversion more or less easy. Of course, a prayerful open-ness to the Holy Spirit's action in the church, in other churches, and in fellow Christians is foundational. Because ecumenism with all its human and moral require-ments is rooted so profoundly in the mysterious working out of the providence of the Father, through the Son and the Spirit, it reaches into the depths of Christian spirituality. It calls for [a] "change of heart and holiness of life, along with public and private prayer for the unity of Christians. ¯ ." Those who identify deeply with Christ must identify with his prayer, and especially with his prayer for unity; . . ¯ those whose lives are marked by repentance will be espe-cially sensitive to the sinfulness of divisions and will pray for forgiveness and con, version. Those who seek holiness will be able to recognize its fruits also outside the visible boundaries of their own church.9 However, studies of seminary formation that were made by 852 Review for Religious diocesan ecumenical officers demonstrate that the most effective ecumenical formative experience is growing up in an interchurch family. Other elements that contributed most to the ecumenical dimension of priestly formation in the United States are (I) internship with an ecumenically effective priest, (2) ecumenically effective spiritual directors, (3) internships with an ecumenically informed non-Catholic minister, and (4) experiences in ecu-menically mixed clinical pastoral education programs. All of the seminaries report that the ecumenical dimension is fully inte-grated into the curriculum. The Directory will be helpful for eval-uating these claims. As sketched out by the council, the elements of Roman Catholic participation in the ecumenical movement include (1) the ecumenical dimension of spirituality, (2) theological dialogues leading to deeper understanding and toward full church unity, (3) collaboration in common witness and service, and (4) internal renewal of the members and structures of the church in response to ecumenical commitments. Attention needs to be given to each of these dimensions in initial and continuing formation and in the ongoing life of a religious community or parish. Ecumenical Spirituality for the Church An ecumenical spirituality is at the center of every aspect of the renewal of religious and lay life in the church. Without con-version to Christ's will for the church--in this case its visible unity and Roman Catholic contributions thereto--any theologi-cal, institutional, or educational progress towards full commu-nion will be superficial. If, on the other hand, Catholics are fully committed to all to whom they are bound by real, if imperfect, communion in baptism and to Christ's will for the visible unity of the church, then no setbacks on the road toward that unity will discourage them or make them complacent about divisions: The ecumenical movement is a grace of God, given by the Father in answer to the prayer of Jesus and the supplica-tion of the church inspired by the Holy Spirit. While it is carried out within the general mission of the church to unite humanity in Christ, its own specific field is the restoration of unity among Christians. Those who are baptized in the name of Christ are, by that very fact, called to commit themselves to the search for unity?° Noventber-Decevnber 1993 853 Coos ¯ The Ecumenical Vocation of Religious While individual religious and some communities have given considerable leadership to church reform in general and ecu-menism in particular, identity problems also affect the relationship of religious and the church. The Nygren/Ukeritis studies show that United States religious have "a stronger ecclesiology than Christology." ii This is not surprising, given the Roman Catholic The vast amount of ecumenical literature that has emerged in the last thi'rty years can help people renew their understandings of sacramental faith together. understanding of spirituality. I would understand this conclusion to mean that Christ is experienced more sacramentally, communally, and in mission than in indi-vidualistic or contemplative encounters. Such a focus on community can mean two things, as a resource for Catholic ecu-menical commitment. In one instance it can mean a more closed and sectarian approach, where primary religious identity and meaning come from the proximate religious community, its institution~ and ministry, rather than from Christ's wider will for the church and the world. Needless to say, this provides a weaker basis for ecu-menical conversion and formation. On the other hand,this ecclesiocen-tric spirituality could indicate that the experience of Christ is primarily in the call to community in the church, in the wider Christian society, and in the whole human family. At this stage in the reporting of the data, "ecclesiology" is yet to be defined. Be that as it may, the fully Catholic religious sees his or her sacramental life as yet defi-cient, short of the full communion of all Christians around the eucharistic table. The data from the same study shows religious to be "clear in their lowered respect for the magisterial authority of the church and the U.S. hierarchy in. general.''12 These words, negative as they sound, may however be interpreted as a critical fidelity to the Holy Spirit's call to the church for its renewal. A higher ideal for the church, its renewal, its leadership, and its eventual unity may not be so much "lowered respect" as elevated expectation and longer-range vision. The movement toward Christ's will for a united church is a critical fidelity for all of the churches involved in the ecumenical movement. 854 Review for Religious The vast amount of ecumenical literature that has emerged in 'the last thirty years can help people renew their understandings of sacramental faith together. The agreements on "justification by grace through faith" with the Lutherans, for example, provide an important contribution to faith development, self-under-standing, and spiritual direction?3 These documents will not reach their full fruitfulness unless they transform the prayer life, litur-gical celebration, and community understanding of the churches that produced them: Catholics should also give value to certain elements and goods, sources of spiritual life, which are found in other churches and ecclesial communities, and which belong to the one church of Christ: Holy Scripture, the sacraments and other sacred actibns, faith, hope, charity and other gifts of the Spirit. These goods have borne fruit for example in the mystical tradition of the Christian East and the spiritual treasures of the monastic life, in the worship and piety of Anglicans, in the Evangelical prayer and the diverse forms of Protestant spirituality. This appreciation should not remain merely theoreti-cal; in suitable particular conditions, it should be completed by the practical knowledge of other traditions of spiritual-ity. Therefore, sharing prayer and participating in some form of public worship or in devotional acts of other Christians can have a formative value when in accord with existing directives.14 Religious have a unique role in translating these intellectual con-tributions into popular piety. Indeed, several ecumenical books on the Blessed Virgin have already provided an invaluable resource, as can be noted by the many languages into which they have been translated,is The lives of ecumenical figures from Luther to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from John WeslEy to C.S. Lewis, have enr.iched the spiritual reading of a generation and made the divisions both more clear and more subject to the healing power of the Holy Spirit. The modern availability of the spiritual classics from the full range of ecumenical sources, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican has enabled all to be enriched. The living presence of fellow Christians with whom we share Christ--in a variety of traditions, but with a common will to be obedient to Christ's call to visible unity--is a rich complement to the liturgical, bio-graphical, and literary gifts we receive from one another. Like the charisms of the various religious communities and their November-December 1993 855 Gros ¯ The Ecumenical Vocation of Religlous founders, each church brings to a united church gifts we dare not lose as we reconcile our divisions. More particularly, giveR the legitimate variety of charisms and of the work of monasteries, institutes of consecrated life, and societies of apostolic life, it is very important that "all communities should participate in the life of the church. According to its individual character, each should make its own and foster in every possible way the enterprises and objectives of the church," including the "ecumenical field.''~6 In addition to personal and communal ecumenical spirituality, an "ecumenical hermeneutics of piety" will need to be developed as we move forward towards full communion?7 Indeed, as the "lineamenta" document for the 1994 synod notes, the baptismal consecration, beyond the narrow borders of the Roman Catholic Church, is the criterion for our communi-tarian outreach: As a reflection of church communion, the community is not a unit closed in.upon itself. Rather, it is open to the multiplicity of relationships with others which are provided by prayer, apostolic service, and collaboration with other members of the church, all of whom share in the same bap-tismal consecration and are called to holiness and mission in the variety and complementarity of each vocation. In its communitarian aspect, the role of the consecrated life is to offer to all members of the people of God the supreme value of the charity of Christ's disciples, lived in perseverance in fraternal communion.~8 Likewise, the agenda of the synod is very explicit about the spe.cificity of the spiritual calling: Those in the consecrated life have a special role in this ecu-menical task, in dialogue with the spiritual experiences akin to those of other churches and Christian confessions, in a spiritual ecumenism of conversion, prayer, dialogue and mutual edification, always in kedping with their proper iden-tity in the faith and their charism?9 Formation for an Ecumenical Spirituality While prayer and ecumenical openness are central to the ecu-menical vocation of Catholics, including the religious communi-ties, this spirituality also has specific intellectual content. It is a truism that one cannot be an effective ecumenist from any tradi- 856 Review for Religious tion without being firmly grounded in one's own faith and iden-tity. 2° However, 'the intellectual content of the ecumenical move-ment, including Roman Catholic principles and history within that movement, is an essential component for the formation of any ministry in the church, lay, clerical, or religious. In addition to the foundational principles enunciated in the conciliar and postconciliar docu-ments, 21 there has been a rich harvest of dialogue agreements.~ All of these texts are resources for spiritual and intellectual " renewal, requiring the same level of delib-erate systematic effort as did the early days of the biblical and liturgical renewal. Until leaders in our institutions, dioceses, and religious communities become well formed in these matters, their spirit will not be able to come alive in our Catholic life. Indeed, these dialogues and the researches and methodologies that stand behind them transform not only our appreciation of our own Catholic faith, but also of the changes necessary if our insti-tutions and practices are to be converted to reach the ideal we outline with our ecumenical partners. As was noted above, the curricula of seminaries have been transformed by the ecumenical movement. Those who receive their training in ecumenical con-sortia are probably the most sensitive to the ecumenical dimen-sion, but no one taking a Catholic scripture course can be ignorant of the full integration of Catholic and Protestant biblical schol-arship since the council. Similarly, any competent liturgy or sacramental-theology course will be informed by the vast literature that has come from the World Council's "Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry" processz3 over the last decade and from the bilateral agreements of a wide variety of churches. Soteriology, spiritual development, and eccle-siology are all informed by the Lutheran/Catholic work on grace cited above. Ecclesiology will include not only the principles of Catholic ecumenism, but also the work done in the World Council and in various dialogues on such topics as the local and the uni-versal church, religious liberty and proselytism, and papal pri- One cannot be an effective ecumenist from any tradition without being firmly grounded in one's own faith and identity. November-December 1993 857 Coos * The Ecumenical Vocation of Relig4ous macy and infallibility. The Directory gives helpful detail for plan-ning both clerical and nonclerical religious formation.24 For the first time a section in this Directory sets the stage for the work of ecumenical formation among religious: While the concern for restoring Christian unity involves the whole church, clergy and laity alike, relig

Issue 54.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1995. ; Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1995 ¯ VOLUME 54 '. NUMBER 5 Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314o977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ P.O. Box 29260 ° Washington, DC 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1995 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read Joann Wolski Conn PhD Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1995 ¯ VOLUME 54 ¯ NUMBER 5 contents 646 symposium The Roots of Faith-and-Justice: Critical Assessment Martin R. Tripole SJ presents a case for a more careful assessment of the relationship between faith and justice in the Christian apostolic life. Responses are made by Gerald F. Finnegan SJ, Vincent J. Genovesi SJ, and Charles L. Currie SJ. 675 681 ecumenism Ecumenism a Scripture Mandate for Religious Jude D. Weisenbeck SDS explains how ecumenism is at the very heart of what it means to be a religious. Too Deep for Dogma Bernard Seif SMC describes the enriching prayer relationship that has been created between a Salesian monastery and a Hindu ashram. 685 Catholicism in the Social Order of a New Era Curt Cadoret~e MM addresses changes in the church that will occur in the next millennium as its center of gravity moves from the developed to the developing world. 696 707 finding God Fihding God in Daily Life: Ignatian Spirituality's Heart Richard J. Hauser SJ describes a practical way of staying attuned to the Spirit by focusing upon the direction of one's heart. A Hermitage Experience Perry McDonald OFMCap takes away the fear or glamor of a hermitage experience as he recounts the everyday grace of solitude. 642 Review for Religious 716 The Abbey of S~nanque: A Journey of the Heart Dennis J. Billy CSSR ponders the contemplative effect of a pilgrimage to the Cistercian Abbey of S~nanque. 723 754 prayer Jesus:Beauty::Jesus:Compassion George A. Maloney SJ enters us into an experience of Jesus as Beauty and Compassionate Love which leads us to a self-emptying service towards others. 729 Mysticism as Flight M. Pascaline Coff OSB explains how t/~e breakthrough to the mystical, to the Transcendent, is the true goal of our lives. living spiritually J 735 The Problem with Problems Hilary Ottensmeyer OSB points out ways in which a problem-solving approach to hfe has e,normous consequences for how we think and feel about ourselves, our neighbor, and our God. 744 A Case for Candlelight [ Donald Macdonald SMM illumines thrbugh the experience of Julian of Norwich how personal relationships with God and others seem to flourish best in a gentldr rather than a harsher light. Vocation as Liberation and Revel Ltion Terrance Wayne Klein describes the necessity of liberation for ministerial candidates in their pursuit of a vocation call 644 772 from God. departments Prisms Canonical Counsel: Cloister for N~uns: From the 1917 Code to the 1994 Synod 779 Book Reviews September-October 199Y 643 prisms Te editor's introduction to each issue is usually focused on a way of viewing an issue, a practice, or an event in relation to our Christian living, often refracted through religious life heritages. In this issue I designate the following content rather in the "announcement" than in the "viewpoint" category. The National Board of the Religious Formation Conference in'the United States has designated Review for Religious to be the recipient of the Religious Formation Conference's Sister Mary Emil Penet IHM Award for 1995. The award is being given in recognition of its contribution to formation ministry in this country and throughout the world during its fifty-four-year-old history. The presentation will be made at the Ninth National Religious Formation Conference in St. Louis on October 13, 1995. Sister Mary Emil Penet, a member of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Monroe, Michigan, was the founder of the Sister Formation Conference (pre-cursor of the Religious Formation Conference) and a woman who recognized the needs of her time in prepar-ing women religious for their professional ministries. The Religious Formation Conference evolved over the years from the founding vision of Sister Mary Emil Penet, and as a national organization continues to respond to the needs of religious communities in the area of initial and ongoing formation. Sister Mary Emil Penet received the first award in 1989. Presented biennially, the award was given to the Institute of Religious Formation at Saint Louis University and the Institute of Formative Spirituality at Duquesne University in 1991. In 1993 the Adorers of the Blood of Christ of Ruma, Illinois, received the Mary Emil Penet IHM Award in honor of their Sisters who were martyred in Liberia, all five of whom were in some way involved in the ministry of formation. 644 Review for Religious As the fourth editor of this journal, I express my apprecia-tion for this recognition--a tribute given to our many writers who have collaborated in sharing from their various religious life heritages. Building upon the untapped resource of collaboration among religious was central to the vision of the founding editors, Augustine Ellard $3, Adam Ellis SJ, and Gerald Kelly SJ, in 1942. That vision has been realized through the articles of numerous women and men--some well-known writers and many others not so well known, but all contributing from the richness of their insight and experience. Today this kind of collaboration is central to formation and ministry--between religious congregations and between religious and laity. ' In another example of collaboration, Review for Religious is working with the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, in its special symposium: "Religious Life 30 Years Later. Is This What Vatican II Intended?" Scheduled to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Vatican II's decree on "The Appropriate Renewal of Religious Life" (Pe~fectae caritatis), this program will investigate the present state of religious life with an eye to appro-priate future developments. Major presentations will be given by Miriam Ukeritis CSJ, Albert Dilanni SM, George Aschenbrenner SJ, and Judith Merkle SNDdeN. The speakers mean to stimulate conversation among all the participants on current trends and devel-opments, community, mission, and other aspects of contemporary religious life. The symposium is dedicated to the memory of Mary Margaret Johanning SSND, former superior general and Review board member who died in October 1994. A notice on the practi-cal details for those wishing to participate in this symposium to be held October 26-29 can be found on page 797of this issue. Finally, Review for Religious intends to publish another book in the series The Best of the Review, with the title The Church and Consecrated Life. The book will include the pope's still-to-be-published apostolic exhortation as a result of the synod on con-secrated life, a collection of Elizabeth McDonough's Canonical Counsel articles reviewing church documents on religious life, and other significant articles relating to synod considerations. This prepublication announcement is meant only to alert you, our readers. Look for the book's publication in early 1996. David L. Fleming SJ September-October 199Y 645 MARTIN R. TRIPOLE The Roots of Faith-and-Justice: Critical Assessment symposium The 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (GC34) met in Rome from 5 January to 22 March 1995. Twenty-four documents were approved and, as of this writing, were awaiting final revisions and official pro-mulgation. Its decree 2, 'titled "Our Mission and Justice," renews Jesuit "commitment to the promotion of justice as an integral part of our mission, as this has been exten-sively developed in GC32 and GC33.''~ Thus GC34 reaf-firms the tradition of the promotion of justice set in place at the 32nd General Congregation in 1975. This paper examines the roots of the justice move~ ment in GC32's decree 4, "Our Mission Today: The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice.''2 Commonly known as Decree Four, the document was dis-cussed amid considerable opposition during GC32 and has been the subject of much joy, confusion, and consternation since, reflecting the different ways the document has been received. A decree of major importance, it became the guiding light that gave new direction and meaning to much of Jesuit spirituality and ministry thereafter. It also had a significant effect on the many other religious orders of men and women that took guidance from its words in Martin R. Tripole SJ, associate professor of theology, and the three Jesuit respondents to his paper first presented these reflec-tions on 21 January 1995 at a Jesuit community meeting at St. Joseph's University. Their address is St. Joseph's University; 5600 City Avenue; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131. 646 Review for Religious reorienting their own spirituality and apostolic direction. It will therefore be useful to examine carefully what the doc-ument decreed about the promotion of justice, why it made this change of direction, whether it was justified in doing so, and whether there might not be a better course to follow to attain its noble goals. This presentation is divided into three parts: (1) the meaning and use of justice in decree 4, with analysis of the spe-cial importance it gives t6 the promotion of justice in the apostolic life; (2) the meaning of"the poor"; and (3) a suggestion for a bet-ter formulary to guide religious apostolic life into the coming millennium. The Meaning and Use of Justice in the Decree A careful examination makes it clear that the primary mean-ing of justice in decree 4 is social justice, a justice that is achieved through the revamping of institutional or social structures so that they May more adequately reflect and promote a just ordering of society. There are those who argue that justice in the decree is more properly understood as the human reflection of divine justice, as God's justice at work in the world. This, they assert, makes Jesuit efforts to promote justice a spiritual activity appropriate to their priestly life. While it is true that the decree does argtie, and rightly so, that our efforts to secure tlie rights of others are a reflection of the "power of God's mercy, that mercy whereby he most fully shows forth his justice," this notion is present in only one small part of.the document and in no way substantiates the assertion that justice in the decree takes its central meaning from this the-ological idea) The argument from divine justice has such an iso-lated position in the document that one guesses it is an afterthought to provide a spiritual, foundation for activity in the social order.4 Even understood thus, the argument has its prob-lems, which we shall point out later. In emphasizing social justice the decree gives importance to the establishment of right relationships among people--to render to each what is his or her due--but stresses even more the need to change the social, political, and economic structures of society so that all, especially the poor and oppressed, obtain what is due them through these structures. The decree states: "There are mil-lions of men and women in our world., who are suffering from September-October 199Y 647 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faitb-and- ffustice poverty and hunger, from the unjust, distribution of wealth and resources and from the consequences of racial, social, and polit-ical discrimination . In a world where the power of economic, social, and political structures is now appreciated and the mech-anisms and laws governing them are now understood, service according to the gospel cannot dispense with a carefully planned effort to exert influence on those structures" (§20 and §31). So far, so good. But this leads to one of the major conclu-sions of this presentation, and perhaps the major conclusion: While it is acceptable that the promotion of justice be a work of the Society of Jesus and, indeed, of all religious life, d problem arises when the decree makes the promotion of justice the absolute stan-dard against which all apostolates must be justified, saying in effect that you cannot have an apostolate in Jesuit life which is not, in some sense, a work of justice. The point is stated emphatically at least twice in the decree: The mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of "which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement. (§2) The promotion of justice is not one apostolic area among others, the "social apostolate"; rather, it should be the concern of our whole life and a dimension of all our apostolic endeavors. (§47) There are at least two reasons why it is unwise to give the promotion of justice this comprehensive role: First, there is an inherent danger in seeing a work of the temporal order as neces-sary to justify a (more ultimate) spiritual work, the danger being that this penultimate requirement may become the goal itself and thus its own legitimation. In this case the promotion of justice would become the goal of apostolic endeavors, rather than being in the service of the faith. Fear of that danger was present even among some of the del-egates at GC32. According to Jean-Yves Calvez, a delegate to the congregation and a longtime close associate of Father General Arrupe, some of the members "were truly fearful that, if the two themes [the promotion of justice and the entire apostolic life] were to be united, the promotion of justice would come to occupy the whole field and appear to represent the totality of today's Jesuit apostolate.''s That Pope Patil VI sensed this danger is clear from his admonitions to the Jesuits through his secretary of state, Jean Cardinal Villot,at the end of GC32, when Paul reminded 648 Review for Religious the delegates of what he had said in his closing remarks at the 1974 Synod of Bishops: "Human development and social progress in the temporal order should not be extolled in such exaggerated terms as to obscure the essential significance which the church attributes to evangelization and the proclamation of the full gospel.6 By most accounts, this danger became a reality--at least twice. Arrupe noted in 1972 that an undue emphasis had been placed upon justice as "socioeconomic development" in the aftermath " of Vatican II, probably because of the powerful impetus given to the social-jus-tice movement b}" Gaudium et spes.7 But it is also generally accepted today that after GC32 the concept of justice again became largely identified by Jesuits with the work of the social apostolate. Calvez tells us that a group of Jesuits who met in Latin America in 1982 admitted that they had "yielded to excessively secularized views" of justice in their apostolate (Calvez, p. 65). He notes that Arrupe became con-cerned in 1980 that justice was being seen as something "sufficient in itself" and not related to charity (p. 84) and tried to cor-rect the problem in his famous talk of 6 February 1981, "Rooted and Grounded in Love." Calvez and others argue that Arrupe reaffirmed the impor- " tance of love or charity in that talk--that social justice should not be separated from love or charity--but that he did not in any way intend to correct decree 4's heavy emphasis upon justice. But a better reading of the evidence indicates that Arrupe was reducing the importance of justice in that talk. Arrupe had been affirming as early as 1966, the year after he became superior general, that all Jesuit ministries and every form of Jesuit apostolate had to be a response "to the urgent priorities which justice and social equity call for. Even an apostolate like education., must be the object of reflection in the light of the demands of the social problem.''8 Right through to GC32 he often sti'essed the role of justice in the apostolate, especially in the famous 1973 speech in Valencia to Jesuit alumni, many of whom became so upset at his assertion that they had not been adequately Justice is necessary, but it is not enough. The world needs a stronger cure, a more effective witness and more effective deeds: those of love. Septentber-October 1995 649 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faitb-and-ffustice educated for justice that the .president of the alumni association immediately resigned'(Calvez, p. 27). But, in "Rooted and Grounded in Love" only eight years later, Arrupe speaks quite differently. He talks about "all the imperfec-tions" of decree 4, that it was an "option in the right direction" but not sufficient: "Justice is necessary, but it is not enough. The world needs a stronger cure, a more effective witness and more effective deeds: those of love .C.harity adds its transcendent, inner dimension to justice .E.very explanation in terms of jus-tice seems inadequate.''9 About two months before this talk, Pope John Paul II had published his second encyclical, Dives in misericordia (Rich in Mercy). Arrupe cites it explicitly: "The experience of the past and of our own time demonstrates that justice alone is not enough, that it can even lead to the n.egation and destruction of itself, if that deeper power, which is love, is not allowed to shape human life in its various dimensions.''~° It would seem that Arrupe had come to a new awareness that undue emphasis had been placed on the promotion of justice by the Jesuits, an emphasis that should more properly have been placed on love and charity. The second difficulty with making the promotion of justice the criterion for all Jesuit apostolates is that it risks undermining the acceptability of traditional apostolates which cannot easily be explained as extensions of the promotion of justice. The ques-tioning of the legitimacy of many traditional apostolates is exactly what~occurred after GC32 and has continued to this day, for it is difficult to find rational arguments to justify apostolates such as education, the fine arts, some forms of research and publishing, administering the sacraments, and giving spiritual counsel on matters of faith and on people's personal relationship with God when these all must be demonstrably the promotion of justice to survive. This leads to one's asking why all apostolates must be expres-sions of justice. It seems.they must only if it has been determined a priori that justice is the norm for all apostolates. But why should that be the case? What the following discussion may show is that there is no clear reason for justice to be given ~uch a far-reaching role. Although dec'ree 4 provides at leasteight arguments for the comprehensive role of justice jn all apostolic activity, we shall examine only two of the more important ones here. 650 Review for Religious Is Justice an Absolute Requirement of Faith? The major argument is based on the view that the "mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the pro-motion of justice is an absolute requirement" (decree 4, §2).lj But is the promotion of justice an absolute requirement of the service of faith? No footnote is given in decree 4 for the origins of this idea, but they are found in the document:Tustice in the World from the Synod of Bishops of 1971, which Arrupe made use of in the congregation. The key text from that statement reads: "Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel." J2 The words constitutive dimension are crucial, for if used in their technical sense they would mean that "action on behalf of justice" is essential to the preaching of the gospel--so that you could not preach the gospel without action on behalf of justice. The statement is repeatedly cited by all who would make the promotion of justice a new essen-tial dimension of Christian liv-ing, and everyone takes these words constitutive dimension in their literal technical meaning. It would take too long to discuss this matter fully here, but Charles Murphy, the former rector of the North American College in Rome, wrote in 1983 a highly significant article on this topic, in which he shows that, whatever it may have meant by those two words, the synod did not mean that they should be taken in their technical sense.13 Among the synod's possible meanings, the most likely is that justice is an integral part of the proclamation of the gospel. According to Avery Dulles, "integral part" means "pertains to the completeness of that of which it is a part, but., not essential to the existence of the latter." ~4 The distinction is crucial, for if the promotion of justice is "integral" but not essential to the service of faith, then the promotion of justice is not an "absolute require-ment" of the service of faith, as decree 4 asserts)s If the promotion of justice is "integral" but not essential to the service of faith, then the promotion of justice is not an "absolute requirement" of the service of faith. September-October 199Y 651 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faitb-and-ffustice No pope since 1971 has understood "constitutive dimension" from Jztstice in the V~orld to have its technical meaning. Paul VI argued that the synod had not in fact explained the exact nature of the relationship between action for justice and the procl.ama-tion of the gospel, and both he and John Paul II have repeatedly used other terms; such as "profound links," to explain the rela-tionship. John Paul II, at his opening address at the Puebla Conference of Latin American Bishops in 1979, stated that work on behalf of justice is "an indispensable part" of the church's "evangelization mission." This is clearly not to assert that it is a constitutive or essential element of evangelization, but rather, in Dulles's sense, an integral part of it. The International Theological Commission in 1977 explicitly treated the synod statement.