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Quotes from Josep Colomer:Constitutional Polarization. A Critical Review of the U.S. Political SystemRoutledge, 2023.  CLICK to purchaseA collection of 6 posts. 1 - Why a Federation? The aim of the Convention in Philadelphia was not to experiment with democracy in a large territory, but to create a "stronger", "firmer" government able to defend the new independent states from the British and other foreign troops still over the continent. The priority was to create a standing army, to pay the debt for the War for Independence, and to introduce the subsequent federal taxes. The basic institutions were the states-appointed Senate and the mighty President with war powers.Some delegates warned that in the new and independent United States, people would not accept, again, taxation without representation. That's why the House of Representatives was embodied as the democratic component of the government. Then, the delegates responded to its perils by designing a series of "filters" and "checks" to prevent the House from prevailing over the other components. The separation of powers and their institutional checks were a cap, intended to tame and temper democracy. NOT A DEMOCRACYMadison warned against "the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit," and stated, "democratic communities may be unsteady, and be led to action by the impulse of the moment." Later, in the campaign to ratify the Constitution in New York, he would hold that, in the past, democracies "have ever been found spectacles of turbulence and contention … and as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."Alexander Hamilton would allege that "the zeal for the rights of the people has been a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government." In his view, democracies are manipulated by people who "commence as demagogues and end being tyrants."Gouverneur Morris was an influential delegate from Pennsylvania who is credited as the main redactor of the final text of the Constitution. He also cautioned against "the turbulence, the precipitation, changeableness, and excess" of democratic assemblies.Other delegates in the Convention referred to "the fury" and "the folly" of democracy. One confessed, "It's the anarchy, or rather worse than anarchy of a pure democracy, which I fear." Another simply stated, "democracy, the worst of all political evils." DIVINE HANDAbout the divine hand guiding the constituents, see, for example:     "America felt that the hand of providence was on the young republic … There can be little question that the hand of providence has been on a nation which finds a Washington, a Lincoln or a Roosevelt when it needs him," Seymour M. Lipset, American Exceptionalism, W. W. Norton, 1997, pp. 13–14.    "I can't wait to go to Heaven and meet the Framers and tell them the work that you did in putting together our Constitution is a work of genius. Thank you. It was divinely inspired," Mike Pence, Vice-President of the United States in December 2020. Reported by Gregory Jacob, Counselor of the Vice-President, to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, June 16, 2022. 2- An elected MonarchyMONTESQUIEUIn the imaginary Constitution of England described by Montesquieu, the powers of the three institutions were so challenged and limited by mutual checks that the most likely result would be governmental paralysis. He held that in order to prevent abuses, "Power should stop ["arrête" in French] power"; brake, not just "check" as it was sloppily translated. In Montesquieu's words, with these rules, "these three powers should naturally form a state of repose or inaction." In the perhaps unlikely or infrequent case that public affairs required some action, he conceded that the three powers should be "forced to move, but still in concert." Madison would only ambiguously paraphrase, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."   There was a problem: Montesquieu had misunderstood how the British system actually worked. What he described was closer to an old-fashioned, outdated model that, in the best of cases, could be identified with a transitory, provisional past period in England's history. It did not correspond with the political system in motion when he visited London, and even less with practices contemporary to the Framers gathered in Philadelphia several decades later. By following Montesquieu's obsolete account, the authors of the US Constitution misunderstood the source.MONARCHYThe monarchical proposal was most explicitly presented by Alexander Hamilton. He did not attend most of the Convention sessions, but on June 18, he showed up, took the floor, and delivered a prepared speech for more than five hours, no break for lunch, that left the delegates flabbergasted. Hamilton proposed a president that would be chosen by electors and serve for life. Such an "elective Monarch" would appoint the state governors and could veto state laws. At the federal level, the president would also be the arbiter for expected regular conflict between the Senate also appointed for life and the popular House: "This check is a Monarch," he suggested, "capable of resisting the popular current." The president, with absolute veto over congressional legislation, would be "a salutary check upon the legislative body." According to Ron Chernow, his biographer, Hamilton had written in his personal notes for his Convention speech that the president would not only be appointed for life but also "ought to be hereditary and to have so much power that it will not be his interest to risk much to acquire more." Yet, probably sensing the audience's reluctance to his already delivered proposals, he skipped that part.    Adams, who would become the US' first vice president and the second president, was suspected of having monarchist leanings. He would propose calling George Washington "His Majesty the President," thought hereditary rule inevitable, and, after Washington's childless tenure prevented it, he would be the first to make his son run for president.3-The Founders' Portraits in WashingtonWhat one can see and guess about these characters by looking at eight portraits,  the first five by Gilbert Stuart and the next two by John Trumbull at the National Gallery of Art, and the eighth by Joseph Siffred Duplessis at the National Portrait Gallery.             4- How the System Actually Works CHECKS AND GRIEVANCESAlexander Hamilton clearly lay on the side of scant congressional legislation. He said, "The injury that may possibly be done by defecting a few good laws will be amply compensated by the advantages of preventing a number of bad ones." It was like fasting for the sake of not being poisoned; the result is anemia, not good political health.In practice, there are checks but no balances. The existing blockingmechanisms in the US constitutional system do not produce balances in favor of a few good laws. They are largely unbalanced in favor of the Presidency and its powers, which is aggravated by the biases of the presidential elections.The US constitutional plan, instead of relying upon positive institutionalincentives, such as the expectation of sharing power in the Cabinet, countedon politicians' virtuous behavior. Yet, absent our better angels' motivations, the system of negative checks becomes a machine for sustained conflict. PRESIDENTIALISMThe greatest increase in presidential power has derived from wars. From General George Washington, leader of the Revolutionary War for Independence, through Theodore Roosevelt, a high-level combatant in the Spanish-American War in the Caribbean, eleven of the first twenty-five presidents were war men. Whether as generals, national heroes, or upper-echelon military officers, Andrew Jackson, William Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley fought in the wars against the British, the Indians, the Mexicans, or, in the Civil War, other Americans, and their military feats helped them to be elected.Alexander Hamilton had already identified the management of foreign affairs as the main way to expand executive powers: "It is of the nature of war to increase the executive, at the expense of the legislative authority." Discussing rates of presidents, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. observed that war "made it easier for a president to achieve greatness.            5- No Parties, But PolarizationNO PARTIESThe Framers were confident about the future of the republic because they miscalculated that in a great, expanding, and diverse Union with multiple institutional checks, it would be unlikely that nationwide parties could be created. They expected that the best individuals with "enlightened views and virtuous sentiments" would lead the new politics against "the pestilential influence of party animosities" and "the pestilential breath of faction," as scorned by both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, respectively. Currently, the two major political parties in the US encompass a range of policy proposals and ideological orientations comparable to the typical European system with multiple parties: There are liberals and socialists within the Democratic Party, and conservatives and populists within the Republican Party, with the minor Greens and Libertarians flanking each side. However, the political competition is polarized by two parties or candidates because of the electoral system and the election of the president.POLITICAL, NO SOCIAL POLARIZATION The polarization of parties and candidates is more politically consequential than the polarization of voters. Generally, parties can lead and carry voters in their direction, either to closeness or to distance from each other, but to a limited extent. That is because it is less difficult to coordinate and mobilize a few thousand politicians than millions of voters. If parties and political leaders move to radicalize their positions and provoke polarization, voters may follow and become more polarized in their preferences, but usually less than the politicians and parties come to be. If, conversely, parties moderate and converge in their positions, voters may also moderate themselves but less than the partisan politicians do.FEAR AND NATIONAL FERVOR During the Cold War, many citizens developed a sense of unity, love of patriotic values, and pride in the American way of life. They trusted the rulers, who appeared as their protectors and providers of security. Challenging the government in the middle of a war would have been regarded as treason. In parallel, the ruling officials were able to keep many state secrets, their policy performances were not seriously evaluated, they enjoyed discrete privacy from the media, and gained support and devotion from the public.After the Cold War, without the threat of a nuclear war, the public lost their fear. There was a new openness to indiscretion and transgression. The new political atmosphere became the opposite of the previous period: a general mistrust of government, close scrutiny of corrupt practices, leaks of confidential plans and messages, frequent scandals about politicians' business or private affairs, and loud calls for more transparency and accountability. After the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the "peace dividend" that appeared to be a potential source of domestic progress led instead to domestic mayhem. With just a little exaggeration, one could say that, over the years, the international Cold War was replaced with a domestic cold war.          6- Towards the 2024 ElectionPRIMARIESThe primaries mechanism is a substitute for the formation of multiple parties. To build a majority, in Europe and other democracies, a coalition of multiple parties must be formed after the election; in the US, a coalition of multiple factions within a party must be formed before the election. In European parliamentary systems with multiple parties, the mess comes after the election; sometimes, the formation of a coalition in parliament for the choice of a prime minister takes months. In the US, the mess is before the election; the process of simplifying the pluralistic setting to only two major presidential candidates starts more than a year before Election Day. These alternative experiences both confirm that, in the absence of a traditional monarch, simplifying a complex society to one single executive leader is always a challenging endeavor.The main drawback of the system of partisan primaries is that it may not produce a majority in support for the winning candidate but it can result in the nomination of an extreme or unqualified demagogue who would be rejected by a majority of voters.The turnout in the presidential primaries has increased to nearly 50% of the party voters in the general election since the 2010s. However, the number of primary candidates within each party has also increased, up to double digits in recent seasons, which reduced the support for the winner. In 2016, Donald Trump was voted in the primaries by only 22% of his voters in the general election; Hillary Clinton, by 26% of her votes in the general election; and in 2020, Joe Biden by only 23%.SPLITTING CANDIDATESIf popular participation increases, partisanship becomes more compact, and the potential political pluralism of the country is not well articulated by the party system, third and further candidates reappear. They indirectly made a winner by splitting partisan support in at least four of the first eight presidential elections after the Cold War. The independent Ross Perot split Republican voters twice, in 1992 and 1996, and twice produced a Democratic winner with a minority of popular votes. The other way around, the Green Party's Ralph Nader split Democratic voters in 2000 and produced a Republican winner with a minority of popular votes. Also, the Greens and other candidacies absorbed potential Democratic voters in 2016 and helped make a Republican candidate the winner with a minority of popular votes.CAN TRUMP RETURN?There are also precedents of traitors who persisted in politics, ran for office, were elected, and provoked further turmoil. At least two former presidents joined the Confederacy during the Civil War. Former Whig President John Tyler, who had replaced William Harrison at his death one month after entering office, was first elected to and chaired the Virginia Secession Convention, and during the Civil War, he was elected first to the Provisional Confederation Congress and then to the Confederate House of Representatives. Former Democratic President Franklin Pierce collaborated closely with Confederacy President Jefferson Davis. Also, former President Andrew Johnson was elected senator on an anti-Reconstruction platform.Collection:1- Why a Federation2- An Elected Monarchy3- Psychological Portraits of the Founders and Framers4– How the System Actually Works5- No Parties, But Polarization6- Towards the 2024 Election

 Alligator has to be the best University Mascot"What is happening in Florida will not stay in Florida." From the AAUP's Report on FloridaThere is no shortage of critical responses to what is happening to higher education in Florida. There is the report from the AAUP cited above, and the podcast I co-host even dedicated an episode to it. In many, but not all of these cases, these responses have dovetailed with DeSantis' political career, focusing on the person, the policy, and the overall strategy. See for the example the great episode of Know Your Enemy. While there is much to be said about that, I watched the following clip below and was struck by its ability to mobilize and tap into existing frustrations against higher education.Leaving aside, at least for a moment, the attack on DEI, There are three prongs to this attack. The first is on tenure. The attack on tenure can be understood as a kind of negative solidarity, in that job security and protection can seem like an egregious excess for an elite class when so many, even those within academia, are subject to absolute precarity and instability. I have been talking about "negative solidarity" for a long time, ten years (and I did not even coin the term), and one of the things that I focus on in my forthcoming book is that negative solidarity has to be understood as a kind of affective constitution of politics. To cite a passage from that book:  "Negative solidarity can be understood as a particular affect, indignation at those who are perceived to not work hard enough, are not engaged in real work, or who rely on political power or corruption (these two things are seen as more or less synonymous) to keep their jobs. This affect, this anger, aimed at everyone from those who benefit from the last remnants of social protection to those public employees who still have union protections, has to be seen as both an exclusion and an inclusion. As much as it excludes those who do not work or who are not perceived as working, it does so in the name of a loose collectivity A popular bumper sticker in the US reads, "Keep Working: Millions of Welfare Depend Upon You," defining a particular kind of indignation. The person affixing such a bumper sticker car is not just angry at the person who is supposedly living off of their labor, but, as it addresses, or interpellates, its imagined audience, it draws them together in shared indignation. There is a sense of a "we," a collectivity of "real" workers, "real Americans," an imagined universality albeit a weak one defined by both work and its ethical norm that is being harmed. This is what puts the solidarity in negative solidarity. There is a unity, a community, albeit loosely defined in and through their shared engagement in work, in productive work. Work that is defined through both its physical difficulty, or at least the stoic fortitude it takes to endure it; its economic centrality, or perceived economic centrality; and ethic of individual commitment, rather than collective protections. The solidarity is negative in the sense it both eschews any collectivity, unions are seen as the deviation rather than the expression of this collectivity precisely because they undermine the shared commitment to work that defines it, and in the way that it functions as a strategy. Negative solidarity can only see any improvement, collective bargaining, protection of employment, and so on, as not only partial, and thus some sense corrupt, but also as a deviation of the fundamental ethical basis of work itself, which demands individual strength and fortitude. As much as negative solidarity is aimed at others, at those who are perceived not to work, seeking to discipline those who rely on state spending or those who are protected by union agreements, it ultimately further the attenuation of class struggle, obscuring actual divisions with imagined ones. The attachment to work and independence ultimately undermines its own status in the world, as individual workers are left to fend for themselves."Tenure, the idea of job security supposedly independent of effort seems absolutely antithetical to a world where effort, hard work is supposed, to be the basis of not only continued employment, but one's very existence and worth as a person. There is nothing more out of sync with the contemporary regime of work subject to constant surveillance, evaluation, and examination than the idea of someone continuing to work with no other motivation than their own particular passion and interest. One important difference between the tenured academic and the other figures of the negative solidarity imaginary, such as the welfare queen and lazy school teacher, is that there is an actual injustice here. It is not the one that DeSantis imagines, of tenured faculty as deadweight (although I am sure that happens as well), but the fact that people doing the same job, and probably even more work, are doing it for a fraction of the salary and with no job security or stability. This is worth imagining because the attack on tenure that is starting in Florida, Texas, and other states is an attack on an already divided and demoralized labor force. I cannot really imagine the thousands of adjunct faculty rallying to defend tenure when it already has been effectively eroded for so many (often with tenured faculty doing little to stop this transformation). Moreover, while some people have responded to the attack on tenure in Florida to argue that this will make it difficult to attract talented teachers and researchers, making it ultimately self defeating. I would argue that such an argument overlooks the truly desperate and demoralized state of the academic job market. Many talented researches and teachers are already working for poverty wages at multiple institutions. Some of these people would gladly take jobs in Florida even without the prospect of tenure if those jobs would at least pay for rent, food, and maybe even insurance. Negative solidarity is at its strongest when it is able to mobilize actual grievances and frustrations, attaching them to illusory objects and fictitious goals. The "Keep Working" bumper sticker referenced above is fueled by an actual frustration, the experience of working hard with no real improvement of one's life. It is this sense that something has gone wrong with work that fuels its indignation. It imagines the cause of this condition to be the welfare queen rather than say the CEO, to put it simply, or, more accurately, the structure of capital. It is an inadequate idea in Spinoza's use of the term, reflecting more the imagination and bias of the one using it than anything about the world. Its inadequacy in terms of a grasp of the world does not diffuse its hold on the imagination, and one could argue it is all the more convincing in that it refers to imaginary causes and less to the actual causes and conditions of the world. This becomes even more the case as these figures, the welfare queen, the radical professor corrupting the youth, the lazy school teacher become part of a powerful mythology circulated though pundits and the media. This is what Yves Citton refers to as a mythocracy and, as he argues, these myths and some sense function by acting on and channeling existing frustrations, anger, and indignation. The more these myths circulate, the more they become the common sense that we grasp the world. Case in point people still believe in the "welfare queen" in millions living off of welfare long after the program has become gutted and subject to disciplinary work regimes. Beneath the Boardwalk, The Gators All of this is a rather long preamble to discussing the video above. Two things strike me in DeSantis discussion of his crackdown on higher education: the increasing cost of higher education and its inability to deliver a better job to those who graduate. These are real sources of frustration. Of course neither of these things have much to do with what DeSantis is proposing, but, as with the idea of the "Millions on Welfare" the important matter is how DeSantis is mobilizing actual frustrations towards imaginary targets. Eliminating majors in things like Women and Gender Studies, Black History, or other sorts of Ethnic studies will do little to reduce the cost of tuition. DeSantis invokes the figure of the taxpayer, arguing that the taxpayer should not bear the costs of such niche and unmarketable majors. The taxpayer could be understood as a kind of stand in for the the citizen, but, as theorists such as Wendy Brown have noted, the shift from the political to the economic has a fundamentally anti-democratic function. The taxpayer is a figure of both individual sovereignty and mass conformity. With respect to the former, it is more akin to a consumer than a citizen, as in the often repeated phrase uttered at school boards, teachers, and city halls, "I pay your salary." The citizen gives consent, elects officials and passes laws, but the taxpayer pays the bills and always reserves the right to get its money back. The taxpayer never alienates some of its liberties or claims in exchange for rights, as in a social contract, but demands to be treated as a customer, and the customer is always right. At the same time, however, the taxpayer is a figure of the majority. The taxpayer is a figure of a kind of silent majority, taxpayers only pay for the general good and, in our society, the general good can only take one form, jobs: it can only be private self interest. This is the second claim of DeSantis speech, that such majors are not well positioned to be employable. We could argue about the employability of majors in women studies, ethnic studies, philosophy, etc., Or we could even talk about the fact that the university's role is to prepare people for more than just work, preparing them for political and cultural life. However, both responses miss the point that the university has, at least in the US, been touted for decades as the only solution to declining wages, automation, and globalization, replacing unions, collective action, and legal protections as the path to a "good job." The solution to every problem with work has been "go to college; get a good job." There are many faults to such a slogan. It overlooks the many "good jobs" that do not involve college, as well as the inherent limitations of such an individual solution to getting, acquiring, and protecting good jobs--leaving everyone to compete with everyone else in getting classes, credentials, and other investments in human capital. It also seems wholly inadequate to the changes of work in recent decades. Education cannot contend with the structural forces of deskilling, offshoring, and casualization that have made work more precarious, less financially rewarding, and just worse. Many students work through college only to return to the same service jobs when they graduate; or, as Communique from an Absent Future put it, "We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow.  And the jobs
we work toward are the jobs we already have." All of which is to say that DeSantis is drawing on existing frustration and indignation with the university. Rising tuition combined with failures to deliver on social mobility have made many people frustrated at the university system. What DeSantis is offering is targets and directions for that frustration; it does not matter that these targets have little to do with the real problems with the university. In fact one could argue that the targets he picks are all the more effective in that they tap into existing myths about race, professors, and universities. The imagined nature of the targets should not overlook the real problems. College cost and with it college debt have been increasing at exponential rates. Students find themselves massively in debt upon graduation only to go into jobs that might require college degrees, as it becomes the new high school diploma, but do not offer the same class mobility. Thus it would foolish to respond to DeSantis by simply defending the university as it is, defending academic freedom, tenure, and so on. Any defense of the university has to be against both the assaults on freedom and the neoliberal university that makes those assaults possible. What I hear when I listen to speeches like the one above is the beginning of a larger assault on the university that will come to every state not because DeSantis will be President, but because it is fueled by real frustrations, college costs, jobs, uneven labor protections, and imaginary enemies. (In retrospect I should have called this post De te Fabula Narratur part two, emphasizing less the exceptional state of Florida and more the general condition). As this struggle spreads from state to state  I fear that a rearguard defense of the university as it exists is just not going to be enough. Any attempt to confront the right's attack on the university is going to have to take on rising costs and also address head on the university's role in the meritocratic mythocracy which claims that the solution to the collective condition of work is individual education and advancement. I realize that these two propositions are nothing less than revolutionary, but it appears that we are living though, once again, the lesson that revolutionary change is the most effective opposition to fascist creep (and fascist creeps). I decided to illustrate this post with pictures of Alligators from my recent trip to Florida

Come, dunque, studiare Ernesto Basile oggi e quale ambito della sua copiosa produzione analizzare? Alla luce dello stato degli studi odierni si potrebbe ritenere che possa essere stato detto tutto. Tuttavia, ci sono diversi ambiti che si offrono a ulteriori indagini, a nuove letture e ricerche. Tra questi, vi è quello dei viaggi, non irrilevante, per diverse ragioni. Una prima motivazione, che vale per Ernesto Basile così come per altri architetti, è quella più interna ed è strettamente legata alla natura stessa dell'architettura e dei luoghi, alla formazione continua dell'architetto e al ruolo che hanno i viaggi nel processo di costruzione o assimilazione del patrimonio di immagini e dei portati teorici. Solo entrando dentro gli spazi, girandoci attorno, osservando il mutare delle ombre col variare della luce, cogliendo il colore dei materiali e dei contesti, osservando la gente muoversi e "modificare lo spazio", si può fare un'esperienza attiva, formativa, sincera e diretta, riducendo i filtri posti tra il fruitore e l'opera architettonica. In questo senso e per l'arco cronologico di cui questa tesi di dottorato si occupa, è esplicativo e fa da guida lo studio di Fabio Mangone sugli architetti nordici in Italia dal 1850 al 1925. Mangone li definisce «viaggiatori specialistici» e mette in evidenza nuove tendenze rispetto all'immaginario e alla pratica più ampia e antica del classico Grand Tour, già documentato da numerosissimi esempi di letteratura odeporica e studi odeporici. Un'altra, non meno importante e di carattere metodologico, è quella legata ai concetti di transfers culturel, cultural exchanges e histoire croisée, introdotti negli Anni Ottanta da Michel Espagne, Michael Werner e Benedicte Zimmermann, applicabili a diversi ambiti dello studio storico, e in particolar modo agli studi sui viaggi degli architetti. Possiamo riassumere cosa si intende per transfert culturel, cultural exchanges e histoire croisée, attraverso le parole di Michael North che, in un suo saggio sulla storia economica, ne fa un'analisi comparativa: «Cultural exchange and cultural transfers have become an independent field of research in the last 20 years. This began in the 1980s, when Michel Espagne and Michael Werner coined the term "transfers culturels" to refer to the transfer of elements of a "French National Culture" to Germany and its reception there during the eighteen and nineteen centuries. Espagne, Werner and their followers focussed on national cultures in order to avoid some of the shortcomings of comparative history by contextualizing questions of transfer, reception, and acculturation». Sulla scia delle sollecitazioni avviate anche dai contributi di Michel Espagne, Michael Werner e Benedicte Zimmermann, le riflessioni attuali nell'ambito storiografico vertono sempre più sul rapporto fra la realtà delle vicende nazionali o regionali e quelle più ampie e di carattere internazionale o generale, quindi su cosa è al centro e cosa è periferico. Questo tipo di analisi può essere usato come filtro di indagine per rispondere ad alcune questioni fondamentali nel caso Basile, cioè per sapere quanto, in cosa e in che modo il suo modernismo è debitore a realtà "extraterritoriali" e quanto, in cosa e in che modo, al contrario, il "fenomeno Basile" sia invece il frutto di particolari condizioni ambientali locali, portatrici di istanze identitarie fondamentali, attraverso lo studio dei suoi viaggi. Un'ulteriore lente di ingrandimento con cui potere osservare aspetti specifici all'interno del più ampio fenomeno dei viaggi specialistici e dei contatti internazionali è quello dei legami con gli espatriati, in forma privata, come nel caso della corrispondenza ad esempio, o in via ufficiale nella partecipazione a concorsi internazionali con il ruolo di giurato, come accade a Ernesto Basile. Se non è difficile sapere, attraverso le letture consultate da Basile, di quale patrimonio di immagini egli disponesse, al contrario, pur sapendo che ha viaggiato, andando in luoghi che potremmo chiamare "strategici" per le vicende architettoniche europee a lui contemporanee, nelle quali - è opportuno dire - si trovava dentro, non è stato, ad oggi, documentato in modo sistematico quali architetture e spazi egli abbia effettivamente visitato e chi abbia incontrato nelle sue mete. Lo studio dell'archivio di Ernesto Basile (che nonostante alcune lacune - si pensi all'esigua quantità di corrispondenza a noi pervenuta - è uno dei più cospicui fra quelli del Novecento italiano) ha consentito di potere avviare un'indagine sugli spostamenti, le mete di viaggio, le impressioni, le tappe, gli appuntamenti, puntualmente annotati nei taccuini e nelle agende personali. Basile stesso parla di viaggi e ne organizza. Egli ne scrive, ad esempio, quando fornisce un reportage dall'Esposizione di Parigi del 1878, oppure quando, in un modo per certi aspetti ancora più significativo, racconta di "Un viaggiatore italiano del secolo XVI", che parte «dall'estremo della Sicilia al lembo delle Alpi», scritto dal quale lo studio dei suoi viaggi ha inizialmente tratto spunto. Un'attenzione particolare all'interno del tema generale, è stata certamente richiesta dall'occasione del viaggio del 1888 a Rio de Janeiro, che vede Basile incaricato della progettazione per la Nuova Avenida de Libertação, nella capitale brasiliana, a ridosso del cambio di regime, a seguito del quale questo importante lavoro viene interrotto. Per questo motivo gli studi sono stati estesi alla cartografia di Rio de Janeiro e alla storia urbanistica della città. Le carte storiche di Barcellona, Parigi e di altre mete europee, per il solo periodo relativo ai viaggi esteri di Basile, quindi per un periodo compreso fra gli anni 1876 e 1900, rientrano tra gli utili strumenti di questo lavoro. L'indagine è stata svolta su tutto l'arco di attività - dal 1876, anno del primo viaggio di studio documentato, ed effettuato con il padre Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, alla volta di Parigi, passando per diverse città italiane, al 1932 anno della sua morte – e ha avuto come principale sfida metodologica la sua profonda natura multidisciplinare. In prima istanza coinvolgendo la storia dell'architettura, la scienza archivistica e l'odeporica, quindi molte altre discipline. Si è analizzata la produzione scritta di Ernesto Basile relativamente ai viaggi, evidenziandone le continuità e le discontinuità in relazione alla più vasta produzione architettonica. In merito a quest'ambito, esce fuori un quadro che getta una luce soprattutto sugli esordi e il clima particolarmente favorevole per una classe di giovani artisti e professionisti, che si raduna nel triennio 1878-1880 intorno alla redazione del periodico scientifico, letterario e artistico palermitano «Pensiero ed Arte», e che si fa strada, a volte guidata per mano dai predecessori, altre in opposizione alle voci più ufficiali e tradizionali delle accademie. La funzione di guida, in questo caso, è certamente quella del padre, Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, ma questa guida viene affiancata da altre figure di rilievo, quali ad esempio quella di Gaetano Giorgio Gemmellaro, di cui si documenta puntualmente una delle attività laboratoriali svolte per la Regia Scuola di Applicazione per gl'Ingegneri di Palermo. I primi viaggi sono viaggi di esplorazione e studio lungo il territorio italiano, con qualche puntata a Parigi, dove il giovane Ernesto conosce Garnier. Anche l'esperienza del militare viene usata dall'appena laureato Ernesto Basile come pretesto per un lungo e approfondito sopralluogo nell'Italia centrale, tra la Campania e l'Abruzzo, alla ricerca di segni di "antico", e ogni genere di traccia storica sul paesaggio costruito. Gli appunti sono numerosissimi e vengono accompagnati da disegni tanto piccoli quanto accurati, delle miniature, poste a margine delle lettere che egli spedisce alla famiglia. Appena qualche anno dopo, questo bagaglio di immagini, unito al desiderio di un approfondimento, lo spingerà a indirizzare le escursioni tecniche della Regia Scuola Romana, avendone la facoltà in qualità di docente incaricato, dando un grande contributo in Italia al filone degli studi sul vernacolare, l'architettura "spontanea" e sui centri minori. E' così che dalla pratica delle escursioni tecniche si passa ai veri e propri viaggi d'istruzione, documentati dagli annuari di quegli anni. La figura di Ernesto Basile come viaggiatore procede quindi di pari passo con quella del professionista, dell'architetto che va dove gli incarichi lo chiamano e dove egli ritiene davvero opportuno andare. I tempi e gli spostamenti sono generalmente lunghi e prendono una media di venti giorni per ogni viaggio estero. Sono anni che lo vedono andare in posti particolarmente caldi per l'architettura contemporanea, con un tempismo da vero professionista, quale è. Con dei colpi fortunati, anche, come capita per la sosta a Barcellona nel 1888 sulla via del Brasile. E con dei colpi mirati; è questo il caso emblematico dell'ancora misterioso viaggio a Vienna nel 1898, l'anno della Secessione Viennese. La conoscenza di quello che accadeva era veicolata dagli articoli sulle riviste, come si sa, ma certamente anche dai rapporti con altri artisti e professionisti che hanno tra i propri fulcri culturali Roma, città a cui Ernesto Basile resterà legato per tutta la vita, se consideriamo anche l'enorme e lunghissimo incarico di Montecitorio. E' lungo le vie della ricerca dell'antico e del contemporaneo che Ernesto Basile dipana tutta la sua vicenda progettuale e indirizza gli studi, le escursioni, le letture. Il contatto con l'antico, da buona tradizione post-illuminista e positivista, è sempre diretto, egli non si accontenta di superficiali acquisizioni frutto dello sguardo altrui. E' ovviamente un grande lettore, ma la scuola palermitana di cui è pienamente figlio lo aveva iniziato alla cultura del disegno come scienza, come mezzo di indagine, come strumento per la resa dell'idea, sulla via della realizzazione. E un altro incarico emblematico lo metterà sulla strada dell'antico, portandolo dapprima in Egitto, quindi in Grecia, nel 1895. I viaggi analizzati sono ampi, eterogenei e documentati, anche se non sempre in modo omogeneo : a volte lo sono con le parole sotto forma di diario, in altre attraverso liste di posti visitati, in altre ancora con le immagini dei suoi schizzi di viaggio. Il ragionamento e l'indagine sono articolati in quattro momenti, che seguono un ordine cronologico e tematico, andando dai viaggi del periodo della formazione (1876-1880) a quelli della piena maturità (1898-1900). Il percorso si muove lungo un binario principale, quello della ricerca sui viaggi esteri, con una strada parallela che si dipana nel territorio italiano nell'arco di tempo analizzato. La città di Parigi ha un ruolo cardine perché apre e chiude la lunga ma discontinua stagione dei viaggi esteri: dal primo viaggio a Parigi, effettuato nel 1876 con il padre, all'ultimo viaggio a Parigi, in occasione dell'Esposizione Universale del 1900, passano ventiquattro anni. Dopo quella data non si riscontrano altri viaggi fuori dall'Italia. Fulcro di tutti questi spostamenti è sempre e comunque Roma, anche dopo il 1892 e il ritorno a Palermo come residenza principale. La lettura delle agende ha evidenziato che dal 1893 al 1932 Basile passa almeno un mese a Roma ogni anno e generalmente almeno un altro mese in viaggio per altre località italiane, tra queste la seconda città più visitata è certamente Napoli. Del periodo della formazione vengono studiati due viaggi e un'escursione scientifica. I due viaggi sono in qualche modo l'uno la continuazione dell'altro e sono affini per lo studio dell'architettura storica italiana. Se nel primo caso, quando l'allievo Ernesto Basile va a Parigi e in alcune città italiane, Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, suo padre e maestro, è fisicamente presente, facendogli da guida e introducendolo anche in ambienti accademici (a Roma) e professionali (a Parigi), nel secondo viaggio, quello del militare, egli è comunque presente in modo costante nei pensieri e nell'attività di ricerca del giovane Ernesto che gli indirizza un centinaio di lettere in cui descrive minuziosamente ogni architettura vista, individuata, "classificata" e ritratta. Questo viaggio del militare, che pure è un viaggio accidentale e in qualche modo obbligatorio, è tuttavia il primo lungo, consapevole tour italiano che Ernesto Basile compie volutamente, ampliando il bagaglio di conoscenze acquisito nel 1876 accanto a Giovan Battista Filippo Basile. Tra queste due significative esperienze viene documentata e descritta un'escursione scientifica di un solo giorno che apre un breve spaccato sulla rigorosa preparazione tecnica in seno alle attività formative previste nel corso di studi per gli allievi ingegneri e architetti della Regia Scuola di Applicazione di Palermo. La ricerca prosegue seguendo il binario dei viaggi internazionali con un saggio su quello che accade otto anni dopo. Anche in questo caso i viaggi predominanti sono due: il primo è quello in Svizzera, previsto nell'attività didattica della Regia Scuola d'Applicazione di Roma, dove Basile è docente a contratto, il secondo è quello in Brasile, dove si reca all'improvviso per progettare su incarico diretto uno dei nuovi principali assi stradali della città di Rio de Janeiro. Questi due viaggi sono accomunati dalla motivazione del viaggio (in entrambi i casi due incarichi professionali, come docente e come progettista) e dal tipo dai soggetti rappresentati negli schizzi di viaggio: architetture storiche dei secoli precedenti, eccezione fatta per la torre dell'ascensore a Bahia. Lungo il tragitto vi è la visita alla città di Barcellona durante l'Esposizione Universale del 1888, una fortunata sosta fra le altre previste lungo la rotta fra Genova e il Brasile. Nell'ultimo periodo analizzato (1895-1900) si svolgono quindi gli altri viaggi esteri di Basile, anche questi legati a due incarichi, questa volta di natura istituzionale. Nel 1895 Basile avrà l'occasione di visitare l'Egitto, chiamato a fare parte della giuria internazionale per il concorso al Museo di antichità egizie del Cairo e la Grecia, sulla strada del ritorno. Dal 1898 al 1900, veloci e purtroppo poco documentati, si svolgono i viaggi nell'Europa centrale, con Parigi come polo di attrazione per l'Esposizione Universale del 1900, dove è membro della Commissione reale. Questa esperienza chiude definitivamente il ciclo dei viaggi esteri ma non quello dei viaggi italiani che continuano, costantemente lungo tutto l'arco di attività, fino ad un ultimo viaggio a Roma a maggio del 1932, anno della morte.

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more. — Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached. — Franz Kafka, The Trial INTRODUCTION How ought we characterise the exercise of power in our societies? Are they societies that confine and discipline our bodies, or ones that control us in potentially subtler ways? This article adopts the framework for analysis used by twentieth century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in his short but defining essay on the subject, 'Postscript on Societies of Control'.[1] It firstly considers the background to the concept of control, then provides a definition of the concept, and, finally, asks whether our society is one of control. It argues that Deleuze is correct to say control has replaced discipline as the primary mechanism of power in our era. ORTHODOXY In order to address the question of whether societies of control are increasingly replacing disciplinary societies, it is imperative first to understand what disciplinary societies are. Discipline is a concept developed most powerfully by Deleuze's contemporary, Michel Foucault.[2] Foucault's philosophy primarily concerns the technologies of power operating within society and their effect on human autonomy. He pursues this study via a genealogical approach; that is, he employs a historical critique to interrogate the workings of powers at play in modern society. In this way—despite his vocal opposition to Hegel—Foucault is very much Hegelian in his belief that close examination of historical parallels and events can clarify and deepen our understanding of present-day technologies of power and how they shape or restrict our autonomy.[3] Through his historical work, which spans various societal and public institutions, Foucault identifies a fundamental change in the mechanisms of power exercised by the state in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He articulates this shift as a transition away from sovereign power to technologies of discipline. This notion of discipline and disciplinary society is perhaps best exemplified by Foucault's enquiry into the French penal system in his Discipline and Punish.[4] The book opens with vivid depictions of public torture and execution in pre-eighteenth century France. Foucault explains that the physicality and the public nature of punishment in the French criminal system up until then was an essential aspect of the exercise of sovereign power. Yet, while brutal public spectacle instilled fear and awe, it also provided public fora for communities to revolt against the perceived injustices of the sovereign. By moderating power through the benevolent reform of the criminal, by the discipline of the docile body, and by the fragmentation of public space into discrete, segregated institutions, state power could be obscured and, thus, maintained. These forces are the hallmarks of a disciplinary society. REVISION In his 'Postscript', Deleuze—building on the work of Foucault—argues that the twentieth century has marked a shift from disciplinary societies to societies of control. A precise definition of control and societies of control has proven to be elusive;[5] it is therefore helpful to consider both the antecedents and critiques of Deleuze's analysis in addition to his work itself.[6] Antecedents Deleuze has attributed the concept of control to William Burroughs.[7] Burroughs, in turn, provides not a definition of control, but brief observations as to its exercise; in truth, his analogies are of only limited assistance when read in the context of mechanisms of power within society at large.[8] Nevertheless, there are two salient points to note. Firstly, Burroughs establishes that when one maintains total or absolute power over the actions of another, they can more accurately be said to be using them rather than controlling them. Secondly, Burroughs shows that control requires concessions and illusions: controllers must make concessions to the controlled in order to maintain the illusion of choice and free agreement, obscuring their true motives in order to avoid revolt. In contrast to Burroughs, Félix Guattari provides an analogy of control that usefully supports the conception Deleuze comes to advance: the gated home and community accessed and exited via electronic cards.[9] This has elements of discipline, as movement being granted or denied constitutes a form of confinement. But, as Deleuze argues, it also represents a departure from the disciplinary society, as 'what counts is not the barrier but the computer that tracks each person's position […] and effects a universal modulation'.[10] Among his identified influences, Deleuze contends that Foucault sees as 'our immediate future' societies of control.[11] Deleuze particularly emphasises that Foucault's work on discipline is historical (focused on the exercise of power in the nineteenth century); we should, therefore, not be so naive as to assume Foucault would not have recognised the possibility of further historical change. Indeed, Deleuze says that Foucault concludes his Discipline and Punish with the explicit recognition that a prison as a physical space is becoming less important in the exercise of power. This, Deleuze suggests, presages a fuller analysis of a new sort of power.[12] Deleuze makes these forceful arguments as to Foucault's understanding of power in response to a critique by Paul Virilio that Foucault did not understand the nature of modern power. Ironically, that critique is also an important precursor to Deleuze's analysis. Virilio argues that the patrolling of the highway—and not the prison—exemplifies the exercise of police power. Deleuze concurs, adding that modern authorities possess predictive technologies that anticipate the movement of subjects and consequently have less need for confining subjects. Deleuzian societies of control That predictive power is a hallmark of control. In his 'Postscript', Deleuze fleshes out this position polemically. It must be noted that Deleuze never attributes any concrete definition to the notion of control itself; he is primarily concerned with how a society of control operates. This section will similarly consider the features and modes of operation that constitute a Deleuzian society of control. Much like with the disciplinary society, the technologies of power that govern a society of control cannot be boiled down to one single technology or mechanism. Instead, there are targeted and multi-faceted ways in which societies of control manage the lives of their subjects. Most fundamentally, there are no enclosures or strictly delineated confined spaces (like, for instance, the disciplinary society's schools, barracks, and factories, which are all subject to clear separation from one another). Instead, there is a single modulation, which allows for the coexistence and connection of various states (the corporation, the education system, and the army are all connected, one flowing into the other). This brings us to the next point: exploring how these spaces or states are connected. The disciplinary society operates on the basis that its subjects start over when they move from one space to another. Though it does recognise analogies between the spaces (the discipline of the school may be similar to the discipline of the army), the spaces and norms are ultimately distinct from each other, with one having little bearing on the other. Societies of control, on the other hand, are predicated on connection between spaces, such that 'one is never finished with anything.'[13] These connections encourage a culture of constant progression or improvement. The question this cultural attitude begs (to what ends is progression and improvement directed?) admits no answer. There are also differences in the conceptualisation and treatment of the person. The disciplinary society takes the individual and subjugates her through discipline so that she will conform to the mass. No such subjugation is necessary in societies of control. The individual is not viewed as a member of a mass, but as a data point, a market audience, a sample. This allows for targeted control to take shape, where compliance is not forced upon the individual (as with discipline) but facilitated. There are no overarching aims or requirements outlined by societies of control (no 'watchwords'). The society is governed merely by way of codes that function as 'passwords'; these can allow or deny the individual access to certain information or amenities. The control of access is presumably based on the conduct of the individual and is a means of exercising control over individuals' choices: the individual self-disciplines because of incentives and disincentives encoded within herself as a data-point. This, in turn, suggests (perhaps even necessitates) a degree of technological surveillance that goes beyond that of the comparatively simple model of the Benthamic Panopticon Foucault famously employs. Additionally, there are no clear hierarchies, if there are any at all. Unlike in disciplinary societies, power is not centralised or in the hands of a single 'owner' or state. Rather, control is exercised by a corporation—invested with its own personhood—comprising stockholders. The make-up of this corporation is transitory and fundamentally transformable. All of these technologies—singular modulation across singular space, an ethos of the relentless pursuit of progress, the 'dividualisation' or 'data-fication' of the individual, the facilitation of compliance, the use of codes as passwords, technological surveillance, and the absence of clear hierarchies of power—together create a society of control. Critiques Here we will explore three critiques of Deleuze's thesis: the privatisation of public space, the role of surveillance in control, and the telos of control. Privatisation Michael Hardt deals at length with the Deleuzian conception of societies of control, both in his joint work with Antonio Negri on Empire, as well as more specifically, in a piece titled 'The Global Society of Control.' Here, Hardt contends that there is an incompleteness to Deleuze's work on control, and proceeds to elaborate on the operation of societies of control to fill in these purported gaps. He does so by situating these societies within his and Negri's broader framework of Empire. The study is multifaceted, but here only one aspect of the critique will be considered: the erasure of the dialectic between public and private. 'There is no more outside,' insists Hardt.[14] This is to say, there are no longer any meaningful or permanent divisions between private and public spaces. Nikolas Rose, similarly, argues that inherently public spaces (like public parks, libraries, and playgrounds) are being abandoned in favour of privatised and privately secured places (like shopping malls and arts centres) for acceptable members of the public.[15] Those who have no legitimate, consumerised reason to occupy these new privatised 'public' spaces are denied access to them. Populations and classes of people deemed 'dangerous' or 'undesirable' are excluded from the private-public spaces and, so, from society itself. Deleuze touches on this idea of exclusion as well, in saying that 'three quarters of humanity', who are too poor for debt (as in, those who cannot be managed through the mechanisms of 'control', because these mechanisms rely on monetary and consumerist incentives or 'passwords') and too numerous of confinement (which makes it logistically difficult to subject them to technologies of 'discipline' that rely on confinement) will have to face exclusion to shanty towns and ghettos.[16] From this, we can take two points. Firstly, that neither the societies of control, nor disciplinary societies are or have ever been able to exercise control or discipline over every individual; when they are unable to, they simply exclude these potentially unpredictable and uncontrollable threats to order. Secondly, there is the implicit acknowledgment that technologies of control and discipline can coexist; to conceive of discipline and control as dichotomous notions would be inaccurate.[17] In fact, the question posed by this essay itself may fall victim to a false dichotomy between Foucauldian discipline and Deleuzian control. These mechanisms of power are not necessarily mutually exclusive. We should, therefore, be wary to adopt a view that control represents a natural or irreversible progression (from discipline) in the exercise of power (as Hardt and Negri may be suggesting in saying that control is an intensification of discipline),[18] because they are contingent historical realities. That is what Foucault's work—and Deleuze's analysis of it—suggested of discipline, and it is no less true in the case of control. Thus, we can qualify our thesis by saying that while societies of control are increasingly replacing those of discipline, technologies of discipline (and even of sovereignty) are still employed in certain contexts. Surveillance Surveillance is implicit within Deleuze's conception of control (in the understanding of the individual as a mere data point, not the member of a mass), but Oscar Gandy articulates this technology more explicitly.[19] Such an emphasis on surveillance is problematised, however, by Rose, who posits that societies of control are not predicated on surveillance but on the instilling of self-discipline and self-regulation in their subjects. That rather misses the mark, because, as we have seen, societies of control employ a range of technologies to exercise power. Nothing suggests an emphasis on self-discipline ought to exclude the technology of surveillance, which is implicit in the incentivisation of labour and use of passwords. Telos But Rose's critique of surveillance does helpfully inform another point of discussion: the odd ideas prioritised within societies of control. Deleuze makes brilliant and incisive concluding remarks about this telos of self-improvement and self-actualisation. But what are the motivations behind this ethos of motivation? That is the question Deleuze poses in his conclusion, and it is a question that largely remains unanswered. In some ways, one can only hazard a guess at the mechanisms at work here. That is rather the point. Societies of control have evolved such that their technologies of power and their telos can be more obscure than that of disciplinary societies. VALIDATION With definitions—or, rather, understandings—of both disciplinary societies and societies of control to hand, this essay considers whether it can be said that the latter are replacing the former. The institutions of the disciplinary society Foucault identifies in his body of work—the home, the school, the prison, the barracks, the factory—are all still extant. However, as we have noted above, there need be no 'either/or' as between societies of discipline and of control; the question is more accurately one of degree and we must identify whether a general movement may be occurring. Again, that movement need not be total or irreversible. Such a movement seems to be taking place all around us. For example, remote working and learning, which Deleuze identified as increasing in the 1980's and which has skyrocketed in light of the coronavirus pandemic, has weakened substantially the disciplinary segregation of physical space.[20] At the same time, it has strengthened the all-encroaching productivity ethos of societies of control by placing work or study (itself little more than a preparatory step towards work) within the walls of the private family home. Whilst coronavirus may have accelerated a shift towards societies of control, this trend runs much deeper still. Below, we shall seek to validate the shift Deleuze identifies by employing and analysing four impressionistic vignettes. Vignette A In April 2021, Chinese state television broadcast an exposé of intolerable working conditions faced by food delivery drivers—long hours, meagre pay, algorithms that encourage dangerous driving and heavily fine lateness, and harassment from customers who have full and 'live' access to drivers' locations and contact details. China's couriers are estimated to contribute to close to 1% of the country's economic activity, but the undercover government official earned just £4.52 over a 12-hour shift.[21] The courier works in no strictly delineated or confined space, but everywhere, openly. He is the subject of constant surveillance. Customers have his precise location, his 'ETA', the corporation's promised delivery slot, and his personal mobile phone number at their fingertips. The threat of an angry call or harsh review might appear in those circumstances to operate rather like a panopticon unconfined by space, enforcing conformity. But that is only a minor part of this story; it is secondary to the algorithmic surveillance and control in which both the courier and the customer are merely variables. Drivers will be set timescales in which to complete a delivery determined by the average speed at which drivers have previously made that journey or a similar journey. If they beat that timeframe, they may be rewarded with bonus pay. If they fail, their pay will be docked. Both processes—the incentivisation of speed and disincentivisation of slowness—are automated. The algorithm does not care how the driver gets from A to B, only that he does so quickly and does not damage the customer's goods in the process. So, drivers will travel recklessly in order to beat the clock to boost their meagre pay, but this only shortens the average time of journey completion, making pay boosts harder to achieve and pay docks more likely and contributing to an insane culture of paranoia and uncertainty. Compliance with the requirements of speed in this system is facilitated, not forced. In paying the less perfect worker less and the more perfect worker more, the corporation is nudging the courier to an (ultimately ephemeral) standard of compliance. But it need take no further punishing or corrective action: it knows that the courier, impacted by these forces, will correct himself. The password operating here is that of a courier 'score' that determines the level of pay afforded for work done. This is ripe terrain to consider Deleuze's challenge as to whether the unions will be able to resist forces of control upon the breakdown of the workplace. China, where organised labour is met with fear and hostility, shows that the communist party will intervene by challenging monopolies and exposing low pay. They may moderate the technology of power, but they will not extinguish it; the work is too economically important for that. In the UK, there have been increased efforts by unions to protect insecure, 'gig-economy' labourers and they have had some success.[22] But here too the overall system of algorithmic control is not removed, but mollified. Vignette B A London-based junior employee at Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the world, has complained that staff face 18-hour shifts that mean they are earning less than the UK living wage and regularly take sick leave due to burnout. In 2015, US employee Sarvshreshth Gupta, who had been working 100-hour weeks, took his own life.[23] The company has a £50,000 entry-level base salary.[24] The company's average employee takes home about £260,000 per year.[25] It is at first blush surprising that employees at Goldman Sachs could be said to be subjects of control by twenty-first century technologies of power, and even more surprising to suggest that their situation is comparable to that of couriers in China. But this is precisely the sort of topsy-turviness that is to be expected from (and ultimately serves to legitimate) societies of control, where we all 'work hard'. The impetus to 'get ahead' is central to the ethos of self-improvement and motivation instilled by societies of control. That is perhaps nowhere more evident than amongst the new, highly-remunerated, highly-overworked, 'meritocratic', professional or upper class of managers, bankers, and lawyers.[26] Previously, elite status was maintained through generations by inheritance. That method of status-maintenance has now mostly been displaced by investments in 'human capital'. This can be achieved directly—through funding private schooling, tuition, and even work placements paid for by the volunteer—or indirectly, through covering children's rent and paying for their goods. The crucial factor in bringing about this shift has been the rise of 'meritocracy', which purports that success (i.e. the rate of remuneration for one's work) is a result and marker of an individual's inherent drive and talent but which in reality allows 'a relatively tiny segment of the population […] to transmit advantage from generation to generation' because elite parents stack the odds in favour of their children's advancement from birth.[27] This is the society of control in action: demanding, inequitable and possessing an obscured, democratically-papered-over telos, drive and skill directed at productive activities. But the elite class are not spared from the brutalities of this system, as the above vignette suggests. Since societies are increasingly meritocratic (in the sense that the most skilled and driven will generally be remunerated the most, not in the sense that the system promotes a level playing field) young elite professionals still have to work incredibly hard to 'climb the ladder'. Even if they reach seemingly secure positions of employment, they will still want to continue to reap the rewards of their labour, still need to work intensively to secure funds to invest in their children's human capital, and still be motivated by the overwhelming and corrupting cultural ideal of self-improvement and motivation. The name of Goldman Sachs' personnel team, 'Human Capital Management', is telling. It has been noted, '[l]ives are things that people have; capital has rates of return.'[28] Vignette C About one in every hundred adults in Britain has been trained as a 'mental health first aider' by the MHFA.[29] They advertise their 'proactive' services thus: 'for every £1 spent by employers on mental health interventions, they get back £5 in reduced absence [.] and staff turnover.'[30] The second of five listed responsibilities for first-aiders is to communicate concerns about 'anyone in your workplace, for example to an appropriate manager.'[31] Separately, the UK government is providing '£1 million for innovative student mental health projects' that offer targeted support to those identified statistically as being at highest risk of mental ill-health.[32] Deleuze argued the hospital was being replaced by 'neighbourhood clinics, hospices, and day care'.[33] Similarly, the above vignette suggests that the power that would in a disciplinary society be exercised by the asylum has, in our societies of control, been exercised dispersedly by employers, with the aim being to improve profit-margins and productivity rates. The actual mental wellbeing of employees—or, rather, of human capital—is a means to that end that may give rise to some incidental good. But even these incidental goods are monetised, such as when companies compete on their 'work-life balance' or their inclusion of private therapy in 'healthcare plans' so as to attract the most human capital. Under these conditions, the public healthcare officials sectioning or supporting a member of the public who risks harm to herself or others are reduced in their significance. In their place, the anxious employer preempts possible harm to the corporation by proactively addressing and preventing harm to the employee. Similarly, 'mental health teams' in schools and universities are encouraged by the government to anticipate, based on a series of data-sets, those students who are 'more at risk' and provide targeted interventions to safeguard their health (and, by extension, their productivity). Deleuze says that 'the socio-technological study of the mechanisms of control […] would have to be categorical'. By this it is meant that we must look to each institution of power—the healthcare system, the corporate system, the educational system—and describe the power being exercised there. The above vignette shows that that has become an artificial mode of analysis in this era of control. The healthcare system has been radically dispersed, with detection, prevention, and mitigation (recovery being ancillary) of illness now increasingly undertaken by the corporation and its agents, including crucially the employee herself qua employee or human capital. She will contact her mental health first aider colleague or her employer (though any difference between the two seems doubtful). She will purchase products—self-help books, meditation apps, tickets to motivational talks—with a view to her greater productivity and, hence, 'employability'. In fact, the monetary value she attributes (through her valuable spare time as much as through her pay-power) to her own productivity and employability may reduce the corporate system's nascent role in facilitating compliance; her self-improvement becomes her guiding, internalised ethos as a consumer-employee and she will discipline herself, knowing this self-improvement will be coded and rewarded. Thus, technologies of power in the modern, mental health context cannot be identified within a healthcare system, a corporate system or an education system, nor even within what might be dubbed a 'consumer system'; there is no single system of operation of which we can speak. This conceptual challenge itself demonstrates the ultimate annihilation of the institutions Deleuze anticipates in societies of control. Vignette D In May 2021, the UK government proposed halving state funding for university courses they do not regard as 'strategic priorities', such as music, drama, visual arts, and archaeology. It is estimated that such courses would run at a deficit of £2,700 per enrolled student, and many courses may therefore have to close if the plans go ahead. The government says the decision is 'designed to target taxpayers' money towards the subjects which support the skills this country needs to build back better'.[34] They also say universities should "focus [.] upon subjects which deliver strong graduate employment outcomes in areas of economic and societal importance".[35] Deleuze foretold the 'effect on the school of perpetual training, and the corresponding abandonment of all university research'.[36] Alarming an idea as this may be, the above vignette should at least discourage us from dismissing it altogether. The government's proposal betrays a deeply production-oriented approach to higher education that sees knowledge and learning as purely instrumental to the development of concrete 'skills' to be directed at the most economically valuable production of goods and services and, correspondingly, the strongest employment outcomes. The UK education system no longer possesses its own watchwords (save, perhaps, 'instilling British Values'). Instead, all activity is directed at the future employment prospects of the student. The privatisation of schools (through academisation in England) has allowed for corporate sponsorship that makes this close instrumentalism perfectly plain: the corporation's senior managers become senior managers of underperforming schools and they are expected to foster students' 'aspirations'. Here, the corporate and educational systems are blended together, the former funding the latter, the latter supplying labour to the former. The physical spaces in which learning occurs can at times barely be distinct from the corporate, whether a company name is printed across the school entrance ('Bridge Academy in partnership with UBS') or affixed to laptops donated to school students studying remotely. CONCLUSION There is a great deal of truth to Deleuze's thesis that societies of control are replacing disciplinary societies. We have noted the destruction of swathes of confined and discrete spaces; the intermixing of institutions; the pervasive power of technology to tweak and modulate behaviour through coding; and the pointless but universal ethos of motivation. As Deleuze ably demonstrates, analyses of discipline, confinement, hierarchy, and masses can only take us so far in understanding these forces. More necessary in our quest to uncover the telos we are being made to serve is a socio-technological study of control and its methods. However, this essay has also sought to demonstrate the limits of Deleuze's proposed methodology. For a 'categorical' socio-technological study of control becomes more elusive the more deeply a society succumbs to control. Schools, prisons, barracks, hospitals, factories, offices, and homes are increasingly blended (and so less discrete) environments. The office educates, entertains, protects, and diagnoses its employees. The school is a business, its pupils are prospective employees. University is a career stage. Beds, dining tables, and lounges are workstations. For those on 'home detention' during coronavirus in the United States or under TPIMs (Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures) in the United Kingdom, these same spaces are prison cells. The gradual annihilation of the disciplines as physical and conceptual spaces—which Deleuze foresaw—also renders obsolete our existing methods of understanding power. We are in need of new tools to respond to these developments; the study of categories must be replaced with the study of networks and systems. We must explore with curiosity and thoroughness the complex web of relations operating through spaces and lives. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams R, 'English universities must prove "commitment" to free speech for bailouts' The Guardian (16 July 2020) accessed 6 May 2021 Bakare L and Adams R, 'Plans for 50% funding cuts to arts subjects at universities "catastrophic' The Guardian (6 May 2021) accessed 6 May 2021 Burroughs WS, 'The Limits of Control' in Grauerholz J and Silverberg I (eds), Word Virus: The William S Burroughs Reader (4th edn, Fourth Estate 2010) Collini S, 'Snakes and Ladders' London Review of Books (London, 1 April 2021) 15 Deleuze G, 'Foucault: Lecture 17' (University of Paris, 25 March 1986) accessed 9 May 2021 — — 'Foucault: Lecture 18' (University of Paris, 8 April 1986) accessed 9 May 2021 — — 'Foucault: Lecture 19' (University of Paris, 15 April 1986) accessed 9 May 2021 — — 'Postscript on Societies of Control' (1992) 59 October 3 Department for Education and others, '£1 million for innovative student mental health projects' UK Government (5 March 2020) accessed 11 May 2021 Ewald F, The Birth of Solidarity: The History of the French Welfare State (Cooper M ed, Johnson TS tr, Duke University Press 2020) Feng E, 'For China's Overburdened Delivery Drivers, The Customer—And App—Is Always Right' NPR (Beijing, 1 December 2020) accessed 7 May 2021 Foster M, 'Guess How Much Goldman's Average Salary Is (GS)' Investopedia (25 June 2019) accessed 10 May 2021 Foucault M, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–79 (Senellart M ed, Burchell G tr, Palgrave Macmillan 2008) — — Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Sheridan A tr, 2nd edn, Vintage Books 1995) Hardt M, 'The Global Society of Control' (1998) 20(3) Discourse 139 — — and Negri A, Empire (Harvard University Press 2001) Makortoff K, 'Goldman Sachs junior banker speaks out over "18-hour shifts and low pay' The Guardian (London, 24 March 2021) accessed 7 May 2021 MHFA, 'Being a Mental Health First Aider: Your Guide to the Role' accessed 10 May 2021. — — 'Workplace Info Pack' accessed 10 May 2021. Morar N, Nail T and Smith DW (eds), Between Deleuze and Foucault (Edinburgh University Press 2016) Muldoon J, 'Foucault's Forgotten Hegelianism' (2014) 21 Parrhesia 102 Nealon J, Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensifications since 1984 (Stanford University Press 2008) Negri A, Interview with Gilles Deleuze: 'Control and Becoming' (Joughin M tr, Spring 1990) Rice-Oxley M, 'UK training record number of mental health first aiders' The Guardian (2 September 2019) accessed 11 May 2021 Roffe J, Gilles Deleuze's Empiricism and Subjectivity: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh University Press 2016) Rose N, 'Government and Control' (2000) 40(2) The British Journal of Criminology 321–339 Wallin J, 'Four Propositions on the Limits of Control' (2013) 39(1) Visual Arts Research 6–8 Wise JM, 'Mapping the Culture of Control: Seeing through The Truman Show' (2002) 3(1) Television & New Media 29–47 Yang Y, 'China's food delivery groups slammed after undercover TV exposé' Financial Times (London, 29 April 2021) accessed 11 May 2021 — — 'How China's delivery apps are putting riders at risk' Financial Times (London, 26 January 2021) accessed 11 May 2021 [1] Gilles Deleuze, 'Postscript on Societies of Control' (1992) 59 October 3–7. [2] On their complex relationship before and after Foucault's death, see François Dosse, 'Deleuze and Foucault: A Philosophical Friendship' in Nikolae Morar, Thomas Nail and Daniel W Smith (eds), Between Deleuze and Foucault (Edinburgh University Press 2016). [3] James Muldoon, 'Foucault's Forgotten Hegelianism' (2014) 21 Parrhesia 102. [4] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Alan Sheridan tr, 2nd edn, Vintage Books 1995) [5] Michael Hardt, 'The Global Society of Control' (1998) 20(3) Discourse 139. [6] Deleuze cites these authors in his 'Postscript': (n 1). [7] Gilles Deleuze, 'Foucault: Lecture 19' (University of Paris, 15 April 1986). [8] Burroughs himself concedes his analogy of the life-boat is a 'primitive' one: William S Burroughs, 'The Limits of Control' in James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg (eds), Word Virus: The William S Burroughs Reader (4th edn, Fourth Estate 2010). [9] 'Postscript' (n 1) 7. [10] ibid. [11] 'Postscript' (n 1) 4. [12] Foucault refers to it as 'biopower'. Biopower is not something that this essay will address, but we can observe that it may be that the Foucauldian notion of biopower and the Deleuzian notion of control are broadly similar or even the same: for a fuller discussion of that relationship, see Thomas Nail, 'Biopower and Control' in Between Deleuze and Foucault (n 2). [13] 'Postscript' (n 1) 5. [14] Hardt (n 5) 140. [15] Nikolas Rose, 'Government and Control' (2000) 40(2) The British Journal of Criminology 331. [16] 'Postscript' (n 1) 7. [17] JM Wise, 'Mapping the Culture of Control: Seeing through The Truman Show' (2002) 3(1) Television & New Media 29. [18] Nail, 'Biopower and Control'. [19] Wise, 'Culture of Control' 33. [20] Deleuze, 'Foucault: Lecture 18'. [21] Yuan Yang, 'China's food delivery groups slammed after undercover TV exposé' Financial Times (London, 29 April 2021). [22] For instance, many will now be recognised as 'workers' rather than as 'self-employed', with greater protections: Uber v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5. [23] Kalyeena Makortoff, 'Goldman Sachs junior banker speaks out over "18-hour shifts and low pay' The Guardian (London, 24 March 2021). [24] ibid. [25] Michael Foster, 'Guess How Much Goldman's Average Salary Is (GS)' Investopedia (25 June 2019). [26] Stefan Collini, 'Snakes and Ladders' London Review of Books (London, 1 April 2021) 15. [27] ibid 22. [28] ibid. [29] Mark Rice-Oxley, 'UK training record number of mental health first aiders' The Guardian (2 September 2019). [30]MHFA, 'Being a Mental Health First Aider: Your Guide to the Role'. [31] MHFA, 'Workplace Info Pack'. [32] Department for Education and others, '£1 million for innovative student mental health projects' UK Government (5 March 2020). [33] 'Postscript' (n 1) 4. [34] Lanre Bakare and Richard Adams, 'Plans for 50% funding cuts to arts subjects at universities "catastrophic' The Guardian (6 May 2021). [35] Richard Adams, 'English universities must prove "commitment" to free speech for bailouts' The Guardian (16 July 2020). [36] 'Postscript' (n 1) 7.

Social norms affect almost every aspect of people's lives, and can be an obstacle to or support economic development. This paper outlines what social norms are and how they work, providing examples from everyday life and from development case studies. Sometimes not much can be done about changing undesirable social norms. In those cases, development economists need to be aware of how the existence of those norms can impact the effects of the policies they advocate. But of particular importance to development economists is the ways in which social norms can be changed, at least under some circumstances. Understanding of social norm change is still patchy at best, but the paper outlines the theoretical underpinnings of change, with empirical evidence from various policies aimed at changing social norms. However, some of those policies raise ethical concerns that would require attention.

This paper focuses on recent theoretical developments in political economy and what role they might play in explaining and reforming individual country and global distortions in food and agricultural markets. Four groups of forces are isolated: political governance structures emphasizing the role of democratic mechanisms; the design of polycentric structures for assigned governmental authority for setting policy instruments; market structure and other socioeconomic characteristics; and the role of sector mobility and asset diversification. Each of these forces are distilled and data sources are reviewed that will allow econometric specifications that have both explanatory and policy reform implications.

Issue 66.1 of the Review for Religious, 2007. ; ' Spiritu:alilty Perspectives Community Tod:ay~s Saint QUARTERLY 66.1 2007 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with God, dialogue with ourselves, and dialogue with one another about the" holiness we try to live according to charisms of Catholic religious life. As Pope Paul Vl said, our way of being church is today the way of dialogue. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published quarterly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Telephone: 314-633-4610 ¯ Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Maih review@slu.edu ¯ Web site: ~w.reviewforreligious.org 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 ° Pontifical College Josephinum 7625 North High Street ¯ Columbus, Ohio 43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ RO. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2007 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 distribution, 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. eview for religious Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff l~ebmaster Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer sJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell 0SB Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp Clare Boehmer ASC Martin Erspamer OSB Kathleen Hughes RSCJ Louis and Angela Menard Bishop Terry Steib SVD Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ QUARTERLY 66.1 2007 contents prisms 4 Prisms 19 spirituality Aging and Christian Spirituality: Joy and Resignation Matthias Neuman OSB explores two challenges of aging, namel.v, the ability to enjoy and the need of resignation. Dreams in Prayer and Discernment Jennifer Constantine Jackson examines the human experience of dreams as one resource from the Lord that can assist us on ¯ the road to spiritual maturity. Reflection/Discussion Questions 3O perspectives Confessions of a Franciscan Ethicist Rende Mirkes O~'S shows how being Franciscan can and does affect the way she does ethics. Review for Religious 40 58 Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue Colleen Mary Mallon OP explores dialogical communion, from the writings of the French Dominican Yves Congar, and reflects upon specific practices of discipleship that promise to deepen communal conversion while offering prophetic witness to a global world. Personal Reflection/Group Discussion community Rose Hoover RC says that being together on the inward journey is a subtly rigorous togetherness not to be missed. 64 An Experience of Jesus and His Brothers Robert Schieler FSC describes his congregation's Holy Week retreat in which three provinces saw a happily workable way to be energetically together as one. 74 today's saint Mother's Quest and Bequest: Theodore Guerin's Sainthood Mary Roger Madden SP provides a historical vignette of her congregation's recently canonized American foundress to show the greatness of her spiritual bequest. departments 90 Scripture Scope: The Bible and the Church 95 Canonical Counsel: Bona Ecclesiastica 101 Book Reviews 66.1 2007 prisms Do I want to be holy? When we ask our-selves the question, the answer would seem to be obvious. Since we believe in God and we want to enjoy life forever with God, we are trying to be holy. Probably many of us would find it a bit pretentious to say that right now we are making the effort to be holy. Why is it so off-putting for us to admit simply that we want to be holy? Trying to be holy sounds, well, sanctimonious. We judge that we are priding ourselves on some-thing we are not. We don't want to be people setting ourselves down at the head of the table in Jesus' parable, only to be told to take a lower place. All too often we think that to be holy includes all the things that we are not: unfail-ingly pious, always prayerful, never offensive, and ever patient and long-suffering. Perhaps images like the eyes-rolled-up to heaven, the hands folded, and the pallid face featured in many portraits of our saints hold us off from identifying with holiness. We likely need a reevaluation of what it means to be holy. God is the holy One. If God is by nature holy, then we are not naturally holy. But God calls us to be holy and empowers us to "be holy as I am holy." In the sacramental life, we identify these key empowerments in baptism, confirmation, and eucharist. God the Father, in the identifying of us with his Son and in the gift-ing of their Spirit, has truly made us sons and daughters. Being part of God's family--the ones adopted in Jesus' name--we merit being called holy ones, the saints as St. Paul frequently refers to his fellow Christians in the various churches to whom he writes his letters. Review for Religqous We might believe that we are called to be holy, in fact, that we are children of God. But what we are and how we act might be two different things. What does it mean for us to act like holy persons? Jesus is our way that we come to understand and live a divine holiness. Holiness, above all, is rooted in our love relationship with our triune God in Jesus. By watching Jesus in action, we discover how we are to live and act holily. Let's take some examples that we ordinarily do not associate with holiness. Jesus lives his holiness in his presence and in his participation in parties such as the Cana wedding feast and in banquets of all kinds, sometimes held in houses of those consid-ered public sinners such as Matthew and Zacchaeus and at other times in the homes of his pious "betters"--like Simon the Pharisee. Holiness, we see, is made real and strengthened in enjoying life, like parties and banquets. In all kinds of circumstances, Jesus expresses holiness in breaking the rules--usually surrounding Sabbath obser-vances- because of his compassion and love. Jesus, we see, teaches us that holiness is not to be identified just with "keeping the rules." Priests and Levites--good peo-ple- kept the rules of not contaminating themselves by helping a wounded traveler, but it was the foreigner, a false-believing Samaritan, who acted holily. Jesus says that we must act as one who loves neighbor as oneself. Jesus shows us that holiness grows in the conversations and interactions with all different classes of people, sometimes with people who think quite differently from him--the ways of Jesus' ministering in the gospels. Jesus shows us that dealing with others who think differently from us is a part of our being holy. Simply said, to live holily, as Jesus shows us, is to live an everyday kind of life, graced always by the love of God and love of neighbor. David L. Fleming SJ 66.1 2007 MATTHIAS NEUMAN Aging and Christian Spirituality: Joy and Resignation spirituality Aging, that universal human experience, is one of life's great mysteries. Why the various stages in the human life cycle: infancy, childhood, ado-lescence, adulthood, and old age? Why should human life be like that? Why do we grow up and then slowly break down, piece by piece, until death comes for us? Our creative God could have arranged matters differently. But the real-ity remains that human life, unless tragically cut short, ends with old age, dissolution, and death-- years that people often find extremely troubling. Old age is where aging really hits home. Aging, especially the last phase, "old age," has become a major social issue for many Western countries. The graying of populations looms in many of them as a social and economic issue. The recent report of the President's Council on Bioethics, Taking Care: Ethical Caregiving in our Aging Society, puts it pointedly: Matthias Neuman OSB has written for us often. His pres-ent address is Our Lady of Grace Monastery; 1414 Southern Avenue; Beech Grove, Indiana 46107. Review for Religious There is no question that we are on the threshold of a "mass geriatric society.," a society of more long-lived individuals than ever before in human history. For this great gift of longer and healthier life for ourselves and our loved ones we are, and should be, enormously grateful . At the same time, however, there are good reasons to be concerned about the human and moral shape that a mass geriatric society will take, especially if the "price" many people pay for the added years of healthier life is a period of protracted debility, demen-tia, and dependence stacked up at the end before they eventually die. Such a reshaping of the life cycle will create enormous challenges for nearly every family and for the entire society.! The Catholic ethicist Daniel Callahan pinpoints some of those troubling issues. By 2030 almost 20 percent of the American population will be over 65; the combined costs of Medicare and Medicaid will double; close to half of those over 85 will suffer from some form of dementia. He says: "The projected long-term institutional costs alone, quite apart from medical expenses, will be astronomical.''2 Aging also appears as an increasing pastoral care issue for the church. The 1999 document of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, "The Dignity of Older People and Their Mission in the Church and in the World," says that the increasing number of aging people in the developed coun-tries of the world will cause some significant shifts in the style and opportunities for pastoral care: The ecclesial community, for its part, is called to respond to the great participation which older people would like to have ih the church by turning to account the "gift" they represent as witnesses of the tradition of fai.th, teachers of the wisdom of life, and workers of charity. [The Church] must therefore reexamine its apostolate on behalf of older people, and open it up to their participation and collaboration.3 66.1 2007 Neuman ¯ Aging and Christian Spirituality Aging doqs not need o be a series of losses th'a can only be eiid ¢ed::i In this article I explore two challenges that aging pres-ents for Christian spirituality. These challenges touch individuals, families, parishes, and the church as a whole. Aging does not need to be a series of losses that can only be endured. Indeed, it offers genuine possibilities for spiritual growth. I came to be interested in this topic for several rea-sons. Seven years ago my father fell on some ice and broke his hip. He never really recovered from that, and spent his last two years in a nursing home. In those two years my parents, my sisters, and I talked much about the reality of nursing-home life, about how many things aging compels the elderly and their families to give up. A year after my father died, my mother fell inside her house and broke her hip. She recovered much better than he did. She had observed the nursing home firsthand and had no desire to go there: "The smells and the food would kill me for sure." Her great effort to do her therapy and avoid the nursing home enabled her (at age 86) to finish the rehabilitation program three weeks early. She was able to return home, but my sisters and I felt she needed a watchful presence around her more than a duplex could-provide. So she moved into a home for the elderly, and Ibecame chaplain for the Benedictine sisters who run the home. My mother and I walk together frequently, our conversations returning now and then to the trials and opportunities of aging. At ninety-two she feels them acutely. I must face my own aging too. At sixty-four, I have had to accept it for some time now. In the last twenty years, I have given up physically competitive sports; my Review for Religious football, baseball, and basketball gear were given away long ago. I still have golf and the treadmill, but the clock is ticking there too. For the last three years, back prob-lems have cut short my summer golf. What encouraged me more than anything else to do some spiritual reflection on aging was a little pam-phlet titled The Grace of Old Age by Father Vincent M. O'Flaherty SJ. He.wrote a series of reflections while a patient in a nursing home himself. His view of aging is special, and he provides some excellent thoughts on the spirituality of aging. Here is one: "When I look at my tensions from the point of view of detachment, I see that each tension is a fear of losing the power to enjoy one of the goods of this life. As a grace, aging is a slow death of the power of enjoying this world.''4 That last cuts deep. But, as Father O'Flaherty adds, it also makes more spiritual growth possible. But wherein does that spiritual growth consist? Throughout Christian history, old age has not stimulated a lot of sustained reli-gious thinking.5 In developed Western countries, that is due in part to the fact that, until the latter part of the 20th century, most people did not live to old age as we know it. In 1790 the U.S. population over age 65 comprised only two percent. By 1980 that was eleven percent, and in 2004 it was approaching fifteen. The President's Council on Bioethics says that the fastest-growing age group in the U.S. is "the oldest of the old (people age 85 or over).''6 In the last quarter century, the increasing percentage of older people has created much investigation into all aspects of growing older. But there is a counterbalance to this increasingly aging population. As the number of older persons in the U.S. increases, the inherent value of any one of them decreases. Previously the elderly's very "scarcity" was a value. A household with an elderly per-son, with someone who could tell the family's history, was 66.1 2007 Neuman ¯ Aging and Christian Spirituality considered honored and blessed. In our own day people are more likely to worry about how many older people there are and how they are going to be cared for. Both the joys and resignations, " of old agk can be seen~ hs ways of deepenin~ g onr . relationship with~ God. Perspective People generally have two ways of considering the onset of old age. Both appear in scientific as well as common thought, and both are mentioned by the Pontifical Commission's document "The Dignity of Older People.-7 The first way is to anticipate joys, to expect that each age possesses its own blessings, its own joys and achieve-ments. The last years of life offer particular graces: the joy of grandchildren, lessening responsibility, time for relaxation, oppor-tunity to do some things you always wanted to do. The Christian tradition often encouraged this, considering old age a blessing. The Bible provides some examples: "Gray hair is a crown of glow" (Pr 16:31). "You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old" (Lv 19:32). Older persons are presumed wise, from their great store of life experience. A second way to deal with aging is resignation. This seems the predominant way. People work at accepting the inevitability of aging, and its conclusion. Aging always involves loss. People must give up many things along the way. At each stage of life, valuable and dear things are left behind. Resignation includes a fearful looking ahead to possible situations that one would rather not face. The fear of helplessness, of being a burden to others, remains Review for Religious extremely troubling for many people. With resignation, one tries to be ready for inevitable losses without becom-ing angry about them. There is a whole body of literature on "disengagement theory.''8 As they advance in age, most people probably experience some joy about their future and some resignation regarding things they fear. All of us have to learn the proper proportions for ourselves. This is a matter of our religious response. Both the joys and resignations of old age can be seen as ways of deepening our relationship with God. Enjoying Joys As people grow older, they do not lose their right to joy in life. They can still partake of joys and pleasures, simple though they may be. The church's teaching on pleasure and joy has not always been as positive as it might have been.9 From the perspective of Vatican Council II, people are beginning to see life's legitimate joys as our ini-tial sharing in the resurrection. A nursing-home resident make this point directly: "Despite pain, I am experiencing joy. If that is so, I am experiencing God. I am delighted to wake up in the morning, to have another day to experi-ence God in joy. The simplest things--the weather, the barren trees of winter, the sports scores, reading, staying in touch with families and friends--all give me joy. In all I find a taste of God. Yes, it is tough to grow old, but I have found joy that I did not know in my youth.''1° Some of the sharper slants of disengagement theory would urge the elderly to disengage themselves from any joys that keep them attached to this world. But a Christian spirituality would encourage older persons to enjoy what they still can. Indeed, other scholars of aging would assert that older people who are not too old can develop abili-ties that they never knew they possessed. Studies suggest that the brain's left and right hemispheres become better 66.1 2007 Neuman * Aging and Christian Spirituality integrated during middle age, making way for improved creativity in one's older years. Age also seems to dampen some negative emotions, making it easier to get rid of anger.1~ My own mother in her eighties developed a bet-ter attitude toward death than she ever had previously. It happens to others as well: An editor I know at a New York publishing company provides a case in point. He was in his sixties and con-templating retirement when he realized that he had finally matured into his job. Despite a sharp intellect and a passion for excellence, this man had spent much of his career alienating people with brusque, critical comments and a lack of sensitivity. Now . . . he was finally beginning to master interpersonal communica-tion. As his emotional development caught up to his intellectual development, he morphed from a brilliant but brittle loner into a mentor and a mediator of con-flicts . His best work was still ahead of him.12 This potential to be creative and surprising is some-thing that those who work with the elderly need to be more aware of. Often they do not give aging people a chance. Sometimes the elderly do not give themselves a chance. Learning new abilities, arriving at positions we could never previously attain, constitutes a great joy of one's older years. The Vatican document "The Dignity of Older People and Their Mission in the Church and in the World" urges that the legitimate charisms of older people be recognized. These gifts can be real blessings for the entire church.~3 The charism of disinterestedness, the ability to give some-thing or to give of themselves without any thought of return, is a special gift that older people can share with younger generations. Another charism of the elderly is memory, in particular carrying the past forward and creat-ing a shared identity for a family, a parish, or some other group. Similarly the charism of interdependence, the ability Review for Religious to overcome individualism and self-seeking and enter into genuine interactions with others, becomes very specific in the lives of the elderly. In many ways elderly people have a need of being interdependent. Their deeply felt awareness can teach :., ,-,, -. - o o., :::c~umauitz~te'sloysi~ndpteasures. nity, and integrity in being old and being old in public. That witness amazed many people, and there is much we still need to learn from it.~4 Let us consider some of the joys that are specific to old age. One is reminiscence--thinking back to the happy and satisfying events of one's life. That can surely be a genuine joy. My mother has often said that the vacations my family took together give her much to remember and delight in. (For twenty years we went on a week's vacation each summer.) Another joy as a person ages is to anticipate the contributions one can make by instructing a younger generation and see them grow to maturity, surely a joy for one who looks back on a lengthy teaching career. Father O'Flaherty reminds us that certain joys, although genuine, are limited: "Part of the confusion over the question of happiness in old age comes from a rela-tive definition of fun. Thus we might ask whether living in Sun City is fun. If we look at it from the point of view of entertainment, Sun City has everything. But we should not exaggerate fun in old age; it peaks out with grandma knitting in a rocking chair. Neither a young nor a mature man would be attracted by the fun in Sun City.''s 66.1 2007 Neuman ¯ Aging and Christian Spirituality Christian spirituality invites the aging to have a deeper appreciation of human life's joys and pleasures. There are created joys appropriate to each stage of life. These should be identified and savored, even or especially by the elderly. Here Christian spirituality can take a hint from Jewish spirituality: A characteristic attitude is taken up by the Talmud towards the pleasures of life. Recognizing that what has been created by God for man's enjoyment must be essen-tially good, it not only counsels men to indulge in them but even condemns those who abstain from them. The rabbis assume the standpoint that God wants his creatures to be happy, and it must therefore be sinful deliberately to shun physical happiness and material well-being.~6 Vghile traditional Christian spirituality would allow a much more positive place for asceticism, s011 there is room in Christian spirituality for legitimate joys and pleasures at each stage of life. This means acknowledging and delighting in the pleasures (a sunny day, an exciting sporting event, a glass of wine). Then, going a step fur-ther, it means giving praise to God for these gifts of joy. Enjoyment is a part of God's providence for us. Facing Resignations Enjoying what pleasures one can in old age is part of Christian spirituality. Nonetheless, at the center of a spirituality of aging remains the reality of facing the many resignations life demands. No matter how great the joys are that elderly people may delight in, acts of resigna-tion are perhaps unavoidably greater. Giving up various pleasures of life is a never-ending part of aging: driving at night, strenuous or agile physical movement, certain well-liked foods, traveling to visit distant friends. The list goes on and on. To recall clearly something you have loved to do for Review for Religious twenty, thirty, or forty years and say "No more" both scares and humbles. So, as Christians, how do we deal with these resignations in ourselves and in others? First we admit that they are difficult and frightening. People coping with them should be patient with themselves and with others. Instant or pat answers like "Christ gave up everything, so should you" can do more harm than good. Elizabeth Kiibler-Ross showed five stages that people may experience as death comes closer: denial, anger, bargain-ing, depression, and acceptance.~7 These may be present when people have to use a walker all the time for mobility or have to enter a nursing home. We can help people to acknowledge the pain and loss they feel; denial does not help. We can be there with them, what Sheila Cassidy has called a "Stabat Mater" spirituality, a simple, silent, stand-with-them presence.~8 After each acceptance of loss, people may feel a loss of integrity. To their mind they will seem to be "less," "needier," a "bother" to others. The helping spiritual task assists them to regain a connectedness with people and things, to help them see that their life still possesses a fundamental meaning and purpose, that their own inner life will always have value in sight of God and for those who love them. We think back to Father O'Flaherty's comment: "Aging is a slow death of the power of enjoying this world." In our later years, aging is dominated by physical and mental decline and the giving up of many pleasures. There is also the fear of facing significant pain; that takes serious resignation as well. Father O'Flaherty puts it well again: "Modern medicine has increased my tensions. I am on 'their' side when they prolong my pleasures, but I classify them among nay enemies when they propose to prolong my pains . My fear is that they would lengthen my three hours on the cross to six.''~9 66.1 2007 Neuman ¯ Aging and Christian Spirituality Vatican Council II's Constitution on the Church has some fine insights about offering our lives to God as spiritual sacrifices: "For all [the laity's] works, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accom-plished in the Spirit--indeed even the hardships of life if patiently borne--all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (§34). The chal-lenge is thus to see each resignation as a spiritual sacrifice. In their later years people offer their life's troubles. Their fragile and failing bodies and minds become gifts pleasing to God. Father O'Flaherty notes: "'vVhen a man gets old and his mind gets foggy, he cannot formulate flowery prayers. At the beginning of the countdown (age 65) he should start saying the prayer of simple presentation so that he will be in the habit of using it when his faculties are not keen. Just present yourself to God . Push your wheel-chair into the chapel and show your broken hip to our Lord. This throws the burden of giving you a cross on Almighty God. It is the resigned way of praying, with full resignation to the will of God.''2° " When people are young, faith shows itself in a lot of activity, vision, building. But in old age faith turns much more around seeking the peace of God. In facing the res-ignations of aging, giving up and faith are almost indistin-guishable. Sometimes all the elderly can do is bring their broken bodies as their spiritual sacrifice; that is their way of building the kingdom of God. The Constitution on the Church notes, too, that suf-fering can be a way to holiness. "In a special way also, those who are weighted down by poverty, infirmity, sick-ness and other hardships should realize that they are united to Christ, who suffers for the salvation of the world" (§41). In old age, that suffering becomes very real Review for Religion, s and sometimes omnipresent in aches and pains, some-times very severe pain. One of the challenges that aging presents to Christian spirituality is coming to believe and assert that pain in old age becomes a genuine prayer. In dealing with the many resignations of aging, we are always working toward that confession of Christ in the garden: "Not my will, but yours be done" (Mt 26:39). From a Christian perspective, that is the result of every resignation: it becomes a holy resignation, the offering of our lives as a spiritual sacrifice. Notes ~ President's Council on Bio-Ethics, 7~;king Care Ethical Caregiving in Our Aging Society (2005), pp. xvii-xviii. 2 "Curing, Caring, and Coping," America (30 January 2006): 13. 3 Pontifical Council for the Laity, "The Dignity of Older People and their Mission in the Church and in the Vqorld," in Autumn Blessings: Living Old Age in Faith (Little Sisters of the Poor Publications Office, n.d.), p. 43. 4 Vincent M. O'Flaherty SJ, The Grace of Old Age (Franciscan Herald Press, 1976), p. 31. s An overview of this topic may be perused in K. Brynolf Lyon, Toward a Practical Theology of Aging (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), "Aging and the Christian Theology Tradition," pp. 31-53. 6 Taking Care, p. 7. 7 Autumn Blessings, pp. 15-16. 8 Lyon, Toward a Practical Theology, pp. 64-66. ~ Jacques-Marie Pohier, "Pleasure and Christianity.," in Franz B6ckle and Jacques-Marie Pohier (eds.), Sexuality in Contempo~w~[y Catholicism (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), pp. 103-109. m Frank Moan SJ, "Prayer and Pain," America (19-26 June 2006): 19. ~ Gene Cohen, "The Myth of the Midlife Crisis," Newsweek (17 January 2006), p. 82. 12 Cohen, p. 12. ~s Autumn Blessings, pp. 18-20. ~4 Robert Proctor, "A Farewell to Remember: \~That John Paul II's Death Taught Us," Commonweal (3 June 2005): 19-25. ~s O'Flaherty, Grace, p. 20. 66.1 2007 Neuman ¯ Aging and Christian SpMtuality 1~ A. Cohen, Eve~yman's Ta&md (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), p. 230. ~7 Elizabeth Kiibler-Ross, On Death and Dying (Touchstone, 1969, 1997). ~s Sheila Cassidy, Sharing the Darkness (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 66. ~90'Flaherty, Grace, p. 17. :o O'Flaherty, Grace, p. 55. via dolorosa it is their sorrow I bear yet they will never know how they have been beaten like a hanging rug stripped bare they are unaware of their nakedness and this is their anguish to thirst and not know why to bleed and not see the wounds Lou Ella Hickman IWBS Review for Religious JENNIFER CONSTANTINE JACKSON Dreams in Prayer and Discernment /~lthe past forty years, writings on Christian spiritu-ity, particularly on prayer and discernment, have given renewed attention to dreams (Doran 498). This article elucidates some movements in this area of study and then invites spiritual directors and discerners to make use of them in Ignatian spirituality. Dreams represent a way of true responsiveness, especially for the laity, to the church's call to an authentic obedience, an obedience that is at all times discerning and fulfilling God's will in the world (Lumen gentium, §37). Some of the earliest contributions to this recent attention to dreams are John A. Sanford's Dreams: God's Forgotten Language (1968) and Morton Kelsey's Dreams: The Dark Speech of the Spirit (1968). The key insight that begins with these works is captured in 1978 in Kelsey's Dreams: A Way to Listen to God (p. 9) and again in 1991 in his reflections on his teaching at the University of Notre Dame: "As I listened to my dreams, I found a presence Jennifer Constantine Jackson, a teacher, is currently a student of theology and Ignatian spirituality. Her address is 333A Harvard Street, Apt. 1A; Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. 66.1 2007 Jackson * Dreams in Prayer and Discernment wiser than I trying to guide me through my difficulties to wholeness, a wholeness that was possible only when I con-tinued to be in touch with the infinitely loving Holy One" (God, Dreams, and Revelation, p. 213). Dreams take place within one's relationship with God. They invite listening in a process that seems to be initiated and sustained not by the dreamer but by God. Kelsey says that the current ambiguous, even fearful attitude about dreams in Christian spirituality is very dif-ferent from that of the first millennium of Christianity: "The early Christian church viewed the dream as one of the most significant and most important ways in which God revealed his will to human beings . We find this view in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and in the church fathers up to the time of Aquinas" (God, Dreams, p. 17). Kelsey and others cite many church fathers acknowledging dreams as helpful for growing in relation-ship with God. In his response to the Epicureans' denial of this possibility, Tertullian "specificallysuggested that dreams have various levels of interpretation, and finally he asked, 'Now, who is such a stranger to human experi-ence as not sometimes to have perceived some truth in dreams?'" (109). Kelsey also cites the fathers' reservations concerning dreams in the life of faith. Clement details what must be the formation of one who interprets dreams (106), Origen says that evil spirits can enter dreams (108), and Gregory emphasizes the dangers for those not aware of the illusory nature of dreams (142). It is clear from these cautionary words that there was a shared under-standing that dreams must be discerned within faith. Concerning attentiveness to the needs of Christians today, Kelsey's emphasis on "wholeness" seems to be echoed in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. In its entry on "dreams," James L. Empereur SJ cites "the sig-nificance of dream work for spirituality and personal inte- Review for Religious gration" as "based on the conviction that every dream is in the service of wholeness through the integration of the inner and outer lives" (296). At the close of Empereur's four-page entry, the reader still wonders how the "service of wholeness" intentionally involves a participation in the life of the Trinity on the part of those involved in the work of dreams. In Spirituality in Depth: Essays in Honor of Sister Irene Dugan RC, Michael Cooper SJ's reflections on "A Spirituality of Balance" provide some assistance. Cooper says: "At the end of the 'discourse of antitheses,' the Beatitudes in Matthew, Jesus sums up all he has just said by exhorting his disciples, 'You must, therefore, be perfect, just as your heavenly Abba is perfect (Mt 5:48)'" (57). Contrary to the "strict and demanding tone" that the Greek word telios has often taken on, Cooper says that "the actual Greek New Testament meaning of telios is whole, complete, balanced!" (57). Herein lies a key to actualizing "that divine balance which lies at the heart of his gospel call to relationship and discipleship" (59). Highlighting the early communities devoted to religious life in the church, Cooper shows how an attentiveness to dreams in a community's faith life could contribute to this "divine balance": The hermits--male and female--lived alone but never too far from each other, so that they could cry out and be heard in case of threat or illness. Because of the isolation and sensory deprivation, some underwent the equivalent of today's Jungian analysis as their dreams and halluci-nations brought their demons and forgotten memories to the surface. Those who survived this descent into their own netherworlds and who were deeply grounded in their own humanity and in their own Christian faith eventually gained renown as wisdom figures. Individuals would come out to the desert to seek spiritual counsel and often stayed for weeks or months as they pursued their own spiritual conversion. (59) 66.1 2007 Jackson ¯ Dreams in Prayer and Discernment For those committed to religious life in the first centuries of Christianity, the fruits of attentiveness to dreams could be pursued successfully only through grace and only if the purpose was life in Christ. As Kelsey notes, this very purpose brought St. TMr~se of Lisieux spiritual consola-tion through her own dream near the end of her short life (God, Dreams, 164). Are these matters relevant to Ignatian spiritual direc-tors and discerners today? In a 1979 series of lectures on For those committed. to religifus life in thee first centuries of Christi~nity)_ the fruits, of attent, iveness to dreams could.~be pursued, Successfully only through grace only, if the .purpose. was life in,Chris "Jungian psychology and contemporary Christian spiritual-ity," published in Review for Religious, Robert Doran SJ noted that, reserva-tions about Jungian psychology notwith-standing, "there is much that we not only can, but indeed must, learn [from Jung] in developing both a theology and an ascesis of spiri-tual transformation in the context of the contemporary world" (499). Working in the tradition of Bernard Lonergan SJ, and noting as well Karl Rahner sJ'S work in Ignatian spirituality, Doran provides an essential guide especially in the matter of dreams and discernment. Doran found himself more and more convinced that "a psychological understanding of the development and flow-ering of human affectivity., is pertinent to our spiritual self-understanding" (857). Both spirituality ("grace, the Review for Religious supernatural, self-denial, the following of Christ" [858]) and psychology are involved in the "realm of interiority," which is also the reahn of dreams and desire (500). "It is the task of spiritual theology," he says, "to mediate these two conceptual worlds [spirituality and psychology], the one with the other, by taking its stand in interior experi-ence, which is the dimension to which both sets of con-cepts refer if they are talking about anything real" (858). Doran emphasizes such a task because of what he has noticed as two severe problematic positions concerning the relation of spirituality and psychology. The first is "the reduction of spirituality to psychology" (857), and the second, "a tendency, once, perhaps, pronounced in Christian spirituality, [and] still to be found," divorces "spirituality from psychology so completely that discern-ment itself becomes impossible . Such an orientation, when put into practice, leads to a split consciousness and a compartmentalized life" (858). The tendency toward this second extreme, he thinks, is because of an ambiguity concerning, in particular, the work of Carl Jung. Here lies Doran's important contri-bution. He precisely identifies Jung's contributions to an Ignatian discernment of spirits, and he shows clearly where Jung failed to be true to his own scientific method. How Jung contributes to spirituality, he says, is rather by "helping us to recognize inordinate projections and disoriented affections, than in orienting us positively to the God of Christian faith and to Christ"; for, in this area of faith, "Jung, I find, is quite deficient, and his thought derails him from the appropriate orientation to the real-ity of God" (858). Doran emphasizes that, if it is clear where Jung's thought fails, Jung's con(ributions can be much more fruitfully employed. And so he elaborates with a special concern for how a false appropriation of Jung can seriously affect an authentic discernment of spirits: 66.1 2007 Jackson ¯ Dreams in Prayer and Discernment Jung's theological ambiguities, and the alternative inter-pretations and evaluations that are offered of his work, are symptomatic of an underlying spiritual conflict that can be mediated only in the context of the dialectic of grace and of sin, of the standards of Christ and of Satan. David Burrell has indicated correctly that one cannot fail to meet God if one goes on the inner journey to individuation. But one will also meet much that is not God and that is even opposed to God. Not only does Jung not help one to discriminate these forces as they operate in the psyche, but he also contributes to and even encourages the confusion that can be experienced in such moments that call for discernment, and thus mires one in the conflictual forces that wage an ultimate battle in the depths of one's psyche. Jung's work, if left uncriticized, leads one into a psychological cul-de-sac that can assume demonic proportions. (499) Jung sees the issue of good and evil as something to be reconciled within the self, rather than acknowledging that the problem of evil remains and is not within our capacity to resolve. The only. solution can come from redemption, and redemption can come only from God, and God's exis-tence, knowledge, ~nd goodness are offered to us to be accepted or rejected: If we accept it, [it] will involve us in a whole new area of growth and transformation, an area which we would not even know in any explicit way if God had not come to meet us. This distinct area of development is related to our cognitional and mora.1 development. It is not the product of our knowing and our choosing. It is not something that we vainly imagine, or that we produce by wishful thinking. Rather, it is offered to our knowl-edge and our freedom as a gift. (501) Our acceptance of this gift means we are in the realm of "faith, which Lonergan defines as 'the eye of love,' the eye of the love that is ours, that is the atmosphere in which we live, when we know ourselves as uncondition- Review for Religious ally loved by, and rooted in, the love that is God's alone" (501). Any true attentiveness to dreams must take place in this context, where, as Rahner knew well in the tradition of Aquinas, "even in the direct vision of God, God will remain for us an incomprehensible mystery" (858). Now more than ever in history, says Doran with Rahner and Lonergan in the tradition of Ignatius, Christians long to see God and to know that God is the mystery that engulfs them and also to know what they are knowing and feeling. This, says Doran, involves not only self-transcendence, "an accepting of God's offer of both salvation and vocation," but also self-appropriation, which "is a matter of self-knowledge, of self-discovery, of self-understanding" in this acceptance (504) and which also constitutes for the Christian a commitment to prayer and discernment. He says that some factors of modern life make this self-appropriation necessary. His reason for seeing dreams as an important component in prayer and discernment, especially the discernment of spirits, is that they involve feelings, and, applying Lonergan's thought in the tradition of Ignatius, he says: To name one's feelings is to discover the dynamic images, the symbols, that are associated with them. To have insight into one's feelings is to understand the symbolic association. To tell one's stoW is to narrate the course of one's elemental symbolizing. And where does one's elemental symbolizing occur in its purest form, untainted by the biases that, in waking life, can lead us to distort our stow? The place . . . is in our dreams. It is in the dream that we first are conscious, and it is in the dream that we find a "stow" going for-ward that we cannot distort without being aware that we are doing so. If we want to know our "story"--the story of insight, the story of judgment, the stoW of decision, and the stoW of prayer--we can find it in our dreams. There is a psychic conversion that puts us into contact with that stoW. It affects us deeply once it has 66.1 2007 Jackson ¯ Dreams in Prayer and Discernment occurred. For it enables us to judge ourselves in our waking life as authentic or inauthentic in our pursuit of understanding, in our seeking of truth, in our decisions, and in our search for God. (510) Dreams offer one way of being attentive to this mystery that is God. The dreams from the lives of the saints come to mind, and their careful, caring, detached attentiveness to them serves as a model for all Christians committed to a life of prayer and discernment. Since a way is clear for an authentic use of Jung's con-tributions concerning dreams, how such contributions can be employed in the service of prayer and discern-ment should be regularly considered and shared. Maureen Dreams offeron way of being at tentiVe . to this mystery that i God.:. Conroy RSM attends to this question and begins to answer it (by reflect-ing on anima and animus in relation to desolation) in the final pages of her book where she reflects on contemporary issues in the ministry of spiri-tual direction (236-238). First and perhaps most important in aiding "the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attach-ments" (SpEx ~5), dreams can invite people to notice whether anything other than God is at the center of their life. Dreams brought to discernment can serve as personal parables, offered intimately by the Lord for the discerner to explore. Conroy gives instances where discerners on their own initiative mentioned dreams in speaking of their prayer difficulties. In one case, the dream helped the discerner realize that she was "playing God" by try-ing to control the events of her life at the time (182-183). In another case, the dreamer felt wounded by someone he may have been trying to substitute for God, a situa- Review for Religious tion causing unrecognized angers inside him (232). Both Conroy and William Barry SJ (God and You, 52-53) note that such emotions can block prayer. The dreams, then, would be ways that the Holy Spirit invites us to bring our lives to Christ. Kelsey reminds us that dreams come as "receptions"; in the New Testament, visitations are generally received with some fear--and with the message "Don't be afraid" (173). Dreams may offer the gift of spiritual consolation. In the final chapter of his Weeds among the Wheat, Thomas Green SJ describes a woman's dream after the death of her husband, a dream that is clearly a spiritual consolation for her (163-164). In the "afterglow" of the consolation, "it seemed to her that this experience of God's love, of confident hope in bereavement, could not be merely for herself alone, and that it must be the Lord's intention that she write about it and thus provide hope and strength to others similarly bereaved" (165). As Kelsey recounts the dream of St. Thdr~se of Lisieux (God, Dreams, 164), it is clear that her dream, too, was a gift of consolation from the Lord. Dreams can beg contemporary pray-ers to be listen-ers. Attending to dreams requires making time for listen-ing, and, in a culture where people are not easily "hit over the head" with Scripture (Shannon 8), dreams can teach us how to be more receptive to God's word. "Authentic silence," Shannon says, "is pregnant with words that will be born at the right time" (3). Authentic listening is con-nected to authentic vision; both are arts we need to cul-tivate if we wish to be open to the Holy Spirit. As Jules Toner SJ says in his commentary on being open to the Holy Spirit in the Spiritual Exercises, "there is a factor in openness to the Holy Spirit which . . . is closely related to readiness to seek counsel . Sometimes, even with-out our noticing it, one or other of [our] prejudgments 66.1 2007 Jackson ¯ Dreams in Prayer and Discernment 28 can play a major role in blinding us to the evidence for the decision to which the Holy Spirit is leading us" (96). Being open to the "evidence" of our dreams, and pray-ing for this openness, are authentic ways of becoming genuine listeners and persons of vision in every aspect of our lives. Dreams also can teach us to trust in the Lord. With dreams as with other data from our lives that we bring to discernment or direction, there are times when we simply cannot see and do not have the answers. The data of a dream may simply be too confusing or unclear. At these times discerners must wait and trust in the Lord. A renewed attention to dreams in Christian prayer and discernment is a way of true responsiveness, especially for laypersons, to the church's call to an authentic obedience. Thomas Green says that "religious congregations' ideas of common life and obedience have often been distorted in such a way as to canonize the annihilation of personality" (38). In our day, prayerful exploring of dreams may be unique expressions of the life of the Spirit in the church. This can be a new way for the laity to participate more integrally in the life of the church, a wonderful oppor-t- unity for a new level of sharing gifts. At the same time, we continue to be called to greater participation in the life of Christ, who Willingly took the cross so that we might share in his resurrection. If a greater attentiveness to dreams in prayer and discernment is going to achieve anything, may it be to give greater glory to God through a radical participation in the life of him who gave himself for us. Bibliography Barry, William A., SJ. God and You: Prayer as a Personal Relationship. New York: Paulist, 1987. Conroy, Maureen, RSM. The Discer~ting Heart: Discovering a Personal God. Chicago: Loyola, 1993. Review for Religious Cooper, Michael, SJ. "A Spirituality of Balance." In Spirituality in Depth: Essays in Honor of Sister h'ene Dugan RC, ed. Avis Clendenen. New York: Chiron Publications, 2004. Doran, Robert M., SJ. "Jungian Psychology and Christian Spirituality: I, II, and III." Review for Religious 38 (1979): 497-510, 742-752, and 857-866 respectively. Empereur, James L., SJ. "Dreams." In The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993. Green, Thomas H., SJ. Weeds among the Wheat--Disce~vm~ent: Where Prayer and Action Meet. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1984. Kelsey, Morton T. God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991. Shannon, William A. Seeking the Face of God. New York: Crossroad, 1988. Toner, Jules, sJ. Discerning God's Will: Ignatius of Loyola's Teaching on Christian Decision Making. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1991. Reflection/Discussion Questions 1. What does it mean for me to listen to my dreams? 2. Have I had the experience of a dream influencing a significant change or decision in my life? What were the circumstances? 3. Can I relate to the statement "Dreams may offer the gift of spiritual consolation"? If so, let me review the experience. 66.1 2007 RENEE MIRKES Confessions of a Franciscan Ethicist perspectives Confessions are never easy. Typically, the stage is set by a .collage of eye-openers. In my case, the events that propelled me headlong into this pub-lic disclosure are interlaced with the common thread of what-it-means-to-be-a-Franciscan. First, some while ago, a new acquaintance of mine innocently asked, with clearly spoken ital-ics, "So, what's it like to be a Franciscan ethi-cist?" Second, for the last fifteen years or more I, together with all the members of my religious congregation, have been encouraged to immerse myself in, and be formed by, not only the ideals and vision of St. Francis of Assisi, but also the eponymous religious tradition fathered by him. And, third, while reading several months ear-lier Cardinal Ratzinger's 1996 address critiqu-ing moral relativism, I was revisited by an old uneasiness.~ I kept asking myself: Are you suffer- Ren6e Mirkes OFS, a Franciscan" Sister of Christian Charity, is ethics director at Paul Vl Institute; 6901 Mercy Road; Omaha, Nebraska 68106. Review for Religious ing from some kind of Franciscan schizophrenia or what? My difficulty, in a nutshell, was this. From one side, I was perfectly at peace with the fact that new pope's exposition confirmed me in the way I help my clients, students, and readers to identify the fallacies of moral subjecfivism. But, from another side, I was unsettled by realizing that my way, like the pope's, was not Franciscan in approach but Dominican and Thomistic. The first incident urges me to confess--t0 acknowl-edge- that until I was questioned I honestly never thought of making a practical connection between being an ethicist and being a Franciscan. The second experience encourages me to confess--t0 declare my si,l or failing--that I have dragged my feet when expressly recalling how Franciscan spirituality actually shapes the here-and-now manner in which I "do" ethics. The third episode prompts me to confess--t0 admit my belief--that Franciscans and Dominicans can learn a .lot from each other, specifically from the charisms of their respective traditions. For the details of this tripartite confession (and a summary critique of moral relativism to boot), I invite you to read on. I confess that I previously neglected to give seri-ous thought to whether my being a Franciscan could affect my ethics work. Learning from the lessons of life is a lot about making connections. And making con-nections is all about understanding what things mean. Before facing the question I began.with, I confess that "Franciscan" is not on.e of the adjectives I routinely used to describe my avocation. I was a Catholic ethicist; I was a Christia~? philosopher; I was an ethicist who is a vowed re/igio~ts. But I had just not taken that seemingly small step toward saying--and comprehending what it means to say--that I am a Francisca~z ethicist. In other words, before I did some careful analysis of the matter, being a 66.1 2007 Mirkes ¯ Confessions of a Franciscan Ethicist Franciscan was just a footnote of, rather than organically related to, my work as a vowed religious ethicist. So, wittingly or unwittingly, the questioner forced me to confront a real hiatus in my thinking and action. Why did I fail to connect the dots of being a Christian, an ethicist, and a Franciscan? The longer I thought about it, the more deeply convinced I became that the crux of my problem was not a rift between my avocation and vocation but my intellectual failure to link my Christian and consecrated-life vocations to my Franciscan calling. I was letting my Franciscan identity wither, and so it was not having its full effect on my life and apostolic work. Lacking attention from me, it was overshadowed by my Christian and religious vocations, becoming a dim sem-blance of what it should have been. Suddenly all those instructions I had received before and during my formation began flowing through my mind. To live as a Franciscan is to respond to Christ's call to follow him, to follow the universal call to holiness, the call I received at my baptism, the call to live and think with the church. To be a Franciscan sister is to incarnate the gospel life that inspired Francis to total discipleship through the vows: ."go and sell," "take nothing along," and "deny yourself." Hence, distinct but interrelated com-ponents simultaneously guide my following of Christ. I have dedicated myself to the evangelical call to holiness, to the long church tradition that draws on prayer and the authentic sources of Christian spirituality, on the recent instructions of the church on the vowed life, and on the particular lifestyle proposed by St. Francis of Assisi. There it was: the proper frame within which I could think anew about being Franciscan in my work as a Christian ethicist. And, for me, seeing Franciscan identity against its proper background was to understand, as if for the first time, its close relationship to my Christian and Review for Religious consecrated vocations. Within this frame, I understood why being a Franciscan is essential in my avocation, my vowed life's apostolic mission to be a Catholic ethicist. I confess that I had never given serious thought to the manner in which being Franciscan did, does, and will affect the way I do ethics. I am confessing here my past failure to explicitly recall the leaven of Franciscan values in the dough of my apostolic service. You see, I had forgotten to note their here-and-now effect, not so much on the content and method of my profes-sional activities, but on the style, manner, and spirit in which I do my work. Once I had explicitly adverted to that leaven, however, I realized I had here a virtu- '.tion on.,[rn .,iFra ci can Values ever more ous circle. Frequent meditation on my Franciscan values fostered an ever more Franciscan self. The more spirited my Franciscan heart, the greater likelihood its values-- continual conversion, poverty, humble "minority," and prayer--would be evident to those I serve.2 First, take the Franciscan charism of pove~-ty. Where every consecrated religious takes vows to live as the poor, chaste, and obedient Christ lived, followers of Francis embrace his special love for poverty. Note that, for il Poverello (the little poor one), poverty was a code word for living the gospel. As such, the vow encompassed not merely being monetarily and materially poor but also the more demanding challenge of imitating the kenosis, the radical self-emptying, of Jesus. For Franciscans, then, special esteem for the vow of poverty means asking for the grace to be formed into the image of the Servant- Lord who washed the feet of his disciples and gave up his 66.1 2007 Mirkes ¯ Confessions of a Franciscan Etbicist life out of love for sinners. For this Franciscan, then, the ethics consults that are "baked in the cake" of my every-day service afford me the precious gift of correcting and encouraging, praying with and, yes, sometimes sharing a good cry with, my clients, moving them ever more surely, moral choice by moral choice, toward their ultimate end of the Good. I frequently remind those who consult me that, because their love of the Truth and the Good is so profound, our exchange puts me in their debt. Indeed, these consultations provide me and them the double blessing of serving Christ in each other. Second, while every religious order requires its mem-bers to conform to Christ by living virtuously, Francis put humilit.y at the top of his list. Imitating Francis, I am called to give first place to the truth about myself as well as my abilities. The former lets me see that God can sing through this poor instrument as long as it is emptied of self; the latter helps me to know that all is gift. While it is true that God has blessed me with the ability to inspire people in their pursuit of the Good, I pray that my being a Franciscan shines through in the way I respond to acco-lades. After a lecture, for example, I always, but always, turn people to the real source of their inspiration: "Oh, I am so pleased you were moved by the truth of Humanae vitae! Isn't it a powerful document?" or "I see that the wisdom and holiness of Edith Stein really spoke to you. Thank God for the living witness of his saints." Third, all religious congregations encourage living in community as an explicit way to serve fellow religious and strengthen them in their service of the larger society. But Francis wanted friars and sisters to be minores, persons who lived together and claimed no special rule or domi-nation or power over anyone. Striving for that attitude as an ethics consultant, lecturer, and teacher, I provide knowledge and advice not in an imperative or domineer- Review for Religious ing way, not in a manner that makes nay moral authority felt, but in a way that appeals to the freedom and dignity of others. In doing so, I reflect and "preach" the value of "minority" by being submissive to those I serve for the sake of God. Fourth, where the church has always encouraged reli-gious to a deep conversion and self-emptying, St. Francis insisted that penance/continual conversion take primacy of place in the mindset and practice of his followers. Pursuant to a Franciscan vocation, the disposition of metanoia means letting one-self be totally cap-tured by Christ. It means unremitting movement toward the Good and avoid-ance of evil. These are the very desires I continually try to foster in those I serve. Frequently I exhort couples, "You will be tempted to give up, to cease wanting to convert to the Lord in the midst of challenging procreative issues. But resist the quick fix 'solutions' of contraception, ster-ilization, abortion, and IVF. The trade-off for expediency in these matters is an attenuated spousal relationship, a weakened family bond, and lost opportunities to lay down one's life for the other out of love." Finally, from his lived experience of the gospel, Francis understood that love must include mission. To demonstrate this he turns our attention to Mary, the per-fect disciple. Francis's way of being Marian was to emu-late the boundless love of Mary for her Son, love which flowed into the spiritual and corporal works of mer#. . Francis God ~ombats evil through holy~,-rn~n and: women, ~ ,.~.aro~gh tho~ who are dedicated 66.1 2007 Mirkes ¯ Confessions of a Franciscan Etbicist encourages every follower of his to frequently recall the scene of Mary standing beneath the cross, standing in the center of the struggle between good and evil, reminding all--but especially a female Franciscan ethicist like me-- that God combats evil through holy men and women, through those who are dedicated to instructing the ignorant by teaching morality. I confess my belief that today's moral climate requires me to morph into a hybrid ethicist: a Franciscan-Thomist. Recall that my uneasiness with the pope's response to moral relativism was largely because his position--and mine--were in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition rather than in the Franciscan tradition. If we had sought a Franciscan answer, it would have come from Bonaventure or his theological successors, Duns Scotus or William of Ockham. Had these men fought a heresy of relativism in their day, they would characteristically have appealed to a voluntarist solution. That is, the best way to avoid the errors of relativism comes from the Platonic way of understanding universal truth, namely, participation in innate ideas. In sum, to avoid the intellectual pride all too easily associated with philosophical speculation, these Franciscan theologians would have insisted that people do best by simply submitting their wills to the universal moral truth brokered by the church's magisterium. The Franciscan/Augustinian solution to moral relativism, then, would not have included rational arguments that yield a reason why people should submit their wills to the church's objective moral teaching.3 Against this background, I take personal solace from a central theme of the pope's theology (which is Augustinian, after all): the need to return to reason as a first step in combating moral relativism. The pope proposes, not naked reason, but reason purified by faith--or clarified by the God who is Logos, who is reason and the Word. A Review for Religious faith that opens people to the living God "liberates reason from its blind spots" so it can be "more fully itself.''4 Implicit in Benedict xvI's critique of relativists--those who contend that judgments about good or bad, right or wrong, are time-and-circumstance matters of personal opinion--is his reliance on Aquinas's philosophical vision of human nature and its transcultural basic needs.5 Since all persons unhampered by ideology, bias, or intellectual sloth can see that these natural needs/goods apply to every human being irrespective of time and culture, they should also agree that these goods ought always be pursued and honored and never denied or suppressed. With these objective human goods in mind, one can set up a series of syllogisms whose conclusions define them as objectively true and universally normative--employ-ing a first premise that has the certitude of self-evident truth and a second premise that cites an observed datum about human nature.6 The following example focuses on the human good of life. First premise: self-evidently, all human beings ought to do all those things and only those things that are really good for them. Second premise: as experience demonstrates, being alive is really good for human beings. Conclusion: every human being ought to seek life and vitality. When we apply this syllogistic argument to other human goods such as wealth, family, procreation, friends, society, play, and the higher goods of wisdom, worship, and contemplation, a set of goods emerges that is not relativist, that is, good for this or that person because of his or her desires or cultural pref-erences, but objectivist and universal, that is, good for all human beings whatever the time and circumstances. Furthermore, since all human beings have a right to this set of real goods, they also have a duty to require legisla-tures and judiciaries to enact and uphold laws forbidding their destruction or suppression. 66.1 2007 Mirkes * Confessions of a Franciscan Ethicist Pope Benedict XVI understands why a Dominican and Thomist solution to moral relativism is the way to go. It offers a discussion matrix within which to address the many fellow pilgrims of his who, by dint of being mari-nated in the skepticism and moral relativism of our day, require cogent persuasiveness for submitting to universal moral norms. And so I must be Aristotelian and Thomist in the content of my moral methods, all the while endeav-oring to have the Franciscan spirit shine through the way I do ethics.7 To conclude, then, I need only repeat my opening statement: "Confessions are never easy." But I can honestly add that this tripartite confession has con-tributed mightily to the lived mission of this Christian, religious, and F~:anciscan ethicist. Notes ~ Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today," available through http://www.ewtn.com. See also The Ratzhlger Repo~7 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985); Priuciples of Christian Morality (Ignatius Press, German 1975, English 1986); Without Roots (New York: Basic Books, 2006), and Values in a Time of Upheaval (Ignatius Press, 2006). 2 For an historical analysis of Franciscan charisms, I recommend an article by Raffaele Pazzelli TOR on Franciscan spirituality at www.fran-ciscanfriarstor. com/vocations. Mso the commentary at another section of the same website: www.franciscanfriarstor.com/resources. -~In the 13th century, the Dominican Albert the Great produced vast commentaries on Aristotle. In them Albert took full account of the work of the great Aristotelian translator and commentator Averroes (Ibn Rushd), while not neglecting to cgrrect his anti-Christian errors, hnportantly, Mbert began to clarify, why Aristotle criticized Plato. The latter had a dualistic notion of the human person that made a correct theory of the human body impossible. It was, however, only with Albert's pupil Thomas Aquinas that this point was fully developed. Unfortunately, Aquinas's work got confused with Averroism in the list of propositions condemned by the archbishop of Paris in 1277. As a result the Franciscans thought it best to retain their dedication to St. Augustine and to minimize the influ-ence of philosophy on theology. This is evident in the great works of St. Bonaventure, who tended to think of philosophy as a pagan tradition and Review for Religious strove to keep theology free of the errors of that tradition. Later Blessed John Duns Scotus and V~illiam of Ockham made more use of Aristotle, hut still remained skeptical of the power of human reason. Consequently--and tragically--the Franciscan and Dominican traditions were never recon-ciled. Ockham became a Nominalist and finally schismatic, and his distrust of reason to prove the existence of God was basic to Luther's thought and the split in the church brought about in the Protestant Reformation. 4 Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §29. SMortimer Adler, Adler's Philosophical Dictionary (New York: Touchstone Books, 1995), p. 13. Perhaps the most egregious example of judicial moral relativism is encapsulated in the opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: "At the heart of liberty, is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of the meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." (' Mortimer Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes (New York: Touchstone Books, 1985), p. 126. Y The Franciscan tradition has made great theological contributions to the church: the understanding of the doctrine of Mary's Assumption, St. Bonaventure's reflection of the Trinity. in creation, remarkable advances in natural science in the 14th and 15th centuries, and influential tracts on spirituality. On the other hand, as regards the theology of the body and virtue theory in ethics, the Dominican Thomas Aquinas has been con-stantly praised as the Common Doctor of the church. Since I work princi-pally in bioethics, I use his contribution and assimilate it to my Franciscan tradition in a harmonious, and not merely eclectic way. I encourage more Franciscans to do research in this field. Franciscan humility, it seems to me, demands as much. 66.1 2007 COLLEEN MARY MALLON Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue To recent experiences frame my reflection on pe in a global world. Recently, as part of a theo-logical update program for our diocese, I spoke on the Spirit and the chui'ch, focusing on themes that emerge from Yves Congar's great work I Believe in the Holy Spirit. Following the presentations, a number of the participants told of having new sources of hope opened up to them. I, too, was struck by the longing of these faith-filled minis-ters to connect to a vital and vibrant hope, to be deeply, ecclesia@ alive in the Spirit, and to share that life with others. There were charisms in that room that, wisely nurtured and supported, could set the diocese ablaze with the Spirit. Clearly, the desert is seeded; with more water, what a riot of flowers there would be. My second experience comes from St. John's University in New York, where I teach the introductory Colleen Mary Mallon OP first presented this essay as a talk on 21 April 2006 at Molloy College's Women of Spirit symposium. She is assistant professor of theology and religious studies at St. John's University; 8000 Utopia Parkway; Jamaica, New York 11439. Review for Religious course in theology. Early in the semester the students discuss Marcus Borg's explication of religious faith. Borg speaks about faith as assensus, intellectual affirmation, fiducia, complete trust, fidelitas, loyalty, and visio, how a person perceives the world from the perspective of faith.~ In each class the difficulty is not faith as trust or loyalty; it is faith as vision. Their vision of faith is stymied by the suffering, the struggle, and the pain that they encounter in the world. At best they hold a cautious hope that God might be at work in it all, but for most of them we live in a thoroughly indifferent universe. The fundamental faith/ hope in a gracious universe is all but nonexistent. These experiences press me to reexamine my own sources and senses of hope. With what theological visio do I see the present moment? How do I bear witness to gospel hope in these times: war in Iraq, worldwide trafficking of women and children, irruption of sectar-ian violence, the ever escalating divide between the have-mores and have-nots, the continuation of white privilege. And, closer to the bone, how do I claim a gospel hope in a church beset by the scandals of abuse and neglect, by clericalism, and by the antipathies of diverse members of the Body of Christ. My search for a response to these questions brought me back into the work and thinking of the French Dominican theologian and ecclesiologist Yves Congar. His experience of intense social, political, and ecclesial upheaval tempered his own sober confidence in the church as the continuing event of Jesus Christ in the world. I believe his perspective brings gospel hope and historical reality into a fertile, albeit tensive, dynamic. He and other French Dominicans contributed in no small way to the refashioning of theology in the 20th century. Their pertinence to wise theological vision in a global world is not to be overlooked. Using a feminist methodology which asserts that 66.1 2007 Mallon ¯ Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue "God is be discovered in human experience," let us look at the hungers and obstacles that we face at this time both as individuals and as members of a diverse and complex Christian tradition.2 Seeking what the Divine Presence desires of us at this time is, I believe, the very stuff of engaged discipleship. Discerning how contradictions and struggles mark our ecclesial experiences calls for both vir-rue and skill. I propose that the virtue is hope and that the skills include practices and behaviors that witness to our hope and even expand the horizon of our own gospel faith. If we listen carefully to what lies beneath our experiences so as to attend to the Mystery--infinitely beyond and yet intimately present to our present--we may encounter, even in "the incomplete" and "the lack," a power and a grace worthy of our freedom. I want to sketch a little more thoroughly thesigns of these global times and then turn to Yves Congar for his theological vision, for how it may inspire hope in the church today. The Signs of These Global Times There is no lack of scholarly analysis of globalization and the religious questions that emerge from the unprec-edented movement of people, ideas, and commodities.3 I want to look at the challenges that living in "glocal" presents.4 The anthropologist Roland Robertson uses the term "glocal" for the juncture where the global and local meet.5 Our contemporary experience of this global-local situation is a significant historical factor in our lives today. This is where we discern signs of the times and make decisions as disciples of Jesus. The theologian David Tracy is famous for the claim that we live in an age that cannot name itself.6 Our global-human existence contains such conflicting world-views that no one way, no single story, can hold us as a human family. Moreover, the very stories that perceive Review for Religious individuals and communities in significant patterns have become mobile. Peoples once geographically distinct are now mixing, interacting, and living in patterns that may be completely foreign to their nextdoor neighbor. Sociologists and anthropologists tell us that we, as global residents, are experiencing "flows" of people, resources, and information in ways never before experienced on the planet.7 Dual factors, media and migration, cause the global experience of compression and expansion? We experience global compression whenever we become aware of the nar-rowed space between once distant geographic entities. Exotic strangers now live close to each other in global cities that have drawn peoples together for a host of different reasons: as tourists, as migrant workers, as refugees, as executive elites. Globalization is reshaping our economic, political, and cultural worlds, and this brings a variety of ways of perceiving and evaluating the production of today's tech-nologically sophisticated societies.9 The flow of the classic Enlightenment notions of "democracy," "freedom," and "sovereignty" into new global spaces stirs in them new instances of these Western ideas. What would "democ-racy" look like for women'in a predominantly Shiite Iraq? What does the "sovereignty" of a Palestinian state, led by a newly elected Hamas government, mean for the established national states of the world? In truth, there is no longer one kind of modernity; many modernities are competing around the globe.~° These observations point to the growing tension between the global and the local which Roland Robertson describes as the "contemporary manifestation of the universal-particular dilemma.''~1 We 66.1 2007 Mallon ¯ Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue live in a world where we truly grasp universals (such as freedom, peace, prosperity) only in particular instances. And there seems to be no end of particulars; we keep discovering uniqueness, singularities, and individualities. We have come to accept, in a sense, one universal: that there are limitless particularities.~2 As Christians we recognize something of this dilemma in the wide range of our ecclesial experiences: the rise of local, base communities of gospel reflection, the renewed focus on particular denominational identities (what does it mean to be a Catholic college or university or hospital?), young people's search for their Christian identity, the rise of religious fundamentalism. Even the concerns regarding the proper role of local episcopal conferences expresses this global-local tension. The question of subsidiarity and collegiality is a much different question today than it was forty years ago at Vatican II. The experience of great diversity raises new questions about the "taken-for-grantedness" of the underlying unity of humanity. Various interpretative frameworks and femi-nist, postcolonial, and postmodern sensibilities foster a new global consciousness of "the other" and "difference." Indigenous stories, newly valorized, emerge on the global scene and inspire local resistance to ideas from outside; these "new primordialisms," freshly reshaped and refash-ioned cultural identities, whet deep appetites for mean-ing and consequence that seemingly transcend, for some people, their own existence.~3 Suicide bombers testify in ways we never expected to the power of meaning in human lives. Disconnected in their storied worlds from wider significance, people become anxious, aggravated, even deadly. New claims for authoritative traditions raise all sorts of questions about identity and symbols and whether our belonging to a particular group prohibits other kinds of Review for Religious belonging. It is in these particularisms that we often expe-rience the tensions of our ecclesial life. Can I be a Catholic and a Democrat? Can I be a feminist and "pro-life"? Like the world we are inescapably a part of, our ecclesial iden-tifies feel the pressure of the global-local predicament and challenges to past certitudes. As these new horizons open, our shared understandings of the gospel cross over into disputed spaces of lived experiences. Within those spaces there appears to be diminishing tolerance among us. Our particular community niche imposes limits on both our imaginations and our practices of tolerance. Many within the church find it increasingly difficult to engage in civil conversations across the wide diversity of perspectives. As the theologian Joseph Komonchak noted in an address to the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, "to judge from a few Internet discussions., many Catholics could learn a thing or two about elementary courtesy, about how to listen and how to speak, about give and take.''14 What hope can we have for a truly "catholic" future when our practice of dialogue mirrors the enclave mentality of our global world? Yves Congar's Incarnational Approach What might a thoroughly 20th-century, white, European, friar-preacher and theologian offer in support of hope in these times? Congar's incarnational, historical approach to theology certainly contributed to the theol-ogy in his day. Early in his theological vocation, Congar understood that he was called to serve the unity of a pain-fully divided Christian community.is Within this call grew his conviction that the dominant mode of doing theology was unnecessarily abstract and all too disconnected from the lives of ordinary people.16 His approach to theology developed from his fraternal relationships with Marie Dominic Chenu and Henri Ma]'ie Feret. Living and 66.1 2007 Mallon * Reclaiming Hope, Recovetqng Dialogue teaching at the French Dominican studium Le SaulchoiT; these three Dominicans plotted the demise of what they called "baroque theology." Congar recalls a particular day when they conceived of a research project on the history of theology. One day, chatting at the entrance of the old Saulchoi,; we found ourselves in profound accord--at once intel-lectual, vital, and apostolic--on the idea of undertaking a "liquidation of baroque theology." This was a moment of intense and total spiritual union . It was not a question of producing something negative: the rejections were only the reverse of aspects that were more positive. One day the balance will be drawn up, but already the positive quality can be sensed. What would a little later be called "ressourcement" was then at the heart of our efforts. It was not a matter either of mechanically replac-ing some theses by other theses or creating a "revolu-tion" but of appealing, as P4guy says, from one tradition less profound to another more profound.~7 This historical approach, learned at Le Saulchoh" and prac-ticed throughout his life, allowed Congar to develop a theology that was more deeply rooted in revelation and at the same time open to the pressing questions of the 20th century.~s It is Congar's approach to revelation that I believe is a critical point of departure. Many theologians regard Congar as the foremost expert on the Christian tradition, and anyone engaged in a theology of tradition cannot pro-ceed without Congar. Some contemporary scholars have noted that, while Congar's view of tradition is stunningly comprehensive, it lacks a necessary attention to the way in which meaning and power are inexorably intertwined. One theologian calls Congar's approach highly idealistic.~9 I have wrestled with this critique because, in some sense, it is a legitimate one. Clearly, Congar missed the post-modern critique of power/knowledge, and his very small Review for Religious reflections on women in relation to ministry and God-language betray his incomplete grasp of feminist concerns and questions.2° I do believe, however, that Congar's intu-ition concerning revelation and history is still significant because it is a profoundly catholic intuition. By this I mean that part of Congar's genius is his confi-dence in the fertile ground found at the intersection of the gospel and the ultimate concerns of people. As I read his theological project, I believe that the starting point of the-ology for Congar is the God-human relationship. Only in and through this relation-ship is knowledge of God possible: a relationship initiated and realized in history, in specific bodies, within unique and diverse human cultures. To make the God-human relation-ship the starting point ointp theologyfor Congar is the ,;, !GOd h :r an Telationship. of theology is to refuse to dissolve the tension between transcendence and immanence; it is, in fact, to claim that tension is integral to our graced existence in this world, in these bodies, at this time in history. I believe that this is a remarkable source of hope for us today. The mind-numb-ing, spirit-quenching materialism of much of our world has laid us low. Our own mystery as beings-made-for-love-and- truth is threatened by the pervasive consumerism that warps our sense of what it means to be human and happy. Our wishes are marketed to us as needs, things we lack are represented to us as inalienable rights, our unwise choices are blindly considered joys of freedom. The God-human Relationship To make the God-human relationship the starting point of our reflection is to reclaim both history and mys- 66.1 2007 Mallon ¯ Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue tery, and to do so in a way that is not naively romantic nor overconfident either, overreaching our finitude as crea-tures. If we allow materialism to flatten our perceptions, we lose the .meanings and values that animate our worlds of sight and sound, the very worlds through which the Divine Life communicates. In the words of Congar, "the regenerative power that will finally operate is already at work in our world, transiently, precariously, fragmentarily, and generally unperceived.''2~ This power is nothing less than the life of God poured out so that all may have life in its fullness (Jn 10:10). The "good news" manifest in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus makes explicit this divine intention for all creation, overcoming every possible alienation, division, obstacle, and separation. For Congar, this is the heart of the incarnation. God's involvement with creation is utterly personal and pro-foundly existential. "God is not the 'eternal celibate of the centuries,' but love and goodness," who creates beings "animate[d] . . . with a movement and., a desire that is an echo in them of [God's] own desire . . . revealed to us as [God's] spirit.''22 48 The Gift and Task of Discipleship For Congar, we cannot speak properly of the human outside the graced relationship that has called all creation into existence for the divine purposefulness that is agapic love. To be human is to have as gift what grace alone brings to completion.23 For Christians, the deepest, truest realization of the project called "humanity" is in receiving the embrace of a Trinity-imbued life; nothing less than the Word and the Spirit continue to effect the fulfillment of "all things in God.''24 And this fulfillment is not some-thing abstract or ethereal. "The Spirit makes it possible for us to know, recognize, and experience Christ. This is not simply a doctrinal statement. It is an existential reality Review for Religious which comes from a gift and involves us in our lives.''2s Our lives, lived Godward, immerse us in the Christian mystery that is simultaneously a gift received and a task entrusted. For Congar, the gift character of Christian life lies in Jesus' mystery becoming our mystery.-'6 Our immer-sion into Christ makes us new creation, or, as Joseph Komonchak says, "Faith discloses a new world of great depth and breadth and a new self within it.''27 In a global world where the media and the Internet hawk lifescripts to eager, vulnerable consumers, we must not lose sight of the liberating gift disclosed in Jesus; we must never forget Jesus' attractiveT~ess. Through his life, death, and resurrection, we encounter the agapic love that alone is worthy of our freedom. Moreover, we touch upon what Gustavo Gutidrrez has called the first step of all theo-logical reflection: adoration.28 The gift character of our discipleship opens us to God's utterly gratuitous love for all creation. Our only adequate response is the searingly silent gratitude of the mystic heart. To be found by this love is to find ourselves in a new relationship with all of reality, and to allow it to govern our existence both individually and communally, as both mystery and history. The gift given in revelation and received in our very being discloses to us the potential within all creation. We can only know a small part of this all-surpassing gift, but the task entrusted to us, to realize the potential of our graced existence, is of utmost importance for humanity. Our global-local world teaches us that particularity counts, that only in the bodies and histories and cultures of actual, unique persons can the transformation of the whole happen. The gift inspires the task. The gift of God's agapic love points and directs us towards the places where mercy, peace, justice, and reconciliation ache to be realized. Our 66.1 2007 Mallon ¯ Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue hope does not lie in some perfect world without the great risks that our freedom in history poses. Our hope lies in our unflinching reliance on the gift of the Spirit as we humbly and confidently put our freedom at the service of in some perfect wqrld without the great risks our freedom in history po eS.- the Love that has called us into existence. We recognize today, more than any other time, just how difficult that is. Our freedoms are conditioned by diverse worlds of meaning, some of which do not easily or comfortably coexist. We acknowledge an exasperating pluralism: global technologies that isolate just as much as they bridge. What ways of being disciples might help our hope and deepen Love's grasp, of our lives? Can diverse Christian reflections on the meaning of Jesus speak to each other? Can we practice curiosity and abstain from obstinate judgments? To imagine our discipleship as gift and task in a global world demands, I believe, a new asceticism that curbs our penchant to overindulge in communities of like-mindedness, that calls us to be different from nar-rowly framed groups around us, that calls us to the hard work of dialogical communion, expressed in new practices of ecclesial hospitality. The Task of Dialogical Communion There are behaviors and skills that can show widely that "the regenerating power that will finally operate is already at work in our world." There are disciplines that, if embraced, can witness to human life as dialogical communion. The diversity of the cosmos is authored and authorized by the Source of all life, in whose Mystery Review for Religious diversity poses no threat to unity. In the divine economy, unity stimulates diversity. The gift inspires the task. Dialogical communion challenges us to attend to how the Spirit continues to communicate God's life in and through our historical unity, a unity that is more than mere uniformity. Emerging from enclave mentalities into the liminal spaces of dialogue is, indeed, risky, business. Transgressing the boundaries of worlds of shared commitments and understandings takes great courage, and not only because of the encounter with difference. In a recent talk at St. John's University, Gerry Adams, leader of the Sein Fein party, spoke of the Irish Peace Process. The single most important element of the peace process, according to Adams, is dialogue: getting people to step out of their hard-fought divisions and to speak to each other. But Adams insists that the hardest dialogue is not with the perceived enemy; it is with your own group. Transgressing the boundaries of our habitation disturbs our communi-ties of like-mindedness. We put our identity at risk; our loyalties may be questioned; we may seem to have lost our regard for once-shared values and visions; we may be accused of undermining the very distinctiveness of our group. And we may become agents of change: midwives to the gestating life of redeemed humanity. If our diversity is no mistake, if our global-human condition confronts us, not only with challenges, but with the deep truth that our differences and particularities are the only way we have to express our essential humanity, then we will have to practice a new ldnd of countercultur-alism. When we become aware that the very diversity that delights God troubles and disturbs us, we have stepped into a moment ripe for conversion. I have the privilege of being a board member of the Parable Conference, an organization whose purpose is to make space for dialogue 66.1 2007 Mallon ¯ Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue Embracing the task Of_ dialogical commun_ion mopes us from false impressions and prejudgment~ to respect and curiosity. among all the branches of the Dominican family in the United States. No other entity for that dialogue exists in the United States. I remember the moment when I saw how mistaken my perceptions of the Dominican laity were. My prejudgment was an obstacle mercifully revealed and dispelled by new relationships with women and men whose embrace of the Dominican charism is truly inspiring. The Parable Conference struggles to keep the dia-logue alive among U.S. Dominicans; it is not an easy task. Ideology, apathy, and enmity challenge our attempts to be in authentic communion across the wide scope of the Dominican .family. Yet the very existence of this group is a good example of the order's preaching charism. Without the witness of an actual, historical community struggling to hold and engage the truths emerging from diverse God experiences, our words are empty and ~ our witness a mere shadow of what it could be. Embracing the task of dia-logical communion moves us from false impressions and prejudgments to respect and curiosity. In a contentiously divided global world, the practice of dialogical commu-nion bears witness every time we risk the hospitable effort to "make space" for each other. In his book Exc&sion and Embrace, the Lutheran theo-logian Miroslav Volf writes, "The will to give ourselves to others and 'welcome them,' to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment., except that of identifying them in their humanity.''29 When I attended Good Friday services last April, I observed a Review for Religious couple in the pew ahead of me struggle to "make space." It was an odd scene, because clearly there was enough space for everyone in the pew. For some reason, however, the woman-already-seated would not move all the way over; when another couple arrived, they had to practically sit on each other. I waited, thinking she would see the problem and adjust, move over just a bit more. No. She looked, made a fussy little head movement, and remained; eventually the intruding couple sat elsewhere. Then she moved over! Now there was plenty of space, and a few minutes later two others filled the pew. Why is it so hard to make space? Why is hospitality so difficult at times? I do not pretend to have a simple answer. I only know that there is a simple answer, and that this incident serves as a parable about the demands of dialogical communion. We need to secure a place where dialogue can happen. We have to cultivate the skills and disciplines that allow for the dignified existence of oth-ers. Without this space we risk the loss of real encounter and the grace it may hold for us. We lose an opportunity to witness to an authentic faith-filled visit, a gospel hope worthy of our fragile freedom. Congar reminds us that theology is not a deadly repetition of neatly worked out dogmatic statements. Disconnected from the existential reality of "someone's living thought," theology "will not bear its fruit.''3° We stand in danger, today, of losing that precious space where we respectfully, thoughtfully, and critically engage the "living thought" of someone else. Dialogical communion might be thought of as the inten-tional practice of hospitality towards those with whom we may not fully agree, or simply do not understand. People securing space for the complex and contrasting truths that emerge from deep diversities are signs of these times: "deep diversity" calls for an equally deep curiosity.3! 66.1 2007 Mallon ¯ Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue If our starting point remains the God-human rela-tionship, then we will be convinced that Mystery touches us only in history. The truth that embraces us in each encounter with the God of life is one, but its manifesta-tions are multiple. Indeed, genuine engagement of the God-human relationship continues to yield wise and chal-lenging expressions of Christian discipleship: the irrup-tion of the poor into history and the holistic vision of the reign of God as presented in theologies of libera-tion, the gospel reflection of women bringing forth new constructive theologies and the prophetic link with eco-logical consciousness and responsibility, the theologies of human rights that seek out space where diverse religions may work together for peace and the dignity of human life, and the emerging reflection on the other face of rac-ism, namely, white privilege and continuing exclusion of people of color. These truths of discipleship call us to examine anew the precious gift of our graced and historically precarious human existence. They call for a deeper asceticism and humility; they inspire a wondrous reverence for God and a curiosity about the things of God. They invite us to sus-pend our judgments so as to make space for each other and, in the very act of "maki~g space," encounter the God, who does more in us and with us than we can ask or imag-ine (Ep 3:20). "Making space" may well be the greatest and most fruitful spiritual discipline we can practice as a global church so as to be genuinely attentive to the Spirit in a world newly awakened to its divinely conceived diversity. Hope lies in our courageous and sober confidence in the Spirit's power to bring all that is God's to fullness. In the spaces where fragile human hearts meet the Love and Truth that alone overcomes all alienation, there is the hope for a different kind of history, a different kind of humanity. The gift inspires the task. Shall we take up the task? Review for Religious Notes ~ Marcus Borg, "Faith: The \a, ray of the Heart," in The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 25-42. 2 Mary Catherine Hilkert, "Tradition and Experience," in Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 60. 3 For an overview of the many facets of the phenomenon of glo-balization, see The Globalization Reader; ed. Frank J. Lechner and John Boli (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000), and Patrick O'Meara, Howard D. Mehlinger, and Matthew Krain, eds., Globalization and the Challenges of a New Centmy: A Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). 4 See Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997). s Roland Robertson, "Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity- Heterogeneity," in Global Mode, v,ities, ed. Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (London: SAGE, 1995). ~ David Tracy, On Naming the Present (New York: Orbis Books, 1994), p. 3. 7 See in particular Arjun Appadarai's seminal essay "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," in Mode~vtity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1996), pp. 27-47. s See in particular Robert Schreiter, "Globalization and the Contexts of Theology," in his New Catboliciq, pp. 1-27. 9 See Saskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobiliq of People and Money (New York: New Press, 1998). ~0 Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmode~ism, and Identity (London: SAGE Publications, 1995). ~ Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: SAGE Publications, 1992), p. 100. 1, As Roland Robertson expresses it, "there is virtually no limit to particularity, to uniqueness, to difference, to otherness." Robertson, Globalization, p. 102. ~3 See in particular Benedict Anderson, hnagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationali.~n (London: Verso, 1991). ~4 Joseph Komonchak, "Is Christ Divided? Dealing with Diversity and Disagreement," Origins 33 (9): 140-147. ~ In a number of interviews, Congar traced his lifelong devotion to the unity the Christian churches to a siugular moment of contemplation. "It was while meditating upon the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel 66.1 2007 Mallon ¯ Reclaiming Hope, Recovering Dialogue that I clearly recognized my vocation to work for the unity of all who believe in Jesus Christ." Yves Congar, Dialogue between Christians: Catholic Contributions to Ecumenism, trans. Philip Loretz SJ (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966), p. 3. ~'~ "We are too prone to be satisfied with a dogma in itself, which has not to be worked out but is all laid down in the catechism or the theologi-cal manuals. We retail it, we are purveyors of orthodox theology, and that is all. We are in the process of finding that a dogma must be someone's dogma or someone's living thought, otherwise it will not bear its fruit." Yves Congar, Priest and Layman (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1967), p. 209. ~7 Yves Congar, "The Brother I Have Known," The Thomist, 49 (4): 495-503. 1~ For an excellent essay on Congar's life as a theologian, see Etienne Fouilloux, "Friar Yves, Cardinal Congar, Dominican: History of a Theologian," U.S. Catholic Historian 17 (2). ~9 Vincent Miller, "History. of Geography? Gadamer, Foucault, and Theologies of Tradition," in Theology and the New Histories, ed. Gary. Macy (Maryknolh Orbis Books, 1999), pp. 56-85. 20 Congar, however, was not in any sense na'ive with regard to abuses of power, particularly in his ongoing concern for a dialogical church. "In polemics., or in any form of controversy devoid of dialogue, I interpose my own personal power, or rather that of a social formation whose views I am defending, such as a nation, a church, a culture, a social group or class, or a nexus of collective interests. Certain questions, such as that of colonialism in its most absolute form, might be approached from this point of view." Congar, Dialogue between Christians, p. 55. :~ Yves Congar, Lay People in the Church, trans. Donald Atwater (~'Vestminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1957), p. 86. 22 Yves Congar, 1 Believe in the Holy Spirit, Vol. 2, He Is Lord and Giver of Life, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), p. 67. ~3 Yves Congar, This CT;urch That I Love, trans. Lucien Delafuente (Denville, New Jersey: Dimension Books, 1969). 24 Congar, I Believe, vol. 2, p. 12. 's Congar, I Believe, vol. 2, p. 37. z6 Congar, Lay People, p. 57. 27 Komonchak, "Is Christ Divided?" p. 76. :s The "adoration of God and the doing of God's will are necessary. conditions for thinking about God." Gustavo Guti~rrez, The T~vah Shall Set You Free: Conf!'ontations, trans. MatthewJ. O'Connell (Maryknolh Orbis Books, 1990), p. 55. Review for Religious 2,; Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Emb~wce: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otberness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), p. 29. 30 Congar, Priest and Layman, p. 209. 3~ See Charles Taylor's discussion of "deep diversity" in "Shared and Divergent Values," in his Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), pp. 155-186. Personal Reflection/Group Discussion In today's church do I find in myself a growing inability to listen and to dialogue with others about my own beliefs and values? What can I do to develop a more tolerant attitude in myself and so help others to become more tolerant? Do I understand dialogical cornmunion? What are some of the challenges ! would face with the people with whom I live and work? 66.1 2007 ROSE HOOVER Why Do We Gather? A Journey Together community We live in an age when young adults rarely consider religious life an option for themselves. Are we dinosaurs with primordial behavior pat-terns? Do we know why we come together in religious communities in this day and age--or in any day and age? There are varieties of commu-nity, but in this article I simply want to reflect on religious community's purpose, whether we are talking about community under one roof or community in a broader sense that does not nec-essarily mean living together. Why do we gather together? For example, are we brought together as religious for the pur-pose of a particular task? Do we form commu-nity for thesake of the ministry we do? Many people get together for special endeavors and enjoyments--music groups and sports teams, for example. Some groups even live together, like Rose Hoover RC last wrote for this journal in March-April 1992. Her address is Cenacle Sisters; 505 Northeast 5th Avenue; Gainesville, Florida 32601. Review for Religious the ad hoc assemblages on some reality shows. We too have tasks we desire to accomplish, tasks not only pre-cious to us but valuable for the people of God. We know that good community life can help us in our ministries. But is ministry the reason we come together? Today other people do the same ministries we do, and do them just as well, without being members of religious communi-ties. If religious community is for the purpose of carrying out ministry, and if the ministry no longer necessitates coming together in community, then is our gathering as consecrated religious also unnecessary? What about forming relationships? There was a lot of talk a few years ago about relational communities as distinct from task-ori-ented communities. A quick Internet search shows that concept to be far from dead today. As Christians we are indeed called to be in relationship both with God and with other ~ i."~ W:~t~hou~t~:i')ood "rdationships, ,- iydividuals and communities Christians. Without good relationships, individuals and communities are bound to be lifeless. And so compan-ionship, relationships, belong in consecrated life. In fact, loving presence is necessary in consecrated life. But com-panionship, even deep companionship, can be had in other ways, some of them far easier than religious community. Neither friendship nor c6mpanionship, of course, can be the main purpose of religious community. As Antoine de Saint-Exup~ry writes in l/Vind, Sm~d, and Stars, "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction." In Christian community, if our primary gaze is on each other rather than on Christ, we are not on the way to true communion. 66.1 2007 Hoover ¯ Why Do We Gather? Religious cOmmunity is no way to flee,the,World; the world walks right-inl Wit,h,us.o Can religious community exist for the purpose of mak-ing the practical details of life more economical or more simple? It certainly can, though it does not always do so. In our university town we see students who live together to save money and make life less burdensome, leaving more time and energy for studies. Religious communi-ties, too, can live simply and economically--and even live gospel poverty. But is this all there is to it? Communities, even small ones, can provide security. People throughout the centuries have banded together for the sake of security. Gated communities thrive today. California lays claim to at least three gated cities--in effect, walled towns: Rolling Hills, Hidden Hills, and Canyon Lake. Probably some peo-pie enter religious life to be safe from the dangers of the "world" (or other dangers they somehow perceive). We know from experi-ence that religious community is no way to flee the world, if for no other reason than that the world walks right in with us. Security, then, cannot be the purpose of coming together as religious. There has to be more to religious community than any of these reasons, more even than all of them together. Parker Palmer, a Quaker, who at the time of writing an article for Desert Call (1987) was part of an intentional community, puzzled over the historical longevity of monasticism, given the difficulties of community life. He concluded that it is because the monks "created a form of community that brings them together not for the purpose of togetherness but to support each other in the rigors of the inward journey.''~ Review for Religious To support each other on the inward journey, the spiritual journey, is indeed rigorous. It has no less a goal than transforming union with Jesus Christ. That, after all, is the Christian call. The road can be rocky, and pitfalls can lie along the path. There can be pain and discourage-ment, but also joy, peace, and love. Moments of grace can astonish, but then there may be long and numbing stretches of boredom. At times we wish to shuffle along complacently, and at other times we are strong against the enemy's wiles. We have glimmers of understanding and then clouds of miserable confusion. The journey is truly rigorous. There is no way to make it alone. Whether we thought about it this way or not, this is the reason we entered religious life. God knew the pur-pose even if we did not--the call to give ourselves wholly to God by following a path of transforming union in love. This path not only blesses us with love and forgiveness, it also demands much of us. It requires prayer. This needs to be said bluntly here because, though for some people prayer is pure joy, for others it is a demand, a rigorous one. And, as for praying together, some find it no bur-den at all, while others are being sorely tested. The need for prayer implies the need to find time for prayer, the courage to carve a quiet niche for it when society--and sometimes religious life as well--would instead reward us for constant activity. How many times have we heard someone say with a hint of pride in her voice, "I haven't had a day off in months"? Or maybe we have even made that boast ourselves. As our life goes on, we have opportunities and duties to learn compassion toward the uncompassionate and to love those who do not love us._We learn to see loveliness in those who appear unlovely, sometimes being surprised at seeing our own kind of goodness in someone we never even liked. We find ourselves acknowledging our own 66.1 2007 Hoover ¯ Why Do We Gather? sinfulness, our helplessness, our inability to understand ourselves or the God who loves us and in whose image we are made. The spiritual journey brings people to a better vision of life--but usually without visions. Along the way we more and more take on the mind of Christ, who emptied himself. We learn not to cling to anything, not to hold anything back. We take one step at a time, without know-ing where the road winds and often without being sure that the next step is the right one. The road through our interior landscape may lack clear markers; misty weather may obscure them and make us forget the presence of God. Formidable though the way may be, it is precisely here that we find our delight. The God who created the universe, who fills the cosmos, who was and is and ever shall be, this God is both our companion and our destina-tion. After beginning on this path, any other way seems dull and senseless, hardly worth the trouble of putting one foot in front of the other. To make the most of this wondrous journey and to smooth its progress, we gather together. We support one another by our words, our prayers, and our presence, and we grant one another the silence and solitude we all need. And, when we become discouraged like Elijah lying under the broom tree, we take for each other the role of the angel who said, "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you" (1 K 19:7, NRSV). We have to admit, though, that sometimes our sisters and brothers the~nselves can be part of the "burning of the noontide heat, and the burden of the day."-' The com-munity may be the very reason we long to crawl under the broom tree and disappear in sleep. But the burdens and the blessings of the road are intermingled and often indis-tinguishable from one another. What seems like a bur-den may in reality be a blessing, and each blessing tends Review for Religious to bring with it its own weight, imperceptible at times, greatly evident at others. In community, as we accompany each other along the way, as we support each other, we bring ourselves to the mix of people, we give ourselves as gifts. As with ordinary gifts, we do not know if we have chosen the right gift for the right person. We sincerely hope we have, and that we are not bringers of burdens or disappointments. In this we all develop subtle social gifts of giving and receiving, giving benefits shyly and having doubts beneficially, all the while sharing in mystery. What, then, is the role of our ministry? Is the value of ministry lessened if the work we are called to do is not our chief reason for coming together? Not at all. Without the inward journey, our ministry lacks integrity. A reli-gious community with a task--even a noble task--as its primary purpose risks allowing both community and task to become sterile. The apostolate is inseparable from the path of transforming union. Like cotton canvas garden-ing gloves, our ministry, hand in hand with prayerfulness, brings our patient dedication to flower in ways beyond imagining--more .and more the work of Christ. We our-selves are transformed into the compassionate and merci-ful Christ for each other and for the world. Notes ~ Parker Palmer, "The Monastic V~ay to Church Renewal," Desert Call, ¼qnter 1987: 8-9. 2 Elizabeth C. Clephane, "Beneath the Cross of Jesus," 1868. 66.1 2007 ROBERT SCHIELER An Experience of Jesus and His Brothers During Holy Week 2006 three hundred De La Salle Christian Brothers gathered in retreat to discern a future together. Under the banner "An Experience of Jesus and His Brothers," we brothers from three East Coast provinces~ and Toronto, Canada, desire to imagine more of a future than merging our provinces into one. As in other congregations, the reason for con-sidering a shared future is the diminishment and aging in our provinces. In recent years the provinces have spon-sored joint formation programs, retreats, workshops, and council meetings. This gathering helped us become even more familiar with one another and our hopes and dreams. From the beginning we wanted to explore creative approaches to consolidation. We saw the merging of provinces as perhaps an administrative necessity but no guarantee for future viability and vitality. Our goal was to Robert Schieler FSC writes from Christian Brothers Provincialate; P.O. Box 29; Adamstown, Maryland 21710. Review for Religious make our network of ministries more effective. These ways were to include a renewed passion for our life together as brothers in community and for our consecrated life in the following of Jesus. The aim of the communal retreat was to facilitate achieving these goals. In the preceding eighteen months, a planning com-mittee guided local community conversations around the Triduum. Four prayer services with reflection questions were prepared for Trinity Sunday, when communities nor-mally .plan for the year, the first Sunday in Advent, and the first Sunday in Lent. Reflection questions sought to mirror sessions that would take place during the retreat: remembering our icons and dangerous memories; discern-ing who we are today and our potential for tomorrow; and deciding on a direction for a shared future. Being pragmatic people, a good many brothers had reservations about this process and the value of the retreat itself. The retreat began on Wednesday evening with over three hundred brothers processing into our prayer space for an opening prayer service and a motivational presen-tation celebrating five brothers identified as icons from our five provinces. During our days of retreat, we would recall icons from Scripture, our Lasallian heritage, and our brothers. Icons, as windows to the interior, help us get in touch with the deeper forces operative in our lives. An icon can help us transcend the immediacy of our pres-ent life situation. By touching the core of our being, icons stir up an interior movement that allows us to go beyond our immediate landscapes. At the opening prayer service we heard read: We gather tonight to remember, to celebrate, to grieve, and to dream. This is our Lasallian heritage. It is rich, indeed! It is composed of individuals, communities, and ministries that at one time listened to the whispers of a radical spirit, a spirit that opened to us new venues and invited us to launch our boats in uncharted waters so 66.1 2007. Scbieler ¯ An Experience of Jesus and His Brothers as to serve better the children of the poor and working class. We celebrate tonight our Lasallian icons. They are stories, people, events of the original foundational journey of our community as De La Salle Brothers that become like windows breaking open the deepest mean-ing, revealing a prophetic insight, full of memory and hope, about the present. They help us to get in touch with our dangerous memories., our wildest dreams. They connect us to our institute, to our church, and to the mystery of God's kingdom here on earth. Brothers, they do not exist to reassure us. Sometimes these icons will destabilize us and challenge our current views and understandings. If we let them, they may stir up in us the deepest movements and yearnings of the Spirit! Seeing men we have lived with or heard about and recalling how they lived as brothers and what they accom-plished stirred us, prompted reflections, and encouraged conversations about our fraternal life together and the mission for which we consecrated our lives. As the open-ing evening came to a close, brothers retired to their rooms in a "wait and see" frame of mind. Dangerous Memories Under the day's theme of "Remembering where we were and refounding our hope. for the future," we met on Holy Thursday morning as provinces to recall our respec-tive dangerous memories. The theologian Johannes B. Metz saw dangerous memories as: memories in which earlier experiences break through to the center point of our lives and reveal new and dangerous insights for the present. They illuminate for a few moments and with a harsh and steady light the questionable nature of things we have apparently come to terms with, and show up the banality of our supposed "realism." They break through the canon of the prevailing structures of plausibility and have certain subversive features. Such memories are like dangerous Review for Religious and incalculable visitations from the past. They are memories that we have to take into account, memories, as it were, with a future content.: One province, in the activities leading up to the retreat, highlighted as one of its most dangerous memories a 1920s decision that resulted in a quick move from primary to secondary education. In 1926 and 1927 the province withdrew from thirteen elementary schools to staff two new diocesan high schools. While reluctant at the time to leave elementary education, the province would realize from these two schools several hundred vocations during the next four decades. This decision is part of the prov-ince lore and often recalled at fraternal gatherings. On this Holy Thursday morning, however, it was about another dangerous memory that several brothers spoke with pas-sion. This dangerous memory was still very much in the present. It was from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like many congregations and the church in general, the province was caught up in the euphoria of the Second Vatican Council, but was also beginning to witness the fallout: departures, the drop in vocations, and polariza-tion. Between the start of summer 1969 and the end of summer 1970, the province would lose nearly a hundred brothers, including the provincial and much of the prov-ince's leadership. In the coming decade nearly thirty men would leave to enter the priesthood. The novitiate that had served the province since 1880 closed in summer of 1969. At the same time the renewal and updating of our religious life, the principle of subsidiarity, and personal responsibility versus directives from the top were going forward. So was empowerment of young over those with seniority status. While this province would struggle with fundamental issues of religious life through much of the 1970s, by the end of the decade a new formation program was bringing 66.1 2007 Schieler ¯ An Experience of yesus and His Brothers from our pas that we wanted tocar or ard fewer but excellent candidates. Commitment to its tradi-tional educational ministries remained strong while being open to new and sometimes individual ministries. The mental health of the brothers would be honestly faced and addressed. After considerable neglect, personal and communal prayer returned. The morning session was both invigorating and inspir-ing. Table conversation at lunch was animated as other brothers were proposed as icons and further dangerous memories shared. Following lunch and prompted by a presentation on passing with Jesus from death to life and by a video on our roots, we reflected on the values from our past that we wanted to cel-ebrate and carry forward into the future. These included accomplishing our educational mission as a community that can adapt and innovate, the diversity of our educational delivery sys-tems, our formation as educators with a Christocentric spirituality, and our recent establishment of national for-mation programs to share our charism with our lay col-leagues. As Thursday afternoon gave way to evening and din-ner, the brothers seemed to accept that we were on a retreat, not at an assembly. Conversations were more hope-filled, and the feeling now being expressed was "Yes, it is good to be together." This was evidenced by the number of brothers coming.before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer and silence throughout the evening. Finding a seat in chapel for adoration on Holy Thursday had not been difficult for a long time! Review for Religious Three Hundred HistoriesmOne Voice, One Spirit While on Wednesday evening and Holy Thursday we celebrated and remembered those brothers who shaped us and our provinces, on Good Friday we would behold the men we are today. How are we different from those we had honored and recognized? What had we lost? What do we take to the cross? Whom do we take down from the cross? What do we bury? To stimulate our reflection we viewed the film Romero, suffering servant in our time, and listened to a presentation on the crucifixion of Jesus, the Suffering Servant for all time. These enriched our table conversations later, but something else in that afternoon proved transformative. The image of three hundred brothers one by one ven-erating the crucified Christ on Good Friday afternoon was a powerful one. We witnessed three hundred histories that have faithfully lived their initial "yes" given to God. There was much gray, but the talent and energy in that long gray line was palpable. One brother reflecting on the experience wrote: "I found that long line of brothers inspiring. Each of us brought our stories to that moment, and I knew many of the men and their talents, the ~ailures they and I faced, the challenges they and I met, the stu-dents they and I inspired, the communities we had lifted up, and our struggles with various demons. Some were my teachers; others were my mentors in community. There were international, national, and district leaders. Other brothers were and are colleagues and confreres. Yet all our various paths pointed us in the same right direction that afternoon. All of us bowed before the same cross, individually and collectively, confessing our belief in Jesus our Savior. What richer image could we have of our vow formula than that we brothers accomplish our educational mission not as individuals but 'together and by associa-tion' with one another?''3 66.1 2007 Scbieler ¯ An Experience of Jesus and His Brothers This kind of change stimulates resistance because it challenges peopl e's habits. Holy Saturday Holy Saturday morning began with a presentation that many brothers found realistic while others found challenging and some even disturbing or out of sync with the spirit of the retreat. That presentation revealed the harsh demographic realities that nearly sixty percent of the membership is over sixty-five years of age with only twelve of the 420 brothers in the three provinces and del-egation under the age of forty. It spoke of the hope lost after the heady days of the council. It spoke of halfhearted efforts at amalgamation in the 1990s and the first cou-ple of years in this new ~ century. It spoke of the ~' difficulties and chal- !enges of what Heifetz . and Linsky call "adap-tive change" versus "technical change"; change at the core of persons or organizations as opposed to the simple rear-ranging of things.4 This kind of change stimulates resis-tance because it challenges people's habits, beliefs, and cultures. The presentation offered elements of hope and a plan for the future, but for some it stood in contrast to the good feelings generated from the storytelling and shar-ing of experiences from our various provinces. Perhaps we were experiencing the stone being placed at the entrance to the tomb. There was a period of questioning, self-doubt, and waiting. What direction would the retreat now take? We had reached a critical moment, and it took all the facilitators' skills to maintain a retreat atmosphere and not slip into a workshop or assembly one. We pre-pared the brothers to opt for the direction they preferred. Review for Religious The answer would come in the afternoon, after the "three hundred stories" had processed in once more. Five possible directions for a shared future were iden-tified, including remaining as separate provinces or unit-ing in a totally new structure. The five possibilities were posted at the front of the hall, and each brother was given a colored dot to place next to his choice. Again three hun-dred men walked up quietly and indicated their choice. At the end, it was overwhelmingly agreed: to create one province with new structures for the vitality of commu-nities and ministries of the three present provinces and delegation. The key phrase was "new structures." In a letter he sent to the brothers at the retreat, our superior general wrote: Our times demand not only that we change current structures, as if by doing only this we could revitalize ourselves. It is not about simply creating larger prov-inces that are the same as those of the past. We have to reinvent what it is we understand by the term "prov-ince," and create new structures that will allow us to be rnore visible and more effective in the way we manage and accompany Lasallian association throughout the world,s The stone in front of the tomb was being removed along with self-doubt and waiting. We embraced the possible. It is always Holy Saturday whenever people push back the creeping boundaries of the world's fear, making room for irrepressible hope; where people live the long darkness of original sin while believing in the possibil-ity of the deeper light; where people discover the touch of an invincible spring on the bare branches of their winter lives.6 Easter Vigil The Easter Vigil was a most joyous occasion. All three hundred brothers had donned their new sport shirts with one of our familiar congregation logos. In his sermon the 66.1 2007 Scbieler ¯ An Experience of Jesus and His Brothers 72 celebrant for the vigil beautifully summarized the previous several days by recounting a conversation he had earlier in the day with a young man staying at the same resort. I walked by. "Hi," I said. "'Sup. You one of Jesus' brothers?" I knew what he meant because I live in the 'hood. "Sorry?" "You one of Jesus' brothers? I saw the sign: 'Jesus and His Brothers.'" "Yeah, yeah, you are too!" Never miss a catechetical moment. "So you pastors or something?" "No, mostly teachers-Christian Brothers." "That's nice," he said. "I've been watching