~6 It argues that the document should not be understood in a "theoretical, scientific," or "theological" way (I, p. 307), that it should be understood as affirming "a pro-found unity that links" the proclamation of the gospel and justice (II, p. 307), and that the more accurate meaning "seems" to be "an integral part, not an essential part" (IV, p. 311). Is Justice Integral to Priesthood? A second reason for the special importance given to the pro-motion of iustice in decree 4 is based on the essential role sup-posedly given to it in the ministry of the Jesuits as a priestly order. Because this constitutes one of the more serious theological argu-ments in the documents and because it has a broader signifi~cance for all religious priestly congregations, it needs to be given seri-ous attention. The argument in question reads as follows: The mission of the Society today is the priestly service of the faith, an apostolate whose aim is to help people become more open toward God and more willing to live according to the demands of the gospel. The gospel demands a life freed from egoism and self-seeking, from all attempts to seek one's own advantage, and from every form of exploita-tion of one's neighbor. It demands a life in which the justice of the gospel shines out in a willingness not only to recog-nize and respect the rights of all, especially the poor and the powerless, but also to work actively to secure those rights. It demands an openness and generosity toward any-one in need, even a stranger or an enemy. It demands, 652 Review for Religious towards those who have injured us, pardon; toward those with whom we are at odds, a spirit of reconciliation. We do not acquire this attitude of mind by our own efforts alone. It is the fruit of the Spirit who transforms our hearts and fills them with the power of God's mercy, that mercy whereby he most fully shows forth his justice by drawing us, unjust though we are, to his friendship. It is by this that we know that the promotion of justice is an integral part of the priestly service of the faith. (decree 4, § 18) We have here an argument that conflates several theological re~ilities that, while interrelated, must be understood distinctly: divine justice and human expressions of it and also the priesthood of all the faithful and the ministerial priesthood. The document gives as parallels "the justice of the gospel" that expresses itself in the mercy by which God draws us into his friendship and into the human practice of justice by which we recognize, respect, and promote the rights of others. The decree implies a certain equa-tion between the horizontal and the vertical: Our work toward the establishing of respect for the rights of others is made possi-ble in the power of God's mercy, the same mercy which is at work when God's justice brings us into his friendship. Thus it is God's justice which is at work both in our efforts to promote justice in the world and in divine-human reconciliation. The argument is not incorrect: It is in reality God's justifying action that is at work in the world in human efforts to promote justice. But God's justice is far greater than human expressions of it. Human actions of justice may therefore be considered one form of God's justice, but only one, and perhaps not even the major form of it. Justice in the Scriptures is always understood as at work inside a covenant relationship, whether in the Old or New Testament. Justice is God's saving,,redemptive activity at work in the world, extricating humans from the power of sin and restoring them to a relationship of friendship with God. Justice is equated with that saving action, and it is present wherever that action is at work. Justice, then, is ultimately found wherever salvific union with God is established. In the Old Testament, Israel's justice is "that she repents and takes refuge in her God, that she trusts in him, that she is faith-ful." t7 In the New Testament, justice takes place in the relation-ship centered on Christ's redemptive activity in his suffering, death, and resurrection. The human being's justice, then, "consists September-October 199~ 653 Tripole * The Roots of Faitb-and-ffustice of, and depends upon, his trusting acceptance of God's saving act in Christ, whereby man accepts the restored covenant relationship with God." ~8 In the New Testament, God in Christ is the source of justice or righteousness, and the human being enters into that righ-teousness by faith in Christ. We are justified in that we are brought back into friendship with God and made his adopted children. God's Spirit leads us to a share in the new justified life as God's children, which is in fact a sharing in God's own life-- even now in this world and more fully in the next. It is in the experience of this new life in God that the com-munity of love, human dignity, and respect for one another is formed. Indeed, in the Christian dispensation the horizontal expressions of that saving justice are realized as a consequence of the justice already enacted between God and human beings, so that the horizontal experience is unintelligible without the lat-ter. To separate human expressions of justice from the salvific encounter with God in the knowledge and recognition of his sav-ing love in Christ is not only to risk distorting the Christian dis-pensation but also to risk reducing the Christian expression of justice to something purely secular. As far as Christians are concerned, the promotion of justice should not be separated from its relationship to divine justice, which is its sole ground of meaning. This means that the pro-motion of justice not only should never be separated from its relationship to the gospel, but also should never diminish pri-mary attention on the good news of God's justifying Word. Decree 4 rightly argues that "our mission today is to preach Jesus Christ and to make him kntwn in such a way that all men and women are able to recognize him" (§1 i). The danger in decree 4 is that, with its excessive emphasis upon the promotion of justice in the social order, the gospel risks being slighted. What is rightly understood as the incarnation of the gospel in the world risks being sepa-rated from its foundation in divine justice and becoming simply an action of social justice of the secular order. That what Arrupe recognized as a danger actually happened in the aftermath of the decree in the late 1970s indicates that the danger remains a real one. While Vatican II in Gaudium et spes did encourage the church to take a strong role in promoting the dignity of the human person, it nevertheless saw human actions for justice as properly pr0paedeutic to the proclamation of the saving 654 Review for Religious mysteries of Jesus Christ and never intended that human efforts for justice be separated from the justifying life of the church. Unless human efforts at justice are designed to lead to an expe-rience of justifying union with Christ in his church, such efforts risk becoming inconsonant with the Christian mission. Decree 4 gives the impression that divine justice translates directly and adequately into efforts at justice in the world. While efforts at human justice are extremely important to God's justi-fy! ng action in the world, that impor-tance should not overshadow the fact that God's saving justice is revealed in many parts of our lives in which the word justice is not used. God's saving justice is revealed in the whole life of the church, especially in the procla-mation of God's Word and the church's sacramental life. While human justice is an integral part of the service of the faith, it is not the rich-est way in which God's saving action is manifested. Therefore, if the promo-tion of justice should ever be stressed to such a point that it begins to over-shadow the primacy of the proclama-tion of the gospel and the sacramental life of the church, one risks once again separating the promgtion of justice from its solid Christian base. Besides the, potential confusion that we have been discussing in regard God's divine justice, which is his saving covenanted relationship with his people, makes a human act of justice priestly, not in the ministerial sense, but rather in the sense of the priesthood of all the faithful. to decree 4's conflation (in § 18) of ~two theologically distinct mean-ings of justice, the passage also tends to confuse the priesthood of the faithful common to a!l Christians with the ministerial priest-hood conferred by the sacrament of holy orders. God's divine jus-tice, which is his saving covenanted relationship with his people, makes a humah act of justice priestly, not in the ministerial sense, but rather in the sense of the priesthood of all the faithful, each of whom is called to show through justice towards others God's saving activity" towards all. The promqtion of justice is, of course, appropriate to the life of the ordained priest inasmuch as he is called to proclaim the SepteTnber-October 1995 655 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faitb-and-ffu~tice gospel and be instrumental in the establishment of God's kingdom, which in some sense involves the establishment of just relation-ships among people. If at times the faithful as a whole are not exercising their commitment to justice by direct action in its ser-vice, it may fall upon the ordained ministers to try to compensate for that lacuna by direct action. Nevertheless, it is to the enhance-ment of the lay faithful's efforts for justice that the ordained priest's mission efforts should be directed, rather than to his own direct involvement. To the extent that the priest gives himself to the latter, he risks slighting the mission role of all the faithful, a mis-sion that is increasingly in need of support. Who Are the Poor? Inextricably linked to the promotion of justice is what is often called the "preferential option for the poor." Though that expres-sion is not used until the 33rd General Congregation in 1983, it is there in germ in decree 4, which makes it clear that "the justice of the gospel" calls us "to recognize and respect the rights of all, especially the poor and the powerless, but also to work actively to secure those rights" (§18). The question arises: Who are the poor? No doubt the term "the poor" is used by decree 4 to refer to the materially or economically poor and the politically oppressed. But we should look to the scriptural use of the expression, to see if this commonly accepted understanding of who the poor are is consonant with the Bible. In the earliest stages of Israel's history, the poor are indeed the economically poor and the politically oppressed or marginalized. But in the postexilic period (after the 5th century B.C.) "the poor" is often the term used for people who are simply meek and humble, but then also for the Israelite community as a whole, standing before God in need. In the New Testament the two favorite texts making refer-ence to the poor are found in the beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6:20-27 and in the Last Judgment scene in Matthew 25:31-46. In examining these three passages and the exegetical interpretations of them, we shall see that there is a broad spectrum of scholarly viewpoints on who the poor are. When Jesus says "Blessed are the poor" (Lk 6:20) and "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Mt 5:3), there is one thing we can be cer-tain of, according to the exegetes: Jesus is not speaking about poor people as such. R.J. Karris says: "The Lucan Jesus is not 656 Review for Religious declaring a social class blessed."19 According to the exegetes, when Jesus calls the poor blessed, he is referring, not to poor people everywhere in the world, but to those among his listeners who are open to his message, open to his Father and the coming of his kingdom, and open to accepting Jesus and his teaching as his disciples. There is no blessed state, as far as Jesus is concerned, apart from being one of his disciples. In Luke, it is true, the disciples (or potential disciples) are addressed primarily in their material and political poverty. But we must not forget that in Matthew the beatitudes are addressed to the "poor in spirit." The primary emphasis here is not on the material or political state of the blessed, but on the fact that they are poor in spirit, that is, living lives of dependence upon God, trusting their lives to him completely, and finding no meaning, comfort, satisfaction, or fulfillment in the things of the world. What Matthew brings out (though it is true for Luke as well) is that the poor are blessed, not because of their material or political poverty, but because of the total orientation of their lives to God in Jesus. This leaves ¯ open the possibility that, for Jesus, being poor or poor in spirit means being a disciple of his (at least poten-tially) and not necessarily being mate-rially or politically deprived. It may be that Matthew, having in mind a later stage in the life of the Christian community, may be extending the beatitude "to all, of whatever social rank, who rec-ognized their complete dependence on God.''2° One exegete asserts that "Matthew has spiritualized and generalized the beat-itudes, making them applicable to the spiritual needs and moral endeavor of every member of his church.''2~ After all, Matthew alone among the Gospel writers tells us that Joseph of Arimathea was "a rich man" and that Jesus' body is laid "in his new tomb" (Mr 27:57 and 60). Would Matthew have considered Joseph not to be poor in spirit? It seems we must be open to a conception of the poor that includes more than the economically poor and polit-ically marginalized. What Matthew brings out is that the poor are blessed, not because of their material or political poverty, but because of the total orientation of their lives to God in Jesus. Septentber-October 1995 657 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faith-and-ffustice Last Judgment Scene Exegesis of the Last Judgment scene (Nit 25:31-46) is equally broad. The heart of the problem is contained in Jesus' statement to "all the nations" assembled for judgment before the Son of Man when he comes in glory: "Whatever you did for one of these least brothers and sisters of mine you did for me," and "What you did not do for one of these least ones you did not do ~:or me." Exegesis centers on who these least ones are and who the people in the nations are who are judged by how they relate to the least ones. There are two quite different interpretations in contention here. The more popular interpretation is that the least ones or least brothers and sisters are the materially and politically poor of the world and that "the nations" includes anyone in the world who comes to their assistance. The point is that, if you respond to the needy, you will be saved; if you do not, you will be condemned. The number of exegetes who in recent times subscribe to this interpretation is significant, due to the emphasis given to it by liberation theologians seeking a scriptural basis for a preferential option for the materially poor and socially oppressed. But there are problems: What about the necessity of faith for salvation and Jesus' constant call for faith among his disciples? Where does that fit in? The pec~ple of the nations are not represented as hav-ing any faith. Some exegetes argue that their faith is presumed, but this is a big presumption. Also, none of the people have any awareness of Jesus' teach-ing identifying himself with these least ones. Would not the dis-ciples know this teaching? It seems better to argue that the people are nonbelievers, in which case the passage is s~howing the sav-ing value and the necessity of works of love for nonbelievers. Niore and .more Matthean scholars argue that it is the Gentiles (and possibly the nonbelieving Jews) who make up the nations and that the least ones are Jesus' disciples sent on mission to preach the gospel of the kingdom.2~ The point, then, is that the Gentiles are saved or not saved according to how they respond to Jesus' disciples in their missionary needs. This appears to be the better meaning. It is based on Jesus' use of "brothers and sisters" to refer to members of the community, especially disciples in need (Mr 10:42 and 12:49), and on the fact that Matthew gives prominence to Jesus' sending his disciples on mission (Nit 10), telling them to carry on this mission to "all nations" to the end of time (Mt 10:40). This approach explains 658 Review for Relig%us why the respondents did not know that Jesus was present in his disciples, since they, unlike the disciples, would not have been familiar with that teaching. It also satisfies more easily the prob-lem caused by the lack of any mention of the importance of faith, a major element in Jesus' teaching (Mt 10:32-33): While explic-itly nonbelieving, the nations are saved because they are in fact responding positively to Jesus present in his disciples. With this exegesis, Jesus in the Last Judgment scene would not be showing a preferential love for or solidarity with the socioe-conomically poor. The scene would have an entirely different meaning; it would show his identification with the members of his community on mission and would give to that mission theo-logical and soteriological significance of enormous proportions. The disciples would be on a mission of evangelization, entrusted to all Christians by reason of their faith and baptism. With this exegesis, the Last Judgment scene and the beati-tudes in both Matthew and Luke could have a certain common message: Jesus' preferential love, if there is to be any, is extended to all sinners who accept him and respond to his teaching. In view of the fact that Jesus came to call all "sinners" (Mr 9:13), Jesus' option or choice is not for any special group or types of people, but rather for anyone who would hear his call and accept him and his teaching. A preferential love, however, could have been directed toward a special group, though certainly not toward hyp-ocrites (Mt 23) and the self-righteous (Lk 16:15; 18:9-14). Jesus, while never excluding anyone who would respond to his call On 3:1), may have had a special love for those perhaps best described as physically unfortunate (Mt 4:23-24) and spiritually dispossessed (Mk 1:12-18 and 5:1-20). Nevertheless, when it came to who this Jesus said would be "greatest in the kingdom of heaven," it was not the poor, nor the unfortunate or dispossessed, but "whoever hum-bles himself like this child" (Mt 18:~t) and "whoever obeys and teaches these commandments" (Nit 5:19b). This would seem to argue that Jesus' preferential love was for whoever accepted him and lived a life of dependence on God, as much as it was for the poor, the unfortunate, and the dispossessed. Those who point to Matthew 5:3 as evidence that Jesus had a preferential love for the poor o~erlook the fact that that verse is immediately followed by similar blessings on.those who mourn, the meek, those who search for evidence of the kingdom on earth, as well as on the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, September-October 199Y 659 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faith-and-Justice and those who are persecuted because of their commitment to Jesus--all of whom may be different types of persons for whom Jesus had a preferential option or who may (more likely) be the same people denoted by different dimensions of their lives, in which case the term poor is probably an all-inclusive category. Since the Gospel, by the time it was written, was being addressed to a Christian community already formed, it is also possible that these beatitudes are intended collectively to describe worthy mem-bers of the Christian community, in which case the poor of the beatitudes are all who have turned to Jesus in faith, hope, and love and are committed to serve him with their lives until the end. This more extended sense of the meaning of the poor has been confirmed by recent statements. In 1986 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated: "The .special option for the poor, far from being a sign of particularism or sectarianism, man-ifests the universality of the church's being and mission. This option excludes no one"; and John Paul II, in his Christmas mes-sage of 1984, listed fourteen separate groups under the concept of the poor, two of which are those who suffer from psychological violence and families that suffer from the moral upheaval of soci-ety due to consumerism.23 A Better Formulary to Explain the Priestly Apostolate GC32's ultimate goal was not simply to promote justice in the world by altering unjust social structures. This is not enough, for it simply attempts to redress the external order. What it wanted to do ultimately was to transform inner lives, to reshape who Jesuits and others are, as a necessary foundation for reestablish-ing the dignity of the human person and right relationships in the human community. The outreach of justice is not .great enough to accomplish this. What decree 4 should have made its primary focus was not human justice but divine justice, the entire process of God's sav-ing relationship toward his people. Instead of putting its primary focus on human justice, it should have put it on the transforma-tion of the human heart so as to bring it into a saving relationship with the divine, which would then be expressed in saving rela-tionships with others. A better formular~ to clarify these goals would be "the service of the faith through the promotion of a Christian and human culture." 660 Review for Religious This formulary keeps the mission's Christian dimension clear and puts inculturation at the forefront of evangelizing efforts. The primary goal of Jesuits and, indeed, of all apostolic religious would, accordingly, be to promote their own personal faith rela-tionship with Jesus Christ through endeavors to inculturate his gospel; in doing this they would be fostering and inculcating val-ues not only consistent with the gospel but also conducive to a truly human society. Such a program would be broad enough to include the promotion of justice and all or most of the other apostolates appropriate to religious life as well. Concentrating work on the pro-motion of justice helps to change external relationships, but it does not necessarily touch hearts, the way peo-ple think and the standards they use to measure success. It does not touch who we are and how we seek fulfill-ment. It does not necessarily restruc-ture our personal relationship to God--or to God in Christ, as the Ignatian focus would put it. Let us briefly examine a.typical apostolate of religious, namely, edu-cation. If we overdo the promotion of justice among our students, there is a danger that the Christian life may come to mean only redressing unjust social structures, but not changing who the students are. Students often seek a secure identity for themselves by adopting secular society's production-and-consumption values, values that embrace greed, money, power, and prestige. There is even danger that, in religious life, the promotion of justice may become a slick way of appearing to care without having any real transformation take place inside us. The promotion ofiustice urges us to fit into our lives some time for thinking of others, but it does not necessar-ily touch our fundamental options. In spite of programs promoting justice in our schools, our students often leave with an understanding of Christianity that accepts as a given that the normal human being lives a me-cen-tered life. The promotion of justice is likely to cut away only a Concentrating work on the promotion of justice helps to change external relationships, but it does not necessarily touch hearts, the way people think and the standards they use to measure success. Septe~ber-October 199Y 661 Tripole * The Roots of Faitb-and-ffustice small part from that me-centered existence. Justice actions can easily fall into the category of works of charity seen as addenda required of those who would be Christian, but who otherwise" lead self-centered lives. This leaves the rich to continue to get richer while the poor get poorer, with the Christian willingly sharing in that search for wealth and power, feeling there is noth-ing wrong as long as life is tinged with social concern. It is little wonder, then, that when there is an open clash in society between the values of the world and Catholic values, the church loses regularly. Christianity has come to be perceived as a side issue, whose primary purpose is to help the needy, and whose legitimate requirements are satisfied by giving some time or money to social causes. In this scenario Christianity's role is to make people feel good--whether as giver or receiver--rather than to make them redefine their understanding of who they are. The church thus loses the right to ask for a redefinition of human existence that would involve a commitment of one's whole life to Christ, to the life of the beatitudes, and to Christ's church. Union with Christ and through him with the Father is pri-mary, and this is not necessarily established by the promotion of justice. People must be led to understand that a personal rela-tionship with Christ through his church is primary and that this demands a commitment so profound that it challenges one's def-inition of oneself. A fundamental change occurs when people give themselves to their baptismal identification with Christ, and the new moral life is consequent upon that change. The absolute requirement in the service of the faith--for reli-gious as for anyone--is identification with Christ: not just to be men and women for others, but to be committed and involved, through personal faith experience, with Someone who re-creates who we are, so that as other Christs we think and act with the mentality, value perceptions, attitudes, and habits that are his. This kind of faith experience is so fundamental that it revolu-tionizes one's existence; it permeates one's whole life. It is this deeper transformation that Paul VI saw operating in effective evafigelization and that he perhaps felt was not pre-sent in the call to promote justice. To promote justice is to seek to establish equitable relations among people individually and collectively. To seek to establish Christian and human culture is to seek to transform people's mind-sets, the precondition for the establishment of a just society. 662 Review fo'r Religious In the coming millennium, the purpose of our religious apos-tolate must be to redress not the lack of justice so much as the lack of fully human beings--men and women who are motivated by Christ and by the beatitudes he proclaimed. To achieve that goal is far greater and more important than simply to promote jus-tice. The church and the world are in need of religious who will work for the transformation of minds and hearts, other people's as well as their own. This can be accomplished only if we restore the person of Christ and the centrality of a life of faith in him to the center of our mission statements. In doing that, we shall also be working for the promotion of all the values he stands for, val-ues not limited to but including the promotion of justice. Notes ~ Continuity is being affirmed with the decrees of General Congregation 32 (GC32), which met in Rome from 2 December 1974 to 7 March 1975 and General Congregation 33 (GC33), which met in Rome from 2 September to 25 October 1983. References from the doc-uments of GC34 are taken from "The Interim Documents of General Congregation 34 of the Society of Jesus," National Jesuit News 24, no. 5 (April 1995), special pull-out section, pp. 1-40. Here the reference is to "Our Mission and Justice," §3, pp. 6-8 at 6. z A more complete presentation of the issues discussed in the paper may be found in the author's Faith Beyond Justice: Widening the Perspective (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1994). 3 "Our Mission Today: The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice," decree 4 of the 32nd General Congregation, in Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, ed. John W. Padberg SJ (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), pp. 411-438, §18 (hereafter, paragraphs are noted in the text). Other documents in this volume are noted under Documents. 4 A letter dated 8 February 1995 to the author from Gerard J. Hughes SJ, chairperson of the commission that composed the decree, confirms this impression. He states that references to supernatural justice were inserted at the end to make clearer the idea that such activity was under-stood as part of the priestly ministry of Jesuits. 5 Jean-Yves Calvez sJ, Faith and Justice: The Social Dimension of Evangelization, trans. John E. Blewett SJ (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1991 [1985]), p. 35 (hereafter, Calvez, and pages are noted in the text). 6 Appendix to "Letter of the Cardinal Secretary of State to Father General," 2 May 1975, Documents, p. 547. 7 Pedro Arrupe SJ, Witnessing to Justice Vatican City: Pontifical Commission Justice and Peace, 1972), p. 41. September-October 199~ 663 Tripole * The Roots of Faitb-and-ffustice s Pedro Arrupe SJ, "To Major Superiors of Latin America on the Social Apostolate in Latin America," 12 December 1966, Acta Romana Societatis Iesu 16 (1967): 791; Calvez, p. 27. 9 "Rooted and Grounded in Love," in Pedro Arrupe SJ, One Jesuit's Spiritual Journey: Selected Letters and Addresses, vol. 5 (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986), §67. ,0 John Paul II, Rich in Mercy (Dives in Mi~ericordia) (Washington: USCC, 1981), §12. l~ The original text reads: "la service de la foi, dont la promotion de la justice constitue une exigence absolue"; the official Latin reads: "fidei servitium, cui promotio justitiae ut exigentia absoluta pertinet" (Acta Roman Societatis Iesu 16 [1975]: 330-331). The complete French and Latin texts are found on pp. 330-375. GC34's decree "Jesuits and the Situation of Women in Church and Civil Society" reaffirms this position (~8, p. 30). 12 "Justice in the World: Synod of Bishops' Second General Assembly," 30 November 1971, §6, in Joseph Gremillion, The Gospel of Peace and Justice: Catholic Social Teaching since Pope John (Mary.knoll: Orbis Books, 1976); pp. 513-529 at 520. 13 Charles M. Murphy, "Action for Justice as Constitutive of the Preaching of the Gospel: What Did the 1971 Synod Mean?" Theological Studies 44, no. 2 (June 1983): 298-311. ,4 Avery Dulles SJ, "Faith, Justice, and the Jesuit Mission," Assembly 1989: Jesuit Ministry in Higher Education (Washington: Jesuit Conference, 1990), pp. 19-25 at 24. ,5 Decree 4 states that the promotion of justice is both an "absolute requirement" of the service of faith (§2) and "an integral part of evange-lization" (§30). The decree gives no consideration to the marked differ-ence between the two statements. The latter would allow for apostolates not directly expressive of the promotion of justice; the former would not. Note that GC34's "Our Mission and. Justice" uses only the expression "integral part" when addressing the role of the promotion of justice in the Jesuit mission, fdr example, §1 (p. 6). 16 "Human Development and Christian Salvation," Origins 7, no. 20 (3 November 1977): 305 and 307-313 (hereafter, section and page are noted in the text). ,7 E.R. Achtemeier, "Righteousness in the Old Testament," in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Abingdon, 1962), vol. 4, pp. 80-85 at 84. ,8 p.j. Achtemeier, "Righteousness in the New Testament," in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Abingdon, 1962), vol. 4, pp. 91-99 at 91. ,9 Robert J. Karris OFM, "The Gospel according to Luke," in New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 48:39. 2o The New American Bible, Saint Joseph Edition (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1986), p. 16. 664 Review for Religious 2~ John P. Meier, Matthew (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1980), p. 39. 2., Eugene A. LaVerdiere SSS and William G. Thompson SJ, "New Testament Communities in Transition: A Study of Matthew and Luke," Theological Studies 37, no. 4 (December 1976): 567-597 at 581. 23 Origins 15, no. 44 (17 April 1986): 723, and Origins 14, no. 30 (10 January 1985): 498. First Response A his mystical experience at the river Cardoner, Ignatius described himself as "another man." As Martin Tripole sees things, that personal, fundamental change in a person remains the mission of the Jesuits today, and it is accomplished primarily by the preaching of the gospel. Using his own experience as a teacher of theology at St. Joseph's University, he argues that his job as a Jesuit in this situ-ation is to challenge students to question the values of the soci-ety in which they live, values which are mainly selfish, the values of the "me generation" which sound very much like the values Ignatius describes in the Exercises as those of the enemy: wealth, honor, and pride. The Jesuit does this by teaching his students the beauty of a life based on the beatitudes. But Tripole's concern is that this mission has been upstaged by an emphasis on social justice in the Society of Jesus since the days of its 32nd General Congregation and the publication of its famous document "Our Mission Today: The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice." The unfortunate consequence of this has been a lapse of memory. Jesuits have forgotten that social jus-tice depends--at least for the Christian--on a personal conversion to Jesus' understanding and way of life. What this means con-cretely in the situation of Jesuit schools is that Jesuits do not chal-lenge the secular values which students are taught as members of American society, but are content to teach them that they are good Christians if they volunteer their time or money to some good social cause. Thus Tripole sees the present emphasis in Jesuit schools on service, learning, and volunteering as deficient. It does not get at the root of the matter. It does not challenge and change the val- September-October 199~ 665 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faith-and-Justice ues of students, their sense of themselves. It does not pay sufficient attention to the gospel itself. He admits that it is always hard to preach the gospel authen-tically. Teachers who want to challenge the values of their stu-dents have to examine their own as well. The social-justice approach, on the other hand, is much easier. It deals with action, The present emphasis in Jesuit schools on service, learning, and volunteering does not get at the root of the matter. It does not challenge and change the values of students, their sense of themselves. not values. It is acceptable to the larger society. It does not require great soul-searching. In short, it is a work, something external, whereas the preaching of the gospel demands first of all the changing of one's heart and mind and soul. And here Tripole can call on Ignatius for support. Ignatius was convinced that any permanent and worthwhile result must begin with the interior of the person and work from there out to external action. The social-justice approach, on the other hand, does not work that way. It begins and ends with external actions and leaves hearts untouched. So Tripole is calling for a return of the Jesuits to an emphasis on the preaching of the gospel. The effort to create a just society will follow from this preaching. But it is the observance of this proper order-- faith first, then works--which he sees as having been lost by those who have made faith and justice synonymous. Unless this primary emphasis on the gospel itself is main-tained, Trii~ole fears, Jesuits will become simply social workers. Moreover, many of their traditional works, since they will not be able to justify themselves as works of social justice, will be aban-doned. Higher education, at least in some of its disciplines, say mathematics, would be on this list~ For how can the work of a Jesuit professor of math be understood and justified as a work of social justice? As he sees it, the commitment of the Jesuits to justice as the criterion for its service of faith was the result of the spirit of the times, the late 1960s and early '70s, the time when society at large and the Society of Jesus were in a crisis of self-identity, when 666 Review for Religious eight hundred Jesuits left the Society each year, many perhaps because they found the priesthood a hindrance rather than a help in their attempts to do justice. Moreover, such efforts have not produced a better world. Thus he would claim that it is now time to correct this mistake, to put justice in its place, and to get back to preaching the gospel and thereby building what those who emphasized social justice wanted to build but failed to build, a more just world. Tripole's argumentation is appealing. How could any Christian deny that he or she wants to preach the gospel and believes in the beauty and truthfulness of the life Jesus describes in the beat-itudes? But then the question emerges: Must not the preaching of the gospel be fruitful? And what kind of fruit is called for today? Ignatius was a practical man. He looked at his situation and then decided how to bring the gospel to effective expression. What then is the effective expression of the gospel demanded of Christians today? It is the building of a just society for our world. Therefore Jesuits should be involved in it. And the only difference between this effort 'today and the efforts of Ignatius and earlier Jesuits is that Jesuits today recognize that economic structures are morally charged and changeable. Thus their effort to change them is simply the modern way of preaching the gospel effec-tively. It is the concrete application of the gospel to the situation at hand. And whether this effort is labeled integral to or consti-tutive of or essential to the gospel is really secondary. But it itself is necessary. Otherwise faith stands convicted as dead. Gerald F. Finnegan sJ Assistant professor of theology St. Joseph's University Second Response InmUSt agree with Father Tripole's suggestion that we need a ew formula to express the Society's understanding of its works, goals, and overall mission. Furthermore, I support the proposition that the varied apostolic endeavors of Jesuits are most likely to be both accurately described and properly justified by September-October 199Y 667 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faitb-and-3~ustice the formulary which calls us to "the service of faith through the promotion of a Christian and human culture." It seems to me that to leave unchallenged and unchanged GC32's statement that the mission of the Society is "the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute require-ment" brings us face-to-face with a task which I am not sure is either valid or necessary. It seems also to be a task which smacks too much of the kind of enterprise taken up by Procrustes. For staying simply with GC32's formulary seems to suggest either that we have to cut the legs out from under certain of our apostolates or that we have to stretch mightily our understanding of what justice is all about and of what in fact it takes in order for a work of the Society to be considered as one which is promotive of that justice. If I understand GC32's formulary correctly, when it says that the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement for the service of faith, it means that unless we are promoting justice we are not serving faith. To me the truth of this idea is neither obvious nor necessary. If ultimately we Jesuits are called to work for the sal-vation of human beingsand if faith is a sine qua non for salvation, then clearly the focus of our concern and labor must be on estab-lishing and enhancing the conditions which make it possible, and even easier for individuals to respond affirmatively to the initia-tive of God's love and grace in their lives. Clearly, one way in which the atmosphere conducive to the birth and flourishing of faith is created is by seeing to it that God is not lost in the exhaustive scramble that takes place when vari-ously marginalized and oppressed people must scratch and claw their way through situations in which their basic human rights are denied and their personal dignity is violated. In light of the full richness of the meaning of redemption--namely, that human beings are saved as whole persons, as spirit and body--it makes eminent sense to say that we as Jesuits must have concern not only for the spiritual well-being of others, but also for their tem-poral or material welfare. Indeed, I seriously do.ubt that the Good News of salvation can be effectively shared without our seriously attending to somehow improving the human condition. But I must maintain ~hat there are other valid and necessary ways for Jesuits to work in the service of faith without being insen-sitive to prevalent injustices or varying forms of oppression and without in any way doing an end-around run in the face of any social or political realities which affront human dignity. There '668 Review for Religious are simply other ways to serve faith besides promoting justice, and there is absolutely no guarantee that the effect of promoting justice is the service of faith. In itself, promoting justice does not necessarily serve faith. Promoting justice may indeed be a way for us as Jesuits to work out our salvation, but promoting justice in .itself may do nothing or little to encourage and facilitate the sal-vation of others, which is pre-cisely what we Jesuits are supposed to be about. I am all for more equity and less oppression and injustice, but when people become temporally and materially better off, then what? Working to improve the material and human status of others is noble and necessary, but it is not our ultimate work and not our final norm for apos-tolic involvement. Working to ensure that people come to have more of the good things of life is fine, but the message must be loud and clear that "the more" is to be used and enjoyed "tan-tum quantum," that is, only insofar as it serves to establish and enhance union with God. In other words, the good things of life are meant simply to help us, all of us, on our return journey to God. This means that all of us have to live and prosper in the light of God's reign. And so, although there is reason to rejoice if the poor become less poor and less oppressed and less forgotten and less powerless as a result of our Society's labors, nonetheless, it seems to me that the joy for us as Jesuits might well be tempered or conditioned until we know the answer to this question: Have these same people, newly lib-erated from the chains of injustice and oppression, remained resis-tant to the strong temptations to self-complacency and self-assertion which already lead so many of us to ignore provid-ing a place for God in our lives? I am left with these two questions: (1) Would it not be more honest and reflective of the actual work of the Society to expand Promoting justice may indeed be a way for us as Jesuits to work out our salvation, but promoting justice in itself may do nothing or little to encourage and facilitate the salvation of others, which is precisely what we Jesuits are supposed to be about. September-October 199~ 669 Tripole ¯ The Roo~s of Faith-and-Justice the formula articulated by GC32? and (2)What exactly would be lost by such an expansion? Vincent J. Genovesi Professor of Christian ethics St. Joseph's University Third Response The Mission of Jesus and Our Mission Today Somewhat serendipitously, the liturgical readings for the Sunday following the weekend discussion reported in these pages were eas-ily related to the theme of the discussion. 14/-hat follows is an adap-tation of the homily given in the St. Joseph 's University Chapel for the third Sunday of year C. Local references have been elim-inated. A few words have been added from the 34th General Congregation, which was in session at the time. Wlive in a time when everyone seems to be writing mis- V V sion statements--schools, parishes, religious orders and communities, organizations of all sorts. At their best, these state-ments address, in a fresh and updated way, who we are and what we are about. One such effort has been the recent 34th General Congregation of the. Society of Jesus, a gathering of about 230 Jesuits from around the world, attempting to say what it means to be a Jesuit in 1995. Another recent effort had members of Congress proclaiminga "Contract with America" on the same front steps of the Capitol where presidents deliver their inaugu-ral addresses. In today's readings from Scripture, we have two similar expe-riences. Nehemiah (8:2ff) and Luke (4:14-21) probably would not know what we mean by mission statement, but in fact Ezra and Nehemiah are proElaiming a mission statement for the Jews who have returned from exile in Babylonia, and Luke has Jesus at the beginning of his publiF life proclaiming his mission statement, his statement of who he is and what he was about. As we listen, we are obviously challenged to ask who we are and what are we about. About 350 B.C. the Jews had returned from Babylon to reestablish themselve~s in Jerusalem, but they were confused, much 670 Review for Religious like today's resettled and repatriated refugees, and they needed leaders to help them to find themselves. Ezra the priest is trying to renew them spiritually, and Nehemiah is trying to renew them politically and socially. Ezra and Nehemiah together remind them of their roots as the people of God by reading the Law, the compilation of God's revelation to them and their traditions as the Jewish people. They redis-cover themselves in their roots and come together as community. From a murmuring, discouraged gro.up of individuals, they become a believing, worshiping community. In the Gospel, Luke is introducing Jesus at the beginnifig of his ministry. He too reaches back to roots, Jesus' roots in the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, to describe who Jesus is and what he is about. He is to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim lib-erty to captives, sight to the blind--probably not wha~ his hear-ers expected to hear. Various scripture scholars point out that Luke's Jesus inher-ited the social realism of the Israel into which he was born. He would have seen his people surrounded by various degrees of bondage, oppression, and poverty, and he would have seen the alleviation of this situation as an intrinsic part of their salvation and, therefore, of his mission. He would go about transforming social systems in a distinc-tive way. For disciples he chooses not the socially influential, .but the powerless and, in Matthew's case the despised. He reveals a predilection for little pe6ple, the least favored. He uses power riot to dominate, but to free and to serve. He follows, in fact goes far beyond, the model of the Suffering Servant, who gave his life so that his people might live. As we listen to Nehemiah and to Luke, we are being chal-lenged to spell out our mission statement as Christian commu-nity in 1995. Will it sound more like Jesus in the synagogue or more like the Contract for America on the steps of the Capitol? We live at a time when men and women all around us-- Democrats, Republicans, Perotians, and whatever--are ti~rning their backs on the poor, on immigrants (legal and illegal), and even on victims of violence and abuse. Lest we blame this on politicians, remember that all too often they are simply telling us what polls sugge.st we want to hear. Much of this mean-spirited agenda is supposedly what white mid-dle- class males and the "Christian Coalition" want. We hear that Septentber-October 199~ 671 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faitb-and-3~ce we have done enough for those on welfare, the poor, and "for-eigners." Now we must look out for ourselves, get ours first, save America first. We h~ve done enough for "them." Let "them" now help themselves. What would Jesus say to us if he were beginning his public mission here in this chapel today? Are there any fewer poor than in his day? Of course not. The number is now in the billions. In this country, the richest in the world, one of every five children is poor arid faces a lifetime of poverty. Imagine what this means in wasted humanity. Are there any fewer captives? Of course not. There are over 45 million refugees and displaced persons in the world, 80 percent of them women and children, trapped in violence, oppression, meaning-lessness. Are there fewer blind? Of course not. We see millions suffering from physical, spiritual, and intellectual blindness of every kind. The big difference between 2000 years ago and today is that we, not Jesus, are challenged to open up the scroll and make Isaiah's words ours. Thirty years ago Vatican II situated the church, not on the m~untaintop above all of the turmoil of the human condition, but down in the trenches with women and men struggling to live in the midst of that turmoil: "The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ" (Gaudium et spes, §1). Twenty years ago the Society of Jesus spoke of its mission as the "service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement"; since then, Jesuits and their colleagues have been trying to spell out what that means. It is sometimes said that the church's (and the Society of Jesus') interest in justice questions and in the poor is a remnant of the '60s and '70s and that it is a third-world issue not necessarily relevant to us today. We are told that we need to broaden our agenda and move on to other issues. But we have to be blind not to see that injustice, poverty, and oppression are as prevalent today as in the '60s and '70s, if not more so, and that we in the "first" world, with our own problems of violence, abuse, and neglect, are not that much more devel-oped than the "third" world. Thus it is that the recent Jesuit general congregation did not weaken, but rather strongly reaffirmed, the 1975 commitment to 672 Review for Religious a "radical life of faith that finds expression in the promotion of jus-tice for all." The international and cultural context for this com-mitment is spelled out in much greater detail, and the fundamental importance of faith is emphasized, in these words of the 34th General Congregation: "The aim of our mission., is the service of faith. The integrating principle of our mission is the inseparable link between faith and the promo-tion of the justice of the kingdom" (Interim Documents, p. 5). Work on behalf of justice is linked to the work of evangeliza-tion, inculturation, and interreli-gious dialogue. The agenda is broadened to include human rights, the sanctity of human life, the global interdependence of peoples and the environment. Within such a perspective, this is hardly the time to retreat from the mission of Jesus, "to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captive, to give sight to the blind." Rather, it is a time to stay the course in the face of an ever more expansive agenda before us. Paul's letter to the Corinthians gives us an important insight for the ongoing task. In the Body of Christ, each of us has a different contribution to make, so that the It is sometimes said that the church's interest in justice questions and in the poor is a remnant of the '60s and '70s and that it is a third-world issue not necessarily relevant to us today. But we have to be blind not to see that injustice, poverty, and oppression are as prevalent today as in the '60s and '70s, if not more 20. total, collective effort may be successful. None of us can be involved in every cause for justice which comes to our attention, but a reading of the Gospels, the documents of Vatican II, and our most recent Jesuit congregational documents would argue that v~e need to be involved in at least one. We can pursue justice in various ways. Some of us will be more the activist, some more reflective. Many strengths are needed to solve the problems we face: the persistent work of the activist, the careful analysis of the scholar, the concerned prayer of the contemplative. September-October 199Y 673 Tripole ¯ The Roots of Faitb-and-3~stice Perhaps in the .past we have been too sweeping and too sim-plistic in our emphasis on justice; It is interesting to note one very moving exchange on the floor of the Jesuit congregation betweeri Latin Americans and those from formerly Communist countries. Both groups acknowledged how they had misread each other's motives in the past. There is no doubt that work for justice needs to be combined with strong faith if it is to be most fruitful for the kingdom and if we are to have the strength we need for the long haul. Work for justice needs to be combined with caring love if it is not to become harsh and vindictive. It needs to be part of an effort to transform culture, inculturate gospel values, if it is to have lasting, widespread significance. It must be linked to a total effort at evan-gelization for the same reason. Each of us will be able to bring one or more of these strengths to the table, each plays a different role within a complex agenda. The endless agenda left to us by Jesus, and made more explicit in the church in recent years, leaves more than enough for each of us to do in integrating faith and justice in our lives. Charles L. Currie SJ Adjunct professor of theology St. Joseph's University Many foreign missionaries depend upon people like you who donate subscriptions for them to Review for Religious. To start a subscription for a deserving missionary, please send $24 to: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Blvd. ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108 To pay by credit card, phone: 314-977-7363. 674 Review for Religious JUDE D. WEISENBECK Ecumenism a Scripture Mandate for Religious Our theme's images of "weaving" and "fabric" are indeed captivating as they relate to our present purpose. The theme affirms that the ecumenical vision, far from being an optional and ancillary dimension of religious life (or, holding to the image, a hem or a fringe), is so integral to our vocation that removing it would run the risk of caus-ing the entire garment to unravel. I hope here to focus reflection. To accomplish this, I believe we need to move away from the natural tendency to ask, "In what ways can religious communities contribute to the goals of the ecumenical movement?" and toward that self-understanding whereby we recognize ecumenism as being at the very heart of what it means to be a reli-gious. Promoting Christian unity is not merely something that is appropriate for religious to be engaged in; it is so integral to our way of life that religious life without an ecumenical thrust would be like religious life without a love for the poor or without concern for peace and justice issues. Undoubtedly an immediate reaction on the part of some might very well be: "Spoken like a true ecumaniac! Jude D. Weisenbeck SDS presented the following (here slightly revised) as the keynote address at the national consultation (Albuquerque, New Mexico; 28-30 April 1995) of men and women religious engaged in ecumenism. He is the director of the Office of Ecumenism for the Archdiocese of Louisville. He may be addressed at Flaget Center; 1935 Lewiston Drive; Louisville, Kentucky 40216. ecumenism September-October 1995 675 Weisenbeck ¯ Ecumenism a Scripture Mandate for Religious Sharing life to the fullest is what I mean by wholeness. In turn I think of the ecumenical movement as promoting the sharing of life. Turn them loose and they will try to make ecumaniacs out of all of us." Please do not respond in that way without first hearing me out. The perspective embraced here rests upon three simple but firmly held convictions: (1) The Scriptures call Christians to wholeness in all of its marvelous dimensions. (2) Religious life is about responding to this call to wholeness in an especially com-mitted way. (3) The ecumenical movement is fundamentally about restoring wholeness to the entire family of God's people. I agree with Michael Kinnamon who, in various recent talks, tenders his conviction that unity is at the very heart of the Good News. It is not one among many themes, nor is it peripheral; it is central to all that the gospel stands for. In the plan of God, shared life is the norm, and it is division that needs explanation. Sharing life to the fullest is what I mean by wholeness. In turn I think of the ecumenical move-ment as promoting the sharing of life. This is a positive idea and an ideal toward which the Scriptures constantly call us. As per-vasive as brokenness may be in our experience, it is still a depar-ture from the norm. Brokenness is something to be deplored, not something to be taken for granted, much less accepted. For reflec-tive sages of centuries past, it was very disconcerting to find our world full of conflict, pain, and suffering. This needed an expla-nation. They concluded that it could not have come from God and is not part of God's original plan. Broken bodies lack wholeness. Divided families lack whole-ness. Communities split apart by dissension and conflict lack wholeness. The church, fragmented into thousands of denomi-nations, lacks wholeness. All of these are in some ways similar to the pieces of a puzzle still in the box. Everything that is needed to complete the picture is there, but until they are put together in their proper relationships, the puzzle just is not a complete pic-ture. It lacks wholeness. I would like to explore this scriptural call to wholeness in somewhat greater detail. The first image I offer for considera- 676 Review for Religious tion is one from the Book of Genesis. What do we find there? We find the creation story, a story about bringing harmony out of chaos. Consider the elements in this image: ¯ the earth was without form and void; ¯ darkness was over the face of the abyss; ° a mighty wind swept over the surface of the waters. We have an image of darkness, formlessness, emptiness, tur-bulence. Enter God bearing gifts: ° light in regulated rotation for night and day; ¯ the ordered relationship of water and dry land; ¯ fertility, resulting in fresh growth, seeds, fruit, young animals, and children; ¯ water, teeming with countless creatures and moistening the dry earth; ¯ an enormous diversity of plants and animals sharing life in harmony: fish for the seas, birds for the air, animals for the land; ° the human species, man and woman, sharing their life in their own wonderful diversity; ¯ the harmonious ordering of all things, each in its own designed relationship to all other creatures. A primary image of the entire story is that of shared life in all its goodness. God shares the divine life through creation; all crea-tures share the divine gifts with each other. Shared life is the norm. Conversely, death, confusion, shame enter when life is no longer shared. Adam and Eve decide to take what is not theirs, and the rest is history. The Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition to this very day are rich in their contributions to this theme, as is evidenced by that remarkable document entitled "Guidelines for the Catechetical Presentation of Jews and Judaism in the New Testament" issued in 1986 by the United States Catholic Conference. A few pas-sages will suffice to illustrate the point: The Jewish understanding of God's reign is of universal harmony and wholeness (shalom), in which all the peoples of the earth will gather to worship God. This understanding of the End toward which all human history is oriented pro-vides a constant and present challenge to Christians and Jews (for example, Is 2:11 and Is 25; Mi 4:4). (Dr. Eugene September-October 199Y 677 Weisenbeck * Ecumenism a So4pture Mandate for Religious J. Fisher and Rabbi Leon Klenicki, In Our Time, p. 64) This sense of wholeness and unity is intended to mark both the hearing of God's word in the synagogue and the festive Sabbath meal in the home (p. 65). The great Jewish festivals underscore in different ways this constant journeying toward wholeness (p. 65). Elizabeth Johnson echoes these sentiments when she com-ments on both the Hebrew tradition and the New Testament: At the heart of [Jesus'] preaching was the symbol of the reign of God. Taken from the Hebrew tradition, this sym-bol signifies what the state of affairs will be when God is recognized as the One on whom everyone sets their hearts, when God finally reigns . The reign of God is the situ-ation that results when God's will is really done. VV-hat is God's will? As revealed in Jesus, God's will is our well-being. God wants the wholeness, the healing, and the salvation of every creature and of all of us taken together. The reign of God, then, involves justice and peace among everyone, heal-ing and wholeness everywhere, fullness of life enjoyed by all. It is what the Scriptures call the situation of shalom, peace experienced not only as the absence of war but peace as the fullness of life. (Consider Jesus, pp. 51-52) When an ecumenist quotes Scripture, especially the New Testament, one normally expects that John 17:20-23 (Christ's famous prayer for unity) will be cited. It is, of course, a beautiful and appropriate prayer. However, it is not the only New Testament passage with ecumenical significance. I would like to suggest that John 10:10 is also very much to the point. Christ says, "I have come that humankind may have life, and may have it in all its fullness." This statement is set in sharp contrast to the work of the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. It is within this context--that we may have life in all its full-ness- that Jesus' preoccupation with healing must be understood. One of the most pervasive images of the gospel is that of Christ engaged in healing. This includes not only physical healing, but also the healing of minds and hearts and souls. The stories of the woman at the well, of Nicodemus, of the forgiveness of sins, and of the resurrection itself are all instances of the healing of minds, hearts, and souls. Living life and sharing life to the fullest are the norm; it is brokenness ~nd division that are the exceptions and departures from the norm. 678 Review for Religious This naturally brings us to my second firm conviction, namely, that religious life is about seeking wholeness. For religious life is about living the Gospels in the most perfect way possible. We call it responding to the evangelical counsels. We take this so seriously that we make public vows to God to do so. We respond to the call to bring wholeness into our own personal lives and to bring wholeness to a very broken world. During the past couple of years I have been involved with a project at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, Kentucky, called Caring for the Soul of the Community. This ecumenical project explores spirituality from a wide range of per-spectives, and it leads me to conclude that, for almost all people, spirituality is an attempt to get in touch with ultimate goodness. It is a desire to possess life in all its fullness, the life which Jesus promises us. It is that yearning for wholeness. Is that