Issue 57.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1998. ; religious Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 ¯ VOLUME 57 ¯ NUMBER 1 Review for Religious is a forum for. shared reflection on the lived experience~ of all who find, that the church's rich heritages of gpirituality support their personal and apostolic ¯ Christian lives. The articles in ~he journal are meant to be informative, practical, historical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (1SSN 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. 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 information on subscription rates. ©1998 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) cbntained 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 perxnission 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 r ligiou$ 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 James and Joan Felling Kathryn Richards FSP Joel Rippinger OSB Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1998 ¯ VOLUME 57 ¯ NUMBER 1 contents 34 48 leadership Congregational Leadership and Spirituality in the Postmodern Era Sandra M. Schneiders IHM offers an analysis of changing worldviews as an aid to understanding present-day religious congregations and exercising effective leadership in them. Leadership for the Common Good Donna J. Markham OP focuses on three areas of leadership skill development: conflict management, guarding against "groupthink," and promoting communal efficacious action. Hearts Afire: Leadership in the New Millennium Anne Munley IHM sees congregational leadership as being the work of impassioned hearts sharing, finding, and making meaning in concert with all the members, with a view to warm cooperation in endeavors of burning urgency. 60 67 tradition Stability: A Monastic Charism Retrieved Joel Rippinger OSB explores stability as a matter of heart and place in the light of contemporary rootedness. History's Role in Defining Spiritual Direction Steve R. Wigall proposes that contemporary spiritual direction needs to embrace openly its historical and theological variety. Review for Religious 77 88 prayer Today's Contemplative Prayer Forms: Are They Contemplation? Ernest E. Larkin OCarm takes a discerning look at contemporary personal prayer practice and terminology against the background of centuries-long traditions. Union with God according to John of the Cross Paul J. Bernadicou SJ describes some aspects of the sanjuanist process towards intimacy with God. departments 4 Prisms 94 Canonical Counsel: Life Consecrated by Profession of the Evangelical Counsels 100 Book Reviews Jant~aty-Februat~ 1998 I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life. prisms 4 T citizens of the United States in recent years have been reinforcing a reputation for being a people that has lost its sense of the sanctity of human life. After a brief lull in the use of the death penalty for what is considered heinous crimes, more and more individual states have been seeking execution for serious crimes committed by both men and women. Then, when we look to the beginning of life, we find that abortion in the United States, even in late term, is justified through the most permissive legal understanding allowed by any Western nation. Finally, when we consider the possible end of life, assisted suicide for the elderly or for the chron-ically ill is already legal in one state and is being promoted by a number of people who defend what is euphemisti-cally called "mercy killing." As we come ~o the last years of this millennium, this most powerful, prosperous, and well-educated nation is sadly being identified as a people that readily "takes life." The year 1998 focuses upon the Holy Spirit in our Christian preparations for entering into the third millen-nium guided by the pastoral plan presented to us by Pope John Paul. Whatever the strength of our faith, the Holy Spirit is the Trinitarian Person most difficult for us to talk about, t9 imagine, and to relate to. Spirit, breath, wind, love, fire are words that in themselves have no face nor even a substance that can be grasped. And yet these are some of the common, traditional words applied to the One we call the Third Person of our Trinitarian God. We might, though, begin this second year of our preparations for the millennium by calling in prayer upon the Spirit by a name appropriate to the times in which we live. Review for Religious In the Nicene Creed we express our belief in the Person called the Holy Spirit, professing first that he is Lord God and then designating this Person as "the Giver of life." What a wonderful identity--Giver of life--especially in regard to a people earning a reputation as "takers of life." It seems obvious that a basic gift we seek from God in this year 1998 is a renewed reverence, respect, and appreciation for human life. Throughout this year, perhaps we all need an examination of conscience on behavior involving us as "takers of life." "Takers of life" can involve an attitude which sullies our approach to any part of God's creation--each part a gift from God. We can become so self-centered that everything--from the ecological environ-ment to the earth's resources to human life itself--is viewed in its value now for us. Takers of life know no gratitude, for life is not seen in terms of gifting but only in terms of getting, a disease of a consumer society. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit will inspire and guide our efforts to be, like God, gi,vers of life. The age-old prayer still speaks out our desire: "Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful." Review for Religious continues to have its own experience of life being given to us. New life continues to flow into our Advisory Board as some members finish their term of service, and new members join. We welcome Sister Kathryn Richards FSP, vice-provincial of the USA province of the Daughters of St. Paul and executive director of the twenty Pauline Book and Media Centers in the USA and English-speaking Canada. She is also the direc-tor of Paulinas Distribudora, the Daughters' Hispanic media dis-tribution center, and the director of the National Association of Pauline Cooperators, the lay collaborators of the Daughters of St. Paul. In addition we welcome Bishop Carlos Sevilla SJ, bishop of the diocese of Yakima, Washington. Bishop Sevilla serves as a member of the NCCB committees on Hispanic affairs and on religious life and ministry. Before his ordination as bishop, he had filled administration and formation roles in the Society of Jesus (California province). Farewells are always harder to express than welcomes. I want to express my appreciation to Father Edmundo Rodriguez SJ and to Sister Iris Ann Ledden $SND for their many contributions to the advisory board over the years of their service. We remain grateful for their continuing interest and support. David L. Fleming SJ January-Febr~,aot 1998 o o o o o o leadership SANDRA M. SCHNEIDERS Congregational Leadership and Spirituality in the Postmodern Era In addressing the issue of leadership in congregations which are increasingly influenced by the emergence of cultural postmodernism, I write not as one who is engaged in leadership or trained in the fields of organization and management, but as a theologian reflecting on the spiri-tuality of contemporary religious. But part of my prepa-ration for these reflections involved talking with a number of religious in leadership positions, asking them what were the major challenges they faced as leaders. One woman, by means of a highly symbolic vignette, epitomized what many others expressed. She said that, if one prepared an agenda for a meeting far enough ahead of time for the participants to come prepared, the first item on the agenda would be the revision of the agenda because the actual situation in the congregation would have changed so sig-nificantly that neither the items on the agenda nor their relative importance would be what they had been when the agenda was formulated. In other words, the challenges about which leaders talked were not so much specific problems but pandemic unpredictability and uncontrol-lability. While leaders face particular challenges because of Sandra M. Schneiders IHM presented this paper, here slightly revised, to the Leadership Conference of Woxnen Religious on 23 August 1997 in Rochester, New York. She is professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, where her address is JSTB; 1735 LeRoy Avenue; Berkeley, California 94709. Review for Religious their public role and more global responsibilities, the situation which makes leadership so difficult today is the same one all of us in religious life face, namely, the context of chaos within which we are trying to live religious life coherently and minister effectively. It is this peculiarly contemporary experience and its significance for spirituality that requires analysis and engagement. Whether or not we articulate it explicitly, we are always living, thinking, working within and out of some implicit worldview which defines both the problems and the potentialities of our historical situation.~ Until we come to some understanding of that world-view, we stand little chance of developing an operative spirituality. How we understand reality in general, religious life in particular, and our own congregation specifically determines what we think we are doing as religious leaders or followers. A worldview is like light or a pair of glasses. We do not notice its role in what and how we see until it flickers or gets cloudy. Furthermore, until relatively recently we were unaware of the plurality of worldviews because we thought that what we saw was simply what is, rather than what is visible through a particular set of lenses which not everyone in the world is wearing. Until the mid-sixties Catholics in general and religious in particular lived within a peculiarly schizophrenic worldview whose intrinsic con-tradictions seldom came clearly into view. Within the institution and culture of the cht~rch, we lived out of a medieval worldview in which society was organized according to an ontologically based, and therefore unchangeable, hierarchy of status and roles; in which all reality could and must be explained in the categories of an Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophy and the-ology; and in which the next world, and therefore religion, held a clear priority over the present world and its concerns. However, outside the church arena we lived out of a modern worldview in which democratic capitalism constructed an economically com-petitive society within a deceptive rhetoric of personal equality. The explanation of reality in this modern world was supplied by the confluence of the dualistic philosophy of Descartes, the mechanistic physics of Newton, the deterministic biology of Darwin, and the materia.listic hydraulics of Freudian psychology. The practical priority of this world over the afterlife was expressed in the banishing of religious concerns from public life to the pri-vate realm of family and church. Although these two worldviews, medieval and modern, were Januat3,-Februat~y 1998 Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality largely incompatible, what they had in common may be more sig-nificant for our present considerations than how they differed. Both of these worldviews presented chaos as the ultimate enemy and order as the ultimate good. It is hardly surprising, then, that we are uncomfortable to the point of panic amid the unpre-dictability and uncontrollability of so much of our experience today. And, the more people, property, and projects we are respon-sible for, the more threatening and even paralyzing widespread chaos in our domain of responsibility is likely to be. However, as cultural critics are increasingly convinced, the modern worldview itself is rapidly giving way to what is being called postmodernirm, a worldview that is still largely inchoate and unarticulated, but which is actually conditioning our experience more deeply and extensively than we can yet appreciate.2 Characteristic of this emerging worldview is what is being called the "new science" or quantum physics,3 which is not only calling into question the adequacy of Newtonian science to explain the natural or physical world, but implying the necessity for a new, cosmologically based philosophy that sees much deeper connec-tions between matter and spirit, between humans and the rest of reality, between this world and whatever transcends it.4 Implied in the collapse of the classical dualisms is ~i revisioning of chaos and order which may open up some possibilities for reinterpreting our present experience within religious life. Although I have been reading voraciously in the new science for a while, I do not claim to understand, much less be able to explain, quantum physics. What I want to do, however, is to use a few of its basic categories, namely, autopoietic structures, fields, and strange attractors, as metaphors for thinking about contem-porary experience in religious congregations. After exploring these categories from the new science in relation to religious life, I will try to make'some suggestions that are theologically sound, spir-itually vital, and culturally plausible about our current experience of religious life and leadership. Autopoietic Structures Margaret Wheatley, in her wonderfully provocative book Leadership and the New Science, brings together new ideas from biology, chemistry, and quantum physics which are analogous in suggesting that order and chaos are not contradictories, but that Review for Religious order emerges from chaos as from its matrix,s Furthermore, con-trol is not synonymous with order nor does it produce stability. Rather, control causes a deadly immobility or stasis which ulti-mately dooms the structure to disintegration. This phenomenon of the constructive relationship between chaos and order is characteristic of living organisms. Erich Jantsch, whom Wheatley cites, describes autopoiesis as "the characteristic of liv-ing systems [by which they] continu-ously renew themselves and., regulate this process in such a way that the integrity of their structure is main-tained.'' 6 In other words, living things maintain their integrity and identity not by eliminating change, but by continu-ous, dynamic interaction with their environment. It is equilibrium, not change, that is fatal! However, the history of religious life in the United States from the 19th century until Vatican II was character-ized by steadily increasing equilibrium and control and steadily decreasing interaction with the environment.7 After the chaotic pioneering days--when our founders and foundresses braved the rigors of frontier life using everything that came to hand, secular and profane included, to survive personally and institutionally-- American religious life settled into a rigidly defined and tightly controlled pattern within an increasingly battened-down eccle-siastical institution. Interchange with the environment was ever more stringently controlled and, to the extent possible, elimi-nated. We understood our congregations as Newtonian machine-like systems composed of virtually identical parts, operating according to established laws of motion codified in Rules and. customs books and functioning best when no part acted in orig-inal, that is, "singular" ways. Leaders functioned somewhat like factory managers maintaining strict control (erroneously seen as order) for the sake of spiritual and ministerial efficiency. Newtonian physics, which supplied this machine model for all systems, also gave us the laws of thermodynamics which gov-ern such systems. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that, when a system reaches equilibrium, entropy or disintegration We are uncomfortable to the point of panic amid the unpredictability and uncontrollability of so mucl of our experience today. Janllary-Februaty 1998 Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality sets in. We moderns learned that this law of increasing entropy or the inevitable wearing down of systems was also characteristic of living things (which we understood as basically very complicated machines) and certainly true of organizations such as religious congregations.8 What the new science is telling us is that social organizations are not entropic like machines, but more like living organisms, which are autopoietic, that is, self-renewing. The basis of autopoiesis or self-re-creation is the openness of organisms to their environment. As Wheatley says, Each structure has a unique identity, a clear boundary, yet it is merged with its environment . What we observe. ¯ in all living entities, are boundaries that both preserve us from and connect us to the infinite complexity of the out-side world. Autopoiesis, then, points to a different universe. Not the fragile, fragmented world we attempt to hold together, but a universe rich in processes that support growth and coherence, individuality and community.9 When we look at religious congregations of the 1950s, we see relatively hermetically sealed organizations operating accord-ing to the quantitative laws of mechanics. Numbers, material resources, institutional agencies of influence, and hierarchical control of all operations were the sources of efficiency. The cat-aclysm of Vatican II and its immediate predecessors in religious life such as the Sister Formation Movement suddenly opened these closed systems to their environment. New information of all kinds flooded the system. Sisters studied new disciplines in secu-lar as well as religious universities and interacted with a variety of people they formerly would never have encountered in any mean-ingful way. The mass media and the uncensored contents of libraries burst through the boundaries of the closed system. And then Vatican II called on congregations to reevaluate those old-world traditions which had so effectively kept religious out of the mainstream of American culture. Ministries changed dramatically and, with them, living situations. Contacts with other religious and with the laity, stringently rationed in previous times, broad-ened and deepened. In short, religious congregations suddenly drew deep breaths of fresh air and discovered that they were not ecclesiastical robots but sociospiritual organisms, living systems in vital interaction with their environment. Increasingly congregations, and their relatively uniform mem-bers, began to exhibit the characteristics of autopoietic structures. Review for Religious Perhaps the most unsettling characteristic is that a healthy liv-ing system is in a continuous state of disequilibrium. New infor-mation, constantly flowing into the system from the environment, challenges it to respond, to change, and to develop without loss of integrity or identity. There is no settling down, no way to call off the bombardment of the new and just be. There are no per-manently right answers, no one correct way to do things, no abso-lute authority. The organism is always off balance. Local chaos is the normal condition out of which global order is continuously being both threatened and resourced. Another characteristic of autopoietic structures, precisely because they are not in balance but precariously poised in the turbulence of a constantly changing ambiance, is that very small influences can have very significant effects on the system. In mechan-ical entities, significant change is usually proportionate to the mass of the influencing agents. Large groups, sizable funds, long-range plans are necessary to alter the status quo. But in a living system a small agent, for example, a virus, can have tremendous impact because it can galvanize the whole organism into response.'° The effect of one book like The Nun in the Modern World, or one speaker like Theresa Kane, is out of all proportion to the mass of the cause. One person generating negative energy can immobilize a whole assembly while one visionary chapter pro-posal can propel the whole congregation into self-renewal. A third feature of living systems is that they are programmed toward life. In this respect they are the very antithesis of the machine. Once entropy has set in, the machine inevitably and irreversibly winds down toward disintegration.11 But, even when very diminished, very endangered, the living system is mobilized toward self-renewal, toward regeneration. I think the merging of some small communities and the combining of facilities among others are examples of this salmonqike burst of upstream energy characteristic of open systems. Fourth, self-organizing systems'are bundles of competencies, "portfolios of skills," rather than collections of optimally func-tioning units,lz This feature has been ve.ry prominent in post-conciliar congregations. V~rhen individual religious or congregations decide that a particular institution or form of ministry no longer responds to the environment and they reconfigure competencies to meet new needs, it seems to me that they are manifesting an organic self-understanding, not, as some seem to think, a des- January-February 1998 Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality perate need to' find something useful to do until the corporate lights go out. Fifth, as Wheatley says, self-r~newing systems are "structures that seem capable of maintaining an identity while changing form. They exhibit "global stability" over time even as their subsystems undergo enormous, seemingly chaotic, change. I was struck by this feature of living systems when I first saw the Great Barrier Reef, the largest organism on earth. This enormous living sys-tem has a form that makes it so distinct from its oceanic envi-ronment that it is even recognizable from the moon, and yet every cell of its vast expanse is undergoing incessant change. Most reli-gious can remember the stupendous resistance to even minor, external changes in religious congregations on the eve of Vatican II. We could hardly conceive of a maintenance of identity through incessant change, and any attempt to engage the environment seemed like a sellout to secularity. But autopoietic structures main-tain their identity precisely by changing in response to environ-mental influence. Obviously not all living systems survive, much less thrive. What determines whether an organism will successfully negotiate what Wheatley calls the "bifurcation point" where the choice between death and transformation occurs? ~4 Wheatley maintains that the deciding factor is what she calls the principle of "self-ref-erence." Healthy organisms do not change randomly or in any and all directions. Rather, they change in ways that are both respon-sive to the environment arid consistent with their own already established identity. A firmly established identity makes the organ-ism both responsive and resilient, both dialogical and autonomous. Whereas a static system constructs external boundaries, fences designed to keep out the influence of the environment and hold the assemblage of units together, the healthy organism develops organic boundaries which make it increasingly autonomous in relation to external pressures even as it remains deeply involved in the ongoing process of iriterchange. Unlike a fence which sim-ply walls out the "other," the organic surface of the Great Barrier Reef is both a resource for relationship with the environment and a self-defining boundary. "Self-reference is what facilitates orderly change in turbulent environments.''~5 This raises directly the question of identity. If religious life itself, religious congregations, and individual religious are open, autopoietic systems whose incessant interaction with the envi- Review for Religious ronment is governed by the principle of self-reference, that is, fidelity to core identity in the midst of continual disequilibrium, what establishes that identity? How is it recognized and main-tained? Fields To begin to get some purchase on this issue, I want to intro-duce a second metaphor from the new science, the familiar but mysterious category of "field." Religious life has always involved the creation by some Christians, "religious virtuosi" in the ter-minology of sociologist Patricia Wittberg,'6 of an alternative "world" within which to live their faith, whether that was a sociologi-cal, geographical, or institutional reality construction.~7 The expres-sion so often used for entering reli-gious life, namely, "leaving the world," was a negative articulation of the positive act of choosing an alternative arena for one's life. Today, speaking of entering reli-gious life as "leaving the world" is so probleinatic as to be counterpro-ductive. Nevertheless, there is something about religious life which distinguishes it from other forms of life. It has an identity. Like the Great Barrier Reef, it stands out from its cultural and ecclesiastical environment even while being involved in continu-ous interchange with it. Perhaps a better metaphor or model for understanding the identity of religious life than the quasi-geo-graphical one of alternative world is the category of "fields." Science has made us aware that reality is composed not pri-marily of substances but of space. Space, however, is not empty. Rather, "space everywhere is now thought to be filled with fields, invisible, non-material structures that are the basic substance of the universe."ls Fields are invisible geometries structuring space, invisible media of connection bringing matter an&or energy into form. We cannot see fields any more than we can see space, but we can observe the effects of fields on that which comes within their influence. We have all seen this mysterious phenomenon in operation when iron filings come within the field of magnetic Perhaps a better metaphor or model for understanding the identity of religious life is the category of "fields." January-Februaty 1998 Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality influence and arrange themselves in certain patterns. Wheatley hypothesizes that personal and corporate space is also filled with fields, both positive and negative, and that, when the personal fields of the people in an organization intersect with the corpo-rate fields of the organization itself, certain predictable behav-iors are manifest. I find this metaphor very descriptive of a frequently experi-enced phenomenon, namely, that the same people behave very differently in situations which do not, exteriorly, differ notice-ably. Something "in the air" (or, perhaps more accurately, "in the space") affects them, for good or ill, and often everyone in the situation is similarly affected. We sometimes call it morale, or good or bad energy, or social climate. Sometimes we even speak of being "in good or bad space." We also know that an individual who is personally "in bad space" either can be pulled out of it by entering positive corporate space or can cause positive space to curdle. Social space, in our experience, seems to be really invisi-bly structured. Perhaps this metaphor of fields could help illuminate the issues of corporate and personal identity that religious have strug-gled with for years under the rubrics of "charism" and "vocation" and their intersection in the mysterious corporate identity prin-ciple called the "spirit of the congregation." Probably the only thing we have agreed on in regard to charism is that it is a mys-terious something that generates a certain recognizable congre-gational identity. Some have tried to equate it with the congregation's traditional ministry, or to identify it as a grace given to the foundress which was somehow passed on to later members, or to find it embodied in a characteristic spirituality. None of these explanations has proved very satisfactory, and all fail in relation to one or another congregation. Wheatley suggests that social fields are generated as people converse, share their visions and hopes, work out their problems, develop modes of interacting, participate in common projects, elaborate symbols and myths to articulate their shared identity and experience?9 In other words, groups create or generate fields. When coherent fields are generated in corporate space, people are drawn together; they begin to act in corporate ways. Eventually the group ethos can be recognized in the members. This sounds very much like what we mean by charism, an invis-ible structuring of corpor.ate space which manifests itself in the Review for Religious indefinable "something common" that is visible in the attitudes and behaviors of all the members. Furthermore, fields, once gen-erated, can outlast the individuals or groups that generated them. Perhaps what comes down through history from our foundations is not some work, set of rules, or uniform spirituality to which new members must conform, but a structured shared space that continues to give common form to ever new energy coming into the congregation in new members. When a new individual comes into this space, her own per-sonal fields intersect with the corporate fields of the congregation and the person is either drawn into and ener-gized by this cgrporate space or not. If vocation were understood as a certain constellation of overlapping fields in an individual personality's inner space, structuring that person's energy and behavior, her entering a congregation would involve the intersection of her personal vocational field with the fields of the particular congregation, especially its charism. Vocational discernment could be understood, then, as try-ing to discover if her personal fields and the congregation's corporate fields are mutually compatible and enriching or not. When the fields that structure the inner space of an individual (that is, her own voca-tion or life call) intersect creatively and har-moniously with the fields that structure the corporate space of a congregation (that is, its charism and other characteristic fea-tures), we often say that the person has "the spirit of the congre-gation." When the members of a congregation are together in "good space," they often feel "the spirit of the congregation." Perhaps what we mean by the spirit of the congregation is the global identity of the group as it manifests itself within the complex of fields that invisibly but really structures the personal into the cor-porate. 2° To use this field metaphor for understanding charism, voca-tion, and the spirit of the congregation does not reduce these realities to the purely natural any more than accounting for the universe by the theory of the "big bang" or for human emergence by evolution denies the divine role in creation. The metaphor simply offers us a more organic way of understanding the human When the members of a congregation are together in "good space," they often feel "the spirit of the congregation." Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality experience of stable and shared congregational identity in the midst of incessant change. It also provides a possible answer to the question about self-reference as the key to coherence for an open, autopoietic sys-tem experiencing continuous life-giving disequilibrium. In a sense, nothing observable in the congregation remains the same--type of ministry, horarium and content of spiritual exercises, commu-nity lifestyle, dress codes, financial practices, patterns ~of inter-acting-- but the field, the spirit of the congregation, in which all the change takes place can account for the ever new order which arises out of the seemingly chaotic pluralism and incessant vari-ation that characterize the community's day-to-day life over time. The Strange Attractor A third possibly illuminating metaphor, drawn from the new science, is that of the "strange attractor," a simple example of which many of us have seen as the computer screen saver of inces-santly changing lines and curves which maintain a moving form that is never repeated. Wheatley says this about the "strange attractor": Chaos theory has given us images of "strange attractors"-- computer pictures of swirling motion that trace the evolu-tion of a system. A system is defined as chaotic when it becomes impossible to know where it will be next. There is no predictability; the system never is in the same place twice. But as chaos theory shows, if we look at such a sys-tem long enough and with the perspective of time, it always demonstrates its inherent orderliness. The most chaotic of systems never goes beyond certain boundaries; it stays con-tained within a shape that we can recognize as the system's strange attractor . '~ This description seems very pertinent to the history of religious life, not to mention that of individual congregations. Religious life has undergone so much movement, so much deep-level change, that it is indeed impossible to know where it will be next. It is never in the same place twice. At times it seems to be in total disarray. And yet, over its nearly two-thousand-year history, it demonstrates a moving pattern which makes it recognizable, distinguishable against the background field of ecclesial life. What, we may ask, is the strange attractor of religious life? A strange attractor is a basin for the system's activity that Review for Religious pulls all activity within the system into a form or shape but with-out immobilizing the system or reducing its inner variety to pre-dictability. The strange attractor itself is not visible. It manifests itself by its power to allow a few simple "instructions," for exam-ple, equations, to repeat and intersect as they feed back upon themselves in an infinite variety of ways so that these iterations create analogous forms at finer and finer levels. These forms are what we call fractals, repetitions at various levels of scale that manifest the whole in each part. Our most homely example is probably a head of broccoli in which each flowerette, down to the tiniest, repeats the pattern of the whole head. But we can see it also in the computer image of lines and curves, or in the clouds, or in a branch of fern. VVheatley was moved to ask the question about the strange attractor when she observed that, in terminally dysfunctional sys-tems verging on collapse, where almost everyone had psycholog-ically abandoned ship and survival had become the only agenda, there were some individuals within the dysfunctional system who continued to be personally centered, creative, and productive. Amid corporate disintegration, personal order. She also observed--in healthy organizations which allowed maximum autonomy, even seeming chaos, at the local level--that the seem-ingly chaotic variety at the local level did not lead to disintegra-tion, but to a kind of global order and stability. Out of local chaos, global order. Somehow the creative individuals in the disinte-grating systems and the healthy organizations permitting high levels of local autonomy were pulled into coherence as if a strange attractor were at work. Her highly suggestive conclusion is that the strange attractor in both cases is meaning generated by a "frame of reference," that is, a coherent vision and pattern of val-ues, which gives direction to all the seemingly disparate activity. Meaning, vision, values, however, are formal categories. What vision, what values, what meaning might be the strange attractor of religious life that accounts for its self-identity and coherence, its fractal wholeness and beauty, through nearly two millennia of chaotic movement in an often dysfunctional church?22 More importantly, is the strange attractor still at work, still generating a recognizable lifeform today in what might be one of the most chaotic periods of development in the history of religious life? Are there a few "equations" that have iterated throughout these two millennia in thousands of different fractal realizations man- January-February 1998 Schneiders * Congregational Leadership and Spirituality ifesting the strange attractor that keeps this lifeform coherent and true to itself?. From the time of the lst-century virgins until it was pro-claimed anew by Vatican II, the basic principle, the fundamental "equation," has been that religious life is essentially gospel life. The pattern of the life has been the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, perhaps the ultimate instance of order out of chaos, that is, life out of death. Of course, religious life shares this deter-mining equation with all Christian life. But religious life has also always been distinguished from lay Christian life by the particu-lar way religious have entered into the paschal mystery of Christ, by the specifically religious "equation," namely, by the life of con-secrated celibacy lived in community and mission. The strange attractor of religious life, then, may be a partic-ular kind of gospel-based relationship with Jesus Christ, expressed in freely chosen lifelong celibacy, lived in community and mis-sion, that has generated a lifeform which is distinct and recog-nizable despite enormous variety. It has reinvented itself endlessly, but from a distance and over time we can note the repeated pat-terns, its fractal wholeness. The effect of the strange attractor is a global stability and self-identity through incessant change, a particular and recognizable order out of chaos. Christian Spirituality and Congregational Leadership If these metaphors .drawn from the new science--that is, the congregation as an open and autopoietic system invisibly structured by the corporate fields that manifest in the spirit of the congre-gation within the shaping influence of the strange attractor of celi-bate living of the Gospel in community and mission--are illuminating of our current experience of religious life in our par-ticular congregations, we can ask what light they throw on the problematic of leadership. Does such a postmodern model of reli-gious life based on metaphors drawn from the new science suggest anything helpful in understanding what leadership in such sys-tems might mean today? Obviously, the image of the leader as manager whose task is to minimize disequilibrium by control of all personnel, policy, and practice is obsolete. But probably the image of the leader as the lone visionary who boldly imagines and projects goals to gal-vanize the membership toward the future is also obsolete. This is Review for Religious not because care of the community and corporate vision are not as important today as they have always been, but because we increasingly realize that they are the shared responsibility of the entire congregation.23 What is characteristic of the context of leadership today is that the kinds of systems over which leaders preside are situations which are not only uncontrollable in fact, but chaotic in principle. Chaos is the system's "steady state." Whatever leaders do today, it cannot be imagined realistically as merely the direction of reliable resources toward clearly perceived objec-tives. It has to have something to do with the creative potential of chaos itself. Even while managing the modern social systems that our congregations, at one level, certainly are, leaders are chal-lenged to engage the deep dynamics of meaning in the increasingly postmodern systems that we are becoming. It seems to me that religious life today is at the bifurcation point between death and transformation, between entropy and self-renewal, and therefore that the responsibility of leaders in relation to the deep dynamics of meaning has to do with the prin-ciple of self-reference which Wheatley identifies as the most impor-tant single determinant of self-renewal in autopoietic structures.24 The science of autopoietic systems suggests that, if the congre-gation (or religious life as a lifeform) is true to itself, in touch with and living out of its own identity, it will continue to renew itself even in the face of the massive material and ecclesiastical challenges of this historical period. If it is the case that the iden-tity of religious life lies in the celibate living of the gospel in com-munity and mission within the spirit of the particular congregation, we are at the heart of the issue. And the issue is faith. In what follows I am relying heavily on a remarkable 1995 study by a British theologian, Denys Turner, of the apophatic ele-ment in the Christian mystical tradition.2s In this book Turner is dealing with what I suspect is the most challenging issue for all of us in religious life today, but perhaps especially for those charged with the care of the community as a whole, namely, the mean-ing, reality, and integrity of Christian faith today. Religious life is fundamentally a faith reality, and the faith in question is not simply a generalized conviction that there is more to reality than meets the eye. Christian faith is both an unthe-matized openness to the ineffable Divine Mystery that has no name and a thematized participation in a particular religious tra- t--!-9- January-Februa~3~ 1998 Scisneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality 20 dition which believes that this Holy Mystery is both revealed and encountered in Jesus of Nazareth risen from the dead whose life is communicated to us in and through the gift of his Holy Spirit within the community called church. A major question today for Christians, including religious, and especially women, is whether these two aspects of faith, unthematized openness to Divine Mystery (which is not necessarily Christian) and thematic adher-ence to a particular religious tradition (namely, Christianity), are or need necessarily be related and, if they are related, how that can be personally experienced and authentically lived. Many postmodern Christians are caught in an experiential disjunction between their God-experience on the one hand and, on the other, their participation in the particular faith tradition, that is, the religion, within which they were initiated into that God-experience and which still claims to mediate it. In other words, there is an experienced disjunction between spirituality as lived faith experience and religion as articulated tradition. This may be partially due to the sudden (at least historically speaking) reversal of our evaluation of the role of experience in spirituality that coincided with the upheavals in religion of the conciliar era. Let me trace this development in broad strokes. For several centuries Christians were educated to discount feeling in the practice of religion in favor of a kind of blind faith and naked exercise of will. It was not the person who believed but the intellect; not the person who loved but the will. The body with its emotions was that which had to be overcome and sub-jected in order for the soul to seek God. This approach to the spiritual life, which effectively reduced spirituality to religious practice, was seriously challenged by at least three developments in the middle of this century. First, for all kinds of reasons that were psychological and cul-tural as well as theological, the radical wholeness of the human person began to resurface, and many believers began to reclaim the importance, perhaps even priority, of feeling in religious prac-tice. Retreat directors learned to ask people how they felt, not what they thought. Retreatants learned to be attentive to subjec-tive states of consolation .and desolation. Discernment began to take into account the person's felt response to alternative possi-bilities. Rather than considering felt religious experience unreli-able or even suspect, people began to consider it the touchstone, even the essence, of genuine spirituality. Desiring such experi- Review for Religious ence, seeking it, trusting it, living from it was no longer an aber-ration but the norm. Second, the feminist movement took hold among Catholic women, and its analysis of patriarchy enabled women to name and claim their experience of oppression in the church and to trace ecclesiastical sexism to its theological roots in Scripture and tradition. Women's experience of the Catholic religious tradition became laced with negative feeling just as they were learning that feeling was not irrelevant, but a valid and important indicator of the real. Many concluded that, if Catholic religion feels deeply alienating, Catholic spirituality may be highly suspect. Third, Catholics, for the first time, came into meaningful appreciative contact with non-Christian religious traditions where they encountered spiritualities that counteracted some of the very aspects of Christianity that were becoming increasingly problematic. The nature-affirming rituals of native American spirituality countered the overcerebral otherworldliness of traditional Catholic wor-ship. The nondualistic, nondogmatic meditation practices of Eastern mystical traditions offered an attractive alternative to the rationalistic and mechanical prayer practices of ordinary Catholic piety. Thus, at the very time that experience was becoming the touchstone of truth in the sphere of religion, both negative and positive experiences in the realm of spirituality converged to undermine adherence to the Roman Catholic Christian tradition. This has led some, perhaps many, religious to seriously question whether Catholic Christianity offers an adequate, much less a preferable, access to Holy Mystery or compelling motivation for ministry. For many the God of Christianity seems too small, too violent, and too male; the focus on Jesus Christ seems narrow and exclusive; the resurrection seems mythological if not incred-ible and, in any case, irrelevant to a world in anguish; the insti-tutional church seems hopelessly medieval, sexist, and clerical; liturgy is alienating; morality is out of touch with reality; and church ministry is a continual battle with male hostility and power There is an experienced disjunction between spirituality as lived faith experience and religion as articulated tradition. Januao~-FebruaO, 1998 Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality dynamics. Spirituality centered in personal experience was increas-ingly engrossing while religion, especially the Catholic religion, was increasingly alienating. After a certain amount of experimentation, many religious have settled into a kind of personal, often highly eclectic, spiri-tuality within the context of a nominal Christianity whose central tenets and practices are of little practical import in their lives. Their God may no longer be the God of Jesus Christ, but a non-personal, benevolent cosmic energy holding reality together in some mysterious way. Jesus may have been consigned to history as one of many prophetic figures whose memory remains moti-vating although they themselves are long dead. The Bible may no longer be, for them, revelatory or normative Scripture, but one religious classic among others. Christian sacraments may be quarries of symbolic elements which can be combined with anal-ogous elements from other traditions in the formulation of mean-ingful rituals. Prayer may be any practice from listening to music, to Zen sitting or Tai Chi, to hiking or massage which is calming and focusing and helps one keep a balance in a crazy world. In religious communities the effect of these developments in spirituality is profoundly disintegrative. It can no longer be taken for granted that the members share the same faith, a serious sit-uation for a lifeform which is based not only on faith but specif-ically on Christian faith. Members for whom Christian faith remains normative may hesitate to speak in explicitly Christian terms lest they be branded reactionary or dismissed as out of. touch with contemporary reality, while post-Christian or selec-tively Christian members may hesitate to voice their spirituality lest they shock their hearers or find themselves branded as heretics. Christian liturgical celebration at congregational events is sometimes so divisive as to be impossible. Nevertheless, wherever they are on the Christian map, reli-gious women continue to be resolutely religious, seeking God in disciplined spiritual practice, making retreats, engaging seriously in spiritual direction, reading widely and deeply in theology and spirituality, attending workshops and renewal programs. Those religious who have survived the postconciliar exodus and are still committed to both community and ministry are not indifferent to the God quest that brought them to religious life in the first place. This is the point at which the disjuncture between spirituality which is a matter of passionate concern and religion which is a Review for Religious locus of struggle and alienation is apparent; and, in my opinion, this may be the bifurcation point at which the choice between death and transformation is going to be made. We cannot afford to ignore this situation or pretend it does not really matter as long as people are sincere and committed. What is in jeopardy is not control but self-reference, the con-gregation's response to its strange attrac-tor, that is, to religious life itself as a faith reality. It seems to me that what many reli-gious are attempting is not to dispense with faith, but to find God in a kind of personal mystical quest that bypasses what are experienced as the superficiali-ties and hypocrisies, and even the vio-lence, of the official structures of institutional Catholic Christianity. In par-ticular, many are trying to find in the Christian mystical tradi-tion itself guidance for developing an apophatic or nonthematic contemplative spirituality that is experientially satisfying and moti-vating, but that bypasses the concreteness of the Christian cat-aphatic tradition with its specifically religious beliefs, liturgy, and practice. In short, it is an attempt to develop a spirituality with-out religion. Denys Turner wrote his treatise on the Christian mystical tradition, The Darkness of God, as a challenge to this contemporary development, which he calls spiritual "experientialism" and which he sees as widespread among Christians in general. Turner regards this experientialism as a kind of modernist positivism in the arena of spirituality. In other words, felt religious experience has become the "hard data" of authentic spirituality analogous to the observ-able results of laboratory experiments in modern science or the quantifiable data of sociological surveys. Personal experience has become the nonnegotiable criterion of validity in the arena of faith.26 The practice of contemplation, yielding direct experience of either the delightful presence or the painful absence of Holy Mystery, has become for many the sufficient, if mir~imal, structure, content, and dynamics of their spirituality, augmented perhaps by a symbolic and ritual eclecticism that draws from various reli-gious and nonreligious traditions. This experience of Holy Mystery is believed to be "apophatic," that is, unencumbered by What many religious are attempting is not to dispense with faith, but to develop a spirituality without religion. January-February 1998 Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality specific religious doctrines, images, symbols, liturgical traditions, and so on. Against this misguided turn to experience Turner maintains, with impressive support from the data of the tradition, that there is no such thing as "apophatic experience." This is a contradiction in terms. The experience of the absence of God is just as much an experience, that is, just as cataphatic, as is the experience of God's presence even though it might be less enjoyable. It is the quest for mystical experience itself, and especially reliance upon it as the touchstone of faith, which is the problem, Turner maintains. Furthermore, following Bernard McGinn, Turner points out that no one who is serious about the God quest, especially not the mys-tics (at least not until very recent times), attempts to "practice mys-ticism." People practice Christianity or Buddhism or Judaism.27 The mystical is a moment in the practice of these traditions, but there is no freestanding mysticism or pure apophatic practice. The development of this kind of experience-oriented, reli-giously decontextualized spirituality has been encouraged in recent years by a tendency in popular books on spirituality to talk of an apophatic and a cataphatic "way" as if there were two types of spirituality, one of which, the cataphatic, proceeds through the use of the theological symbols, images, rituals, and practices of a religious tradition and one of which, the apophatic, makes no use of these "externals" and reaches directly to the Divine Mystery that transcends all human institutions.28 Furthermore, there has been a tendency to suggest that these "ways" are a matter of per-sonal choice and so one might decide to bypass the cataphatic and plunge into the darkness of the apophatic way, where God would be met in pure spiritual nakedness. There has been much talk of foolproof methods by which to achieve mystical empti-ness and union, often without or before any serious ascetical train-ing, theological formation, or liturgical involvement. What Turner exposes is the basic fallacy of this whole "expe-rientialist" turn in spirituality. All spirituality, insofar as it can be practiced or pursued, is cataphatic, and all religious experience is by definition cataphatic. The apophatic is not a "way" or a "prac-tice," much less a kind of "experience." It is a moment of negativity, of nonexperience, at the heart of genuine, ordinary religious faith and practice. This moment is, by definition, not something one can experience at all. The apophatic or mystical is precisely the neg-ativity, the total darkness which cannot itself be seen or felt. It is Review for Religious the absence of experience, the "hole" at the heart of religious expe-rience, the place of the Holy Mystery Which is utterly beyond our experiencing, attainment, knowing, or naming. Mysticism is not negative (or positive) religious experience, says Turner, but the negativity of all religious experience.2Vlf I can experience it at all, it is not God in Godself that I am experiencing. If Turner is right, this attempt to bypass religious practice of the Christian tradition in search of some direct experience of the Holy Mystery is wrongheaded and futile, and it can end only in self-delusion of the kind pilloried by the author of The Cloud of Unknowing.3°Insofar as the apophatic moment occurs, it is abso-lutely nonexperienceable and hidden. And it occurs only within the cataphatic context of resolutely faithful Christian practice, which may at times overflow in the exaltation of spiritual peak experiences or generate the psychologically devastating suffering of the "dark night" described by John of the Cross. But, as all the mystics have maintained, such graces of light or darkness are neither the content nor the criterion of genuine spirituality. As Turner says, the deformations of the "experientialist" derive . . . from the error of understanding that which is a "moment" of reserve, of denial and unknowing within worship, prayer and sacrament as if it were a rival practice which displaces that Christian ordinariness. "Experientialism" in its most extreme forms is therefore the displacement of a sense of the negativity of all religious experience with the pursuit of some goal of achieving negative experiences.3~ In other words, a purely mystical spirituality is not a viable alternative to full participation in the religious tradition. The mystical, insofar as it is spiritually significant and transformative (as opposed to momentary experiences of oceanic bliss which may be caused by any number of stimuli from drugs to trance) is available only within some ongoing, ordinary, everyday cataphatic practice. The alternative to being imprisoned within the rigidities of an overmaterialized tradition is not the flight into a disembodied, decontextualized, and individualistic pseudomysticism. The deeply interior life of the serious postmodern Christian requires the shaping influence of a tradition worked out over centuries by saints and scholars, mystics and martyrs, even as the tradition itself requires the critical challenge of its postmodern adherents, whose new insights into reality must refine the tradition of its historical dross. 25 Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadersbip and Spirituality Let us return now to the framework of meaning that has sup-plied us with the important principle of self-reference. If the focus of self-reference of religious congregations and their members is the gospel-based celibate living of the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ in community and mission within the spirit of the partic-ular congregation, and if the self-renewal and continued flour-ishing of religious life and the particular congregation depend on this self-reference, then nothing is more important than the authenticity of the spirituality of religious. Obviously, people can form and live community and altruis-tically serve others without being either Christian or Catholic. And a religious congregation can certainly transform itself into such a community of life and service, leaving behind its specifically Catholic identity and affirming whatever religious affiliation, or lack thereof, its individual members espouse. That is, it can cease to be a religious congregation and continue as an intentional com-munity with or without religious roots?2 My concern is with con-gregations which have not, or not yet, made that choice, but are struggling to maintain their Catholic Christian identity in a highly dysfunctional ecclesiastical context. For such communities the quiet sidelining of Christian identity believed and practiced in the church is not compatible with their ongoing life and self-renewal as a religious congregation. And perhaps the most impor-tant task of leadership in such congregations is helping the congregation to negotiate the moment of bifurcation between congregational death through the abandonment of that identity and congregational transformation through the critical reappro-priation of its Christian identity. There can be no question, in a postmodern context, of deal-ing with this issue by fiat. The present state of spirituality in many religious congregations is highly chaotic, and attempting to abol-ish chaos by control is, as we have seen, the kiss of death. Hope lies not in the exercise of coercive power, but in the realization that the current disequilibrium is potentially far more creative than the kind of static uniformity that prevailed in the spiritual-ity of most preconciliar communities. But how do leaders facilitate the emergence of new spiritual order from religious chaos? The analogies from the new science suggest several possible leads. First, a climate has to be created in which divergent theological views and spiritual practices can rise to visibility and articulation and be seriously and respectfully Review for Religious engaged. The unspoken agreement not to talk about anything that could cause dissension and not to use any ritual with which someone might be uncomfortable--and to substitute therapeutic methods and organizational techniques for theological engage-ment with controversies in the area of faith--is analogous to main-taining tight managerial control in a dysfunctional organization. The upheaval in spirituality at the individual and local level needs to be articulated, recognized, and owned. Within it lies the poten-tial, not for a restoration of preconciliar uniformity of doctrine and practice, but for a self-renewing reclaiming of the tradition in very new, perhaps even startlingly new, forms. Any Christian!ty that can be relevant and life-giving in a postmodern context is simply not going to look like, or be like, the Catholicism of the Middle Ages or even of the 1950s. Second, the basic framework of meaning needs to be reartic-ulated, but in ways that take seriously the problems which have led to its practical collapse. This basic framework is the gospel in all its depth and breadth, and that means the theological and litur-gical, moral and socially transformative riches of the Christian tradition in dialogue with the postmodern culture emerging in our time. The Christian tradition that has become alienating for so many is not the gospel itself, but the moribund formulations of post-Tridentine Vatican institutionalism. The extraordinary response of so many, especially women religious, to the work of theologians like Elizabeth Johnson and Catherine LaCugna, bib-lical scholars like Carolyn Osiek and Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, liturgists like Mary Catherine Hilkert, ecumenists like Rosemary Radford Ruether, moral theologians like Lisa Sowle Cahill, and scholars of spirituality like Constance FitzGerald and Joann Wolski Conn--along with the rediscovery of the Christian mys-tics themselves--suggests that the tradition has the potential to be reappropriated and renewed in feminist, ecological, and pluralis-tic patterns if the meeting between the postmodern religious and contemporary theology can be facilitated. A system converts local chaos to global order by the infusion of new information which can be appropriated within a coherent frame of reference. Access to theological resources and also deep engagement with the new science, feminist thought and practice, and ecological and social theory by all the members of a congregation would seem to be an absolute requirement for the development of an authentic post-modern Catholic Christian spirituality that would be adequate Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirit~tality for religious life in the 21st century. If religious develop such a spirituality, we can expect resistance from the official exercisers of institutional control. But, if religious fail to develop such a spir-ituality, we can expect religious congregations to disintegrate from within as their spirituality unravels and becomes a tangle of idiosyncratic and individualistic syncretisms. Third, the interaction between the whole and the parts has to be facilitated so that what is emerging in the spirituality of the members appears in a corporate spirituality that breaks the ver-bal and ritual silence at the global level and also transforms the global frame of reference itself so that it is not a religious strait-jacket but a flexible focus of self-reference. In preconciliar days. most communities had a repertoire of symbols, myths, celebra-tions, and ceremonies which integrated the spirituality of the individual members with the spirituality of the congregation. How can we experience this local-to-global articulation today? The order at the global level, which is not dogmatic uniformity but deep unity in shared faith and spirituality, can be authentic only if it emerges from the lived variety and ferment at the local level, among the individuals and groups that make up the community. In recent years some congregations have begun processes of getting religiously sensitive issues out on the table and seeking ways to bring theological resources into dialogue with personal religious experience in the context of open sharing of faith. This is very risky business. But in many cases it has resulted in unusual experiences of renewal of the spirit of the community. Perhaps, having negotiated so many of the more "external" issues of lifestyle and even ministry, many religious are eager, even if fearful, to engage the deeper issues of faith, religious identity, and spiritu-ality. Congregational leadership may be challenged today to take the initiative in helping the congregation address the fundamen-tal issue of Catholic faith and spirituality, that is, the issue of identity and self-reference. Conclusion Let me briefly summarize and conclude. What leadership means and how it is exercised depends essentially on how one understands the social system one is leading. I have tried to sug-gest that the quasi-mechanical modern model of the religious congregation is giving way to an organic postmodern model of Review for Religious community. I have explored a few features of this new model, namely, the conception of the community itself as an autopoietic or self-renewing organic structure; the category of fields as a way of un.derstanding the unifying forces of charism, vocation, and the spirit of the congregation; and the strange attractor as a way of understanding the quintessential role of the gospel lived in consecrated celibacy in community and mission as the principle of self-reference of religious life. I then tried to suggest that the role of leadership today may be neither primarily social maintenance nor ministerial goal set-ting, but the facilitation of the congregation's self-renewing pro-cess through attention to its core identity, its framework of meaning. This framework of meaning is not a uniform religiosity nor a particular type of ministry. It is Christian paschal spiritual-ity, rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, lived celibately in com-munity and mission, a spirituality which cannot bypass the Christian theological, liturgical, moral, and socially transforma-tive tradition within the believing community we call church. But in a postmodern context such spirituality cannot be leg-islated or enforced. Nor are leaders, in all probability, any less caught up in doubt, alienation, and theological-religious confusion than the other members of their congregations. What we ask of our leaders today is not that they supply us with the correct answers, or even that they pi6neer the road to the future, but that they mediate the creative interchange between local and global levels, helping us to own the real questions and search honestly, together, for appropriate responses, and thus facilitate the life-giving interaction between the religious congregation and the real world in which we live and minister. When Peter, that first leader of the Christian community, asked Jesus for a clear fix on church order and ministry by inquiring what role his apparent rival, the Beloved Disciple, was to have, Jesus replied, "That's not your problem. What you need to do is follow me," that is, become a beloved disciple and thereby become capable of the ministry to which you are called. Perhaps for all of us, leaders and followers, it is both that simple and that difficult. Notes ~ On this issue of the i~nportance of worldview and the character of the emerging worldview with which I am concerned in this paper, see the very provocative thesis of Danah Zohar in collaboration with I.N. Marshall, The Quantum Self." Human Nature and Consciousv~ess Defined by the Januao,-FebruaO, 1998 Scbneiders ¯ Congregational Leadership and Spirituality New Physics (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1990), esp. pp. 231-237. 2 For a comprehensible introduction to the notion of postmodernity in the context of Christian faith, see James B. Miller, "The Emerging Postmodern World," in Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World, ed. Frederic B. Burnham (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), pp. 1-19, or Douglas C. Bowman, Beyond the Modern Mind: The Spiritual and Ethical Challenge of the Environmental Crisis (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1990). The SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought, edited by David Ray Griffin, and published in Albany, New York by the State University of New York Press, includes several volumes of essays repre-senting most of the preeminent writers attempting to relate Christianity and its concerns to the postmodern worldview. For a powerful presenta-tion of secular postmodernity, see Albert Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 3 My primary resources in trying to understand this new approach to reality have been the following: Heinz Pagels, The Coswtic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature (New York: Bantam Books, 1983); David S. Toolan, "Praying in a Post-Einsteinian Universe," Cross Currents 46 (Winter 1996-1997): 437-470; Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly Universe (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992); Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers,/t Simpler Way (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1996); Danah Zohar in collaboration with I.N. Marshall, The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1990). 4 Zohar, The Quantum Self, p. 234, speaks of the new worldview chal-lenging the modernist dualisms which split subject and object (mind and body), individual from relationships, and culture from nature. This is a slightly different focus on what I am talking about in more humanis-tic/ religious terms. 5 Specifically, Wheadey relies on the thought about living systems of Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe (Oxford: Pergamon, 1980); the treatment of chemical reality of Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos (New York: Bantam, 1984); the work of quantum physi-cists on strange attractors as explained by James Gleick in Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987). 6 Cited in Wheatley, Leadership, p. 18. 7 Much of the following description of U.S. religious life from the 1800s until Vatican II is well illustrated in the volume, coauthored by a team of IHM sisters, Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, ed. Margaret Susan Thompson (Syracuse: University Press, 1997). 8 It is interesting that sociological theory of organizations has .applied these Newtonian principles to social systems, leading theorists like Helen Rose E Ebaugh, in Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993), to confidently predict the immi- Review for Religious nent demise of religious life, not because the spirituality of religious has died, but because the organizations seem to have lost their niche in the social, economic, and occupational machinery. If I understand Wheatley's thesis, she is convinced that the mechanistic understanding of organiza-tions that underlies much organizational and management theory is inap-propriate to the kind of entity such organizations are. I think Wheatley's thesis is applicable to religious life in general and religious congrega-tions in particular. 9Wheatley, Leadership, pp. 18-19. 10 Wheattey, Leadership, pp. 95-96, treats this feature. ~' When I hear religious wearily predicting the demise of their con-gregations as simply inevitable since decline in one or more areas seems to have set in and, in the long run, decline cannot be arrested or reversed, I am struck by the mechanistic character of their image of religious con-gregations. ,2 Wheatley, Leadership, p. 93. 13 Wheatley, Leadership, p. 90, italics mine. 14 Before reading Wheatley, who uses this very expression, "death or transformation," in relation to living organisms, I was looking at this same phenomenon in religious life in terms of the mystical tradition, the "bifurcation point" represented by the "dark night." See Sandra M. Schneiders, "Contemporary Religious Life: Death or Transformation?" Cross Currents 46 (Winter 1996-1997): 510-535. is Wheatley, Leadership, p. 94. 16 See Patricia Wittberg, Pathways to Re-Creating Religious Communities (New York/Mahwah: Paulist, 1996), pp. 19-31, for her very enlighten-ing treatment of the sociological category of the "religious virtuoso" as a descriptive of religious. Peter Brown, in The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 58, refers to the lst- and 2nd-century virgins, the original religious, as "virtuoso practitioners of continence." 17 In the earliest period of church life, the choice of lifelong virgin-ity created an alternative to the sociological givens of society in the 1st century of the Christian era. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, the desert ascetics moved geographically out of the overacculturated church of late antiquity. In the Middle Ages cenobitic monasticism was an institutional alternative to life in the cities. The "leaving the world" motif continued in the closed lifestyles of apostolic religious congregations right up to Vatican II. 18 Wheatley, Leadership, p. 48. 19 See esp. Wheatley, Leadership, pp. 52-54. 201 think this dynamic metaphor fnight have some potential for dis-cussions of the issues of belonging and membership. For example, if every individual is a distinct constellation of overlapping and intersecting fields (family, personal friends, professional associations, ministerial involve-ments, and so forth) which structure her personal identity and which 3I Janua~y-Febt'uaty 1998 . 32 Scbneiders * Congregational Leadership and Spirituality intersect with the fields of other members and the corporate constellation of fields of the congregation, we have to expect that ways of belonging and participating in community life are going to be very diverse and that this need not lead to disintegration. Likewise, there may be significant but not determining intersection between the field of some person and the congregational field,, leading to a considerable sense of"belonging" on the part of this person who, nev-ertheless, does not feel called to become a member in the full sense of the word. 2, Wheatley, Leadership, pp. 20-21. 22 The amount of chaos within religious life and the sometimes over-whelmingly dysfunctional character of the ecclesiastical settings in which the life survived and even thrived over the centuries is strikingly chron-icled by Jo Ann Kay McNamara in Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 23 1 do not mean to suggest that leadership does not play a special role in maintenance and mission. In fact, I suspect leadership in these arenas is even more important today than it was in the recent past when eccle-siastical control dictated virtually all major decisions about mission and stable financial procedures and reliable resources assured maintenance. I want to suggest, however, that these functions, although facilitated by leadership, are largely handled by specialists or by congregational struc-tures that do not depend exclusively on leaders. 24 Wheatley, Leadership, p. 146: "More than any other science prin-ciple I've encountered, self-reference strikes me as the most important. ¯ . . As an operating principle, it decisively separates living organisms from machines." 2s Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian MystMsm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 26 Turner, Darkness of God, p. 262. Turner says (p. 259): "Experientialism is. the 'positivism' of Christian spirituality. It abhors the experiential vacuum of the apophatic, rushing to fill it with the plenum of the psychologistic." 27 Turner, Darkness of God, pp. 260-261; he cites Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of VVestern Christian MystMsm, Vol. 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1992), p. xvi. Turner does not actually agree with McGinn about the role of experience in mysticism, but he does agree with him that, until the present century, tnysticism was not isolated from religious traditions but an element within the,n. 2s Mthough there is much of value in Diarmuid O'Murchu's latest book, Quantum Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1997), I have serious hesitations about his facile dismissal of .religion as a dispensable human invention (see esp. pp. 7-12). He is right to point out the distinction between spirituality, religion, and theology, but I doubt that the direct leap from spirituality to theology is possible because, while the categories of theology can be enriched by science, I doubt that they can be supplied Review for Religious without recourse to sacred texts and liturgical ritual. It is indeed part of the function of theology to purify religion of its excesses; but it is also part of the function of religious tradition to criticize theology. 29 Turner, Darkness of God, p. 259. 3o See the caustic description in chaps. 52-53 of The Cloud of Unknowing (The Classics of \Vestern Spirituality), ed. James Walsh (New York/Ramsey/Toronto: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 220-223. 3t Turner, Darkness of God, p. 259. 3: In speaking of religious congregations, I am using the term theo-logically and not canonically. I am talking about the faith reality that constitutes religious life, not juridical requirements ofany particular period in history. Tropical Night Watch (Cap Haitien, Haiti) The current is cut, the light fails, generators die, sleep prevails. Wakened by silence, I stagger onto the gallery, stumble over stars, so many stars the sky overflows, the Milky Way spilt and star running all down the dome. Does someone, I wonder, watch with me, or do I alone gorge on the glory? Two a.m. an ungodly hour?-- with this luxury of light? this starry sight? I gape, I gape, at this godly night. Mary Alban Bouchard CSJ Januasy-February 1998 DONNA J. MARKHAM Leadership for the Common Good Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being torn asunder, the clarity of their vision along-side an ability to take their place in a materialistic world. They are the modern heroes . --Irene Claremont de Castillejo Knowing VVoman: A Feminine Psychology AnY person who is called upon to lead today is also called to the heroic act of unifying and healing in the midst of a world that is increasingly fragmented by nationalism and regional separatism. Nor are religious leaders unaffected: denom-inational sectarianism and ideological divisions threaten to take a mortal toll on the community of believers. At the same time, we live in an exciting era, alive in the midst of an enormous shifting in the collective experience of our planet. Insights from world religions, the new sciences, and feminist consciousness are con-tinually shaping our responses to the suffering oppressed. Religious leaders want to unify their members in order to meet the various challenges effectively, but the personal and communal risks are great. Women religious leaders find themselves engaging in heroic action as they contend with complex and differing perspectives on Christology and spirituality and on what constitutes the core Donna J. Markham OP is CEO for Southdown, a center for Christian healing that serves clergy and religious. Her article, published in Origins 27 (I 3 November 1997), is a slightly edited version of her address to the annual assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, held in Rochester, New York, in August 1997. Her address is Southdown; 1335 St. John's Sideroad East; RR #2, Aurora, Ontario; Canada L4G 3G8. Review for Relig4ous identity of religious life in this emerging global reality. Those who are entrusted for a time with the exciting task of fostering greater union and community are also expected to keep in front of our eyes the gospel-illuminated vision to which we have all committed ourselves. Irene Claremont de Castillejo rightly asserts that those who strive to accomplish such things are, indeed, mod-ern heroes. We actually have modern-day heroes--who have called us to common ground, who have invited us to envision a new way of being dwellers on earth, who have risked opening dif-ficult conversations and bringing forth serious critiques as new insights and truths are searched out. Within our midst are, I believe, unobtrusive modern heroines. The thoughts I share come from one who is clearly not a philosopher or a theologian, but rather a student of human behav-ior who has herself been stretched and challenged by a loving God. I share these thoughts as one who has experienced a call to profound conversion in the midst of the awesome responsibility of being entrusted with leading. I share these thoughts as one who, lost in deserts of confusion, has called out in fear; one who, with her sisters, has called upon a God of mystery, wisdom, and hope to show some clarity or meaning in daunting, sometimes terrifying, situations pregnant with disharmony and division. I hope to propose some specific skills for leaders to use in their efforts regarding the good we hold in common. Before doing that, however, I note two perspectives on the meaning of the com-mon good and offer a summation of our own experience of the past ten years. Perspectives on the Common Good There are two principal perspectives about how to achieve the good of society. The prevalent one, perhaps, is that the aggre-gate of individuals all pursuing their own self-interest constitutes the most good for the greatest number. This individualistic and utilitarian view--from John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill--emphasizes the common good as a composite of individual goods. It wants the civil authority to keep out of people's affairs except to ensure that no one tramples on another's rights. The second perspective, in the Thomistic tradition, emphasizes the common good as a social good that all must.participate in if the good of the whole is to be achieved (Hollenbach, 1989, pp. 85ff). January-February 1998 Markham ¯ Leadership for the Common Good Maritain elucidated this by speaking of a "personalistic commu-nitarianism" in which individuals achieve their own good more fully and readily when, in relationship with others, they work to enhance the common good. History has demonstrated, especially over the past two cen-turies, that two extremes of governance must be avoided: a lais-sez- faire individualistic philosophy that heralds each person in There is an increasing plurality of expression regarding personal spirituality and one's relationship with God. society as completely autonomous and indepen-dent, and a socialistic collectivism in which the individual sacrifices everything for the society, even to the loss of self-actualization. Within these polarities there exists a tension for each of us: to want each individual member in our community to be fulfilled and to flourish and to want our religious institutes to unleash their communal passion and energy in service of the mission of Jesus. After a long history of reflecting a more col-lectivist model, with the needs of individuals heavily subordinated to the needs of the larger community, religious life has, I think, swerved toward the Lockean-Smithian libertarian notion of the common good. Leadership itself has, at times, colluded in this--unconsciously, I think. We saw this reflected in some of our early documents after the call to renewal: the individual member was noted as our primary asset and first concern. While this concern was certainly not intended to subordinate the communal mission, experience has shown that this interrelationship has remained a serious issue for us, and we find ourselves seeking ways to lead well in the midst of escalating diversity of thought and belief. Experiences, Insights, and Questions What I say about the experience of leaders over this past decade is by no means exhaustive; I simply offer my own obser-vations: ¯ Women religious have a far stronger sense of internalized personal identity and individual maturity than previously. We also seek clarity concerning what constitutes corporate, com-munal identity .and what the requisites for membership are. Review for Religious ¯ We have witnessed a growing diversification of ministries, in which members are far more able to use their individual cre-ativity and talents in service of the gospel. ¯ We have deepened our sense of inner authority and self-direct-edness, yet we struggle with how this relates to any congre-gational ministerial focus and communal accountability. ¯ There is an increasing plurality of expression regarding per-sonal spirituality and one's relationship with God. ¯ There is a clear movement away from structures and systems that are oppressive and demeaning to women, and a deliber-ate movement toward systems that address the needs of the poor, the oppressed, and the abandoned. ¯ We have deepened our understanding of feminism in relation to our church and our world. ¯ We see an escalation of profound questioning, with conse-quences for our communal life as members of our institutes, not to mention our life as dwellers on this planet. ¯ As leaders we continue to experience the pervasive tension between our pastoral responsibility with its consequent care-giving obligations, and the possibilities of vision-driven, spirit-linking, heart-stirring leadership. ¯ We continue to examine models of leadership, modes of par-ticipation and decision making, and forms of governance that are faithful to our commitment as gospel-driven women. ¯ We live within the growing complexity of all the institutions and systems in which we minister. ¯ And we have witnessed the common good being held hostage, at times, by malaise and a depletion of communal passion. We have seen the common good compromised by leaders who have become overly preoccupied with the torment of a trou-bled individual and have diverted their attention from the broader work of leadership, with its potential to accomplish major transformations. We have witnessed the common good being co-opted by leaders who have become frightened and paralyzed in the face of an articulate few whose sociocultural precommitments distract them and others from gospel faith, the living water of religious life. At times we have also seen leaders--perhaps in misdirected efforts to affirm individu-als- fail to critique emergent societal, religious, and cultural movements as these impact on the common good of the con-gregation. 'L37 . 1998 Markham ¯ Leadership for the Common Good 3-8A So what is it that we have learned from what we have experi-enced? We have intensified our conviction that pluralism and diversity must work in tandem with a binding sense of identity and relationality. We know that interdependence is imperative for our survival as a planet, as nations, as a church, and as religious institutes. It is clear that all living systems are characterized by net-works of relationships. We are aware, more than ever, that all things are somehow connected and have an impact on one another for good or bad. Consequently, we know that various necessary and desirable boundaries need to be permeable enough for bond-ing with other communities and the global community to be pos-sible. We have learned, too, that neither hieratic leadership models nor totally consensual models are effective in this time of rampant change, greater complexity, and anxiety-provoking ambiguity, and we search for new ways to express leadership and exercise author-ity. We have learned that neither the subordination of individu-als to the needs of the community nor the subordination of the common good to the needs of individual members will make for a viable future. We have learned that new expressions of com-munity are being called for, whereby persons exercise true inter-dependence, participation, and responsibility about matters pertaining to the well-being of all those involved. We know that, if we are to do this, we need to develop skill in managing conflict and diversity. We have embraced even more deeply our need for ongoing contemplative reflection and conversation about mat-ters of the heart and soul. And we have learned with some trepi-dation that, insofar as profound doubt about the meaning and validity of our founding myths pervades our communities, we flirt with division and dissolution. Given all this, we are faced with serious questions. At what point does diversity within our institutes lead to entropy and orga-nizational dissolution? How will we work with our differences so that the result is synergy rather than division? How can we, with our members, become more intently engaged in the promotion of a personal communitarianism which recognizes that each per-son's dignity is most fully achieved in communion with others? What can we do as committed women of the gospel to help heal the gender and ideological rifts within our church, the racial and economic rifts in our country? What deliberate and concerted actions should we be taking as communities of faith to address Review for Religious materialistic individualism and the exploitation and mutilation of creation? How will we inspire others to that end? What signs will identify the better emergent models of leadership? In an effort to shed some light on these questions, I will focus on three areas of skill development: conflict management, guard-ing against "groupthink," and promoting communal efficacious action. By no means the only skills needed, these three call for some special attention today. Skills by themselves are, of course, not enough; but a leadership team's understanding of the princi-ples behind them can help keep the congregation moving for-ward while holding open the possibility of true synergy emerging. By synergy I mean the energy-laden, unexpected accord--or com-munion- within a group that gives it momentum toward the good which it esteems in common. Comfortable and Adept in Handling Conflict Perhaps more than any other skill, religious leaders today need the ability to manage conflict well. This prevents group-think from setting in and supports communal efficacious action. While we all know that some conflict is normal in any human relationship and an important part of the interaction in any vital group, much of what I say about managing conflict will seem counterintuitive. It flies in the face of our upbringing and our instinctive responses to confrontation. Most of us probably employ two basic responses to conflictual situations. Either we shy away from them, taking no action or procrastinating in the hope that the problem will go away, or we engage in symmetrical inter-change, being defensive or aggressive toward one another, prob-ably debating to a standoff. With the first strategy we quickly learn that the denial of the possibility of conflict is an easy way of becoming involved in one. With the second strategy we find our-selves caught in dualistic thinking that categorizes others as either with us or against us; we draw the proverbial line in the sand, and some become self-righteous winners and others demoralized losers. To use a third strategy, that is, to act counterintuitively, we anticipate and deliberately move toward that which is feared in efforts to establish connection. VCe meet conflict proactively or, in the wonderful words of William Shakespeare, we "meet the first beginnings; look to the budding mischief/before it has time to [-~9-- January-February 1998 Markham ¯ Leadership for the Common Good Where debate aims at convincing and winning, dialogue is a commitment to listen and learn from one another. ripen to ,naturity." We anticipate conflict and confrontation and approach the other with the clear, well-articulated intent to dia-logue. In so doing we open the possibility of engaging in a kind of ecological relationship building, a way of working through erroneous assumptions about and resistance to one another. We do not engage in debate, but rather in dialogue that has been pre-pared for with rigorous study, prayer, and reflection. Where debate aims at convincing and winning, dialogue is a commitment to lis-ten and learn from one another. Debate encour-ages dogmatic rigidity and judgment; dialogue encourages the search for insight and truth. If all parties have not prepared for the conversation by disciplined and intensive study, prayer, and reflec-tion, we are not ready to dialogue. Dialogue means that, while we are open to lis-tening and learning, we. also know that there are certain issues about which a group cannot com-promise. These include identity, internal consis-tency, and core values. A group ceases to exist as itself when these constitutive elements are com-promised. For example, leaders of religious congregations have a fundamental fiduciary obligation to promote the unity of the con-gregation. They canr~ot compromise those founding values and principles which have endured over ti,ne and which constitute the community's identity, charism, and mythic history. On the other hand, conversation and dialogue around the contentporary meaning of communal identity--no matter how divergent our understand-ings may bemis of critical importance and should not be shied away from in spurious hopes that differences will disappear. Still, to entertain that the fundamental identity of the group is open for negotiation is to promote disunity, disintegration, and ultimate demise. Membership in the group has become meaningless. A few examples: One can be a part of a group called "psy-chologists" and struggle with reformulations and new constructs relative to the study of personality and behavior. But to assert that the study of personality and behavior is no longer relevant to the discipline of psychology is to move oneself outside the iden-tity of being a psychologist. Similarly, Dominicans can struggle with how to enflesh the mandate of the order to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in today's world, or how they will name and address contemporary heresies, but they cannot say that they will Review for Religious replace the gospel of Jesus Christ as a foundation for that preach-ing mission with some other construct. To do so would be to move outside the identity of being Dominican. Likewise, when an indi-vidual experiences a loss of identity, that person moves into a state of confusion and terror. In the most dramatic sense of this phe-nomenon, the psychotic person has little or no awareness of who she is, what she is to be doing, or what meaning there is to her very existence. This is why the therapist, as an agent of responsive and responsible authority, must take swift action to protect her from further disintegration and potential self-destruction. Good leaders take clear and directed action to protect the solidarity of the group, its commitment to unity in the face of challenges to its founding purpose, its identity and mission. They do so by calling the group to reflection, prayer, and respectful dialogue. They, with the group, walk toward what is feared and claim their truth in faith and in commitment to the greater good. Leaders in this era of connection (Lipman-Blumen, pp. 8-21) live in the midst of ongoing diversity. Accordingly, they also live in the midst of the conflicts which arise from this diversity of insight and thought. Successful handling of these conflicts demands certain assumptions: that all are committed to learn from one another and to search for truth together; that they agree to carry out the conversation to its conclusion; that they respect one another; and that no party will resort to oppressive or vindictive strategies during or after the conversation. Leaders who succeed possess an internal disposition of grace, flexibility, balance, empa-thy, courage, creativity, and a heavy dose of curiosity about the dif-ferent and unusual. But even these qualities are insufficient if leaders are frightened or unclear about or uncommitted to what constitutes the identity of the group which they have been called to serve. A time may come when evasion or avoidance--or a direct naming of the futility of carrying a discussion any further--may actually be a worthwhile move. The problem has often been that we have resorted to these moves before working proactively with the conflictual situation. Guarding against Groupthink One way, of course, of avoiding conflict within a close work group is for all to adopt patterns of thinking that are so "agree- Janttal.3,-FebtvtaD, 1998 Markham ¯ Leadership for the Common Good able" that disagreement becomes unthinkable: it would be "dis-loyalty." But "agreement," then, is an ambiguous thing. The greater the ambiguity, the more likely it is that a leadership group has fallen into the groupthink that some analysts describe. This dangerous dynamic arises when, in the face of adversity or perceived danger, a cohesive "ingroup" (here, the leadership team) insulates itself from conflict with the "outgroup" (here, the other members). It does this by concurrence seeking and unques-tioning agreeableness among the ingroup members. Groupthink interferes with leadership's ability to act on behalf of the com-mon good because it has closed off alternative courses of action. It falls into a tight-knit, closed system in which team members avoid deviating from consensus. The ingroup thus shares an illu-sion of unanimity concerning most of its judgments and posi-tions. In the worst scenario, certain members of the ingroup unwittingly assume the role of "mindguards" who protect the leader and other ingroup members from adverse information that might break their sense of well-being about their past decisions. Groupthink can result from a largely unconscious effort on the part of a leadership group to fortify itself, in ambiguous and con-flictual times, against perceived threats from the outgroup. It is characterized by the ingroup's feeling a certain invulnerability and having exaggerated optimism about the future. Negative feed-back has been dismissed by rationalizing, by stereotyping the behavior of members who disagree as invalid, irrelevant, erro-neous, disloyal, or uninformed. The search for truth has thus been compromised not only in the leadership group but also throughout the community, because sincere engagement between the ingroup and the outgroup has been aborted. W-hen diversity of thought has been stifled within a leadership group, stagnation, boredom, and a certain brittleness, set in. This situation comes from a misunderstanding of consensus, but it often masquerades as a nonhieratic, more feminist model of managing disagreement and arriving at decisions. Groupthink is serious and should not be underestimated. Group analysis has shown that the membership of any large group reflects the deficiencies of its leaders. V~rhen diversity of opinion, conflict, and serious dialogue find little or no room for expression in the leadership group, the membership will unconsciously mir-ror the leadership or react strongly to it, in either case jeopar-dizing the common good. Review for Religious In order to counter the unconscious pull toward groupthink, leadership teams may wish to set up safeguards. They could, for example, devise ways of getting critical evaluations of decisions and actions (including evaluations from outside the leadership team); they could, before coming to agreement, probe for alternatives; they could seek and happily come up with more than one way of addressing a given issue; they could broaden the decision-making base by consulting persons from different disciplines and areas of expertise; they could, after a period of time apart, hold a sec-ond- chance session to readdress the issue; they could simply ask whether there is "too much unanimity." Promoting Efficacious Communal Action Leadership teams that manage conflict well and avoid group-think instill in their communities the belief that it is indeed pos-sible for something important and significant to come from concerted communal action directed toward the greater good (Bandura, 1997). On the other hand, if a community has little sense that it is making a difference as a group, it will experience organizational anxiety, corporate depression, and a growing fear of the future and it will not attract new members. Leaders who work well with conflict and promote the unity of the group through a clear commitment to pursuing the truth together make a difference in this world of ours. Their fearless-ness and passion in repeatedly calling the group to fidelity to its mission have an impact. If all else is equal, a group that is more unified and clear about its identity and mission will endure beyond one that is fragmented. In other words, integration and unifica-tion contribute to life; disintegration and fragmentation, to demise. We know well that our desire to flourish is not an end in itself. Rather, we choose life as members of religious institutes because we are committed to radical discipleship. We commit ourselves to a vowed life in community in order to make a differ-ence-- for the poor, the oppressed, the vulnerable, and the aban-doned in our world. We believe we can do this better because we are united as sisters, and so we invite others to walk with us. We do this not simply to bolster our sense of well-being, but because we believe desperately in the mission of Jesus to promote justice and right relationships among people, between people and their Januaty-Februa~y 1998 Markham ¯ Leadersh~ for the Common Good God, and among all the various peoples that dwell upon this planet. We know that this work is not finished. We invite others to join us in this connective mission of pursuing what is true, what is just, what is merciful, and what ultimately is the One who unites us all. Most of our congregations have identified issues which they see as critical to the common good of our society today. In meet-ing with communities across North America, I have noted a remarkable consensus on the critical issues calling for our response as women religious. Through chapter acts, vision statements, and communal goals, concerns about the environment, racism, the poor and oppressed, spirituality, and women's needs and oppor-tunities continue to surface. These concerns, besides inviting our deep compassion, recall us to our commitment to live the gospel as wholeheartedly as we can. I watched in awe as the NASA scientists shared the excite-ment of accomplishing something awesome. This team of women and men was jubilant that their Martian dreams, their hard work, their collaboration gave us earthlings a chance to see another world. They were passionate, and millions of us on the Internet shared their passion as we took in the unfolding events. Why, then--though our dreams and efforts on behalf of the oppressed and abandoned bring successes and are no less altruistic than those of NASA scientists--do we seem not to have such excitement and passion about our corporate accomplishments, either just among ourselves or in the eyes of others? I found myself pon-dering this question with a tinge of sadness as I watched the ongo-ing televised press briefings. We want to make a difference in our mission. We want to see something come of all our hard work. We want to know that we are participating in something that makes a tangible difference in our world. We long for excitement and passion regarding our work. When a group has a sense of nothing much coming from a colossal effort, it gets discouraged. Negative corporate conse-quences follow: heightened individualism, attrition of member-ship, loss of momentum, corporate sluggishness. While many of us individually experience satisfaction in know-ing that we are addressing those compelling needs identified through our chapter processes, I wonder if we are depriving our-selves of the possibility of magnanimous corporate accomplish-ment. I wonder if the aggregate of our individual good works has Review for Religious buried in oblivion our ability to do something passionately, and concretely, together. What might it mean for us if we were to spec-ify concretely what we will do together as a congregation--or per-haps all of our congregations in concert--by way of making a passionate and grand contribution to this Mother Earth of ours, especially the neediest causes on it? I realize that, as soon as we entertain thoughts of concerted and clearly defined com-munal endeavors, we may conjure up our worst memories of the past. The urgency of the needs of these times, however, demands that we let go of that history and allow the fire of a revived corporate passion to brighten our eyes and our vision as we look toward the future of the life and labor for which God called us together, and keeps calling us. We have dedication and commitment and a vision and a mission that are at least as broad and deep as the NASA team has. We are attuned to needs that make the Martian endeavor look small and childlike. Oppression and exploita-tion are no strangers to us. The exploitation of our planet, of the abandoned, of women and children, is daily being resisted by wonderful women religious all over this continent and beyond. But now is a time for us to come together, in ways we have never imagined, to make an even greater difference for the good of our world's people. We join with John Paul II in seeing ecological concern as a driving force in the communal mission to which we are called: The earth is ultimately a common heritage, the fruits of which are for the benefit of all . It is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to accumulate excess goods, squandering available resources, while masses of people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of sub-sistence. Today the dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness-- both individual and collective--are contrary to the order of creation, an order which is characterized by mutual interde-pendence . Simplicity., moderation, and discipline, as well as a spirit of sacrifice, must become part of everyday life, lest all suf-fer the negative consequences of the careless habits of a We commit OldYselves to a vowed life in community in order to make a difference-- for the poor, the oppressed, the vulnerable, and the abandoned in our world. Januao~Feb~wa~y 1998 Markham * Leadershi~for the Common Good few . An education in ecological responsibility is urgent; responsibility for oneself, for others, and for the earth . (John Paul II, 1990) Engaging in this efficacious action on behalf of the common good calls each of us to a deeper expression of our personal value and meaning and makes it available for the well-being of one another. To lead on behalf of the common good is as exciting as it is heroic. To stay centered on the ultimate vision of unity; to manage conflict in service of what is true, faithful, and just; to stand committed to the unfolding meaning of our identity in mis-sion-- these things are the substance of leaders who invite con-version and the linking of spirits and hearts at a time when not to do so is, all too probably, to toy with death. Steering Clear of Resistance Temptations to let oneself be drawn away from the demands of such a ministry of spirit-linking leadership abound. To allow oneself to be caught up in efforts directed toward problem persons and a minimal status quo is to entrench oneself and one's con-gregation in a futile defensiveness. Recognizing the difference between getting caught up in crisis management and working with the crisis in order to promote the common good is an art form that requires continual attention and development. In the process we must guard against a certain emotional and behavioral passivity that lulls us into a tolerance of diversity without restraint. Individual efforts and accomplishments should not crowd out the larger vision of a community's contemporary identity in mis-sion. When community leaders sideline or postpone or limit a unified group response to the crying needs of God's people and God's world, when leaders give too much attention to individual members (to their preferences, their convenience, even their per-sonal gratification) or fail to set limits on behaviors that stand in the way of the greater good, then something is wrong. Any group, of course, has maintenance tasks that need atten-tion. But how much time and energy should those entrusted with leadership today spend on those tasks? Honest self-evaluation of the use of team time is an important reality test for a leadership group. Such a group needs continual creative redesign so as to become or remain free to lead and not just manage. Beyond merely managing or even merely leading, I ask con- Rev&w for Religious gregational leaders to call one another and to call our communi-ties to heroism. Call us to risk entering into conflictual conver-sations that hold promise of connecting us in trust and in hope to one another. Lead us into the midst of difficult dialogues that will bring us into deeper and more respectful relationship with all who long for a church, a society, and a world in which communion in spirit and in truth prevails. Risk calling us to concrete corpo-rate ministerial responses. Invite us to be passionate. Help us to face together the different, the other, the frightening, and the unexpected so that we may discover ever more deeply that the good which we hold in common is nothing less than participa-tion in the compassionate goodness and mystery of God. Bibliography Bandura, A. "Human Agency: The Emperor Does Have Clothes." Canadian Psychological Association Convention, Keynote Address, June 1997. Bellah, R., et al. The Good Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Claremont de Castillejo, I. Knowing Woman:/t Feminine Psychology. Harper Colophon Books, 1974. Hollenbach, D. "The Common Good Revisited." Theological Studies 50, no. I (1989), pp. 70-94. Hollenbach, D. "The Catholic University and the Common Good." Current Issues in Higher Education 16, no. 1 (1995). John Paul II. "Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation." Papal statement, 1 January 1990. Lipman-Blumen, J. The Connective Edge: Leading in an Interdependent World. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. Rivers, E The Way of the Owk Succeeding with lntegv-i~y in a Conflicted World. HarperSanFrancisco, 1996. Roszak, T., M.E. Gomes, and A.D Kanner, eds. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995. Tracy, D. Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987. Whyte, D. The Heart/1roused: Poetry and the Preset'ration of the Soul in Corporate America. New York: Doubleday Currency, 1994. Wren, J.T., ed. The Leader's Companion: Insights on Leadership through the Ages. New York: Free Press, 1995. Janttary-Feb~'uary 1998 thNv N E MUNLEY Hearts Afire: Leadership in the New Millennium I love you, God, with a penny ~natch of love that I strike when the big and bullying dark of need chases my startled sunset over the hills and in the walls of my house small terrors move.~ ~edeeSSica Powers's image, "a penny match of love," is a won-rful imag~e o.f human desire for God that yearns" to be stronger, that yearns to ignite hearts, capture imaginations, shape dreams, and awaken possibilities. There is nothing paltry about God's gifts. God longs to kindle our penny matches of love into a growing fire as we gather here, more than a thousand strong, representing ninety-four percent of the women religious of the United States. It is a precious gift to be alive and to be called to leadership as one millennium ends and another begins. The last decades of the 20th century have been a time of cataclysmic change. The coming of the third millennium is certain to prompt diverse mus-ings about the challenges of this moment in history. Some, lament-ing present evils, will forecast doom. Others will gloss over substantive issues of dignity and justice to focus on the bizarre. Still others, including ourselves, will view the millennium as a kairos time for renewing hearts and transforlning society. Anne Munley IHM presented this paper, here edited and somewhat short-ened, as the presidential address to the August 1997 national assembly, in Rochester, New York, of the Leadership Conference of V¢o~nen Religious. She may be addressed at the I.H.M. Center; 2300 Adams Avenue; Scranton, Pennsylvania 18509. Review for Religious The year 2000 presents the world with an extraordinary occa-sion to commemorate-the birth of Christ as an historical fact and as a saving event for humanity for all times. The new millennium is an invitation to renewed wonder at the lavishness of a God who so loved the world that Jesus, the Christ, took on human flesh that all might become alive in God. We are called to leadership in a time when humanity yearns for connection with God, with one another, and with all creation. Yet we are acutely aware that we live in a world of violence, envi-ronmental desecration, economic polarization, racism, poverty, systemic oppression, and cultural breakdown. Our senses are bur-dened with images of human suffering in the homes, streets, vil-lages, neighborhoods, suburbs, and cities of this nation and throughout the world. In this age of globalization, when the peo-ples of the world are linked together as never before by commu-nication, economic interdependence, and the diffusion of cultural values, gaps continue to grow between rich and poor. Most peo-ple would agree that beneath obvious contemporary problems lie a crisis of the spirit and an erosion of concern for the common good. There is little sense that all the peoples of the earth are brothers and sisters having a common destiny in one global fam-ily created by the God of infinite love and compassion, but such a sense is what is needed." Inside the walls of our house, "the bul-lying dark of need" aches to see flames of love and moral com-mitment, aches for a revolution of the human heart and a resurgence of spiritual leadership. There are many signs of hope for this moment: conscious-ness that there is a crisis, desire for practical life-giving solutions, hunger for meaning, purpose, and direction and a longing for connectedness. The biblical concept of jubilee offers a revolu-tionary vision of reform for these times. The call to jubilee rec-ognizes the sanctity of time, the sacredness of creation, the importance of rest and contemplation, the equality of all in the eyes of God, the need to attend to the common good and the jus-tice of right relationships. The biblical jubilee calls for forgiveness, reconciliation, and joy, not ju.st an inner joy but a jubilation that is expressed in communal celebration) In proclaiming a new covenant of unity among peoples, Jesus brought the jubilee promise to life. We lead in a time of soul-stretching possibility. It is a holy time for "bringing good news to the afflicted, liberty to captives, January-Februaly 1998 Munley . Hearts Afire sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed." One of the greatest gifts that leaders can bring to this age is a sense of hope that transformation is possible. This gift is a penny match of love that can ignite great fires. Scientists tell us that tiny movements can have a huge cumulative impact on vast systems.4 Spiritual seekers discovered this truth long ago. In the words of Kukei, an 8th-century Zen master: "A hand moves, and the fire's whirling takes different shapes . All things change when we do."SMore than anything else these times need leaders who can bring to the outer world the transforming spirit of the inner world. Spiritual Leadership Recent literature about leadership reflects growing awareness that spirituality sustains community, meaning, and hope. The titles of many of these works suggest a shift toward conscious-ness of the inner life: Leading with Soul, The Corporate Mystic, The Heart .4roused, The Soul of Politics, and "Leading from Within.''6 The message of Leading ~vitb Soul is that leadership is a jour-ney of the heart. Heart, hope, faith, compassion, and courage are essential to leadership, to the creation of communities of mean-ing, and to a rediscovery of the ethical and spiritual center of society. Corporate mystics are spiritual leaders who are comfort-able with their own spirituality and who nurture the spiritual development of others. Corporate mystics call forth the best in themselves and others; they operate with integrity and intuition and pursue their visions with passion and compassion. In The Heart/1roused, the poet David Whyte links the inner world of spirit and creativity to the preservation of the soul in corporate America. Whyte knows well that leadership from within involves far more than techniques, plans, goals, or strategies. In his latest book of poetry, The House of Bdonging, he urges us to remember:7 What you can plan is too small for you to live. To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. Re'view for Religious Jim Wallace in The Soul of Politics and Parker Palmer in his essay "Leading from Within" emphasize responsibility for co-creating the world we live in by bringing to it the best of our spiritual traditions and convictions. Our spiritual traditions tell us that we are not victims of the world as it is, but are its co-cre-ators. Borrowing from Annie Dillard,s Palmer says that, unless leaders are willing to take the spiritual journey inward and down-ward, we are likely to project what we hate in ourselves onto other people because we fear to face the enemy in our own souls. Great leaders have the courage to face their shadow side and consciously choose to project a spirit of light. Our own experiences on the inner journey and as women religious committed to co-creation of a just and loving world are a valuable part of our call to lead-ership within our communities. Gift of a Heart Afire At this national assembly of ours in outstate New York, I recall the determination and incredible belief in possibility of the hand-ful of women who organized in 1848 the Seneca Falls Convention that lit a fire to change the legal and political position of women in the United States. Using various means to secure suffrage for women, leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Carrie Chapman Cart drew on their inner fire to breathe spirit and passion into their quest for reform. Women like Mice Paul, Lucy Burns, and Rose Winslow must have drawn deeply on their inner strength as they endured impris-onment, hunger strikes, and forced feedings. I recall also the countless women from all ethnic, class, and racial backgrounds who addressed severe social problems at the end of the last century and the early decades of this one. I recall the inner fire, faith, and vision that sustained the founding and pioneer members of our congregations, enabling them to over-come great obstacles. In the depths of their hearts they realized that, for those who love, the impossible becomes possible. I am conscious of the millions of people who daily confront abuses of human rights and work for change. I am conscious of all of the women religious throughout the world who, with listening hearts and eyes focused on today's fierce urgencies and spiritual hungers, continue to imagine alternate possibilities as they struggle toward the reality of God's reign in the immediate circumstances of daily January-February 1998 Munley . Hearts Afire life. I am conscious of the collective spiritual energy in this room and of the force that it is for the life of the world. Understood in its broadest sense, spirituality includes more than the inner life. It is, in the words of the theologian Anne Carr, "the whole of one's spiritual or religious experience, one's beliefs, convictions, and patterns of thought, one's emotions and behavior in respect to what is ultimate, or to God.''9 As women of faith and conviction, the greatest resource we can bring to the new millennium is the spiritual leadership of a heart afire. Spiritual leadership rooted in the gospel involves working for a transformed understanding of the good life as life that is profoundly good for all. When the heart is on fire, light comes from within. With the "eyes of the enlightened heart," we can see the hope to which we are called (Ep 1:18). By baptism and the mystery of vocation we have proclaimed publicly that the quest for God and the new creation is the fire of our lives. Our world longs for visible expressions of God's saving presence and for new ways of seeing that are graces of the inner experi-ence of God's love. In the Christian tradition seeing with the eyes of the heart occurs on the journey of discipleship. Discipleship is not an easy journey. It is an ongoing effort to live the gospel with integrity--trying, sometimes succeeding, often failing, recognizing the need of being forgiven and then trying again. It is a way of being in the world that affects every relationship. Disciples shape one another according to the action of the Spirit in their lives. The energy of the disciple flows from faith in what_is unseen yet believed. At its root, discipleship is a call to a love that never gives up on God, one's neighbor, or oneself. Disciples are called to love well., as Jesus did, with hope, truth, fidelity, and compassion. This leads inevitably to taking a stand with the Christ of the paschal mystery, who willingly laid down his life in love so that all may have life in abundance. In these times, spiritual leadership rooted in the gospel involves working for a transformed understanding of the good life as life that is profoundly good. for all. Such transformation will happen in our communities and in the world around us when Review for Religious precepts of compassion and justice inspire the collective soul and have an impact on behavior. All around us and among us there are compelling stories of discipleship. As leaders we need to see them with the eyes of the heart. In the sharing of the stories, heart touches heart and souls are filled with the spirit that makes ongoing commitment possible. Meaning-Making Spiritual leaders empower their communities for ongoing commitment by keeping questions of meaning before them: Why are we together in community? How are we called to the unique circumstances of these times? What is our commitment to one another and to those with whom we journey? In times of sub-stantive change there is an extraordinary need to explore ques-tions of meaning and purpose. In the midst of chaos, a coherent worldview and a dynamic understanding of the relevance of reli-gious life are helps toward interpreting the signs of the times and living discipleship with integrity. Leaders can make an enor-mous contribution to this process by helping the other members to make sense of shifting fealties both outside religious !ife and within it. At the deepest level, our congregations are held together by myths, values, beliefs, and foundational stories. These are the roots of the congregation's identity and purpose. They constitute the why of our being together as communities. They have their effect on the passion with which we live our mission. They influ-ence the way we use resources, the way we work together to press the mission forward. The shared meaning and work and mem-ory of our lives together provide symbols, relationships, and prin-ciples for making sense of the changes going on within us and around us. Shared meaning is essential for shared commitment. At a time of rapid social change and shifting demographics and resources, spiritual leadership is not about getting people to do something. It is about helping the group to keep before itself the kind of meaning that will guide choices and call forth com-mitment.~° Spiritual leadership is a group process rather than an individual's personal qualities or skills. It is interactive and rela-tional. When members of a community are closely involved in piecing shared meanings together as a basis for corporate action or direction, they experience significance together, discovery together, leadership together. Today, as many congregations grap- pie with issues of governance and restructuring, it is a key func-tion of leadership to foster meaning-making together. The more things change around us and within us, the more important it will be to create connections for exploring the pos-sibilities that change and newness offer. As Margaret Wheatley notes, "Life invites us to create not only the forms but even the process of discovery.''l~ The kind of effort that we put into mean-ing- making will affect the credibility of our way of life as well as our own sense of authenticity and integrity. Integrity and Justice In