not what religious life also is about? And what stands in the way of possessing life in all its fullness is the same today as in the Garden of Eden--the refusal to share life. It is the incli-nation to take for ourselves what does not entirely belong to us or to keep for ourselves what is designed to be shared. We live out our lives in community, not only the immediate community of our religious sisters and brothers, but the larger communities making up our church and ultimately the entire fam-ily of God. Consequently, our concern for wholeness must extend beyond ourselves to the various circles of larger communities of which we are a part. Individually we can never be fully whole unless the entire community is whole. Our call, then, is to seek wholeness for the entire community. This brings us to my third basic conviction, that the ecu-menical movement is a response to the call to seek wholeness for the entire Christian community we call the church. The church is broken, fragmented, divided. Healing this brokenness, this frag-mentation, this dividedness and bringing wholeness to the church are what the ecumenical movement is all about. This has to be a matter of grave concern to those who take the gospel seriously. Members of religious communities may not take the broken-ness and the dividedness of the church for granted any more than we may take poverty and injustice for granted. The entire church suffers, and the people for whom the church is a sacrament of Christ's love suffer, when doctrinal differences and other dis-agreements divide members of the church one from another. Septe~tber-October 199Y 679 Weisenbeck ¯ Ecumenism a Scripture Mandate for Religious A divided church is both a scandal and a handicap. It is a scan-dal because persons professing the kind of conversion required by baptism prefer to go their separate ways rather than to continue in dialogue and prayer until irreconcilable church-dividing con-troversies are settled. It is a handicap because the life of the church and the life-giving powers of the church are not fully and mutu-ally shared both by its members among themselves and with those who need the church that they may live life to the fullest. Is not a failure to reach out in love to those separated from us in some sense a failure to live our vow of poverty to the fullest? We keep for ourselves what should be shared with others. Is not our failure to attempt to enter into relationship with other Christians who are not in communion with us a kind of disre-gard for our vow of chastity? Instead of observing celibate chastity for the sake of freeing ourselves to cultivate the numerous other relationships required for a healthy Body of'Christ, we retreat into a celibacy of aloneness in which shared life is seriously inhib-ited. And our vow of obedience: here is where the prayer of Christ for unity is disregarded if we fail to take seriously the mandate to work for unity both within and among the Christian communities. If a divided church is both a scandal and a handicap, then also a religious not concerned for the unity of the Body of Christ is an anomaly. Life cannot he lived to the fullest without sharing life. Promoting unity among Christians is both a mandate of the Sacred Scriptures and an integral part of the very fabric of reli-gious life. Kansas Sunflower bright and bold nodding in the breeze splash of color; smile of God sunshine for the road. Mary E. Penrose OSB 680 Review for Religiou~ BERNARD SEIF Too Deep for Dogma ~otnieS y oenalry bfeivfoe rme itlhees afowuanyd ainndg foofu onudre do wasn r elictetlnet lmy oasn a1s9t8e6ry, .j uAst bit of divine synchronicity, I often wondered--now I know it was much more than just a bit, it was a gloriously large dose. The juxtaposition of the two communities has led to great joy and new life for many people, clear signs of the intervention and presence of our Creator. I always knew the ashram, which is what I will call Arsha Vidya Gurukulam for purposes of simplicity, was nearby, Ashram is a generic term for a spiritual community in the Hindu tradition, much like a monastery in the Christian tradition. A gurukulam, more specifically, is a very special Hindu community where one or more gurus (also called swamis) live and teach, passing on the wisdom of revelation, holy scripture, the practice of meditation, and so forth. Not only did I know that the ashram was nearby, but I knew that it resonated with what seemed to be an ageless long-ing within me for a deeper experien.ce of Eastern traditions. Thomas Merton's love of the East had long nourished a similar love within me. Dom l~ede Griffiths' many years of living and guiding Shantivanam Ashram in south India, wherein Christian and Hindu traditions meet without loss to either tradition, but rather enrichment, long fascinated me. My own energies in more recent years have been spent largely in the foundation and running of the Salesian Monastery. I had, Bernard Seif SMC wrote for our July-August 1992 issue. He continues living .his monastic life and sharing it with others through the practice of clinical psychology and spiritual direction, with part-time ministry at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth. He may b.e addressed at the Salesian Monastery; HC 1, Box 455, Frantz Road; Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania 18322-9630. Septentber-October 199Y 681 Seif ¯ Too Deep for Dogma however, wandered onto the property of the ashram a few times during those years, but did not get too far. Most of that was due to my own timidity. On one reconnoitering I spoke with a teenage boy who had stopped on his bike for some reason along one of the paths. We felt a warm and lively connection. We chatted for five or ten minutes and then both of us left, happy for the encounter. The only prob-lem was that the boy was speaking Hindi and I was speaking English. Neither of us understood, on a surface level, a word of what the other was saying. Deep in our hearts, however, we knew that there was a connection. Such is the kind of connection or dia-logue which I would like to present and encourage in this all too brief. Once when one of my sisters, who is a Sister of St. Joseph of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, was visiting our monastery with a mutual friend, another Sister of St. Joseph, we traveled over to the flea market situated on the grounds of a drive-in theater across from the ashram. My hidden agenda was to get the three of us over to the ashram and explore it a bit. After purchasing some discount cereal and dented cans of decaffeinated coffee, we walked across the road and onto the property. This time I caught a glimpse of the top of the temple on our way and was able to fol-low the paths which lid to it. Peering in the windows we could see a few hundred people sitting peacefully on the floor. I was hooked. I needed to be in there. As we went to an entrance, a smiling man with an Indian accent welcomed us and encouraged us to go into the temple. Before I knew it we all had our shoes off, had left our recently purchased items out in the hall, and were sitting on the floor before a man dressed in orange robes who spoke in English and every once in a while sang something in Sanskrit which the community repeated. I was mesmerized. My sister, on the other hand, was mesmerized by the hole in my white running sock. The gathering began to break up for lunch; I wanted to stay but knew I had my visitors to attend to, and so we left to con-tinue o.ur journey even though we were assured of a welcome at lunch with the ashram community. Tha.t night as I sat quietly reviewing the day, thinking and praying about its events, I picked up some of the literature I had taken from the ashram. There was a sheet of paper announcing some classes being given by Swami Tadatamananda with a little picture of him printed on it. Mthough I had never met him, did not even know if he spoke English, I 682 Review for Religious knew at some very deep level that we would become good friends, and so it has come to be. After a weekend students' class, which the Sunday morning lectures are called, I introduced myself to "Swami T," as people affectionately call him. There was an immediate smile of recog-nition when I mentioned who I was. He had read about our monastery in the newspaper a year or two before and had saved the article to look us up one day. Knowing how precious the gift of time is, I am always cautious about taking up the time of another and thought of keeping our encounter brief. The swami, however, made me feel so wel-come that we sat down and had coffee and talked for a long time. The upshot of that meeting is that our community is graced with his presence on a regular basis, coming to us several times a week for Evening Prayer (and sometimes Eucharist), dinner, chapter, and some private time together. During this time I tutor the swami a bit in counsel-ing (I am a clinical psychologist), and he teaches me Vedic chant-ing. We have shared our spiritual journeys with one another and experience an ease and honesty which brings joy to our hearts. Both of our communities are supportive of our relationship. The other monastics and our associate members enjoy the swami's presence, and the sharing of our spiritual heritages (which often is experienced as one heritage) is mutually enriching. In fact, Swami T has now become an associate member of the monastery. More recently Swami Dayananda, founder of the ashram and a venerated teacher throughout the world, asked me to come and speak at a Christmas gathering in their community about Christ and Christmas. What a thrill it was to offer the Good News in an atmosphere of mutual dialogue and respect. No one was or is trying to convert the other. We are simply shar- Before I knew it we all had our shoes off, had left our recently purchased items out in the hall, and were sitting on the floor before a man dressed in orange robes who spoke in English and every once in a while sang something in Sanskrit which the community repeated. September-October 1995 683 Seif ¯ Too Deep for Dogma ing our experience of the sacred and finding a profound unity therein. Such is the experience of a group that has long been dia-loguing on this deeper level of prayer, rather than on dogma, called the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue.~ This group is made up primarily of Hindu, Buddhist, and Catholic monastics from throughout the world. My friends and my spiritual director tell me that they see my excitement as I talk about this part of my spiritual journey. They see the life that it brings to me and others. I sometimes expect them to say something like "What next?" yet they encourage me to continue on in the way that the Lord is leading me these days. With a grateful heart I must admit that I too wonder "What next?" Yet what does it matter? My recent spiritual experiences have helped me to live, better than ever, in the spirit of our Salesian charism peacefully in the present moment. The day that manifested the reality of East-West dialogue which is carried on at a level deeper than dogma occurred shortly before Christmas when the Salesian Monastery and the ashram held a joint puja (Hindu worship service) at the monastery. The form was totally Hindu and the content totally Christian. The service enacts the welcoming of an honored guest. Oil lamps blazed in the oratory as incense and flowers were offered. We chanted the doxology in Sanskrit. Hindu and Christian alike touched foreheads to the ground before the Blessed Sacrament. Even the newspaper reporter eventually took off his shoes, respecting the holy ground on which we stood. The presence of God was palpable in the oratory, and I saw tears glisten in the eyes of my friend at one point. There was absolutely no division among us. We were all experiencing the same God. In conclusion, I encourage fidelity to one's faith tradition as well as all forms of dialogue, but I believe that we cannot wait to hammer out agreements on paper. Praying and meditating together is a form of dialogue which bonds us without any need to leave the tradition one comes from. Nor does it create a hybrid religion. When one is properly grounded, there is no threat of these things happening. Rather, it takes us deeper into the won-der of who we truly are to the Source from which we all come. Note ~ A bulletin is available; write Bulletin of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue; Abbey of Gethsemani; 3642 Monks Road; Trappist, Kentucky 40051. 684 Re~v~ iew for Religious CURT CADORETTE Catholicism in the Social Order of a New Era On I0 April 1995 Newsweek, a weather vane of American middle-class sensibilities, displayed a close-up picture of Pope John Paul II on its cover. The pre-Holy Week edition fea-tured an analysis of the pope's recent encyclical, Evangelium vitae, a lengthy and important document that calls into question the ethical assumption of the developed world or, from John Paul's vantage point, the lack thereof. Calling for the creation of "a cul-ture of life" rather than "a culture of death," the pope criticizes the materialism of the developed world, birth control, abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. The encyclical is unprece-dented in its intensity and cohesion. Social analysis, characteris-tic of his early encyclicals such as Laborem exercens, is linked with reflection on personal and social ethics, a theme in his more recent writings. In the pope's estimation, we stand on the brink of catas-trophe, tempted by nihilism and violence that already claim mil-lions of victims every year and may destroy us all if left unchecked. In Evangelium vitae John Paul is a social analyst and social ethi-cist. He calls on individuals and societies to reflect deeply on their behav, ior and the contemporary social order, affirming what is good and rectifying what is deficient in the light of humankind's innate dignity and transcendence. His plea is that we see and treat each other as God-given gifts rather than as opponents or objects and thus counteract the destructive violence that afflicts us. Curt Cadorette NIM holds the John Henry Newman chair in Roman Catholic Studies at the University of Rochester. His address is 430 Rush Rhees Library; University of Rochester; Rochester, New York 14627. September-October 199Y 685 Cadorette ¯ Catbolicis~n in the Social Order The common wisdom that Roman Catholicism is nothing more than its hierarchy, or even the dominant Christian church in the Western world, is wrong, both theologically and demographically. The reactions to the encyclical were equally predictable, from "challenging" to "monstrous." Some critics pointed to the pope's nai'vet4 about free-market economics and the inevitability of casu-alties in a rough-and-tumble world. Some members of the pro-choice movement characterized the encyclical as another exercise in Catholic misogyny. Since the encyclical's critics had to read and analyze 198 pages of heavy prose in just a few days, we can assume that their analyses require further refinement. In any event, Newsweek proves that the title of this article is germane. Catholicism is a national and international part of the social order. Some rejoice, some lament, but none can deny that a religious insti-tution with nearly a billion peo-ple is a significant force in the contemporary world. However one assesses the current papacy, (and prudent analysts are advised to wait several decades before deciding its historical fate) there can be no doubt that John Paul II has helped make the Catholic Church a more significant interlocutor in social dis-course. Beyond the shallow categorizations of John Paul's ideas lie a great deal of thought, analysi;, and passionate concern about the modern world. Of course, many people, including loyal Catholics, disagree with some of his ideas. H+ speaks from a Eurocentric vantage point and understands the institutional church in a profoundly hierarchical way. Like all of us, he has his contradictions. He feels others' pains but refuses to deal with aspects of the institutional church that sometimes cause pain. Although he is a student of modernity, he is essentially a medieval man. The memory of Christendom seems to control his imagi-nation and make him deeply wary of post-Enlightenment plural-ism. He questiofis a civilization predicated on materialism, convinced that a return to Christian values can somehow rem-edy our global ills. Although many people resonate with his crit- 686 Review for Religious icism of modernity, many also question his vision of Christendom, in large part because of the historical record of the church itself. Institutional Catholicism suffers from a credibility problem. Fortunately, the question of credibility is being addressed by ordi-nary Catholics who are remaking the church to which they belong. We need to focus on these people as much as on the papal persona to understand what contemporary Catholicism is really all about and how it affects the social order. "Real" Catholicism Media images of Catholicism, of course, are only marginally accurate. In today's world, news has been commercialized. It is sold in package form to consumers who pick and choose accord-ing to their tastes. More troubling, however, is the erroneous assertion that what the media calls Catholicism is Catholicism. Impression to the contrary, popes, bishops, and priests, as well as the church in the United States, are only a tin.y part of what is now one of the most culturally, linguistically, and politically diverse rgligious institutions in the world today. The common wisdom that Roman Catholicism is nothing more than its hier-archy, or even the dominant Christian church in the Western wo~ld, is wrong, both theologically and demographically. Such assumptions have been incorrect since the 1960s when the center of gravity in Catholicism moved from the developed to the devel-oping world. The bishop of Rome now presides over a religious community that is more African, Asian, and Latin American than American and European. Catholicism is undergoing profound internal change as millions of non-Western people, most of whom are economically poor and politically marginalized, enter its ranks as full members. In effect, Catholicism is becoming more catholic with all the growing pains and confusion such expansion entails. The "in" words these days among Catholic theologians are con-textualization and inculturation, that is, how to take the basic insights of the Catholic tradition, translate and then transplaht them in the different soil of the developing, non-Western world. Contextualization and inculturation are well under way. New vari-eties of Catholicism are emerging that are making the Catholic community, locally and globally, a stronger, more credible force. To understand correctly the role Catholicism plays and will play in the social order it is imPerative to look beyond its leaders September-October 1995 687 Cadorette ¯ Catholicism in the Social Order and institutional structures. The heart and soul of Catholicism has been and always will be the people who make up the Catholic community. Today that means hundreds of millions of people in the developing world whose culture, economic values, and polit-ical traditions are vastly different from people in the developed world. In 1979 Karl Rahner, the great Jesuit theologian, tried to assess the significance of Vatican II, a council he helped shape more directly than any other theologian. Rahner recognized that Vatican II, great achievement that it was, really marked the end of the "second age" of the church. In his mind, one of the greatest achievements of the council was the fact that it gave license to non-Western peoples to create new forms of Catholic thought and life consonant with their diverse histories, cultures, and approaches to the sacred. Rahner was convinced that Catholics in the developing world would be able to do new things with their faith that would reen-ergize Catholics in the developed world. Indeed, by the year 2000 almost 70 percent of the world's Catholics will live in the south-ern hemisphere. (In the United States 50 percent of American Catholics will come from so-called minority groups, largely Hispanic and Asian.) This means that Catholicism is about to enter a new "third phase" marked by an unprecedented internal diversity. The globalization of Catholicism is now a fact whose consequences have already altered its internal and external life. New ways of understanding and explaining the Catholic vision have emerged, forever altering theological discourse. Institutional structures, more and more the responsibility of lay women and men, are being recreated. The way the Catholic community responds to its social environment has changed dramatically. In a church made up largely of poor and oppressed people, prophetic challenges to injustice and its corollary, martyrdom, have become commonplace. I want to focus the rest of this article on these changes and what they mean on a deeper level for Catholicism, both internally and as a institution that is part of a global social order. As a postscript we will focus on the American Catholic church and its place in the global scheme of things. Modes of Theologi, cal Discourse Theology was understood in early Christianity as reflective living rather than verbal or written discourse about faith. By the 688 Review for Religiolts third century, however, Christian thinkers were busy devising a sophisticated mode of theological discourse that relied on Hebrew and Christian Scripture as well as classical philosophical language. Isaiah and Jesus, as it were, met Plato and Aristotle. Augustine and Aquinas systematized Christian thought in impressive ways and had a profound impact on Western history. Their theology is structured, logical, deductive, and dualistic. This type of theo-logical discourse has legitimacy, but it also has limitations. Few people can fol-low it other than trained intellectuals and, like all professional languages, it often becomes an end in itself. The problem of Western theological language becomes more acute when non-Western people are involved. Because their cultures and histories are different, Western theology rarely meets their needs. Their faith is strong, but their patience with imported theological discourse is limited. They recognize the difference between the medium and the message and insist on their right to cre-ate theologies that reflect who they are culturally and historically. Perhaps one of the most significant decisions of Vatican II was the. decision to encour-age non-Western Catholics to use their own language and expe-rience to explain their beliefs. This may seem like an innocuous and abstract shift, but it really is quite revolutionary, theologi-cally and politically. Abstract theological language is being replaced by context-specific discourse about faith done by people who confront grinding poverty, injustice, and violence. Suddenly~, theology has become the voice of the voiceless, something it has not been for centuries. It is intellectually and existentially provoca-tive, as well as socially engaged. Since the council grass-roots theological discourse in the developing world has burgeoned. It is now impossible to keep up with the vast amount of theological literature coming out of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Just as intellectually sophisticated as European and North American material, third world theology nonetheless displays special characteristics, most notably rooted- Perhaps one of the most significant decisions of Vatican II was the decision to encourage non- Western Catholics to use their own language and experience to explain their beliefs. September-October 1995; 689 Cadorette ¯ Catholici~n in the Social Order ness and passion. It draws on many provocative sources--the Hebrew prophets, the Beatitudes, Catholic social teaching, and the day-to-day experience of ordinary people. It is contextualized intense reflection on how faith can help transform society. This new theology, often called liberation theology, is no threat to the integrity of Catholicism. To the contrary, it is a vital component in its survival. It enriches an ancient tradition with a new vocab-ulary and point of reference. As Gustavo Gutidrrez has put it, liberation theology is dis-course on Christian faith done from "the underside of history," a part of the world inhabited by most Catholics, past and present,l Indigenous Catholics in the Andes are beginning to create a the-ology that speaks of their great reverence for the earth, the Pachamaraa, a symbol which speaks of the feminine side of God and the sacredness of the earth as the common womb of life. Korean Christians have incorporated concepts like ban, or trauma-induced anger, and minjung, a word that connotes the spirit and genius of the poor and oppressed, into their theological writing and liturgical life.2 These are signs of energy that instill hope. Western theology will not disappear, but in the third millennium it will be seen as part of a larger whole, one vocabulary and set of images among many. More important is the fact that Catholic theology now reflects the experience of people heretofore over-looked and victimized. Their history and hope are thus kept alive in a social order that often disregards and even kills them. Ecclesial Evolution and Political Society Not only will theological discourse be different in third-mil-lennium Catholicism, community structures and leadership will be too. As peoples create their own varieties of Catholicism they will construct new types of community. For centuries, most Catholics have thought of Catholicism as something that flowed from the top down--from pope, to bishop, to pastor, to parishioner. This model, however, is beginning to change. For more and more peo-ple in both the developing and developed world, Catholic iden-tity is not something conferred by infant baptism, but rather something a person acquires as an adult who enters a believing community, assimilates the tradition, and begins to see him- or herself as part of a larger Catholic whole. Today base communi-ties and even large parishes are made up of people whose self- 690 Review for Religious understanding as Catholic is more intense and articulate. Engagement within the community and the community's rela-tionship to the larger social whole are therefore more focused and consequential. Catholic identity, defying the laws of history and hierarchy, increasingly flows from the bottom up, changing the self-under-standing of the church and its social role. In many parts of the developing world, the Christian community is a real political force. Committed to an incarnational spirituality which insists that God is present in history and nature, members of base com-munities struggle for justice and social transformation in soci-eties scarred by violence and oppression. The Christian churches in South Africa were at the front of the struggle against apartheid struggle. In Haiti base communities provided refuge for the per-secuted and food for the hungry despite military repression. Precisely for this reason, of course, prophetic individuals and committed communities have faced the wrath of the mighty who often brand them as subversive. The label, in fact, is correct since Christianity lived well is subversive. What is really remarkable, however, is the depth and commitment of many Catholic Christians who are willing to risk their lives for their faith and the world they live in. Saints and martyrs abound in contemporary Catholicism. Most of these saints and martyrs are ordinary, name-less people, and that frequently overlooked fact may be the most important political datum in the history of contemporary Catholicism. Their sanctity was gained in Catholic communities intent on doing justice and transforming history. Spirituality As a central part of a person's identity rather than a religio-cultural label, Catholicism serves as a vision or spirituality that helps people achieve a more integral and respectful understand-ing of their own selves as well as a more engaged and positive relationship with the larger world. The incarnation, as central Christian symbol, speaks of God's love and commitment to all human beings, women and men with particular languages and cultures. This symbol validates their specificity. In a world marked by a violent preiudice against the other as inferior by dint of race, class, gender, and culture, the incarnation is both an indictment of such violence and a call for transformation in the institutional Septentber-October 1995 691 Cadorette ¯ Catholicism in the Social Order church and in society. Despite the fact that millions of human beings are deemed nonpersons by oppressive economic and polit-ical systems, a truly Catholic spirituality insists that each of them is a gift because of the incarnate God it believes in. It denounces injustice and makes justice real by accepting these people in all their specificity. Liberating spirituality is not developed abstractly but rather in a living community that is dialectically engaged with the larger world. Base communities address people's brokenness and chal-lenge their members to transform those economic and political forces that oppress them. Much of liberation spirituality revolves around the central symbol in Jesus' life and mission, the reign of God. As contemporary scripture scholars have pointed out, Jesus understood God's reign concretely. It was not a future event or abstraction for him, but something he saw happening in first-century Palestine. Even today, when a broken person is healed, when a community celebrates Eucharist in the midst of oppres-sion, or when a believing community helps bring about even mod-est social change, we see signs of God's reign transforming history. Spirituality is really a synonym for visionary political holiness.3 As the poor and oppressed begin to understand themselves as graced, an insight that oppressive social systems try to deny them, they have a powerful impact on their social environment. Great tech-nical skill is required to transform society. Social technology alone, however, is mute and unappealing. It requires a human voice and poetic imagination. A spirituality aimed at integral justice must also include stories, song, and dance--lessons people in the devel-oping world teach eloquently through their spirituality. Beauty is as much an antidote to iniustice as economic and political plan-ning. It is an unequivocal no to deforming violence. Given its multicultural makeup, contemporary Catholicism can play a vital role in forging a liberating spirituality. By affirming the beauty of many people it can be a living embodiment of political holiness. A U.S. Catholic Postscript The history of Catholicism in the United States is a fasci-nating story of disenfranchised immigrants coming to life, By hanging on to and affirming their religious identity, Irish, German, Polish, and Hispanic immigrants managed to gain a foothold in a largely Protestant society and eventually make a significant con- 692 Review for Religious tribution to the United States. Their success would not have been possible without parochial schools and neighborhood parishes. By the 1960s American Catholics were part of the mainstream, and the United States was the better for it. As full members of the middle class, however, United States Catholics run the risk of forgetting that they were once the "other" and forgetting the "other" in their midst. Luckily, the American Catholic church is not static. New Hispanic, African, and Asian Catholics are mak-ing the American church more diverse than ever before. Many of these groups are poor and politically powerless. Their experi-ence of oppression cannot be overlooked. If Catholics cannot understand and defend their fellow Catholics, then what good is American Catholicism? Middle-class Catholics cannot hide in suburban parishes and satisfy themselves with a type of "Catholicized" civil religion. In a country separated by racial and class divisions, they are called to exemplify inclusion and real justice, virtues that are central to Catholicism and a democratic political system. Given their place in the world, American Catholics also have to remind themselves that they have "made it" in an empire and that this empire unfortu-nately is responsible for a great deal of suffering in the world. They need to keep in mind that their tax dollars have trained third-world dictators in the School of the Americas, some of whom have murdered committed Catholics and non-Catholics in the developing world, and even American missionaries. They need to tell themselves that as people with voice and vote they can do something about their country's foreign and domestic policy. American Catholics have to raise hard, responsible questions about national policy and the way we wield our enormous might. That is a right and obligation American Catholics have towards their fellow Catholics and their country. Real patriotism requires responsible th6ught about our national and international policy--something Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and more recently the American bishops have said with eloquence. Many political analysts have pointed out that Middle-class Catholics cannot hide in suburban parishes and satisfy themselves with a type of "Catholicized" civil religion. September-October 199~ 693' Cadorette ¯ Catbolicis~t in the Social Order we are in the midst of a deep national crisis. We need people of vision, men and women with a deep spirituality and commitment to the public realm, to find our way out of the cul-de-sac we find" ourselves in. Squabbles between liberals and conservatives have become meaningless. We need people with vision and integrity who defy political categories. American Catholics can make a sig-nificant contribution in political discussion as representatives of an American Christian denomination that embraces more social classes and races than any other and a religious community of global proportions. The pluralism of American Catholicism is its greatest asset. It has much to contribute to the debate about who we are as a nation and our role in the international arena. The Catholic community does not have all the answers nor does it pretend to, but it is hardly shy on experience, wisdom, or com-mitted people. If it can live up to its own vision and be truly inclu-sive, just, and joyful it will have made an enormous contribution to the body politic. Of course, inclusion, justice, and joy do not rain down from the heavens. They require work which heaven asks of American Catholics. There are those, of course, who do not welcome a Catholic voice or presence in the social order. Often, they are working with an erroneous understanding of what Catholicism is, rooted in a misunderstanding of what Catholicism was. As new types of Catholicism come to the fore, this prejudice hopefully will decrease. There are more astute and hostile people, however, who oppose Catholicism not for what it was, but for what it is. They recognize the subversive potential of a religious tradition based on the incarnation and universality of grace. The Catholic vision, lived deeply, threaten~ their economic and political interests. Ironically, some of Catholicism's most implacable foes call them-selves Catholics, as recent events in Latin American tragically demonstrate. One can only hope that the example of people like Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Ita Ford and Maura Clark will call these people to conversibn, for their own sake, that of the Catholic community, and the world at large. We must keep telling our-selves that there is ground for hope, that our religious traditions, the liberties made real by the Enlightenment, responsible sci-ence, and homespun genius can lead us out of our current quandary. The social order can and must be transformed. The question we must ask ourselves is what role we will play in its transformation. Can we and will we respond to that powerful 694 Review for Religious spirit of liberation at play in our world or will we resist it? The answer to that question is enormously consequential for each of us as individuals and for the world we all inhabit. Notes ~ Gustavo Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1983). 