Security Council 8221st Meeting ; 5/21/2018 Questions Remain over Syria's Chemical Weapons Programme, Security Council Hears, as Speakers Call for Agreement on Suitable Ac… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13276.doc.htm 1/5 MEETINGS COVERAGE Questions Remain over Syria's Chemical Weapons Programme, Security Council Hears, as Speakers Call for Agreement on Suitable Accountability Mechanism After more than four years of work, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was still unable to verify that Syria's initial declaration on its chemical weapons programme was accurate, delegates told the Security Council today, underlining that questions remained about the use of such weapons in that country. Discussions between the OPCW Technical Secretariat and the Syrian Government were continuing, although they had not led to the resolution of any of the remaining issues regarding the completeness and accuracy of Syria's initial declaration, said Thomas Markram, Director and Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament A􀃗􍝡airs. Stressing that resolving those outstanding issues would allow for shared con􀃒􍉤dence in Syria's declaration across the international community, he emphasized: "The persistent allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Syria underscore the need to identify solutions and reach agreement on an appropriate accountability mechanism." The OPCW Fact-Finding Mission was continuing its work and was currently in Damascus looking into allegations of the use of chemical weapons that were brought to the attention of the OPCW Director-General by the Government, said Mr. Markram. The next report of the Fact-Finding Mission would be submitted when it considered that it had su􀃕􍕣cient information and was in a position to draw a conclusion. In the meantime, the Syrian Government had continued e􀃗􍝯orts to destroy the two remaining chemical weapons production facilities in the country, he said, adding that destruction of those facilities was expected to be complete within two to three months from the start date and would be veri􀃒􍉥ed by OPCW. Expressing concern that OPCW was still unable to verify Syria's initial declaration on its chemical weapons programme, the representative of Sweden noted there were still a number of serious outstanding issues that had yet to be resolved. Speci􀃒􍉣cally, the Director-General last month reported that the initial 5 outstanding questions had grown to 22, including the case of the Syrian Scienti􀃒􍉣c Studies and Research Centre. Emphasizing that sarin and chlorine stocks did indeed exist in Syria, France's representative said that the country had either deceived the Council or pursued a clandestine chemical weapons programme. Given those two options, France called on Syria to respond to all unanswered questions, "and there are many of them". The Damascus-based regime's responsibility for the use of chemical weapons had been publicly and unambiguously established by the Joint Investigative Mechanism and any attempt to discredit its clear conclusion could not change that reality, he said, stressing that impunity for those who used chemical weapons was not an option. The speaker for the United States said a few years ago, a single chemical weapons attack would have united the Council in shock and anger, but now there was a regime that used them "practically every other week". Letting one regime o􀃗􍜠 the hook emboldened others, she said, adding that the world was rapidly sliding back to a time when people lived in fear of colourless, shapeless gas leaving them gasping for air. Her country refused to believe that the Council could not come together once again on chemical weapons, despite di􀃗􍝥erences between its members. Echoing those concerns, the United Kingdom's representative noted that, in the absence of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, there was no proper channel to ensure accountability. Substantive gaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies in Syria's declaration remained and the seriousness of the situation had increased over time. Turning to the recent poisoning in the town of Salisbury in her country, she said no explanation had been provided as to how a military-grade nerve agent had come to be used to sicken two people. There should be no more victims of chemical weapons attacks, whether they took place in the war zones of Syria or in an English town, she stressed. The representative of the Russian Federation said that the conclusions of the Joint Investigative Mechanism were nothing more than a pre-ordained, pre‑programmed result aimed at accusing the Syrian authorities. The Russian Federation was unable to support extension of the Mechanism's mandate in an unchanged form, he said, highlighting that his delegation had proposed a speci􀃒􍉣c alternative and circulated a draft resolution which was currently "in blue". Syria's representative said that his Government had ful􀃒􍉬lled its commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Council resolution 2118 (2013). It had eliminated its chemical weapons programme in record time, which was a 􀃒􍉲rst in the history of OPCW, he stressed, and the Joint Investigative Mechanism had con􀃒􍉲rmed that fact in its June 2014 report. The 5/21/2018 Questions Remain over Syria's Chemical Weapons Programme, Security Council Hears, as Speakers Call for Agreement on Suitable Ac… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13276.doc.htm 2/5 Syrian Army did not use chemical weapons nor did it possess them, rather they had been used against civilians by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh), Nusrah Front and other associated entities. Also speaking today were the representatives of the Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Ethiopia, China, Bolivia, Côte d'Ivoire, Poland, Equatorial Guinea and Peru. The meeting began at 10:03 a.m. and ended at 11:47 a.m. Brie􀃒􍉮ng THOMAS MARKRAM, Director and Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament A􀃗􍝡airs, said that the Syrian Government had continued e􀃗􍝯orts to destroy the two remaining chemical weapons production facilities in the country. Destruction of those facilities was expected to be complete within two to three months from the start date and would be veri􀃒􍉥ed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), he said, stressing that the long-awaited and veri􀃒􍉥ed destruction of the two facilities was an essential step towards the full implementation of Security Council resolution 2118 (2013). Discussions between the OPCW Technical Secretariat and the Syrian Government were continuing, although they had not led to the resolution of any of the remaining issues. "The OPCW Technical Secretariat continues to be unable to con􀃒􍉲rm the completeness and accuracy of Syria's declaration," he said, underscoring that resolving those outstanding issues would permit shared con􀃒􍉤dence in Syria's declaration within the international community. The OPCW Fact-Finding Mission was continuing its work and was currently in Damascus looking into allegations of the use of chemical weapons that were brought to the attention of the OPCW Director-General by the Government, he said. The next report of the Fact-Finding Mission would be submitted when it considered that it had su􀃕􍕣cient information and was in a position to draw a conclusion, although those conclusions would not entail attribution of responsibility in those cases where the use of chemical weapons was determined. "The persistent allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Syria underscore the need to identify solutions and reach agreement on an appropriate accountability mechanism," he emphasized, adding that the Secretary-General and the High Representative for Disarmament A􀃗􍝡airs had repeatedly underlined the need to avoid impunity and ensure that those responsible for the use of chemical weapons were identi􀃒􍉥ed and held responsible. Statements NIKKI R. HALEY (United States) said the Council often talked about chemical weapons, but she worried that sometimes it lost sight of the human side of chemical weapons attacks. A century had lapsed between the 􀃒􍉲rst use of chemical weapons in the First World War and the chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaykun one year ago today, and in that time, several international instruments sought to prohibit such weapons. The international community dared to believe that once day chemical weapons would be relegated to the history books. Then came Syria, where shared disgust led the Council to adopt resolution 2118 (2013) requiring the scheduled destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, followed in 2015 by the creation of the Joint Investigative Mechanism on Chemical Weapons Use in Syria. The United Nations found that the Assad regime, as well as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh), had been responsible for the use of chemical weapons, and the Council dared to believe that consensus over the use of such weapons would hold. "But, we know what happened next," she said. The Assad regime continued to use chemical weapons, with one Council member shielding that regime from the consequences. The world today was a more dangerous place, with the Assad regime dropping chlorine bombs on men, women and children, she said. A few years ago, a single chemical weapons attack would have united the Council in shock and anger, but now there was a regime that used them "practically every other week". Letting one regime o􀃗􍜠 the hook emboldened others, she said, adding that the world was rapidly sliding back to a time when people lived in fear of colourless, shapeless gas leaving them gasping for air. Even as the Council remained deadlocked, some had stood up to demand accountability, with the General Assembly approving an impartial mechanism to investigate serious crimes in Syria and France establishing a partnership against impunity for the use of chemical weapons. At the same time, people in Syria were facing the terrifying reality of such heinous weapons. She invited Marmoun Morad, a Syrian physician who treated victims of the Khan Shaykun attack, present in the Council chamber this morning, to stand up, and saluted him for his courage and determination. He was present today to be an inspiration for all Council members, she said, adding that, if Mr. Morad was not going to stop treating victims of chemical weapons attacks, then the Council must not stop working to eliminate such weapons and to hold to account anyone, anywhere who used them. Concluding, she said her country refused to believe that the Council could not come together once again on chemical weapons, despite any di􀃗􍝥erences between its members. KAREL JAN GUSTAAF VAN OOSTEROM (Netherlands) recalled that Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention almost 􀃒􍉶ve years ago, having promised to destroy and abandon its chemical weapons programme; yet month after month there was news that the Syrian regime's declaration could not be considered complete or accurate. One year ago, the Assad regime carried out the heinous 4 April 2017 chemical attack against Khan Shaykhun that resulted in the deaths of about 100 innocent Syrian civilians, including many children. The use of chemical weapons should never go unpunished, he stressed. The Council must act upon the conclusions of the Joint Investigative Mechanism and the outcomes of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission. Further, the Council must intensify its e􀃗􍝯orts to achieve a mechanism that could continue the meticulous work of the Joint Investigative Mechanism. 5/21/2018 Questions Remain over Syria's Chemical Weapons Programme, Security Council Hears, as Speakers Call for Agreement on Suitable Ac… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13276.doc.htm 3/5 KAREN PIERCE (United Kingdom) recalled that the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission had concluded that sarin had been used at Khan Shaykhun and the Joint Investigative Mechanism had concluded that the Syrian regime was responsible for that attack. After more than four years of work, OPCW had yet to verify that Syria's declaration was accurate. Gaps, inconsistencies and discrepancies remained which were not trivial points of minor detail — they were substantive and the seriousness of the situation had increased over time. There could be no impunity, she said, pointing out that, in the absence of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, there was no proper mechanism to ensure accountability. There was still no explanation provided as to how a military-grade nerve agent had come to be used in the poisoning in Salisbury. There should be no more victims of chemical weapons attacks; whether they took place in the war zones of Syria or in an English town. KAIRAT UMAROV (Kazakhstan) said that the use of chemical weapons was absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances. His delegation was pleased that during the reporting period there had been some progress towards the destruction of the remaining two chemical weapons production facilities in Syria, although, at the same time, he expressed concern about the lack of progress in clarifying all outstanding issues regarding the Government's initial declaration. The Council had not yet restored its investigative potential, he noted, stressing the need for every e􀃗􍝯ort to be made to 􀃒􍉮nd common ground on the issue. It was extremely important and necessary to overcome all di􀃗􍝥erences among Council members that prevented the complete elimination of the threat of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. FRANÇOIS DELATTRE (France) said the responsibility of the Damascus-based regime for the use of chemical weapons had been publicly and unambiguously established by the Joint Investigative Mechanism. Any attempt to discredit and to cast into oblivion the clear conclusion of the Joint Investigative Mechanism could not change that reality. Emphasizing that sarin and chlorine stocks did, indeed, exist in Syria, he said that country had either deceived the Council or pursued a clandestine chemical weapons programme. Given those two options, France called on Syria to respond to all unanswered questions, "and there are many of them". Reiterating his country's full support for OPCW, he said the use of chemical weapons was a moral o􀃗􍝥ense that undermined the fundamental standards of international law, as well as the credibility of the non-proliferation regime. A taboo had been broken in Syria, as in Salisbury and elsewhere. He went on to emphasize that impunity for those who used chemical weapons was not an option. Their use against civilians was a war crime and a crime against humanity, and perpetrators must be held to account. If there was an area in which the Council's credibility was at stake, it was chemical weapons, he said, delivering an urgent appeal for Council members to overcome their political di􀃗􍝥erences and put an end to the use of chemical weapons in Syria. That much was owed to civilians, who were the main victims of such weapons, and to the international non-proliferation regime. MANSOUR AYYAD SH. A. ALOTAIBI (Kuwait) said that, due to divisions within the Council, the justice he had hoped for in the Khan Shaykun incident had "vanished into thin air". The continued use of chemical weapons in Syria four years after the adoption of resolution 2118 (2013) was unacceptable. His delegation backed any mechanism that could achieve consensus in the Council and hold those responsible for committing such crimes to account, according to the principles outlined in resolution 2118 (2013). Indeed, the draft resolution tabled by the United States contained such elements. As such, he called on Member States to use that draft as the basis for future negotiations on any such mechanism. Stressing the importance of bringing perpetrators of chemical crimes to justice, he expressed support for the work of Joint Investigative Mechanism in assisting in the investigation and prosecution of such crimes in Syria and looked forward to hearing the results of its 􀃒􍉲rst report, which would be discussed on 17 April in the General Assembly. TEKEDA ALEMU (Ethiopia) expressed concern for the "barbaric" chemical attack in Khan Shaykun one year ago and called for those responsible to be held accountable. Without a uni􀃒􍉥ed response from the Council, damage to the chemical weapons disarmament and non-proliferation regime could not be repaired. He expressed hope that the Syrian Government — with the support of OPCW — would eliminate its two remaining stationary above-ground facilities. In that connection, he reiterated the importance of continued communication between OPCW and the Syrian Government with the ultimate objective of addressing remaining gaps and inconsistencies. Meanwhile, it was imperative that the investigative work of the OPCW's Fact-Finding Mission continued on all allegations of chemical weapons use. Nevertheless, the Council had to address the current institutional gap by creating an independent, impartial and professional investigative mechanism that could identify all State and non-State actors responsible for such crimes. WU HAITAO (China) said that his delegation was greatly concerned by the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria and 􀃒􍉲rmly opposed the use of such weapons under any circumstances. Recent incidents of suspected use of toxic chemicals were deeply concerning, and in that regard, establishing a new investigative mechanism to 􀃒􍉮nd out the truth and prevent the recurrent use of such weapons was of vital importance. All parties should continue to insist that the Security Council and OPCW should be the main channels for addressing the use of chemical weapons. He hoped that the Syrian Government would continue to cooperate with OPCW on the resolution of the initial declaration and properly resolve the outstanding issues. Political settlement was the only way to resolve the Syria issue, and in that context, the international community should support the next round of Geneva talks. JUAN MARCELO ZAMBRANA TORRELIO (Bolivia) expressed concern about the latest reports of alleged uses of chemical weapons in Syria and believed that there could be no justi􀃒􍉣cation for the use of such weapons, irrespective of the circumstances. His delegation strongly supported the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission and called on all parties to ensure an investigation could be carried out in a transparent and e􀃗􍝥ective manner. However, there was still the need for a mechanism 5/21/2018 Questions Remain over Syria's Chemical Weapons Programme, Security Council Hears, as Speakers Call for Agreement on Suitable Ac… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13276.doc.htm 4/5 to identify the perpetrators so they could stand trial before the competent bodies. The Security Council must not be politicized or exploited on that issue, he said, calling on the parties to seek greater dialogue to create an investigative mechanism. The only way to resolve the con􀃓􍍩ict was through a political process led by the Syrian people. CARL SKAU (Sweden) said the failure to agree on a new, independent and impartial attributive mechanism for chemical weapons use in Syria cast a particularly dark shadow on the Council. He condemned the continued and repeated use of chemical weapons in Syria, which constituted a serious violation of international law and a threat to international peace and security. Regarding the implementation of resolution 2118 (2013), he expressed concern that OPCW was still unable to con􀃒􍉲rm whether Syria's initial declaration on its chemical weapons programme was accurate and complete. Indeed, there were still a number of serious outstanding issues. More speci􀃒􍉣cally, the Director-General last month reported that the initial 5 outstanding questions had grown to 22, including the case of the Syrian Scienti􀃒􍉣c Studies and Research Centre. He went on to express deep regret that the Council had failed to agree on an extension of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, which was essential to protect the international disarmament and non‑proliferation regime and ensure accountability. BERNARD TANOH-BOUTCHOUE (Côte d'Ivoire) said cooperation among the Syrian Government, OPCW and the United Nations O􀃕􍕣ce for Project Services (UNOPS) aimed at the destruction of remaining chemical weapons production units was encouraging. He also thanked those States which had contributed to the Syria Trust Fund for the Destruction of Chemical Weapons. However, major challenges persisted, he said, urging Syria to continue its cooperation with OPCW to address outstanding issues, including the destruction of remaining chemical weapons facilities. Any use of chemical weapons was a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and a violation of hard-won international standards banning such weapons. He encouraged OPCW, the Fact-Finding Mission and the Syrian Government to continue their cooperation, and called for a political settlement to the Syrian con􀃓􍍩ict. PAWEL RADOMSKI (Poland) said his delegation had taken note with utmost concern that the OPCW Technical Secretariat had been unable to con􀃒􍉲rm whether declarations submitted by Syria were accurate and complete. Once again, Poland joined the Secretary-General in calling on Syria to extend its fullest cooperation with the declaration assessment team. A clear message must be sent that the use of chemical weapons by anyone would not be tolerated, and the international community must be empowered to address each and every chemical weapons attack and to hold perpetrators accountable. Poland believed that the United States draft resolution was a good basis for further discussion on investigating the use of chemical weapons. He emphasized that the credibility of the non-proliferation regime, as well as collective security were at stake. Poland also hoped that those responsible for the reckless act in Salisbury would soon be held accountable. ANATOLIO NDONG MBA (Equatorial Guinea) said the use of chemical weapons posed a clear threat to international peace and security. The divergent positions of Council members had demonstrated that the end to the use of chemical weapons in Syria hinged on an inclusive political agreement. His delegation a􀃕􍕲rmed the urgent need for an investigative mechanism, calling it a collective responsibility and moral obligation to the victims of the con􀃓􍍩ict. He called for Council members to recall their important role in the promotion of international peace and security. VASSILY A. NEBENZIA (Russian Federation) said it would be constructive to conduct a thorough analysis of the Khan Shaykhun incident and the consequences of that event in the context of global and regional security. The circumstances around that incident remained obscure. The so-called work done by the Joint Investigative Mechanism could not be taken seriously by professionals. The conclusions of that Mechanism were nothing more than a pre-ordained, pre‑programmed result aimed at accusing the Syrian authorities. They ran counter to the laws of physics, chemistry, aviation, ballistics and explosive matters. Experts did not travel to the location where the incident occurred and they had built their guesses on information received from armed groups and dubious structures that supported terrorist groups, including the white helmets. The Russian Federation was unable to support the extension of the Joint Investigative Mechanism mandate in an unchanged form, he said. Armed groups had amassed considerable capacity in chemical warfare. His delegation had proposed a speci􀃒􍉣c alternative to the former Joint Investigative Mechanism and circulated a draft resolution which was currently "in blue". The urgent need was to conduct an analysis of the production of chemical weapons by non-State actors, as well as their e􀃗􍝥ective use of those toxic substances. Nevertheless, Western colleagues were insisting on the recreation of a mechanism that was convenient for them and that would rubber stamp their own conclusions. International law fell to pieces when suspicions became the queen of evidence. Countries continued to con􀃒􍉤dently announce that chemical weapons were being used by Damascus, despite the absence of evidence and the clear political and military objectives behind such allegations. Lastly, he called for a Council meeting on Thursday regarding the incident in Salisbury. GUSTAVO MEZA-CUADRA (Peru), Council President for April, speaking in his national capacity, said chemical weapons attacks were atrocities committed in open de􀃒􍉡ance of the non-proliferation regime, as well as a threat to international peace and security which the Council could not allow. He expressed Peru's concern about the accuracy of the Syrian Government's declarations, adding that the Syrian authorities must be encouraged to provide all information without delay. Paying tribute to the Fact-Finding Mission, he said its work must be complemented by an independent mechanism that would make it possible to assign responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in line with international law. 5/21/2018 Questions Remain over Syria's Chemical Weapons Programme, Security Council Hears, as Speakers Call for Agreement on Suitable Ac… https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13276.doc.htm 5/5  MOUNZER MOUNZER (Syria) said Syria had ful􀃒􍉬lled its commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Council resolution 2118 (2013). It had also always fully cooperated — in a positive, transparent and 􀃓􍍥exible manner — despite great challenges and a complicated and di􀃕􍕣cult security situation. The Syrian Government had been able to eliminate its chemical weapons programme in record time, which was a 􀃒􍉲rst in the history of OPCW. The Joint Investigative Mechanism con􀃒􍉲rmed that in its June 2014 report. But, rather than commending the Government for its e􀃗􍝯orts, some Council members — including the United States, which had not destroyed its chemical arsenal, United Kingdom and France — had mastered the art of deception and misinformation to dominate the world and take it back to the era of colonialism and trusteeship. They were investing in new Council meeting formats with one clear goal: to obstruct the Syrian army's progress against armed terrorist groups which they supported. He referred to theatrics staged by "white helmets" whose claims about the use of chemical weapons in eastern Ghouta coincided with its liberation from armed terrorist groups. Recalling the incident in Khan Shaykhun, he said the Joint Investigative Mechanism had refused to visit that location, relying instead on false witness statements and so-called open sources whose work was unfounded and lacking in credibility. His Government had insisted before the Council and the OPCW Executive Council that it condemned the use of chemical weapons and any other weapon of mass destruction for any reason in any place. The Syrian Army did not use chemical weapons nor did it possess them, he said. Rather, they had been used against civilians by ISIL, Nusrah Front and other associated entities. He said his Government had sent the Council and specialized agencies 130 letters on the possession, production and use of chemical weapons by armed terrorist groups, but, unfortunately, it never got an answer regarding measures that the Council might take against those States which facilitated terrorist access to such weapons. He went on to ask how the United States, United Kingdom and France could claim to be committee to justice while having carried out "blood-curdling attacks" in several countries in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean over many years. The partnership against impunity established by France represented an attempt to set up a politicized parallel mechanism that would serve the interests of States opposed to the Syrian Government, he said. His Government was committed to implementing its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and it would continue its war against terrorists regardless of political blackmail and cheap attempts to exploit the su􀃗􍝥ering of the Syrian people. Concluding, he asked the representative of the Netherlands why no information had been provided about chemical agents aboard an aircraft that fell on Amsterdam in 1992, creating an orange-coloured explosion. For information media. Not an o􀃕􍕣cial record.

Dirk Messner on the dynamics
of global change and the significance of international science and technology
cooperation in the post-Western world



This is the fifth in a series of Talks dedicated to the technopolitics of International Relations, linked to the forthcoming double volume 'The Global Politics of Science and Technology' edited by Maximilian Mayer, Mariana Carpes, and Ruth Knoblich 





In recent years, the analysis of new emerging powers and shifting global order has become central to the study of international relations. While International Relations, aiming to evolve into a truly global discipline, is only just about to start opening up towards Non-Western perspectives, global power shifts have already led to a restructuring of global governance architecture in large fields of political reality and practice. Dirk Messner illustrates how far global power shifts have to lead to new patterns of international cooperation using international science and technology cooperation as a case in point. He argues that investment in joint knowledge creation and knowledge exchange is vital for managing the earth system. Messner also points to the multitude of tasks related to socio-technical systems which the political sphere is currently facing, particularly with regard to the challenge of managing the climate system. 




Print version of this Talk (pdf)




What is the most important challenge facing global politics that should be the central debate in the discipline of International Relations?



The biggest challenge of the next decades which we have to come to terms with is governing the big global commons. When I say global commons I do have in mind the atmosphere, the climate system, and other parts of the earth system, but also international financial markets and global infrastructures, such as the Internet – stability of these and other global commons is a public good much required. We need to stabilize the global commons and then manage them in a cooperative manner.



Three dynamics of global change make it specifically challenging to manage these global commons. The first wave of global change is the globalization wave; the economic globalization, cross-border dynamics, global value chains. It becomes evident that in many areas and especially when it comes to the global commons, regulation exceeds the capacity of individual nation states. The international community is required to institutionalize multilateralism and efficient global governance mechanisms in order to properly address issues arising from global dynamics. The second big global change is the shift from a Western to a post-Western world order. Global power shifts remaking the international system impede governing global commons. The third wave of global change is related to climate change, which adds a new dimension of global dynamics; human beings now have to learn how to steer, to stabilize, and how to govern the earth system as such. We are not only a species living on this planet, depending from resources and ecosystems of the earth systems. With the acceleration of economic globalization during the 1990s and the emergence of new, non-Western economic drivers of change, like China, humankind now significantly impacts the physical structures of the earth system. This trend is new. For the first 4,6 billion years of the existence of the earth system it was driven by the laws of physics, the dynamics of biology and bio-chemical processes. Homo sapiens appeared 220.000 years ago, and the impact of our species on the earth system has been marginal until the industrial revolution started 250 years ago. During the last decades human mankind became a major driver of change at a planetary scale.





How did you arrive in your current thinking about these issues?



I have always been interested in international relations, international policy dimensions, and the global economy. I started at the Free University of Berlin at the beginning of the 80's towards the mid-80's, studying Political Science and Economics. One among those professors who have been particularly important to me is Elmar Altvater. He was the supervisor of my diploma as well as of my Ph.D., and he sent me abroad. This resulted being a pivotal experience to me. I studied the last year of my first degree in Seoul, in South Korea. It was the period, the 80's, when the four Asian Tiger states emerged following Japan's example: South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, and Singapur. I had the chance to visit these countries, study there and learn a lot about Asia. I was fascinated by the dynamics of emerging economies and what this implied for the international arena. Somewhat later, the Latin American continent became the center of my interest. I did research in Nicaragua, Uruguay, Chile and some other Latin American countries, trying to understand liberalization-movements, how weaker actors come under pressure in Western-dominated global settings, but also how some countries managed it to become dynamic parts of the global economy (like the "Asian tigers" or Chile) and why others failed. I learnt that it is crucial to understand dynamics of global change in order to being able to build solid and inclusive economic structures and legitimate political systems at national levels. There has always been a political impulse that pulled me into certain fields I decided to work in.





What is your advice for students who would like to get into the field of global change research or international cooperation?



My first advice is: visit and work in different countries and different cultural and political settings. It is one thing to learn from scholars or books, but having studied and having lived in different contexts and countries is absolutely a key experience. This is the way to understand global dynamics, to get a feeling for differences and similarities. My second advice stems from my experience and conviction that we need much more interdisciplinary research than we currently have. We talk a lot about interdisciplinarity, however, we do not have career paths that systematically build interdisciplinary teams.



Looking particularly at global environmental changes and the future of the earth system, at the end of the day, social scientists and natural scientists need to learn how to work together and to understand each other. The future of the oceans, for example, is not a question that can be understood by ocean biologists only. They are the people studying how these elements of the earth system are actually working, the dynamics and drivers - focusing on physical, chemical, and biochemical processes. But when we look at the oceans towards 2100 from the perspective of global change, the most important drivers are now us human beings, our economies, our consumption patterns, our greenhouse gas emissions and their impacts on the oceans. And this implies that to understand dynamics of global change, we need to analyze the interactions, interdependences and feedback loops between three systems: the ecological system(s); social systems (our economies and societies) driven by humans; the technical systems and infrastructures. Therefore natural scientists, social scientists, and engineers need to interact very closely.  In the German Advisory Council on Global Change we call this approach: Transformation Research. Currently, we do not possess the appropriate university structures to adequately address this sort of problems. This is an immense institutional challenge. If I were a young scholar I would move into this direction, crossing disciplinary boundaries as much as possible.





What is the role of science and technologies in the dynamics of global change?



There are multiple important dimensions, but I would like to focus on some of them by moving through the aforementioned waves of global change. Technology is driving economic globalization, the first wave of global change. So we need to understand the dynamics of new technologies, especially the impact of ICTs, in order to understand the dynamics of economic globalization. The World Wide Web and social communication media are restructuring industrialization processes and global value chains. ICT infrastructure is also displaying a big potential for less developed regions. In Africa, for example, we saw many African countries jumping from the old telephone technologies to smartphones within less than a decade, because the old, maintenance and capital intensive communications infrastructure was no longer needed. Many African people now have access to smartphones, thus to communication- and information networks, and begin to reshape prize constellations and the global economy. Because of its restructuring effects, the impact of ICTs is relevant in all areas of the global economy. The global trend towards urbanization is similarly related to ICTs. Currently, we approach the global economy via data on national economies. But this might be about to change, as global mega-cities develop into global knowledge and financial hubs, building their own networks. In 2040, 80 percent of the global production, global GDP, global consumption, global exchange might be concentrated in 70 to 80 global cities or city regions.



Technology is also linked to the second wave of global change – the tectonic global power shift – in the way that investment in technology and knowledge in emerging economies are growing rapidly. We are not only facing economic and political power shifts, but also a remaking of the global science and research system itself. From my perspective, international cooperation in the field of science and technology research between "old powers" and "new powers", between Western countries and non-Western countries is extremely important for two reasons: First, we need to pool know-how in order to solve core global challenges and to develop patterns for managing the global commons. Interaction and cooperation in the field of science and technology is especially important for the creation of knowledge that is "better" in any way. For instance, in the field of adaptation policies to the impacts of climate change, most of the knowledge on how societies and local communities actually work or respond under these conditions exists in non-Western societies. The generation of knowledge is context dependent. We need to interact with colleagues from the respective countries for mutual learning and common knowledge improvement. My second argument is that, as an effect of the global power shift, traditional development cooperation is losing legitimacy. Many of these societies, from China to Peru, from Kenya to Vietnam, are no longer interested in our usual business, in our "aid-packages", our money, our experts or our concepts. What they are more interested in is true and reciprocal knowledge exchange and joint knowledge creation. Therefore, investments in respective forms and institutions of knowledge exchange and creation will be a central pillar of/for future oriented development cooperation or international cooperation and beneficial for all partners involved. Joint knowledge creation is a precondition for joint action and legitimate global governance initiatives.



The role of technologies with regard to the implications of climate change is crucial and multifaceted. In the German Advisory Council on Global Change we put forth suggestions concerning the transformation towards a low-carbon global economy. We are relatively optimistic in a technological sense. This statement is partly based on the Global Energy Assessment (GEA) research, which has been driven by Nebojsa Nakicenovic, one of our colleagues, who is working on energy modeling. The perspective there is that we know which kind of technologies we need for the transformation into a low-carbon or even zero-carbon economy. We can even calculate the investment costs and structures of different countries and regions. But we do know relatively little about the transformation processes of entire societies, economies and, eventually, the international system towards low-carbon systems. The transformation towards a low-carbon society is a "great transformation". In the entire history of mankind there might be only two examples for such a profound change: the industrial revolution 250 years ago and the Neolithic revolution 10.000 years ago, which induced the practices of agriculture. Today, we thus witness the third great transformation: the decoupling from fossil resources, from high-carbon to zero-carbon. To achieve the 2° Celsius goal, a complete decarbonization of the basic infrastructures of the global economy (the energy systems, the urban infrastructures and systems, the land use systems) is required – within a very limited period of time, until 2070. Comprehensive knowledge is key to achieve this. Let me emphasize once more the significance of international cooperation in the field of science and technology research, particularly in the IPCC context. I am sure that politicians from China, India, or Brazil only accept what the IPCC is presenting as objective knowledge, as the stand of the art knowledge, because their national scientists are deeply involved. If this were a classical western-based knowledge project it would have resulted in a lack of legitimacy. In the case of global climate policy, it is obvious that investment in joint knowledge creation is also about creating legitimacy for joint action.





What are the main obstacles of the low-carbon transformation?



The first two great transformations have been evolutionary processes. No one "planned" the industrial revolution, not to mention the Neolithic revolution.  These have been evolutionary dynamics. The sustainability transformation instead needs to be a governed process right from the beginning. In our institute, we looked at different transformation dynamics, not only the really big ones, the Neolithic, industrial, and the current sustainability transformation. We also examined structural adjustment programs in Latin America and Africa, the collapse of communism at the end of the 80s, the abolition of slavery, and similar other key transformations of human societies. Based on this historical perspective, we have identified four main drivers of transformation: The first one is crisis, this is the most important one. Confronted with strong crises, society and probably also individuals react and change direction. The second important driver is very often technology and scientific (r)evolution. The third driver is vision: If you are confronted with a problem but you do not know where to go to, transformation becomes very difficult. The European Union is the product of a fresh vision among elites after World War II; the United Nations is a result of the disasters of the first half of the 20th century. Advancing a vision is an essential means to move or to transform in a goal-oriented manner. Sustainability, of course, is also a vision. The fourth and last driver of transformation is "knowledge": you know that you have a certain problem constellation, and though the crisis is still not there, you react based on your knowledge in a preventive way.



For the low-carbon transformation, the fourth driver currently is absolutely key. We are able to address problems which would otherwise become much worse in the future, although the climate crisis is latent still – in contrast to, for example, the financial crisis, which is more visible in its effects. The impacts of a global warming of 4 or 5 degrees are still not visible. This makes for a huge difference. In fact, humans are not very good at acting and transforming significantly based on knowledge only. In combination with visible, tangible crises, knowledge is a strong driver of change, but without crisis, it is merely sufficient. Transformations based on knowledge and preventive action only are rare. The ozone hole is one positive example; solving the problem was possible because it required less complex technological change, affecting few industries only. Human beings are risk-averse in a sense, we are conservative, we do not like to change rapidly; we are path-dependent. John Maynard Keynes once said: "It is easy to develop new concepts and ideas. The difficult thing is to forget the old ones". Therefore, scientific tools are needed in order to sketch out future scenarios. Based on scientific knowledge, we need to convince our societies, our political decision-makers that it is necessary and possible to transform societies and economies towards sustainability – in order to avoid disruptive change in the earth system. Pushing towards sustainability at a point where the crisis has not yet materialized implies a specific and new role for science in managing global dynamics. Organizing a deep transformation towards sustainability avoiding significant crises driven by Earth system changes would be a cultural learning process – a civilizational shift.





What are the effects of growing multipolarity for global governance processes?



To start optimistically, I would argue that in contrast to historical situations in which this kind of tectonic power shifts led to conflicts or even wars, the current situation is different. The world is highly interconnected and economic interdependencies are stronger than ever. Charles Kupchan is differentiating between "war", "cold peace" and "warm peace". I think that a big "war" is not very probable, and "cold peace" is what we are in actually. "Warm peace" would be cooperative global governance: we identify our problems, have a joint problem analysis, and subsequently start acting cooperatively on them. But this does not describe the contemporary situation. While there are no severe global conflicts, we do not solve many of the global interdependency problems.



There are many barriers to global cooperation and I would like to mention two or three of those. The first one consists of power conflicts and power struggles. Hopefully realists such as John Mearsheimer are not right in claiming that "a peaceful rise of China is not possible". But the fundamental point remains that the re-organization and shuffling of power resources is rendering cooperation extremely difficult. The second point is that all the important global actors currently have severe domestic challenges to manage. The European countries are coping with the European dept crisis. Similarly, the United States is concerned with financial turbulences and rising social inequalities. China has to keep its annual growth rate of about 8 to 12 per cent and meanwhile stabilize its rapid modernization process. In India, there is still a large group of people suffering from poverty. So, managing that and trying to be a responsible global actor at the same time is not easy at all. In brief, all actors that we would like to see taking on a more responsible role on the global level are overcommitted domestically.



There is consensus among different disciplines on what cooperation is actually about. At the Centre for Global Cooperation Research we did a study on The Behavioural Dimensions of International Cooperation (2013) based on insights of very different disciplines – evolutionary biology, social anthropology, cognitive sciences, psychology, political sciences, behavioral economics – to find out what the basic mechanisms are which help human beings to cooperate at any scale towards global corporation in a world of nine billion people. Finally, we identified seven factors promoting cooperation: trust, communication, joint we-identities, reputation, fairness, enforcement – and reciprocity, which is the most fundamental prerequisite. These factors form an enable environment for cooperation and they are manmade. In contexts, actor constellations, systems, in which these basic mechanisms of cooperation are strong, they help to embed power dynamics, to solve social dilemma problems and to manage interdependencies. In contrast, contexts, actor constellations, and systems in which theses basic mechanisms of cooperation are weak, will be driven mainly by power dynamics and struggles. By looking at these factors one immediately understands why the G20 context is so difficult. We have been able to create and to well establish these factors in our old settings; in the European Union, the Western world, the transatlantic community. But now we are sitting together with new actors rather unknown. The G7/G8 world – the OECD driven and the western driven global economy and global politics – has moved towards G20 since it was acknowledged that one cannot manage any global turbulence without emerging economies. The G20 was created or rather called to meet in 2008, a few days after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers when many feared the collapse of the world's financial markets. Most western economies were highly indebted, whereas the emerging economies, especially China, were holding large currency reserves. From a behavioral perspective we have to invest in these basic factors of cooperation in the G 20 context in order to create the essential preconditions of joint action to solve the big global problems. This represents a long-term project, and unfortunately many of these global problems are highly challenging from the time perspective: a tension derives from the gap between time pressure in many of these areas and the time it probably needs to build up these basic mechanisms of cooperation. In fact, the major feeling is that international cooperation is even weaker now than a decade ago. I usually visualize the current situation of the G20 as a round table with 20 seats but no one is sitting there. Charles Kupchan's "No one's world" or Ian Bremmer's "The G0 world" deal with the same problem: international cooperation, global governance is currently so difficult, although all these interdependency problems rendered the problem of managing the global commons fully obvious. If you talk to our Foreign Ministers or Finance Ministers or Chancellors and Presidents, they of course all know exactly what is out there in terms of globalization impacts. But organizing the necessary global consensus and the governance and cooperation structures is tremendously difficult.





How far is the discipline of development research affected by global change?



This is a complex question, to which I do not have a definite answer. The whole field of development research is currently about to get redefined. In the past, the concept of development was clear: On the one side, there was the developed world, the OECD-world, consisting of 35-40 countries and on the other side, the "underdeveloped" part of the world, all other countries. Understanding the differences between developed and developing, along with thinking about the basic drivers of modernization and wealth creation in less developed countries was at the core of development research for a long period. How can poor countries become rich and as developed as OECD countries already are?



Today, it is highly questionable if even the broader categories of "development research" still serve to analyze the new realities. Do we currently still need "development economists", and how would they differ from classical "economists" doing research in those European countries suffering most from the debt crisis, high unemployment and weak institutions? Situations in many OECD countries nowadays look like what one would expect from a still developing or emerging economy, and the other way around. So, what distinguishes development research? This is an important question. Studying non-OECD countries, do we still need development research based governance theories or democratization theories – thus, theories that are systematically different from those we apply in our research on OECD countries? The discipline of development research is under immense pressure. This debate is linked to the second wave of global change we talked about: the post-western world order, emerging economies catching up, convergence trends in the global economy.



If you look at the role of international technology transfer, the same scenario arises: the North-South, donor-recipient categories have dissolved. Technology transfer has lost its distinct direction, and it is much more reciprocal and diffuse than it used to be. There are several studies currently pointing to the fact that investment rates in R&D and in technology creation are growing fast in several regions around the globe, whereas in many OECD-countries, investment is stagnating, or even decreasing. The whole map of knowledge, if you like to say so, is about to undergo deep changes. This implies that the common assumption that knowledge is based in OECD countries and transferred to the South via development cooperation is just not working any longer. We need new patterns of cooperation between different countries in this area. And we need research on global development dynamics which will be different from classical development research which has been based on the assumption of a systemic North-South divide for a long time.







How do institutions such as the World Bank react to the emerging and redefined agenda of development?



The current reorientation of the World Bank as a Knowledge Bank originates from the assumption that knowledge is just as important as money for global development. The second point is that more and more of their partners in non-OECD countries, classical developing and emerging economies, are more and more interested in the knowledge pools of the World Bank and less in their experts. And: dynamic developing countries and emerging economies are even more interested in investments in their own knowledge systems and joint knowledge creation with the World Bank. The old North-South knowledge transfer model is eroding. You might say that there currently are two contradictory global trends: on the one hand via social media and the Internet, knowledge is being widely distributed – broader than ever before and actually, theoretically accessible at any point in the world –, on the other hand the proliferation of knowledge is accompanied with access restriction and control, and the growing privatization of knowledge. Aiming to play a constructive role in collaborative knowledge generation, the World Bank invests a lot in building up freely accessible data bases and open research tools, including the provision of governance or development indicators of any kind. However, this is a difficult process that is developing slowly.



The World Bank is currently undergoing several basic re-orientations. The structures inside of the World Bank are about to become less hierarchical and more horizontal. Originally, the World Bank has been a much more western dominated organization as the Bretton Woods institutions were formed by the United States and its allies. If you look into the governance structures of the World Bank today, it is still largely dominated by OECD countries, but you can notice that this is changing. It is a global organization but 90 % of people working there have been studying at Anglo-Saxon universities. Actors especially from emerging economies have been criticizing that for long, claiming that the World Bank as a global organization should have to be represented by a global citizenship. Although this had slowly started to change already, all the knowledge and all the qualification procedures still remained very western dominated. So they asked the World Bank to diversify its partner structures, to reach out and cooperate with research institutions from around the world. This is what the World Bank is trying to do at the moment, which is really a break with its culture. Because even though the World Bank is a global organization, it has always been a very inward-looking organization. The World Bank was strong, with fantastic professionals and researchers inside, but without cooperating tools. Now they are trying to broaden their cooperation structures and to learn from and together with other institutions.





What are the opportunities and difficulties of big data analysis for global development?



Access to any kind of data is important for any kind of knowledge creation. It has been very limited for many developing countries over a very long time. So, thinking about how to assure access to serious data is significant. This would be my first point. My second point is that, when it comes to big data and the question of managing large amounts of indicators on, for example, cross-country or cross-sector modeling, I think the new technologies are opening up new research possibilities and opportunities. Big data provides the opportunity to identify patterns. Looking for similar dynamics in very different systems is a very interesting exercise, because you get deeper insights into the basic dynamics of systems. This is what I have learned from my colleague Nakicenovic, whom I have mentioned before, and who is working on the Global Energy Assessment, or from Juergen Kurths, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who is studying basic structures and dynamics of very different complex systems like air traffic networks, global infrastructures and social media networks. Managing big data allows you to see patterns which cannot be seen if you only work with case studies. However, to understand the dynamics of countries and sectors, new actor constellations or communities, you need to go into detail and in this specific moment, big data is only the starting point, the background: you also need qualified, serious, very often qualitative data on the ground. Big data and qualified, specific data: they complement each other.



For sure, an important aspect of big data is that for the most part, it is gathered and stored by private businesses. We started this interview talking about global commons and we actually just defined a global commons: data on development should be a global commons, and we need standards and rules of managing those. Private actors could play a role, but within a set of rules defined by societies and policies, and not the private business sector.









Dirk Messner is the Director of the "German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)" since 2003 and teaches at the Institute of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen. He is Co-Director of the "Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR)", University Duisburg-Essen, which was established in 2012. He furthermore is Co-Chair of the "German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU)", member of the "China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development", member of the "Global Knowledge Advisory Commission" of the World Bank and member of the "European Commission's Scientific Advisory Board for EU development policy". Dirk Messner's research interests and work areas include globalisation and global governance, climate change, transformation towards low carbon economies, and development policy. He directed many international research programs and thus created a close international research network.



related links:


Profile at German Development Institute
Messner, Dirk / Guarín, Alejandro / Haun, Daniel (eds.) (2013): The Behavioural Dimensions of International Cooperation, Global Cooperation Research Papers 1, Centre for Global Cooperation Research (pdf)


Read Jing Gu, John Humphrey, and Dirk Messner's (2007) Global Governance and Developing Countries: The Implications of the Rise of China here (pdf)


Messner, Dirk (2007): The European Union: Protagonist in a
Multilateral World Order or Peripheral Power
in the »Asia-Pacific« Century? (pdf)


Print version of this Talk (pdf)

Issue 27.5 of the Review for Religious, 1968. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITORS Ralph F. Taylor, S.J. John C. Treloar, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. C~orrespondence with the editor, the associate editors, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to KEVIEW FOR RELI~3IOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63io3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 32~ Willings Alley; Philadelphia, pennsylvania ~91o6. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by faculty members of the School of Divinity of Saint Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright ~) 1968 by REvmw FOR RELm~Ot3S at 428 East Preston Street; Baltimore, Mary-land 21202. Printed in U.S.A. Second class pos!age paid at Baltimore, Maryland. Single copies: $1.00. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $5.00 a year, $9.00 for two years; other countries: $5.50 a year, $10.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order paya-ble to Rzvmw Fort R~LIGIOUS 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. Renewals and new subscriptions, wher~ accom-panied by a remittance, should be sent to REvIEw ~Oa RELIGIOtJS; P. O. BOX 671; Baltimore. Maryland 21203. Changes of address, business correspondence, and orders not accompanied by a remittanct should be sent to REvmw FOR RELIGIOUS ; 4~8 East Preston Street; Baltimore, MaD, land 21202. Manuscripts, editorial cor-respondence, and books for review should be sent to R~vmw ~oa RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of the Questions and Answers editor. SEPTEMBER1968 VOLUME 27 NUMBER 5 JOSEPH FICHTNER, O.S.C. Signs Charisms, Apostolates "Signs of the times" is a phrase that has been bandied about for so long in ecclesiastical circles that it has be-come part of our Christian vocabulary and has helped to define the relationship between the Church and the world.1 It is a category which sums up and expresses the Christian interpretation.of human, history---of the events which give evidence of and vindicate God's pres-ence and activity in the world through human agency. It has been empl'oyed in papal and conciliar documents not as a pious exhortation but in order to draw attention to the Christian duty of recognizing, analyzing, and assessing the events and movements of !aistory as so ma.ny opportunities for evangelisation. The Church will have a dynamic and effective apostolate in the world only if she discerns and assesses the values to be found in the world today. The charisms or gifts with which the Spirit of Christ endows the Church enable her not only to interpret contemporary history but to meet the needs of peoples. Pope John XXIII first used the expression "signs of the times" in the apostolic constitution Humanae salutis, proclaiming the Second Vatican Council3 "Indeed," he said, "we make ours the recommendation of Jesus that one should know how to distinguish the 'signs of the times' (Mr 16:4), and we seem to see now, in the midst of so much darkness, a few indications which augur well for the fate of the Church and of humanity." After 1 See M.-D. Chenu, O.P., "Les signes des temps," Nouvelle revue thdologique, v. 87 (1965), pp. 20-$9; "The Church and the World," Documentatie Centrum Concilie, n. 52; "The Christian Value of Earthly Realities," ibid., n. 157; "A Pastoral Constitution on the Church," ibid., n. 205. = Walter M. Abbott, S.J., and Joseph Gallagher (eds.), The Docu-ments o[ Vatican H (New York: America Press, Guild Press, Associa-tion Press, 1966), p. 704. All translations of Vatican II documents throughout the article are taken from this edition. Joseph Fichtner, O~S.C., is a faculty member of the Cro-sier House of Stud-ies; 2620 East Wal-len Road, Fort Wayne, Indiana 46805. VOLUME 27, 1968 + + ÷ $oseph Fichtner, 0.$.C. listing several indications he himself had noticed, he added: "And this facilitates, no doubt, the apostolate of the Church . " The phrase was given a little more precise applica-tion by the same pontiff in his encyclical Peace on Earth,~ most significant for addressing itself not only to members of the Church but to "all men of good will." Here John XX!II observed how our age is distinguished by three characteristics: (1) the promotion o[ the working classes; (2) the entry of women into public life; and (3) the emancipation of colonized peoples. All three together signi[y that sweeping socialization whose Christian value the Church embraces with the arms of her catholicity. The recourse she may have to such signs of the times is not. a matter of opportunism but the result of understanding the spirit of the times and how the Spirit o[ Christ is at work in them. In his first encyclical Ecclesiam Suam,4 Pope Paul VI retained the term aggiornamento coined by John XXIII and associated it with the "signs of the times" as a pro-gram of action: "We want to recall it to mind as a stim-ulus to preserve the perennial vitality of the Church, her continuous awareness and ability to study the signs of the times and her constantly youthful agility in 'scrutiniz-ing it all carefully and retaining only what is good' (I Thes 5:21) always and everywhere." As John XXIII made the signs of the times the nerve center of his en-cyclical and the reason [or his optimistic outlook upon the health of the world, so did Paul VI comment upon them favorably after his return from Jerusalem on J.anuary 8, 1964, asking the faithful to understand, reflect upon, and learn how to go about deciphering them. Finally, despite some hesitation about accepting the phrase because of its biblical derivation, it was taken up into the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:5 "To carry out such a task [of service], the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting-them in the light o[ the gospel . We must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its expec-tations, its longings, and its often dramatic characteris-tics." The same article sketches by way of contrasts some of the contemporary characteristics: social, economic, and cultural transformation versus the uncertainty about the direction man is giving it; abundant wealth, natural resources, economic power, and the accompanying hun- 3 William J. Gibbons, S.J. (ed.), Pacera in terris (New York: Paul-ist Press, 1963), nn. 39-45. ~ The Pope Speaks, v. 10 (1965), p. 271, n. 20. The translation given above differs somewhat from the reference. 3 Article 4. ger and poverty; the unity and solidarity of the world versus the threat of total war; exchange of. ideas and diverse ideologies; a better world movement without equal zeal for spiritual betterment;'hope and anxiety. Its use in Matthew 16:4 has rendered the ph~rase sus-pect, for in the Matthean context the term "signs" refers to the miracles Jesus Worked, which is far from the meaning attached to it by either the popes or the recent council. What the latter had in mind were the events, not necessarily miraculous or extraordinary, taking place in the course of human history having spiritual and symbolic significance. The events, what-ever they may be, have both historical and theological significance. This means that beyond their immediate, brute, historical content, they have a value because they are an expression of an other reality. One can, for exam-ple, envision the forms of civilization---industrialization, socialization, urbanization, decolonialism--simply as historical trends, and then again, as the Pastoral Con-stitution on the Church in the Modern World would have us do, .as pointers to a higher reality. They open to man "spiritual vistas long unsuspected." 6 ,Perhaps their spiritual and symbolic significance can be seen more clearly when we recognize them to be signs of the times.7 The Church's duty, if her mission is to be accredited by God,. is to see that the question of God be not left out of any understanding ~ of contemporary history. The Church is dealing here with a "theophany" that has been termed "theonetics," the study of God in change. She is living in a messianic age with an escha-tological thrust--toward the end of time. Christ appeared in the one unique kairos, in the "fullness of time," and the Church is to. appear in His stead, as His' Body, con-tinuously and permanently in the process of time. Her mission in the course of human history is to interpret events and phenomena in such a way as never to let the world lose sight of its creative and redemptive reality, the transcendent and immanent in it. The Church bears witness to the economy of salvation as she sees it unfold-ing itself in history. The times furnish her with the Signs whereby she can be both sensitive to the movement of history and docile to the Holy Spirit helping her inter-pret the signs. She is in the same situation as Israel was when Yahweh was dealing with her in the concrete history Of her people. Failing this task to read the signs. of the times and to recognize their theological implica-tions, the Church abandons the world to its blind his-torical events. Chenu, "Les signes,'; p. 32. See E. Jenni, "Time," The Interpreter's Dictionary o! the Bible, ,1.4. sig,~, Chaa.~, Apostolates VOLUME ~7, ~.968 4, $oseph Fichtner, O$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOU~ Part of the difficulty of such a task is that though the Church is distinct from the world, she is linked up with it. The emphasis throughout her history has fallen upon either of the two, the distinction or the link. Whenever the Church felt the distinction from the world most keenly, she shied away from her duty of evaluating earthly realities or else failed to understand them entirely or too glowly.8 It is far easier to insist upon the current categories of the temporal-spiritual, profane-sacred, civilization-evangelization, creation-redemption, history-salvation, Church-world, nature-grace, than to grasp their interrelationship. If the dualisms emerge too sharply, the Church may treat them too much apart, pass abstract judgment upon them, so that "never the twain shall meet." ¯ Granted, evangelization is not of the same order as civilization. To promote culture is not to convert to the faith. To feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty is a duty of Christian charity, but it is not equivalent to preaching the word of God, teaching catechetics, or administering the sacraments. And yet the many earthly values are the common capital of all men, believers and unbelievers alike. Wherever they may be found, they afford the good ground for evangelical growth. Without such positive values as order, justice, right, freedom, and so forth, the work of God would have to operate in a vacuum. All human enterprise, personal as well as social, so long as it promotes the good, the true, the just, and the beautiful, is the fulfillment of that hidden potential man has in himself as an image of his Maker. Humanity itself served an incarnational purpose for the Son of God; all the good works of humanity subserve.the further goal of evangelization. All such works and the values attaching to them, because they signal the gradual development of man, his humanisation, are to be considered the prevenient signs and predispositions for the diffusion of the gospel. Man, confronted by the immense resources of nature, including his own almost infinite capacities, becomes more human through the advance of science, technology, culture, and socialization. At the same time he is left open to spiritual values, his personal and social life as it develops presents positive dispositions for the incar-nation of. divine life. For example, the closer he comes to fulfilling his aspiration for peace, the more likely he is to receive "a peace the world cannot give." 9 Major improve- 8 S~e Heinrich Tenhumberg, "The Role of Church Authority in Investigating the Signs of the Times," Third Session Council Speeches of Vatican H, ed. William K. Leahy and Anthony T. Massimini (New York: Paulist Press, 1966), pp. 172-3. See also Paul Gouyon, "Reading the.Signs of the Times," ibid., pp. 154-7. 8 Jn 14:27. ments upon mass communications help the Christian to spread the message of the gospel universally. So in every instance where he is an agent of truly human progress he renders himself fit for or subject to .grace. What scholastic theology calls the "obediential potency" of men is nothing else than man radically-good but now more than ever open and receptive to grace because of .the development of his capacities.10 Popes John and Paul and the Vatican Council have called our attention to the social dimensions of this obediential.potency. A fair illustration and parallel to our times can be taken from early Christianity when the fathers of the Church observed a major and universal phenomenon of their own stage of human evolution, the civilization of the Roman Empire. The socialization in .our day is comparable to the" civilization in theirs. They were ready to describe the civilization of the Roman Empire as an evangelical preparation. The cultural value of language alone, such as the Greek and the Latin, helped them to proclaim the gospel far and wide, though they could have been tradition-bound by the language of their Founder. The worldwide extension of social and political values, moreover, provided them the good ma-terial for the construction of the kingdom of God. They found the Roman Empire to be a meeting, place for Christianity; its cobblestones were the stepping-stones for "the feet of one who brings good news." 11. Earthly realities, however,, do not always and every-where contain pure or undiluted values; their values oftentimes are ambiguous, contaminated by error or sin. The fathers of the Church realized this fact too, but it did not prevent them from sifting the important values from an admixture of good and evil. In the grandeur of nature, though occasionally troubled in land, sky, and sea, they discovered the vestigia Dei, and in the grandeur of a tainted human nature an imago Dei. Mined ore has its measure of slag before its refinement in a smelting furnace. The same is true of labor organization, agrarian reform, social charity, and so forth. The ultimate per-spective of human projects, faulty as they may be in their hesitant beginnings, may go far beyond their im-mediate realization. This is why it is so ne.cessary to read the signs of the times correctly and not let ourselves be confused over realities.which onesidely seem to be stumbling blocks or idols for mankind. In rendering service to the world we cannot help but expose our own weaknesses and limitations. This exposure is unavoidable, and the a0St. Thomas Aquinas, De virtutibus incommuni, a.10, ad 13; 1-2, ci.ll3, a.10. n Is 52:7. Signs~ Chhrisms, Apostolates VOLUME 27~ 1968 77i Church herself admits it in her Pastoral Constitution On the Church in the Modern World: ". the mission of the Church will show its religious, and by that very fact its supremely human character." x2 There will certainly be risks to assume while drawing the good out of all possible resources for building the kingdom of God. But the risks will be diminished to the extent that we recognize and receive the values of the world in the light of the gospel and instinct with faith" and charity. Faith fed by an intensive prayer life will. have to be on the alert to follow God's designs in .the progress of nations. If the risk is great on the one hand, there is no less risk, for lack of faith and discernment, in failing to see the divine interventions in the events of today. Vatican CounCil II was mindful of this risk when it exemplified a discernment of the signs of the times by way of con-trasts, Such a discernment inspired by the Holy Spirit reveals the Spirit working within the signs: "The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal his sons." in Re.ligious institutes cannot rest content with the papal and conciliar exhortation to discern the signs of the times, nor are they generally qualified to do so without the charisms or gifts of the Holy Spirit. What the Church i~s able to analyze and assess universally, the various religious groups should do locally and periodically, always ready to seek out new solutions for new problems, How else is adaptation to circumstances possible? They might ask themselves questions such as these: What are ¯ the needs of the local community, civic and religious? Do signs of the times show themselves locally, pointing the way for a religious community to promote and take action? Housing projects, job opportunities, educational facilities, cultural programs, ecumenical activities, social charities, and a host of other situations--do they not cry out for that cooperation without which God will not intervene in human events excepting miraculously? As fast as science and technology are moving ahead into the future, can the religious apostolate afford not to re-examine itself periodically? One of the characteristics of the new-style religious life would seem to be presence in an ever changing society. Members are determined to share in the suffering, sacrifice, and conflict affecting society today. ,~÷ But is there not a subtle temptation in thinking'one ,.4. .has to leave his milieu behind in order t.o go "where the ¯÷ action is" ? The local apostolate, along with the charisms befitting it, may well be the first obligation of a religious group. Heinrich Tenhumberg, Auxiliary Bishop of Mfinster, Joseph Fichtner, 0.$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS !772 Article 11. Rom 8:19. Germany, in a speech to the Council Fathers on October 26, 1964, commenting upon the schema of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, raised the question why in her past the Church too rarely acknowledged the free action of her members who aptly recognized the signs of the times. Fie laid down what he thought were the four conditions for rightly investigating and interpreting the signs of the times, one of which was that "room must be given to a new evaluation of the charisms and gifts of the Holy Spirit among the People of God." 14 Without aspiring to such a mature and correct understanding of the signs of the times, he felt the Church would not be able to "fulfill the will.of God in time." The question Bishop Tenhum-berg raises does not touch upon the fidelity of God to His Church in the modern world, as if He might forsake her in an hour of need; he simply asks whether the Church always utilizes the prophetic gifts which keep her au courant. Of course, the same question can be directed to religious institutes as belonging to the char-ismatic character of the people of God. "Charism" is the near transliteration of a Greek term typically Pauline. It is to be found in the Pauline Epistles and once in the First Epistle of Peter. The latter more or less encapsulates the Pauline idea of a charism: "Each of you has received a special grace, so, like good stewards responsible for all these different graces of God, put yourselves at the service of others." 15 Paul, too, regards the charisms as given to members of the Christian com-munity in trust for the common good of that community. The four lists of charisms he provides indicate how diversified these gifts are, yet none of the lists nor all of them together are ~xhaustive.16 In this enumeration there is no hint of Paul prognosticating about the future needs of the Church and how his lists of charisms are sufficient for them. To envisage the function of each charism for the bene-fit of the whole community, Paul ~onjures up the image of the human body with all of its members contributing to its welfare.~7 The multiplicity of the charisms, rather than manifesting conflict with one another within the totality of the body or tearing it apart, tend toward its 14 Tenhumberg, "The Role," p. 174. The first, second, and fourth conditions are: a renewed theology of the Holy Spirit and of His life and activity within the Church; a renewal of biblical and patris-tic theology; a new style of Church authority and a new method for it to act, watch, and judge. ~ 1 Pt 4:10. See a preconciliar explanation of the charismatic element in the Church by Karl Rahner, The Dynamic Element in the Church (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964), pp. 42-83. an I Cor 12:8-10, 28-30; Rom 12:6-8; Eph 4:11. a~ See Rom 12:4-6. + + + Signs, ~harisms, Apostolates VOLUME 27, 1968 77~ ÷ ÷ ÷ Joseph Fichtner, O.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS unity. In this connection it is interesting to compare the Pauline idea of this totalizing effect of the charisms with the opinion expressed by St. Hippolytus of Rome in his introduction to the Apostolic Tradition, a third-century document. He asserts that "all charisms which from the beginning God gave to man in accordance with his will, restore to man the image which was lost." The early Church thought of the apostolate as the first of the spiritual gifts entrusted to her by Christ. It was itself a charism. Scripture, particularly the Pauline writings, witness to the fact that the Twelve did not lay exclusive claim to the title of "apostle." Probably because they felt the need of the assistance of others, they invested the rest with some of their own power and called them "apostles." The apostolate and the prophetic spirit was, for Paul, the foundation of the Church, with Christ as its cornerstone,is The apostolate was a spiritual gift he treasured much, and that is why he so frequently re-ferred to it. A closer investigation into the charisms of the early Church and their meaning and use bears out the fact that the early Church was so convinced o~ her charismatic role under the influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit that it has led some scholars, peering back into that time, to be-lieve the Church to have been entirely charismatic and not at all hierarchical and institutional. Relating the role of the Holy Spirit to the mystery of the Church, the Dog-matic Constitution on the Church takes issue with such a stand, stating: "He [the Holy Spirit] furnishes and directs her [the Church] with various gifts, both hierar-chical and charismatic, and adorns her with the fruits of His grace (cf. £ph 4:11-12; 1 Cor 12:4; Gal 5:22)." 19 Part and parcel of her charismatic structure is the re-ligious life, and only within this structure does it find its authentic ecclesial dimension. Paul esteemed the apostolate to be a gift and a de-manding task at one and the same time. It would be foolish of us to think the early Christians were buoyed up by a host of fancy, even magical, spiritual gifts and had to exert no effort of their own. We do them an in-justice in imagining their life was surrounded with the miraculous. A good glance at some of their charisms will tell how much need there was for personal and communal effort. Works of mercy--nursing, almsgiving, adminis-tration, fraternal help of every kind--cost effort on their part. So did the preaching, teaching, and discernment of spirits. All such charisms had to be met halfway by men of good will .and selflessness; they demanded that same See Eph 2:20. Article 4. human enterprise and exertion which we ~aw had to be put into a periodic reappraisal of thh signs of the times. For some time before Vatican II theology was reluc-tant to teach that charisms belong to the contemporary Church. Theology was wont to confine the charisms to the primitive Church and to limit them characteristically to the miraculous or extraordinar~y. Vatican II changed all that theological opinion. Little and great charisms have existed throughout the history of the Church. As we read in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, the Holy Spirit "distributes special graces among the faith-ful of every rank . These charismatic gifts, whether they be the most outstanding or the more ,simple and widely diffused, are to be received with thanksgiving and consolation, for they are exceedingly suitable and useful for the needs of the Church." 20 There seems to be no reason then to hold the early Church to have been more richly endowed with charisms than the Church today. In the Church then as now charisms are spiritual gifts bestowed freely especially for the benefit of others. Wherever one discovers the incon-spicuous service of the Church, no matter how small the ecclesial operation, there, in such gifts, one will likely detect some sort of divine intervention. However slight a manifestation of loving service, it may conceal a gift of the Spirit of Christ. Charisms may be found together wherever one sees the accumulated effect of a sign. Charismatic gifts are not only rare and extraordinary but common and ordinary. Anyone who is willing to expend himself for Christ in heroic fidelity to common-place, everyday things is gifted with a charism. Under the common thing the hidden grace. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are deeper, more hidden and widespread or pervasive than we know. Who is to set limits upon His gifts in our life? Are we too inclined to look for gifts only in the spectacular, the colossal, the newsworthy, like finding a solution to wars, social problems, ecclesias-tical enigmas? Many are the gifts wrapped in the small packages of fidelity to duty, kindness, sincerity, purity, courage, truthfulness, trust, love. At this point it may be time to push Bishop Tenhumberg's argument one notch further by asking if there is any possibility at all of interpreting the signs of the times unless charisms are better employed? How closely interconnected, in fact, intermingled are charisms with the signs of the times? Do we have to speak of them as "values" to observe how they overlap? St. Paul never meant to enumerate all the Charisms of Article 12. ÷ ÷ ÷ Signs, Chazisms~ Apostolates VOLUME 27, 1968 + + ÷ .loseph Fichtner, O .S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the Spirit at work in his day, possibly because he did not discern them all; nor is it possible for us to list them in our own day, excepting to mention, as he did, that there are varieties of gifts, all of which are intended for the good of the Church. Gifts of nature, talent, skill, com-petence, which often are the substratum of grace and are not easily told apart from it, are not to be hoarded or stingily communicated. Were it possible to paraphrase I Corinthians 12, we would have to say that the variety of gifts discloses itself somewhat differently now than in early Christianity. Perhaps this variety shows up in in-telligence or scholarship or scientific research, social reforms, artistic talent, catechetical skill, pediatrics, ger-ontology, the schooling of exceptional children, liturgical zeal, youth programming, public relations, apostolic en-deavor, mystical bent, and so forth. Gifts of all kinds, specializations, are useful and necessary in the Church in the modern world and are not to be bottled up or hidden. Nor will they function properly if restricted to a loner or a clique. They will dictate the abandoning of some apos-tolates and the assuming of others. Various gifts of the Spirit should enable Christians to work together harmoniously in the Church, for though the gifts are many they are one in the Spirit. In the Decree on the Apostolate of ~he Laity the unity of the apostolate is accentuated, however variously it may ex-press itself: "From the reception of these charisms or gifts, including those which are less dramatic, there arise for each believer the right and duty to use them in the Church and in the world for the good of mankind and for the upbuilding of the Church." ~ Since no one can claim all the gifts, their very diversity can do service in many apostolates and fit together into a fine pattern of apostolic activity. St. Paul wrote about this unity because he himself was faced with the Corinthian quarreling over gifts as though they were held in contention or competition: "There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit, there are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is work-ing in all of them." ~z Whereas Paul had in mind char-isms belonging to individuals, it seems more appropriate to think that nowadays the charisms are diffused among groups of men and women who are willing to pool their capabilities and resort to consultation and con-certed action. The Spirit confers communal charisms as well as individual. Charity, according to Paul, is their unifying factor, and therefore he stresses the fact that charity outranks ~XArticle 3. =1Cor 12:4-6. them all. Charity motivates the recipients of the gifts to employ them for the common good of mankind. Charity too allows us who live in a community to appreciate the variety of gifts distributed among the members, so that each person can be different because of them even when we do not comprehend why he is so gifted or how he is so effective with his gifts. We must leaim to be patient, tolerant, and sensitive to one another, letting another employ his gift(s) as he sees fit as long as he is not misguided in his zeal and effort (how can a so-called charism square with" an otherwise questionable life?).- The function of gifts cannot be legislated in complete detail, nor can everybody in every circumstance abide by such detail. Practical matters simply cannot be regula.ted unanimously. But it may take charismatic courage to say "No" to a trend or policy or spirit which proves to be wrong and damaging to the Church. Egotism sometimes blinds us to the divine goodness in the many splendid achievements, the human values, round about us. Humility, contrariwise, prompts us to behold the marvels of God's grace. Charismatic goodness is to 'be found abundantly in the Church' and society if we would only peel from our eyes the scales of our selfish-ness. We are tempted to look only for the things which suit our fancy. ,At times, no doubt, the charismatic may frighten us or appear threatening because it is novel and catches us by surprise. It may be shocking, and yet upon investigation it may reveal a hidden or unknown contlnmty with something of the past. Liturgical change, for example, may startle today but in itself be a revival of a tradition dating back to the early Church. Charismatic leaders ¯ may be criticized for their bumptiousness or impetuosity; -they may obe called untraditional or subversive; their spirit may be attributed to a yen for change. They and their gifts may meet with contradiction, apathy, sloth, delay, distrust, because not all others discern their true value or the Spirit introducing them into the Church and society. Difficult as it is to sense the Spirit at work among charismatic leaders, it is no less difficult for the charis-matic leaders themselves to be sure of their own inspira-tions and enthusiasms. The uncertainty within themselves is compounded by the opposition they inevitably meet from without. Men like Gandhi, John XXIII, and Martin Luther King, Jr. exemplify the point at hand. We who are caught up .in the crosscurrents sweeping through the Church at the present time easily recognize the signs of opposition. They are like the churning waters left behind by a ship, the wake of its effort to plow ahead through the rampaging sea. + + Signs, Charinm, Apostolates ~OI.UME 27, 1968 777 + ÷ ÷ ]o, seph Fichtner, . . 0.$.~,. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 7.78 This opposition is mild in comparison with the re-jection the true apostle has to contend with while follow-ing Christ in the modern world: rejection by his enemies because what he upholds or promotes is hostile to them, and rejection by his own who fail to understand him or his gift(s). The cost of apostleship and discipleship is sul~ering-- the sacrifice of earthly ties, possessions, life itself. What uncompromising zeal is necessary for the disciple as he assumes the cost of his charism. Christ expected His followers to encounter suffering, at least the pain of carrying out the burden or responsibility of a charism.23 It is painful to realize charismatic limitations, painful to be humbled by other charismatic activities which clash with ours. Not all gifts are operative in the Church at the same time, so they will have to bide their time. The important thing to remember is that the charisms meant for the apostolate place their recipients in the service of Christ who was a suffering Servant for His people. Since Vatican Council II considered the religious way of life to be charismatic and apostolic, it is only to be expected that this life should suffer through its current attempts at self-renewal. The charism of the religious founder was the germ of "the original inspiration of a given community," 24 which has to undergo the pain of growth. The retention or modification of that charism which he injected in his community can cause suffering especially when the personal charisms of members are in conflict with it. The Spirit communicates a "spirit" determinative of "the particular character of each com-munity," which can put the community at odds with ecclesiastical authority and occasion large-scale dissatis-faction. 25 Thus the vital principle of a religious com-munity can be at one and the same time the source of its sanctity and the cause for the purification of its orig-inal gift. The most agonizing encounters with ecclesias-tical authority occur in the field of the apostolate, a fact confirmed by contemporary examples. Yet Vatican II admitted it was "by divine plan that a wonderful variety of religious communities' grew up" with "the diversity of their spiritual endowments." 2n This is an admission that the Spirit of Christ communi-cates directly and not necessarily or always through "~ See Lk 14:25-35. ~ Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Lile, Article 2. See M. Olphe-Galliard, s.J., "Le charisme des [ondateurs religieux," Vie consacrge, v. 39 (1967), pp. 338-52. ~Decree on the Bishops' Pastoral O0~ce in the Church, Article 35.2." 28Decree on the Appropriate Renewal oI the Religious Lile, Ar-ticle 1. hierarchical channels. By their initiative and creativity, in accordance with their special gifts, religious com-munities initiate movements which only later may be taken up by authority. Their apostolates lie at the fron-tiers of the Church, supported by the gifts, small and great, of the Holy Spirit. The ultimate norm of the religious life is "a following of Christ as proposed by the gospel." z7 The gospel pic-tures Jesus addressing himself to the J.ews who were accusing Him of blasphemy, speaking of Himself as "someone the Father consecrated and sent into the world." 28 Christ in turn called others to this same ~onsecration and same mission, that is, ap6stolate. They had to give up all things to follow Him. Religious have appropriated to themselves the word spoken by Peter the Apostle: "We have left everything and fol-lowed you." 29 Christ called fishermen and a tax collector to the apostolate: "Follow me.''30 This call to obedience meant adherence to the Person of Jesus Christ and fellowship with Him. Before Christ entrusted any offices to His followers, He established a community among them with Himself at the center; He shaped them into a Christocentric community. The early apostolic life was not motivated by some form of hero worship but by obedience to the Son of God. The Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Re-ligious Life devotes an entire article to a discussion of the apostolate.31 After explaining in Article 5 that the life of religious is "an act of special consecration [to Christ] which is deeply rooted in their baptismal con-secration and which provides an ampler manifestation of it," the decree shows how its basic unity is diversified in two vocations, corttemplative and apostolic. The special consecration can be lived in two ways because of its twofold orientation. Vatican Council II was look-ing at the religious life phenomenologically: it saw therein two principal orientations, one toward con-templation, the other toward the apostolate. The religious apostolate then must stem from the special consecration to Christ; it is an apostolic con-secration. The religious apostolate is not simply a gesture, a sort of outward and incidental manifestation of the love consecrated men and women have for Christ. It is ~ Ibid., Article 2. 's Jn 10:36. =~ Mt 19:27. ~ Mk 2:14. ~ Article 8. See £. Pin, S.J., "Les instituts religieux apostoliques et le changement so¢io-culturel," Nouvelle revue thdologique, v. 87 (1965), pp. 395-411. ÷ ÷ ÷ Signs, ~Tharisms, Apostolates VOLU~E ~7; i~3 779 ÷ Joseph Fich0t~n.e(~r,. REV[EW FOR RELIGIOUS rather a concrete and unmistakable love expressed in a life '!committed to apostolic works." 32 In Article 8 we read about the "various aspects of the apostolate," how religious groups make diversified con-tributions to the common good of the Church. These contributions, the decree points out, derive from the varieties of gifts given to the groups by the Holy Spirit. The varieties of gifts determine to a large extent, though not fully, the specific apostolic orientation a religious group takes--teaching, nursing, social work, home and foreign missions, and so forth. Although the decree does not refer to it explicitly, it implicitly wants religious to consider the interrelationship of signs of the times, charisms, and apostolates: "Communitie.~ should promote among their members a suitable awareness of contem-porary human conditions and of th~ needs of the Church. For if their members can combine the burn-ing zeal of an apostle with wise judgments, made in the light of faith, concerning the circumstances of the modern world, they will be able to come to the aid of men more elfectively."3a Such studies as psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, can be the humanistic basis for the charisms to be more under-standing of and productive in the world. In a second paragraph within Article 8 the council links closely two spirits that should dominate each other in the religious life, the religious and the apostolic. Without such interlinking the religious life would suffer and die. The key statement to this effect is the following: "Flence the entire religious life of the rdembers of these communities should be penetrated by an apostolic spirit, as their entire apostolic activity should be ani-mated by a religious spirit." Here we touch upon a delicate point of the spiritual renewal asked "for by Vatican II--the possibility of failure to renew a spirit while changes are made "on behalf of contemporary needs." "Indeed such an interior renewal must always be accorded the leading role even in the promotion of exterior works." a4 Of course it is impossible to set any determinate, calculable hours apart for each, prayer and apostolate, but it is essential to realize that the two go hand in hand. In order to avoid the idea that perhaps apostolic works will lead to the danger of activism, to a self-seeking in the apostolate, to immoderate desire for action, to some sentimental involvement in the lives of others, the council asserted that "apostolic activity should ~ See the first reference in footnote $1. ~ Article 2. ~ Decre~ on th~ ,4ppropriate Renewal o/th~ Religious Life, Arti-cle 2. result from intimate union with" Christ.35 It would not have a Christlike spirit and would be torn from an apos-tolic witness, a body of Christianity without a Heart. The prayer itself of religious should be apostolic. Normally they will make their own the petition in Christ's prayer: "Thy kingdom come"--all the spiritual interests confided to the community. Daily community prayer will embrace all the persons who are in the in-timate care of the community: personnel, students, patients, fellow religious, all who depend upon the community for their spiritual sustenance. Instead of being an evasion of apostolic duty, wrongly inspired by the idea that the community can cure every evil and help everyone with prayer alone, its apostolic prayer will be a catharsis and a strength .for apostolic activity. Its members will not dilute their prayer life with all the worry and anxiety they experience throughout their daily apostolate. Apostolic prayer will be for them a humble and confident conversation with Christ who may find them worthy of His own fiery love for the people His Father committed to Him to redeem. A community closely bound together is prone to feel that its communitarian link conditions its form of presence and activity in the world. Community life of itself is not necessarily opposed to an effective presence and activity in the world. But its members obligate them-selves to live this tension between presence in the world and presence in a community till the' eschatological day when the Church and world will be entirely one. No matter how well they try to regulate their life, there will inevitably be some tension between religious observance and apostolic works, between the structural and the ~harismatic. It would be an easy solution to turn the time for observances into an apostolically disordered life. The regular community observance has apostolic meaning and purpose. Perhaps this tension can be eased by better budgeting and managing of time and service. Better management will help to avoid the two extremes of a rigid formalism on the one hand and a disordered and frantic life on the other. The former is harmful to the apostolate, the latter arouses anxiety or qualms of conscience. All the discussion nowadays against structure and the institutional Church can do harm to what is good and useful of structure and the institutional Church. Some sort of structure and a prudently regulated observance is an indispensable aid to religious life and to the apostolate. To take an example from family life--how much family life remains if members come and go as they Ibid., Article 8. 4- 4- 4- Signs, Charisms, Apostolates VOLUME 27, 1968 781 ÷ ÷ ÷ $oseph Fichtner, O.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS please without any recourse to a schedule for meals, sleep, work, recreation, and especially to a steady inter-communication? The same holds true for religious life:. a moderate observance is a precious boon to it. On the other hand, observance for its own sake is obnoxious. It is bound to incite a harmful restlessness, to sap energy, paralyze effort, or invite either pharisaical regu-larity or intentional neglect. Vatican II was rather in-sistent that this point of observance be looked into and brought up to date. The decree carefully notes that a high-spirited and level-headed apostolate will itself nurture rather than ruin the love for God and neighbor. The question is, how will it nurture this love? First of all, by putting to rest that old fear of an apostolate, genuine and sincere, somehow detracting from the love of God. The council will go down in history, particularly for its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, in seeing signs of the times which hold promise of much good for the human community. While speaking of the religious apostolate, it remarks about this same good as the field for religious to harvest. The religious apos-tolate, therefore, will nurture love in two ways: first by peace, secondly by stimulus. Peace will accrue from it because the religious will learn that his effort and fatigue are the sincere and au-thentic expression of his love for God. There is much comfort in knowing, deep down in his heart, that he is doing the will of God in the apostolic task assigned to him and for which his charism suits him. Obedience to an assignment with all the hardship and suffering it entails, is a participation in the obedience of Christ. Christ felt real contentment in the fulfillment of His duty toward His Father. "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work." 86 At the same time the apostolic religious will be stim-ulated to love more, for the apostolate will impress him with need for fidelity to prayer and to a rule of life. He will recognize at once that any lack of zeal on his part amounts to a lack of love, zeal being the fruit of love. Insufficient love springs from an insufficient union with God. Christ turned to prayer in the midst of a busy apostolate and denied Himself sleep in order to pray often and for long spells. Such prayer instilled in His heart a greater love for souls, greater patience, and more courage. This has been an endeavor to weave together the complementary aspects of the signs of the times, charisms, and apostolates especially as they pertain to religious ~ Jn 4:34. institutes. Religious institutes too, inasmuch as they have a charismatic role in the Church and society, have to examine the signs of the times locally and periodically in order to see what apostolates are open~to them and whether they have the charisms most suited to contem-porary needs. All three--signs of the times, charisms, and apostolates--mesh into a single program of life and work under the guidance o[ the Holy Spirit and in the light o[ faith and charity. Signs, Charisrns, Apostolates VOLUME 27, 1968 KEVIN F. O'SHEA, C.Ss.R. The "Security Void" + ÷ Kevin F. O'Shea, C.Ss.P., writes from St. Mary's Monas-tery; Wendouree; Ballarat, Victoria; Australia. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Two years ago Dan Herr wrote in The Critic of a "piety void": the deep loss felt by many people since older "devotions" have been downgraded and have lost their force, and the new "liturgy" is not yet meaning-fully established. The "piety void" is only one aspect of the "security void": a deep unhappiness experienced by many, since older "securities" have been challenged and nothing seems to have replaced them. This diagnosis contends that two basic types of security are in conflict: a security of absolute norms, and a security of committed love. It analyses them only in the area of external au-thority and obedience (though it might well take in areas of moral conscience, faith and doctrine, and voca-tional role and ideal). Each of the two "approaches" to security to be out-lined here could claim (and has claimed) roots in St. Thomas. It is necessary to distinguish between theory, translation of theory into experience, translation of experience into inspirational-motif, translation ol in-spirational- moti[ into formula, translation o[ [ormula into a workable living pattern. Any fully developed "ap-proach" to a profoundly human value (like security) includes all five: theory, experience, inspirational-motif, formula, and workable living pattern. Of the two ap-proaches to security to be developed here, the first (the "older") can be considered initially as "fully developed" in this sense; the second ("the modern") cannot. Both could agree at root in the theory of St. Thomas; each then develops a different experience and inspirational-motif; the "older" possesses its clear formulas and work-able living patterns, which are now challenged by the "modern"; the "modern" is not yet equipped with these elements, and for that reason is deprecated by the "older." Here lies the problem of analysis: here lies finally the root of the "security void" itself. A security of absolute norms is the fruit of a rational-ized approach to society. Accepting the common aim and the need for organized action to attain it, the members of a society accept also a human authority that will give it firmness, sureness, stability, and "security" in the I'face of conflicting human attitudes within it. When a superior, in whom such authority is vested, make~ an authoritative precept, it becomes normative for the society; only in obedience to that norm can that society continue with security. Security is conceived as unified and efficiently ordered action; it stems from "managerial authority." When the subjects obey, they conform their practical thought and action to the authoritative precept given them, out of respect for authority and out of love for the well-ordered existence of the society and its "security." Their obedience is intelligent, even rational: it is logical for them to obey, given their commitment to such values. When in fact their theoretical assessment of a situation differs from the dictate of authority, they will then sacrifice the advantage they believe they might bring to the common interest, to the greater good of the unchallenged reign of authority and for the noble end it serves, the societyrs "security." This is no infantile submission to the "will" of a master: it is the manly conformity of those who see greater value in their sacrifice than in their independent achievement. Their con-science is honored; and they have the personal, ful-fillment of being rightly ordered to the values they cherish, rather than the less esteemed fulfillment of mastery through their own pattern of action. At .times, recourse might duly be had to higher authority; but always in the interests of greater security for the com-mon interest. This is the theory; it has been lived in a way that subtly turns authority into something more absolute. It is assumed in'practice that the order ~1: the society to its common aim, its security, and its continued existence, depend on absolute obedience to its authority at all times. Despite the theory (which would allow for the balance of one human law with another, and with natural and divine law, andfor the use of epikeia as a x;irtue and not simply as a legal loophole), visible division from authority in any matter commanded is considered a supreme, scandal and an absolute evil. We suspect here a practical transition from general policies (the principle of respect for authority) to particu-lar details (the absoluteness of this dictate, in which the whole meaning of authority is seen to be at stake); we sus.pe~t a practical equation of what is authorized for the society with what is objectively good (and best) for the society--of the practical .and the theoretical advantages of the society; we suspect even that authority is almost conceived as the end of the society itself. In this way the basic theory has been hardened through experience towards a stress on absolute loyalty to authority at all VOLUME 27, 1768 785 + ÷ ÷ Kevin O'Shea, C.Ss.R. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS costs, as the~ esprit de corps and inspirational-motif of society. The formulas of the basic theory are read in this sense, and the workable living patterns enshrine it. In practice, then, it is in the "absolute norms" of authority that man finds his security in society. For an "older" generation such unchallenged security alone was possible. This same approach underlies even a mystical view of the Church as the Body of Christ growing to its fullness under the guidance of the Spirit. It is through the charisms that the Spirit rules the Church; and to some He gives the charism of discerning the direction that might be taken with profit; to others He gives the charism of expressing .this conviction publicly; while to the apostolic hierarchy alone He gives the charism of placing God's definitive seal of approval on any plan. It . is through the hierarchy alone that salvation history can finally and authoritatively be formed: the word of the hierarchy is the word of the Lord. When a member of the Church obeys the hierarchy, he acts out of deep reverence for their office and for the divine plan of history in the Church. He thinks it is better for Christ to be revered in His bishops than for Christ to be helped by independent action but dishonored by an apparent. schism between His members. He gives up .what he hitherto thought to be the desire of the Spirit, for the word of the hierarchy, which He authentically knows to be the desire of the Spirit. This is the theory, and it is not hard to see how it has absolutized the practice of obedience in the church. An episcopal command has been regarded as a divinely absolute norm in which alone the Church can continue to live and grow in Christ. The apostolic placer is the will of God and is the security of the Church. It is the absolute norm for a Christian who wants to live in the Church and follow God's plan. We suspect here the root of the attitude of simple acceptance in many of the faithful who look on all pronouncements of ecclesiastical authority as though they were of the same univocal value; we suspect here a certain voluntarism by which God's ideal plan for man in the Church is identified with God's here and now (permissive?) will expressed through the hierarchy. A mystique of security in the Church stems from this lived attitude. A personal approach to community today suggests another kind of security--the "security of committed love." It begins with the axiom that man is a living and loving person. He is called to give himself to others in generosity, sacrifice, and service. In this "self-spending" he really "becomes" a person. There is in man, then, a native instinct (blunted by sin but given new point by grace) to yield, in love, to others whom he serves. It could be called "obedience," but it is not what is strictly and technically described as social obedience. It is prior to the existence or recognition of any social au-thority; it is an intrinsic function of love. It goes far beyond the demands of organization; it is directed to persons not to abstract values. Man then has to live his life in situations in which he experiences in his conscience the call to such love and serf-giving to others. In this call he hears the voice o[ love itself, which is God. In it he recognises the eter-nal law of absolute Love. He needs these situations if he is going to meet this Love and experience its challenge; they channel it to him as "mediations" of Love. He also needs these situations if he is going to respond to this Love and live up to its demands; they are the ambient, the milieu in which he can grow in it. Such human situations, which are. not of man's mak-ing, are in no way opposed to man's love. His love acts, not against them, but within them. As human, his love needs them. The basic situation thus needed is the situation of "personal community." We do not refer, to a community of traditions and practices, or to a community of meth~ ods and pooled skills, but to a community of persons who strive to live together in a. truly personal and serf-giving way. They are a "people" together, a true "comm.unity," blending together their instinctive desire for love and self-giving. Within such a community, the call to Love is heard and answered; the community is the "mediation" and the "milieu" of the eternal law of Love. Love can find itself only within such a community; it is an intrinsically demanded "structure" of love, a permanent, developed, and basic situation of human love. Considerably more is meant here, of course, than what is usually read into the concept of a society, effi-ciently organized to achieve a common aim. In com-munity, persons experience a sense of belon~,tng, of. "being together," of loving together. The integration_ of person with person, of personal attitude and ideal with personal attitude and ideal, as they yield to one another and serve one another and together serve others, is the basic horizon needed for all human life. In this sense, community "serves" man. Within such a community, there is need for celebra-tioh; such real love and togetherness need to be sym-bohzed and feted. Within such a community, there is also need for leadership; such love needs to be given open and significant expression within the community Security Void VOLUME 27, 1968 Kevin O'Shea~ REVIEW FOR RELI~IOUS 788 and radiated outward to those who do not yet know it. Such celebrations and leading-actions are the high-points of community life. Without them, the community does not live, symbolically, in the hearts of the persons who form it, and does not supply them with action-situa-tions for ever deeper personal love. The community needs such events, and therefore it needs within it an oOice responsible for assuring their presence. Those who bear this office are rightly considered to have special eminence in the community, and to them the open-ness of all members of the community is especially directed. Those who bear this office are in a real sense the pivots and sttpports of the community-structure which serves personal love. The acceptance, the reverence, and the "obedience" they are given is fundamental to the commitment of community love and transcends the limits of merely social obedience. At the same time, the office we describe is not strictly social authority but something prior to it. If in fact in a given community there is also social authority (and thus also social obedience), they/viii be fully integrated, on their lower level, into these primary values. Authority must spring spontaneously from the community-office of celebration and leadership; obedience must spring spon-taneously from integration into community, availability to the action of the community, and reverent acceptance of those who hold office in the community. It is clear that when in fact such true social obedience is called for, it will possess a unique a~ective tone. It wi!l be an obedience within community love. It will simply pinpoint the readiness to yield which is there in the community prior to any legal precept. It is more a privilege than a duty. There are two major differences between this and the pattern of obedience previously described in the "older" approach. First, it claims the right to integrate the external com-mand into the claims of Love as heeded in conscience and lived in the community. The subject to whom the external authority speaks "hears" the dictate externally and then asks himself what it "means,' to him in his community-conscience, as a moral imperative of Love. He does not assume, absolutely and universally, that every external command will always automatically mean such a demand of Love. He does not assume, absolutely and universally, that always and in every ~case personal sacrifice must be made to the higher role of this authority. He will not grant, beforehand, that' authority is the main thing in a given situation but will assess the claims of authority in relation to the claims Of community love itself. He will'make this assessment as a person, in open-ness with the persons who form his community and hold office and authority in it. He will grant that normally and in many cases authority-claim (legal imperative) will mean community-claim and love-claim (moral imperative): but he will not a priori equate the two. He will grant that he must make his decision in this matter in deep responsibility of conscience, but he will think that such responsibility is part of his duty in a community of this kind. This first point is claiming more than the simple state-ment that a true imperative (legal and therefore moral) can objectively be in point but may or may not be grasped subjectively by a given person in invincible ignorance because of environmental circumstances. It is an expres-sion o[ an attitude to obedience that springs from the inspiration of the community-love theme. In theory it may not be saying more than is said in classic positions concerning epikeia and the balance of laws and incon-veniences, but it is said in the spirit of an experience different from the experience that has concretely inter-preted and presented the classic positions. Whatever our final judgment of it, a new point of view is expressed here. Secondly, by way of balance, in this obedience there is always a willingness to go beyond legal demands and to go beyond the hard and fast line of what is obligatory by authority. It does not like to stop at what must be done; it looks for what can be done. The final criterion of action is not what legal authority says (or does not say); it is what the situation really demands of the conscience of those involved. The external authority and its statement are respected as part of the total situa-tion in which the imperative of conscience is seen and in which it must act, but it is recognized that the total situation may at times and even often require more than the external authority has stated. Such obedience must be recognized as magnanimous: it acts, not in con-straint, but in love. Once again, it is an expression of attitude that is in point here, flowing from the basic inspiration of the meaning of community. In theory, it is saying no more than the classic position says of the primacy of charity over social obedience, the unity of all the virtues in love, and the rights of personal conscience. But it is expressed in a new enthusiasm arising from a new ex-perience. It is a different point of view from the "old." In the concrete the obedience morally recognized by the person in a given situation will be a determination of the tension between the first and second point: be-tween the right of personal integration into his respon-sible community love, and the duty of personal tran-÷ ÷ ÷ Security Void VOLUME 27, 1968 789 ÷ ÷ Kevin O '.SShs.eRa.~ REWEW FOR RELIGIOUS 790 scendence of the limits of an external command. If this resolution were consistently in the direction of ignoring the external command, it would not be authentic to its own inspiration; for it would not be recognizing the genuinely "normative" character of authority in the community.It is not the "norm" that is refused; it is the assumption that the norm is "absolute." When this obedience is given, it is not lacking in the formal motiva-tion of social obedience, for it does yield to authority as such, but within a community context. The real ques-tion is: When this obedience is not given (in the usual form of conformity to the external command), is it objectively defective in the essential moral value of obedience? But the question is not one of theory, as we have repeatedly shown; it is one of interpretation of the "formula" used as a guideline, as a workable living pattern. It is less a question of what is externally done (or not done) on a particular occasion; it is more a ques-tion of what is the psychology behind it and how it could stand with, and not destroy, the genuine psychol-ogy of social obedience. For a person who forms his mind on these personalist lines cannot have a psychological security of absolute norms. He must find a new type of security elsewhere: in the absoluteness of his commitment to Love and to self-giving and to community in the sincerity of his own conscience; in the relative service that he finds for this in the structures of community, with its members, and their offices, and their common acdon. His is the security of committed love and appreciated structures. The "absoluteness" here is genuine but new: it includes the impredictability of human love, and the incalculable progress of providence. This same personalist approach underlies a sense of the Church as the "people" of God, impelled by the Holy Spirit of Love. The Church is a divinely created, supernaturally indefectible home-situation of truly per-sonal love and sacrifice. It is through and in the Church as a community that the voice of eternal Love in Christ comes to the conscience of her members. It is through and in the Church as a community that her members respond to this voice and live their self-gift to others and to Love itself. Ttie Church is being rediscovered as a community; the Constitution on the Church of Vatican II places its chapter on the "people of God" prior to its discussion of the place of the hierarchy within the people of God. The community of the Church is the natural horizon of our love as it is divinized in Christ; the Church in this sense is indeed the pillar and the very "ground" of Love. In this sense she serves the mystery of human love by creating the conditions for it to. be real. In the Church, the hierarchy, vested with the office of liturgical celebration and of missionary ex-pansion of the Church's mystery of love, and vested also with true social authority to rule the people of God, be-comes the pivot and the support of this "ground" of love. This is why the members of the Church, .as they carry each other's burdens and so fulfill the law of love, look on the Church with reverence as their "mother," even when they see her humble limitations. It is not initially a sense of duty and of obedience that binds them to the Church and to the hierhrchy; it is a sense of vocation and of belonging, since they are meant for her and cannot truly love outside of her. "Outside of m~, you can do nothing." This is why the same nuance of obedience enters here within the Church as we noticed on the gen-eral level: the entire problematic of authority-obedience itself serves the deeper problematic of community-love. At pre~ent there is a conflict, within and without the Church, between those who maintain a long established modus vivendi based on and leading to security of ab-solute norms, and those who demand the creation of a new modus vivendi based on and leading to security of committed love. It is certain that the "older" pattern is well established. It is only recently that it has been challenged; and the challenge has been resented, with shock, by the "older" generation. They have experienced a unique insecurity on seeing the very principles of their security openly questioned, on finding the present age disenchanted with the absoluteness of the old ways and seemingly submerged in the pure relativism of love. They have been asked, implicitly at least, to approve patterns of action in others that are completely at variance with their own inner orientation to norm-security and even to accommodate their own mentality and pattern of action to them. They cannot believe that their own generous sacrifice and 'heroic loyalty over a lifetime have been unnecessary and that their conscious foundation of security is chimerical. They tend to harden the "essential" theory of authority-obedience- security, in the language they have always known it, into the one and only workable living pattern they have known and to admit no other. They feel now that the essential props of their security are under attack. It is certain too that the "new" pattern is noble in its inspiration. Because it is noble and even more because it is new, it tends to remain as yet in the order of ideals and even of inspirational "slogans" (for example, "personal fulfillment," the need for "dialogue") and has not yet formed for itself a realistic working pattern. Its ÷ ÷ ÷ Security Void VOLUME 27, 1968 791 + + Kevi~t O'Shea, C.Ss.R. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS idealism is tender to attack and resents the fact that others cannot understand it but reject it and even regard it as harmful. The "new" generation cannot believe that they ought honestly regard their ideals as unreal and settle for the pseudo-satisfaction of security through absolute norms and legal authority. They tend to stiffen their allegiance to their principles and to be insecure precisely because they know they are not yet accepted or put into practice at community level. It is Strange that precisely here the "new" generation may be rather unfaithful to its own principles. Instead of placing their real security in committed love and self-giving, they seem to insist---immediately---on the security of acceptance in the "older" community; they want their values upheld and identified as legitimate and valid, they want to be understood by others and not thought rebels, they want to be integrated, as they are, into their community's way of life and tradition which they feel that they do not violate but practice in a new way. Would that they have all this; but is it primary to their own principles? At all events, a certain paralysis is taking hold of protagonists of both points of view, which is deepening their insecurity. It happens especially where there has been little attempt at renewal of commonity living structures; where a tradition of legalistic obedience has set up a quasi-divine right of the establishment; where a system of bureaucracy or a veil of anonymity or a pro-tection of prestige has been used to give firmness to the status quo without facing the issues; where a policy of "via media" or of "prudence" is used merely to cover a refusal to do anything; where there is a visible split into parties "for" and "against" the new idealism; where in such mental alienation of one group from another, action comes mainly from party politics, dominant personalities, or emotional enthusiasms created by prop-aganda; where unkind name-slinging is used to make real dialogue and acceptance impossible. Here a critical impasse is soon reached; only the external signs of true community remain. Even those who try to remain tran-quil are misjudged; they are thought insincere in the face of a common anxiety. Men go through the motions of what they have always done, or would wish to do, without the fulfillment that ought to come from it. They live in a "security void." It is made acute when they refuse the obvious dilemma of the situation: rebel or accept. The malaise can be cured by neither; neither by open irreverence, public agitation, mental alienation from the whole situation, refusal to cooperate, invocation of one's rights (from legal authority or from conscience), retreat into one's , I work; nor by timidly coveting up and finding a false refuge in permission (of authority or of conscience), or by the cowardice of giving away all serious attempt at idealism (of whatever form) and settling for no security at all. Those who rightly refuse these false avenues know that they have no anchorage left; they are nonplused and beaten. There is a "credibility gap" between themselves and any founded security, a wavering of trust in asking completely serious questions at all. In this fundamental disillusionment they cease to live in the presence of a liberating truth (since they refuse the falsehood of double truth, one of idealism and another of reality). Their life becomes shallow and superficial, and. their work is not reliable. This is the "security void." This study is a diagnosis, not a solution. It can con, dude with a simple suggestion of seven thoughts, to .be pondered in the present crisis. (1) The theory behind the "new" personalist position is m reality no different from the theory behind the "older" essentialist position. On the general level, it is simply expressing the primacy of the person over society and the primacy of charity over the social virtues. On the particular level, the cases where it might admit a refusal of conformity to the authoritative dictate of a superior can well be reduced to cases already well known in traditional moral theology: epikeia, balance of laws, inconveniences, rights of conscience, and so forth. It is true that the expression given to these cases is new; it is emotive and enthusiastic and thereby tending to more difformity than has been allowed in the older working pattern. But this does not prove the theory is incorrect; it proves only that it is ambiguous in its expression as reduced to a working pattern. It is therefore on the level of that working pattern, in practice, that any incor-rectness should be removed. At least, there is room for real "dialogue" in a theoretical agreement on founda-tions. (2) The spirit of the personalist position, as it is typi-cally expressed at present, does not appear to allow suffi-ciently for the role of social authority within a personal communityi and this defect comes from its idealism. Let us grant thi~ idealism absolutely, but let us remember that we are asking it of men who live in a sin,situation and who carry within themselves profound inclinations contrary to gene.rous and sacrificial self-giving in love. The first evidence of these inclinations is the tendency for groups to isolate within a community and to consider the expressions of love that-correspond to their .own idealism without due consideration of the interests and peculiar form of love of other groups. On the very prin-ciples of total lov~ within the total personal community, .!- ÷ ÷ Security Void VOLUME 27, 1968 793 + ÷ ÷ Kevin O'Shea, .Ss.R. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS granting the intrinsic weakness of man, there must be some human authority to determine the forms of authen-tic love for all when need arises; and this authority must be conceded a per se place in the community. The typ-ical personalist expositions at present stress the idealism of what man is called to do somewhat at the expense of the necessary regime for its human realization, a vital part of which is authority. It is possible to rethink the meaning of authority as an inner demand of the personal community. In this way, the tendency to conceive an opposition between the expressions of a responsible authority and the inherent claims 9f love and conscience will weaken; at least, a better balance between the two will be achieved in practice, and in due time the formnlas and the working patterns will be rightly adjusted. (3) But if sin has abounded, grace has abounded even more. In assessing the present situation, we may reason-ably judge that mankind is on the threshold of a sig-nificant evolution in its living experience o[ community and of the meaning of personal love. We must not poison the wells of this inspiration. We must therefore admit, in theory and in practice, that the older static unchal-lenged working pattern of community must also evolve to be more in accord with the new inspiration. Any at-tempt to pin one's security finally in the unchanged positions of old is doomed to failure. To back down before the challenge of the present in the name of the weakness of human nature, which needs a lower stand-ard, is a practical denial of the triumph of grace. (4) This evolution in the living of community-love must of its nature be slow: "i(ll great matters must come to ripening slowly" (Congar). Those who live through the present transition and cause it must have a peculiar patience: a deep-rooted existential conviction that history is slowly changing through the measured pace of their lifetime. To the extent that their love and self-giving is really great, it will have the patience of the times, seconding and not subverting the dynamism by which God is bringing His gracious design to com-pletion in His own manner. It is perhaps in this fidelity to what is perceived as the bvolving character of provi-dence, that a genuine security can be found. Paradox-ically, it is~ patience that engenders hope, and not the reverse! (5) If social authority can and must be given a place de se in the personal community, it can and must also be found a special place de facto in the currently evolving form of personal community. Our original frailty is showing itself in a new facet: our inability to assure the tranquil passage from the older order to the new, evi-denced in the intransigence of some and the impetuosity of others, and the imprudence of all. There is need of a new awareness of humility if we are to engage correctly this exciting and dangerous transition of history. And there is need for,,social authority to recognize a new responsibility: that of assisting, with its own power of juridic firmness, the pattern of change and of progress from one order to the other. In the exercise of this office, social authority will slowly commend itself more truly to the humility our times must learn. (6) St. Thomas once described .the effects of human law as disciplina et pax. No doubt, he envisaged these mightly mysteries in the static culture of his day; but they remain valid, and needed, in the day of dynamic evolution of human living forms that is ours. Our current emergence to greater times must not be turbulent but tranquil; and the tranquility we need we must learn. We can only learn it if all those who make up the human community at present, "old" as well as "new," play their proper roles together. An "o]-der" point of view is neces-sary today to show the new inspiration, which it accepts at root, the realistic way to find its own survival. A "new" point of view is the soul of the upsurge, and its cry is for a love and a self-gift to all; it is necessary that it learn the peace of the future by establishing its own peace in the present, by accepting "togetherness" with those who do not yet appreciate its value and teaching them by deeds what it has not succeeded in communi-cating to them in words. The most unusual trait of the "new order" of love is that it can be created by real love in ariy conditions; it does not depend on special structures or circumstances but relies on its own dyna-mism. If it is to have more desirable conditi6ns in .the future, it must learn to give its own peace to those of the present. (7) Finally, those involved in this development, which means all of us, should be big enough to overlook mis-takes in detail for the greatness of the cause. We must become conscious of who we are in our times and in history; we must live with a sense of our call to the greatness of love together. In this sense, we must know not a "security void" but a "security fulfillment." + ÷ ÷ Security Void VOLUNE.27, 1968 PAUL MOLINARI, S.]. Renewal of Religious Life according to the Founder's Spirit Paul Molinari, s.J., writes from Borgo Santo Spirito, 5; Rome 00100, Italy. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 796 In presenting these few thoughts, I should like to clarify some theological points which have not, I believe, been sutticiently understood when we speak of a return to the origins of each religious institute. The conciliar decree Perfectae caritatis insists on a life of union with Christ, leading us to consider Him not only as the exemplar of the life of a religious but as the very form of this life.I think that this aspect has not been sufficiently stressed, because the wealth of mean-ing of certain rich but very concise expressions of the decree has not been adequately understood. The decree deliberately avoids detail in order not to bind religious life to concrete forms, identical for all, which would pre-vent it from developing freely in Christ. Rather, it sought above all to emphasize that we must make an ef-fort to conceive and live our religious life as one of donation to Christ, in which we must share His way of livin~g, His spirit. Hence the insistence on a supernatural principle. W~ must always keep in mind that the mis-sion of the Church is a continuation of the mission of Christ and that the mission of Christ is specifically su-pernatural. We must realize, therefore, that in order to participate in the mission of Christ, in order to continue it, we must of necessity adopt His criteria. It is pre-cisely a question of a gift of life--the Word made flesh in or,der to give supernatural life, divine life, to man. Participation in the life of Christ is what gives vitality to the Church. Participation in the redeeming sacrifice is what gives life to man. It is the sacrifice of Christ giving His life for the Church that ought to lead re-ligious to give their life for the Church, that is, for the supernatural good of all of the People of God, for a more abundant communication of divine life to the entire fam-ily of man. I insist on this point precisely because today there is, at times, a tendency to stress almost exclusively the necessity of adapting the exterior apostolate and of bringing it into line with the possibilities offered by modern technological society or to concentrate almost exclusively on the social apostolate of the Church. We must not forget, however, that Christ's apostolate is not only, nor even principally, a social apostolate but a supernatural apostolate: the communication of divine life. This presupposes that we can and often ought to see to the material needs of man and interest ourselves in serious and pressing questions of social justice, but our apostolate does not stop there. We must above all consider the supernatural value of religious life as such, the value of this self-donation which, even though it may remain unperceived, attains something very precious for others on a supernatural level precisely because it is a donation, a sacrifice of self, In this context, I would like to point out that we tend too easily to overestimate the criterion of exterior effi-cacy and of visible success. Is it not true that, when Christ died on the cross, the efficacy of this sacrifice of His entire life could not be seen? It is important to emphasize this at a time when the profound value of self-donation is being called into question precisely be-cause so little is said about the guiding principle of the Lord in His apostolate. Moved by the Spirit, He spent Himself, He delivered Himself on the cross. That is the force of the Spirit. We find ourselves here in the realm of faith. In the light of faith we begin to understand the value of a life hidden in Christ, of a life of im-molation, a life of love, a life which gives up its life for others--and nothing is more beautiful than to lay down our life for others. The ultimate solution to the crisis in contemporary religious life can be found in the realization of religious life as a life of self-donation. Not that religious life should lead merely to the interior life. On the contrary, it will lead us to a great activity; it must express itself exteriorly but in such a way that it is supernatural in character. It is along these lines that we can find a solution to today's problems, particularly those concerning the social apostolate. At this point, I quote those beautiful phrases contained in the decree Per[ectae caritatis: Fired by the love which the Holy Spirit pours out in their hearts, they live their lives ever increasingly for Christ and for his Body which is the Church. Consequently, the more fervent their union with Christ through this giving of themselves, which includes the whole of their lives, the richer the life of ÷ ÷ ÷ Founder"s Spirit VOLUME 27, 1968 797 REVIEW FOR RELIG~OU5 798 the Church becomes and the more fruitful her apostolate (n. 1). The gospel brings out that the characteristic note of Christ's mission was His docility to the Holy Spirit. I think that this is why the decree insists so much~ on the Holy Spirit, His action in the Church and in the soul of founders. If Christ, the head of the Church, began His mission led by the Spirit, the Incarnation itself being the work of the Spirit, the Church, which is the Mysti-cal Body of Christ, likewise ought to be docile to the Spirit. The Church, as such, tries to be so, and she has the permanent assistance of the Holy Spirit, her soul: Christ, having been lifted up from the earth, is drawing all men to himself. Rising from the dead, he sent his life-giving Spirit upon his disciples and through this Spirit has established his body, the Church, as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, he is continually .active in the world, leading men to the Church and through her joining them more closely to himself and making them par-takers of his glorious life by nourishing them with his own body and blood. Therefore, the promised restoration which we are awaiting has already begun in Christ, is carried forward in the mission of the Holy Spirit, and through him continues in the Church (Lumen gentium n. 48). In virtue of the same principle, each member of the Church should likewise follow the motions of the life-giving Spirit. We are touching here on one of the most fundamental principles of the religious life and of the Church. As the conciliar document Perfectae caritatis says, the Holy Spirit has raised up in the Church men and women who founded religious families. These souls were called to a providential mission in the Church and were particularly docile to the action of the Holy Spirit: Indeed from the very beginning of the Church men and women have set about following Christ with greater freedom and imitating him more closely through the practice of the evangelical counsels, each in his own way leading a life dedi-cated to God. Many of them, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, lived as hermits or founded religiou~families, which the Church gladly welcomed and approved by her authority. So it is that in accordance with the Divine Plan a wonderful variety of religious communities has grown up which has made it easier for the Church not only to be e~u!pped for every good work and ready for the work of the mlnxstry--the build-ing up of the Body of Christ--but also to appear adorned with the various gifts of her children like a spouse adorned for her husband and for the manifold Wisdom of God to be revealed through her (Perfectae caritatis, n. I). The Spirit who led Christ is the same Spirit who leads those who are united to Christ and in whom, as with docile instruments, He can more freely carry on the salvific mission of communicating divine life to His Church and to all mankind. With these theological principles in mind, it is easier to understand that while the. cardinal point of renewal is the Gospel and total, unconditional surrender and consecration to the redeem-ing Christ, another is precisely the docility and fidelity of members of a religious institute to the spirit of their founder. Actually, the mission of Christ is not yet completed; it continues in the Church which must remain faithful to His inspiration. This is why charismatic graces, that is divine inspirations given in view of certain apostolic necessities, continue to be given to the Church. These graces are evident in a special way in all those who have truly given their heart to the Lord and who, without setting any conditions or limits, allow themselves to be guided by God, that is to say the saints and those great charismatic leaders, the founders and foundresses of re-ligious families. But while this action of the Holy Spirit is particularly visible in the soul of founders, it does not stop with them. The same Spirit, wishing to continue the mission that He has entrusted to the founders ~for the sake of the Church, acts in the soul of each member of the People of God and calls some of them to follow our Lord and dedicate their lives to the institutes established by these holy men and women. It is as i£ the Holy Spirit sent a ray of light which filled the soul of: the founder. This ray continues on, through the founder, until it reaches the soul of those who are called to a certain religious family. It is a ray of light which has its own particular characteristics and limitations. It is thus that institutes receive a specific mission from the Holy Spirit. For this reason there is a variety of institutes in the Church, which are all necessary. And the Holy Spirit inspires and continues to inspire the members of all religious families but in different ways, according to their specific task in the Church. It is in this sense that St. Paul, while dealing with the Mystical Body, speaks of the di-versity of functions within the Church; and there is no doubt that this variety is very good for the Church. It is extremely important, therefore, that religious know what the authentic spirit of their founder or foundress is and that they share it consciously. This is what the Council intended when it invited religious, especially in view of the renewal of their life, to discover anew the riches of this spirit and to find life-giving in-spiration in it. For that reason, the motu proprio Ec-clesiae sanctae says it is essential for each religious family to study the sources and to go down to the real roots of their institute. It is, therefore, indispensable in 4- VOLUME 27, 1968 ÷ ÷ Paul Molinari~ $.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 8OO the preparation for special chapters charged with putting into practice the Council's teachings and directives, to engage in serious and searching study concerning the charism of the founder or foundress and to discover new depths concerning the authentic inspiration which gave birth to any given institute. It is obvious that in many cases a good number of studies have already been made on this precise point, and these studies can and ought to be judiciously used. It would be an error, nevertheless, to limit such research to an analysis of these studies, because each generation has its own sensitivity, its own special g~ace for discovering certain accents, and is struck by elements which previous generations prob-ably knew of but did not make use of with the same de-gree of explicit understanding. What happens in biblical exegesis and in the authentic evolution of dogma and theology is likewise true of the progressive understanding of what the Holy Spirit wished to start with founders and continues, through their mediation, throughout the ages in the institutes which He raised up in the Church. Precisely because we are dealing here with an interven-tion of God Himself in the history of the Church and of an initiative that He wishes to prolong and renew, not only today but also in the future, it is imperative that this search for the true spirit of a founder or foundress be done with complete objectivity. In no way is it permis-sible to base such a study on feelings or on interpreta-tions and intuitions which are more or less subjective. Reverence for the work of God in the soul of the founder as well as reverence for the divine vocation by which we were called to become a member of our religious in-stitutes requires that we remain humbly open to God's light. In no way should we try to make the divine grace given to the founder coincide violently or arbitrarily with our limited personal ideas. On the contrary, the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul of the founder ought to be our point of reference ]n examining our own way of thinking and acting. Much is being said today about the discernment of spirits. But this is exactly what the Church has been concerned with in regard to founders. We have the as-surance that they were acting under a charismatic im-pulse. We, in turn, participate in this same impulse to the degree that we are faithful to the grace which called us to our religious family, and that we let it de-velop and grow in us. It must be noted in this context that while the Church invites us to recognize loyally the spirit of our origins, she does not at all exclude the possibility that this spirit may find different expressions throughout the .ages. There is a tendency, at times, to identify the spirit of the founders with their works. But the spirit gave life to a work; it determined its beginning. It can happen that, as time passes, a work, begun with an intention largely determined by the needs and circumstances of the age and place in which the founder lived, has changed. In present day conditions, it may no longer b~ possible to continue these same works or, due to exterior circum-stances, to carry them on in the same way as when they were begun. Fidelity to the letter can thus become in-fidelity to the spirit of the founder. In other words, it is not sufficient simply to make an historical catalog of our works. We must try to see them, spiritually and integ-rally,~ from the inside, in order to seize the inspiration which animated the founder when he acted. It is only if we succeed in grasping this profound inspiration that we shall find, at the same time, that true fidelity to the founder which the Church is asking usa to preserve in deciding what adaptations are to be made. If the spirit of the founder is a living reality to us, we shall likewise be able to formulate it adequately in modern language, fully in accord with the contemporary situation. To be truly faithful, we must go to the very heart of the mat-ter, that is, go to the very root of the reasons why the founder acted and discover the ultimate criteria of the choices he made. We must not be content with discover-ing what the founder did; we have to discover why, whether we have grasped the inner inspiration. While reflecting so openly and clearly on this essen-tial principle, I want to make a brief point dictated by charity, justice, wisdom. It is well known that on the occasion of special chapters in all religious institutes, there is an atmosphere of unrest among truly generous religious who are loyal both to the Church and to their institute. This uneasiness is ultimately caused by an in-adequate understanding of the principles which have just been stated. On the one hand, there are religious who do not understand clearly enough that the concrete expression of the identical spirit of the founder c/m, and even ought to change according to the circumstances and mentality of succeeding generations. Every innovation, consequently, seems' to them to be a departure from the authentic spirit of the founder and, as such;' inadmissi-ble. On the other hand, there are also religious who, with a certain naivet~ which is no less serious, proclaim loudly that only the present generation has discovered the true spirit of the founder and that former genera-tions did not understand it at all. The mutual error of these two tendencies is simply that they both think that one, and only one, generation can discover once and for all what the authentic spirit of the founder is, exhaust the wealth of its possibilities, and determine defi'nitively 4, 4, Fou~w~$ ,Sp~r~g " VOLUME 27, 1968 4" 4" 4" Paul Molinari, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 8O2 all possible authentic expressions of this spirit. But, as we have already said, such a conception errs by not taking into account human limitations and historical sense. Each generation of religious has its own strong points and its own deficiencies, it own profound intui-tions as well as its own task. It is precisely along these lines, with the greatest reverence and objectivity, that each generation of rel.igious should look towards the authentic origins of their institute and delve into the heritage of its founder's authentic inspiration. In this process of humble and reverent seeking, which is at the same time both painful and liberating, each generation should make the charism of the founder and the in-stitute their own. Each generation, through prayer, med-itation, and study, should seek to find out, according to the spirit of the founder, what ought to be kept or abandoned in the present day. As can be seen, this work is both very necessary and very delicate, requiring hum-ble and utter abnegation. But if we understand that the true patrimony of the Church and the task of renewal are at stake, we shall not be afraid to renounce personal points of view or preferences in order to go wherever the Holy Spirit may lead us. Experience teaches us, moreover, that such a return to the authentic origins of an institute is not only possible but also extraordinarily fruitful. There is immediately a very keen and positive reaction when anyone speaks with competence to religious men and women about the documents left by their founder or about his life. I am sure that we have all already experienced this. Can it be explained in any other way except by the fact that men-tion was made of something that the Holy Spirit had already put in the heart of these religious? If they are put into direct contact with the sources of their institute, they explicitly find in them what they were formerly more or less conscious of and which had led them to one particular religious family and not another. The Spirit of God gives a certain sort of interior spiritual sensitivity and a spontaneous inclination towards the spirit of the founder and its authentic manifestations. If religious are brought into direct contact with the spirit of the founder, they are moved to ever greater generosity and immediately pass to a higher plane. Many people can thus be helped to overcome their difficulties, precisely because the very root of their life has been touched. It goes without saying, moreover, that this life-giving con-tact with the authentic inspiration of the founder greatly facilitates responsible adaptation to conditions and cir-cumstances of time and place. This is obviously the reason why the conciliar decree Per[ectae caritatis de- clares that any adaptation ought to come forth as a pre-cious fruit of interior renewal, that is of a return to the gospel and to the authentic spirit Of. the founder. Let us now say a word about the concrete manner of proceeding in this extremely delicate and important matter. Experience seems to bear out the following: Af-ter the religious have been informed of work done on the sources and after they have been invited to meditate on the different aspects of renewal and even to give their opinions in writing, it is a good practice to gather to-gether those who have showed special interest in the subject, especially those who likewise have a good scien-tific preparation. Ask them to study the documents and everything that has been done previously in the way of research and analysis in order to bring to light the outstanding elements, that is, those which recur con-stantly in the thought of the founder. The outcome will not all be the same because each one has his own per-sonality and way of looking at things; but by comparing the results, a sufficiently objective view will be obtained which will permit the characteristic elements of the life and thought of the founder to be isolated. These in turn will help orient the work of renewal. When it is time to rewrite the constitutions, they can be based on the discoveries made, without fear of changing or modi-fying illegitimately the thought of the founder which these objective studies will have brought out more clearly. The next step is to compare these results with the life, constitutions, and works of today. This will be rela-tively easy if the fundamental points have already been clarified. The various editions of the constitutions, pro-mulgated at different stages in the history of the in-stitute, should be examined to see what elements have been forgotten or not sufficiently emphasized. This type of research can contribute notably to a greater direct knowledge of the sources and will bring to light again the true thought of the founder. If this research is car-ried on according to these objective criteria and is al-ways inspired by theologically and spiritually sound principles, a naive desire of change for the sake of change will be avoided. On the contrary, if changes are necessary or opportune, they will be made without great interior difficulty because all will see more clearly what Gods wants of us and how. He is asking us to mani-fest our fidelity to the authentic spirit of the founder. It is equally obvious that, in the same way, we can more easily avoid those distressing internal divisions among members of the same institute since all will have the conviction that the changes proposed are based on a ÷ ÷ ÷ Founder's Spirit VOLUME 27 19e,8 80,~ , 4. .4. Paul Molinari~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 8O4 common desire to correspond fully to what is under-stood to be the true spirit which gave rise to the in-stitute and its authentic charism. In the same way,-it will likewise be easier to decide What changes must be made in the exterior life and even in the works of the institute. We say that it will be easier, because when it comes to works, there are naturally other problems which are generally very seri-ous and which cannot be naively ignored. But I am con-vinced that if, first of all, everyone is in agreement on the essential lines of renewal according to the spirit of the founder, courage will more easily be found when all are working together in the solidarity of a chapter. If, for example, the members of a chapter 'clearly see that today certain works no longer correspond to what the founder wanted in his day, it should be easier /or the chapter to take clear and decided decisions, without causing profound dissensions, without sidestepping the solution and without leaving all the most serious deci-sions to the sole authority of the superior general and. his council. Would it not be better for the chapter, which truly represents the institute, to take essential decisions, basing them on a greater knowledge of the spirit and charism of the founder and his work, and thus tracing the way for times to come? In answer to Christ's call, religious left all things to ,follow Him, that is, to go with Christ wherever He wishes to go. It seems evident that Christ wishes to go where the needs are the most urgent. One of the things that we would do well to consider when we speak of union with Christ in the religious life is that it is not simply a question of going out to the poor but of leaving all things, and following Christ in a spirit of donation and complete availability. This can sometimes mean leaving well established works that are running well but which, having reached the point where they do run well, no longer need us. In such cases, led by the spirit of the founder, we should go where social condi-tions are more or less similar to those that prompted the founder to act in his day. It is then that we have truly vital contact with the authentic spirit of the founder. In a certain sense, it can be said that where this spirit adaptatioh is' found, religious live in closer union with the spirit of the founder. Indeed, when, as it were, the very soul of the founder has been refound, there is no crisis in religious life and vocations are not lacking. It is clear that those souls who have followed their founder .most closely have found, under the motion of the Holy Spirit, what they were seeking. Naturally, it would be absurd to maintain that all present-day works of religious should be abandoned or that all need to be adapted or again that all changes should be made instantly. We must, however, have the courage to face these questions honestly and to solve them with the same courage that characterized the action of founders, the courage of the saints. It is worthwhile meditating, in this light, on the fol-lowing words of His Eminence, Cardinal Agagianian, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith: Evolution has considerably modified the physiognomy of Christianity and the sign value of this type of Institution. Where formerly there were charitable works to answer press-ing social needs there is now state socialization or the national-ization of an entire sector. If this has not been done yet, it is at least the intention of young governments and is being planned by large official international organizations. Are not our institutions, which were begun with such generosity and which answered such authentic social needs, now anachronistic, technically .surpassed, not viable financially, lacking true Christian witness value since other official organisms which are better equipped have taken charge of this sector? We must therefore avoid duplication, useless waste, unequal competi-tion, and rethink our activity, which must be missionary to the greatest possibl~, degree and carried on in the light of an apostolic vision which is more freshly evangelical. It is a ques-tion of discovering the true exigencies of the hour, of estab-lishing priorities, and of effectuating our own "reconversion" by turning to work which is doubtlessly socially less spectacula~ but which is more specifically a work of the Church, a work which is directly missionary in scope and character. At the present time, religious must be very open to the grace of the Spirit in order to follow Christ effectively and continue His mission. We should all clearly un-derstand that the charismatic grace given to the founder and his institute is a call from God, a talent which has been confided to us. God asks that the talents He gives be well used. We must not be afraid to make them fructify. Such a fear should never paralyze our generosity and our donation to Christ. It is therefore not enough, necessarily, to keep works just as they are. They must be made to bear the greatest amount of fruit possible. How can this be done? That is where the difficulty lies. It is certainly not permissible simply to keep the capital. If the apostolic return amounts only to 2% or 3%, we must ask ourselves if this capital could not be used in a better way. If we consider the exigencies of the Lord, we can more calmly envisage the fact that the decisions to be taken will sometimes lead to very serious changes, but we must accept them in a spirit of love and fidelity to the true charism of the founder and his work. But we must consider more specifically and more ex-plicitly the ecclesial dimension of our personal vocation as well as the vocation of our institute. The institute is part of the Church and it has a specific function within ÷ ÷ ÷ the Church. It is a living part of the Church and it will have life insofar as it accepts its function for the sake of the Church. This will help us to penetrate more and more into our vocation of being available for the service of Christ and His Church. We will experience the joy of giving life, the consciousness of being the grain of wheat which falls to the ground and dies, and to bear fruit a hundredfold. Problems will find their solution in this deeper vision of religious life as a life of union with Christ in order to continue, in Him and with Him, His mission of communicating divine life to man. 4, ÷ Paul Molinad~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 80fi SISTER M. DENIS, S.O.S New Trends in Community Living Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word who is life-- this is our subject. That life was made visible; we saw it and we are giving our testimony, telling you of the eternal life which was with the Father and has been made visible to us; we are telling you so that you too may be in union with us, as we are in union with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. --1 John 1: I-3 In* these opening lines of John's First Epistle, he is trying to translate into a multiplicity of feeble human concepts and words, Life itself which is not many but one, not a thing but a person--the triune Person of the Godhead. When discussing the "new trends in commu-nity living" with you, I shall attempt to follow the exam-ple of John. Words are a very necessary component of human communication, but nevertheless annoying. As soon as we describe a reality we break it into parts and tend to give the impression that if every part described is present, we have the reality itself. Rather, the reality of community that I hope to translate into practical and concrete terms, is not composite but one--permeated with the dynamism of that divine incarnated union John spoke of. Unfortunately, that dynamism cannot be put into Words; it must be lived and experienced. Therefore, the approach in this paper will be experi- * This is the text of an address given in May, 1968, to a meeting of Canadian major superiors. ÷ ÷ ÷ Sister M. Denis, S.O.S., writes from 62 Hargrave St.; Winnipeg 1, Mani-toba; Canada. VOLUME 27, 1968 80~ ÷ ÷ Sister M. Denis~ $.0.5. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 808 ential and practical and not a rephrasing of the excellent literature on community with which you are familiar. First, we shall examine the bases or principles upon which community is created, investigate the trends evi-dent in community living today, attempt to describe the type of community life that is unfolding from these trends, and propose some practical ways of effecting the transition from the present structures of community life to that form toward which we are evolving. Rather than burden you with another definition of community, I would prefer a descriptive approach. We are well aware of the different kinds of communities that exist among men. There is the natural community of the family and the artificial or contrived community of the organization, society, or state. All too often, we have described the religious com-munity solely in terms of one ot~ these two societies: our terminology of mother, father, brother, sister, reflects the familial concept; and our highly structured religious corporations betray the organizational concept. Al-though religious community can benefit from aspects of these two basic human groupings, we must with deep faith live the essence of religious community as an en- Spirited or Spirit-filled community: "Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me" (Jn 17:21). To the individual person who has embraced the re-ligious life, what then is community? I enter community so that I may begin to gift myself to others, to give the life I have to another, and to re-ceive from them in the same way; and this transmitting, this sharing of life, of wholeness is carried over into my apostolate. This life is given and received in faith be-cause the life or dynamism of community that permeates it is not my own--it is the life of the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ who shows us the Father; my gift to God-~a gift which has come from Him in the first pIace--is to give life to others by the life that is in me. True community, therefore, is created, not structured or legislated. PRINCIPLES The principles or bases upon which an en-Spirited community is created must be grasped, not only intel-lectually, but also experientially by every member in the community, although not necessarily to the same extent or depth. None of these principles stand alone; rather they are interdependent and interrelated. Trinitarian The ultimate model of en-Spirited community is the trinitarian life as it is lived by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have heard this so often that we tend to dis-miss it as another cliche. What does it mean in actual practice? It means that each person in community must be and do what God Himself through Christ and in the Spirit is and does: namely, He gathers, unites, establishes communion. How? By communication. Supportive words, other means of communicating love give life to another, as the Father begets His Son, the Word. This gift to one another and the response from one another engenders love--the Spirit. It is at this point where Trinity and en-Spirited community merge. ~lgape. If this trinitarian love-life is incarnated and experi-enced, the cohesive bond in community is the living agape of Christ, not the force of rule or custom. We must have the courage to examine and question the place of rule in religious life. In actual fact, which has frequently taken precedence---our holy rule or the gospel? The experience of agape is an entirely new human ex-perience. It is this gift of God--the Spirit. Pagans could only look at the early Christian community and exclaim: "See how these Christians love one another." But the words "love" or "charity" are, at best, a weak transla-tion. Agape is the knowledge and love of God--that very dynamism of the Trinity itself--which, through a free gift of God, has been incarnated, embodied in human community--a Spirit-filled community. Peace and joy, in which are contained all the other fruits of the Spirit, characterize such a religious community. The ultimate expression of agape is the love feast itself--the Eucharist. The en-Spirited or agape community is effected by the liturgy--when members are conscious of communicating or uniting themselves together in Christ. In turn, their liturgical expression is intensified by their community life. Incarnational Spirituality In order that community reflect trinitarian life or agape--which are different expressions of the same real-ity- the spirituality upon which it is based must be truly incarnational. Again we are back to the importance of faith. If the Son of God, the Word, became flesh, be-came incarnate, then the world, the whole world is "shot through with the grandeur of God," as Hopkins wrote. We cannot arbitrarily determine which particular ma-terial signs signify the presence of Christ; this is an in-sidious form of idolatry. Worse still, we cannot attempt first to establish a relationship with the transcendent God and then go out to other people. Because of the Incarnation, the transcendent God has been revealed to + ÷ Community Living VOLUME 27, 1968 809, ÷ ÷ Sisger M. Denis, $.0.S. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 810 us precisely as immanent. This immanence is continued in the world through the gift of the Spirit. The experi-ence of agape, the witness of a Spirit-filled community, is the experiential embodiment of this transcendence. In community agape we realize the fullness of the In-carnation. Respect for the Integrity of the Individual Person Community is not achieved through uniformity; but in practice our preoccupation with uniformity often militates against that respect for tl~e integrity of the individual person so necessary for the developme.nt of an en-Spirited community. This respect involves accept-ance first of ourselves as we are--not as we would like to be. We must risk taking off our masks, not only to others, but also to ourselves, and be truly authentic. I never realized what a mask the traditional habit could be until a few summers ago at the Superior's Conference in Portland, Oregon. During the day we walked around very conscious of religious decorum and dignity. When the magic hour of 2:00 p.m. struck, we converged on the swimming pool. As each layer of clothing came off, the person emerged. This respect [or the integrity of the person involves acceptance ot another in the same way---as they are and not as we would like them to be. If we love only those who share our ideas, our thoughts and aspirations, then we are merely loving an extension of ourselves. We must love what is truly the other--in which there is nothing of oneself. This acceptance is a respect based not on toleration or on charity or even because we see Christ in another; rather this respect is based on the unique dignity created in that person by God Him-self. Often we bypass this unique dignity for "good and noble reasons." Our acceptance and love should always be based on the person, not dependent on their actions. This is a great danger in community life, where we do 'not have the natural ties of blood as in the family and where much stress is placed on uniformity. Community, as we have been describing it, is not necessarily the common life. This communal acceptance involves a sharing, an openness with one another dictated not on my terms but by the other person's real needs for growth. In listening to the conversation of some religious I get the impression that self-fulfillment is selfishness, not selflessness. We only"receive when we give. And very often giving hurts. Serf-fulfillment is the very mystery of the death-resurrection of Christ incarnated and re-peated in the lives of men and women. Originality, Creativity The external structures of the en-Spirited community --structures which may take many and varied forms according to times and places--should always leave room for the development of originality and creativity among its members. I am merely stating in concrete terms the theological problem of institution versus charism. Spontaneous .4 ction Closely related to the need for originality and crea-tivity is the need for spontaneous action in community. A few years ago I read an examination of conscience in which was the question: "Have I organized myself so intensely that I have no time for spontaneous generos-ity?" We might well ask the question on the com-munal level. Is our day so laid out, charges so spelled out, that members function as automatons--cheerfully perhaps, but not spontaneously? Responsibility Finally, true community fosters responsibility, the ability to respond. Men and women can come to good-ness only through a knowing and free choice. The other side of the coin is a sharing in the authority on which responsibility depends; and this authority, in turn, is derived, from the community. Members are responsible to one another personally and to the group collectively. The religious or Spirit-filled community, therefore, is based on the agape-life of the Trinity as incarnated among men. Its growth and development depends upon the respect for the integrity of the individual person with the necessary correlatives of personal authenticity and acceptance. Desirable structures permit and foster originality, creativity, responsibility, and spontaneous action both individually and collectively. CURRENT TRENDS With these principles in mind we shall now attempt to describe the current trends among religious in Can-ada, trends which will affect community living. These trends were gleaned from the recent reports of the eight round-table discussion teams which were organized across Canada by the Canadian Religious Congress to contribute to a survey of religious life. In this era of post-Vatican II, we are coutinually reminded to be alert to the signs of the times, to significant indications or movements in a parti.cular direction. Whether the trend be evaluated as good or bad, as desirable or un-desirable, it remains, nevertheless, the voice of the Spirit speaking to us. Discernment of the message is not as easy as discernment of the trend. 4. ÷ Community Living VOLUME 27, 1968 811 Sister M. Den~s, $.0~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ,4 ttitudes Very evident is the evolution of new and more posi-tive attitudes among religious. In relation to the in-stitution, there is a greater respect for the person and the charisms of the individual. Religious place a priority of being over seeming, of the person over the actions. The false dichotomy between body and soul is diminished. A new appreciation for the "world" which has lost many of its former negative connotations is evidenced in an understanding of eschatology as be-ginning here below in the form of earthly happiness. Therefore, there is less stress on the'negative aspect of sacrifice and a grea~er emphasis on a joyful, more positive asceticism. Resurrection, not death is predomi-nant. There is a tendency to diminish the artificial distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Thus, the religious sees his or her dedication to Christ and to mankind as one. This unifying trend involves a rejection of the logical distinction between the transcend.- ent God and the immanent God, where the existential is concerned. Spirituality The incarnational spirituality that has evolved from these attitudes integrates human values and identifies "human experience" and the "experience of God." God is encountered .at work in the world present in and through human realities. Throughout the entire study there was evidence of a strong trend toward assuming a more personal responsi-bility for one's life of faith involving a renewed self-commitment. Thins desire for personal responsibility and the previously mentioned attitudes have strongly in-fluenced the trends in the prayer life of Canadian re, ligious today. In the search for new and authentic forms of prayer, none of the traditional forms have escaped honest scrutiny. Although religious believe in the necessity of prayer, the form or expression of this prayer is radically changing, primarily due to a new understanding of prayer in which there is no separation between prayer and action. Looking upon everything as prayer, especially encounter with others, was a very pronounced trend. Therefore, religious desire more freedom in their prayer life--with a structural minimum that gives more consideration to personal needs, that encourages authenticity, and that is adapted to the rhythm suited to the life each one is leading. The daily obligation for Mass is. questioned because of the need for' respecting the personal spiritual rhythm of the religious. In the celebration of the Eucharist, the re- ligious insist less on the idea of sacrifice and more on the notions of communion and gathering. There is an increased trend toward community encounter in the Eucharist within the parish community. Because of their strong faith in the value of interpersonal relationships and group accomplishment, the trends indicate the de-sire of religious for group reflection in prayer. Prayer is no longer a private matter but is becoming a means fulfilling the need for an expression of friendship and human support. The place of God in prayer is not thereby lessened, because of the identity of "human experience" and "the experience of God." The starting point of prayer--personal or communal --is likewise incarnational--an event, something con-nected with themselves, the needs of the world as re-vealed in continuing salvation history--more than the speculative knowledge of a transcendent God. Institution Religious from coast to coast are questioning--not theoretically but existentially--the meaning and purpose of religious life itself. The reports indicate, however, that this scrutiny is not negative, but positive--in spite of the front page articles in the NCR. Structures are not disregarded but desired if they help real personal commitment. Community of life, however, takes prece-dence over institution which is understood as something to help community of life, to make and keep its mem-bers more fully human persons. The institution is re-jected under certain aspects because of unfortunate ex-periences resulting from harshness, impersonalism, legal-ism, and paternalism. Rule Regarding the rule, the trend is toward getting away from the traditional rule because it no longer measures up to the needs of the time. Also evident is a lack of regard for unnecessary canonical legislation. Religious women, in particular, are resentful of the paternalism manifested toward them by the Sacred Congregation of Religious and in canon law. External Signs Also strong is the trend to reject archaic signs of identification as religious. These externals, such as the habit, the canonical cloister, the rule, community con-trols, are seen as objectionable to the extent that they separate the religious from the secular world. These religious wish to remove the barriers imposed by monastic influences of another age. ÷ ÷ ÷ Community Living VOLUME 27, 1968 813 Silence Closely connected to their notions on spirituality, prayer, and religious structures are the views of religious on silence. They admit the value of silence but not according to traditional concepts. Personal silence is valuable as a means to encountering the other; it is closely related to charity. Rather than an absence of words, silence is an inner attitude. Thus, they refuse to keep a conformist silence or silence of rule considered for its own sake. Size oI Community Especially strong are the desire and the realization of riving in small homogeneous groups because of the need for human interpersonal relationships, for authenticity, for the development of the person. In this way, religious desire to bear effective witness both to poverty and to service. Thus there is a trend toward experimen-tation in this more fraternal way of life: some are living in smaller groups; others are living in apartments. Secular World Today's religious desire to socialize more naturally wid~ other people. In fact, there is evidence of a trend toward seeking fraternity outside the usual religious community group. On the one hand, some see this trend as a reaction against an incorrectly understood type of ¯ community life; on the other hand, some see this as an overflow of the love that is established in true com-munity. Whatever be the case, we must attempt to read the signs of the times; if a person does not find accept-ance and human fellowship within the community, he will seek it elsewhere. Increased activity in the secular world is practically a fait accompli for most religious who are now reading contemporary books, going to movies, taking part in politics, and maintaining contact with the world of art and artists. 4- 4- 4- Sister M. Denis~ S.0.5. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS .4 uthority Religious admit that they will readily sh~re personal experiences with their fellow religious but less willingly with one who is in authority--a spiritual director or a superior. The authority figure in practice is not yet seen as a friend. Strongly rejecting paternalism, religious do not wish to be dependent upon a superior. Authority itself is not rejected; religious still see the necessity of someone in charge of the group. But this person--the superior--should be an available and approachable moderator--one among brothers. Authority is seen as service and coresponsibility. There is a trend, but not yet clearly defined, toward a concept of shared authority with joint responsibility in view of the good of the group. Because of the dignit