2 Chung Hyun Kyung, Struggle to Be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women's Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 53-73. 3 Pedro Casaldfiliga and Jos~ Maria Vigil, Political Holiness: A Spirituality of Liberation, trans, paul Burns and Francis McDonough (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994). Listen! Listen to your life. Listen and be still. Listen to the endless fall of endless silence. Listen with the ears of the sentinel alert to the sounds of the night. Listen to the years cresting over forgotten days, soundless, breaking infinitely slow. Do not speak. Gather together your life, and let time well slowly up from your depths and collect it as you might spring water in a cool dipper. Thomas More Page CFX September-October 1995 695 RICHARD J. HAUSER Finding God in Daily Life: Ignatian Spirituality's Heart The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins calls attention to a fact of all created being in his "kingfishers" sonnet: Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying I, Vhdt I dd is me:for that I came. Every created being is endowed by God with an inner nature and ac.ts accordingly--"selves"; in this it glorifies its Creator. And so with us human beings. We are endowed by God with a specific nature, indeed with the very image and likeness of God. Further we have been given God's own Spirit to assist us in expressing our inner being--the same Spirit that guided Jesus. But, unlike our fellow crea-tures, we humans need not always act according to our deepest selves. We alone of all creatures are given the choice of whether or not to follow the laws of our inner being. And so in his Spiritual Exercises Ignatius of Loyola gives us guidelines for recognizing God's movements within our hearts. He calls them Rules for the Discernment of Spirits. For Ignatius discernment is sim-ply the art of listening to our inner selves and learning to recognize (discern) movements that arise from the Holy Richard J. Hauser SJ is director of the graduate programs in theology, ministry, and spirituality at Creighton University. A comprehensive treatment of his thought on discernment can be found in his book Moving in the Spirit: Becoming a Contemplative in Action (Paulist Press, 1986). His address is Creighton University; 2500 California Street; Omaha, Nebraska 68178. 696 Review for Religious Spirit (our true selves) from those which do not. Traditionally the skill is called discernment of spi

Issue 46.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1987. ; REVIEW FO, RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO. 63108-3393. REWEW FOg RELiGiOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. ©1987 by REVIEW FOg RELiGiOUS. Single copies $2.50. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $11.00 a year; $20.00 for two years. Other countries: add $4.00 per year (surface mail); airmail (Book Rate): $18.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: Rv.vlv.w FOR REI.I(;IOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F.X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors May/June, 1987 Volume 46 Number 3 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOIl REI.I~;IOtlS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Richard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from REVIEW fOR REI.I~:IOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassgtte recordings as a service for the visu-ally impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. Mary and Our Reconciliation in Christ Donald Macdonald, S.M.M. Father Macdonald has written yet another thoughtful and fruitful article on Mary our Mother. His last article on Mary was "Our Lady of Wisdom" (May/June, 1986). His last article in our pages was "Invisibly Companioned" (January/February, 1987). Father Macdonald still resides at: St. Joseph's; Wellington Road; Todmorden, Lanc.: 0LI4 5HP England. It is puzzling to read from time to time that,- seemingly, the appeal of Our Lady is chiefly psychological rather than personal. So, for example, "Mary .has been a very popular image for both women and men . Men still Often seem to derive a great deal from the image of Mary, perhaps cel-ibate men. in particular, since Mary as mother provides a safe, that is, sex-ually taboo womanly image.''~ Is her appeal then in what she represents rather than who she is? Is she a popular image or a popular person? Every individual suggests more than herself, of course, but in the living of the everyday Catholic this emphasis on "the image of Mary" seems sadly unreal. There is a world of difference between admiring her icon at an exhibition and taking her into our home in faith and love. Insofar as she is seen primarily as a psychological refuge she is no longer the mother of Jesus as the Gospel reflects her. It was no image but someone authentically human who "gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swad-dling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn" (Lk 2:7). A male religious might be forgiven instinctive irritation as he feels him-self being patronized. More to the point, being particularly singled out as finding Our Lady a safety valve seems to contradictexperience. Is it true? The experience of an adult lifetime spent in pastoral ministry at the grass roots could more plausibly make a case for the attraction Our Lady has for the married woman or the professional man. In thinking of those with an 321 322 / Review for Religious, Ma.y--June, 1987 enviably marked and integrated devotion to Our Lady, the male celibate, while there, is by no means primary. Mary means so much to so many, far beyond the few who, it is suggested, see in her particularly a safe, sex-ually taboo womanly image. A lifetime could be spent in a Catholic com-munity without ever meeting many of that particular group, though one would certainly find genuine devotion to Our Lady. Too, contemporary novelists and journalists notwithstanding, genuine devotion to her from the male celibate has surely stronger ties than sexual security. It is a Catholic thing, not a psychological need. It is of the faith. Again, does everyday devotion to Our Lady really express itself like that? Is it mainly a popular image useful for meeting a psychological need? Whether it be the assembly line, down-market product of "repository art,'" or-the faith-aesthetic creation of a Giotto, the Christian can distinguish between the person and the product. The picture or image can focus atten, tion, and there are psychological overtones in every glimpse of Our Lady, since every individual carries more meaning than he or she knows. Mary may transform whomever and whatever she is introduced to in the context of Christian devotion. She creates her own climate in the generations con-sidering her ,blessed among women. Yet traditionally and individually within the Church, the person of Mary is known and loved beyond all that art, theory and culture might suggest. Faith and the feminine are lovely, life-enhancing qualities. To speculate about them may have some point, but cannot be compared to seeing them in a particular woman. Here lies Our Lady's appeal. Her union with her Son as the Gospel reveals this, and her oneness with us in our humanity and faith are definitive. Many talented peop!e can perhaps paint an icon, but only the specially prepared, it is said, may paint its eyes. Insight is a gift. The scientist and man of contemporary culture who considers the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris exclusively in terms of its construction has literally not seen it. In ignoring God and her whose name it was given, he has lost the key which would unlock its meaning. This is much more than simply discarding a relative culture. The contemporary Catholic, attracted by the appeal of Our Lady, might say of her what the medieval mystic said of being gripped by the desire for contemplation: "You would run a thousand miles to talk about it with someone you know has really experienced it, and yet when you get there you can find nothing to say. ''-~ One need not be able to articulate what one knows. The common tongue of Lourdes~ Fatima, Banneux and "down-town anywhere," as far as Our Lady is concerned, is faith working through Mary and Our Reconciliation / 393 love. With the mother of the Word made flesh dwelling among us, we are in touch with someone rooted in humanity and faith. ,.- This, then, is why devotion to Our Lady in Catholic tradition is not something subjective, as a liking for sugar, but an objective reality whether we advert to it or not. It is not an arcane secret given to some esoteric group inhabiting an ethereal heaven. It cannot be when so many Christians' first real introduction to Mary is often in the world of the Christmas carol, where "earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone . " She is known by the company she keeps--like her Son, easily going to the houses of sinners to be with them. The consequent allegiance she has won in the Christian world is far from the preserve of a Gnostic group. She is real to so many. "~ray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death," is possibly the most common prayer of invocation in the Catholic world. We can, perhaps, understand something of her appeal if we consider the best which can be said of Christian life, and glimpse how genuinely she reflects it. The anonymous medieval author mentioned earlier suggests that the human spirit can safely work with God once it "has been checked by the three witnesses, Scripture, direction, and common sense.-3 We can usefully consider how Our Lady reflects authentic Christian living in the light of that rubric. A New Creation Although not to everyone's taste, our faith is incarnational and so, "God'was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Co 5: 19), says St. Paul. He goes on to explain that, as an apostle and preacher, he shares in the same office of reconciliation, since God "gave us the ministry of reconciliation . . . entrusting to us the message of reconciliation" (2 Co 5: 18-19). It follows, therefore, that "we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us" (2 Co 5:20). Paul's mediatorial role is thus heavily emphasized in line after line. Such a mandate implies that who-ever is so commissioned as God's ambassador to help reconcile people to God must have received the enabling power of God to help him do it. He is, then, attuned to both God and man. His very person helps in binding people to God. "All this is from God" (2 Co 5:18). How is it done? It all depends on what is seen. Paul begins where the New Testament begins, with God first loving us in Christ. "For the love of Christ overwhelms us when we reflect." (2 Co 5: 14), he says, quite bowled over as he comes to an ever-wondering realization of what God has done for us in Christ. Christ, as one of us, lived, died and rose from a grave so that, in him, we might break out of our congenitally self-centered exis-tence which can even challenge the will of God, and so be able to "live 3~.4 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 no longer for themselves but for him [Christ] who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Co 5:15). Insofar as I am at one with the selfless Christ I can do the same. This vision of God in Christ can,provide the dynamic to draw me out of myself towards the will of God. Paul, a man among men, shackled, too, in the same self-centered world, and so wanting to be free of it, but seemingly powerless to change, now knows that this is possible in Christ. Paint the picture in the most somber colors, as bleak as can be, in a world where personal sin and selfishness can wreak havoc in epidemic proportions, and in it all Paul sees Christ. "For our sake, he [the Father] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Co 5:21). Whatever depths of evil can be reached individually or collectively, God in Christ is there empowering those who would accept him to break free of its infernal power: "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself" (2 Co 5:18). This Paul sees and is part of as Christ's ambassador, engaged in reconciling his world to God. So deep is this view of reality that Paul sees it as something wholly new, not just a change or adaptation. "If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come" (2 Co 5:17). His center of reference now is God giving himself in Christ. The selfless Christ replaces the selfish Paul, as he breathes the invigorating air of one now free to live for God.He is still an imperfect man with partial vis~ion, but insofar as his lifeqs a response to God in Christ, he can only describe what is happening to him as a new creation. Ideally, he describes Chris-tian reality. His world has been recreated. Glorifying God If such a grasp of reality is true of Paul and the best of Christians, and true of us :all to a degree, it is, self-evidently, descriptive, too, of Our Lad~,. That vision is flawlessly realized in her. Sinless from her conception and now assumed into heaven, she is a new creation from the mind of God. So alive to God is she that she is alert to the implications of her being way beyond any experience of ours. She hungered for the will of God, so it became her food (see Lk 1:53). "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your Word" (Lk 1:38) is the total response of the new creation. She is blessed, the Gospel maintains, because she believed and there-fore gave herself wholly to the Word of God. She is particularly blessed "among women, and blessed is the fruit of [her] womb" (Lk 1:42) as in her God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself. Her Son Jesus "will save his people from their sins" (Mt i:21). As the Word became Mary and Our Reconciliation / 325 flesh in her womb and in her life, having been welcomed in faith and love into her heart, her maternal being from first to last becomes part of the gift of her Son: "And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother"; "But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister" (Mt 2:1 I, Jn 19:25). Only a mother, perhaps, could under-stand the give and take of that exchange over a lifetime. Mary, one with her Son at so many levels as the years went by, learned so much of life as he lived in and for his Father's will, and yet "he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:51). The reflective Chris-tian, too, has assimilated much of the perplexity of life in oneness with the heart of Mary. When she stood with her crucified Son as his life ended in ag6ny, "Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near" (Jn 19:26), and gave them to each other. Far from seeing this as a son tying up loose ends as best he could--his use of the word woman sug-gests more than a domestic arrangement--generations have felt the weight of those words from the Cross, and have gladly accepted the relationship, taking ourLady into their own homes. She is not then seen as just a type or evocative image of yesterday. Her appeal is of today and tomorrow, as her reconciling presence helps Christians to welcome and live the appeal of the Gospel in the Church. Admittedly these Gospel glimpses of Mary are or~ly straws in the wind, but many in the Church have loved the way the wind was blowing. The Pauline sketch of reconciliation in Second Corinthians outlined earlier, can become real in her person. This is especially true of those who could never read St. Paul, nor perhaps even pronounce the word "reconciliation." She radiates Christ, invariably generating the wonder and pleasur6 of Elizabeth's welcome as Mary hurried to her door: "And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Lk 1:43). "Mother of my Lord" is, in the context, a new creation in Christ, ideally and providentially there to help reconcile us to God. Her heaven, too, is being spent doing good upon earth. DirectionmWhat Do the Saintlike Advise? Given that Our Lady, because of who she is in the providence of God, mediates God in Christ to us through her feminine, reconciling presence, we can reinforce that insight by continuing to take the advice of an English mystic and seek direction. What did those with the clearest Christian insight advise? What did the saints andsaintlike do? Perhaps we can glance at Julian of Norwich who, in her fourteenth-century hermitage, has distilled 396 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 sufficient insight to be found today on contemporary bookshelves as a best-selling paperback. Julian tlad asked for a bodily vision of Our Lady. She was never given one, but "when Jesus said: 'Do you wish to see her?" it seemed to me that I had the greatest delight that he could have given me in this spiritual vision of her which he gave me.-4 Delight, of course, is characteristic of Julian's understanding of the Faith, and she finds Our Lady delightful. She is enthralled by this God-given insight, and clear as to its implications: "And so he [Jesus] wishes it to be known that all who take delight in him should take delight in her and in the delight that he has in her and she in him." There is no suggestion here of tension, division or embarrassment. It is all so perfectly natural. Julian's understanding of the Faith, like St. Paul's, centers on Godwin Christ reconciling the world to himself through the cross. So suffused is it by the love of God--Julian really had grasped Paul's insight--that she can only delight in what God is doing. Responding as she does to Our Lady, she believes that she is sharing in Christ's delight in his mother and in hers in him. "For after myself [Jesus] she is the greatest ~joy that I could show you, and the greatest delight and honor to me." Far from seeing any contradiction or distraction in so honoring Our Lady, Julian sees it as the express will of Christ. One might reasonably expect this, as the relationship echoes the best in human nature as well as suggesting the hundredfold of all who are at one with God. Whenever delight is experienced, the whole person is marked, together with a~wish that everyone could see it, coupled with sad-ness and incomprehension if the delight cannot be shared. Julian, a new creation in Christ, savoring with an immediacy given to few his reconciling presence, sees Mary as part of the treasure to be found in Christ. Mary, for her, is not tacked on in a moment of misguided devotion, but rather soldered on by the love and will of God, intrinsically, if subordinately, part of the reconciliation found in Christ. In Mary she sees herself and all of us, "as if he [Jesus] said, do you wish to see in her how you are loved? It is for love of you that I have made her so exalted, so noble, so honorable; and this delights me. And I wish it' to°delight you." Maryqs no shadow across the face of Christ, but a further means of shar-ing delight in what God is doing in Christ. As one in Christ we may savor this, too, and insofar as we can see just how much we are loved in her, enjoy a comforting glimpse of our present and future status. It is not without interest that in the shorter text of Julian's "Revela-tions," believed to have been written some twenty years before the longer Mary and Our Reconciliation /327 text we have been using, she adds, after seeing Christ more gloriously than she had yet realized, "In this I was taught that every contemplative soul to whom it is given to look and seek, will see Mary and pass on to God through contemplation.-5 As always, in Julian the tone is uniform and the perspective unforced, and her faith is so alive in her belief that attachment to Our Lady will inevitably bring us to its source in God. Mary herself effects the transition, reconciling to God whoever is open to h~r influence. ~ It is said that, increasingly, women find less and less in Our Lady "as women discover themselves as less passive than Mary is made to appear in the gospels.",° They therefore look for other models. Women can, of course, speak for themselves, but as regards passivity in the gospels, it is useful to remember that the biblical "divine passive" is often just a passive tense serving to emphasize the wholly present activity of God. So, for exam-ple, Paul speaks of Christ, "who for their sake, died and was raised" (2 Co 5:15). God in Christ is not molding plasticine. The death and resurrection of Christ is not the behavior of a mechanic using an inert tool, but God's response to a life actively given to his will, even to accepting death in his name. The passive tense implies an active God and willing human Cooperation, and so as Paul said of the process of reconciliation, "All this is from God" (2 Co 5:18). So, too, when Julian speaks of those "to whom it is given to look and to seek," far from indicating lack of initiative in a passive recipient, she is speaking of someone alert and alive, empowered by the driving Spirit of God:. Motherhood strikes one as possibly the least passive of all vocations, especially as glimpsed in Mary's life in the gospels. She is so attractive and influential today simply because whatever God said she did in'faith. Does anyone really believe that banner headlines in a newspaper or a pic-ture on the cover of Time magazine are the measure of lasting influence? With so much left unsaid in the gosPels, it may well be'that the feminine, creative, nourishing and responsive qualities of Mary are what God has valued in her. Without these, people wither and personal relations are bleak. The old advice is still sound: "Do not teach [God] his business. Let him be. He has enough might, skill and goodwill to do the best for you and for all who love him.''7 Julian is always concerned for her "fellow-Christians," and her delight in the Faith is tangible, though she, too, lived in a socially horrific age. Calm self-possession is her keynote, never raising her voice. There is none of the stress that takes so many women today to the bottle or drugs, the counselor or the hospital. So many are living lives of quiet desperation, while others are teetering on the edge of despair. She writes out of con- Review for Religious, ~May--June, 1987 cern, with the simplicity of wisdom reflecting what she sees in faith. Her teaching of the natural delight of mother and son, and Christ's desire that we share in it, since we see just how much we are loved by God .in her, is surely, "simple, courteous, joyful.''8 Her guidance is at one with so much that is good in the Church. Common Sense God was in Christ recon~ciiing the world to himself. Those closest to him are effective mediators of his presen.ce. Clearly, "Paul, an apostle-- not from men or through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father" (Ga l:l), is superbly placed, but the origin of that call is valid, too, for Our Lady: Immaculately~conceived, bringing Christ into the world, raising him, beside him as he died, praying in the Church then, and now within the Church gloriously assumed into heaven, common sense would suggest that such a woman cannot but help in reconciling us to God. "This is only what sanctified common sense would expect: that God should keep safe all who for love of him forsake themselves, indifferent to their Own welfare.-9 The safety that is now hers she wants to be ours, and almost instinctively the Catholic faithful have felt this. In view of who she ~is in the providence of God, generations have opened themselves to her influ-ence in an often very unsafe world. G.K. Chesterton emphasized this when he told of the reaction of two eminent nineteenth.century Victorians to news of the proclamation of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception. Prince Albert was the husband of the leg-endary Queen Victoria who gave her name to an era, .and W.E. Gladstone was one of the outstaffding political figures of the age. If Chesterton is to be believed, the proposed declaration by the pope of Our Lady's Immac-ulate Conception was greeted with indecent hilarity by the former and with grief by the latter, as each in his own way saw in it the sign of the immi-nent downfall of Catholic. Christianity. Both were agreed that it would be unpopular. Albert and Gladstone, who both worked conscientiously for the poor, "understood so little of what that crown and image really meant to millions of ordinary people . Yet the applewoman did not dash madly out of church; seamstresses in garrets did not dash their little images ,of Mary to the ground, on learning that she was named Immaculate."~° Chesterton then speak~ of the first appearance of Our Lady at Lourdes some four years later. While the influential and educated still puzzled, "little knots of poor peasants began to gather round a strange, starved child before a crack in the rocks from whence was to spring a strange stream and almost a new city; the rocks she had heard resound with a voice crying, 'I am the Immaculate Conception.' " Did Albert and Gladstone~ men of Mary and Our Reconciliation / 329 integrity, even remotely approach the influence for good with ordinary people that is associated with the name Bernadette Soubirous? Shrines such. as Lourdes and private revelations such as Julian's are not to be considered as though from St. Paul and the gospels. Yet as a fact of life within the Church and with the approval of the Church, such places and similar insights undeniably have helped reconcile so many from every walk of life to God. In the light of Mary's Immaculate Conception each one of us is handicapped and in need, and she has particular appeal for those who are aware of their need. Here, especially, her faith and her fem-ininity are found so attractive, as she is known to be present now in imag-inative sympathy. In the circumstances, common sense would direct us to her company. Jimmy Durante used to celebrate that he was "the guy who found the lost chord." Unhappily, in the same breath, he had to admit that he had lost it again! It is given to few to be truly original. Life, genes, language, skills, food--virtually everything of consequence that has made us what we are have been mediated to us by others. It is the human condition, and it is the supernatural condition. Even the insights of a St. Paul are, under God, largely the result of an interchange, often troubled, between himself and his people. "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge," may not be valid in terms of personal guilt, but it is true in terms of personal influence. Human beings transmit life and superb medical care, as well as AIDS and drug-dependent babies. Often the fruits of the Spirit are mediated through others as are the sins of the flesh. We all have reason to thank God for some of the people we have met as well as to regret the influence of others. As mediated experience is a fact of life for good or ill, common sense; would suggest that nothing but good can come from opening ourselves to Our Lady's influence. Her selfless, perceptive being, one person in Christ with ourselves, radiates God as she delights in the Lord her Savior. What-ever life did to her, "Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Lk 2:19). Open to her reconciling influence, we too can assimilate experience, responding to God's presence in a sacramental world. Finally, common sense would especially commend that religious, who "ought to be poor in both fact and spirit" (Perfectae Caritatis 13), con-sider Our Lady's guidance in the search to be truly reconciled to God. She sees further and more clearly than any other guide in the Church, and her encouraging presence is always here. With increasing affluence, or possi-bly insensitivity, numbers of religious travel far looking for enlightenment. It is not wrong of course, but there does seem to be an innate contradic- 330 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 tion in the context of poverty when, for example, the search may take a religious to an a~hram in India, the deserts of Israel or California, or to the monasteries of Japan, Whatever insight is gained may be at the cost of a threadbare vow of poverty. Our Lady once appeared so nondescript as not to merit a first glance when she came with the offering of .the poor. Yet to the one truly enlight-ened by the Holy Spirit she was seen to be carrying in her arms "a light for revelation to the Gentiles" (Lk 2:32). She still reflects that same light now wherever we are in Christ. NOTES ~ M. Furlong, "The Power of,Images," The Way, October 1986, p. 299. 2 The Epistle of Privy Counsel, Chapter II, in The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works, Penguin Books, 1978. 3 The Epistle of Privy Counsel, Chapter 10. 4 Julian of Norwich, Showings, Chapter 215, tr. E. C011edg~ and J. Walsh, Paulist Press, New York, 1978. All quotations are from Chapter 25 of this edition. 5 Julian of Norwich, op. cit., short text, Chapter 13. 6 M o Furlong, op. cit., p. 299. 7 The Epistle of Privy Counsel, Chapter 10. 8 Julian of Norwich, op. cit., short text, Chapter 13. 9 The Epistle of Privy Counsel, Chapter 6. ~0GoK. Chesterton, The Strange Talk of Two Victorians, and The Common Man, Sheed and Ward, 1950. Each quotation is from this essay. Brothers in the Church: A Vocational Reflection William Mann, F.S.C. Brother Mann is in his eighth year as a Formation Counselor for the Brothers of the Christian Schools. He had also served as Assistant Provincial for Formation (1979- 1984) and Director of Novices up to the present. He may be, addressed at: Christian Brothers; 83 West Lake Street: Skaneateles, New York 13152. ,~ few years ago, I volunteered to work at a Soup kitchen in Rhode Island. As my first experience of working with the street poor, it was both diffi-cult and challenging. Most of the time, I was afraid; and my fear kept me washing dishes and away from the people. I was attempting to make my contribution and avoid contact at the same time. On more courageous days, I would visit the dining room to sit and talk with the guests. Occasionally, I ventured, into the lounge to socialize after a meal. On one particularly hot day, a six-year-old child walked over to me, climbed into my lap, and using a shredded and badly soiled napkin wiped the perspiration from my forehead. He kissed my cheek, hugged me, and moved my heart. So para-lyzed by my own fears that I found it difficult to offer hospitality, this poor child reached out and offered me love. The story of my encounter with this young boy in a soup kitchen high-lights four key aspects of the vocation of Brother: I) ours is primarily a ministry of example; 2) our ministry on behalf of the Gospel and on behalf of the sanctification of others r~quires our own radical transformation; 3) those to whom we minister will be the instruments of our own conversion; and 4) 9urs is, therefore, primarily a ministry of reciprocity and mutuality. At the time that this incident occurred, I was teaching English and reli-gion in a coed secondary school. "Example makes a much greater 331 339 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 impression on the mind and heart than words."~ If I wanted my students to take seriously the admonition of Jesus to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and visit the imprisoned, then I knew that I was going to have to put those words into action myself. In twenty-two years as a Brother of the Christian Schools, I can hon-estly say that I have attempted to put my life at the service of the Gospel. As teacher, activity moderator, dormitory supervisor, school administrator, retreat director, and now formation counselor, I have worked consistently at proclaiming the Gospel by word and by example. Often this has been a humbling experience. "We are only the earthenware jars that hold this treasure, to make it clear that such an overwhelming power comes from God and not from us" (2 Co 4:7). My entire life as a vowed religious brother is a sincere, and yet sometimes inadequate, attempt to put the Gospel into practice. Accompanying those students each Wednesday to the soup kitchen was just one concrete instance of living out this commitment. "Your zeal for the children under your guidance would be very imperfect, if you expressed it only in teaching them; it will only become perfect if you practice yourself what you are teaching them. ''~- The example of Chris-tianity lived is what "brother-ing" is all about. Although religious brothers have traditionally been identified by the work we do (teacher, health practitioner, parish assistant, or manual laborer), I contend that our particular ministry, while significant in terms of individual congregations, is not of the essence of our vocation in the Church. It is the choice to be called "brother" which has always pinpointed our key contribution. Our very existence as brothers announces the new world order ushered in by Christ. We understand ourselves to be among those chosen by God "long ago and intended to become true ima.ges of his Son, so that his Son might be the eldest of many brothers [and sisters]" (Rm 8:29). The Scriptures tirge us to "love our neighbor as ourself" (Mt 22:39). That child reached out to me in love; and I believe that, in his person, Jesus Christ reached out to me and reminded me that, since God is my Father, all of us are'brothers and sisters. That young child reminded me that I was his brother, and challenged me to accept the people around me and not to get caught up in the differences of age, class, or color. He reminded me that God intends that we should love one another and that we should let go of the prejudices, defenses, fears, and barriers that hold us back from truly being his children, brothers and sisters of one another. This very ministry in which I was engaged on behalf of others was requiring that I °Brothers in the Church / 333 change. I was being challenged to live more fully the message that I preached. I was at the soup kitchen on this particular day precisely because I was trying to educate my students to share the gifts and the blessings of their own lives with those less fortunate. However, Jesus used the opportunity to challenge me to see him among the poor. This is the second key aspect of the vocation of brother; our consecration as brothers commits us to a life of transformation. Loving Jesus always means being changed. I wanted to help my students; Jesus chose to help me be more open to receiving the blessing the poor could be in my life. I went to the soup kitchen hoping to embody the loving presence of Jesus in the world; I returned home having encountered Jesus' loving presence in another. Initially, it seemed ironic that I was challenged to live the Gospel more wholeheartedly by the very people for whom I was attempting to be its proclamation. This was, however, the very heart of the teaching of St~ John Baptist DeLaSalle on what it means to be a brother. Furthermore, this was not only DeLaSalle's teaching; it was his own experience. We minister to others, but they call us to holiness. St. John Baptist DeLaSalle founded the Brothers of-the Christian Schools in France in 1679 to give a Christian education to the children of the working class and the poor. By 1682, however, the Society of the Chris-tian Schools was threatened with collapse. DeLaSalle urged his first di~cj-. pies to trust in Providence. As with the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, God would provide (Mt 6:25-30). The brothers challenged .DeLaSalle's right to say these things. He still had great family weal~l~ and a prestigious position as Canon of the Cathedral of Reims. What did he know of trusting in Divine Providence? If the schools collapsed, he would be safe. In his attempt to minister to the brothers, DeLaSalle hims61f was called' to holiness. He attempted to announce the Gospel to them; they challenged tiimto a fuller living of the Gospel. The first biographers report that so complete was his devotion tO the brothers and to the foundation of the Christian Schools that he heard in their challerlge the invitation of Jesus to take the Gospel more seriously, resign his Canonry, and distribute his wealth among the poor.3 Christ continues to speak to the brother through his disciples. If" we open our eyes and our hearts, we will continue to hear in them the invita-tion to draw closer to God. I believe that~this is what DeLaSalle meant when he wrote: "You can be assured that if you act this way [with an ardent zeal] for their salvation, God himself will take responsibility for yours."4 He was not speaking here of some kind of mysterious and passive 334 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 transformation. He was articulating his own experience. In proclaiming the Gospel to others, the Gospel lays claim on our own hearts. God uses the people and the situations of our lives to evangelize us. Through them and for the sake of the Gospel, God gradually refashions us into the image of his Son. Over and over again, the people and the situations of my life have pro-vided the opportunity to draw closer to Christ. There have been many times in my life when Jesus has asked me to recognize him and to love him in another person. Sometimes that person has been someone for whom I cared deeply; at times, that person has been a complete stranger. What has so often struck me in the Gospel has been the ability of Jesus to be open to all kinds of people in so many different situations. He saw in every person he met a reflection of his Father, a new and unique and beautiful side of God that could be seen in no other person or in no other place on this earth. I believe that Jesus calls us to open our eyes and our hearts to him as he continues to show himself to us in one another. Hence, ours is a ministry marked by reciprocity and mutuality. "They are a letter which Christ dictates to you, which you write each day in their hearts, not with ink, but by the Spiri! of the living God.-5 In inviting others to holiness, our own lives are opened to holiness. Those to whom we min-ister facilitate the capturing by the Gospel of our own hearts. I more and more suspect that this is the key aspect of the vocation of brother. In our openness to the evangelical dimension of everyday life, we provide our clearest witness on behalf of the Gospel. What greater example can be given than that I allow another to become the instrument of my own con-version to a fuller living of Gospel values? Jesus Christ is the "pearl of great price" (Mt 13: 44-46), and I ardently .desire to "share Jesus with those who have been entrusted to my care. We brothers desire to share "the treasure we have found hidden in the field of our own lives. ,,6 Our world is already bombarded with empty and meaningless words. What is needed are people who not only speak of Jesus but who act as followers of Jesus. What is needed are people who follow him so wholeheartedly that they become new incarnations of God's loving presence in the world. This is what I believe the vocation of brother is all about; this is what I am trying to do with my life---do this because I.believe this is what God Wants me to do. Furthermore, I do it because I believe that there are millions of people on our planet today~some Chris-tians, some Jews and Moslems, som6 far away, but very many are young Americans who look,to see if anyone any longer takes Jesus Christ seri- Brothers" in the Church / 335 ously. What hangs in the balance is the very credibility of the Gospel itself: 7 St. Paul assures us that the wisdom of this world is not the wisdom of God (I Co 3~!9); and I do not doubt that, in the face of a modern' Amer-ican society that encourages and fosters a pursuit of pleasure, possessions, and self-interest,8 it is perceived by many as foolhardy to be willing to want God to be more important than anything else in this world, and courageous enough to take the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Yet we broth-ers are bold enough to believe that our own radical, personal conversion to Gospel values really has the potential to make a difference in the lives of those around us. We believe that this is the gift which Jesus Christ intends us to be for his Church. As DeLaSalle writes: "Be convinced of what St. Paul says, that you plant and water the seed, but it is God through Jesus Christ who makes it grow, that he is the one who brings your work to fulfillment?. ~ Earnestly ask him to make his Spirit come alive in you, since he has chosen you to do his work.-9 NOTES ~ John Baptist DeLaSalle, Meditations for the Time of Retreat, trans. Augustine Loes (Winona, Minnesota: St. Mary's College Press, 1975), p. 94] 2 DeLaSalle, p. 80~ 3 John Baptist Blain, The Life. of John Baptist DeLaSalle, trans. Richard Arnandez (Winona, Minnesota: St. Mary's College Press, 1982), Vol. I, Book I, pp. 81-84; Eli Maillefer, The Life of John Baptist DeLaSalle, trans. William Quinn (Winona, Minnesota: St. Mary's College Press, 1963), pp. 27-28. 4 DeLaSalle, p. 91. 5 DeLaSalle, p. 54. 6 Jose Pablo Basterrechea, "Address of the Superior General to the Regional Convoca-tion of the Brothers of the Christian Schools" (Mgraga, California: Regional Convoca-tion, 1984). 7 James Wallis, The Call to Conversion (S~in Francisco! Harper and Row, 1981); Pedro Arrupe, "What Is the Greatest Service Which Religious Can Give Today to Human-ity and to the Church?" Donum Dei No. 24 (1978). 8 John Kavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, ~981). 9 DeLaSalle, p. 56. ' Appropriate Formation Martin O'Reilly, C.F.C. Brother O'Reilly, Director:of Formation for his community in Liberia, previously wrote "Current Conceptions of Religious Formation: An Analysis"r (November/Dece,mbe.r issue, 1985). His address is: Christian Brothers; P.O. Box 297; Monrovia, Liberia; West Africa. When Captain Smith of the Titanic uttered the words, "The only ice around here, Sparks, is in my drink," he was displaying a characteristic common to most of us--skepticism. When many American and European religious hear of the great vocation boom within the develoPing churches and look at their own decreasing numbers and formation houses being turned into retreat centers and homes for the aged, they skeptically wonder: "How it is that so many young Africans and others are being attracted to living a life of community, prayer and service as religious?" When I returned to Liberia in 1982 after an absence of eight years, we still had no local brothers in our West African communities~espite erect-ing a novitiate building in 1975 and having made it clear toall and sundry that we were keen to welcome local candidates into our communities. As I write this article in 1987 we have, to date, eighteen Wes~ African mem-bers and a thriving candidacy.program. We have just missioned our first West African brothers to set up a new community to work among leprosy sufferers, and fully expect to open another community elsewhere in either Liberia or Sierra Leone during the coming year. It seems fantastic to many in our congregation that in the space of five years we have more novices and junior professed religious in West Africa than in many of our other pro-vinces combined together. When people ask me how it is, I usually tell 336 Appropridte Formation / 337 them that it is the Holy Spirit's work--and something called "Appropri-ate Formation." This article will be concerned with defining the meaning of a religious formation that is~rooted within a developing-church situation. I will be using categories and concepts normally associated with the development of appropriate technology in developing economic and social orders, and .'using them to map out a theory of religious formation that is ,appropri-ate" to this new wave of young religious that congregations throughout the developing world are beginning to welcome into their ranks. In the second part of the article I will outline some of the important issues that our own young West Africah members felt should be on the agenda for an appro-priate formation. Appropriate Formation: A Definition Appropriate formation involves the application of the principles of reli-gious life to concrete local situations. This means developing ways or "technologies" which can be defined as "replicable methods for solving community problems and developing the capacities of communities to achieve their own goals" (S.B. Fawcett, R.M. Mathews and R.K. Fletcher, "Some Promising Dimensions for Behavioral Community Tech-nology," Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 13, 1980). These authors propose that seven dimensions of a technology must be considered to ensure the appropriateness of the technology: - Effectiveness - Expense - Decentralization - Flexibility -Sustainability - Simplicity - Compatibility A new technology means anew way of.doing things for the people who use the technology or who are affected by its use. For any significant change in behavior or attitudes to persist and the technology to be effective, the rewards, satisfactions and achievements obtained have to clearly outweigh the efforts and difficulties involved. For this to happen in the area of religious formation, formators need to have a firm understanding of what are to be the intended outcomes, methods t6 be used, content to be consid-ered and evaluation procedures which will° make up their formation pro-gram. This will, of necessity, demand that'~i formator sit down with both professed members of the group a~d neophytes, and work out what real- 338 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 istic goals a formation community can set itself, what practical wfiys they can be realized, and their appropriateness evaluated at different stages of the formation program. Inexpensiveness is of'considerable importance in a context such as West Africa since cash incomes are generally low. If we expect r~ligious from such regions ,!o earn their own keep and to be credible followers of the "chaste, poor and obedient Christ" for their people, then their formation experience should~prepare them f6r this reality. The end values of religious life shouid"not be obscured by the trappings of a partiCular lifestyle that is alien to the majority of Candidates prior tO entering a religious com-munity. Decentralization means the application of technology at a local level rather than from a remote center. Local religious will need to assume full responsibility .for the living out of their commitment, and not look to over-seas generalates and provincialates for direction on every facet of their lives. They are "the people on the spot," and they need both the compe-tence and the confideqce to discern in what direction the Spirit is calling them. As far as possible, ~those in initial formation need to be shown that responsibility and accountability are intrinsic to religious life. If candidates are not willing to grow in these areas, then there is no place for them 4n a religious community. If formation technologies are not flexible there is. little chance that people will be prepared to handle the gigantic social and pastora, I devel-opments that are taking place in so many parts of the world. There has to be a clear distinction made during religious formation between the end values and the means values of religious life. The end values are not negotiable, but the means ones can be redefined in the light of new insights among the members and the needs of the Church and of society. A flex-ible dimension in religious formation will concern itself with presenting a range of options to cope with specific concerns, and will include guide-lines for Change according to the felt needs of the group in formation. A frequent concern of formation personnel is that many young reli-gious, after having passed through the novitiate, experience a painful regression to the state they were in prior to entering the community. It is as though no significant personal or spiritual development had taken place. Often the cause~of this is because the technology, or way of being a reli-gious, is not sustainable: at the local community level. They leave the novitiate with either unreal expectations of what religious life will be,, and are disillusioned with what they find to be t.he reality~ or they flounder with- 6ut ihe strong guiding hand of a r~ligious specifically missioned to help Appropriate Formation / 339 them overcome every hurdle they may encounter. A gradualist strategy is needed during formation wherein "stretch-outs" are provided so as to allow young religious to know what it means to live, pray and work in a typical community of the congregation. Here they can focus on the con-crete problems of religious life rather than on the long range goal-setting which makes up so much of the agenda of religious formation. A new technology must be simple and comprehensible enough to be understood by its potential users. Religious formators will need to acknowl-edge the "multi-path" approach when dealing with candidates coming from differing social, economic and educational and faith backgrounds. There. have to be features of a formation program that provide for acceler-ation when goals are realized and values interiorized, and a locking-in system that prevents regression from gains obtained. Finally, any new technology must fit into the community or society at large. To be compatible with the surroundings from which the candidates are comirig and in which their religious formation is taking place, the new technology must be seen to work. It must be seen to provide religious men and women whose lifestyle is clearly valued and appreciated by the immedi-ate society. If religious life is seen as wholly meaningless by those around, it is difficult to see how an individual can commit himself or herself unreservedly to such a vocation. Appropriate Formation: An Agenda I want to turn now to a consideration of what are some of the problems facing young local religious. I shall outline these issues within the frame-work of the three end values of religious life---community, prayer and ser-vice. To identify what are the problems our young religious will have to confront is the necessary first step towards devising a formation program appropriate to the people and situation in which religious life will find a new beginning. Community. ~ The issue of where a person's primary loyalties lie---either with one's extended family or with the community--is a source of tension for most local religious at one stage.or another of their lives. Appropriate formation must tackle this area sensitively but una.mbiguously: "No, a community cannot take on the responsibility of supporting and educating younger mem-bers of a local religious' family; but yes, a community will help in a crisis or an emergency as best as it can." Formal membership in a religious.con-gregation must broaden a person's "in" group to .those past and living mem-bers of the congregation around the world. If the extended family holds 340 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 the central loyalties of the young religious, then eventually a clash will come and he or she will be the casualty. It is hard to be a citizen of two worlds! Unless serious efforts are made to tackle the issue where a person's identity and sense of belonging lie, feelings of inauthenticity may arise within the young religious, and eventually may lead to their departure from the community. Likewise, with the question of tribal or national bonds, while encour-aging people to be proud of their heritage, those distinctions which blur the call of a person to see everyone as his or her brother or sister in Christ, must be faced up to during the period of initial formation. Tribalism, mean-ing the preference for one's own tribe over national interests, is a growing political concern in post-colonial Africa. Local religious can easily fall into a tribal mentality with disastrous consequences for community living. Going against tribalism is no easy thing and young religious need to be under no illusion that to have respect for each person's tribal identity is one of the primary signs that they can give to their people of the inclusive nature of the kingdom of God. Many of those who apply for membership in religious communities in developing countries carry with them stories of how they had to struggle against all odds to complete their schooling and perhaps to start in a career. This experience of being a "survivor," when so many of their friends gave up along the road, can lead some to evaluate any or every facet of religious life in terms of what they can get materially from the community--instead of what they can give to the community. Every formation community fairly exudes the idea that there are those already in the community (i,e., they own the house, the bedsheets and the marmalade), and those who wish to join the community. This is a classic "donor-receiver" situation. Usually it takes years for a religious to believe that the house and community pos-sessions are not "theirs" but "ours." In a developing-country situation this "donor-receiver" mentality can persist far longer when the professed religious are white and those joining the community are black. Obviously, religious life means old and young, black and white--or ~,hatever other contrasts a person cares to make between people--all attempting to live in harmony together. This is our" witness of the kingdom and the means by which we build up the Church. For that to happen, there has to be a basic leveling among the members of the community. Formators need to devise ways in which local religious can "own," not only the community goods, but the core values at the heart of the community. Prayer Appropriate Formation / 341 . Much of religious formation, in the spiritual domain, is concerned with deepening a person's,capacity for, and appreciation of, a "grace-full" rela-tionship with Jesus. This is a task for religious formators worldwide, but in my experience, .those working in countries with a strong animist tradi-tion have added challenges. The first one is helping young religious see that prayer, to be real; must be a constant part 6f a person's life. Just praying when the community decides to pray in common is not enough. When prayer is simply a duty expected of one by others, then the shallowness of a person's prayer~life will be revealed when serious vocational problems arise and a ~oung~reli-gious doesn't really believe that there is a God who is ready to love, under~ stand and forgive. In my experience of countries with a strong animist tra-dition, God is more than likely to be feared rather than loved, .and for-giveness is at a price. Coupled to the above challenge is that of helping local candidates real-ize that the form and structure of prayer are not ends in themselves. They are only aids to developing an'awareness of God in ~ne's life and in encour-aging prayerful living. The tendency in the animist tradition to overstress the ma,.gical nature of prayer can lead to a marked separation ~of the sacred and the secular, andah inability to make the "stuff Of daily living" the quarry for one's own prayer. A third challenge I believe formators can have is helping young reli-gious recognize that their own people's spiritual heritage can provide them with stepping stones to discover and value the face of God in Jesus. They will need a strong, personal faith to be able to discern authentically the pres- 6nee of God in their people's faith history, and a vision of the Church as embracing all peoples and cultures, as acknowledging and respecting the I,ocal character of each people. Service In many countries where the Church is newly rooted, much is made of a person's final profession or ordination--I suppose because local reli-gious and priests are still a rarity in many places. Sadly, perhaps, not a few young men and women leave the altar as newly professed or ordained with a very exalted view of themselves. They go on mission with a mentality, more suited to starting a career than a vocation. We need a model of the "servant" Church as never before in devel-oping countries. Otherwise the cr6"dibility and respect which the first mis-sionaries earned from the people will vanish. If there are not local men and women prepared to minister with total conviction and compassion to the marginalized of their society,, then things do not look well for the future. 349 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 I believe that there are people amongst those seeking to follow "the chaste, poor and obedient Christ" who have the dynamism and selflessness of those first missionaries. But they will need every encouragement and incen-tive to rise above merely identifying with the better educated and affluent members of their society. Appropriate format.ion will need to stress the distinction between a career and a vocation, and to present clearly and simpl~, the model of Jesus who had "nowhere to lay his head," who could welcome all and who was wholly caught up in doing the will of his Father. Conclusion Thi~ article has concerned itself with indicating dimensions of a for-mation program that must be appropriate to the persons it serves and to the so(iety in which such people will minister. I have pointgd out some of the priorities I feel that formators involved in develpping-church situations need to take note of and to put.on their formation agenda. To those who are skep-tical concerning the future of religious life in the. world today, let me end wiih a quote from Samuel Beckett: "He sat with me in the dark room of my doubt and lit a candle." During my five years of close involvement with religious forma_tion in West Africa, I have seen that candle glowing, and my hope is that religious throughout the world will, like me, grow in certainty by its light. From Tablet to Heart: Internalizing New Constitutions land II by Patricia Spillane, M.S.C. Price: $1.25 per copy, plus postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. Growth Producing Tensions in Pre-Novitiate Formation Donna Marie Wilhelm, S.N.D. Since writing this article, Sister Donna Marie has been transferred to Sarasota's Cardi-nal Mooney High School where she now teaches and is local superior. She may be addressed at 4004 Fruitville Road; Sarasota, Florida 33582. Liberal, conservative; masculine, feminine; introvert, extrovert; Ignatian, Franciscan; adjectives--"labels" that describe experience, that are valu-able as long as they do not become restrictive in their attempt to'describe, as long as they do not bind rather than free us for growth and understand-ing. These labels are set up in tension as opposites, or perhaps better as complements. Their value is not so much in setting persons in opposition to one another, but in directing them to wholeness of vision. They provide for an expression of tension that can lead to healthy growth and a more com-plete outlook on life and experience. I believe that formation, too, is about tension--healthy tension--that is inherent in the process itself. Tensions exist throughout the period of initial formation with varying emphases and with differing intensities. This is particularly true in the pre-novitiate period. One of the dangers in the beginning of the formation process is that some individuals, once they begin to live in a community setting, may live out of a sense of finality that says, "I have made my decision. This is where God wants me. Just tell me what to do in order to be a good Sister of Notre Dame (or Franciscan or whatever) and I will do it." A stance like this needs to be explored gently, and then laid to rest as a false and harmful presupposi-tion. 343 344 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 I believe that it is more accurate to define vocation as a verb rather than a noun, as E.F. O'Doherty has suggested in The Psychology of Vocation. A vocation is not something that I "have"; it is a possibility for me to "become." Implied in this kind of definition is the reality that following a particular vocation involves a repeated act of choosing. In the initial stages it involves decision-making that then becomes the raw material for an ongoing discernment process. For the remainder of this article I want to describe three of the tensions that I think are common to those who are new to the religious process: those in pre-novitiate. Since formation does not happen in a vacuum but in the context of community, community members and attitudes among members are very important in helping the individuals in formation to negotiate these tensions successfully. Child/Adult. Jean Vanier has said, "When people come into a community they are usually in a state where you can ask anything at all of them . People coming into community have a child's grace.''1 This stateof becoming "like a child" again i~ a result of a variety of factors: the initial joy and enthusiasm of any beginner; the "rush" that comes with "finally arriv-ing"; but perhaps most importantly there is a tremendous loss of the famil-iar for the newcomer. o Ray B(adbury in his book Dandelion Wine tells a story that points to the importance of the familiar, of the everyday. It is a story of two y, oung boys and their summer discoveries through everydayness. Doug, the older boy, decides to keep a record bf the summer's adventures in a yellow nickel tablet. In explaining his plan to his brother Tom, Doug begins: I'm going to divide the su.mmer up in two parts. First part of this tablet is titled: Rites and Ceremonies. The first root beer pop of the year. The first time of the year running barefoot in the grass. First time of the year almOst drowning in the lake. First watermelon. First mosquito. First har-vest of dandelions. Those are the things we do over and over and over and never think. Now here in the back, like I said, is Discoveries and Revelations or maybe Illuminations, that's a swell word, or Intuitions, okay? 