Dottorato di ricerca in Ecologia forestale ; Climate change has become the most important global environmental crisis and its consideration has revealed the emergence of a new political regime that has been idealized under the hypothetical "carbon city". The Carbon City corresponds to a political community of people who can act on the carbon cycle and enjoy its productions and services. Forests play a key role into this new city because they significantly contribute to the carbon cycle and ecosystem stability and they represent an object to meet the consensus among the different groups of interests. Physically represented by the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the climate community tends to establish an equitable repartition of the efforts to mitigate climate changes and adapt to future modifications of our environment. A fair distribution of the efforts requires the quantification of the contribution made by each country through scientific expertise. However, sub-Saharan African countries are mostly in margin of the process mostly because of the lack of knowledge about the quantitative contribution these countries can make to the global efforts. Quantification of carbon stocks has become crucial for sub-Saharan African countries to increase their participation to the climate discussions arena and develop actions to mitigate an environmental crisis they are the most vulnerable to. Better understanding the carbon cycle also allows a better comprehension of our interaction between the global climate and our activities. The aim of this thesis is to better understand the dynamics of carbon stocks in sub-Saharan Africa. The objectives were (1) to understand the most important factors influencing the estimation of carbon stocks and carbon stock changes, (2) to inventory the state of knowledge at continental scale and (3) to fulfill some of the gaps while identifying the necessary further researches. Three field experiments where implemented in Ghana to measure the variability of biomass within plots, between plots and between wet evergreen, moist evergreen and moist semi-deciduous forests. The wet evergreen forest was selected to analyze the variation of biomass within and between trees based on an original method to build tree allometric equation. The three forests were logged and the wet evergreen forest was selected to measure the impact of logging activities on carbon stocks. In parallel, an intensive data collection in various libraries of the world has allowed the development of the first tree volume and biomass allometric database and the first biomass and carbon stock database at continental scale. The data were organized and reviewed to allow the comparison between equations and carbon stocks data. About two third of the continental carbon stock is found in the soil. Using different soil databases and soil maps may result in variation of the soil organic carbon estimates of about 30%. The choice of the tree allometric equation to estimate the tree biomass can induce variation of aboveground biomass of about 40%. Using already available biomass data, the aboveground carbon stocks ranges 10-105 Pg C. Using the data collected in this study allowed increased the number of data and its harmonization. It follows a major reduction in the variability of carbon stocks that is between 58 and 76 Pg C. Measurements in humid tropical forests in Ghana revealed variations of biomass at different scales, from trees to different types of forests. Aboveground biomass ranges 348-364 ha-1 between ecological zones, 218-485 Mg ha-1 between plots and 0 - 4681Mg ha-1 within plots of 1 ha. Carbon stocks are on average 355 Mg ha-1 with 49, 39, 9, 1, 0.9, 0.8, and 0.2% are in the aerial part of trees, soil organic carbon, roots, litter, dead wood, lianas and palms. The biomass of a tree was mainly influenced by the diameter of the trunk, the crown diameter and the wood density in a tropical rainforest of Ghana. However, various factors influence the ecosystem biomass variability. At plant scale, the tree biomass is influenced by the tree species, the plant functional type and the growth strategies. At ecosystem scale, the biomass is influenced by the effect of topography, plant distribution, slope, soils, history of perturbations and forest management. At biome scale, the biomass is influenced by climate, ecological zone, age, structure, and management. When considering the impact of anthropic activities on carbon stocks, deforestation and forest exploitation emissions ranged 0.06-0.5 and 0.03 – 0.08PgC Yr-1 respectively. While deforestation had already been studied in previous research, I have focused on forest degradation caused by selective logging. In Ghanaian rainforests, selective logging impact 12 Mg C ha-1. Based on the relation between harvested volume and the impact of forest carbon stocks, I have estimated that 88 Tg C yr-1 are being emitted at continental scale which means selective logging would contribute to 20– 25% of the continental C balance. However, the potential for decreasing GHG emissions from selective logging has been limited by the accuracy and the cost of field measurements. Forest restoration has been identified as the highest potential activity for emission reduction and C sequestration in Ghana. While this activity is not recognized by the climate convention, enhancement of forest C stock can sequester significant amount of C. It was estimated that intensification of already existing cocoa farms was the most feasible option to sequester important amount of C in Ghana while increasing the farming income by about 19%. However, carbon sequestration and financial compensation are among many other aspects to better consider when implementing developing activities. Land and forest tenure issues have to be particularly addressed in Ghana to allow effective implementation. The mis-consideration of some social entities would lead to massive forest destructions that already happened in the past. Sub-Saharan Africa faces important gaps related to the understanding of the contribution of the African ecosystems to the C cycle. Only one percent of the necessary tree allometric equations is currently available. The impact of degradation and deforestation on the role of the decomposition of wood and carbon dynamics in soil are particularly poorly understood. The dynamics of forest regeneration after perturbations such as selective logging are poorly known. While C stocks are assumed to recover after a 40 years period, the structure of the forest and the biodiversity are still strongly affected. The use of remote sensing is often presented as a panacea and the solution to monitor natural ressources such as forest biomass. However, I have pointed out that the estimation of biomass using available satellite imageries of Ghana is not an accurate option while the use of high resolution imageries are too costly for countries that have low human and technical capacities to achieve their forest inventories using these techniques. This study highlights the issue of the language used to describe the environment. The global land descriptions are often not in relation with the language used in the field to describe the vegetation in term of structure, floristic composition, position in the landscape and management. The identification of the degraded forest is strongly limited by the poor definitions and the poor previous consideration and analysis. While several attempts to harmonize the vegetation descriptors have been developed on the basis of classification systems, however, they have been facing the complexity of wording, defining and translating our perception of environment. At last, very few socio-economic studies have considered the impact of carbon services to local farmer livelihood. However, they are considered as part of the main process of deforestation. There is an urgent need to identify the potential for improving farmer livelihood while sequestering carbon stocks and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This would be achieved by an increasing consideration of agricultural activities in developing contries by the climate change convention. Still, the agricultural sector will be considered if a carbon quantification system can be implemented for farming. ; Il cambiamento climatico è diventata la crisi globale più importante, e la sua considerazione rivela l'emergere di un nuovo regime politico. Le foreste svolgono un ruolo fondamentale perché contribuiscono in modo significativo al ciclo del carbonio e la problematica della loro tutela e gestione incontra il consenso di diversi gruppi di interesse. Rappresentata dalla Convenzione delle nazioni Unite sul clima, la "comunità clima" tende a stabilire una ripartizione equa degli sforzi per attenuare i cambiamenti climatici e per adattarsi alle modificazioni del nostro ambiente. Tuttavia, i Paesi dell'Africa sub-sahariana sono ai margini di tale processo soprattutto per la mancanza di conoscenza di quanto il loro contributo possa essere fondamentale agli sforzi globali. La quantificazione degli stock di carbonio diviene pertanto fondamentale per accrescere la loro partecipazione alla discussione sul clima e per l'eventuale sviluppo di azioni. Una migliore conoscenza del ciclo del carbonio consente anche una migliore valutazione della nostra interazione tra il clima globale e le nostre attività. Lo scopo di questa tesi è quella di comprendere meglio la dinamica degli stock di carbonio nell'Africa sub-sahariana. Gli obiettivi erano 1) identificare i fattori più importanti che influenzano la stima degli stock di carbonio e le variazioni degli stock di carbonio 2) l'inventario delle conoscenze su scala continentale 3) soddisfare alcune lacune individuando al contempo le necessarie opportune ricerche. Tre siti sperimentali sono stati stabiliti in Ghana per valutare la variabilità della biomassa all'interno di piazzole, tra complotti e tra foreste sempreverdi umide, sempreverde umido e semi-umidi di latifoglie. La foresta pluviale è stata selezionata per analizzare la variazione di biomassa di alberi e tra gli alberi attraverso un metodo originale che consente anche la realizzazione di equazioni allometriche. Poi, i tre boschi sono stati sottoposti ad un trattamento selettivo di sboscamento. La foresta umida sempreverde è stata scelta per misurare l'impatto del disboscamento selettivo sugli stock di carbonio. In parallelo, la raccolta intensiva di dati, sulle equazioni allometriche e gli stock di carbonio, in varie biblioteche del mondo ha consentito lo sviluppo della prima banca dati sul continente africano. Circa due terzi degli stock di carbonio del continente si trovano nel suolo. Le loro stime variano del 30% a seconda delle mappe del suolo utilizzate e delle banche dati disponibili. Per quanto riguarda la stima della biomassa degli alberi, la scelta dell'equazione allometrica può portare a cambiamenti nella biomassa aerea di circa il 40%. Utilizzando i dati già disponibili nelle banche dati internazionali, la stima degli stock di carbonio varia tra 10 e 105 Pg C. Il database creato in questo studio ha permesso un numero crescente di dati e la loro armonizzazione. Ne consegue una forte riduzione della variabilità degli stock di carbonio che sono tra i 58 ei 76 Pg C. Inoltre le misurazioni nelle foreste pluviali tropicali in Ghana hanno permesso di rivelare variazioni di biomassa su scale diverse, da alberi a diversi tipi di foreste. La biomassa varia tra 348 e 364 Mg ha-1, tra le umide foreste tropicali, 218-485 Mg ha-1, tra i campionamenti e 0-4,681 Mg ha-1, all'interno di appezzamenti di 1 ha. Le riserve di carbonio sono in media 355 Mg ha-1 con 49, 39, 9, 1, 0.9, 0.8, e 0.2% si trovano nella parte aerea degli alberi, carbonio organico del suolo, le radici, lettiere, legno morto, liane e palme. La biomassa di un albero in una foresta pluviale tropicale è influenzata principalmente dal diametro del tronco, il diametro della chioma e dalla densità del legno. Inoltre, la variabilità della biomassa degli ecosistemi deriva anche da altri diversi fattori. Nella scala degli alberi la biomassa è influenzata principalmente dalla specie, il tipo funzionale e dalla strategie di crescita. Nella scala degli ecosistemi, la biomassa è influenzata dall'effetto della topografia, della distribuzione della vegetazione, dalla pendenza, dai suoli, dalla storia degli eventi che sono intervenut e dalla gestione forestale. Su scala bioma, la biomassa è influenzata dal clima, dalla zona ecologica, dall'età, dalla struttura e dal tipo di uso del suolo. Per quanto riguarda l'impatto delle attività umane sulle riserve di carbonio invece, la deforestazione e il degrado forestale derivanti da disboscamento selettivo variano rispettivamente tra 0,03-0,08 0,06-0,5 e Pg C anno-1. Il fenomeno della deforestazione è stato oggetto di precedenti studi. Pertanto, mi sono concentra essenzialmente sul degrado delle foreste dal disboscamento selettivo. In una foresta pluviale tropicale in Ghana, il disboscamento selettivo interessa circa 12 ettari Mg-1. Sulla base del rapporto tra il volume e l'impatto provocato dalla raccolta negli stock di carbonio, ho stimato che l'88 yr Tg C -1 sono rilasciati su scala continentale. Ciò significa che contribuiscono allo sfruttamento silvicolo il 20-25% del saldo C continentale. Tuttavia, il potenziale di riduzione delle emissioni di gas serra prodotte dal disboscamento selettivo è limitata dalla precisione e dal costo delle misure di campo. Il ripristino forestale ha delle foreste sono state identificate come aventi il maggiore potenziale di riduzione delle emissioni di gas serra e il sequestro di C in Ghana. Anche se questa attività non è riconosciuta dalla Convenzione sul clima, il miglioramento degli stock di carbonio delle foreste potrebbe conservare quantità significative di C. Prendendo le piantagioni di cacao come esempio, l'aumento della densità di alberi è l'opzione più sostenibile per preservare una notevole quantità di C in Ghana, aumentando perdippiù il reddito di circa il 19%. Tuttavia, la preserazione della C e di compensazione finanziaria tra i molti aspetti da considerare nella realizzazione delle attività di sviluppo. Territorio e possessi foresta sono questioni che devono essere specificamente trattata per l'effettiva attuazione di progetti di sviluppo forestale in Ghana. L'esclusione di alcune entità sociali porterebbe alla massiccia distruzione delle foreste, un fenomeno che già si è verificato in passato. L'Africa sub-sahariana affronta carenze significative nella comprensione del contributo degli ecosistemi africani ciclo C. L'inventario dei dati attualmente disponibili emerge che una percentuale di equazioni allometrica sono disponibili. L'impatto della deforestazione e degradazione sul ruolo della carie del legno e della dinamica del carbonio nel suolo sono particolarmente poco chiare. Anche se gli stock di carbonio si suppone che per recuperare da un periodo di 40 anni dopo la registrazione, la struttura e la biodiversità forestale rimangono fortemente colpiti. L'uso del telerilevamento è spesso presentata come una panacea e la soluzione per monitorare le risorse naturali come la biomassa forestale. Tuttavia, lo studio sottolinea che la stima della biomassa utilizzando satelliti disponibili per il Ghana è un basso uso e precisa di immagini ad alta risoluzione è troppo costoso un'opzione per i paesi con bassa capacità umane , tecniche e finanziarie. Questo studio mette in evidenza la questione del linguaggio usato per descrivere l'ambiente. La considerazione della struttura, la composizione floristica, la posizione naturale e lo sfruttamento e il degrado delle foreste è in gran parte limitato dalla povertà del linguaggio, le definizioni e le analisi precedenti. Diversi tentativi di cercare di armonizzare i descrittori della vegetazione sulla base dei sistemi di classificazione. Essi sono fortemente limitate dalla complessità della formulazione, la definizione e la traduzione della nostra percezione dell'ambiente. Infine, pochissimi studi hanno considerato l'impatto socio-economico dei servizi connessi di carbonio sulle condizioni di vita degli agricoltori locali. Essi sono comunque parte del processo di deforestazione. E 'urgente identificare il potenziale per migliorare le condizioni di vita degli agricoltori, mentre sequestro del carbonio e la riduzione delle emissioni da deforestazione e degrado forestale. Questo obiettivo può essere raggiunto aumentando la considerazione delle attività agricole nei paesi in via di sviluppo dalla convenzione sul clima. Tuttavia, è solo quando un sistema adeguato per la quantificazione degli allevamenti di carbonio, che questi ultimi saranno poi prese in considerazione.

This essay discusses the relation between urban spaces and street festival as an example of a creative industry. To begin with, several terms are presented as part of a theoretical approach to fully understand the concept of street festivals, then two cases studies of street festivals will be presented and analysed: The Iberoamerican Theatre Festival of Bogotá and Rock al Parque Festival both from Bogotá, Colombia. The essay has a chapter dedicated to the relationship between festivals and economic development. ; Cultura y desarrollo; Esfera pública; Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro; Festivales callejeros; Habermas; Rock al Parque ; 1 An Act of Faith: Two Cases Studies Of Street Festivals As Examples Of Development. ANDRÉS GUILLERMO CHAUR1 Course Title: Theories of the Culture Industry: work, creativity and precariousness Course Code: CU71015A Date: 13 January 2014 1 Beneficiario COLFUTURO 2013 2 3 «Culture is the be all and end all of development» L.S. Senghor, poet (Senegal, 1906-2001) Introduction This essay discusses the relation between urban spaces and street festival as an example of a creative industry. To begin with, several terms are presented as part of a theoretical approach to fully understand the concept of street festivals, then two cases studies of street festivals will be presented and analysed: The Iberoamerican Theatre Festival of Bogotá and Rock al Parque Festival both from Bogotá, Colombia. The essay has a chapter dedicated to the relationship between festivals and economic development. It is important to mention that the starter point of this essay was precisely to give an introductory background of the importance that has have those two case studies in the development of the city. It is not a secret that Colombia has suffered a period of violence and instability since the second part of the XX century so at first glance it is curious to study and research about an almost contradictory topic such as Culture in a "war country". But at the same time, the "beauty" of this study relies precisely in its contradictory nature: How a country with those characteristics can hold two of the most important and respected free theatre festivals and music festivals in all Latin America? This essay will try to explain that culture when it's conceived with some specific characteristics will bring democracy and peace. A series of deep and abstract concepts will be discussed. This essay was thought just as an introduction and approximation to the topic of public and private, public sphere, culture and development just to mention some examples. Same with authors and thinkers used to elaborate the structure of this study. Once again it should be taken as an approximation rather than a full and elaborated research. The aim is to structure a series of ideas and concepts around one thesis: Those festivals have helped to make Bogotá a better city thus that is the main point of the relation between urban spaces and creativity: It fosters a better understanding of a society overall. At the end of the essay, in the appendix section, some photos are presented to visually recreate the two festivals, its dimensions and its importance. Although, like every 4 transcendental event, in order to understand the magnitude of The Iberoamerican Theatre Festival and the Rock al Parque Festival one have to experience in person. Cities as spaces for the public To fully understand the concept of "Public Realm" and "Public Sphere", one has to address the theory of the city and its relation with the concept of public and private. The concept of "city" has had many meanings through time. There are different ways to approach the concept; however, for the nature of this essay an urban sociological perspective will be approached. Mumford (1937) states the city as a space undoubtedly bonded with the development of human potential: "a city is an expression of the human spirits, and they exist to nurture human personality"2. Weber (1921), one of the founders of modern sociology sees a city in terms of connectivity and settlement between commuters, in that way, the concept of a city, according to Weber, is about the networking, the political and economic participation and the organization among communities. Landry (2013) defines the city as "a complex organism and in constant movement with perspectives, opinions and priorities about what is right often clashing"3. Simmel (1950) explained the correlation of man and the scenarios created by the capitalism and modern society called "The Metropolis". There is always a struggle between the man (individual) and his society (public): "The deepest problem of modern life arises out of the attempt by the individual to preserve his autonomy and individuality in the face of the overwhelming social forces of a historical heritage, external culture and technique of life"4. Simmel's concept of a city as a place where modern man struggle to find his individuality within "overwhelming social forces" is key to understand the theory of the city, specifically one attached with the words: Public -Private. Sennett (1996) in his book "The Fall of the 2 Mumford, L., 1937. What is a city?. In: Scoutt, S and Stoutt, F. ed. 2011. The city reader. Taylor and Francis. pp.91-96. 3 Landry,C. 2013. Civic Urbanity: Looking at the city afresh (PDF). Hangzhou International Congress, "Culture: Key to Sustainable Development", 15-17 May 2013, Hangzhou, China. Available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/images/Charles_Landry_Hangzhou_Congress.pdf (Accessed 12 January 2013). 4 Simmel,G. 1950. The Metropolis and Mental Life. In Miles, M; Hall, T and Borden, I. The City Cultures Reader. Ed. 2000. pp. 12-19. 5 public man" gives an account of the city as the scenario where those 2 concepts are correlated. He starts explaining the meaning of public and private. Although its historical background, coming from the Greeks and the idea of Oikos and Polis as the Private and Public respectively, Sennett comments that "the public" in modern times, started to develop in the eighteen century that is as a direct consequence of the industrial revolution and the liberalism ideas coming from The Enlightenment. "Public came to mean a life passed outside the life of family and close friends. In the public region diverse, complex social groups were to be brought into ineluctable contact the focus of this public life was the city"5 The public life is also the ground to understand modern democracy and public political institution. Sennett, citing Hanna Arendt's book The Human Condition shows how the public life in cities can be a scenario where ideas and opinions are discussed and debated. "Private circumstances have no place in the public realm". 6 Arendt even manifests that cities are "democracy's homes"7 This notion of public started to be more evident when places to meet strangers (people from outside the private sphere) within the city started to grow up. Examples of those "places" are the coffee houses and salons (Habermas will mention those examples to explain his theory of public sphere). Those spaces are called "Public Realm" by Sennett. Public Realm, in other words, are spaces where strangers meet. This encounter is characterized by "anonymity". In "The Conscience of The Eye" Sennett (1992) also says that anonymity is the power of modern cities: "The power of the city lies in its diversity; in the presence of difference people have at least the possibility to step outside themselves (.) The city can give them experiences of otherness"8 The concept of Teatro Mundi is an interesting way to look at the public sphere. According to Sennett, "Teatro Mundi" are spaces full of vitality, differences and disorder. Places where the differences connect and all citizens participate: "Society is a theatre and people are actors". This essay will discuss Teatro Mundi in detail in the chapter related to street festivals. . 5 Sennett, R. 2003. The Fall of Public Man. Penguin, New Edition. 6 Sennett, R. 2008. Reflections on the Public Realm in Bridge, G and Watson, S. A companion of the City. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 380-387. 7 Sennett, R. 2008. The Public Realm. (online) Richard Sennet Website. Available at: http://www.richardsennett.com/site/SENN/Templates/General2.aspx?pageid=16 (Accessed 13 January 2014) 8 Sennett, R. 1992. The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities. W.W Norton & Company. 6 In the next chapter, this essay will discuss in-depth different theories about the public realm specially the ideas of Habermas about the public sphere and his theory of action communicative. Habermas and the Public Sphere Even though the previous chapter gave an account of the concepts of private-public, it is important to highlight them according to the theory of Habermas. Recognized as one of the most influential sociologist and philosopher of our times, Habermas theories of the public sphere (phrase from the German Öffentlichkeit), and modern democracy as well as his theory of action communicative have been enormously influential for modern sociology9. Firstly Habermas' thought is marked in the tradition of the Frankfurt School. His first mayor publication "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere" argues that instrumental rationality is implicit in the Public Sphere. However, Habermas took distance from the classical notion of the critical theory when argues that participation in the public sphere (he exemplified the coffee shops and the salons in Paris and London in the XVIII century) is free and autonomous in order to shape a common good: "The public sphere consisted in voluntary associations of private citizens united in a common aim, to make use of their own reason in unconstrained discussion between equals"10(Later on, Habermas is going to present how mass media eroded individuality and declined the public sphere). It is important to mention the dichotomy of the words public-private for Habermas. Although different, both are dependents to each other. In that way the private sphere and the public sphere instead of being exclusive are inclusive. Susen (2011) defines the public sphere, taking into account Habermas' theory, as: "The socialized expression of individuals' reciprocally constituted autonomy: individuals are autonomous not in isolation from but in relation to one another, that is, in relation to a public of autonomous beings".11 9Finlayson, J .2005. "Habermas, a very short introduction". Oxford University Press. 10 Habermas,J. 1991. The Structural Transformation Of The Public Sphere. MIT Press. 11 Susen, S. 2001. Critical Notes on Habermas's theory of the public sphere. (online). City University of London. Available at: http://tinyurl.com/lhy4j4z. (Accessed 13 January 2014). 7 Several questions came to mind: How this socialization is constructed? What does an autonomous individual mean? And how can individual reach autonomy? For Habermas, the answer relies on a rational communicative action. The aim of the public sphere is to create a consensus through the active participation of all individuals involved. This consensus is created by a rational approach of the language: "The public sphere is a collective realm in which individuals' cognitive ability to take on the role of critical and responsible actors is indicative of society's coordinative capacity to transform itself into an emancipatory project shaped by the normative force of communicative rationality"12. Rationality in terms of Habermas does not consist in knowledge per se but "how speaking and acting subjects acquire and use knowledge"13. This type of rationality is different from the instrumental rationality from the Enlightenment, widely criticized by the Frankfurt School, since it is "practical, epistemological and more important, intersubjective"14. The public sphere, considering the above, not only describes the space where the encounter occurs but moreover, the public sphere has within itself an emancipator and a transformative component. Some critics find Habermas ideas "too utopian and idealistic"15. The next chapter the link between Habermas and Sennett notion of Public Realm in the city will be tracked. The Open City Sennett takes Habermas as a mayor inspiration for constructing his idea of the Public Realm in the city. According to Sennett (2008), Habermas does not tie the public sphere to any particular place, such as a town centre for instance. Even new technological media as the 12 Ibid. 13 Hahn, L. 2000. Perspective On Habermas. Open Court Publishing. 14 Susen, S. 2001. Critical Notes on Habermas's theory of the public sphere. (online). City University of London. Available at: http://tinyurl.com/lhy4j4z. (Accessed 13 January 2014). 15 Ibid. 8 Internet could be seen as an example of public sphere: "In today's cities, an internet cafe would be more likely to excite him than Trafalgar Square" 16 The place where strangers meet, as Sennett defines Public Realm, could be anywhere: An event, a medium, etc. that encourages communication between strangers. Eventually, Sennett argues, cities that promote those types of encounters are called cities with open systems and on the contrary, cities that lack a real public realm or just promote the privatization of spaces are called cities with closed systems. Based on sociologist Jane Jacobs(1961) and her book "The death and life of great American cities"17, Sennett(2006) imagines a city with a closed system with two attributes: Equilibrium and Integration18. Equilibrium is related with balance, with harmony and with a static idea of conceiving a city. Public Spaces as spaces full of differences, dissents and disorders are not part or are reduced in a closed system. By integration, Sennett means that everything is connected and is part of a greater and unique vision. Thus, everything that is not part of that unique vision is expelled and rejected: "The logic of integration is to diminish in value things that don't fit in (.) Closed system cities refuse to evolve and has paralysed urbanism", concludes Sennett. Opposing a closed system, the open system is all about diversity and finding a place for differences, dissents and disorders. It is about complexity, about how a place adapts itself to the always changing community and its processes. Sennett lists three elements of an open city: Passage territories, incomplete form and development narratives. Passages territories means to diffuse boundaries and different territories within the cities; incomplete form is regarding "empty spaces" so the public can interact in it. Development narratives means to allow dissident voices to express and to fully participate. Wirth (1938) summarize the above by saying: "The juxtaposition of divergent personalities and modes of life tends to produce a relativistic perspective and a sense of toleration of differences"19 Taking into consideration the above characteristics of an open city, one can say that an open city is a place for democracy, "not in the legal sense but in the physical experience" says 16 Sennett, R. 2008. Reflections on the Public Realm in Bridge, G and Watson, S. A companion of the City. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 380-387. 17 Jacobs, J .1961. The death and life of great American cities. Random House, New York. 18 Sennett, R 2006. The Open City. (online). Urban Age- LSE. Available at: http://esteticartografias07.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/berlin_richard_sennett_2006-the_open_city1.pdf. (Accessed 13 January 2014) 19 Wirth, L .1938. Urbanism as a Way of Life. (online) Chicago Journals. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2768119 (Accessed 13 January 2014). 9 Sennett 20. This thesis is important to understand the importance of public spaces in construction of a fully democratic society and thus is connected to the idea of development and equality. ¿What are examples of an open system? Can one give an account of a public sphere? The next chapter will give an account of the relationship between the street festivals and the public sphere, understanding them as a significance example of public realm. Street Festivals and the Public Sphere To begin with, Street Festivals or Urban Festivals as any other cultural event placed in the public sphere are related of what Durkheim called "collective effervescence". As Durkheim pointed out when a group gathers to perform a "religious ritual" experiences a sense of encounter and unity, "leading participants to a high degree of collective emotional excitement or delirium"21. However as Sassatelli(2011) adds, although Festivals are also part of a collective delirium, taking all participant apart from the everyday life, they are also places where the social encounter is made of "polyvalent performances, rather than unified signifiers of a consensual collective conscience"22 Sassatelli complements that street festivals contrasted with museums: By its living dimension as well as its unrestrained sensory experience. Sennett (1992) also talks about spaces "full of live" as narrative spaces where every dweller constructs a disorder and kaleidoscope meaning of the public. This could lead to the erosion of the boundaries of high and low culture in the sense of the Frankfurt School understood the "cultural industries". namely they turn into instances of communication and instances of production of collective meanings and desires. 20 Sennett, R 2006. The Open City. (online). Urban Age- LSE. Available at: http://esteticartografias07.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/berlin_richard_sennett_2006-the_open_city1.pdf. (Accessed 13 January 2014) 21 Durkheim, E .2008. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford Paperbacks. 22 Sassatelli, M. 2011. Urban Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere: Cosmopolitanism between Ethics and Aesthetics in Delanty, G; Giorgi L and Sassatelli, M. Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Routledge. Pp 12-19 10 If Habermas, the notion of the "Public Sphere" is related as the area where rational individuals communicate to each other to discuss their social problems; nowadays as McGuian(2011) argues, there are different ways to look at the public sphere, not only inside a rational communicative system as Habermas states, but from other types of communication that also create a sense of public sphere. One of those "public spheres" is the cultural public sphere, namely a sphere within the public where different modes of communications, for instance "affective-aesthetics and emotional are articulated with the public and the private"23 "The public sphere nowadays operates though various channels and circuits of mass popular culture and entertainment facilitated the routinely mediated aesthetic and emotional reflections on how we live and imagine the good life (.) festivals are the aestheticization of politics as the ground for festivals is the democratization of an independent thought by the spectators transformed into active actors". . Although McGuian theorized the cultural public sphere for the mass media and populism culture, undoubtedly street festivals share that conception in an emotional and aesthetic way of "come together as a public" and to transcend the private sphere into a societal integration as Habermas explained. Fabiani (2011) explained as well: 24 Street Festivals are also part of the Sennett's idea of "Teatro Mundi". Spaces operated in an open system, where strangers meet through a "rhetorical way, acting in order to be 23Mc Guian, J. 2011. The Cultural Public Sphere- a critical measure of public culture? in Delanty, G; Giorgi L and Sassatelli, M. Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Routledge. Pp 79-92. 24 Fabiani, J. 2011. Festivals, local and global: Critical interventions and the cultural public sphere. in Delanty, G; Giorgi L and Sassatelli, M. Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Routledge. Pp 92-108 Involvement rather than contemplation Instances of communication and community building Erosion of the boundaries between high and low culture Construction of Identity Produce meanings and desires Box 1. Characteristics of Street Festivals according to Sassatelli(2011). 11 credible" 25 In the next chapter, this essay will discuss the implications of street festivals in the sustainable development of a city. Different approaches coming from the research of the UNESCO on the relationship between culture and development as well as the studies of the creative class by Michael Florida and the Creative cities by Michael Landry. . People act as in they were in a "role playing" to create a sense of "equality", even if they do not share their same social class, race, sexual orientation, etc. Street Festivals have this "communicative power" of involve everyone together. Street Festivals as mechanism for sustainable development How could we connect street festivals as examples of the cultural public sphere with the idea of development? In other words, is there any connection between street festivals, understood as a cultural manifestation, and sustainable development? This chapter will introduce the concept of "Culture for Development"26 In the last few decades, UNESCO programs have been focused in how culture should be at the centre of economic development in developed and especially in developing countries. One of the last attempts to foster that was the Hangzou Congress in 2013 in China. The final conclusion was: "Placing Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development Policies"; a term coined by UNESCO in a variety of its programs wide world specially for developing nations and will give an account of the link between that term and street festivals as examples of a cultural industry. 27 25 Sennett, R. 2008. Reflections on the Public Realm in Bridge, G and Watson, S. A companion of the City. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 380-387. and described 9 main ideas to do so: Integrate culture within all development policies and Programmes; Mobilize culture and mutual understanding to foster peace and reconciliation; Ensure cultural rights for all to promote inclusive social development; Leverage culture for poverty reduction and inclusive economic development; Build on culture to promote environmental sustainability; Strengthen resilience to disasters and combat climate change through culture value; safeguard and transmit culture to future generations; Harness culture 26 Culture and Development. 2013. UNESCO- Culture. (Online) Available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/culture-and-development (Accessed 13 January 2014) 27 UNESCO. 2013. The Hangzhou Declaration. UNESCO- Culture. (Online). Available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/culture-and-development/hangzhou-congress/ (Accessed 13 January 2014). 12 as a resource for achieving sustainable urban development and management; Capitalize on culture to foster innovative and sustainable models of cooperation. 28 Landry (2008) also talks about the benefits of cultural industries in a city and how the creativity of those industries will foster economic development and social cohesion: "Culture can also strengthen social cohesion, increase personal confidence and improve life skills, improve people's mental and physical well-being, strengthen people's ability to act as democratic citizens and develop new training and employment routes".29 Florida (2003) shows the relationship between creativeness and development. His theory of human capital, called creative capital theory, shows how by fostering tolerance, high education levels and social adaptation to changes, a social class can help to develop their communities. This creative class and its idea of create "new forms of meanings"30 The bond between the cultural public sphere with democracy and the idea of an Open City, explained before, is also a seminal part of how through cultural manifestations, a society can develop and tackle social problems. are attached to the idea of UNESCO's Culture for development program. Case Studies: The Iberoamerican Theatre Festival of Bogotá and the "Rock al Parque" Festival This essay will present two cases studies of street festivals and its relation with the city and its sustainable development: The Iberoamerican Theatre Festival of Bogota (Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá) and The Rock al Parque Festival. Both represent two major fields in the cultural industries in Bogotá such as the performative arts and the music. 28 Ibid 29 Landry, C. 2008. The Creative City: A toolkit for Urban Innovators. Earthscan Editions. 30 Florida, M (2003). Cities and the creative class. (Online). Available at: http://uv.vuchorsens.dk/r/KAZ/Undervisning%202012-2013/GEOLOGI/B%C3%A6redygtighed/Befolkning%20og%20b%C3%A6redygtighed/GetFile.pdf (Accessed 13 January 2014). 13 Firstly the chapter will introduce a context of each festival and then discuss around 5 main axes how the two festivals help to development in specific ways. Iberoamerican Theatre Festival of Bogotá Declared in December 2013 as "cultural heritage of Colombia"31, The Ibero-American Theatre Festival of Bogotá is a biannual cultural event held in Bogotá and organized by the Fundación Teatro Nacional (National Theatre Foundation) an NGO dedicated to theatre with private and public funding. It is considered as one of the most important theatre festival in Latin America and the most significant cultural event in Colombia32 The history of the festival is in every sense "quixotic": Launched in 1988 when the country was immersed in drug-related violence and when the public institutions and the general idea of democracy were at crisis, Ramiro Osorio, a renowned cultural entrepreneur and Fanny Mikey, considered one of the icons of theatre and culture in Colombia, created the theatre Festival as a "Act of Faith" in order to promote culture as an answer to defeat the prevailing violence of those years. . It is important to mention somehow the significant role of the National Theatre Foundation in the conformation and development of the theatre in Colombia. Founded in 1981 by Fanny Mikey, an Argentinean émigré, with the play "El Rehén" nowadays has three major venues with a wide programme throughout the year as well as an art college a social programme for deprived communities and an international tours of their plays33 The first Ibero-American theatre festival, held from 25th march to 3th of April 1988, gathered 59 theatres companies from 21 countries with an estimated of no more than 100.000 spectators. In 2012, 26 years later, the festival had more than 3 million spectators and 200 theatres companies from 32 countries and 5 continents. 34 31El Espectador. 2013. Festival de Teatro de Bogotá, declarado patrimonio cultural de la Nación. El Espectador, (Online) (Last updated 11December 2013). Available at: . http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/bogota/festival-de-teatro-de-bogota-declarado-patrimonio-cultu-articulo-463508. (Accessed: 13 January 2014). 32 Cepeda, A .2010. FESTIVAL IBEROAMERICANO DE TEATRO DE BOGOTÁ- IMPACTO Y SUPERVIVENCIA. Instituto Complutense de CC Musicales. 33 Ibid 34 Ibid 14 The conception of the festival as a "carnival of the city" relies on the stress in the use of the public space: There are plays presented in the streets, plazas and parks from all over the city: From slums to rich areas covering all significance area of the city. In 2012, the festival presents 218 street plays in 4 major parks (Simón Bolívar, Tunal, Nacional y Plaza de Bolívar) 7 public spaces for street plays, 4 community centres, 2 big parades starting from the north of Bogota (Calle 80) until the Bolivar's Square, the biggest plaza in Bogotá. The Festival was in 11 out of the 21 districts of Bogota. In average, around 2, 5 millions of spectators participate in the festival. 35 "Rock al Parque" Festival In March 2012, Bogotá was chosen by the UNESCO as Creative City of Music along with European cities such as Bologna (Italy), Ghent (Belgium), Sevilla (Spain) and Glasgow (Scotland).36 This recognition is part of the strategy of the secretary of culture of Bogotá of positioning the city as a major culture hub in Latin-American especially in the music field. In recent years and after the creation of the central roadmaps namely the "Políticas Culturales Distritales 2004-2016"37 The link between urban public spaces and public festivals as cultural policies is more visible in the "Festivales al Parque" (Park Festivals) which consists in five annual free music festivals held in different times of the year and performed in important free venues and public parks. They are managed and executed by the Institute for arts in Bogotá (A sub division of the Secretary of Culture of Bogotá) "IDARTES". and the "Plan Decenal de Cultura 2011-2021" the music field and their relation with public spaces have being an important core of the cultural policies in Bogotá. There are 5 "festivales al parque" dedicated to the 5 most popular rhythms that conformed the music scene in the city: Hip Hop, Jazz, Colombia (traditional music) and Rock. Created in different years, the "Festivales al Parque" conforms a local identity and a cultural highlight of the city. 35 Ibid 36 Cultura y Entretenimiento. 2012. Bogotá fue declarada capital mundial de la música. EL TIEMPO. (Online). Available at: http://www.eltiempo.com/entretenimiento/musica/ARTICULO-WEB-NEW_NOTA_INTERIOR-11842506.html (Accessed 13 January 2014) 37 IDARTES. 2004. Políticas Culturales Distritales (Online) Available at: http://www.culturarecreacionydeporte.gov.co/sites/default/files/politicas_culturales_distritales_2004-2016.pdf (Accessed 13 January 2014). 15 The pioneer and the biggest in terms of audience of the "Festivales al Parque" is "Rock al Parque" a 3 days rock festival created in 1995 and hosted in the biggest public park of the city, Parque Simón Bolivar; it was organized by musicians Mario Duarte and Julio Correal as a strategy to create a bond between citizens of different socio economic background with the public space during the Antanas Mockus' mayor. The XVIII edition of the festival in 2012 congregated more than 70.000 people per day, making the Festival, the biggest public rock festival in Latin America in terms of audience38. Places for sustainable development: conclusions studies. Although each festival has its own characteristics a study conducted by Obgregón (2007) shows 5 main conclusions that "Rock al Parque" festival has brought to the city. In a similar study done for the Iberoamerican Theatre Festival, Cepeda (2010) also concluded that the festival helped the city in similar ways of the five elements of Obregon. Those five elements also share the same roots of the elements of Culture for Development by the UNESCO. This is an interesting discovery that shows how festivals if they are organized inside the language of Open City -Teatro Mundi (Sennett) and in the Cultural Public Sphere all share similar benefits: 38 Obregon, J. 2007. Desconfianza, civilidad y estética. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Improve the image of the city Create a sense of identity Help to build an audience Visibilization of a minority group Tolerance and social cohesion. Box 2. Five mains benefit of the Iberoamerican Theatre Festival and Rock al Parque Festival to Bogotá. 16 1. Improve the image of the city Both festivals improve the image of the city, for both its inhabitants and foreigners audiences. Leguizamón, Moreno and Tibazisco(2013) have argued the relation between the festivals and the local economy especially in the touristic field: "Bogotá is a touristic destiny who takes advantage of its public festivals as an important opportunity to retain tourists interested in performing arts because they visit the city only one time. This advantage depends on quality improvements which tourist perceived around touristic products and services offered like: security, hospitality, environmental practices, mobility and connectivity."39 UNESCO (2001) has also states how cultural tourism has increased in recent years: In 2010, international tourism generated 919 billion dollars in export earnings. Emerging and developing countries accounted for 47 per cent of world international tourism arrivals and 36.9 per cent of world international tourism receipts in 2010. Cultural tourism presently accounts for 40 per cent of world tourism revenues. Taking into account the statistics of the monitoring centre for culture of IDARTES conducted in 2011 the percentage of tourist that visited the city exclusively to assist to "Rock al Parque" Festival were 16,16% compared to 6,03% in 199740. 2. Create a sense of identity Wyss (2012) states that for 17 days, "the Iberoamerican Theatre Festival transformed a chaotic metropolis like Bogotá (more than 8 million inhabitants) into a cultural Mecca", The general director of the Festival, Ana Marta de Pizarro also argues than the festival is "the carnival of the city, crime rates are significantly reduced and the general atmosphere of the dwellers is of great joy and party"41 39 Leguizamon, M; Moreno, E and Tobavizco N. 2013. Impacto turístico del Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá. (online) Available: . http://www.pasosonline.org/Publicados/11113/PS0113_06.pdf (Accessed 13 January 2014) 40 IDARTES. 2011. Observatorio de Culturas. (online) Available at: http://www.culturarecreacionydeporte.gov.co/observatorio/medAlparque.html. (Accessed 13 January 2014). 41 Wyss, J. 2010. Bogota theater festival: a bright mask for a once grim city. (Online) Available at: http://carpetbagbrigade.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/miami-herald-dios-callings-english1.pdf. (Accessed 13 January 2014) 17 Similar to Wyss, Obregon citing Cante(2007), says that the idea of Rock al Parque has brought a sense of "social cohesion through the construction of an identity of tolerance and coexistence. It creates a civil culture in the city"42. 3. Help to build an audience Obregon (2007) and Cepeda (2010) states that one of the most important benefits of Rock al Parque and the Iberoamerican Theatre Festival is that those events have helped to build an audience in music and performative arts respectively. In the case of Rock al Parque, the event helped to massify a genre that wasn't part of the mainstream in Colombia as Rock. According to IDARTES (2011), almost 60% of the audience that assisted to the Festival in 2011 has been to a different free rock concert. Almost 80% has already assisted to more than two versions of Rock Al Parque. Cepeda (2010) concludes that the Iberoamerican Theatre Festival has collaborate to "enrich the theatre market in the city and to put it in one of the top in Latin America". 65% of the public, who assisted to the Festival in 2010, has seen a play regularly outside the Festival, according to the study. 4. Visibilization of a minority group This point is connected to the last conclusion. By building an audience, the festivals helped to make visible an audience. In Rock al Parque an "underground culture" as the rock scene, stigmatized before as "antisocial, started to have a better image in the community. IDARTES (2011) indicates that 60% of the audience of Rock al Parque has been to a Rock Concert without any kind of stigmatization43. 5. Tolerance and social cohesion Another important point about the two festivals is regarding the social cohesion and zero violence culture that promotes. Cepeda (2010) is very emphatic describing the impact of the Iberoamerican Theatre Festival with the violence and crime rates in the city: 42 Obregon, J.2007. Desconfianza, civilidad y estética. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. 43 IDARTES. 2011. Observatorio de Culturas. (online) Available at: http://www.culturarecreacionydeporte.gov.co/observatorio/medAlparque.html. (Accessed 13 January 2014). 18 "The festival has contributed since its beginning to the peace process in Colombia. This festival dared to make public performatives acts in the streets when the crimes rates were really high. Those events had an amazing and significative success. One could say that in the 17 days of the festival, crimes and violence stops. Police informs that the crime rates during those two weeks are the lowest of the year."44 93,48% of the spectators of the 2011 "Rock al Parque" felt that the event help to promote a non-violence culture. Still, both festivals shares the unique values of the "Teatro Mundi": Every spectator is equal, no matter his race, gender, social class, etc. The rates of zero violent deaths in the history of both festivals are also an example of how those events are truly places for democracy and peace. Conclusion As it has been seen through the different chapters that conform this essay, the benefits of creating public cultural events in urban spaces bring, undoubtedly a notion of democracy and development. Although Habermas did not specifically discuss street festivals and public festivals in urban spaces as examples of his theory of both public sphere and the theory of communicative action, the essay helped to shape a theoretical background to such events according to Habermas's notions. In the end, the link between Cultural Public Spaces and the UNESCO definition of Culture for Development was an interesting discovery that is worthwhile to keep researching. As mentioned in the introduction, the aim of the essay was to create a structure to understand the Iberoamerican Theatre Festival and the Rock al Parque Festival as examples of cultural public sphere and based on that give an account of the relationship between those spaces and the idea of development. Culture and Cultural manifestations are always moving and changing as society itself. Street Festivals are manifestations that definitely have to be fully addressed. All the rich variety of characteristics that those kinds of events possesses as the essay presented, make them a unique type of cultural products. Could culture transform a society? Definitely. Not only culture transformed society but improves it. Bogota is a better city, with more possibilities with events like the ones studied. In the future, and as part of a cultural policies plan, More events such those, should be created. This is the only recommendation of this essay toward the future, taking into account 44 Cepeda, A .2010. FESTIVAL IBEROAMERICANO DE TEATRO DE BOGOTÁ- IMPACTO Y SUPERVIVENCIA. Instituto Complutense de CC Musicales. 19 that the existing legislation "protect" the two festivals, that in the end, are part of the cultural heritage of the city and the nation. 20 Appendix Photos a. Iberoamerican Theatre Festival45 45 All photos: Humar, Z., 2012. En fotos, Bogotá y su fiesta de las mil caras. [electronic print] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/video_fotos/2012/04/120405_fotos_galeria_festival_teatro_bogota_aw.shtml [Accessed 12 January 2013]. 21 22 b. Rock al Parque Festival46 46 All photos: Lopez, J., 2013. Bogotá Rock al Parque. [electronic print] Available at: http://tinyurl.com/oabvlmt [Accessed 12 January 2013]. 23 24 Bibliography • Cepeda, A. 2010. FESTIVAL IBEROAMERICANO DE TEATRO DE BOGOTÁ- IMPACTO Y SUPERVIVENCIA. Instituto Complutense de CC Musicales. • Cultura y Entretenimiento. 2012. Bogotá fue declarada capital mundial de la música. EL TIEMPO. (Online). Available at: http://www.eltiempo.com/entretenimiento/musica/ARTICULO-WEB-NEW_NOTA_INTERIOR-11842506.html (Accessed 13 January 2014) • Culture and Development. 2013. UNESCO- Culture. (Online) Available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/culture-and-development (Accessed 13 January 2014) • Durkheim, E .2008. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford Paperbacks. • El Espectador. 2013. Festival de Teatro de Bogotá, declarado patrimonio cultural de la Nación. El Espectador, (Online) (Last updated 11December 2013). Available at: http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/bogota/festival-de-teatro-de-bogota-declarado-patrimonio-cultu-articulo-463508. (Accessed: 13 January 2014). • Fabiani, J. 2011. Festivals, local and global: Critical interventions and the cultural public sphere. in Delanty, G; Giorgi L and Sassatelli, M. Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Routledge. Pp 92-108 • Finlayson, J .2005. Habermas, a very short introduction. Oxford University Press. • Florida, M .2003. Cities And The Creative Class. (Online). Available at: http://uv.vuchorsens.dk/r/KAZ/Undervisning%202012-2013/GEOLOGI/B%C3%A6redygtighed/Befolkning%20og%20b%C3%A6redygtighed/GetFile.pdf (Accessed 13 January 2014). • Habermas,J. 1991. The Structural Transformation Of The Public Sphere. MIT Press. • Hahn, L. 2000. Perspective On Habermas. Open Court Publishing. 25 • IDARTES. 2004. Políticas Culturales Distritales (Online) Available at: http://www.culturarecreacionydeporte.gov.co/sites/default/files/politicas_culturales_distritales_2004-2016.pdf (Accessed 13 January 2014). • IDARTES. 2011. Observatorio de Culturas. (online) Available at: http://www.culturarecreacionydeporte.gov.co/observatorio/medAlparque.html. (Accessed 13 January 2014). • Jacobs, J .1961. The Death And Life Of Great American Cities. Random House, New York. • Landry, C. 2008. The Creative City: A toolkit for Urban Innovators. Earthscan Editions. • Landry,C. 2013. Civic Urbanity: Looking at the city afresh (PDF). Hangzhou International Congress, "Culture: Key to Sustainable Development", 15-17 May 2013, Hangzhou, China. Available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/images/Charles_Landry_Hangzhou_Congress.pdf (Accessed 12 January 2013). • Leguizamon, M; Moreno, E and Tobavizco N. 2013. Impacto turístico del Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá. (online) Available: http://www.pasosonline.org/Publicados/11113/PS0113_06.pdf (Accessed 13 January 2014) • Mc Guian, J. 2011. The Cultural Public Sphere- a critical measure of public culture? in Delanty, G; Giorgi L and Sassatelli, M. Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Routledge. Pp 79-92. • Mumford, L., 1937. What is a city?. In: Scoutt, S and Stoutt, F. ed. 2011. The city reader. Taylor and Francis. pp.91-96. • Obregon, J .2007. Desconfianza, civilidad y estética. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. • Sassatelli, M. 2011. Urban Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere: Cosmopolitanism between Ethics and Aesthetics in Delanty, G; Giorgi L and Sassatelli, M. Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere. Routledge. Pp 12-19 • Sennett, R 2006. The Open City. (online). Urban Age- LSE. Available at: http://esteticartografias07.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/berlin_richard_sennett_2006-the_open_city1.pdf. (Accessed 13 January 2014)26 • Sennett, R. 1992. The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities. W.W Norton & Company. • Sennett, R. 2003. The Fall of Public Man. Penguin, New Edition. • Sennett, R. 2008. Reflections on the Public Realm in Bridge, G and Watson, S. A. Companion of the City. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 380-387. • Sennett, R. 2008. The Public Realm. (online) Richard Sennet Website. Available at: http://www.richardsennett.com/site/SENN/Templates/General2.aspx?pageid=16 (Accessed 13 January 2014) . • Simmel, G. 1950. The Metropolis and Mental Life. In Miles, M; Hall, T and Borden, I. The City Cultures Reader. Ed. 2000. pp. 12-19. • Susen, S. 2001. Critical Notes on Habermas's theory of the public sphere. (online). City University of London. Available at: http://tinyurl.com/lhy4j4z. (Accessed 13 January 2014). • UNESCO. 2013. The Hangzhou Declaration. UNESCO- Culture. (Online). Available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/culture-and-development/hangzhou-congress/ (Accessed 13 January 2014). • Weber,M. 1966. The City. Free Press. • Wirth, L .1938. Urbanism as a Way of Life. (online) Chicago Journals. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2768119 (Accessed 13 January 2014). • Wyss, J. 2010. Bogota theatre festival: a bright mask for a once grim city. (Online) Available at: http://carpetbagbrigade.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/miami-herald-dios-callings-english1.pdf. (Accessed 13 January 2014)