'in other words you do an o!d familiar thing, like bottling dandelion wine and" you put that under Rites and Ceremonies. And then you think about it, and what you thinkr crazy or not, you put under Discoveries and Revelatiohs. Here's wha~ I got on the wine: Every time you bottle it, yo~u got .a whole chunk of 1928 put away, safe.2 Wh~t Bradbury recounts is in many ways similar t~ the dynamic of the familiar in our lives, the movement from the experience of the world.,gs Tensions in Pre-Novitiate Formation / 345 alien, through a sense of well-being, to an awakening to "otherness." Our first experience as children, or later in life as beginners in a religious for-mation process, is one of awe, dread, an overwhelming helplessness and powerlessness. As children, this sense of, anxiety is usually answered by our parents who provide a caring atmosphere in which we can experience some security. We need this sense of security and familiarity with persons, things and event~ in order to function in this world. This movement from helplessness'and powerlessness to security and familiarity is a "child to adult" movement. Being "at home" in our world is also essential to our spirituality. We need to be grounded in the familiar and the ordinary, since it is that grounding that gi'ves us a feeling of belonging, at homeness, security. And these experiences point to a deeper ground, ou~ groundedness in God in faith, hrpe and love. Our faith in God must be incarnated in our experience, and this happens as we reflect 6n the everyday occurrences where God touches our lives. If what is familiar and "everyday" in our lives is so important to our adulthood, to our functioning and to our grounding in God, then losing our"' sense of "at homeness" in our day-to-day living is a significant loss. It is this loss that brings us back to being like a child again, a child in an alien world. What takes place at the onset of the pre-novitiate is e~actly that: the loss of the familiar. "Familiar" in this context may mean different things for different individuals but for most it includes job, apartment, car, friends and family and a certain degree of indepepdence ih action and in decision-making. Loss of the familiar is often accompanied by a feeling that "I'm out of control," a feeling of helplessness in my new environment. In many candidates this is expressed by a loss of ability to do something as simple as balancing time, and that results in lost hours of sleep, cutting down on leisure and exercise to make up, loss of efficienqy on the job, in ministry or at school. Moving into a new place with new people requires a tremendous adjust-ment. It involves~a period of trying to determine what "the rules" are in this group .with whom I have chosen to live. It is a time of grieving for many losses. And it is a time that is often ac~companied by regression, the return to patterns of behavior that helped us to cope with an alien world when we were children. One of the problems in c?mmunity is that this regressive behavior can be very disconcerting to the "old-timers" unless they are aware of what is happening. It is a crucial period when the com-munity must offer support and understanding, but must carefully guard against giving a formula for a new identity too soon. As in any loss, the loss of what is familiar can break the newcomer open to another necessary 346 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 element of life,- the transcendent. The pain of this experience can be an invitation to the candidate to begin the process of lived discernment, of choosing his or her vocation in day-to-day life. A further difficulty.in community can occur if the purpose of this time of formation is not well understood. The heart of the pre-novitiate is built on the call to holiness that all Christians share. That call must be explored and deepened through gradual growth in self-awareness and developing nat~ ural gifts, in dealing with past losses and hurts, in deepening prayer and in learning the dynamics of community living. "Our candidates are older women," some community members say, "women with education, with work and life experience. Why do they need to spend a year or two in a pre-noyitiate process?" It is a very common mistake to look at a person's age, work experience, social skills and make a statement like "Why can't she just begin as a novice?" It is so important not to equate age absolutely with any given level of human maturity, of experience, of spiritual or pro-fessional development. Accompanying women, especially older ones has ¯ only confirmed my belief that each individual is composed of many com-plex variables, and the time spent at the beginning of the formation pro-cess is not "lost" but is essential to provide a confirmation of gifts, an accurate assessment of needs and limitations, and then time to allow the individual to begin to build a foundation for continuing discernment for the future. This is the purpose of the pre-novitiate as it is described in Essen-tial Eletnents. It is the period "in which the genuineness of the call is iden-tified as far as possible . -3 It is a time of growth, not stagnation. Being In/Being Out Another significant area of tension for those in the pre-novitiate pro-cess is the tension that is created by not being a "real" member of the congregation, by hot even, strictly speaking, being a "religious," while living in a house of the congregation with its real members, more or less according to their manner of life. One of the major emphases in the doc-uments dealing with formation that have been published since Vatican Coun-cil II is that of the concept of gradual transition, that is, the idea that the mok, ement from the previous lifestyle to the life of religious consecration should be a gradual, not an abrupt one, and that it involve a time of transi-tion rather than of drastic or dramatic change. Congregations have made many and varied efforts in this diri~ction. They have developed vocation-awareness activities that reach into the elementary schools, retreats and overnight experiences for high school stu-dents, and live-in programs for those who hre seriously considering the option of religious life.-'Many congregations have begun nonresident affil- Tensions in Pre-Novitiate Formation 347 iate programs to give interested men or women an even closer experience of their life. These efforts are all for the sake of gradual acquaintance and transi-tion, find they are invaluable. They need to be carried into the period of pre-novitiate as well. One way to accomPlish this is to establish the pre-novitiate community as an "in-between" community as Vanier cails it in his book Community and Growth. IdeallY this community will be com-posed of the candidates, the director ahd several oth,er professed members who represent different mir~istries. I am not speaking here of simply moving the candidates and director into an established local community-- even though in fact this is what may happen. The difference is that the pri-mary purpose for the existence of the "in-between" community is to pro-vide a formative environment for the candidates. Such a community pro-vides an environment which facilitates the transition of the individual from being an independent lay man or woman to being incorporated as a com-munity member, and finally to becoming a committed member of this specific community and congregation~. It must, be an environment that encourages reflective living, where acceptance is~not based on conformity. What is of primary significance at this stage is to foster human growth and a sense of responsibility towards the life, not to provide a cozy escape from decision-making or a neat set of dos and don'ts. Such a community will provide a rhythm of life that is the "bare bones" for continued discernment; a rhythm of reflection, silence and prayer. It must give the time for candidates to participate in courses or group direction that con-tinue, to develop knowledge of the faith and of the spiritual life. Finally it will provide opportunities for some type of initial exposure to the ministries of the congregation and for some connectedness with the local Church. The individual who +omes to a pre-novitiate experience has made a definite decision and commitment, and so has the congregation ~vhich he or she has joined. Being "in-b~tween" does not water down that commit-ment or mitigate the decision. Rather it gives the space f~)r the candidate" to do two very important things: t~) learn hoW to live in community arid to adjust significant relationships to his or her new lifestyle. These issues are important ones in becoming a member of any community, not just a religious congregation. Outlining the elements in "learning" community is simple. Living them is a tremendous challenge. At the very beginning, a knowledge of the stages in the growth Of a community is essential, as is an awareness of some basic dynamics that can occur. I have found the material provided 3till / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 by Hammet and Soefield in their book Inside Christian Community extremely helpful in these areas. Communication and dealingwith conflict are two other key issues. I believe that the most difficult of any of these is conflict management. This is true not only for the newcomer, but for most of us who have lived in religious communities for years. Each time I am involved in a workshop on this topic with our candidates I am aware of how much more I must learn. It is so iinportant to be patient, firm, and to provide supportive gui.d:~ ance in this area. Above all, experienced community members must not fall into the trap of becoming the rescuer between two candidates or a can-didate and another community member who may have taken on the roles of victim ancl persecutor in regard to each other. Being willing to sit down and role-play situations or conversations is a valuable tool here. In sum, the skills of conflict management must be practiced, our limitations and weakness shared, if growth is to occur. ~ The "in-between" climate of the pre-novitiate community also pro-vides the space necessary for the candidates to adjust significant relation-ships in their lives. This is particularly important for candidates who come with a broad base of family, friends and work-related contacts. It takes time and the freedom to move in and out of community to make the decisions necessary to maintain some relationships, to let go of others', and to invest in new ones within the community or in a ministerial setting. This is no small task because it involves community members who can allow for free-dom but also who, through modeling and guidance, can gradually intro-duce the candidates into the obligations and time commitments that com-munity life can and must of its very nature demand. Providing opportunities for the community to get to know the family and friends of the candidate can be extremely helpful and enrichi.n.g for both. Visiting, inviting family members to share in celebrations, and other casual contacts are,just a few ways to do this. Again, grow,th must be suppprted by u,nderstanding, hon-esty, openness in dialogue, and willingness to search together for the best decisions. In these areas, too, we are dealing with choosing a lifestyle, with making decisions that are more and more--or less and less-~consonant with one particular life direction rather than another. Fitting In/Impacting For Change A newcomer to any group can be expected to ask the question, "What d6,.I have to do to fit in here, to be one of you?" He or she may also say "I have talents, gifts, a vision to offer that may call for some changes in our group. Will they be acce.pted?" The tension between the desire to "fit in" and the need to influence toward change is born in these questions. Tensions in Pre-Novitiate Formation / 349 There is, I believe, a very real sense in which a candidate in any religious congregation must "fit" if not "fit in." In an attempt to be "liberated" and "open" to everything, I think we sometimes try to deny the truth of that. Our congregations do .have living traditions, a heritage that must be experienced and to some extent learned. We each have a unique identity; whether we have articulated that or not, that is our founding gift, and it is that which mediates the Gospel to the members of our institute. The for-mation process takes place according to this founding gift.4 The community at large is very important in this aspect of the process. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults in number four states: "The initia-tion of catechumens takes place, step by step, in the midst of the com-munity of the faithful. Together with the catechumens, the faithful reflect upon the value of the Paschal Mystery, renew their own conversion, and by their example lead the catechumens to obey the Holy Spirit more gener-ously." Since the call to religious consecration is a call to the deepening of one's baptismal consecration, an analogy can be drawn between the pre-novitiate and the catechumenate, between the involvement of the faithful and the indispensable involvement of the religious community in which the candidates seek membership. Members of religious communities see in their initiates not only a renewal of their individual covenant relationship with the Lord, but also the hopeof the continued life of the congregation. Rejoicing in and affirming new members in their call is essential. It draws the candidates into a large~',.sense of belonging, gives them a sense of his-tory and furnishes them with many more individual touchstones of unique charism, as well as an experience of charism in the corporate sense. For those who are already part of the community at large there is not only the opportunity but the responsibility to participate in "handing on" the congregation's traditions, and of being a "welcoming presence." "Welcoming presence" says, "this is how we are." At times of celebra-tion, community prayer and working together, it is a presence that says, "This is the diversity of ways in which we express our common charism. For us, Sisters of Notre Dame, our charism includes a simplicity of life and an experience of the Father's provident care in our lives that is expressed in the phrase 'How good is the good God!'. These elements of our shared vision are concretized in a special family spirit, and in our efforts to min-ister to the poor, to bring hope to them through evangelization and catechesis. You are welcome to be with us and to bring your uniqueness to our vision." 350 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 Once again it is absolutely necessary, though, that the "welcoming" not become a welcome that demands immediate conformity. The com-munity must understand the "in-between" nature of pre-novitiate and the primacy during this time of confirming the choice of this particular lifestyle within the basic call to holiness. "Welcoming" also includes welcoming gifts and initiative. When I enter into a relationship with hnother, I invite the possibility of being changed by that encounter. I trust that the new vision that we come to share together is good and growth producing. This is true of the new members in community. "Candidate" is not necessarily equal to "'young" and "inexperienced." We need to remind ourselves of that at times, and let our welcome include the invitation to enter into our life in a meaningful and effective way. 'Practically, this means including our candidates in tl~6 significant events of our community: meetings, renewals, ;'futuring" ses-sions, preparations for chapter and the like. It means valuing their gifts and expertise, and accepting these when they are offered in service of the com-munity and of the Church. These men and women of today can help us in our struggle to find ways to incarnate our charism into our life and ministry and to meet the needs of our times in a realistic way~ There is a very healthy discomfort that we experience when we feel pulled in two directions, a discomfort that moves us to action, to choice. The tensions experienced by newcomers to religious life are opportunities for self-awareness, for growth and for authentic discernment of a lifetime commitment. Being aware that they exist, dealing with them in realistic ways and' soliciting the understanding and support of community members in helping candidates to live and grow with them can only be an invalu-able asset to any formation process. .~ . NOTES ~ Jean Vanier, Community and Growth: Our Pilgrimage Together (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), p. 5 I. 2 Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (New York: Bantam Books, 1976), p. 27. 3 Essential Elements in the Church's Teaching on Religious Ltfe, n. 48. 4 lbid, n. 44. Beyond Frontiers: The Supranational Challenge of the Gospel Gerald A. Arbuckle, S.M. Well known to our readers, Father Arbuckle is the prime mover and designer of the summer workshop, sponsored Dy R~viEw Eon R~L~¢~OUS and St. Louis University's Department of Theological Studies, entitled: "Refounding Religious Life from Within: Strategies for Leadership." His previous article, "Mythology, Revitalization and the Refounding of Religious Life," appeared in the issue of January/February, 1987. Father Arbuckle's.permanent mailing address is: East Asian Pastoral Institute; P.O. Box 1815; Manila 2800; Philippines. Supra-nationalism is the ability and the willingness of individuals or groups to strive to id.entify with cultures and needs beyond the frontiers of their own country in ways that are both critical and non-exclusive. (Multiculturalism, on the other hand, is the same ability and willingness, but directed to other cultures within the boundaries of one's own country.) This identification with cultures, be it noted, is not blind or uncritical. The weaknesses, as well as the strengths, of cultures are recognized. Moreover, this identification is not exclusive. That is, supranationalists are open to still other cultures beyond those with which they are immediately con-cerned. Christ calls his followers to a basic supranationalism, They are them-selves to be reconciled with the Father through love, and they are to express this reconciliation in their relations with other peoples and cultures. With-out, this love of the Father, a gift of the Holy Spirit, the reconciling rela-tionship with those around us cannot be sustained. Selfishness and the desire for power over others will overcome us. Ultimately we are encour-aged in this struggle to be reconciled wi(h the Father and with one another 351 352 / Review for Religious, May~June, 1987 by the hope of the "new heavens arid a new earth" in the fullness of God's kingdom yet to come, "where; accordihg t6 his promise, the justice of God will reside" (2 P 3:13). " The world is fractured by ideological conflicts, pathoio~ical forms of nationalism and intercultural tensions. It is a world "groaning in travail" (Rm 8:22), desperately in need of reconciliation across and within national frontiers. ~ Inasmuch as many religious orders are stamped with an interna-tional character, the Church rightly expects of them bold evangelical initiatives in response to today's critical need for supranationalism.2 But are religious orders responding to this challenge to provide lead-ership not just to the Church but also to the world itself?. Or have some congregations settled into a comfortable, introverted type of "ecclesiastical nationalism"? What conditions are necessary for religious congregations to express in spirit and action a much-needed supranationalism? This article is an attempt to respond to such questions. I will - show how prejudice obstructs sup.ranationalism; - explain the New Testament call to supranationalism; - reflect on how religious orders have in the past responded to the challenge of supranationalism; - construct two models which religious institutes can use to mea-sure their own response to the challenge of supranationalism; - reflect on the role of ongoing conversion as an essential require-ment for supranationalism. Excessive Nationalism: the Obstacle to Supranationalism Nationalism is a complex word to define. It expresses a form of group consciousness, that is, consciousness of membership in a nation. In this lim-ited sense, nationalism is good. It gives people a sense of meaning and iden-tity, a respect for their past, the energy to work together for the common good. When, however, people begin to believe that they are superior to other peoples and cultures, then nationalism becomes excessive. People become unable to look beyond (supra) their national borders to learn from the values and experiences of other cultures. At the heart of excessive nationalism is cultural prejudice. Prejudice is an "attitude towards a person who belongs to a group simply because he belongs to that group and is therefore presumed to have the qualities ascribed to that group." 3 In brief, prejudice involves a predisposition toward a group of people that is not derived from adequate information. There are two aspects to cultural prejudice to be noted. Firstly, there is the meaning aspect or stereotype. A stereotype is ,a preformed image or picture or judgment about people, whether favorable or unfavorable: "The Beyond Frontiers / 353 Irish are prone to excessive use of alcohol." "All Italians sing beau-tifully." The second aspect is the feeling dimension. The prejudiced person sees only what he or she wants to see, even to the point of seeing things that are not there at all. The causes of prejudice are complex and many: fear of people who are different, a desire to exploit, a need to bolster one's personal and cultural self-esteem .4 Culturally prejudiced people can show excessive nationalism in one of two major ways. Firstly, they can seek to impose on "decadent and imper-fect cultures" their own "perfect" values and customs, coming to treat subject people like children---or worse. Secondly, a particularly insidious form of cultural prejudice is cultural romanticism. The foreign culture with which the individual wishes to identify is considered "perfect," and his or her culture-of-origin is thought to be thoroughly decadent. Often the romantic will seek to freeze the new culture in time, thinking any change will undermine its "perfection." This type of romanticism is alive and well, especially among foreigners working in Third World countries. Romanticism is also apt to show itself in overidentifying with nation-alist movements in those cultures or nations. Here, would-be agenis for change sometimes lose all sense of objectivity; they fail to see the violence and tragic effects of their overinvolvement in nationalist movements. Some-times more nationalistic than the locals themselves, they become severely condemnatory of the values and customs of their own cultures-of-origin.5 It is not easy for a person to become truly supranationalist. Supranationalism can only result from the ongoing personal struggle for truth and for the desire to respond to this truth. First one must face the truth about oneself: we are all prejudiced in one way or another. Self-knowledge is always extremely difficult. It also happens to be highly inconvenient, because as a result of a better knowledge of myself and my prejudices, I may have to do something about it. Human beings are highly skilled in avoiding truths about themselves; we are accomplished fugitives from our-selves. If I have the courage to discover my cultural prejudices, I then need a strong motivation to put them aside. It is much easier and simpler to ignore my prejudices! Supranationalism and the New Testament The heart of the Christian .message is that God "has reconciled us to himself through Christ" (2 Co 5:18) and his peace, a peace that can never come from mere human action (Jn 15:27), that we struggle to share with our brothers and sisters no matter what culture or nation they belong to (Rm :354 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 12:18). This peace, the fruit of love in the Spirit, motivates us to respect cultural differences and the just aspirations of people; it shows itself in "patience, generosity., mildness" (Ga 5:22f). It includes an openness to learn how God has worked in the lives and cultures of other peoples. There will be no jealousy for their achievements nor will there be a boast-ing over the accomplishments of one's own nation or culture (ibid v. 26). There will be ~he courage to challenge people of different cultures to face obstacles, for example, personal and social sin, that hinder or prevent them from achieving reconciliation with God and with each other. Followers of Christ know that they can avoid excessive nationalism in its various forms only if they remain truly open to the .Transcendent, allowing it to influence their lives in each one's particular cultural situation, even as they await the fullness of justice and peace ~n the world to come. Not surprisingly, Jesus directly confronted the excessive nationalism of his day, urging his followers to be supranationalists. At the time of Christ, Jews looked on Samaritans as uncouth, stupid, heretical. And Samaritans had similar views of their Jewish neighbors. As Scripture com-mentator, J. McKenzie, points out: "There was no deeper break 6f human relations in the contemporary world than the feud of Jews and Samaritans, and the breadth and depth of J~sus' doctrine of love could demand no greater act of a Jew than to accept a Samaritan as a brother."6 Those who heard Jesus speak would have been left in no doubt about the meaning of what we now call the Good Samaritan incident. The Samaritan is manifestly a supranationalist! Jesus' listeners are stunned to heai- him say "Go, do likewise!" (Lk 10:37). In a second story, this time a personal event in Christ's life, Jesus is an "international traveler" and exemplifies his own supranationalism in his relations with the Samaritan woman at the well (Jn 4). Not only does the woman experience Christian politeness for the first time, but she is told that eternal salvation is open to her through the love of the Father. Of all the early followers of Christ, Paul stands out as the model of supranationalism in evangelization. He had been a thoroughly fanatical sup-porter of Jewish culture, a rabid nationa~list, but underwent a dramatic theological and attitudinal transformation once he began to preach the Gospel in Gentile cultures. In Paul's epistles we see depicted the attitudes that must govern the evangelizeras he or she relates to different cultures. Firstly, the evangelizer must identi.fy as far as possible with the cultures of people to be e.vangelized: "I became like a Jew to the Jews in order to win the Jews. To those bound by the law I became like one who is bound (although in Beyond Frontiers / 355 fact Iam not bound by it), that I might win those bound by the law . I have made myself all things to all men in order to save at least some of them" (1 Co 9:20, 22). Secondly, identification with the aspirations of peo-pies of different cultures should be critical (Ga 5:1-6). Thirdly, the Gospel message is to be preached in its fullness; our struggles for justice and peace in this world are but the seed and the beginning of the kingdom of God here below; it will find its completion at the end of time with the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of the whole of creation (Rm 8:1 1- 21).7 Religious Life: Internationalism and Supranationalism .~ On one occasion, while doing research in a Third World village, I over-heard villagers speaking about the "Backhome Man." Each time they used the expression there would be hoots of laughter. I discovered the man who delighted them was an evangelizer from another coun.try who began sentences with the expression "Back home . . ." so often that the people nicknamed him the "Backhome Man." The evangelizer had the gift of internationalism, that is, he was prepared to live in someone else's coun-try, b.ut apparently he was slow to learn anything from the host culture. He lacked the gift of supranationalism; he was willing to give (on his terms), but not to receive. Our "Backhome Man" sadly lived a stunted religious life as well. For the true religious dedicates himself or herself totally to God, the Supreme Love. In a new and special way the religious makes himself or herself entirely over to God, to serve and honor him in and through the Church.8 The religious should seek to be an exemplary disciple of the Lord, to be one with him in his mission to the world.,The object of his. mission is the person "whole and entire, body and soul,',9 involving what we call today integral salvation. Supranationalism (and mu!ticuituralism) opens the way to this concern, for it relates to the well-being of both body and soul of the peoples of this world in their concrete reality. For this reason, because of their radical commitment to the Lord and to his Church, religious must be in the forefront in fosteringthe virtues of human solidarity and interdependence. Two questions are~to be asked: have religious congregations in the past fostered supranationalism? How are they responding to this challenge today? I will take each question in turn. Religious Life and Supranationalism before Vatican II There is no doubt about the involvement of religious congregations in internationalism over the three hundred years prior to Vatican II. Religious, 356 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 very often from newly formed congregations, moved into recently discov-ered countries, frequently braving, atrocious physical conditions, in order to spread the faith.~ While many individual religious aspired to identify with the cultures of the people they were evangelizing, rarely was the work of religious congregations themselves marked by the spirit of supranationalism within those countries which we now call the Third World. At the risk of grave oversimplification I will explain briefly why it was difficult for religious to express supranationalism, in evangelization. ~0 From the fifteenth century onwards, a marked inflexibility in the Church's rela-tionship with cultures, especially beyond Europe, developed. This inflexibility affected the missionary policies of religious Congregations. Prior to this period, most especially in the early centuries,o.the Church often related to cultures in remarkably flexible ways. Pope Gregory the Great's directive to Augustine of Canterbury 'in the year 601 about not destroying the temples of the gods, and,the need to place the relics of the saints in those same temples is rather symbolic of the flexibility of the period. ~ This openness, however, was not to continue; The Church became more and more culturally "Euro-centric" in its expression of the faith. In more modern times, as European colonial expansion developed, it was this Euro-centric Church that was to accompany it. As one commentator put it: "The missionaries--true children of their times--shared the intolerant and prejudiced views of the conquistadores on the native cultures and religions.''~2 The European Ch~'ch was to be planted in the new lands with-out change. The cultures of the people being evangelized were seen as unim-portant; priority was given to the conversion and salvation of individual souls: Rarely did missionaries see the need to understand local cultures-- or even at times to learn the local languages.13 There were vigorous, but eventually unsuccessful, reactions against this arrogant ecclesiastical/colonial European nationalism. From the Con-gregation of the Propagation of the Faith in 1622 there came a very force-ful condemnation of cultural prejudice: What could be more absurd than to carry France, Spain, or lt~l~,, or any other part of Europe into China? It is not this sort of thing you are to bring but rather the Faith, which does not reject or damage any people's rites and customs provided' they are not depraved . Let customs that prove to be depraved be uprooted more by hints and by silence., gradually without jolting. 14 People like the Capuchin Father Jerom Meroila in the Congo in the sev-enteenth century ~eriously endeavored to follow this advice. ~5 Jesuits in par-ticular, notably de Nobili and Ricci, led the movement for accommoda- Beyond Frontiers / 357 tion and adaptation with a flexibility characteristic of the early Church. 16 Tragically, these efforts to revitalize supranationalism within the Church were crushed with the rejection of the work of Ricci and his companions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the late nineteenth century the revival of Thomistic Aristotelianism, which encouraged people to look for what is good and of God within cul-tures, sparked off a new movement that would many decades later lead to the return of the Churcl~'s early pastoral flexibility. Euro-centric prejudice in evangelizers was condemned. 17 At the same time there developed within the Church a vigorous support for the rights of all people in regard to their culture and national identity. ~8 But it would take a long time before the pas-toral implications of these emphases would be worked out. Many evangelizers yearned to revive the apostolic approach of people like Ricci, but multiple factors made it difficult for these dreams to be realized. Thus, for instance, as long as the theQlogy of the local church remained under-developed, it would be difficult to explore fully the pastoral implications of the relationship of evangelization to culture. Terms like "accommoda-tion" or "adaptation" became common in missiology. But theologically and pastorally they connoted not an exchange between the Gospel and cul-tures, but rather a process of.choosing what local value or custom could be used to express better the meaning of the faith. The local faithful, how-ever, were not to be involved in t.his process of choice. So, while the rhetoric favored flexibility, in practice the Church remained fundamentally Euro-centric in its evangelizing aims and methods. Understandably, religious life mirrored this ongoing European empha-sis. 19 This was evident in the rigidity with which Europ.ean forms and struc-tures of religious life were uncritically exposed and planted in other cul-tures. At times local vocations were not encouraged because it was thought the people were "just not ready and mature enough" to undertake the responsibilities of religious life. Moreover, the fact that Europe and America had what was thought to be an endless supply of missionary vocations removed.a good ideal of the urgency to discover what were the practical implications of the phrase "accommodating the faith to local cul-tures~" Religious congregations continued to become dramatically international, but rarely did they become supra-national. At times the internal structuring or method of governing missionary ven~ tures further reinforced the spirit and practice of the European colonialism. For example, some congregations favored the system of attaching mission-ary endeavors directly to particular provinces in Europe and America. Invari-ably, this meant that French missionaries were isolated in one part of a Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 "mission" land, Americans in another, and so on. Hence, a "little France" or a "little America" could exist in Third World countries, with no outside challenge to such assumptions of cultural superiority. In view of all these forces, therefore, it is not surprising that indigenous forms of religious life have rarely developed in the Third World; the mode.Is remain overwhelmingly First World in design.2° Reiigious Life and Supranationalism after Vatican II With Vatican II, and with subsequent reflection, religious life has been challenged to'its very roots by a revitalized theology of evangelization and of the local church. The relationship that should e~ist between the Gospel and cultures has been clarified. Evangelization is to be a "living exchange between the Church and the diverse cultures of people:''2t The Church, which ~s itself a culture, must be prepared, to chahge and develop new insights into how the Gospel is to be preached through a process of exchange and dialogue with the people being evangelized. This exchange process is what is now called inculturation. The expressions accommodation and adaptation do not quite convey this emphasis on exchange. Rather they imply that the Church gives to cul-tures, but does not receive. As historical expressions they were found to be dated; hence, the new word inculturation was developed in order to high-light the importance of exchange.2z Evangelization is not to be directed to the soul alone, but to the person--"whole and entire, body and soul.''23 "What mhtters," declares Paul VI, "is to evangelize man's culture and cultures [not in a purely decorative way, as it were, by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth and right to their very roots].''z4 The search for justice in this world is not something secondary to evangelization, but it is a constituent part of the mission of the Church.25 However, as was pointed out above, the Gospel, and therefore evangelization, can never be exclusively identified with this or that culture, or with the pursuit of justice in this world alone. Evangelization must include the "prophetic proclamation of a hereafter, man's profound and definitive calling, in both continuity and discontinuity with the present sit-uation: beyond time and history, beyond the transient reality of this world ¯ . . beyond man himself, whose true destiny is not restricted to his tem-poral aspect but will be revealed in the future life.''26 In brief, evangelization must call people to a life of evangelical supranationalism. These emphases have serious ramifications for the religious who is an evangelizer. The evangelizer's task is to facilitate the dialogue between cul-ture and the Gospel. The religious must prophetically call people to this dialogue first, by the witness of his or her evangelical example, and then, Beyond Frontiers / 359 by the preaching of the Word of God. The dialogue to be aimed at is not merely intellectual. Rather it must be a faith interaction in which people are invited to interior conversion. To quote Paul VI again: "The Church evangelizes when she seeks to convert, solely through ttie divine power of the Message she proclaims, both the personal and collective consciences of people, the activities in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieus which are theirs."zv Conversion is not brought about through author-itarian dictation, nor is it achieved through various forms of cultural romanticism. The religious, who in his orher zeal for :social justice overidentifies with nationalism or the protest movements of people against oppression cannot prophetically proclaim that "man's profound and definitive calling . . . [is] beyond time and history, beyond the transient reality of this world." Such a religious falls victim to the insidious power of cultural romanticism. Especially in parts of the Third World in which there is so much oppres-sion by the rich over the poor, massive injustices and corruption, the con-cerned religious is severely tempted to fall into a form of romanticism. Paulo Freire, the brilliant South American educator., has warned people to avoid the trap of romanticism. In order to remain objective and helpful to the oppressed, those who would be change-agents must, he says, undergo a profound rebirth. They must rise above the desire to overcome oppressors through the use of the same force that they used to subjugate the poor.28 The evangelizer, too, must at all times maintain the objectivity that is necessary to proclaim the fullness of the Gospel message with its power for salvation. St. Paul reminds us: "It was for liberty that Christ freed us. So stand firm, and do not take on.yourselves the yoke of slavery a second time" (Ga. 5:1). If the temptation in the past was for evangelizers to fall into the trap of Euro-centric cultural evangelization, then today's special temptation is to become slaves for "a second time" through cultural romanticism. Both forms of slavery obstruct our prophetic freedom. Religious specially should commit themselves to fulfill St. Paul's call for Christians to be ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Co 5:20). If religious overidentify with political parties, pressure groups or nationalist move-ments in the name for social justice, they jeopardize their prophetic role as reconcilers in Christ of all peoples--the oppressed and the oppressors. The chance to witness to the transcendent love of the Father for all is in danger. For example, if I as a religious join a political party, I become inevitably cut off in various ways from other sectors of society I seek to evangelize. I cease to be free to act credibly as an ambassador of reconcil-iation between all groups within that society. This fact helps to explain 360 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 John Paul II's insistence that politics should normally be left to lay people. In his address to priests in San Salvador (March 6, 1983) he said: "Remem-ber, my dear brothers, that--as I said to the priests and religious in Mexico~you~are hOtsocial directors, political leaders, or officials of a tem-poral power . " Religious are rather to foster among the laity a com-mitment to witness to the Gospel in the secular world as directors, leaders and officials. Though excessive nationalism is much less a temptation to evangelizers in the First World than in the Third, nonetheless these can still easily fall into other forms of cultural romanticism. For example, religious may become so involved in maintenance work in dioceses that they forget their prophetic and innovative role. Or, in their zeal to solve social problems, religious may turn to secular methods and values alone, ignoring or downgrading the supernational importance. We come to the second question: Are religious congregations respond-ing to the challenge given them by the Church today? Only through a process of discernment and reflection can each congre-gation. respond to this question. However, in order to aid this process I will offer two extreme polar models of religious congregations. These models can help religious to measure their own behavior and that of their institutes. It would be rare indeed if any particular congregation perfectly fitte~l either of ,the models described. Models in anthropological analysis are simple, abstract representations of human~' experience and interactions which are often highly complex in real life. Models are constructed~ to he!p under-standing, and to do so they emphasize major themes or characteristics and overlook details. It is up to the reader or researcher to modify, refine-~or even reject--models in light of his or her experience. Model 1: Internationalism/Faint Supranationalism ~ Anthropologists have discovered a type of society that is organized on the basis of segmentation.29 The society is divided up into segments for a variety of reasons, but these segments are not permanently divided, since they are united at other levels to form new and more inclusive segments when certain common needs require this. Total unity is very fragile and, like all levels of unity at any stage in the society, it disintegrates once the reason for the unity disappears. In brief, there are factors within the soci-ety that encourage people to form opposing groups, but there are counterbalancing factors that draw people in these groups together at other levels. Suspicion or potential/actual conflict or feuds divide the segments Beyond Frontiers / 361 Figure 1 Model I. Internationalism/Faint Supranationalism Factors Conducive to Internationalism/Supranationalism Constitutions/Mission Statements: -rhetoric favors supranationalism Commitment to supranationalism: -Weak in congregation Factors Conducive to Provincialism/Segmentation Commitment to provincial boundaries strong: Central Government: General Chapter: -symbol of unity; -rhetoric favors supranationalism General Government: -symbol of unity/internationalism -supplies bureaucratic needs, for example, dispensation --charism research Interprovincial-Regional Cooperation: -weak: last resort Apostolates: -in Third World for vocations/sur-vival. Formation: -international/interprovincial only in extreme need -inward looking vision -prophetic figures marginalized Provincial Government: -commitment to survival of prov-ince as the priority -suspicious of outside "interference," for example, General Government Apostolates: -Identification with diocesan main-tenance works -prophetic role weak -if clerical-religious, clericalism strong -weak involvement in multiculturalism Formation: -poor screening; concern for numbers -no training for multiculturalism/ supranationalism and are put aside only when common needs demand unity for survival. A feud can be defined as relations of mutual animosity among intimate groups in which a resort to violence is anticipated on both sides.3° The violence does not have to be physical; it can be verbal. Past injustices or misunderstandings are recalled to remind all concerned that the "out- 362 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 group" simply cannot be trusted to work with the "in-group." There may be an official leader in such a society, but the real power rests in the various segments, the lowest segment having the most power over its members. Oft-repeated rhetoric supportive of total unity is apt to so confuse the observer that it is thought that real unity exists, when, in fact, such is far from being the case. In Model ! of religious congregations that I am proposing the empha-sis is on internationalism, with a faint acceptance of supranationalism. A congregation of this type has the characteristics of the segmentary society or culture just described. In Figure 1, the major qualities of a segmentary congregation have been summarized. The official rhetoric is often power-fully supranationalist, as in general chapter documents or mission state-ments, but the ~-eality just as strongly contradicts this rhetoric. Internationalism exists inasmuch as some members live and work in for-eign lands, such as missionaries and general administrators. There may be a growing interest in the Third World countries inspired by the congrega-tion's rhetoric about the call to be at the service of the poor, but the really operative force would be the desire for vocations to keep the provinces and the congregation alive. The emphasis of recruitment is on numbers, not on the quality of the screening methods or the formation given. The formation remains culturally Euro-centric and paternal; the local cultures and their needs are ignored. Inculturation simply does not exist. Loyalty in the congregation imagined in this model is first and fore-most to the province to which one belongs, not to the congregation or its spirit.Whoever encourages congregational supranationalism would be thought a "traitor" to the province.3~ Cooperation exists between the prov-inces and with the general administration only when it is absolutely nec-essary- and even then fo~: the advantage primarily of the province. The gen-eral administration, for example, would be able to staff congregation-wide projects only through a process of bargaining, not dialogue. A province is prepared to release difficult personnel for such work, but not talented mem-bers, for the province's first obligation is to its own survival. "Talented people simply should not be released for work outside the province" is the overriding assumption. At international meetings of the congregation, pro-vinces look first to their own rights and their interests, not to those of the congregation. Suspicion and feud-like behavior colors the province's rela. tions with the general administration and with other provinces. Stories of past interference and misunderstandings on the part of general officers are gleefully recounted in order to maintain in the province a distrust of "out. siders." Beyond Frontiers" Apostolically, provinces in this model are strong supporters of main-tenance rather than of mission within the dioceses in which they work. A province takes its bearings all too exclusively from the internal ecclesiastical and socioeconomic structure of the countries where its apostolates are situated.32 There is little or no prophetic challenging of dioceses or diocesan administrations. Consequently, there is little room for other issues such as justice or multiculturalism/supranationalism. Individ-uals wh0do show interest are thought to be "somewhat odd," or follow-ing a "hobby," or just "wasting time." On the other hand, where involve-ment in the social apostolate is encouraged, its relationship with the Transcendent may be deliberately played down "lest one's identification with the Gospel hinder one's identification with those who struggle for social justice." In this model clericalism would be a dominant force in clerical insti-tutes. (Clericalism connotes "an authoritarian style of ministerial leader-ship, a rigidly hierarchical world view, and a virtual identification of the holiness and grace of the Church with the clerical state and, thereby, with the cleric himself.''33) Consequently, within community there would be little fraternity with lay members of the congregation who would be looked down upon as inferior and as "servants of the priests." Lay involvement in apostolic works of the congregation would be poorly encouraged. On the other hand, religious who might act against clericalism would overidentify with worldly values and with the customs of the ambient cul-ture on the pretext that this will "bring us closer to the people we are evangelizing." As regards the screening and formation of candidates, the approach in such a congregation would be colored by all the above characteristics. Can-didates would be encouraged to join the province if they are seen to have the qualities that would "fit them in" to the overriding inward-looking, weakly prophetic ethos of the province. Candidates would be jealously iso-lated from contact with those from other provinces lest they develop "dan-gerous ideas," supranationalism, or the feeling of belonging to a "con-gregation wider than the province." Formators of other provinces could not be trusted to direct the formation of candidates because they might decide that the latter have "no vocation to religious life." Hence, interprovincial and international formation programs would be severely discouraged. Model 2. Internationalism/Strong Supranationalism In Figure 2, I set out emphases that are seen in congregations which approximate the second model, Internationalism/Strong Supranationalism. 364 / Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 The members of such a religious congregation commit themselves primar-ily to the mission of Christ and the Church according to the insights of the founding figure. Administrative structures such as provinces exist to facil-itate the response of the congregation itself to the mission of Christ. The spiritual and human welfare of members of the congregation is considered of paramount imporiance. The congregation's administrators are alive to the ctiallenge given them by Paul VI that they take up the "double task of inspiring and innovating in order to make structures evolve, so as to adapt them to the real needs" of mission and personnel.34'Provinces relate to one another and to the general administration on the basis of their common mission and according to subsidiar{ty, dialogue and discernment. Apostolates are selected according to definite objective criteria: the pri-ority of needs in the universal Church and local churches, the mission of the Church, the charism of the congregation and the resources available. The congregation hesitates to accept parishes unless there is scope for mis-sionary and creative pastoral action. No matter what apostolate is selected, members of~ the congregation will attitudinally be influenced in all they do by the need to call the People of God to multiculturalism/supranationalism. Given the priority of needs internationally today, congregations may strive, where possib!e, to witness to supranationalism by establishing international teams. For these teams to be effective they need to fulfill various require-ments. Firstly, those selected must be capable of living internationally according to the principles of supranationalism. Not everyone has the abil-ity to live and work on an international team; there can be heavy d6mands on the psychological and spiritual resources of individuals as they are called to face up to the requirements of constant adaptation to new cultural con-ditions. Secondly, members of teams must be given the chance for adequate preparation spiritually and humanly in order that they can fit into challeng-ing international and intercultural situations. This means not only the acquisi-tion of linguistic skills, but also an awareness of key anthropological insights into the nature and power of culture, culture change, the role of catalysts in culture change, and so forth. In their training programs mem-bers will need to have adequate periods of living in cultures very different from their own. They will need to experience the shock of being "at sea" in a culture that is unfamiliar to them; they will need to discover for them-selves the richness of being humble and dependent on other people whose culture they do not know or understand. Their own cultural biases and preju-dices must be challenged, otherwise an insidious ethnocentrism will govern their relations with other team members and the peoplethey hope to serve Beyond Frontiers / 365 Figure 2 Model 2. Internationalism/Strong Supranationalism Loyalty: primarily to the Congregation which is at the service of the mission of Christ and Church. Apostolates: based on -priority of needs in universal Church (internationalism/supranationalism) and local churches (multiculturalism). -charism of congregation -available resources Administration: -at service of mission -provinces and general administration relate on basis of common mission/subsidiarity/ dialogue-discernment Formation: Initial: On _going. -based on mission/charism -emphasis on union with Christ for cre-ative response to demands of change. -training for internationalism/ multiculturalism/supr-anationalism -revitalization of commitment to: -Christ -Congregation -creativity/adapability in change pastorally. Thirdly, in the structuring of an international team, as far as is possi-ble no one culture should predominate. If one cultural group does predom-inate, it is likely to over-influence attitudes and policies of the group.35 If a culturally balanced team is not possible, the predominant cultural group must be especially sensitive to avoid obstructing the emergence of 366 / Review for Religious, May-~June, 1987 supranationalism in the team. From history, such international teams as I have described are apt to foster vigorous creativity pastorally and in religious life. As Raymond Hostie notes: Basic to all institutions that became remarkable for their explosive expan-sion is an initial heterogeneous core. Cistercians, Norbertines, Dominicans, Carmelites, Jesuits and Piarists, all emerged from groups whose members belonged to three nationalities, or even four or five. The initial group of Franciscans, CamillianS, Brothers of the Christian Schools and the Salesians was composed of men of very disparate social rank and cultural level. Heterogeneity is a necessary condition for activating effective fermentation.36 Initial formation in Model 2 is dictated by the demands of mission and the charism of the congregation. Hence, the programs are structured to foster in candidates a spirit of adaptability to constant change.37 Spiritual formation will be aimed at uncovering within candidates their own inner poverty and their ongoing need of strength from Christ: "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eter-nal life" (Jn 12:25). The process of initial formation is a delicate one requir-ing skilled people to accompany candidates through the journey of self-discovery. Though the formation program is spread over several years and may well involve experiences in different cultural situations, there will be formators to whom candidates are clearly accountabl~. In Model 2, forma-tion is not a haphazard arrangement. As with initial formation, the ongoing formation programs are structured on the basis of the needs of mission. Religious need oppor-tunities to revitalize their commitment to Christ and to their congregational charism. They need space to reflect on whether or not their commitment to multiculturalism/supranationalism is rhetoric or reality. Over time, reli-gious may have uncritically absorbed negative values from the culture in which they work; little by little their supranationalism and pastoral creativ-ity may have been undermined. In this model it is assumed that adminis-trative structures are so flexible that superiors are able to spot quickly the individual needs of evangelizers and offer appropriate assistance. This ser-vice to evangelizers is part of a much wider task of administrations, namely, the ongoing need to foster evaluation of the apostolic relevance and effectiveness of the teams. In this model apostolates aie hot permitted~ to drift without goals and without effective evaluations. Conversion to Supranationalism In J.R. Toikien's The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, Bilbo Beyond Frontiers / 367 Baggins initially turns down an invitation to go on a journey. He is too com-f0rtable in his way of life to be bothered with the trials of an adventure. He finally accepts the challenge and even begins to enjoy it. The cultures and the people he meets both disturb and intrigue him. But he soon tires of the constant need to adapt to new challenges, so he turns for home and retreats from the world of adventure singing:."Feet that wandering have gone, Turn at last'to home afar. Eyes . . . Look at last on meadows green.-38 Most of us can identify with Bilbo. We commit ourselves to multiculturalism/supranationalism, that is to the preaching of God's love across the frontiers of cultures. Yet we are tempted at times to weaken our efforts, to seek the security of our own cultures and our prejudices. Inevitably we will give way to these temptations, thus losing our apostolic effectiveness, if we seek to rely on merely human motivation. There is needed that inner, ongoing conversion that comes~from being a new creation in Christ (2 Co 5:17). Only in the ongo.ing response.to this new life will we have the inner resources to become "all things to all men" (1 Co 9:22). The divine love within us gives us the evangelical muscle to keep struggling to be open to other p~oples "~nd their cultures: "Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not l~ut on airs, it is not snobbish . There is no limit to love's forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure" (! Co 13:4,6). St. Paul uses the analogy of a runner when he explains the process of ongoing conversion. To stop runn.ing for the Lord is to fall back into purely human insights and comforts (1 Co 9:24-27). Constant discipline 6f the whole person is required: "Athletes deny themselves all sorts of things: . . . What I do is discipline my own body and master it; for fear that after having preached to others I myself ~.hould be rejected" (ibid). The discipline of conversion also involves the Struggle .to identify one's own cultural prejudices, and the battle to remove them. It is a never-ending struggle and battle! I recall a fine evangelizer working outside his culture-of-origin commenting: '~I th6.ught for years I was not prejudiced. I believedI deeply loved these people. One day ! discovered that I was highly prejudiced and this shocked me intense]y. I could get no good ser-vice in the local shops, the car was slow to be fixed, letters were not reach-ing me fast enough, the food tasted horrible! I found myself complaining aloud about the people, and I used all the stereotypes about them that I had thought I had long rejected: 'These silly people--they are lazy, deceitful. If only I was back home where things are really done rightly!' " This evangelizer is an honest person. He courageously recognized' his prejudices as grave obstacles to his supranational work of evangelization, and courageously struggled to remove them. He understands that self- 361~ /Review for Religious, May--June, 1987 discipline must be ongoing. When Yahweh called Abraham, he summoned him to leave the warmth of his familiar surroundings to begin a life's journey: "Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you" (Gn 12:1). R(ligious are to live out the same kind of call in a' spirit of faith. Bilbo, when he started out on his journey, sang "The world is ahead and home behind," but finally rejoiced when he could sing "The world is behind and home ahead." For we religious, unlike Bilbo, the ~hailenges of the world ahead are always with us; we can never say that we run out6f apostoli.c challenges or adventures. And our home is also ahead of u~. We await in hope for the ne, w Jerusalerrl (Ga 4:26). We can resist making this world our substitute Jerusalem only if we have Abraham's spirit of detachment and faith. Detachment comes from discov-ering in oneself one's own chaotic powerlessness to be supranationalist with-oiat the love and power of Christ. If we recognize our own inner helplessness, then we can say with'St. Paul: "And' so I willingly boast of my weaknesses instead, that the power of Christ may rest upon me . . . for when I am powerless, it is then that I am strong" (2 Co 12:9f.). Summary With St. Paul we say: "I do not run like a man who loses sight of the finish line" (1 Co 9:26). The ultimate finish line, in which there will be perfect justice and love, is to.be found when "the new heavens and the new earth" emerge at the end of time (2 P 3: I'3). In this waiting time we strive in faith to express this justice and love towards different peoples and cultures: "There does not exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female. All, are one in Christ Jesus" (Ga 3:28). Religious esl~ecially commit themselves to this vision and its realiza-tion. In their lives and preachiflg they call people to look beyond this or that pressure group, political party, cultural group, tO the needs and insights of other people and cultures.39 At the same time they challenge people to avoid an unrealistic and ~i'~ous search for ~ perfect world here below, "for the world as we know it° is passing away" (I Co 7:31). Religious,. when confronted by the enormity of evil around them will be tempted to discouragement, skepticism or even the recklessness of despair. They will bc tempted to retreat into the security of their cultural prejudices and feel-ings of superiority. Recourse to merely human power, even violence, in order to achieve human justice may look very attractive. However, the moment a religious gives way to these temptations, he or she ceases to be apostolically supranationalist --indeed, apostolically effective. Beyond Frontiers I 369 NOTES ~ See John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 1979, par. 8. z See On Mutual Relations between Bishops and Religious, Congregations for Religious and Bishops, Rome, 1978, par. 12. 3 G. AIIport, The Nature of Prejudice (New York: Doubleday, 1958), p. 8. 4 See also D.L. Shields, Growing Beyond Prejudices (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1986), pp. 149-176. 5 At times anthropologists, too, are guilty of romanticism. See G.E. Marcus and M.M. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986), passim. 6 Dictionary of the Bible (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1986), p. 766. 7 See Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith, "Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation" in L'Osservatore Romano, 14 April, 1986, p. 5, par. 58. 8 See Lumen Gentium, par. 3. 9 Gaudium et Spes, par. 3. ~0 See G.A. Arbuckle, "lnculturation and Evangelization: Realism or Romanticism" in D.L. Whiteman (ed.), Missionaries, Anthropologists and Cultural Change (Williamsburg: Studies in Third World Societies, 1985), pp. 171-207. ~ See "Gregory's Counsel to Mellitus with Regard to the Heathen Temples in England" in A.J. Mason (ed.), The Mission of St. Augustine to England (Cambridge: CUP, 1879), pp. 89ff. t2 G. Voss, "Missionary Accommodation" in Missionary Academic Study No. 2 (New York: P. Faith, 1946), p. 17. ~3 See P. Duignan, "Early Jesuit Missionaries: A Suggestion for Further Study," in American Anthropologist, Vol. 6, pp. 725ff. 14 See S. Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, "Instructio ad Vicariorum Apostolicorum ad Regna Synarum Tonchini et Cocinnae Proficiscentium," in Collectanea Sacrae Congregationis de P. Fide (Rome, 1907), Vol. I, p. 42. ~5 See M.D. Jeffreys, "Some Rules of Directed Culture Change under Roman Catho-licism" in American Anthropologist, Vol. 58, 1956, pp. 723f. ~6 See C.W. Allan, Jesuits at the Court of Peking (Arlington: University Publications of America, 1975), passim; and P. Duignan, op. cit., pp; 726ff. t7 See Pius XII, "Princeps Pastorum" in (ed.)R. Hickey, Modern Missionary Doc-uments and Africa (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1982), p. 143. ~8 See Pius XII, AIIocution 6 Dec. 1953, in Acta