Issue 49.2 of the Review for Religious, March/April 1990. ; Religious Life Spirituality The Clericalization of Monasticism =Thomas Merton and the Enneagram Directing the Third Week Volume 49 Number 2 March/April 1990 R~\'u~w~:o~ R~:~.l(mms (ISSN 0034-639X) is published hi-monthly at St. Louis Universily by the Mis-souri Province Educational Institute of Ihe Society of Jesus: Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Blvd. Rrn. 42g: St. Lxmis. MO 6310g-3393. Second-class postage paid at St. b,~uis MO. Single copies $3.50. Subscriptions: United States $15.00 for one year: $28.00 Ibr two years. Other countries: US $20.00 for one year: if airmail. US $35.00 p~r year. For subscription orders or change of address. wrile: Rt~','ll~w I:oR RI~i.IGOUs: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth. MN 55806. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to R~:\'~:w rot R~:u~;mus; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. ©1990 REview For REI,IGIOUS. David L. Fleming, S.J. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David J. Hassel, S.J. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. March/April 1990 Volume 49 Number 2 Manuscripts, books f~,r review and correspondence with the editor should he sent to R~:\'~:w vo~ R~:k~;~ous; 3601 I,indell Blvd.; St. la~uis, MO 63108-3393. Cnrrespondence abnut the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.: 1735 LeRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709-1193. Back issues and reprints should be ardered from R~:\'~:w FO;{ R~:LmtOUS; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. I,~mis. MO 63108-3393. "~Out of print" issues are available frnm University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service fiw the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS . The desire for new life, new ideas, new expressions, new insights permeates the everyday existence of us all. Modern day advertising and the consumer economy of first world countries continuously search out the ways to sell products, not in terms of real needs, but in terms of in-duced needs for something new. Consumerism builds upon the human desire for the new, while at the same time offsetting the equally strong human tendency to remain comfortably entrenched in the familiar. The Church seasons of Lent and Easter confront us all with our de-sires for the new and with our equally strong tendency to remain firmly entrenched where we are. The dialogue between Nicodemus and Jesus in the third chapter of St. John's Gospel captures well the continuing ex-change between the Christian and God, clearly focused during these Church seasons. Approaching God out of a certain darkness in our lives, we seek new life and new growth, a new understanding of our faith, or a new sense of relationship with God and with neighbor. But when God starts indicating a dying to some familiar life patterns, when God starts pointing the way to "being born anew," we are tempted to laugh it .off, to claim we are "too old" to need that kind of change. Why not a little "renewal," perhaps a little "restoration," or maybe even an attempt to "recapture" past devotion or past grace (charism)? Any of these words seem to allow ias to keep some measure of control, to retain some-thing of the old and familiar, and yet to pray and give God a place. Rebirth--to be born anew--remains the challenge of Lent and Eas-ter. Rebirth means the dying and rising--the pattern of the paschal mys-tery- which we Christians celebrate in the daily Eucharist. More clearly in these Lenten and Easter seasons we come face-to-face with the most traditional faith concept--that it is the Spirit who brings to birth and who gives life, in our continuing personal growth in our life-in-Christ, in the life of our religious congregations, and in the life of our Church both lo-cal and larger. Our personal response to being born anew is taken up in the articles "Directing the Third Week" by Joseph P. Cassidy, S.J. and "The Theme of Joy in the Spiritual Exercises" by Joan Mueller, O.S.F. We are given new insight into our call and our response to new life in the articles "Will the Real Prodigal Son Please Stand Up?" by Christine Ere-iser, O.S.B. and "Redemption and Romantic Melancholy: Thomas Mer-ton and the Enneagram" by Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. "The Re-demption Kernel" by Dennis J. Billy, C.SS.R., presents a new theologi-cal approach in understanding dying and rising, with special application 161 169 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 to religious life. Robert T. Sears, S.J., in his article "Resurrection Spiri-tuality and Healing the Earth," expands our vision about Jesus' resur-rection affecting the ecology of our whole world andso giving us the re-sponsibility of a new life-healing power. Finally those articles specifically dealing with renewal and transfor-mation in the congregations of women and men religious indicate the ar-eas of present struggle, the history of a sometimes laborious develop-ment, and the proposed costly future of new life. The various authors-- Stephen Tutas, S.M., Charles Reutemann, F.S.C., Anne O'Brien, gsic, and Lora Ann Quinofiez, C.D.Po and Mary Daniel Turner, S.N.D., de N.--invite us into seeing and knowing a life beyond renewal and trans-formation, a birth which only the Spirit can bring about for the future of religious life. May the joy with which the risen Jesus consoles us now become more richly our experience of new life. David L. Fleming, S.J. Resurrection Spirituality and Healing the Earth Robert T. Sears, S.J. Father Robert Sears, S.J., teaches in the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola Uni-versity in Chicago. This article had its origin in a presentation made to the North American Conference for Christianity and Ecology. His address is 5554 S. Wood-lawn Avenue; Chicago, Illinois 60637. Those involved in ecology and those involved in a healing ministry are for the most part on two different tracks. The one is focused on a scien-tific study of evolution and the interdependence of creation, the other on individual hurts with little attention to environment. My own healing min-istry, on the other hand, has led me little by little to concern for the en-vironment. I began with attention on the individual, then was led to see family relationships into past generations as grounding present destruc-tive patterns. And only recently have I become aware that the environ-ment itself is affected by these destructive patterns and needs healing. Several experiences have brought me to this conclusion. In the first place, there is evidence that places are affected by what occurs on them. Barbara Shlemon, noted for her healing ministry, has observed the ongoing destructive influence violence can have on certain places. She felt called to build a healing center in Clearwater, Florida but over a year's time could not find a place. With two others she prayed for guidance and one member thought of Native Americans. They looked into the history of that region and found that it was the location of a war with the Seminole Indians where it is estimated that some 10,000 to 15,000 Seminole Indians died as we took their land. They had a service of reconciliation, asking forgiveness of the Indians for what our ances-tors did then. The very next day an ideal piece of land opened up for 163 "164 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 them! It was as though God would not give the land till reparation was made for that violence. I will speak later of an instance in my experi-ence from Chicago. The civil war Camp Douglas lay between Thirty-first and Thirty-third streets and Cottage Grove. Some 6000 Confeder-ate soldiers died there in inhuman conditions, and when we went there to pray for healing, we found that prime property still overgrown and in ruins. Secondly, we have some experimental evidence that plants at least remember. Cleve Backster, an expert on the psychogalvanic skin re-sponse that is basic to the lie detector, decided one day to attach the elec-trodes to a tropical plant in his office. ~ He wondered if the plant would respond to cutting it. It did, but not as much as he expected. He then thought he would burn its leaves, and even at the thought the graph showed a violent response. The plant seemed to be able to anticipate his intended violence. He then set up a situation where plants could "wit-ness" a destructive action. Six people were selected and given numbers. All but one were instructed on their paper to go into the room, look at the plants, and leave. One was instructed to tear up and stamp on one of two plants in the room and then leave. Electrodes were attached to the remaining "witness" plant, and each person again went into the room. Only the plant "knew" who was responsible! There was no re-sponse for the five innocent persons, but when the culprit went into the room the plant responded vigorously, as if in fear. It seems to have re-membered. 2 Finally, Dr. Kenneth McAII, an English psychiatrist noted for his heal-ing ministry with family systems, was traveling by banana boat over the Bermuda Triangle (a place formed by an imaginary line between Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda where for hundreds of years ships and aircraft had gone down without a trace) when the boat was caught in a terrible storm.3 In escaping south, one of the ship's boilers broke leaving them adrift. In his quiet leisure, he heard a droning outside. It wasn't the crew. Researching, he found that this was the place unfit slaves were thrown overboard so their owners could collect insurance money. As Genesis 4 said of Cain's killing Abel "Your brother's blood cries out to me from the soil," these souls were crying out from the sea. On returning to En-gland, Dr. McAI! got Anglican bishops in various places to celebrate Eucharist for those who lost their lives in an untimely way in that place, and later the Bermuda Anglican bishop did the same. For five years be-tween that celebration (in 1977) and his book (1982), there had been no reported accident in that region. Resurrection Spirituality We are dealing with incidents that are hard to repeat scientifically, but such evidence supports a view of the world as living and responsive to what occurs on it. Much like humans who are God's most developed creatures, the earth seems to be marked by past experience. Can it be healed? What implications might result for the earth if humans under-stood how to assist in this healing? It is my conviction that a deeper un-derstanding of the resurrection of Jesus would help us bring healing not only to humans but also to the earth. I will begin by relating creation-centered spirituality to a focus on resurrection. Resurrection-Centered Spirituality A recent focus on the importance of celebrating creation and joining its creative impulse is the work of Matthew Fox: Creation-centered spiri-tuality (see his Original Blessing: a Primer in Creation SpiritualiO, (Bear & Co. Inc., 1983). Fox sees traditional spirituality (which he terms Fall/ Redemption spirituality as instanced in Augustine, Thomas h Kempis up to Tanqueray) as dualistic, focused on the danger of sensuality and earthiness and on the need for ascetical restraint. He argues for another tradition which he finds in the Yahwist, wisdom writers, lrenaeus, Eck-hart up to Teilhard de Chardin, which is basically positive toward crea-tion. In his view Fall/Redemption spirituality sees little value in science, focuses on original sin and its effects, encourages detachment from the world and moral self-control and awaits the end of the world rather than its transformation. Creation spirituality, on the other hand, welcomes the discoveries of science as revealing the creator, focuses on the blessing of creation and our God-given commission to care for it, moves beyond moralistic negation of human action to a sense of communion with na-ture, and believes in the ultimate goodness and creativity of the cosmos. He wants to move beyond a focus on guilt to a focus on spiritual growth. He presents four stages from the work of Eckhart: befriending creation, befriending darkness, befriending creativity or our inner divinity, and be-friending new creation and universal compassion. I found myself in tune with those goals, but not with Fox's negation of the Fall/Redemption tra-dition. It gradually dawned on me that those very goals are restored to us through the resurrection of Jesus. Let me explain. It was Teilhard who turned our attention first to many of these themes. When he was in the novitiate, he told his director about his de-sire for both spirituality and science, and his wise novice director encour-aged him to pursue both, believing that God would somehow bring them into unity. His focus on evolutign did make theologians suspicious that he was neglecting original sin. In response he wrote an appendix to The 166 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 Phenomenon of Man explaining that evil was discoverable at every level of evolution, even though he chose not to speak of it for the sake of clar-ity, There is the evil of failure and disorder in adjusting and emerging, the evil of decomposition of the present to make room for the new, the evil of solitude and anxiety (especially for humans) in striving for con-sciousness in a dark universe, and the evil of growth itself--the constant struggle to make progress against the inertia and resistance of the pre-sent state. Whether further there is an excess of evil, stemming from an historic tragedy, he declines in that study to say. What he does persua-sively illustrate is that humans emerge as a higher consciousness within an evolving universe filled with seeds of new creation. We must choose, and in choosing we bring creation with us for better or worse. By our choices we develop a human "layer" of evolution, a noosphere, that af-fects everything. We create culture and "history," and we, in turn, are influenced by that history. We need only look at our technological world which drives our days with given hours and our attention with narrowly determined tasks to see how we are formed and informed by our crea-tions. Yes we are faced with new possibilities and creative challenges, but new creation is conditioned by the patterns we have grown accus-tomed to: our compulsion to consume and to live by an ever increasing standard of consumption. What will empower us to change? It is this awareness of historical conditioning that makes me take more seriously than Fox seems to the doctrine of original sin. Granted the doctrine as developed by Augustine needs reconsideration, still its roots are the biblical insight that our evil choices have a history. It is not enough to change our present attitudes because the present is conditioned by the choices made in our past. Our ancestors need healing and the earth affected by our ancestors needs healing. Joy in creation cannot accom-plish the earth's healing alone. We need redemption, yet a redemption that does not separate us from the earth but empowers us to purify the earth and bring it into wholeness. Redemption must be more than per-sonal. It must extend to the whole of creation. The resurrection of Jesus changed his sinful, unreliable disciples into a powerful community of com-passion. Can we expand our view of the resurrection to include its power to restore the earth? Let us see. Stages of Salvation History Both Freud and Jung worked on the assumption that the growth of the individual in a speeded up way goes through the stages of evolution-- from emergence out of water to the unfolding of human physical and psy-chological life. This evolutionary view need not be seen as contrary to Resurrection Spirituality/167 creation, since God's creativity is always required. It simply describes how God creates. What I have found is that human spiritual growth also recapitulates the stages of salvation history, and it is only in light of sal-vation history that the resurrection as its culmination can be fully under-stood. I have found five such stages culminating in the death/resurrec-tion of Jesus as the goal of the process: initial faith (Yahwist), familial faith (Elohist/Deuteronomist), individuating faith (Exilic prophets and Job), communitarian faith (foreseen in Isaiah 53, first lived in Jesus) and mission faith (revealed in Pentecost).4 Let us begin with individuating faith. Ezekiel 18 cites the saying: "You have heard it said that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." It then goes on to say: "That will no longer be said in Israel, for the children are mine as well as the fathers." They had been living by a so-called "conditional covenant" that af-firmed: "if you keep my law, then you will be my people." That cove-nant, Yahweh affirms, they have broken (see also Jr 31:32), and it is ab-rogated. Yet in this breakdown there is a breakthrough of a promised "new covenant" when Yahweh says: "I will put my Spirit within you and make you live by my statutes" (Ez 36:27). lndividuating faith, then, is a breakdown of human effort and a turning of each individual to God's initiative. I experienced this personally through a period of depression while studying theology in Germany. I began studying Freud to get some understanding, but was still depressed. Then one author led me to Isaiah 43:18 (written during the Exile): "remember not the events of the past ¯ . . See I am doing something new." In other words, healing would come from God's present creativity, not from my efforts to re.pair the past. From that central breakthrough (Israel's and my own), I saw that mere keeping the law (familial faith) was no longer enough. In that stage "The sins of the fathers/mothers are handed down to four generations (and more in my experience), the blessings to a thousand" (see Dt 5:9f, Ex 20:5-6 and so forth). In other words the patterns of history are handed down for better or worse till there is a collapse of human efforts and an inbreaking of God's new creation. Even before that concentration on hu-man cooperation through law, there is (in the Yahwist, Gn 2-3, 12:1-5 and others who wrote in the time of David) a focus on trusting Yahweh in order to find life. That universal trust, however, gave rise to intermar-riage and distortion of faith in Yahweh (as it can do whenever we lose the specificity of our faith) and so encountered the prophetic challenge of the Elohist and Deuteronomist. We see the result of even this human "161~ / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 effort in their Exile. Once we turn to Yahweh's spirit ourselves, we need to find the spirit in others. This we do by the forgiveness of enemies which I believe we find first only in the ministry of Jesus, though it was foreseen and for-gotten in Isaiah 53--the suffering servant. This stage of unconditional forgiveness allows us to remain faithful even to unfaithful partners (as Jesus did with Israel) and so to die that others might live. It forms the basis for the compassionate community that Matthew Fox envisioned. And finally, the actual gift of life in union with God releases a new communal reality through the Pentecostal power of the Spirit. Through the Spirit Jesus' death/resurrection builds a living, self-giving commu-nity that is open to all and to all creation. I contend that it is through this transformation of humanity that ultimately the earth itself will be trans-formed. The ground and goal of this development is God who raised Christ from the dead. The norm of who God is is not creation alone, but the life/death and resurrection of Jesus. "Who sees me sees the Father" (Jn 14:9). God's suffering love surrendered his own Son for us, and through Jesus' response of self-surrender the Spirit of self-giving love is sent and revealed. God is revealed as a community of self-giving love in this world-forming event. This pattern of stages is fully revealed in Jesus, but is lived out cy-clically. Individually or communally we can have a breakthrough to a new stage but then regress to a previous stage. This, I believe, is what happened in the Church. With the failure to convert Israel, the message of Christ went to the gentiles who were not prepared with the solidarity of a thousand year history. The gifts of the Spirit led to factions as we see in the Corinthian community and in the Didache. The central gift of the Spirit of forgiving love that builds the self-giving community was su-perseded by the need for institution and discipline (my "familial stage"). Structure and control replaced healing as focus of attention. As in Jesus' time, I believe we are again emerging from the familial stage of development to recognize again our need for forgiveness and healing. Healing the Human Family In order to understand the healing brought by the resurrection, we need to look at sin in history. The Yahwist, who first wrote of the sin of our original ancestors, did so by first looking at the sin of his day (the time of David). It was a time of domination and exploitation, of loss of faith in Yahweh because of the multiple marriages of kings like Solo-mon, of alienation of families torn by strife. If Yahweh was all good, Resurrection Spirituality 169 how could this happen? The Yahwist concluded (see Gn 2-3) that ~t was due to a freely chosen loss of faith in Yahweh. Humans were the culmi-nation of Yahweh's creation, formed from the earth, given the power to name (and so direct) creation and the commission to subdue the earth and bring it to order. All creation served humans, as humans served God. But they chose their own way and not only did they hide from Yahweh, but they also blamed and were alienated from one another. God gave as pun-ishment that Adam would dominate his wife and the woman would cling to her man, and the earth would be hard to till and not graciously yield crops. The Yahwist was symbolically telling the story of sin. Humans were given care for the earth, but when they turned from God, the source of creativity, they could only use power, dominance, and force. Further, this beginning continued in history. Cain doubted his accept-ability, envied and then killed Abel. Domination and enmity, social and sexual sin were handed down generation to generation to the Yahwist's own day. His solution was a return to trust in Yahweh as Abraham did (Gn 12: 1-5). But as we have seen, Israel proved incapable of such trust. God's Spirit was promised "to make them keep God's Law," but cen-turies passed. A similar envy and hatred of one gifted by God led to Je-sus' death. The heritage of sin exploded around him. The earth quaked and shook the foundations, as though being exorcized from an ancient wound. What began its healing was not a simple trust in God's good-ness. It was Jesus' willingness to forgive and trust God while suffering the effects of human sin. Such generational patterns, we find, change only when they are understood, compassionately borne, and forgiven. This is how we can view Jesus' resurrection. As human he inherited his nation's sinful temptations (see his baptism "to fulfill all justice" (Mt 3: 14-5) and his temptations which were like those of Israel). Yet he re-sponded with a surrendered trust in God. Under God he showed he had "authority" over storm and sea, and over the fig tree. Yet he freely bore the hatred of the Jewish leaders and Romans. His death culminated a life of trust in God, and through his resurrection he "sent" the Spirit to con-tinue this new life with his disciples. What Adam was called to and lost by distrust, Christ restored not on the basis of the old creation, but by the "new creation" through his resurrection. The world is restored to God's favor not by a return to the past (creation), but by a reconciling call from the future--the resurrection. It is important to understand the resurrection as such a restoration in this world. The Resurrection Firstly, the resurrection is an event in this world. It is not uncom- 170 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 mon to imagine the resurrection as Jesus' reward.apart from this world. He has made it and motivates us to try harder. Scripture presents a very different view. Peter's sermon in Acts points to the gift of the Holy Spirit as the sign that Jesus has been made "Lord and Messiah" (Ac 2:36). The resurrection meant that Jesus was made Lord over the whole earth. As Paul put it: "God . . . put all enemies under his feet" so that he in turn can subject all to God "that God may be all in all" (I Co 15:28). This is expressed in the earliest Creed: "Jesus Christ is Lord" (Ph 2:11). Far from separating Jesus from the world, the resurrection unites him to the world in a new sovereign way to bring everything to its intended goal of the kingdom of God. Secondly, the resurrection is a now event. A second misconception is that the resurrection is a past event rewarding Jesus. In the resurrec-tion Jesus returns to God and opens creation to union with God. Since God's Time is an eternal now, the resurrection is also an eternal now. That means it touches all time and all space. It affects the heart of every creature with a deepened and more absolute hope. It is not a particular event that we canlocate in a particular space and time. It is an event that transcends our concept of space and time, and is universally available if we but call upon the Lord. Thirdly, it is not merely spiritual but also bodily. All the apparitions point to bodily aspects: eating fish, touching his side or clinging to him, seeing him though some doubted. The resurrection is, as Teilhard might say, a new phylum in our world, the basis for building all believers into a new Body, a new family that is based not on blood ties or cultural ties, but on faith in Jesus as Lord and on the power of God's Spirit. Since it is a bodily event, it also penetrates the depths of bodiliness and so of the earth. As Colossians says, "It has pleased God to make absolute full-ness reside in him, and by means of him to reconcile everything in his person, both on earth and in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross. "( !: 19-20). Fourthly, therefore, in Jesus' resurrection the whole of creation has a new beginning, a new creation. This is the ultimate ground of spiritual healing. Spiritual healing is not simply a repairing of wounds, like re-parenting because of wounds from one's parents. It is actually creating anew. As Isaiah 43 taughtme: "Do not look at what is behind, behold I make all things new." I realized that healing came from looking at God's ever present creativity, not at one's problems. God's love heals our basic distrust. God's love gives us power to forgive rather than re-bel against our heritage in the familial faith stage. I have come to see Resurrection Spirituality that Jesus' resurrection restores our link to the creativity of God. He is the 'new Adam" (1 Co 15:22), the ground of our new family in God. He is also the one who fulfills God's command to Adam--increase and multiply, subdue the earth and bring it into order. As Lord, Jesus has this power to create anew in right order. It was Teilhard who called our attention to three basic principles of ongoing creation or evolution: differentiation, increasing interiority, and deepened community. Every new stage of evolution--molecules to life to sensation to thought--shows increased complexity or differentiation, increased self-activity or freedom, and all this in a total unity. If resur-rection is the final point of creation, a new creation from God, does it show these principles to the highest degree? It does. The Spirit from God gives each a "different" gift "for the building of the body." Differen-tiation and community are both increased as we see in the free sharing with the community that occurred in response to the Spirit in Acts. And the Spirit frees us to our deepest truth. The resurrection is a life at work in our deepest depths calling us through intimacy with Jesus, the Spirit, and our loving Creator. Finally, it is through sharing in the resurrected life of Jesus that we share Jesus' Lordship and power to heal. The miracles of Jesus (show-ing his power over materiality) are expressions of the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. We are to do "even greater works" (Jn 14:12). Jesus' power over the storm at sea (Mt 14:22-33) and over the fig tree (Mt 21:18-22) are not presented as unique to him. Jesus com-plains about their "little faith" and says if they had faith as a mustard seed they could say to the mountain "go into the sea," and it would obey. "If we die with Christ," Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:11-12, "we shall also live with him; if we hold out to the end we shall also reign with him." Andagain in Romans 5:i7: "If death began its reign through one man because of his offense, much more shall those who receive the overflowing grace and gift of justice [grace from Jesus' resurrection] reign through the one man, Jesus Christ." The disciples are to share Je-sus' rule which extends not only to believers but to the whole world (the whole universe). We share this rule not by our own power but as chan-nels of the Spirit--the resurrected power of Jesus, 'for without me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). Thus, in the scriptural view, the gifts that were meant for humans from the beginning of creation--union with God, rule over the earth that would respond fruitfully, partnership between men and women and the power to bless their offspring--were lost through Adam and Eve's sin 179 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 but restored through the death/resurrection of Jesus. We are to live now in the power of the resurrection or new creation, not just by union with world creativity. Resurrection differs from creation in that it is centered in a personal relation to Jesus (whether explicitly confessed or implic-itly lived through love) and has at least the following characteristics: a commitment beyond feeling (as revealed in Jesus' death in fidelity to God), creative community beyond failure (as seen in his disciples' re-newed community), wholeness beyond perceived disintegration (as seen in their power to heal), and the ability to face death through trust in God's indestructible life. All these are qualities of Jesus' resurrection Spirit as seen in Scripture. But the central difference, in my view, is that creation focuses on the beginning, unaffected by historical choices (an "original blessing"), whereas resurrection restores a new beginning by forgiving and healing actual historical choices and their effects. The stages that Matthew Fox finds in spiritual growth (befriending creation, befriending darkness, accepting inner divinity, cocreativity) almost par-allel the historical stages I discovered (trust and familial being creation, individuating faith opening to darkness, communitarian releasing crea-tivity in relationships, and mission caring for all and the earth). Only he omits the historical grounding. What Jesus' resurrection does is make his-torically real those goals. Jesus took our death-bringing choices on him-self, and in God empowered a new beginning for those who believe and receive forgiveness. All creation "waits" for that freedom of the chil-dren of God, Paul says in Romans 8:20. It is consigned to futility (or emp-tiness) for the sake of that hope. This resurr._ection power is already at work in us (Col 3:1 ). How can it help us become instruments of healing the earth? Healing the Earth If we are meant to live by the power of the resurrection to reconcile, order, and heal, we need to know the principles of such a life. Firstly, we need to be oriented to Jesus' victory. The resurrection brings creation into union with God. Jesus became human and since all humans are united with all creation, his death/resurrection brings crea-tion into union with God's own life. This cannot be lost. The universe is fundamentally saved though we cannot be sure how this transforma-tion will actually work itself out. Healing prayer is grounded in this truth, and seeks Jesus' guidance for how to cooperate with the saving of the earth. Secondly, our power to envision and imagine needs to be trans-formed by this vision of God's kingdom. What we believe affects what Resurrection Spirituality / 173 comes to be. Belief is not a surface act of mind alone, but also includes feeling, will, and imagination. Jesus' initial proclamation was "Repent and believe the good news." Repent meant "change your mind, believe the good news." Healing prayer is often unsuccessful because we do not expect and envision the hoped for change. For example, we might pray for a friend to be healed of an illness, yet go on complaining about how he or she suffers. We are attending to the sickness, not envisioning her getting well and thanking God for it. The conversion we most basically need is to trust God's love totally, We are channels of God's creative light, but if our minds are filled with worries and fears, what we are ac-tually believing is that the worst will happen. It is a spiritual law: what we believe is what we cause. We need God to change our faith, to help us believe that God wants and can bring good to the earth, and that we are given the power to pray for this. An example may help. How many times have we not prayed for good weather with little effect? Perhaps we did not have sufficient faith for such a large project. We may have to start smaller--say with our gar-den- in order to be convinced about the power of such prayer. Or per-haps we don't really believe we have such power with the weather. "That's God's domain," we may have been told and believed. Jesus' disciples were shocked when Jesus commanded the storm to be still, but he c6rrected them for their little faith (Mk 4:40). A number of cases show that we do have marvelous power under God. In a talk on healing the earth (given at the annual conference of the Association of Christian Therapists, San Diego, 1982) Barbara Shlemon told of a prayer for just that purpose. She and several others were giving a healing retreat for sev-eral hundred Native Americans in Montana when a tornado was spotted heading directly toward their camp. Not wanting anyone hurt they thought of disbanding, but decided first to pray for guidance. The way they were graced was to ask the Bishop to say a prayer for God to turn aside the tornado and let only a slight rain come to water the ground. Al-though he was not used to this kind of prayer, the Bishop complied, and then went on with the healing Mass. That is exactly what happened. Only a slight rain fell. The incident may not have received notice if a journal-ist had not been present, with the result that the next morning's head-lines read "Tornado divides and misses a healing service and then comes together again." Needless to say, the Bishop was quite impressed (he had said after the Mass "One does need common sense"). Many other examples could be given.5 Thirdly, what heals is God's love. The more we are filled with God's 174 / Review for Religious. March-April 1990 love and forgiveness, the better channels we will be for all sorts of heal-ing, including that of the earth. If we harbor resentment or judgments against others, we block the power of God's healing. Many instances could be given, but the one that comes to mind was given by Fr. Jim Burke, O.P. in a retreat. He was in a retreat where people shared con-version experiences and one sister spoke of getting to like Detroit after harboring a dislike for many years. Fr. Jim felt her words like a knife. Whenever he thought of bad examples of cities, Detroit came first to mind. In the repentance service he asked forgiveness for his condemn-ing attitude toward Detroit and asked for God's view. The result was that in the next few years he had fifty invitations for missions or retreats in Detroit whereas before he had almost none. Forgiving love opened the way for God's love to work. As we pray for the earth, we need to ask for God's forgiveness of those who exploit the earth, and for ourselves who in many ways have hurt the earth unawares. It is not resentment and bitterness that heals, nor discouragement, but forgiving love and faith. Fourthly, we have found that blocks may often be from the past both in individual healing and in healing the earth. As I mentioned earlier, places seem to remember what has happened on them and similar evil seems to continue. A group of us were led to have a Mass said for the civil war dead from Camp Douglas in Chicago, and to pray for the camp grounds. We found through history that some 6,000 Confederate soldiers died there in inhuman conditions, and the place of the actual camp (be-tween Thirty-first and Thirty-third and Cottage Grove in Chicago, a very suitable piece of land for building) was still a waste land after more than 100 years! We felt many of the dead did find release. We wondered what affect it might have on the land, and now three years later we passed by and saw a new housing complex being built there. I mentioned Dr. McAll's prayer for the Bermuda Triangle, and the five year freedom from incidents. He has many similar examples. We have been led to pray for such events as the Alamo (and the enmity between Spanish and Whites affected by that battle), the different sides in the Northern Ire-land dispute, several areas in Chicago with Mafia and Satanic connec-tions, divisions in Livingston, Kentucky, and similar areas. It may well be that the root of a present misuse or exploitation stretches back to an original hurt (like the killing of the Seminole Indians), or to injustice per-petrated by the Church (like the witch trials of the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries). In sum, we have found that the same principles that apply to healing of persons apply also to healing the earth. Psalm 115:116 says: "Heaven Resurrection SpiritualiO, / 175 is the heaven of the Lord, but the earth he has given to the children of men." Nature is also given into our care as well as other persons. The earth is given to us to learn to love. As children teach us our sin by how they are affected by it, so God seems to let the earth be devastated so we will see our own inner devastation that causes it. But Jesus has come to restore to us power through his resurrection and Lordship to pray for its healing. Whether we will choose to restore the earth or exploit it has been given to us to decide. Implications for Us What are some implications for our own care for the earth'? Firstly, true prayer is helped by being informed.6 Agnes Sanford found out about the San Andreas fault in order to pray for it, how the earth must swell to create new land, how a division of the.earth falls along that fault. She prayed not to stop movement (that would have caused problems else-where), but that the tremors would be many and slight so that no destruc-tion would occur. If we want God to heal the earth, it helps to know what to pray for. Should we pray for the leaders of nations to realize the im-portance of their land? For the leaders of firms and their relation to the health of the environment? Ask God for guidance. Secondly, we need to grow in awareness of the power of healing prayer. Each of us will be led differently to experience God's love and forgiveness, and begin to pray for small things. Rest in God's love, en-vision that love and light radiating out into your selected place (a flower, garden, bird, and so forth). Envision with love and gratitude the healed condition you anticipate (a healthy flower, garden, and so forth), and fi-nally thank God. If nothing happens, you can check a number of things: your faith (are you convinced God wants this? that God wants to respond to your prayer?), your attunement to God's plan for this area, its appro-priateness with regard to other things (for example, not to pray for a good day for a picnic when the earth needs rain). God is infinite creative love and Jesus has been given "all power" to bring the earth to order. We are Jesus' instruments, so prayer will be effective if we have learned to become channels. Thirdly, you may expand your concern to some place like a city or church. Agnes Sanford was led by one lady to pray for cities. You may pick out city hall (quite a challenge in Chicago, but we have been try-ing). Visualize God's love bringing peace to that place, reconciling dif-ferences. We can waste our energy complaining because what we attend to is what we cause. We need to develop a constructive attitude of trust in God's Spirit and pray with a vision of peace being given. "176 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 There may be some particular issue that you are led to pray for. One of our group worked at Edison, and found his particular office rife with competition and discord. He did not even want to go to work. As we prayed we were led to pra}, for Thomas Edison himself who had no re-ligious faith and was disillusioned and angered by conflicts and compe-tition around the use of electricity. We prayed for him to be healed and opened to trust in God, to forgive and be forgiven and for the corpora-tion he began to be freed from that attitude. There has been relief in my friend's office, but long term change can require ongoing prayer. Or we may be concerned about the loss of small farms and the ex-ploitative policies of insurance companies that have received the land. We may not know how to.pray for such complicated issues and can best leave them in God's hands, always ready to do what we are led to do. We can pray God's light into these lands, and God's protection. I was asked by some members of the Association of Christian Therapists to go out to their land and bless it, and pray for any traumatic events (Native American or otherwise) that occurred on it. I was more than happy to do that knowing the many instances where such prayer has helped, though in most cases we don't see the results for some time. Conclusion As Psalm 115 says: "Heaven belongs to the Lord alone, but he gave the earth to humans." We have misused it, appropriated it for ourselves, as the parable of the vineyard says, and even killed God's Son, but we have not been left without resources for healing. Through the power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' resurrection we can cooperate in God's ongo-ing creative work. We pray daily: 'Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." In heaven God rules. On earth we pray that God may also bring life, peace, order and justice, but it cannot be done except through many who make themselves channels of God's love. Agnes Sanford likes to use the example of the light bulb. God is the power source, Jesus the transformer, but there will be no light unless we light bulbs are wired to Jesus and ultimately to our triune God. Further, one light can light a room, but if we want to light a house or a city ,we need many bulbs. God has entrusted the earth to us and given us the en-ergy. We still have to understand how creation works and how it is healed, and we need to become ever more fully united with God's crea-tive power. Resurrection Spirituality / "177 NOTES ~ See Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, The Secret Life of Plants (N.Y.: Avon Books, 1973), chapter I. -' Ibid, pp. 24-25. Backster admitted the plant could have picked up guilt feelings in the culprit, but since it was for science he likely had none. 3 See his Healing the Famil\' Tree (London: Sheldon Press, 1984), pp. 59-61. 4 See my "Trinitarian Love as Ground of the Church," Theological Studies, vol. 37, no. 4, Dec. 1976, pp. 649-679 where I develop this argument, and "Healing and Family Spiritual/Emotional Systems," Journal of Christian Healing, vol. 5, no. I (1983), pp. 10-23, where I apply the five stages to healing family systems. 5 See Agnes Sanford, Creation Waits (Plainfield, N.J.: Logos International, 1978) for several of her examples. 6 See W. R. Parker and E. St. Johns Dare, Prayer Can Change Your Life (Prentice- Hall Inc., 1957) where they give results from three self-chosen control groups-- prayer only, therapy only, and prayer and therapy--and found that the prayer and therapy group improved by far the most. and prayer alone the least! They concluded that psychology (understanding) was needed to guide the prayer. Bang! Bang! "Yeah!" The miniature cowboy (or was it a cop? Scandalous play, whichever) said to his tiny victim, who wouldn't stay still, "'When you're really dead, you're dead for life." And I thought of a seed in the ground And a stone rolled away in a garden and "Out of the mouths of babes." Clarita Felhoelter 3105 Lexington Road Louisville, KY 40206 The Third National LCWR-CMSM Assembly Stephen Tutas, S.M. Father Stephen Tutas, S.M., finished his term as President of the Conference of Ma-jor Superiors of Men Religious at the time of the August 1989 national assembly about which he writes. Previously he had served as the Superior General of the So-ciety of Mary (Marianists) in Rome. His address is Marianist Formation Center; 22622 Marianist Way; Cupertino, California 95014, The Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men Religious held a joint national assembly in Lou-isville, Kentucky, August 19-23, 1989. Over one thousand participated in this historic discussion of the future of religious life. What was spe-cial about this meeting was that it was a gathering of leaders of the esti-mated 130,000 women religious and 30,000 men religious at the service of the Church in the USA and beyond. What was also significant was that the discussion of the religious life of the future was placed in the context of our Church and society. It was not an in-house discussion, but a reflection on the future of the world and the Church and the response of religious to these anticipated changes. We viewed the challenging movie "Global Brain" and listened to stimulating presentations and reactions. Besides the women and men re-ligious, Mrs. Donna Hanson spoke from the perspective of a lay person while Archbishops Thomas Kelly and Pio Laghi represented the official local and universal Church. The greatest strength of the assembly, how-ever, was the quality of sharing that took place at the 119 round tables as the participants expressed their thoughts about where they are going-- and where they want to go--as women and men religious at the service of the Church in the USA. 178 The Third National LCWR-CMSM Assembly / 17'9 Charles Reutemann, F.S.C., described the process well: ". not so much of identifying something new but of grasping firmly the signifi-cant strands that have emerged and are emerging over the past twenty-five years . " Reports of the table discussions were gathered and col-lated, leading up to consensus on ten "transformative elements for re-ligious life in the future." And because the most important part of any meeting is what comes afterwards, the last session of the assembly was devoted to a table-sharing of planned follow-up. As Robert Schreiter, C.PP.S., pointed out ". if we are to be faithful to our tasks in lead-ership, and engage in more than a maintenance ministry, then look into the future we must." The assembly was an inspiring experience of looking back with grati-tude and of looking forward with hope, anticipating changes in the world around us. For me, it was another occasion to thank God for the grace of living at this time in history. As the assembly came to a close and I completed my term of service as President of CMSM, I looked ahead to a new phase in my life. I continue a very active ministry with women and men religious of many communities besides my own Marianist com-munity, and I also pray and reflect with many diocesan clergy and laity in the context of spiritual direction and retreats. Accordingly, my first act after the meeting was, as always, to pray and reflect about what I had seen and heard. Then I decided to offer this summary to others. When the tri-conference commission on religious life and ministry met for the first time this past February, two tasks were determined: the clarification of the identity of religious life and the promotion of collabo-rative ministry. Both objectives were emphasized at the LCWR-CMSM National Assembly. In fact, they seemed to be fused into one in the un-derstanding that religious in the future will be recognized precisely by their commitment to collaborative ministry in the local church. In this regard I found the observation made by Charles Reutemann especially significant: "Of special interest today is the phenomenon of lay partici-pation in founding charism., what seems to be demanded today is that bonding between lay and religious be one of a common spirituality, a ba-sic Christian spirituality of mission modified by the unique focusing of a congregation's special founding charism . . . a shared vision focused on a common ministry." To be ecclesial means to b~ collaborative, to have a sense of belong-ing to a larger community, to recognize that each person brings a unique gift to the group as a whole. Religious life, with the emphasis on spe-cific charisms, is built on the realization that each person is gifted and Review for Religious, March-April 1990 that a dynamic community is one that calls forth the gifts of every mem-ber. What religious try to do in their own communities--recognize and affirm giftedness--is applicable to the larger Christian community. Donna Hanson used the image of a relay "where people work together helping each other toward the community's common goal." Relays "re-quire planning, patience, and practice. Relays demand teamwork . . . could we also discover new ways of supporting our team members in their vocations to marriage, the single state, religious life and ordina-tion?" What will be the specific contribution of religious life to the Church of tomorrow? The LCWR-CMSM assembly gave the strongest endorse-ment to three features: women and men religious will be prophetic, con-templative, with a preferential option for the poor. These are not exclu-sive properties of religious. All the baptized are called to belong to a Church that is prophetic, contemplative, with a preferential option for the poor. Donna Hanson called for a new agenda: "We on the relay team must expand our Church agenda from a preoccupation with A, B, C-- abortion, birth control, and celibacy--to a more comprehensive com-mitment to D, E and F-- debt, environment, and family." This church-in-the-world emphasis is very promising for religious life and for the Church as a whole as we move into the twentieth cen-tury. It was good to hear Archbishop Laghi speak about a Church in the USA that is vibrant and still growing, and to hear him echoing the words of Pope John Paul II about religious life at the heart of the mystery of the Church. He reaffirmed the desire of religious to be on the cutting edge and to be prophetic and also challenged religious to find new mea-sures to meet the needs of ttiese new times. While some focus on the de-cline of numbers and the aging of religious, Archbishop Laghi chose to remind the religious that much more remains to be done. The climate of the meeting was remarkably positive, but not unreal-istic. Recognizing that attitudinal change is always difficult, the partici-pants saw the need for intensified ongoing formation as we move into the twentieth century. They also saw that the most significant changes would take place in communities and in the Church through incultura-tion. Change does take place most dramatically through the incorpora-tion of new members. There is need to reach out more effectively to blacks, native Americans, Hispanics, Asiatics, and also to others who are at present marginalized from church and society. But Robert Schrei-ter also issued a warning: "American Catholics' demand for a partici-patory model of leadership in parishes, coupled with the growth of lay The Third National LCWR-CMSM Assembly ministries, will result in a great deal of energy expended on intramural strife over issues of power and authority . There is great tension involved in striving to build a Church that calls forth the gifts of every member. Shared responsibility is a marvelous ideal, but not easily realized. But as I reflect on this, I am encouraged by looking at where we have come from and where we are going today. Our hope for the future is always based on our experience of God at work among us in the past. The tri-conference retirement project is a great ex-ample of ecclesial collaboration. The tri-conference commission on re-ligious life and ministry is a promising new structure in the Church. The ongoing collaboration between LCWR and CMSM regionally and nation-ally is an important witness. Looking forward to the year 2010 means that we are dealing with four five-year plans. Only a great belief in the value of religious life and the power of the Spirit at work among us enables religious to accept the mission to be messengers of hope in the Church today. The assembly statement was a commitment: "We will nourish these transformative elements for religious life in the future." They were ten in number, arranged in the order of priorities. The first three are these: 1. Prophetic Witness Being converted by the example of Jesus and the values of the gos-pel, religious in the year 2010 will serve a prophetic role in church and in society. Living this prophetic witness will include critiquing societal and ecclesial values and structures, calling for systemic change and be-ing converted by the marginalized with whom we serve. 2. Contemplative Attitude Toward Life Religious in the year 2010 will have a contemplative attitude toward all creation. They will be attentive to and motivated by the presence of the sacred in their own inner journeys, in the lives of others, and through-out creation. Recognizing contemplation as a way of life for the whole Church, they will see themselves and their communities as centers of spiri-tuality and the experience of God. 3. Poor and Marginalized Persons as the Focus for Ministry Religious in 2010 will be investing their resources in direct service with and advocacy for structural change on behalf of the poor and margi-nalized. They will minister where others will not go. Their own listen-ing to and learning from the poor and marginalized will shape all aspects of their lives. The other transformative elements, without commentary, are: 4. Spirituality of Wholeness and Global Interconnectedness Review for Religious, March-April 1990 5. Charism and Mission as Sources of Identity 6. Change of the Locus of Power 7. Living with Less 8. Broad-based, Inclusive Communities 9. Understanding Ourselves as Church 10. Developing Interdependence Among People of Diverse Cultures. While all ten are important, the first three received the strongest sup-port from the assembly. Preliminary to being a prophetic witness is the openness to conver-sion. It is interesting that religious are calling themselves to a continu-ous change of attitude. This change will come about as religious reflect on the example of Jesus and the values of the gospel. I found the words of Graciela Volpe, R.S.C.J., very helpful: "By their charismatic and prophetic vocati6n, religious men and women are called to capture and interpret the signs of the times, the demands of God in each historical moment. This requires letting oneself be led by the Spirit, opening to the Spirit of God, an entrance on the road of discernment, a humble and sin-cere search for the call of God in each situation in the complexity of events. ' ' It is also interesting to note the closing words of the first transfor-mative element. People are converted not only by meditating on the gos-pel, but also by associating with the marginalized with whom they serve. In the third transformative element, we are reminded that listening to and learning from the poor and the marginalized will shape all aspects of our lives. Many of us are just beginning to learn what this means. But as any-one learns and shares, others in the community also learn. Perhaps this is the most striking feature of this transformative ele-ment and in fact of all the priorities, namely, that being prophetic is not something peculiar to religious life. The entire Church is called to be pro-phetic. Religious recognize that they are called to contribute their aware-ness of what it means to be prophetic. Their mission is to lead by exam-ple. This is what it means to be on the cutting edge. Religious are called to be outspoken in word and in lifestyle. This call to be prophetic prompts two basic questions: How do we critique societal--and ecclesial--values and structures? How do we call for and facilitate systemic change? Charles Reutemann commented: "As we look at religious life, in its lifestyle and varied ministries, and the spirituality which motivates it, can we say that we need more than ever to be prophetic, to continue to offer a radical criticism of the social and political injustices in our society, in housing, schooling, racism, and so The Third National LCWR-CMSM Assembly / "11~3 forth, and to bring a contemporary vision of the beatitudes and gospel message that will energize a confused and disheartened people?" Being prophetic goes hand in hand with being contemplative. It is important to note that the contemplative attitude we want to develop as religious communities and as Church is toward all creation. We see the need to step back from contemporary activism even while being intensely apostolic. We need to be attentive to the presence of the sacred first of all in our own journeys, and then in the lives of others. As we see God at work in our own lives, we are able to see God at work in the lives of others. Our awareness of how God is at work among us is the key to both ministry and community. Contemplation is a way of life for the entire Church. But religious, individually and corporately, are called to be centers of spirituality in the Church and to be expert in being able to share the experience of God. Once again we see that religious life in the future is to be characterized not so much by what religious do, as by how religious live. In being prophetic and contemplative, religious are inspired to reach out to the poor and to the marginalized. This will become more and more the focus of ministry. Graciela Volpe reminded us of the assertion of Le-onardo Boff: "A Copernican Revolution has been produced in the Church, whose.significance goes beyond the Latin American ecclesial context, and concerns the universal Church. This option signifies the most important pastoral-theological transformation which has occurred since the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. With it a new socio-historical place is defined, from which the Church wishes to be present in society and construct herself, namely, in the midst of the poor, the new subjects of history." But Graciela also reminded us that ". the option for the poor is being viewed with suspicion, obstacles are be-ing put in its way and sometimes it is condemned. The Christian base communities begin not to be trusted. A surge of neo-conservatism is be-ing felt within our Church." While the Christian community must be concerned about everyone, religious serve to remind the Church not to forget the poor and the margi-nalized. I found it especially challenging to note that religious in the fu-ture will minister where others will not go! Direct service with the poor and advocacy of structural change on behalf of the poor are already be-coming more and more characteristic of contemporary religious life. Again, Graciela Volpe shared her experience in commenting that "this mission of Jesus was eminently concrete. Jesus lived it in a conflic-tual context, fighting against sin and for the human person, especially 11~4 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 the poor. To follow Jesus today implies for us the consciousness that we also are supposed to live his mission in concrete historical situations, cer-tainly conflictual ones, 'in an ongoing struggle against sin which mani-fests itself in concrete political, economic, and social structures." While Robert Schreiter challenged us with the observation that "communities now have much rhetoric about the poor, but generally pursue a middle-class lifestyle" Charles Reutemann rightly pointed out that "it would be impossible to have lived religious life for the past twenty years with-out being aware of the intense focusing on the concerns of the poor, the option for the poor." The Church of tomorrow cannot be exclusive or closed. It must be recognized as compassionate and welcoming. The role of religious life is to help build a Church that calls forth the gifts of every member, a Church which recognizes the potential and actual giftedness of every mem-ber, a Church which continually restates the universal call to holiness and mission, a Church which gathers together God's sons and daughters as co-disciples. INCARNATION While sage and sorcerer Sought salvation in words, And high priests strove in blood To reverse man's age-old curse, While from scruples' towers Flagellant and Pharisee Laid siege to Paradise, You remade us from a woman, Formed of her flesh, instead of dust, No longer mere breath and image, But Your very Self at her "Fiat." Kathleen T. Choi 1706 Walanuenue Ave. Hilo, Hawaii 96720 Religious Life Spirituality in the Year 2010 Charles Reutemann, F.S.C. Brother Charles Reutemann, F.S.C., is a de La Salle Brother of the New York prov-ince. He currently serves as a staff member of the Center for Spirituality and Justice in Bronx, New York, as adjunct professor in spirituality and spiritual direction at the Maryknoll School of Theology, and spiritual director at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York. For sixteen years he had been director of the Sangre de Cristo Renewal Center in Sante Fe, New Mexico. His address is St. Joseph's Seminary: Dunwoodie; Yonkers, New York 10704. When first approached to share some reflections on religious life at this year's LCWR/CMSM assembly, the year 2010 was proposed as a con-text for describing what religious life might look like in the foreseeable future. It was an attractive image, 2010, arbitrary but just far enough ahead to make one wonder. The program theme has since been descrip-tively changed to "tradition and transformation in religious life," but I have the feeling that the substance is the same: what will things look like twenty years down the road, as we move through present traditions and experiences? In targeting 2010 we recognize that the changes shall not happen over-night, nor in 2009, but that the future is already germinating and hap-pening now. Would it be correct then to say that since we now seem to be in a settling out, settling down, though still transitional period of re-ligious life, it would be helpful to identify and further describe the main trends and movements ihat are presently pro~,oking and energizing us so that we might embrace them in greater depth and with more enthusiasm? Is it a question then not so much of identifying something new but of graspingfirmly the significant strands that have emerged and are emerg- 185 Review for Religious, March-April 1990 ing over the past twenty-five years, and see if we can continue to weave them integratively into a religious life experience that will support and enhance the evolving Church in its quest for the kingdom? "Spirituality" would seem to be an "in" word today: articles, books, seminars, institutes--all are using the word repeatedly and in a variety of ways. Somehow I have the feeling that underneath its repeated use there are two strong movements: the quest for interiority and the con-tinuing quest for identity. In addition, I find it difficult to locate any one definition of spirituality that applies to all of its uses. Thus, for our pur-poses and partially because of my own bent, I should like to settle for a definition that focuses on the experiential, that is, what it feels like from within, as well as something that is applicable to all situations, re-gardless of different belief systems and religious responses. Hence, I would describe spirituality as a kind of mind-set, or a heart/mind-set, or if you are familiar with the skill of focusing, a body-sense/heart/mind-set that focuses a person's energies as he or she receives, reflects on, judges, and acts out life's responses in light of the transcendent. Spiri-tuality is thus a kind of integrative orientation which penetrates and chan-nels energies, as a person seeks for meaning and lives out life's choices. Except for the totally fragmented person, most of us function out of some spirituality in a good part of our conscious moments, though we may not be actively aware of that. Again, what is said of the individual may be said of the collectivity: groups function out of a spirituality, a heart/mind-set orientation as collectively they seek for meaning and live out life's choices with some awareness of the transcendent. A helpful metaphor for an experienced spirituality would be that of a large cable of many copper strands through which an electrical current flows. For the Christian, and afortiori, for the religious, this electrical current can be identified as the Holy Spirit, or the grace of Jesus, or the grace of God--whichever term one feels most comfortable with. In any case, the electrical current is a power source beyond the self; yet it be-longs to the self in freedom to accede to, impede, or modify the flow of this current. In such a metaphor for spirituality, the electrical current is absolutely indispensable; yet it is the copper cable and its strands that need to occupy our attention as we seek to describe religious life spiritu-ality in the year 2010, for all of us have some responsibility for that. I see the cable as having as many as eight identifiable strands sometimes overlapping through which the current of God's grace is presently form-ing the expression of religious life. I would name them as: founding charism strand, holistic strand, the experience of God strand, dealing Religious Life Spirituality with impasse strand, prophetic strand, conversion strand, feminine prin-ciple strand, and ministry strand. A brief description of each follows. The Founding Charism Strand By now, many initiatives have been taken by each religious group-ing to reappropriate its founding charism. Serious scientific research has uncovered the language, thought-patterns, and experiences of the foun-der and his or her early companions. Based upon this, there has been an attempt to re-say the rule, the constitutions, methods of governance, and mission statement. Through questionnaire, convocation, document, and chapter meeting, practical steps have been taken to involve the total mem-bership in valuing the charism, in recognizing it in its present lived ex-perience, and in re-appropriating it more enthusiastically as an histori-cal ideal for the present and the future. Underneath, of course, there is the strong conviction that it is God's Holy Spirit who has created the charism and who now invites us to a new appropriation. Yet there remains a challenge: we need to continue to demytholo-gize the founding charism by putting it into contemporary thought-form, imagery, and applicability, even as we must recognize that the charism itself has not completed its growth, for it is a living reality that can be ever transmuted while still retaining its original identity. Reli-gious are not meant to be stamped-out copies of an historically-conditioned founder, but possessors of his or her charism that is rooted in an initial gift which flowers in new ways and new relevances. For us, of special interest today is the phenomenon of lay participation in our founding charism. Lay collaboration is being redefined into more than a shared participation in the good works of religious, or a prayerful bond-ing of common aspirations. What is being demanded today is that the bond between lay and religious be rooted in a common spirituality, a ba-sic Christian spirituality of mission modified by that unique focusing of a congregation's special founding charism. Today and into the future we shall speak of creating Lasallian, Franciscan, Marian families; but this will have to be rooted in a mutually shared spirituality of mission with its unique focus flowing from the founder's gift. In lay-religious collabo-ration today there are no firsts and seconds, but a shared vision focused on a common ministry. And so, this founding charism strand needs fur-ther attention as the numbers of religious lessen and lay-religious col-laborators increase. The Holistie Strand Last February, I was part of a group of three hundred who attended "1111~ / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 a seminar on American Spirituality at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, California. While there, I noticed an announcement on the bulletin board that said there was a resident sister who was available to give a massage, for a fee. I have never had a massage, and regretted that I could not work it into my seminar schedule. But it did seem appropriate: spirituality with massage. Is this what holistic spirituality is all about?--"holistic"-- again, a much-used word, but one that attempts to say that body and spirit need equal attention, that the cultivation of the whole person comes about through an exciting multiplicity of experiences that leads to nature/ person integrity. Personally, I like to say that "holistic" is not just an integrated harmony of body and spirit, but that it includes a felt experi-ence of God, that the experience of self (body-spirit) in a developmental growthful way is also a God-experience, something that happens simul-taneously. Karl Rahner seems to suggest this when he speaks of the uni-versality of religious experiences in ordinary happenings. Should this not incline us to want to grow more holistically?. For then, God would not be thought of as some kind of "adversary," standing over and above the self, calling the individual to some better self, but as a Presence within, calling a self that is desirable (as Sebastian Moore would say) to further growth and development. Becoming one with the self (body/ spirit) is becoming one with God. Spirituality and massage do go to-gether. A fully-embraced holistic strand within spirituality opens the door to a healthy receiving and adapting of psychology in its theories and popu-larized processes. Self-knowledge and self-acceptance are essential to healthy spirituality, and modern psychology offers extraordinary help in becoming the holistic self. A rapid glance at the prospectus of extended renewal programs offered to religious today show such things as: jour-naling, dream analysis, enneagram, focusing, Myers Briggs interpreta-tion, and so forth--all tools for self-knowledge and integration. Added to this are the relational helps: skills for collaboration and community-building, communication skills, and the arts of relating. Then there are the healing arts which use music, massage, color, fiber, and clay. Is all of this not a strand of a spirituality of the present into the future, a mod-erated, integrated cultivation of body-spirit? Tennyson's lines from Ulys-ses might well signal the motivation: I am a part of all that i have met. Yet all experience is an arch where-thro" Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, Religious Life SpiritualiO, / 189 To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho" to breathe were life. The Experience of God Strand (a balance to the holistic strand!) By title, this strand of religious life spirituality may seem to be the most obvious. There can be several differing theologies of what reli-gious life is all about, but there's no arguing with its name: "re-ligious"-- bound back to God. God is the central agenda, God is the enough, and, as the Constitution on the Church insists, the religious is centered on God and "the more." We have heard it many times: serv-ice and doing are essential for religious; but it is the "being," the wit-nessing to the central agenda that God is and that God cares in the immediacy of an exciting and troublesome world--that is what religious are all about. And yet, to achieve that kind of presencing, religious can-not just be, they have to be nourished by a lively, ongoing experience bf God. Here, the key word is "experience": do we really believe that God is extraordinarily near in the ordinary, in the daily, in the moment? If so, where are the happenings, the daily experiences in life where we can say: here! God is affirming, inviting, scolding, caring? If Elizabeth Barrett Browning can say to her beloved "how do I love thee? let me count the ways," should that not also be the language of the religious who is a lover? Let me count the ways, O Lord, that you come to me today and I to you. Our Judaeo-Christian God is a passionate, personal God, who invites to a relationship, but who also exacts a relationship and a passionate response. Obviously, prayer, prayerful awareness, is cen-tral to a "counting of the ways," a deliberate acknowledging of the re-lationship. Prayer is not an end in itself, nor is it a conjuring act, though that belongs, of course. Prayer at its core is "a counting of the ways," a saying "yes" in a fumbling, inadequate way to the intermittently ex-perienced God. In our times, there have been all kinds of development of the prayer response: contemplative centers, prayer workshops, experiments with methodologies, books. Yet, with all of this, it remains important that we be not distracted from the central fact: God is ever near, wiping away the tear, suffering with us, helping us to taste and see in the immediacy of our lives. Cultivating an awareness of God's presence is our chief re-sponse. That, too, is the central girl that spiritual directors can be for oth-ers: a hungry awareness of this passionate God. Very much part of the "experience of God" strand, though it could be given separate treatment, is our focus on the human Jesus. I have al-ways felt that one of the most significant statements in that remarkable 190 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 book, Shaping the Coming Age of Religious L(fe, by Cada, Fitz, and oth-ers, is this: "One of the major prerequisites for the movement of a re-ligious community from a time of search and darkness to that of creat-ing a transformed community is the personal transformation among a significant number of people in the community . The most striking feature of this metanoia is a new (in the sense of deep, broader, and so forth) relationship to the person of Jesus and the gospel message of the kingdom." Experiencing Jesus in his humanity has a special attraction for our era which values the human and seeks to minister to its broken-ness. Today, Christology has fed into this contemporary longing with many remarkable studies: and belief in a resurrected human Jesus, who has gone before us and who is now let loose in our world as a healing, ministering presence, is for many a source of great hope. I would think that an ideal spirituality of 2010 would include a lively love affair with the person of Jesus in which through the concrete instances of his his-torical life we would penetrate his mind and heart and thus stretch back into the heart, mind, and feelings of our very God. God may be inex-haustible mystery, but divinity does not have to be mysterious--there is Jesus. The Dealing with Impasse Strand We do not have to have lived long to be convinced that life is filled with impasse situations: rejections, oppression, exploitation, and suffer-ing bear a multitude of names and disguises. Spiritual directors hear from their directees an endless litany of these darkness experiences, and the pain and confusion which they cause. Also, if our social critics and art-ists are any gauge, what happens to the individual is happening on the worldwide stage of society where drugs, local wars, forced deportation, the funneling of natural resources for weapons of destruction, the stran-gulation of initiative by business conglomerates, are creating societal im-passe in the social, political, and economic spheres. Just as "figuring a way out" is no longer an option for the individual in impasse, rational planning by societies seems less and less feasible. Social institutions are becoming paralyzed by never-ending impasse situations. What kind of spirituality is best able to deal with impasse? Once again, we probably know the answers, but it may be helpful to spell them out and thus fashion another strand of a wholesome religious life spiri-tuality. Earlier this summer, while Pope John Paul was visiting Norway, a country which has one of the highest p~r capita incomes in the world, one 28-year old student was interviewed as saying: "We have every-thing, yet something is missing in our lives, something spiritual. So Religious Life Spirituality many things happen that you cannot explain. We often talk about this at our university." Impasse. The Holy Father himself made this com-ment: "Science and technology, like the economic life they generate, cannot of themselves explain, much less eliminate, evil, suffering, and death." Impasse. The reality is that material self-sufficiency and politi-cal planning, so terribly necessary for all, cannot of themselves resolve deep personal and societal impasse--something which even liberation theologians are coming more and more to realize. Here in America, we have experimented extensively with the self-help techniques of psychology as being able to bring a person or a group through impasse. Gail Sheehy writes of the victorious personality, the survivor who by self-trust, flexibility, and the assistance of a mentor is able to overcome the cataclysmic effects of being a boat-person, a sur-vivor of the holocaust, a castaway from a disintegrated family. Yet even here, psychology does not seem to be enough--another level has to be touched to resolve impasse. Witness the Cambodian refugee, whom Miss Sheehy cites as a victorious personality, who says: "I started thinking, 'maybe God has a plan for me.' If I didn't think that way I would have given up so many times." Are self-help insights and techniques enough to confront impasse? What then? Allowing for the need of economic and political plan-ning, as well as the need for psychological self-awareness, would it not be true to say that the day-to-day impasse situations of our lives can only be met by Christian reflection: "Maybe God has a plan for me"? Here we touch upon experienced faith in a contemplative mode. This is not so much a belief system as it is a simple awareness that "God chooses what is foolish in the world to shame the wise and what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (! Co 1:27). God has a plan for me. Such an awareness rests in the paradox of nothingness and its seeming im-passe. In such awareness of darkness before the Lord, individuals and groups, moved by faith, can quietly exclaim: "I am crucified with Christ--but I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me" (Ga 2:20). Maybe God has a plan for me, as I rest in the crucified Christ. A spirituality of the present into the future needs very much to make creative space for contemplative moments where impasse is accepted and reflected on-- gone through contemplatively. Only then can there be a flowering of hope that will nourish a utopian praxis in the very face of such impasse. The Prophetic Strand Although history tells us that there have always been prophets, we seem to be needing them more today than in our remembered past. Is it 199 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 because of the extraordinary changes and the accelerated rate of change that we find we need someone to tell us what this means and where it is all going? Is it also because, as never before, the media is able to re-veal to us the tragedies and unending travail of so many of the world's inhabitants? Planet earth,, though spectacularly beautiful from a distant moon walk, is pock-marked and diseased when looked at closely--the media has shown us this. We can no longer afford to "bring on the clowns" to help us forget; rather, we find we need prophets, truth-tellers, to remind us that many on planet earth can never be fully human, fully alive; we need truth-tellers, prophets, to help us mourn injustice, and to show us by lifestyle and ministry how to offer the poor some uto-pian hope and an alternative vision. We religious: are we meant to be prophets in our own culture? We are accustomed to describe ourselves as being on the cutting edge, as be-ing in the world but not of it, belonging but not entrapped, always strug-gling for justice and the better way. Certainly, scriptural prophets were on the cutting edge of their cultures, belonging to the scene but refusing to be corrupted by it. Certainly, too, our founders and foundresses and early associates were on the cutting edge, prophets in their culture. Is it part of our vocation then to be prophetic in a special way, and will it become even more evident and necessary as we reappropriate in depth our founding charism? Will it be a clear mark of the refounded religious group that, in both lifestyle and ministries, there will be significant mourn-ing and denouncing of injustice in the marginalized as well as the offer-ing of clear alternatives for social betterment? It is remarkable how Walter Brueggemann's book on The Prophetic Imagination has captured the thinking of many who today are writing about religious life! I join them as I add these thoughts. Brueggemann points out that anyone who uses power, particularly in bureaucratic re-ligion and religious life, tends to develop "a royal consciousness," that is, a fixated omniscient view that power-holders are automatically the cus-todians of God's power, and hence know best how to control structures and limit dissent. A royal consciousness mentality loves law and order, and exalts the status quo. A royal consciousness mentality is forced to stifle creativity, encourage passivity, and consequently fosters fear and mistrust. But, Brueggemann says, the oppression goes just so far; his-tory reveals that when the very stones are crying out, God breaks through and overthrows the control by raising up prophets. Andthe prophets play two roles: they radically criticize existing inequities, not so much as a social crusade or in strident indignation but in grief and lament, a thren- Religious Life Spirituality ody of woe. And secondly, the prophets provide alternative visions that penetrate the numbness of despair and give energy for opening up new paths. Does Brueggemann's insight speak to religious life today? By life-style and ministries are we being called to a more visible prophetic spiri-tuality that will enable us to offer radical criticism in housing, school-ing, job opportunities, religious expression, medical care, and a host of other social and political structures, and continue to bring a contempo-rary vision of the beatitudes and gospel message that can truly energize a confused and disheartened people? The ways and means of prophetic expression will vary: we may be serving as individual catalysts rather than as groups, we may be creating communities rather than living in com-munity, and so on; but prophecy must certainly be part of religious life spirituality in 2010. The Conversion Strand In 2 Corinthians Paul writes: "All of us gazing on the Lord's glory with unveiled faces, are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image by the Lord who is Spirit." For the Christian, the process of transformation or conversion entails a lifelong focusing on the face of Christ and an active surrender to the Lord who is Spirit. Conversion is one of those strands of spirituality that everyone recognizes as essen-tial. Mohandas Gandhi rues that he is still unconverted: "It is an unbro-ken torture to me," he says, "that I am still so far from him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am." Thomas Merton, on what was to be the last day of his Asian jour-ney exclaims: "What is essential . . . is not embedded in buildings, is not embedded in clothing, is not necessarily embedded even in a rule. It is somewhere along the line of something deeper than a rule. It is con-cerned with this business of total inner transformation." Conversion. The parameters of Merton's 1968 perceptions of religious life may have changed, but the business of total inner transformation remains a formi-dable goal for all religious. Property can be bought and sold, garb can undergo many modifications, rules can be simplified and redirected; but that firm decision with its appropriate means whereby we place ourselves on the path of Jesus remains the never-ending challenge. Conversion of individuals, of small communities, and of the total grouping remains a basic project in religious life. Two observations about conversion and spirituality. First, there is de-veloping a new kind of leader in the Church. Inasmuch as social con-cern about armaments, the economics of structural poverty, refugees, ecol- 194 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 ogy, the homeless, and so forth, have high priority in the consciences of Church and society, people are looking to leaders who can deal ef-fectively with such concerns. And, more often than not, the Church lead-ers who are rising up to work with them are indiscriminately sister, priest, brother, lay person, bishop; but what is common to them all is that each has undergone a personal conversion, a conversion provoked by some kind of renewal experience--a program, charismatic prayer, an AA experience, some social justice involvement that helpfully trauma-tized-- and through this experience or series of events each has found an-swers to very real and very personal questions about their lives and their ministry to others. "What they have in common," Kevin O'Rourke says in a Commonweal article, "is not ideological; it is experiential, an ex-perience of conversion and commitment. And, they are becoming the lead-ers in the American Church; they are spearheading the move to involve the Church in (struggling) with nuclear disarmament, capitalism, and third world issues." Is the religious of the future being invited to a lead-ership in a variety of ministries, a leadership that demands a spirituality of radical conversion? My second observation about conversion is that it seems it must be an across-the-board experience. Bernard Lonergan, James Fowler, a host of writers in recent issues of The Way magazine, all insist that conver-sion goes well beyond our moral responses. Conversion must affect the integration of our emotions and feelings, the rectitude of our thinking, the purifying of our images of God, the maturity and depth of our reli-gious enthusiasms--and all of this accompanied by that inner critical sense, discernment if you will, by which we pay attention to the subtle movements of our desires, attitudes, indecisions. A spirituality of the fu-ture geared towards total inner transformation must be accompanied by Buddhist awareness, or what Hemingway crudely called "a built-in crap detector." Only then will pure passionate energy be released and sim-plicity achieved. The Feminine Principle Strand Of the eight strands, the one about which I feel the least secure is what I am calling "the feminine principle strand." My insecurity comes not from a.lack of conviction about the importance of this strand--far from that. Rather, it is rooted in my own limited.knowledge and my be-lief that only a woman can adequately speak to the subject. Neverthe-less, something must be said. It would be impossible to have lived religious life for the past twenty years without being aware of the intense focusing on the concerns of the Religious Life Spirituality poor, the option for the poor. Likewise it would be impossible to have lived religious life in the same span of time without being aware of a simi-lar intense awareness of the feminine in Church and society, especially as that touches upon the demands of justice for women. These two con-cerns have marched along together, principally because the claims of jus-tice are common to each, but also, I think, because women, and relig-ious women in particular, have been in the forefront of succoring the poor through individual and group initiative. The claims of justice un-derlie every enterprise of religious life ministry. But it is the feminine and justice--an understanding of, respect for, and espousal of--that I feel must color our spiritual vision in the future. Once again, allow me to reduce my observations to two specific ar-eas. Most of us now accept the anima-animus duality of Jungian analy-sis and recognize that both operate within us. Likewise, most of us are probably still struggling to work out the implications of this distinction as we strive for wholeness. For example, speaking for myself, I sub-scribe to the theory that each man needs to go from his socialized mas-culine self, to his feminine self, and then to his deep masculine self, if he is to complete the journey of personal integrity. The same would ob-tain for woman: from the socialized feminine self, to the masculine self, to the deep feminine self, and thus to integrity. But, in a world that is patriarchal in language, symbol, and structure, much has to be overcome; the feminine needs to be underscored, both for the man and the woman. The gifts and qualities of the feminine are the ones that need to be ap-preciated and actively endorsed. We know those feminine qualities well: the ability to tap into and relate experience, the ability to be in touch with feelings and to articulate them in detail, the gift of making friendships that mature, the gift of a special bonding with the earth, for holding it sacred and walking on it gently. All these are specifically feminine quali-ties and gifts, and I would see our cultivating them as a consciously-chosen goal in a spirituality of the future. My second observation would have to come under the heading of "woman and justice"--a vast topic, but one that pertains to every di-mension of society and church. Simply put, the goal may best be ex-pressed in the words of Carolyn Osiek in her book Beyond Anger where she writes: "What we need is a transformation of patriarchy into a dis-cipleship of equals." A discipleship of equals; yes, that's it, and it would involve an ongoing conversion of attitude and action that must affect lan-guage, symbol, structure, and relationship. As part of a spirituality, this would mean an alert conscientization, a willful desire for justice in a spe- Review for Religious, March-April 1990 cific realm. A spirituality of the future must include a feminine princi-ple strand that addresses at least these two specific areas. The Ministry Strand "Go out to all the world and tell the good news." That is the com-mand. At the beginning ofevery religious congregation there was always some human need that cried out for relief, some opportunity for bring-ing the gospel message and Jesus to the marginalized. Founding groups and we their followers continue to believe that we are called by the Holy Spirit to be involved in the cause of Jesus through love of neighbor and a concern for justice. Of all the strands of religious life spirituality this has to be the most central and dominative: ministry rooted in faith and love that seeks justice. For me, the best contemporary expression of this goal was spoken by Pope John Paul II to a gathering of religious superiors: "The central conviction for meaningful renewal of a religious group lies in a deep-seated sense of mission for each individual and within the group. More than contemporary abstract social and psychological models, your for-mation programs for new members and for old, your community struc-tures of government and lifestyle will be well-ordered and sharpened when they are infused by a contemporary understanding and feeling for the group's historically-derived mission . Mission fires the idealism of the young and old alike. Mission calls us to pay the price, to bear the burden, to suffer pain, loneliness, and loss. Mission remains at the heart of the active apostolic vocation." If this be so, as we look into the future, we may want to define and evaluate our spirituality of mission according to three factors which have special meaning for today. First, the works of ministry. To what extent are the present works of our congregations the legitimate offspring of the founding charism? As a guide to this evaluation, it may be more impor-tant to gauge the religious zeal with which the ministries are being pur-sued, rather than their specific nature. Paul's words in 2 Timothy seem appropriate: "I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God bestowed when my hands were laid on you. The Spirit that God has given us is no cowardly spirit but rather one that makes us strong, loving, and wise" (2 Tm 1:6-7). Genuine ministry will always have a driven quality about it. Secondly, although all works of justice attract Christian ministry, our present technological society calls us to give special attention to struc-tural justice. Our socio-political-economic institutions and systems fre-quently oppress in a nameless, faceless way. We will not be able to con- Religious Life Spirituality / "197 front this unless our vision sees three and not just two dimensions to hu-man existence: the individual, the inter-personal and the public or so-cietal. How often, for example, in working for change through minis-try, have we focused on structures: personal, community, business, neigh-borhood, and asked: are these structures oppressive or life-giving? am I contributing to their power? A spirituality for ministry today must in-corporate a much clearer and more sensitive awareness of structures and their power if justice is to be achieved. Thirdly, our world has gotten smaller and more cohesive. United na-tions, one world, global village, planet earth are the terms we use, and our ministry responsibility needs to reflect that. Consequently, I would see that the ministry strand of religious life spirituality would have a global and ecological orientation that would make us concerned citizens that can pass beyond geographical boundary and language as we bring Christian outreach to all people and to the earth itself. Will "missionar-ies" be a special category in religious congregations of the future, or will all of us be part of that? A Final Word Where can we go with this? If I myself were reading this presenta-tion and found myself agreeing with some of it, and wanted to take some action, I think I would first sift the word "spirituality": is it a signifi-cant operative reality, and if so, what is its power and function within religious life? Depending on the answer to that, there is the matter of defi-nition: what is religious life spirituality and is there a generic understand-ing that cuts across congregational differences? Next, there is the image of the cable and its strands: are there identi-fiable patterns, movements, elements that we are being called to live out as religious today and into the future? If so, is it helpful to tick them off in some form of completeness/incompleteness, and can we then match these with our own congregational documentation (rules, mission state-ment, and so forth) and major endeavors (ministries, lifestyle, and other creative involvement), so that we might see where we are on the living chart of contemporary religious life? In other words, are we ready for some kind of self-evaluation as we move towards 2010? Following that, I should think a number of possibilities would de-velop: As a first (1) possibility, after a careful critique of our congrega-tional group, there might be cause to have a major celebration, a convo-cation or something similar, where the message would be: "We are on the right track; let us continue, though we might want to give some spe-cial consideration to such and such a strand. A second (2) possibility "191~ / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 might be the recognition that, although our congregational group has an intellectual or "documentary" grasp of these major strands, we, the rank and file, do not own them sufficiently in our lived experience, and we need to devise further strategies to address that. A third (3) pos-sibility, though I doubt it exists, is that our congregational group has not yet adequately come to an intellectual awareness of the import of these strands in religious life today. And so, we come back to our starting point: what will religious life spirituality look like in the year 2010, and what can we do about it now? Canticle To I Am The splendor of Your love is dazzling winter sunlight upon drifts of snow frozen by the frosts. At other times, it has the deep roar of immense waves crashing against red granite rocks which have patiently withstood the continuous onslaught of the sea. Also, it has the tranquillity of a street puddle made by the rain. Such a place can catch countless reflections of skyscrapers, the intense blue of a child's inquisitive.eyes. Your love is the song of a red cardinal telling the world that spring has come. Brother Richard Heatley, F.S.C. De La Salle Centre 45 Oaklands Avenue Toronto, Ontario M4V 2E4, Canada From CMSW to LCWR: A Story of Birth and Transformation Lora Ann Quihonez, C.D.P. and Mary Daniel Turner, S.N.D. de N. Sister Lora Ann Quifionez, C.D.P., is a former executive director of the Leader-ship Conference of Women Religious. She served as a member of the general coun-cil of the Sisters of Divine Providence of San Antonio, Texas. Sister Mary Daniel Turner, S.N,D. de N., is also a former executive director of the LCWR. She served as president of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. They are currently co-authoring a book on the renewal of religious life in the United States. They may be addressed at 1319 Floral Street, N.W.: Washington, D.C. 20012. This article is based primarily on sources in the archives of the Dominican Sis-ters, Adrian, Michigan; of the Sisters of Loretto, Nerinx, Kentucky: and of the Lead-ership Conference of Women Religious. The authors have constructed chronologi-cal sequences and the details of events from correspondence, minutes, proceedings of assemblies, internal reports, and a few in-house publications of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (Conference of Major Superiors of Women). The dates of the papers consulted fall within the years cited in the article. That the last twenty-five years have witnessed marked changes in Ameri-can Catholicism and that women religious have been prominent actors in the change process are evident. From children and daughters of the Church to women and partners in the mission of the Church, from ob-servers of to active participants in church-world affairs, and from insti-tutional church workers to initiators of and collaborators in multiple serv-ices, women religious of the United States, setting out from a stable and precisely-defined state of consecration, have journeyed to a less secure, and more expanded life of mission. There are many lenses through which we could examine this journey. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)--founded as the Conference of Major Superiors of Women (CMSW)--however, offers a unique lens through which to view 199 200 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 the coming-of-age of American women religious. ~ Composed of the chief officers of congregations of women religious, the conference is a juridically-recognized body in the Church, having of-ficial status with the Vatican and the American hierarchy. The major su-periors, as the designated leaders of their congregations, give priority to their communities, and issues of meaning and ultimate direction engage their energies. Joining with their peers in the conference, they are in a privileged position to probe and analyze issues. Moreover, since their roles encourage the promotion of change consonant with the mission of the Church and their respective charisms, they possess a certain degree of moral authority to consider common responses to the claims of church and world on their resources. Two events--the founding of the conference in 1956 and its verita-ble refounding in 1971--illuminate the transformation which occurred among the leaders of congregations of women religious within a span of twelve years, a metamorphosis not unlike the one among the sisters of the United States. These events reveal women of their times who carried out their responsibilities from very differing worldviews. This difference, graphically captured in their contrasting perceptions of religious life, is clearly evident in the records of the founding and the refounding of the conference. For the founders of the conference, consecration to God, the pursuit of personal holiness, and separation from the world were the essential elements of religious life. They understood their vocation as a call to a "state of perfection," whose legitimacy came from ecclesiastical author-ity. Religious were "religious" first and foremost; apostolic works were secondary, mere "nets" for saving souls. Corporate institutional ser-vices, however, ensured their collective and public identity. Stability, cer-titude, and order marked this way of life; regular observance distin-guished the "good sister." The place and the role of religious in church and world were secure and privileged. The statutes drafted at the time of the founding of CMSW simply reflected this theological perspective and mirrored the corporate self-understanding of the major superiors in the 1950s. Many of the major superiors of the late ! 960s and early i 970s, how-ever, imaged religious life not so much as a state within a "perfect so-ciety" but as a reality rooted in the Gospel, organized around and for the mission of the Church and shaped in history through the Spirit-inspired insights of persons living it. The work on the conference bylaws at the time of reorganization made apparent that leaders of women's con- From CMSW to LCWR / 201 gregations were refashioning their religious identity and reordering their place in the Church. Appreciating the universal call to holiness of all bap-tized persons espoused by Vatican II, these women searched for a cor-porate self-definition that would simultaneously speak to the commonly-shared vocation of all Christians and describe religious life as a distinct, but not more perfect, response to the Gospel. For a significant number of these leaders, personal holiness and the transformation of society were inextricably related. They no longer judged the world as alien territory; it was a locus of the holy. No longer secondary, works were constitutive of an apostolic life. They were not to be determined by a priori definitions of appropriate "religious" ac-tivities nor confined solely to corporate institutional commitments. World realities attested to needs and services were to be responsive to them. The mission of the Church, not regular observance, was the or-ganic principle of an apostolic religious life. In contrasting the members' work on the CMSW statutes and on the LCWR bylaws, we see that these differences determined the purpose and character of the conference. Conference of Major Superiors of Women (CMSW) 1. Genesis The story of the founding is an account of a church movement with its beginnings in post-World War II Europe and its inspiration in the call of Pius XII for "aggiornamento" in and collaboration among religious institutes. The movement, deriving its direction from Vatican officials, gaining momentum through the international congresses and national meetings of religious held in the fifties, ultimately became institutional-ized because of the persuasive moral power of Vatican officials and the allegiance of American women religious to church authorities. 2. Organizing the Conference. In 1952 Valerio Cardinal Valeri, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Religious (SCR), appointed a committee of seven women to help plan the first national congress of religious of the United States. In April, 1958, he asked this same body to organize, in consultation with the ma-jor superiors of men, a national conference of religious in the United States. Writing to Mother Gerald Barry, O.P., superior general of the Dominicans (Adrian, Michigan), chair of the organizing committee, Val-eri states that the purpose of national conferences "is precisely to en-able those who understand most intimately the particular needs and con-ditions of their own country or area to provide for those needs by means 902 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 best adapted to their situation" (Oct. 9, 1958). These women, however, saw no need for a conference because organizations like the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the National Catholic Education Associa-tion, and the Catholic Hospital Association were ably serving com-munities in matters related to apostolic works. Besides, the need for "ag-giornamento" was not a felt-experience in the United States, where works were thriving, vocations abounded, and religious life seemed sta-ble. Nevertheless, if the Holy Father wanted such an organization, these women could be counted on to help realize his dream. They knew that the major superiors of the United States, "obedient children" and daugh-ters of the Church, would obey the wishes of the Sovereign Pontiff. Within six months (April--November, 1956) the Committee had drafted statutes, secured SCR approval for their work, orchestrated a na-tional assembly of major superiors, and set in motion a process for es-tablishing a conference. In doing their task, they relied heavily on the statutes of the newly-formed Canadian Religious Conference, which included both women and men; they also took quite seriously the directive of Valeri to structure national conferences according to local needs. Thus, although the SCR assumed that there would be a single conference for women and men, the Sisters' Committee took the view that the needs and problems of relig-ious women and religious priests were quite different. They saw a sepa-rate conference for women as a practical necessity: women must orga-nize and act on their own behalf. (No references were made to religious brothers in these early discussions!) Convinced as they were that other national organizations compe-tently advised women religious in matters pertaining to health, educa-tion, welfare, and "foreign missions," the organizing committee at-tached less importance to establishing a national office than did their male counterparts, also drafting statutes for a national conference. And so the women decided that a national executive committee would serve as a kind of "national sec?etariat" for the CMSW. Authority within the conference would be entrusted to the executive committee, and its mem-bers alone would elect national officers. The executive members would make decisions, direct programs, and transmit the mind of the Church to major superiors. While the conference membership would gather na-tionally every five years, the organizing committee did not envision mo-bilizing their power for corporate action. The national executive com-mittee would determine what, if any, activities were appropriate for a re-ligious conference. From CMSW to LCWR / 903 The organizing committee did, however, attach great significance to regional organization and activity. Local and regional diversity, so much valued in the United States, demanded this emphasis. The regions, there-fore, would constitute the strength of the conference and serve as forums for education and gathering places for major superiors to study together issues and topics relating to religious life. Work on the statutes made evident the relative certainty of the found-ing women about the nature and purpose of the Church and religious life. They accepted the official definitions and the practices of ecclesiastical authority as well as the canonical prescriptions about religious life. This certainty guided their deliberations and left its mark on the statutes, which clearly identified CMSW as an ecclesiastical moral person, depend-ent on church officials for its being. Submission to church authorities within the limits of canon law was to be the hallmark of the new organi-zation. Determining the criterion for membership was also no problem: only major superiors as defined by church law qualified. Similarly, the pur-pose of the conference was precisely specified: the spiritual welfare of religious and matters that were properly spiritual would engage the re-sources and energies of the conference. In summary, the statutes of CMSW structured a conference accord-ing to a hierarchic-elitist worldview, shaped in harmony with the domi-nant classical theology of religious life as a state of perfection and a life of consecration. Conference programs, activities, and relationships would take their direction from this worldview and theology. 3. The Founding Assured that the SCR endorsed their preparatory work, the organiz-ing committee planned a national meeting for November 24, 1956. Fol-lowing Vatican directives, they invited only major superiors of pontifi-cal congregations. Although the more than 235 in attendance unani-mously approved the proposed statutes, some raised the possibility of experimenting with a national conference for one year before making a final decision. The participants easily and quickly disposed of the ques-tion: what the Holy Father wanted, United States women religious wanted. Experimentation was unnecessary. And thus, the CMSW was founded. As originally envisioned, it was to be simply and only a conference: a forum for the spiritual benefit of major superiors as well as for the revitalization of religious life and an organ for communicating and promoting the mind of the Church. The months between November, 1956, and July, 1957, were devoted 204 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 to organizing the six regions, in particular, to electing regional officers who would serve as the eighteen-member national executive committee of the conference. A report given by Mother Alcuin McCarthy, O.S.F.--first National Chairman (sic)--at the Second International Congress of the States of Per-fection (December, 1957) reviews the founding activities of the confer-ence. Her account, simply and directly told, makes clear that, within the context of the Roman initiative, the organizing women took full charge of the process of founding and did so according to their understanding of the needs of religious life in the United States. It likewise records a story marked by the absence of conflict. Whatever the reservations of the founding women about the need for a national conference and about cer-tain organizational features, their steady reliance on church authorities and, in turn, the confidence of Roman officials in them worked together to bring about a stable, well-defined organization. The SCR officially recognized the conference in 1959 and approved the statutes in 1962. As a pontifically approved organization of major su-periors, the CMSW was well on its way to becoming a nationally and internationally recognized presence in the Church. Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) In contrast to the record of the founding of CMSW, the account of its reorganization is a story of women religious profoundly affected by Vatican II, influenced by the movement of Catholics into mainstream America, unsettled by the politics and cultural revolution of the sixties, challenged by the liberation theology of Latin America, and somewhat conflicted about their own identity and purpose. The decision to reor-ganize emerged from within the conference, engaging the members in an intensive review of the statutes and generating a transformation of con-sciousness about the purpose and organizational components of the con-ference. In fact, the implementation of that decision brought about the refounding of the CMSW. The Work of Reorganization The journey toward the refounding of CMSW was initiated and di-rected from within the conference. Responding to a request from Mary Luke Tobin, S.L. (then CMSW National Chairman) to ascertain the readi-ness of American congregations of women religious to implement Vati-can II, the National Executive Committee (NEC) appointed, in 1965, a research committee to direct this task. The committee launched the Sis-ters' Survey, a questionnaire of some 645 items, answered by 139,000 From CMSW to LCWR / 205 women religious in the United States. Since responses to the Survey made it clear that the sisters were eager to participate in decision-making, the research committee recommended to the 1967 assembly of the CMSW a study of conference structures. The NEC engaged the mem-bership in a study of the statutes that developed into a full-blown educa-tional program, calling for the active involvement of all the members. In many ways the process paralleled the special general chapters then un-derway in individual communities. In revising the statutes, CMSW members probed radical questions about the nature and purpose of religious life and necessarily about the nature and purpose of the conference. Conversations made evident that some leaders of women's congregations understood and experienced ap-ostolic religious life as something other than a "state of perfection" and a life of "separation from the world." The reports from regional meet-ings show that the appropriate relationship of religious to the world was a dominant issue in the discussion. The clear-cut distinction of classical theology between the sacred and the secular and between the "strictly spiritual" and apostolic works no longer held sway. It could not be as-sumed that traditional formulae about religious life, its purpose and mean-ing, claimed general allegiance among conference members. To some members it seemed that a spirit of secularism was finding its way into the conference. The records of this study also show the major superiors grappling with questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and debating the issue of mem-bership eligibility. What was the appropriate relationship between a pon-tifically approved organization (the conference) and church authorities? What was the legitimate and necessary autonomy of the conference within the church system? They questioned, too, criteria for membership. A proposal to include associates evoked fear among some members: they believed that to admit major superiors who did not fit canonical defini-tions and leaders of groups who did not have canonical approval would surely undermine the identity of the conference. Minutes of regional discussions also point up that a few members ex-pressed seriousconcern about the relationship between the national and the regional levels. Disturbed by what they perceived as the "sociologi-cal" character of the Sisters' Survey and its propagandizing intent, some members believed the influence of the NEC, who commissioned the study, needed curbing. Even the egalitarian principles shaping the orga-nizational character of the conference did not wholly dispel mistrust of the power of the NEC. 906 / Review for Religious, March-April 1990 The proposed revisions of the bylaws drastically altered the purpose and role of the national meeting as well as the constituency and function of the governing body. Now conference members were to gather annu-ally and as a national assembly determine directions, establish goals, and specify priorities. A national board constituted by the chairs of the newly structured fifteen regions, five officers, and the executive director would govern according to the directions determined by annual assemblies and be accountable to the membership for its decisions and actions. The proposed bylaws provided for an expanded national office. This restructuring also caused anxiety among some members. As directors and coordinators of programs, research, development, communications, and fiscal procedures, the staff would, some thought, be in a position to ex-ercise too much power in the conference. Assurances from conference officers about the ecclesial character of the conference, the proposed restructuring of the regions, the move to universal suffrage for the election of the national officers, the function of the national assembly as a decision-making body, the board's account-ability to the membership, and the supervision of the staff by the board did not totally eliminate tensions within the conference. These tensions remained throughout the process of revision and after its completion. The revised statutes--now called "bylaws' '--adopted by the mem-bership in 1971 represented the dominant position, if not the unanimous view, of the membership. The bylaws clearly identified the conference as an ecclesial body, sophisticated as an organization. The members were unequivocally "women" in the Church, equal among themselves and partners with church officials in carrying out its mission. While they were clear that the bylaws of the conference existed to serve the leaders of congregations precisely as leaders, the purpose and objectives of the conference were broadly conceived, allowing for great diffusion of en-ergies and wide-ranging agendas. Not only were the Church and the world legitimate forums for concern and action, the conference was chal-lenged to be a transforming agent in both spheres. Strikingly, the lan-guage of the bylaws manifests a dynamic, evolutionary worldview, and the objectives mandate the development of a theology of religious life consonant with that worldview. Re founding Without prior consultation with or endorsement from the SCR, the national board presented the proposed bylaws for a final vote during the 1971 assembly. This was not, however, the first opportunity for a total conference discussion of the revised statutes: A special assembly had From CMSW to LCWR / 207 been held in February, 1970, to provide full membership debate on the purpose, role, and objectives of the conference. They had endorsed the restructuring of the conference from six to fifteen regions and adopted universal suffrage for the election of national officers. At the 1971 As-sembly the members approved the revised statutes and a new title, Lead-ership Conference of Women Religious. The newly-adopted bylaws and title signaled a transformed under-standing and appreciation of the raison d'etre of the conference: not only was it to be a forum for enabling leadership, it was also to become a cor-porate force for systemic change in Church and society. LCWR was born and with it an organization committed to constructive, creative use of power and influence in Church and world. No longer simply a forum for sharing, it now became an agent for change. The assembly, the national board, and executive committee as well as the secretariat and national committees consolidated the corporate power of the conference to coor-dinate regional and national levels and promote collaboration with Church and civic organizations. Following the 1971 Assembly the board directed the staff to initiate whatever actions were necessary to have the new name legally recog-nized. The former name CMSW, they agreed, communicated a negative image to the public: its militaristic and hierarchic connotations needed dispelling. This action and the adoption of the bylaws by the assembly without prior approval of SCR caused consternation not only among some conference members but also in some members of SCR. Presented with the newly adopted bylaws in November, the SCR raised questions about the lack of explicit jurisdictional lines between the conference and Church authorities and the meaning of the new title. Amendments to the bylaws worked out by the national board stilled, for a time, the concerns of SCR about jurisdictional issues. Provisions were incorporated to acknowledge the "authority of the Holy See and of the bishops," the relationship of the conference to SCR, and its re-sponsibility to the Apostolic Delegate in "its more important activities." As a result, the SCR granted definitive approval of the bylaws in 1972. Agreement about the title, however, did not come until 1974. For some SCR authorities the appropriation of the term "leadership" by the United States major superiors appeared arrogant. Besides, they charged, the language evoked the negative images associated with terms like "Fuh-rer" and "II Duce." After much dialogue between conference officers and members of the SCR and the addition of a statement in the bylaws clarifying the meaning of "leadership," SCR officials finally endorsed 201] "1 Review for Religious, March-April 1990 the title. The CMSW, according to one observer, had taken "a sharp new turn." The work of producing bylaws gave evidence of a growing ap-preciation of United States culture by the major superiors. And though probably unconscious of their kinship with feminists, the CMSW mem-bers of the late 1960s demonstrated commitment to becoming a self-determining conference, not isolated from Church officials but interact-ing with them. Concluding Reflections I. Transitions: Times, Events, Movements Between the call of Pius XII in the 1950s for "aggiornamento" and the challenge of John XXIII for renewal, the United States had experi-enced rapid and radical change. The flight from the cities to suburbia, the volatile confrontations of the civil rights movement, the assassina-tions of John F. and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the ex-cruciating agonies and divisions over United States involvement in Vi-etnam, the farm-workers' struggle for justice, the anti-Communist para-noia, the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the development of a vocal feminist minority threw the country into a national paroxysm. Self-doubt, dissent, and protest became a way of life. Moreover, the nation was not untouched by liberation movements in Third World countries. The presence of Peace Corps volunteers and of United States religious in Latin American countries awakened social re-sponsibility and global sensitivities, and, at the same time, called into question the role of the United States in international inequities. The United States was a world power. Was it a force for international jus-tice? The response of Catholics in the United States to Humanae Vitae was a powerful symbol and experience of intense ferment in the Church, evok-ing as it did a storm of protest. Public dissent was no longer confined to civic matters. The American Church, consciously becoming a "local church," was loosening its ties to Rome as Catholics moved into main-stream America, became better educated, and delighted in the experience of a Catholic president. Catholics were at home in America. They had assimilated well ~pecifically American values: the sharing of power, the right to dissent, participation in decisions that affect one's life, dialogue, respect for differences, and due process. The political upheavals, in ad-dition, evoked a new awareness of and commitment to these values. For many Catholics, however, these values were not simply or only From CMSW to LCWR / 209 cultural: they were consonant with the Gospel. They could, and should, find their way into Church life and structures. As renewal efforts within religious congregations demonstrate, women religious were not immune to these developments. They were profoundly affected by them. Movements directly related to religious life also influenced religious women. The expansion of education and theological competence brought about by Sister Formation (SF) activities in the 1950s and early 1960s insured that "new" ideas concerning both Church and society circulated in communities. Newer members, in particular, as well as congregational leaders and formation directors sensed that some structures and practices within religious institutes were not workable nor productive of healthy people and groups. Neither were they compatible with a developing sense of apostolic religious life. In many ways, the SF movement had prepared religious to respond boldly to the societal and ecclesial chal-lenges of the 1960s. In particular, the Vatican II mandate for renewal, its acknowledg-ment of the vital connection between Church and world, and its charac-terization of the Church as People of God and as Pilgrim People found receptive minds among a significant number of women religious. These ideas, validating the developing consciousness of many religious concern-ing the meaning of apostolic religious life, opened the way for its re-imagination. The depth of the response of United States religious to Vatican II was probably enlarged by the presence of Mary Luke Tobin, S.L., as an of-ficial observer at the Council. Her work on the commission which de-veloped The Church in the Modern World uniquely prepared her to be-come an ambassador of the Council. Traveling extensively throughout the country, she challenged women religious to take an active role in the world: they were to be bold advocates for justice and peace. As the presi-dent of CMSW (1964-67), she was in a privileged position to dissemi-nate the "good news" of Vatican II among major superiors. Her influ-ence was especially felt in the program planning of the national as-semblies from 1965-1967, assemblies that proved powerful corporate and formative ex

Issue 56.5 of the Review for Religious, September/October 1997. ; for ,relig i 'ous Christian Heritages and Contemporau Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1997 ¯ VOLUME 56 ¯ NUMBER 5 " Review for R~ligious is a forum for shared refleaibn _on the lived experienc.e of all who find that ttfe church's rich heritages of spi#ituality support their personal and apostolff Christian lives. Tbe articles~ in the journal are meant to bb informativb,,L . practical, or inspirational, written from a theological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point,of vie~. Review for Religious (1SSN 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 Religiou~ ¯ 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, I\~N 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1997 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 ihe 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 Fopp'e Tracy Gramm Jean Read James ain,t Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Jo~l Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez SJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia W]ttberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1997 ¯ VOLUME 56 ¯ NUMBER 5 contents consecrated life 454 468 Contemporary Religious Leadership Howard Gray SJ focuses on three tasks of a contemporary religious leader: to design strategies that further the kingdom of God, to implement those designs through existing ministries, and to do this in the compassion of Christ's cross. Continuing Formation: Perspectives from I~ta Consecrata Joel C-iallanza csc explains Vita consecrata's treatment of continuing formation in terms of pertinent basic principles, its necessity throughout religious life, and the dimensions through which it engages the whole person. 478 methodology Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree Betty Ann McNeil DC sketches out an example of international research on kinship within the Vincentian tradition, thereby providing information for mission and fostering creative collaboration. 491 From Parchment to Cyberspace: New Technologies Can Serve Charisms John Freund CM explores the communication world of the Internet and the World Wide Web, especially in view of their evangelizing potential. Review for Religious 503 heritages Angela Merici: Ursuline Mother and Valiant Woman Frances M. Biscoglio brings us into the wonder of the life and legacy of Angela Merici. 511 "The Beautiful Acarie" 525 Robert P. Maloney CM enters us into the story of Madame Acarie, the central figure in a great spiritual renewal in 17th-century Paris. Ninian's Whithorn: A Time-and-Place Pilgrimage David Douglas shares reflections from a pilgrimage to St. Ninian's first monastic settlement in what is now Scotland. 533 542 spiritual life What Is Spirituality? Carla Mae Streeter OP presents an understanding of spirituality that reveals the Holy already in our midst and calls us to full human response. Being Saved by Beauty Melannie Svoboda SND helps us appreciate the role of beauty in Jesus' life with God and its role in our own life and ministry. departments 452 Prisms 547 Canonical Counsel: Habit and Habitus: Brief History 553 Book Reviews September-October 1997 prisms ~hat centers our life determines 'the kind of balance it has. Sometimes we become aware of that cente? during a quiet prayerful retreat. Perhaps a crisis--the death of someone close to us, a reversal in our own health, a failure in a project, or confusion about future directions--makes us face the question of what centers our lives. True, Jesus Christ is the center of all Christian living. But perhaps we men and women religious should take stock of our experience of Jesus' centrality to consecrated life. We find it in our every celebration of the Eucharist, with Jesus as the center in both Word and Sacrament. We may also find that central Presence in a particular com-munity or an outstanding leader or a special project that helps focus our faith life. Yet such a group or individual or work can also obscure what is central to our faith. Perhaps, through no fault of the community or the person or the project, our attention s.tops at the immediate incarnation of faith in front of us, and these very instruments of grace block out rather than bring us in touch with Jesus Christ. We have heard sad tales of some priest-confessor so antag-onizing a penitent, somehow, that the person leaves the confessional in a huff and refuses to actively practice the faith. The person's focus has become fixated on the lim-ited incarnation that each individual~priest (or Christian or institution) represents. What ChriStians take for granted in theory--that Jesus is the center of their faith--can eas-ily be disrupted in practice, amid the trials of living their faith. With the dearth of vocations to the consecrated life within western Europe and North America today, vocation promoters remind us anew that we limited incarnations of Christ have an important role to play in stirring up and inspiring people to thas kind of special followang. Still the .l Review for Religious ~; call remains Christ's, and the focus of our vocation is not just one of us nor our community nor our work; the focus is Jesus whom we image imperfectly at best. In our own call, we can distinguish various influences, but their collect~e focus is always Jesus. Our individual crises--like all Christian crises--usually include a loss of our central focus. Again it is individual people, particular com-munities, and even pet projects that can sometimes stand in the way of our deepening relationship with Jesus. Yes, it is easy to acknowledge that Jesus is the center of consecrated life--in the-ory! But in our living of this relationship we often find moments of doubt, confusion, and even anger. Not.only do we experience at times an obscuring of the cen-trality of Jesus in our personal vocation stories, but we also obfus-cate the theology of consecrated life by a similar failing. Some contemporary studies about consecrated life have little to say about the future of this lifeform because they take no account of its central focus. Without that focus, consedrated life obviously has elements that will be out of balance. As we read some present-day books about religious life's future or as we get involved in various workshops, we need to ask ourselves: What centers consecrated life in this way of presenting it? The Jesus who is the center of our personal vocation and who is the center of consecrated life calls for a love relationship. We cannot relate to this Jesus as an abstract concept such as Wisdom, biblically authentic as its personification is. We cannot~ identify this Jesus with good actions which we perform in our rehg~ous mission: Jesus is more than some category of virtue enhancing human behavior. True, Jesus identifies with each person we serve or who serves us, but Jesus has his own identity and his own way of lov-ing and of being loved. Jesus in our lives calls forth from us and from our religious congregation the awed response of love he called.forth from Thomas: "My Lord and my God!" The mis-sion of our congregation is not identified with making this world a better place to live; our mission as consecrated people is so related to the Jesus of the Gospels that together we make present the actions of Christ. Because of the goodness of a real relation-ship with Jesus, both as individuals and as congregations, we expe-rience that Jesus is the center of our consecrated life, the center of our life-in-mission. David L. Fleming SJ September-October 1997 consecrated life HOWARD GRAY Contemporary Religious Leadership Harry Truman said, "A leader is a man who has the abil-ity to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it," ' If there is any accuracy or wisdom in this reflection, then the most effective leader in our lives is the Holy Spirit. Presumably the members of CMSM believe that for better or for worse God's Spirit had a major role in their selection as a community leader. V~-hether you like being in that position or not, you ought to be asking for consolation, asking for the gift of the Spirit to find some genuine light and, yes, even happiness in the fact that you are someone God has elected to lead. I want to explore this fundamental reality of election and then develop what this call to leadership means for your service in our church and in our contemporary society. First, to be religious is to be called, to be obedient to the initiative that God uses to ask us to do something for the sake of the kingdom? Second, the mastery of God over the enterprise is both a comfort and a challenge. It is a comfort because God bears the ultimate responsibility for the works we do and the people we serve. It is a chal-lenge because we are partners with the divine, co-laborers who shoulder a bit of the divine burden. Third, we are Howard Gray SJ presented this article, here somewhat edited, as a talk on 8 August 1997 to the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) at their annual assembly, titled this year "Called by Jesus: Free to Lead" and held in San Diego, California. His address is Jesuit Institute; Boston College; Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02167. Review for Religious. trying to be good stewards in a time of internal community declines, ecclesial tensions, and exploding apostolic possibilities. Charles Morris, in his recent study American Catholics, puts it this way: The problems the church is facing are of exquisite subtlety. ¯. Traditionalists may yearn for the old Catholic docility, but ¯. the young people who are most informed about their reli-gion- recent Catholic college graduates--are also among the most committed to the church and among the least disposed to accept the rote dictates of authority. The problems lie within the institution itself. The root problem is the vision or lack of vision--or superfluity of visions--of what the church is and how it should carry out its mission and who should do it. The awkward revi-sioning of the church that has been taking place over the last thirty years sweeps up questions of authority, of sexuality, of gender, of orthodoxy in matters great and small, and sets bishops and theologians at one another's throats) You and I do not have to buy all of Morris's conclusions or his rhetoric, but the kind of concern he voices is real and hardly idiosyncratic. To be summoned, as you are, to temporary official leadership within the church and within this culture is to accept an anomalous role. You are not bishops nor part of the diocesan curia; but you do have authority, responsibility, and opportunity to effect the mission of the church within a diocese or within many dioceses. You work intimately with members of your com-munity and with the lay colleagues who partner your apostolates, but you also assess the effectiveness of their labor against the obligation you have to foster the overall mission of your larger community. And you have to do all this while being prophetic yet managerial, spiritual yet financially astute, sympathetic towards human weakness yet known for your "tough love." You also have to be theologically literate, informed about justice issues but socially nimble with benefactors, a man of prayer, graceful in pub-lic liturgies, and yet able to offer creative ways for your commu-nity to enter into the new millennium. You have every right to feel defenseless against this army of expectations. And anyone who dares to speak to you about reli-gious leadership has to share your feelings. No one has the final answer except God. This conviction demands a terrible asceti-cism. You and I live "in the meantime," .in tha~ period of waiting for answers along the way, for directions towards the kingdom, for ways to find God but within this world and within these prob- September-October 1997 Gray * Contemporary Religious Leadership lems and opportunities. As partners of the divine, we move with a God we do not always see and cannot always find. The answers we try to form and the directions we try to give come out of our prayer and study, our consultations and our traditions. Consequently, our answers and our directions bear the all-too-human stamp of our limitations and our projections. And yet you and I must return to that radical religious conviction that God has called us to leadership for the good of God's people and the furthering of the kingdom. For all these reasons, then, I.want to emphasize the religious character of your lea~dership and to suggest what religious lead-ership might mean for the church and culture of today. A Metaphor for Our Reflections: Head and Hands and Heart Among other questions, I had to ask where I myself found direction towards understanding religious leadership. Certainly, the example of older, effective leaders helped, as did the rich' store of material on leadership theory in business, education, and health services.41 was drawn, finally, to a moment in my own life that helped me to realize what the essential elements in religious lead-ership are. ,. As a young priest I was assigned to preach a summer retreat to a large assembly of religious women. Their community was involved in a variety of ministries, with commitments in the United States and throughout East Asia. The retreat was held at the motherhouse, which included the community infirmary and retirement center. Early in the retreat I struck up a friendship with a sister in the infirmary who was dying of multiple sclerosis. She had been a giant within the community, one of the first to attend a prestigious secular university and to obtain a doctorate in economics. Although she had great promise as a scholar and teacher, she was put into administration and became the presi-dent of one of the colleges sponsore'd by her m:der. As president she led the school through a series of financial campaigns that added buildings and .stature to the institution. Then she was diag-nosed as having M.S., and the disease moved quickly through her nervous system. When I met her, she was totally confined to bed. She was wonderful to talk with--insightful, witty, without an ounce of Review for Religious self-pity. When on the last day of the retreat I went to say good-bye to her, she said something like this: "Father, yon are a young man and I am an old and dying woman, so we are both in the rigfit position for advice. When I was a young nun, I thought it was important to give God my head, so I studied hard and won my way to the university and to doctoral studies. I saw scholarship as my way to God. But then, after a few years, my community had other needs. I was put into university adminis-tration and became the president of the college. Then I thought that what God really wanted was my hands, my ability to accomplish great things for the college, to build up this institution. Now here I am. I struggle to remember, and I cannot hold a glass of water. Now I realize as never before that what God has wanted all along is my heart. Give God your head and your hands, but bring your heart along with them." Sister died about a month later, but her words have lived within me. The head, hands, and heart symbol.i, ze what we "do" as religious leaders. While ydh have specific works in line with the charisms 9f your community and devel-opments within its ministries, what you oversee as provincials or council members is your com-munity's entire mission. It is this mission that primarily engages your leadership, and it is this mission that determines the char-acteristics your leadership needs. The answers we try to form and the directions we try to give come out of our prayer and study, our consultations and our traditions. Mission of the Intellect In 1990 Robert Bellah delivered an incisive address to the bishops of the United States gathered in special assembly at Santa Clara University. In that address he traced the influence of John Locke in the formation of the North American ethos: "It is remarkable how much of our current understanding of social real-. ity flows from the .original institutionalization at the end of the 18th century (the 'founding') and how much of that was depen-dent on the thought of John Locke. Locke's teaching is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, ideologies ever invented. Indeed, it is proving to .be more enduring and influen-tial, which is not to say truer, than Marxism. It promises an Septentber-October 1997 Gray ¯ Contemporary Religious Leadership unheard-of degree of individual freedom, an unlimited opportu-nity to compete for material well-being, and an unprecedented limitation on the arbitrary powers of government to interfere with individual initiative . [The Lockean myth] rejects all lim-its on the freedom and autonomy of individuals other than those they freely consent to in entering the (quite limited) social con-tract . Limited government exists to provide a minimum of order for individuals to accumulate property.''5 This social contract, Bellah points out, is essentially at odds ~ith the biblical notion of covenant, a relationship between God and people, between Creator and creature, founded on loyalty and trust. The covenant relationship transcends self-interest and entails obligations to God and to the neighbor. The social contract is also radically at odds with the Pauline understanding of the Body of Christ; Christian freedom is radically different from Lockean freedom. The Lockean notion of contract, Bellah says, affects not only the economic and political spheres, but also our understanding of all human relations, including the family and church. This exaggerated individualism permeates the culture in which the church proclaims the gospel and the call of the kingdom. "The teaching role of the church," Bellah continues, "is placed under a considerable strain, and tact and prudence are certainly neces-sary. It seems to me the first problem is at the same time theo-logical and sociological: how to communicate the deep social realism of biblical religion to an individualistic culture.''6 Bellah carefully calls the bishops to teach within the Body of Christ, that is, with recognition of the various gifts that are there to be consulted within the church's membership, but also to rep-resent the authority that transcends individual consent, namely, the authority of God. Bellah says, "I hope you have the courage to be what you are as authentically as you understand what that is and are not too intimidated by the confusions of our culture [and] do not fall back too readily on our central cultural stereotypes of leadership--the manager and the therapist. For if we are to demonstrate what the church is as a community based on unlimited loyalty in a covenant and membership in the same body, we must all, with the. grace of God, fulfill the particular gifts with which we have been entrusted to the best of our ability. You have indeed been pas-tors, prophets, and leaders in this society in a way that does Review for Religious demonstrate what the people of God is.''7 I have quoted Bellah extensively because his words to the U.S. bishops seven years ago continue to have relevance for your mis-sion of religious leadership. The challenges Bellah presented to the bishops are also yours, and these challenges shape your mis-sion today. You do not share the power of bishops, but you do share in many of the same areas of apostolic and ministerial responsibility. As leaders within your communities and as mem-bers of the CMSM, you have a voice that offers direction to God's people who are bound by your charisms and united in your mis-sion. The traditions that founded your schools, parishes, social centers, seminaries, and international missions will not be kept alive through some osmotic process. The education of your apos-tolic colleagues into the charisms and traditions of your religious families must be done with the tact and prudence Bellah recom-mended to the U. S. bishops. Indeed, this may be your most important intellectual work in the years ahead. I realize that this process of communicating the charism that founded our works is well underway in many communities and in the institutions and works they sponsor. My emphasis is that this task be seen as one of the most important ministries for you to carry out in your positions of leadership. I add that this min-istry is not simply a matter of exhortation. It calls for a strategy of communication, integration, and leadership training. By communication I mean that faculty and staff, for exam-ple, ought to know as much about the religious tradition of their institutions or apostolates as they do about their health insur-ance. The communication, then, has to be attractive, accurate, and enduring. By integration I mean that there has to be a pro-gram whereby all faculty and staff members able and willing to do so can take the spirituality of your charism and use it to bring greater harmony and meaning into their private and professional lives. By leadership training I mean providing formation for a probably much smaller number of faculty and staff members who are able and willing to take responsibility for the future commu-nication and integration of the tradition. This aspect of your min-istry of leadership involves more than conveying information and a sense of the relevant history and tradition. It involves--I want to emphasize this--planning some processes that help make it all happen. That is why I include it as an aspect of the mission of those in leadership positions. Septetnber-October 1997 Gray ¯ Contemporary Religious Leadership As religious leaders you have to see the ways in which evangelization permeates all your works. j Besides the formation of lay apostolic colleagues, I want to underscore two other specifications of your leadership ministry. First, there is the support that you give to scholarship within your communities. Within the church the great heritage of religious communities is that they have both carried traditions forward and illustrated their significance for present ages and cultures. I speak not only about formal theological scholarship, but also about the whole array of scholarly work that sustains a dialogue of faith with a culture of disbelief. There is so much pressure to fill admin-istrative lacunae that we may panic and see studies only as a means to give people the credentials they need to fill those lacunae. Your scholars need to be free to develop as scholars who share actively in con-temporary intellectual dialogue. They need to know that they can count on your support in moments of difficulty and misrepresentation. They need to know that in your eyes fidelity and risk have to go together. Second, as religious leaders you hav~.to see the ways in which evangelization permeates all your works. By evangelization I mean making the gospel and the tradition intelligible and applicable. A wonderful history surrounds reli-gious- life ministry. Our community life locates the reality of the body of Christ within the human family. Our ministries are not restricted to the faithful, but move by design to those who feel that the gospel has no mean-ing for them or who have become convinced that they are outside salvation. Frequently our works are spiritual and corporal works of mercy precisely because they are not tied to conventional reli-gious symbols or rhetoric.8 The mission of the intellect, the planning that creates reli-gious centering within a culture often resolutely antireligious, does not rely on numbers, but on being a presence that under-stands both the mission appropriate to your charism and the cre-ative evolution the mission can take. This aspect of your leadership presumes a formation program that teaches your new members consultation and teamwork. It is a mission that links the king-dom to contemporary culture, that incorporates your lay col-leagues into your charisms, and that gives your scholars the freedom they need to unpack the significance of revelation for Review for Relig~olts our culture so that, finding energy in the gospel thus revisited, they can also translate it into terms our culture can understand. Mission of Implementation Closely allied to the leadership task of designing the work of the kingdom is the oversight you give to implementing that design, to making the projects work. The diminishing number of active religious has occasioned withdrawal from some traditional ministries, the transfer of leadership positions within traditional ministries to lay people, and the creation of new apostolic bonds. Examples of such bonds are the merging of community apostolates at the University of Detroit Mercy, where two communities (the Sisters of Mercy and the Society of Jesus) brought their two insti-tutions of higher education into one, and the efforts in many places to incorporate associate members into the work and life of the established religious community. In other words, things have already been done to meet the immediate demands for the reconfiguration of our works. What I want to focus on, however, is what implementation might mean within the threefold mission of lay formation, support for our scholars, and pervasive evange-lization. As leaders within your communities, you know how crucial it is that the lay personnel who now embody the ethos of your com-munity- sponsored works be somehow engaged by the religious vision and traditions that founded your institutions, apostolates, and centers. You also know that some who join our works will never'incorporate our sense of mission. Frequently those who are involved in retaining and developing a tradition--call them vice presidents for mission effectiveness or mission coordinators or the office of spiritual development--describe their task as creat-ing "a critical mass" of persons who buy into the tradition and mission of the sponsoring religious community. You lead within an apostolic reality that feels the constant pressure of competing philosophies and theologies. Moreover, when we speak of incor-porating capable and willing lay colleagues into our religious vision and traditions, we have to encourage two movements: (1) the ongoing development of lay ministry within the wider church and (2) the participation of lay men and women in our specific apostolates. I have already indicated what lay formation could entail (that is, communication, integration, and training in how to September-October 1997 Gray ¯ Contemporary Religious Leadership pass on the community tradition to others). What I want to insist on here is that the task of implementation--your role as a com-munity leader--is to encourage and to authenticate the appro-priation of your charisms by lay people. However, if this implementation is to be effective, then it means support, not imposition; guidance, not censorship; trust, not fear or suspicion. Lay participation in your community charism also implies that it will be adapted and modified and will assume new symbols as your lay apostolic partners make it their own. For, unless there is cultural assimilation of your charism, there will be no appropri-ation of your charism. Granted the need for authenticity in living a charism, there also has to be willingness to let the charism reshape itself through lay experiences. All this calls for a new style of leadership and a creative approach to implementation. One religious community put it this way: The Society of Jesus places itself at the service of the mis-sion of the laity by offering what we are and what we have received: our spiritual and apostolic inheritance, our edu-cational resources, and our friendship. We offer Ignatian spirituality as a specific gift to animate the ministry of the laity. This spirituality respects the unique spirituality of the individual and adapts itself to present needs; it helps persons to discern their call and "in all things to love and serve the Divine Majesty." We offer to the laity the practical wisdom we have learned from more than four centuries of apostolic experience. Through our schools, universities, and other educational programs we make pastoral and theological training available. Perhaps most important, we join with them in companionship: serving together, learning from ¯ and responding to each other's concerns and initiatives, dia-loguing with one another on apostolic objectives? I cite this not as a paradigm, but simply as an instance of what I mean by your role as an implementer of lay formation through your respective charisms. You implement when you articulate your community's mission and charism, designate your priorities, and support the people who can make it happen on the local level. Concerning the support of scholarship within your aposto-lates, let me offer three suggestions. First, incorporate your schol-ars into your community's life and thought. Second, bring your scholars together to help you sort out and approach particular pastoral and ecclesial problems. Third, sponsor opportunities for scholars within your ministries to talk together about how faith and culture intersect today, where there are tensions, and how Review for Religious scholarship could help the church in the United States to respond more effectively to a whole array of cultural and social problems. Your initiative towards the scholarly community is the best imple-mentation. Your public support creates a climate of conversation badly needed in our church and in civil society. Your participation in the concerns and ambitions of the scholarly community gives witness to your community's willingness to learn God's wisdom in a privileged place for doing so and to respond in the light of that wisdom. You accomplish this precisely because you are the leader ofyour community, the bearer of its corporate presence, and the formal representative of its concerns. Finally, in the third overarching, apostolic concern, that of evangelization, I want to specify one major contribution you can make. You can represent your community's willingness to bond with those who most want to share in and to count on the justice promised in God's kingdom. The faith of the gospel means little if it is not accompanied by the justice of the gospel. The eco-nomically poor, the marginal within our civil society and within our church, and the alienated have a particular purchase on the gospel. It was for such as these that Jesus came. To sustain that call before your religious brothers is an important part of imple-menting the call to evangelize. To make sure that this dimension of the gospel is part of every lay formation program is essential to forming people's Christian identity. To acknowledge and reverence the mutual concerns that bind you to the poor, the marginal, and the alienated shows that you know the importance of listening and learning before trying to help. More profoundly, it means that you take the lead in showing that the greatest gift people can give you is their weakness and struggle and pain and anger because these, in turn, shape the reality and sincerity of your willingness to imitate the One who is the reason we have a gospel. In meet-ing those who need Christ, we find Christ. Mission of the Heart When we talk about the religious Significance of the heart, we mean that which "symbolizes the center or core of the human person . . . the locus not only of our affectivity but also of our freedom and consciousness, the place where we accept or reject the mystery of ourselves, human existence, and God. [the per-son's] sacred space."~° As religious leaders you are called preem- September-October 1997 Gray * Contemporary Religious Leadership inently to be men of heart, providing vision for your brothers to follow, extending mercy and care when they have stumbled and fallen, confronting them when they have wandered, encouraging them when they are overwhelmed and fatigued with the journey. You have been called to a rare and lovely ministry that sustains the hospitality of the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus. I want to talk about that aspect of your mission, emphasizing that there is no Emmaus without the cross, that it is important that religious leadership be exerted under the sign of the cross. The Christ of Emmaus could speak to the heart of the two disciples so trapped in their own expectations and so locked in their own disappointments because his heart, too, had been opened, his faith had been tested, his hope had been challenged, his love had been broken. The wisdom of his compassion for the two disciples was not only the revelation of divine wisdom; it was also the expression of the hard-earned solidarity of his human brotherhood with them. Jesus knew that there cguld be no Emmaus without the cross. The ethicist David Hollenbach has linked the Catholic uni-versity's search for meaning to the need to establish the continued possibility of a Christian humanism. In promoting a Christian . humanism, Hollenbach reasons, we must face the harshness of contemporary evil--the wars and violence, the homeless and refugees, the children without parents and the parents who kill their own babies, the poor and the hungry, the illiterate and emo-tionally disturbed, those who suffer AIDS and those who have lost their families and friends to AIDS. Genuine Christian human-ism, then. demands a return to the cross as "the sign through which Christians proclaim that the ultimate mystery that sur-rounds our lives embraces human suffering and shares human misery. The cross uncovers the central meaning of this mystery as compassion and divine mercy."ll Your leadership has to find its way to the cross and from the cross; that is, you lead in the likeness of the One who called you and whose kingdom you represent. The risen Christ of Emmaus brings consolation to the two disciples and later to the rest of that frightened community, not by denying the cross, but by explaining the cross, by linking it to the long-cherished hopes that God would be with God's people. In uniting his passion and death to the glory of those touched by God, Jesus took a symbol that was repulsive and made it a symbol of love, forgiveness, hos, ¯ Review for Religious pitality, hope, and life. The transformation came because Christ embraced, not the wood of the cross, but the people whom the cross represented, those whose sin and sickness, whose insignif-icance and estrangement, made them repulsive to a world that equates humanism with political power, physical beauty, and cul-tivated tastes. Christian humanism flows from the heart of the pierced Christ; it is born in pain and humiliation; it finds its mean-ing in reconciliation and forgiveness. Christian humanism pro-claims that divine wisdom and power can be found only in the folly and the vulnerability of the cross. Religious leadership has to be born from that same heart, a heart willing to bear pain and humiliation, a heart offering reconciliation and forgiveness. You have to help the lay people who share your mission both to learn and to employ the strategies of Jesus if they wish to accomplish the mission of Jesus. You have to call your scholars to a generosity of sac-rifice that moves beyond criticism and competition into a reverence for wis-dom and a fidelity to a mission that includes social responsibility as well as professional competency. In all the apostolates that you oversee, you have to call attention to the Christ who continues to be crucified in the least of his brothers and sisters. You must pro-claim to those who look to you for leadership that you point to the crucified and risen Lord, whose cross represents best what the gospel honors, the compassion that brings us into the presence of God. Religious leadership has to be born from a heart willing to bear pain and humiliation, a heart offering reconciliation and forgiveness. "Called by Jesus: Free to Lead" Under this watchword we have reflected on what inhibits the exercise of religious leadership. We have situated the qualities of leadership within religious experience, the experience of being called to be a companion in the mission that God inaugurated in Christ. I focused on three tasks that describe the essential quali-fies of a contemporary religious leader in today's church: the abil-ity to design strategies that further the kingdom within any and September-October 1997 Gray * Conton~orar~ Reli~ous Leadership every specific ministry, the ability to implement those designs through these existing ministries, and the ability to do this in the compassion of Christ's cross. I designated three crucial areas in which leadership needs to be exercised by the community superior: in the formation of lay apostolic colleagues, in the work of scholars in the church, and in ~tbe work of evangelization, especially among those on the fringe of the church's attention. What, finally, catches what it is to be a religious leader today? Is it to be someone who can envision a mission and articulate it with stunning effect? Is it the man of hard-nosed practicality that gets the jobs done, that absorbs criticism and never looks for thanks? Is it the saint among us who radiates the care and insight of Jesus? I have seen each of these in my brother Jesuits. Sometimes I saw parts of them in myself, not all at one time, but here and there, scattered over the six years of my term as provin-cial. I suspect that you, too, have found the same in your work as major superiors. But, when everything else fades away, what is the one characteristic that a major superior has to have? To answer that, I turn to something I wrote years ago called Letters to a New Rector: "Finally. it is a matter of love., for our brothers. If I had any one piece of advice, I'd say simply pray for the grace to love your brothers. The gift God gives in response does not make problems go away, but it does usher us into the presence of God's love. We stand with our Lord, surveying the world of our com-munity: the fervent and the weak, the quick and the shy, the boast-ful and the withdrawn, the leader and the follower--and God invites us to cherish not what should be but what is. I believe that this is the real 'grace of office,' the gift to become, with all its messiness and risk, a more loving man."12 Back in 1982 I thought that this was the essential quality of a good superior; in 1997 I feel it all the more. --466 Notes t As quoted in Howard Gardner, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 22. 2 Donald Senior CP, "Living in the Meantime: Biblical Foundations for Religious Life," in Living in the Meantime: Concerning the Transformation of Religious Life, ed. Paul J. Philibert (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1994), pp. 61-62: "If we understand obedience in its most radical form as the faithful listening to God's voice as it comes to us through the community, through our teachers and leaders, and through the events Review for Religious of history, then we tap into a characteristic of faith most blessed by the Bible." 3 Charles R. Morris, American Catholics: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church (New York: Times Books, 1997), pp. 320-321. 4 See, e.g., Peter M. Senge, "The Leader's New Work: Building Learning Organizations," Sloan Management Review 32, no. 1 (Fall 1990): 7-23; Robert N. Bellah, "Leadership Viewed from the Vantage Point of American Culture," Origins 20, no. 14 (13 September 1990): 217, 219-223; John Coleman sJ, "Dimensions of Leadership," Origins 20, no. 14 (13 September 1990), pp. 223-228; W. Chan Kim and Renee A. Mauborgne, "Parables of Leadership," Harvard Business Review (July- August 1991): 122-127; and Howard Gardner, Leading Minds. Also, the entire February 1982 issue of Studies in Formative Spirituality features the topic "Spiritual Formation and Leadership." s,6,7 Bellah, "Leadership," pp. 219, 220, 221. s See John W. O'Malley SJ, "Priesthood, Ministry, and Religious Life: Some Historical and Historiographical Considerations," Theological Studies 49, no. 2 (1988): 223-257; also his First Jesuits (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) and his essay "One Priesthood: Two Traditions," in A Concert of Charisms: Ordained Ministry in Religious Life, ed. Paul K. Hennessy CFC, (Mahwah: Paulist Press). 9 "From "Cooperation with the Laity in Mission," Decree 13 of Documents of the Thirty-Fourth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995), §337, pp. 161-162. ~0 Annice Callahan RSCJ, "Heart," in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), pp. 468-469. n David Hollenbach SJ "The Catholic University under the Sign of the Cross: Christian Humanism in a Broken World," in Finding God in All Things: Essays in Honor of Michael J. Buckley Sy, ed. Michael J. Himes and Stephen J. Pope (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1996), p. 293. 12 Howard J. Gray sJ, "An Experience in Ignatian Government: Letters to a New Rector," Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 14, no. 4 (September 1982): 29-30. September-October 1997 JOEL GIALLANZA Continuing Formation: ¯ Perspectives from Vita Consecrata Tecrtaam, OcSont triencueenst ptoa pbael tdhoec uombjeenctt oonf rmeluigciho udsis lcifues,s Vioitna acnond-reflection and analysis among people in the various forms of con-secrated life within the church. While it is generally acknowl-edged that this document does not break new ground in the theology of consecrated life, it does contain some sections which can be helpful reminders of the basic values and priorities for this way of life. One such section contains the three paragraphs on continu-ing formation (§§69-71). In general, the paragraphs concerning vocation promotion and formation (§§63-71) are among the most helpful in the entire document. This stems not so much from anything particularly new in them as from their acknowledgment of and clarity concerning important experiential realities. The three paragraphs on continuing formation address some basic principles, its necessity throughout religious life, and the dimen-sions through which it engages the whole person. These paragraphs on continuing formation are well situated within l~ta consecrata. They appear in chapter 2, "Consecrated Life as a Sign of Communion in the Church," and specifically within part 3 of that chapter, "Looking to the Future." The impli-cation is clear: The quality and integrity of religious life as a sign of unity in the church for the future is directly related to the qual- Joel Giallanza CSC, a frequent contributor, wrote two articles for our 1995 volume. His address is Congregazione di Santa Croce; Via Framura, 85; 00168 Roma, Italy. Review for Religious ity and integrity which religious life embodies today. While this may be a statement of the obvious, it is nevertheless a useful reminder that nothing about our way of life is automatic. Through our daily lives we either fortify or forfeit the quality and integrity of religious life, now and for the 21st century. Principles The principles cited in Vita consecrata are offered as affirmation, encouragement, and guidance for institutes as they try to provide specific means for the continuing formation of their members. Paragraph 69, though brief, mentions three basic principles. First, "continuing formation, whether in institutes of apostolic or contemplative life, is an intrinsic requirement of religious con-secration." As religious we tend to use the past tense when speak-ing of our own formation experiences. Such language is quite understandable since it incorporates and highlights memories of our initial years in religious life. Those years were followed by "final" profession (and ordination) and then involvement in "active ministry." Thus, we came to the "end" of our formation. Given this perspective, it can be easily assumed that some religious (younger and newer members) are "in formation" and some are not. The first principle points to the inaccuracy of this perspec-tive by reminding us that all religious are in formation, regardless of the number of years since initial or perpetual profession. The basis of this principle is a simple reality of human nature. "Due to human limitations, the consecrated person can never claim to have completely brought to life the 'new creature' who in every circumstance of life reflects the very mind of Christ." Our transformation into living likenesses of Jesus never ends. We cannot at any point say, "I am complete, nothing remains to be done," and simultaneously claim to be truly alive. At least we do hot come to that point in this life apart from an arrogance that steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the need for further growth. Unless we maintain our efforts for continual human and spiritual growth in every part of our life, refusing to let our relationship with the Lord become somehow stale, we begin to drift away from that relationship. The implications of such drifting com-promise and contradict the very. witness religious life is meant to give. Second, "initial formation should be closely connected with September-October 1997 Giallanza ¯ Continuing Formation continuing formation." The separation of these two underlies that tendency to speak and think of formation in the past tense. Revised constitutional texts are eloquent regarding the indis-pensability of continuing formation. However, the challenge in reestablishing a recognizable link between initial and continuing formation is not documentary but structural. Programs of initial formation must communicate clearly and consistently that for-mation in religious life is, of its nature, a progressive thing that persists to the very end of one's life. Then religious institutes, individually or collaboratively, must develop and implement pro-grams of continuing formation to which members are regularly invited and in which their participation is occasionally required. The idea of this principle is to foster right at the beginning "a readiness on everyone's part to let themselves be formed every day of their lives." This is inseparable from the first principle. Without the recognition that continuing formation is important and 'necessary throughout religious life, the "readiness" for such formation will be minimal or nonexistent. If continuing formation is assumed to be for the benefit of "other members," those expe-riencing some "particular difficulty" at this point in their lives, then its effectiveness for and its impact upon the future of religious life will be negligible. Third, "it will be very important for every institute to provide, as part of its ratio institutionis, a precise and systematic description of its plan of continuing formation." In general, religious institutes have not developed continuing-formation programs comparable in quality to those for initial formation. The reasons for that vary from institute to institute; nevertheless, formators and those in authority should identify and explore those reasons with a view to addressing the potential consequences for the future. The plan for which Vita consecrata calls should be designed "to provide all consecrated persons with a program which encompasses their whole life." No doubt such a program will necessitate some allo-cation of personnel and financial resources; that allocation, how-ever, will prove to be a wise investment in the future of the institute and of religious life. The basis of this principle is the truth that "none are exempt from the obligation .to grow humanly and as religious; by the same token, no one can be overconfident and live in self-suffi-cient isolation." To facilitate the members' response to this obli-gation, religious institutes must provide sufficient opportunities Review for Religious through a comprehensive plan and an accompanying program of continuing formation. An effective plan and engaging program will affirm that "at no stage of life can people feel so secure and committed that they do not need to give careful attention to ensuring perseverance in faithfulness." These three, principles assume that religious desire to deepen their commitment to religious life and are willing to do whatever is necessary for nurturing that deeper commitment. Also assumed is the institute's investment of time, energy, and resources in developing and maintaining appropriate means of assisting the members in this desire and willingness of theirs. Necessity Cultivating and sustaining faith-fulness is at the heart of continuing formation. "At every stage of life a person seeks and finds a new task to fulfill, a particular way of being, of serving, and of loving" (§70). That task and way call for a renewed sense of fidelity, a refreshed approach to every dimension of religious life. Thus, continuing formation is necessary throughout life to assist us in exploring and developing ways of living fidelity that are appropriate and .adequate for the changes in our personal requirements and our professional responsibilities. Paragraph 70 of Vita consecrata identifies five stages within religious life, each of which calls for specific means of support, "encouragement, and guidance adapted to the individual's experi-ences in ministry, prayer, community, and living the vows. Those means will be more beneficial to the degree that they incorpo-rate relevant aspects of the institute's distinctive heritage and tra-dition. The document presents these stages in a generic way so that they can be addressed according to the character and charism of the institute. First, "in the consecrated life the first years offull involvement in the apostolate are a critical, stage, marked by the passage from a supervised life to a situation of full responsibility for one's work." Without the recognition that continuing formation is important and necessary throughout religious life, the "readiness" for such formation will be minimal or nonexistent. September-October 1997 Giallanza ¯ Continuing Formation As newly professed (or ordained) religious move from an envi-ronment of careful guidance and close direction into conditions where their range of activities and use of time are more self-deter-mined, they should be provided with support and accompani-ment. Ideally, these will be offered "by a brother or sister who helps them to live to the full the freshness of their lo-~e and enthu-siasm for Christ." Without such support and accompaniment, the religious may begin to drift, losing their balance and neglecting to give appropriate time and attention to the basic components of everyday religious life. The challenge for continuing formation at this stage is to assure that the experience of transition does not dominate and define people's religious life, but rather that their life as religious gives meaning and direction to the transition. Second, "middle-aged consecrated persons" may experience "the risk of routine and the subsequent temptation to give in to dis-appointment because of meager results." As religious become increasingly competent and fluent in their professional responsi-bilities and as their daily activities become a familiar and contin-uous cycle, the energy and enthusiasm surrounding their commitment can begin to wane. Everything looks and feels rou-tine, including those obligations most essential to religious life. At this point in their life, religious "must therefore be helped, in light of the Gospel and the charism of their institute, to renew their original decision and not confuse the completeness of their dedication with the degree of good results." The challenge for continuing formation at this stage is "to search for what is essen-tial" precisely so that routine and disappointment do not become determining factors in forming strategies for life and ministry in the future. Third, "the stage of maturity, while it brings personal growth, can also bring the danger of a certain individualism, accompa-nied either by a fear of not being in line with the times or by forms of inflexibility, self-centeredness, or diminished enthusi-asm." Of all the stages, this is the most complex. It is a time of reexamining and redesigning personal identity. Religious may observe quite unexpected and unexplained behaviors or state-ments or plans coming from someone they have known and lived with for many years. One task will be to assist the person in redis-covering the value and beauty of self-giving in community and ministry. The challenge for continuing formation at this stage is "not only to bring back a higher level of spiritual and apostolic life, Review for Religious but also [to discover] the special characteristics of this stage of life." It is indeed a time 6f refashioning personal identity. Support can be provided through various forms of assistance and guid-ance so that "the gift of self is made to God more genuinely and with greater generosity [and] extends to others with greater seren-ity and wisdom, as well as with greater simplicity and richness of grace." Fourth, "advanced age poses new problems, which can be pre-pared for by a discerning program of spiritual support." This stage can be a particularly rich period of life when the religious is accompanied in seeing the possibilities for growth and the poten-tials for transformation within it. Without that accompaniment, it can become a time of loneliness and bitterness. The document recognizes that, even though this is "often a time of suffering, advanced age nonetheless offers to elderly consecrated persons the chance to be transformed by the paschal experience." The challenge, then, for continuing formation at this stage is to sup-port religious in "a new way of living one's consecration, which is not tied to effectiveness in carrying out administrative responsi-bilities or apostolic work." This new way of life becomes the foun-dation for the transforming work of God's grace. Fifth, "when the moment finally comes for uniting oneself to the suprerfie hour of the Lord's Passion, the consecrated person knows that the Father is now bringing to completion the mysterious process of formation which began many years before." Death is the consummation of the formation process. For religious it is "the supreme act of love and self-offering," even as was Jesus' own. Death thereby confirms and celebrates lifelong faithfulness. The goal of continuing formation in each of these stages is to facilitate fidelity. The document makes no assumption that fidelity will be effortless; quite the contrary, it acknowledges that "any period can present critical situations due to external factors., or resulting from more directly personal factors." Beyond whatever programs may be designed and made available, "when fidelity becomes more difficult, the individual must be offered the support of greater trust and deeper love, at both the personal and com-munity levels." Such trust and love are the greatest gifts any reli-gious can receive through the process of continuing formation. They are also the most powerful gifts the community can pro-vide. These gifts constitute the strong and lasting supports of fidelity and of religious life itself. Septentber-October 1997 Giallanza ¯ ContinuingFormation Dimensions "If the subject of formation is the individual at every stage, the object of formation is the whole person" (§71). Any process of continuing formation must incorporate those dimensions which reflect the full extent to which consecrated life engages the per-son. Paragraph 71 of Vita consecrata identifies four such dimen-sions. First, "the human and fraternal dimensions of the consecrated life call for self-knowledge and the awareness of personal limita-tions." These dimensions are the most extensive for they include the full range of human qualities and capabilities. "In present-day circumstances, special importance must be given to the inte-rior freedom of consecrated persons, their affective maturity, their ability to communicate with others, especially in their own com-munity, their serenity of spirit, their compassion for those who are suffering, their love for the truth, and a correspondence between their actions and their words." Sexual integration and the devel-opment of healthy relationships as significant means of nurturing and sustaining a celibate commitment could be added to this list. Even if an individual has established a solid base for all these aspects of life during initial formation, there is no guarantee that the base will remain stable and sufficient as the person matures and encounters new experiences. More than likely the opposite will be true: the initial base will become inadequate and will need rebuilding in light of personal growth and development. Attentiveness to these human and relational dimensions of life must be a priority for all religious, regardless of culture, age, or ministry. Second, "the apostolic dimension opens the hearts and minds of consecrated persons and prepares them for constant effort in the apostolate . In practice, this will involve updating the methods and objectives of apostolic works in fidelity to the spirit and aims of the founder or foundress and to subsequently emerging tradi-tions." There are two important realities within this dimension: maintaining efforts and updating ministries. Ministry demands and consumes energy and enthusiasm. We must have adequate provisions for supporting and strengthening our efforts in ministry lest we communicate a lack of motivation and meaning to those with and for whom we work. Closely related to this is the need to evaluate our corporate ministries to determine the level of their continuing responsiveness and relevance to current and develop- Review for Religious ing needs. A similar evaluation must be applied to our individual ministerial skills to determine the extent of our personal need for updating. If we neglect to monitor and evaluate the quality of ministry we provide, then the apostolic dimension of our life can turn inward. When individual and corporate works are maintained for the sake of the religious involved, their significance gradually diminishes as needs change and are replaced by more pressing ones. Eventually those works continue to exist in response to nothing contem-porary except for providing the peo-ple currently involved in them with jobs. The apostolic dimension of reli-gious life challenges us to examine periodically the actual needs being met through our individual and corporate works. Third, "the cultural and professional dimensions, based upon a solid theo-logical training which provides the means for wise discernment, involve continual updating and special interest in the different areas to which each charism is directed." The document urges consecrated persons to "keep themselves as intellectually open and adaptable as possible, so that the apostolate will be envisaged and carried out according to the needs of their own time, making use of the means provided by cultural progress." The perspective adopted here reflects and expands the main points already mentioned under the apostolic dimension. However, the openness and adaptability emphasized in these dimensions have important implications for at least two other areas. First, these qualities are truly necessary for welcoming and listening to those presently entering the institute. New members will bring perspectives and ideas which can make a contribution to our way of life. Openness and adaptability confirm our desire to receive vocations, to listen and to learn. Second, these same qualities are important in light of the growing internationality within many religious institutes. Openness and adaptability enable us to benefit from the wisdom and experience of those entering religious life from parts of the world which do not represent the The apostolic dimension of religious life challenges us to examine periodically the actual needs being met through our individual and corporate works. September-October 1997 Giallanza ¯ Continuing Formation historically or traditionally dominant culture of the institute. This development is and will continue to be a major challenge to some institutes, given their rapidly changing demographics. Fourth, "all these elements are united in the dimension of the charism proper to each institute, as it were in a synthesis which calls for a constant deepening of one's own special consecration in all its aspects, not only apostolic but also ascetical and mystical." Learning about and reflecting upon the institute's history and the contemporary significance and applicability of its heritage must be included in any continuing-formation program. Inadequate is the assumption that what was learned in initial formation about the founder or foundress and the heritage will be sufficient through-out life. Experiences in ministry, prayer, community, living the vows, as well as the natural process of human development and maturation, will influence our perspective and interpretation of whatever was learned earlier. The charism must be explored and integrated anew with all the richness of those experiences and that process. The purpose of this renewed exploration and integration is "to advance the personal and communal assimilation of [the insti-tute's] charism." Without this assimilation the charism gradually degenerates into an ancient and fragile artifact: interesting, but of little practical use today. One consequence is that the institute can become a generic humanitarian organization, doing good works but lacking a distinctively attractive character that invites others to share its way of life. A continuing-formation program is no magic formula for ensuring that members will regularly study and reflect upon the institute's charism, but it can emphasize the importance and value oir such study and reflection while provid-ing resources that encourage and facilitate them. These four dimensions can be expanded further and enriched by the particular ways they are adapted and applied within each institute's plan for continuing formation. Whatever that expansion and enrichment may entail, these dimensions form a solid foun-dation upon which to develop the curriculum for a sound con-tinuing- formation program. Living in the Spirit "Formation is a dynamic process by means of which individ-uals are converted to the Word of God in the depths of their being and at the same time learn how to discover the signs of God in earthly realities" (§68). This process begins with initial formation and never ends. We always need further conversion to God's Word and clearer recognition of God's presence and activ-ity in our world. Accepting that.need and responding to it lead us ever more surely along the "path of gradual identification with the attitude of Christ towards the Father" (§65). This path con-stitutes the very nature and purpose of all formation. Precisely because this identification is gradual, "the commitment to formation never ends" (§65). Formation remains therefore but a single real-ity. Admittedly, different emphases and tasks characterize each stage along the way; nevertheless, formation remains an unbroken and unending journey toward transformation into the living like-ness of Jesus. Fidelity to this journey is a grace of the Spirit at work within us. "Living in the Spirit, consecrated persons discover their own identity and find profound peace; they grow more attentive to the daily challenges of the word of God, and they allow them-selves to be guided by the original inspiration of their institute" (§71). This life in the Spirit characterizes the journey and guides us to the fullness of our religious life--union with the Lord. Continuing formation can provide us with some compelling insights and incentives for exploring and assimilating the many and varied blessings along the pathways of this graced journey, now and for the future. can-~now be°ordered~or renewed byFAX . and!paid f0t' ~byfMast~rCard'or Visa. ~,X the~brder form inside the back~over, ~:CALL~-oug office vci~' your,credi~ .FAX: '~ 1~!,977-7362 ~ ":o. PI~OtgE~'~31~-9_77~7363 ~ -. L4~-7-- September-October 1997 BETTY ANN McNEIL Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree methodology Is our faith strong enough to risk tapping latent potential in the signs of our times at the brink of the third millen-nium? Some individuals and religious institutes that share the charism of one and the same founder or patron may have charismatic energy that goes unnoticed and unused, waiting only to be recognized and then made use of. Attentiveness to our world and prayerful reflection on its situation call us to envision the synergy of future ministry. by looking back to our origins. Delving into our historic roots enables us to appreciate our spiritual heritage more and understand our mission and spiritual identity better. The great missionary or religious person is not so much one whose words are beautiful as one whose life is striking.1 Such an individual was St. Vincent de Paul (1581- 1660), whose mission and spiritual legacy continue to inspire his followers and challenge today's church. The urgency of St. Vincent's mission compels women and men to come together and seek the common ground of their Vincentian identity. St. Vincent's vision can spark fires of charity and zeal for the 21 st century. The real needs of the world's poor summon the men and women who profess a preferential option for the poor according to the tradition of St. Vincent de Paul and St. Betty Ann McNeil DC, a member of the'Vincentian Studies Institute, is currently involved in research and presentations on the Vincentian mission and community heritage of the Daughters of Charity. Her address is St. Joseph's Provincial House; 333 South Seton Avenue; Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727. Review for Religious Louise de Marillac (1591-1660) to go beyond rhetoric to concrete action. Our ability to escape into cyberspace must not lull us into ignoring the realities of the poor, but must impel us to harness new energy to accomplish our mission in innovative ways just as Vincent de Paul did for his generation. Charism of Charity and Evangelization Recent international research on religious institutes has traced the ties of kinship within the Vincentian tradition in a way that could provide useful information for carrying out an institute's mission. Its application could foster creative collaboration (regionally, nationally, and internationally) on behalf of the least of our brothers and sisters--the poor whom St. Vincent considered his lords and masters.2 St. Vincent's vision of service was collaborative--requiring relationships, teamwork, linkages, and networking to accomplish the mission. Confronted with urgency and driven by necessity, he shaped his charity and evangelization in innovative ways. He simply but clearly shared with the first members his vision for the Company of Charity: "We should assist the poor in every way and do it both by ourselves and by enlisting the help of others . To do this is to preach the gospel by words and by works."3 Over the years the extended Vincentian family has preached the gospel by words and by works throughout the world and in so doing has grown to include more than two hundred diverse groups of women and men, lay people and religious, Catholics and Anglicans. The mission, spirit, and rule of Vincent de Paul have been adapted to many cultures since emerging in 17th-century France. That has resulted in a majestic family tree. The Vincentian Family Tree The largest branches of the Vincentian family tree bear communities with which Vincent de Paul himself was personally involved, those under his patronage, or those begun by members of institutes that he himself founded: the Confraternity of Charity, the Ladies of Charity, the Congregation of the Mission, and the Daughters of Charity. Another large limb supports the numerous congregations that follow the foundational Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity and of the Congregation of the Mission, which Septentber-October 1997 McNeil Q Tracing tbe Vincentian Family Tree evolved through St. Vincent's collaboration with St. Louise de Marillac for more than thirty years.4 Other large limbs on the family tree bear communities that share Vincent's mission of serving Jesus Christ in the poor in a spirit of humility, simplicity, and charity. Goal The Vincentian Studies Institute (VSI), cosponsored by the, provinces of the Daughters of Charity and the Congregation of the Mission in the United States and dedicated to promoting a living interest in the Vincentian heritage, conducted a project to gather information about the extended Vincentian family from a genealogical perspective. Called the Family Tree Project, it was to research the historical development of the extended Vincentian family around the globe since 1617.s Initially it located, organized, and recorded existing information from the few national listings of Vincentian communities that had been published in Europe, most notably France, Spain, and Italy.6 No comprehensive international list had ever been compiled until the institute published The Vincentian Family Tree.7 This documentation of the family's growth raised the consciousness of historic links and relationships within the tradition and provides material for collective reflection, discernment, and action. The Vincentian Family Tree provokes timely questions for personal and corporate self-examination:6 What types of mission-oriented forums could institutes rooted in the charism of Vincent de Paul create for reflection and action? How could collaboration among related institutes help realize the ageless vision of St. Vincent in new ways for today's society? What goals could national federations establish for addressing the root causes of poverty? What joint projects could regional associations sponsor for serving the poor more effectively in this era of welfare reform? Project Criteria The Family Tree Proiect traced the genealogical development of Catholic and other Christian religious congregations, societies of apostolic life, and lay associations for men and women. This project developed numerous criteria to distinguish groups within the extended Vincentian family and then designed a multilevel Review for Religious approach involving fourteen criteria. The research was designed to illustrate the degree of relationship to the historical Vincent de Paul and his own foundations. From a genealogical perspective, affiliation with establishments made by St. Vincent himself and using his Common Rules represents the closest relationship, whereas foundations made by members of his communities are related to a lesser degree. Primarily using an international survey and consultations based on referrals, the research simply proceeded from the known to the unknown. A survey instrument collected basic identifying data and historical details according to specific criteria. Respondents were invited to provide reference information about other communities that should be contacted also. From. extant institutes with the closest degree of affinity to St. Vincent, pictures of the founder were requested with a view to their being published. To avoid errors in identification, The Vincentian Family Tree provokes timely questions for personal and corporate self-examination. immediately upon receipt each picture was logged, labeled, and cross-referenced by the identification code for the related institute. A tiered approach was used for data collection. Both historical and collateral research in various publications identified prospective entities by congregational tides (for example, inclusion of the words Vincent de Paul or Charity), place of origin, and similarity of mission or spirit,s Conferences of major superiors throughout the world were contacted for assistance in identifying diocesan communities. Much helpful information and additional leads were obtained from consultation with community archivists, community historians, foreign missionaries, and past or present congregational leaders. The survey instrument contained a cover letter, a two-page questionnaire, a self-addressed return envelope, and a referral form for identifying additional prospective communities. It would have been helpful if respondents had been asked to append a one-page documented summary of their foundation. Findings The Family Tree Project identified 268 societies of apostolic life and institutes of consecrated life (239 religious institutes, 21 layL4SI Septonber-October 1997 McNeil ¯ Tradn~ the Vincentian Family Tree associationsl and eight Anglican congregations) that met at least one criterion of the Family Tree Project. Its report, The Vincentian Family Tree, summarizes all available information about each group and classifies it only once according to the degree of affinity closest to St. Vincent. Some institutes met more than one criterion and could have been listed in several categories. Besides the institutes whose primary claim to St. Vincent is their adaptation of his Common Rules tt-their purposes, thirty~ other institutes adopted those rules and follow them. Service of the poor was the founding charism for another seventy institutes, of which thirteen make specific reference to serving the sick poor and eight have a fourth vow of service to the poor. Numerous others claim the same community virtues as the Daughters of Charity: humility, simplicity, and charity. The following are some of the Family Tree Project's findings: St. Vincent de Paul himself founded two institutes and two lay associations. Fifty Catholic religious institutes, seven Anglican con-gregations, and one Catholic secular institute adopted the Common Rules of Vincent de Paul or substantially incorpo-rated their major principles into their rule. St. Vincent served as mentor or advisor or in some other way for nine institutes. Thirty-nine institutes and five lay associations were established by members, or former members, of the Congregation of the Mission. Nineteen institutes and two lay associations were estab-lished by members, or former members, of the Company of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Three institutes were established by lay members of the Vincentian family. Ninety-nine institutes and one lay association have Vincent de Paul as one of their patrons. Rule of St. Vincent Among the many influences that fostered the charism of charity within the extended Vincentian family intoday's world, the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity are the most prominent. Many of the communities which use or adapted what is poPularly known as the rule of St. Vincent have Vincent de Paul as their patron and also may have been founded by a member of the Congregation of the Mission or the Daughters of Charity. On the Review for Religious basis of available information, a total of eighty Roman Catholic institutes throughout the world substantially follow the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity. Many factors influenced the early growth and rapid expansion of Vincent de Paul's foundations. Primarily, the originality of the rule he gave his Daughters of Charity had appeal to others. In 1646 St. Vincent first submitted it for approval to Jean Franqois de Gondi, archbishop of Paris. This primitive document resulted from thirteen years of the early sisters' lived experience under the direction of Louise de Marillac. The rule of St. Vincent, without further specification, refers to the Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity for women's institutes and .to the Common Rules of the Congregation of the Mission for men's institutes. For women's communities established after 1672, references to the rule of St. Vincent refer to the document promulgated on 5 August 1672 by St. Vincent's successor, Very Reverend Ren6 Alm6ras CM (1613~1672). Alm~ras had organized Vincent's original rule into chapters and included oral teachings of the founder. It is this text that passed from generation to generation as (popularly) "the rule of Vincent de Paul," although it is in fact a revision of'the text of Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, The Company accepted it as its Act of Establishment on 8 August 1655.9 The Company of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul evolved from the first sisters working in the Confraternities of Charity of. the Servants of the Sick Poor in a number of parishes in France and from the Ladies of Charity at the H6tel-Dieu in Paris. Today the Ladies of Charity have more than 250,000 members worldwide. There are 27,000 Daughters of'Charity and 3,600 priests anti'brothers in the Congregation of the Mission. Over~ the years, some institutes have become affiliated to the Daughters of Charity or to the Congregation of the Mission through nonjuridical ties of a spiritual nature. The 1994 affliafion of eleven communities of Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul (in Germany, Austria, and India) to the Vincentian Federation of Germany is the most recent example. Earlier examples include the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, founded in France in 1816; the Institute of the Nazarene, founded in Italy in 1865; and the Sisters of the Eucharist, founded in Greece in 1889. The geographic spread of the institutes studied was as follows: 75 percent in Europe, primarily Western Europe (193), 13.5 September-October 1997 McNeil ¯ Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree percent in America; primarily North America (22) and Central America ~10); 9.3 percent in Asia; 1.8 percent in Africa, and .4 percent in Australasia. "I~he Charism.of Charity and Evangelization As a prototype for apostolic women, St. Vincent and St. Louise's servants of the poor (whom the people they served called daughters of charity) not only represented a revolutionary change from the status quo, but were inspired by the Spirit to a mission driven by gospel values. Although not the first to take such an initiative, Vincent and Louise were the first to succeed on a large scale.1° Many bishops both in and beyond France soon adopted the rules and model that St. Vincent and St. Louise developed and adapted them to meet pastoral needs within their dioceses, frequently to assure continuance of new schools that were then emerging, especially for little girls. This was another step forward for the mission, vision, and ministry of apostolic women. The Vincentian Mission over the Centuries Sons and daughters of Vincent de Paul's own foundations established approximately sixty distinct communities in at least nine countries throughout the globe, with one-third of these located in China. Since 1660, the year both Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul died, approximately forty founders either adopted or adapted the Common Rules of Vincent de Paul for their institute. The face of human poverty began to change in the 17th century, requiring new models of response. Urban misery escalated while rural poverty generally continued. Capitalism developed during this time of cultural renaissance, religious reformation, and the growth of Protestantism. Much of Europe looked across the seas to new opportunities. In the 18th century, factors such as higher birth rates, internal migration, and urbanization contributed to massive immigration to new lands on foreign shores and made social needs more urgent, Many bishops throughout Europe sought to reproduce the Vincentian model in their dioceses. The spiritual descendants of the Sisters of Charity of Strasbourg, founded in France in 1734 but dispersed during the French Revolution, now' constitute the Vincentian Federation in Germany and provide the best example Review for Religious of the circuitous ways of the Spirit in bringing new communities to birth in unplanned circumstances. Confronted with the challenges of evangelization in foreign cultures, missionaries frequently gathered indigenous young women to assist them in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps. Urban poverty in Europe increased as land transportation improved and many Europeans sought to explore, colonize, and gain wealth in Africa, Asia, and America. These developments widened the horizon of the Vincentian mission on all continents. As early as 1727 in Palermo, Sicily, the Daughters of Charity, under the patronage of Reverend Nicholas Placid Filippone, may have been the first outside France to claim St. V~ncent as patron of their institute, which was dedicated to caring for the sick, orphans, and widows. Lesg than ten years after his canonization, the St. Vincent de Paul Church in Laval, Canada, became in 1743 the first parish in the world named after the great apostle of charity. As early as 1750, the Chinese Daughters of Charity of Tonkin (Chungqing) became the first Vincentian community founded outside Europe.l~ The French Revolution, which began in 1789, ultimately caused the dispersal and migration of community membership; Many continued the Vincenfian tradition and embodied it 'in new institutes and lay groups. Examples include the Sisters of Charity of St. Joan Anfida, founded at Besangon in 1799, and numerous diocesan communities in Austria and Germany also known as Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. The sphere of Vincentian influence widened and a ripple effect occurred. The success of Vincent de Paul's parochial charities and the viability of his noncloistered apostolic communities provided timely models for responding to pressing social 'needs among the poor and the emerging middle class. Sister Rosalie Rendu DC (1786-1856) introduced Blessed Frederic Ozanam (1813-1853) to practical charity and became his mentor. This relationship played an important role in the international Society of St. Vincent de Sons and daughters of Vincent de Paul's own foundations established approximately sixty ,distinct communities in at least nine countries throughout the globe. Septonber-October 1997 McNeil ¯ Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree Paul, which Ozanam founded in France in 1833 and which involved lay people in effective parish outreach to the poor. That society now comprises,875,000 members in 130 countries on all five continents . European immigration brought an appreciation of the Vincentian mission to the United States. This, with the impact of exploration and colonization in the Americas, was a factor influencing Bishop Louis William DuBourg SS (1766-1833) to invite Reverend Felix de Andreis CM (1778-1820) and Reverend Joseph Rosati CM. (1789-1843) to initiate the Vincentian mission (1816) in North America.12 In 1827 Rosati became the first bishop bf St. Louis. DuBourg had previously invited the widow Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1774-1821) to Baltimore to establish a Catholic school for~ girls and subsequendy a sisterhood. The :minutes of 14 March 1809 for the Sulpician assembly in Baltimore read: "It is a matter of buying a 'plantation near Emmitsburg to found there a community of daughters, b peu pros sur be meme plan que les filles de la CharitY, de St Vincent de Paul; who join to the care of the sick the instruction of young girls in all branches of Christian education.''13 The French Sulpicians, who befriended Elizabeth Ann Seton, were instrumental in obtaining the rule of Vincent de Paul and forming Mother Seton's Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph's in the Vincentian spirit. Her 1809 foundation at Emmitsburg, Maryland, was the first indigenous religious institute of apostolic women founded in the United States. Elizabeth Ann Seton became the first native-born United States citizen to be declared a saint. . From the Emmitsburg foundation several, other communities, also called Sisters of Charity, developed in North America. These became independent institutes .in New York City (1846), Cincinnati (1852), Convent Station, New Jersey (1859), Greensburg, Pennsylvania (1870), and Halifax, Nova Scotia (1856). In Canada the Religious of Notre-Dame-du-Sacre-Coeur (1924) evolved from the Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception (1854). These institutes and others now constitute,.the Sisters of Charity Federation, which began in 1947 as a collaborative effort to promote the Seton cause for canonization. In the 20the, century, two world wars, economic crises~" Communism, Nazism, and Fascism have brought the global village to a new level of complexity. The cries of today's poor peoples beg for initiatives and innovation to improve their situation. Review for Religious Since Vatican Council II seventeen new branches of Vincentian charity have emerged throughout the world. The church's thrust of mission ad genres has given additional emphasis to evangelization, and thereby new seeds of religious life have budded in different lands, including Nigeria, El Salvador, and the church of silence. Family Groups~ Vincent de Paul himself had an influential working relationship with several founders. Among these were Jean Jacques Olier of the Sulpicians, Pierre de Bdrulle of the Oratorians, Pierre Lambert de La Motte of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, and St. John Eudes, who began the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge. St. Vincent also became a consultant~to religious orders such as the Daughters of the Cross, the Daughters of Providence,. and the Daughters of the Holy Family. He was director of the nuns of the first Visitation monasteries in Paris.lq In the United States the Sisters of Charity Federation now includes thirteen institutes that represent 7,000 religious women plus lay associates. Its membership has made significant contributions to the North American church during°its first fifty years of collaboration. In addition, several otheL family groups are especially noteworthy within the interuational extended Vincentian family. ,~ Founded in the United States to preserve the faith among Catholic peoples by engendering a missionary spirit among the faithful, the family of Trinitarians .established by Reverend Thomas A,:~Judge CM (1868-1933) includes the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate (1909), the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity (1912), the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity (1929), and a recent lay branch, the Blessed Trinity Missionary Institute (1964~. Worldwide Web of Charity ,, The Family Tree Project findings provide a point of reference and a model for anyone interested in further study of a group's founding charism and documenting the development of its institutional expression over time. This project any congregation can replicate to examine its own root system and growt.h. The September-October 1997 McNeil * Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree Tracing the Vincentian family tree has helped identify new partners for collaboration that could stimulate innovation in ministry and launch St. Vincent's mission into the third millennium. mission and vision of Vincent de Paul, the great aposde of charity, challenge his spiritual progeny to look into new ways to continue the mission of evangelization and charity. Tracing the Vincentian family tree has helped identify new partners for collaboration that could stimulate innovation in ministry and launch St. Vincent's mission into the third millennium. The Vincentian Family Tree is the only international compilation of all communities known to belong to the extended Vincentian family of St. Vincent de Paul. Thi'~ unique resource contains illustrations and a concise summary describing each community's establishment (date, place, and founder), its primary mission, and the addresses of all extant generalates. Bibliographic data is provided for each entry, and there is a comprehensive index, This Family Tree traces the historical record and paves the way for additional study of the mission, ministries, and membership~ for extant institutes. Appendices include listings of communities .chronologically by category, the addresses of international resource groups dedicated to Vincentian studies, and copies of the survey instruments. The Family Tree is a research tool that can enhance mission. It offers information that 'could bring institutes together to nurture deeper appreciation of the timeless vision of Vincent de Paul as he followed Jesus Christ, the evangelizer of the poor and source and model of all charity2s The Family Tree Project has identified common elements of the Vincentian charism of evangelization and charity in hundreds of institutes worldwide. Inspired by the innovation of Vincent de Paul--"Love is inventive to infinity"~6--how will his present-day followers claim and own these commonalities and move trwards more collaboration in the corporal and spiritual service of the poor? How inventive can hearts given to God for the service of the poor become in a common search to improve both today and tomorrow for the poor? Review for Religious Notes .1 Robert E Maloney CM, He Hears the Cry of the Poor (New York: New City Press, 1995), p. 125. 2 Conference no. 85, to the Daughters of Charity, 11 November 1657, in Saint Vincent de Pauk Correspondance, Entretiens, Documents (here-after CED), ed. Pierre Coste CM, 14 vols. (Paris: Gabalda, 1920-1925), vol. 10, p. 332. 3 Conference no. 195, to the Priests of the Mission, 6 December 1658, in CED 12:87. 4 John Rybolt CM, "From Life to the Rules: The Genesis of the Rules of the Daughters of Charity," Vincentian Heritage 12, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 173-199). s The Vincentian Studies Institute may be contacted through Reverend Edward Udovic CM; DePaul University; 2233 North Kenmore Avenue; Chicago, Illinois 60614 (tel. 773-325-7348, fax 773-325-7279, E-mail eudovic@wppost.depaul.edu). 6 See, e.g., Nicolfis Mas, Fundac16n de las Hijas de la Caridad en Espafia," Anales de la Congregaci6n de la Misi6n 85, nos. 6-8 (1977): 107-148. 7 6 Betty Ann McNeil DC, Monograph 1, The Vincentian Family Tree (Chicago: Vincentian Studies Institute, 1996) is available from DePaul University Bookstore; Vincentian Heritage Department; 2419 North Sheffield Avenue; Chicago, Illinois, 60614 (tel. 800-700-8086, fax 773- 325-7701), US$20. 8 These resources include: National Catholic Directory (Chicago: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1993); New Catholic Encyclopedia; Annuario Pontificio (Vatican City, 1993), and Dizionario degli istituti di Perfeccione (Rome: Edizioni Pauline, 1973). 9 See Rybolt, "From Life to Rules," pp. 173-199; also see Conference no. 169, to the Daughters of Charity, 8 August 1655, in CED 10:97. 10 For a complete discussion of women in the church of France dur-ing this period and their response to social needs, see Elizabeth Rapley, The Dgvotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Magill-Queen's University Press, 1993). 11 For a full discussion of indigenous communities in China, see Fernand Combaluzier CM, "Congregations chinoises indig~nes dans les vicariats lasaristes," in Le clergg indigkne dans les missions de Chine configes aus congr~gationsfran~ais (Paris: Oeuvre de Saint-Pierre-Apotre, 1945), pp. 15-25. ,2 Rybolt, "Three Pioneer Vincentians," Vincentian Heritage, no. 1 (Fall 1993): 153-168). 13 Annabelle Melville, Louis William DuBourg, 2 vols. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986). p 177. The text reads, in translation: "It is a matter of buying a plantation near Emmitsburg to found there a com-munity of daughters, similar to those of the Daughters of Charity of St. September-October 1997 McNeil ¯ Tracing the Vincentian Family Tree Vincent de Paul, who join to the care of the sick the instruction of young girls in all branches of Christian education." 14 McNeil, Vincentian Family Tree, p. xix. ~s See Common Rules of the Daughters of Charity, chap. 1, art. 1, and Constitutions of the Congregation of the Mission, C.I. 16 Conference no: 102, Exhortation to a Dying Brother, 1645, CED 11:146. by the well lord, even in our close family friendship is a mysterious gift, your presence healing in us the wound of loneliness; when we lug back our fatigue at sunset to rest, the bread we will break, the cup We will share, the stories we will tell,' these will wield the power to open the graves where our daily dyings have held our souls and spirit them on love ° s wing to our union by the family well. by holding others in such tenderness evening dances out to embrace us: inay my flames play on your faces, may my breez~e rub your backs, may my moon stroke your heads; so, lord, if thou will bless us, give us good and caring friends and we~will water your creation with this love that brings us home; as our elders learned, we return to old watering holes for more than water--friends and dreams are there to meet us. Uwem-Celestine Akpan SJ Review for Religious JOHN FREUND From Parchment to Cyberspace: New Technologies Can Serve Charisms "We have been making pages for 1500 years . " --a Benedictine monk ~frhonOt- wpaoguel dc ohvaevrea gtheo iung thhte a N reelwig Yiooursk o Trdimere ws aonudld t,h'reenc ebieve featured a few months, later in a New York Times Book Review article? And the stories had nothing to do with scandal. In fact, the tone of the articles reflected uncommon respect and even admi-ration for the electronic publishing endeavors of the Benedictines at Christ in the Desert Monastery. These religious have found a new way to embody their charism of working with the written word. The world looks on, fascinated by the blend of devotion, artistry, and technological expertise. The Benedictines of Christ in the Desert Monastery host a Web site on the Internet, where they "continue the heritage of creativity, the arts, and handicrafts as exemplified by our prede-cessors in monastic life. We write on electrons creating cyber-books: pages for the World Wide Web . We have been making pages for 1500 years. It is part of our tradition, our heritage as monks." (See Web sites in the Note at the end of this article.) It is a new monastery industry, an industry that goes beyond jams and breads. By using technology to update their approaches to ministry, the Benedictines offer food to hungry souls in the vast community that the Internet comprises, and they have also John Freund CM may be addressed at St. John's University; 8000 Utopia Parkway; Jamaica, New York 11'439 (or: freundjb@stjohns.edu). September-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to Cyberspace found a source of income to support their ministry. Institutions seeking to establish a presence on the Internet prize the skills of the Benedictines. As these religious assist already developed print media to migrate to a new form of library on the Internet, they have developed a new face for their ministry to the world. Updating a Community Charism Religious coffgregations in the 20th century have wrestled with the challenge of expressing charisms anew in the modern or postmodern world. The Benedictines of Christ in the Desert Monastery have peered thoughtfully through the lens of tech-nology to examine their charism again. Other congregations might engage in such a process, too, especially taking into account the evolution of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Some individual members or pockets of "early adopters" of new technology haveventured into cyberspace as modern-day Gutenbergs, adapting developing technologies in service of the gospel. But the Benedictine community of Christ of the Desert offers a hint of what might happen if other communities, too, began to look at their charisms through the special lens of tech-nology. This is by no means the only way to revitalize a charism. I suggest merely that the Internet and its associated technologies might provide us with great new opportunities, opportunities that may well deserve much more attention than they. have thus far received. As a Vincentian, an example that occurs readily to me is that the poor are being shut out of the newly emerging world of information. The sad prospect is that the gap between the haves and the have-nots will .only increase. Communities that work to reduce poverty and to provide a way out of poverty must look at issues raised by a new form of deprivation--"information poverty." What the Benedictines have accomplished belongs to a broad landscape. Here we explore some of its horizons and look at ways to move forward boldly and prudently. Information Age ~ There is a revolution going on in communication, a sea change. It has various names: cyberspace, the Internet, the Web,° computer-mediated communication. Some describe it as more Review for Religious than a revolution, as a paradigm shift possibly more significant than that brought about by the printing press. Reactions vary. Some hail the changes; others ridicule, revile, or fear them. Religious leaders in Iran have labeled it a plot of the Western. world to subvert religious and cultural values and impose Western materialism in every home. (A decline in cultural and religious values and a rise in materialism may to a certain extent be an effect of all media everywhere, even if unintended.) Regardless of whether opti-mistic or pessimistic views of modern com-munication media prove closer to the truth, regardless of how intimidating, oversold, or underestimated these media are, it seems the revolution cannot be ignored. Microsoft computer titan Bill Gates learned the lesson the hard way. Initially he miscalculated the impact of the Internet. Now he has seen the light and scrambles to revise his multibillion dollar company's plan. He knows Microsoft needs to catch the wave he at least implicitly admits he did not see coming. The revolution brings tremendous implications for the church and for religious communities in our postmodern world. It should not be ignored. Put another way, it can only be ignored at tremen-dous cost to evangelization. We need to evaluate the new medium of the Internet without allowing ourselves to be driven by the "hype." Information and information technology are, of themselves, neutral. We need to use them in the service of gospel values. Gospel-centered vision must lead us, rather than trends and fads. We need to evaluate the new medium of the Internet without allowing ourselves to be driven by the "hype." What Is the Internet? In some ways the Internet is akin to, but even more powerful than, the largest multinational corporation. It cuts across inter-national and ideological boundaries, all without incurring long-distance charges, because computers connect to a local network. Metaphors abound. The Internet has a Barnes and Noble megabookstore-like aspect, but with many more rows of shelves, not to mention the comfort of your own chair, coffee, and slippers Septentber-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to CFberspace --- 494 if you connect from home. It differs from a bookstore in that, when a publication catches your attention, you can frequently establish e-mail contact with the authors, send notice of it to a friend on the other side of town or the world, or join an interna-tional discussion of the work. It evokes the memory of our parents' or grandparents' excite-ment about getting a television set or a radio--but with this sig-nificant difference: the 'Net puts in homes and offices not only a receiver, but also a transmitter. At another level the 'Net resem-bles a gigantic party-line conversation. Freedom and chaos abound as people share their worlds, eavesdrop, advise strangers, and always look for more information. Virtual communities of sin-ners and saints, .of health practitioners and disease sufferers, of workers and game players spring up in the free-flowing world of the Internet. The Internet sends mail moi'd efficiently than any postal ser-vice ever imagined. How fiercely people on the Internet grumble if electronic mail delivery requires more than a few seconds! Hence the derogatory appellation of ordinary postal service: "snail mail." All this has its shadow side. Point-and-click ease of sending multiple copies is a mass-marketer's delight, and the possibility of "spamming" (flooding another's electronic mailbox with so much mail that important communication gets buried) or "flaming" (send-ing inflammatory or just plain rude messages) delights the venge-ful and the mischievous. But e-mail opens up new possibilities of networking which many have already seized upon. The Internet makes strange bed-fellows-- the anarchist cozies up to the traditionalist. Pro-life and pro-choice activists proclaim their positions in this free-speech medium. Traditionalists and Call to Action groups clamor for attention. An exiled Catholic bishop and Mother Angelica hold forth from the same podium. The World Wide Web, the "www" increasingly cited on busi-ness cards, billboards, and print advertisements, may provide the most apt metaphor. The Web entangles us, whether we realize it or not. As bandwidth and baud (net jargon for speed of transmission) increase, the Internet is becoming increasingly visual and inter-active. Television, other communication media, books, newspapers, magazines, and more represent themselves. Become enthralled Review for Religious with Mona Lisa's smile live from the Louvre and, with a simple "download" and the right software, make her frown. Hang out on a street corner a world away, where a video camera vigilantly records the ebb and the flow of human traffic. Children in Alaska teach their language to children in the Philippines; grown-up children hook into endless Dungeon and Dragon games, now in shockingly real three-dimension (3-D). Electronic fan clubs of your favorite movie or TV show elevate time-honored institu-tions to a new level of sophistication. Pray with monks of Taiz4, search through the entire text of the Summa Tbeologiae, or down-load the latest statement of Pope John Paul II. A CEO may be able to view a competi-tor's tax returns, or an activist can query who contributed to political-action groups in a specific ziP code, and in what amounts. The very concept of a library as a phys-ical place in town or on campus is challenged by this exponentially increasing repository of information. Yet the Internet is not owned by anyone and therefore is controlled by no one. In a sense, everyone owns it. It is not a large ster-ile machine with whirring reels of tape in the sealed room so often portrayed in movies. The reality of the Internet is far messier and far less organized. At its most basic, it is a network of computers of all sizes and types. These range from very basic computers found in many a child's bedroom to the super com-puters of research institutions and governments. The Internet is the sum total of computers and computer networks voluntarily connected to various telephonic umbilical cords. Information is shared voluntarily. No one has to open one's own computer or every part of ivto the penetrating eyes of others. However, the fact that so many have done so has created, in the incredible space of about five years, so great an archive of information that the phrase "information overload" loses meaning. The Internet blurs traditional distinctions between telephone, movies, books, radio, and more. Traditionally packaged media must scramble and merge. The president of Sony Corporation forecasts integration of the electronics and entertainment indus-tries. And already cable and telephone giants compete fiercely The Internet is the sum total of computers and computer networks voluntarily connected to various telephonic umbilical cords. September-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to Cybers~ace for who can direct, if not produce and control, the ongoing devel-opment of the Internet. Above all, industry leaders must figure out how to avoid the fate of the Swiss watchmaking industry. Swiss watchmakers, com-fortable with their superior handcrafting, turned their backs on quartz technology for watches. They believed that the new tech-nology would barely ripple their pond. Instead, they found them-selves swept away by a tsunami. Inside five years their market share plummeted, and they became, in business and paradigm-shift literature, a classical example of an industry that refused to read signs of the times. Hooking Up to the Internet The information superhighway has its tolls, and the first is the equipment required to travel on it. One image of being "on line" suggests that only high-powered, state-of-the-art equipment cruises the Internet. In truth, the equivalent expense ranges from the cost of a "rent-a-wreck" to that of a Cadillac, Mercedes, or Ferrari. In addition to the basic hardware of a computer, a monitor, a keyboard, and a modem, one needs access to telephone service. Massive on-line service providers such as America Online, telecommunication, giants such as AT&T, and Internet service providers (ISPs) provide connections to telephone lines for trans-mission of the electronic data that is the life blood of the Internet. One part of the Internet is primarily text based, without "golly gee whiz bang" graphics. Even a relatively ancient computer (three or more years old), which can occasionally be found abandoned at curbside, is enough equipment to take advantage of sometimes free e-mail accounts. (These accounts are supported by advertis-ing revenue much in the manner of commercial TV.) For other applications, newer but still relatively simple equipment suffices. New Technologies in the Service of Our Charisms Once alerLto this technological phenomenon, we need only a little imagination to envision some of the enormous implica-tions and possibilities for ministry. Potential exists for ministries of the church and for individual religious communities. Review for Religious Social Ministry to the Least of Our Brothers and Sisters The information age brings with it a new formof poverty potentially more significant as a social problem than has yet been realized. "Information poverty" imposes a new kind of power-lessness. The needs of the poor have changed. A new measure of wealth is access to information and skills required for survival in an infor-mation age. The poor need more than food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. Alongside these matters that continue to need addressing, new needs not envisioned in earlier times have arisen. More than ever there is need for employable skills, which for the most part can be acquired only through training and hands-on, on-line experience. The shift from an industrial economy to a service and information economy dramatically widens the gap between the "digerati" and the poor. To attend to this new form of poverty, we must heed the repeated calls of Pope John Paul II "to search out more than ever, with boldness, humility, and.skill, the causes of poverty and encourage short and long-term solutions." If the poor are to sit at the table with others, then they have very specific needs. Chief among these would be word-processing skills and access to computers. Some individuals and groups have already begun this form of empowering ministry. Recendy a hous-ing development in Rhode Island became the first in the country to act on this insight: it made computer access and computer-skills training available to all residents. In Philadelphia local activists have arranged for a mobile van to provide access and training in poor neighborhoods. The voice of the poor may be initially through people like us, but ultimately the poor themselves must be empowered to speak with their own voices and take their places at the table that offers a wealth of new information. There will always be a need for bringing food and bandaging wounds. But even Vincent de Paul, the paragon of direct service to the poor, saw in his age the need to do more--to network, organize, and get at root causes. Otherwise the poor are condemned forever to eating the scraps from Dives' table. The Ministry of Evangelization Historical precedents abound for adapting new technologies in the service of ministry. We see the genius of Gutenberg in adapting the bible to the new paradigm, of others using ships as [-//0-7--- September-October 1997 Freund * From Parchment to Cyberspace means of transporting missionaries across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans (although Paul crossed the sea 'much earlier), of bishops fly-ing airplanes in Alaska to visit far-flung parishes. Few TV view-ers of the 1950s have forgotten Bishop Sheen's flourishes and ;his anticipation of the current interest in angels. Without pressing the point, perhaps Father ~Eoughlin might be seen as one of the forerunners of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio. Other Implications and Possibilities for Religious Congregations The Internet brings with it new ways of embodying a reli-gious charism for those who .have eyes to see. The Benedictines of Christ in the Desert have found a new way to live out their charism of working with the written word. The general Benedictine site on the~Web includes the Rule of St. Benedict (the Latin text as well as translations into other languages), with extensive bibliography. General Information includes a world-wide Benedictine e-mail directory, information on internal elec-tions, material on monastic topics, and links to corporate and personal Benedictine sites throughout the world. Developed religious outposts in cyberspace include the Dominicans, the Claretians, the Jesuits, the Franciscans, and ,my own Vincentian family. But, as with all things on the Internet and the Web, the presence of other communities is growing by leaps and bounds. The Dominicans seem to have been among the first to plunge deeply into cyberspace. Perhaps that is why some of them seem on the cutting edge of the latest interactive possibilities of the medium, such as the sound and video very effectively integrated into their pages. The Claretian presence includes a wide range: addresses and telephone numbers of their houses throughout the world, a gallery of pictures of Claretian priests and brothers, descriptions of var-ious apostolates, and a section that educates even novices on the Internet in the details of composing their own Web page. Their best-known magazine, U.S. Catholic, has a Web site. Of course, the Jesuits have turned out in force. One of the keys to their presence resides at LeMoyne College. The site includes links to information about their spirituality, history, and official documents; Jesuit events around the world; the aposto-lates of retreat centers, parishes, and colleges and universities; and faith and justice, art and artists, science and technology. Review for Religious My own Vincentian family is using the Internet and the World Wide Web as a way to connect the more than one million Vincentians in the world. These followers of Vincent, Louise de Marillac, Frederic Ozanam, and Elizabeth Ann Seton can now visit, for history and announcements of common interest, the site of the Vincentian Center for Church and Society at St. John's University and can contact each other directly through an e-mail list that spans the globe with its membership. The Internet has great potential for facili-tating communications, internally and externally. ¯ The recently developed SisterSite promises to be for religious women a major networking resource. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Conference of Maior Superiors of Men are both in the process of developing Web sites. It is not at all inconceivable that Internet usage will become more ubiquitous and utili-tarian than current uses of fax machines. Administrative correspondence could speed instantaneously from provincial offices to houses, and individual members. Apostolates can hold on-line meetings, 'maintain think tanks, and so forth. Imagine the saving in time and money when meetings or at least parts of meetings can be done through videoconferencing, which is already economically feasible even if not of the quality that large corporations can command/Certainly there will always need to be face-to-face meetings. But on-line preparation offers the tantalizing possibility of improving productivity. A frequently heard criticism of cybercommunication is that it devalues human presence. But think of members of congrega-tions who find themselves in isolated assignments far from mean-ingful direct contact with their fellow members. Through the Internet many achieve a new level of connectedness with their brothers and sisters. Similarly, the valuable services ham radio operators perform during times of crisis and in maintaining mis-sionaries' connections to their home bases can now be supple-mented over the Internet without the costs of long-distance telephoning. There are many other reasons to explore ministerial possi-bilities of computer-mediated technology. While the documents The Internet brings with it new ways of embodying a religious charism for those who have eyes to see. September-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to Cyberspace do not explicitly reference computer-mediated technologies, such advances seem to fall within the call to the church as .expressed by the invitation of Vatican II to read and adapt to the "signs of the times." There are also some very practical reasons. A technologically mediated apostolate can be available and appealing to the old and the young, the healthy and frail. Certainly it engages the young. Increasingly, youth will not only be computer literate but will speak the Internet's language with all the ease of their native tongue. Also, this new technology offers the possibility of people remaining active longer. It can empower the frail and may be the source of second-career energy for those in burnout. As Vincent de Paul faced his increasing infirmities, he would write: "When I can no longer ride a horse, I will take a carriage to continue my work. And when I can no longer do that, then I can write." For a final reason, we need to compete in the marketplace of information. That it is "better to light a candle than curse.the darkness" applies to establishing a positive presence on the Internet rather than merely condemning it or sitting idle as X-rated chat rooms proliferate. As a state lottery ad proclaims, "You've got to be in it to win it." Put differently and more com-pellingly, the sinful, .sad state of our world did not stop God from sending Jesus. Concerns about the state of morality on the Internet should drive us to provide more helpful, interesting, and even entertainifig sites. As one e-mail correspondent of mine expresses it, "The more good places we put on the Internet, the more likely it is that people will find good places to go." Initially I was surprised at how the Internet has given me a much richer sense of the immediacy of the body of Christ in the world. In a matter of minutes I can "converse" with people from all continents whose concerns I share. As we move to a new millennium, we are called to be as visionary and as practical as Vincent and the other giants whose spirit we enflesh in the new millennium. If we are to be effective servants of the poor in the new century, we must explore the new frontier called cyberspace, and we must take advantage of its immense opportunities for networking in service of the poor. Catching the Wave The skills required are rapidly becoming no more complex, Review for Religious arcane, or mystical than those needed to drive a car. Few drivers can design, build, or repair a car; few Internet users these days are the technical whiz kids portrayed in popular media. Investing a few hours in simple computer training is not at all beyond the mechan-ical prowess of the average religious. Witness the rapid develop-ment of Internet use among senior citizens ranging into their nineties. Getting started does not require a long technical explanation. The single most important suggestion, is that you find someone to show you firsthand what all the shouting is about. The Web is not something you read about but experience. The second sug-gestion is like the first: Fearlessly mount the Internet surfboard yourself. Explore any topic that interests you, and prepare to be amazed at what you find. It remains a dry, intellectual concept until you jump in the river and get baptized. The Internet will not solve all ministerial problems. Indeed, it may create some. But it will become an increasingly valuable and indispensable tool. The Internet is another way to gather the folks and tell the story. Only?a few hours of surfing the 'Net dis-closes that there are many seekers hungry for information, for truth. Who will feed them? Likewise, the Internet is another way to serve the poor. A few hours of surfing uncovers valuable sources of information and networks for people who join in common cause for the poor. Some say this paradigm shift is nothing short of a tidal wave sweeping us into the 21st century. Is this hyperbole? Time will tell. Pray let us not find ourselves among the Swiss watchmakers in the world of the gospel! Note Some Web sites, in alphabetical order: Benedictine site (general): http://www.osb.org/osb/welcome.html/ Benedictines of Christ in the Desert Monastery: http://www.christdesert.org/ Claretian site: http://www.claret.org/ Dominican site: http://www.op.org/domcentral/ Jesuit site: http://www.Jesuit.org/ LyO!-- September-October 1997 Freund ¯ From Parchment to Cyberspace Jesuit resources: http://maple.lemoyne.edu/~bucko/jesuit.html/ SisterSite: ¯ http://www.geocities.com/wellesley/1114/index.html/ Vincentian site: http://www.stjohns.edu/vincentianctr/ Icons In her eighties she walked in a recurring drea~m. She saw icons everywhere, sacred figures peering ~at her with holiness shining in their eyes. Their bodies were of angels or saintly figures long dead,. but their faces were young: students she taught in inner city schools, smilin~ back at her with holy content written all over their faces, raising hands of gratitude from their gilded clothed bodies. Thank you, their still lips murmured. Thank you for seeing the divinity written in our small lives. Patricia G. Rourke 502 Review for Religious o FRANCES M. BISCOGLIO Angela Merici: Ursuline Mother and Valiant Woman The scenic route south from Ponte Arche in the Trent]no to ,Desenzano. follows the western shore of Lake Garda and then bends around the corner of the lake. The road winds through olive and lembn trees, tall dark cypresses outlining pastel-colored villas,° and majestic palm trees that arch over the turquoise waters of Italy's largest lake. For.me this trip at the end of a summer vacation was a pilgrimage, one that had its roots in my childhood. How often the Ursuline nuns, who educated me from grade school through college, had told the story of Angela Merici of Desenzano! She ~was the foundress of the first teaching brder of women* in the church, although ironi-cally she herself never attended school. Today the port resort of Desenzano del Garda is a thriving town where old and new converge. Chic bou-tiques and modern shops line narrow ancient streets. In the summertime, tourists relax along shaded benches that face the lake, or gather in the piazza to sip cappuccino .at a caff~ all'aperto in view of the old cathedraL, But even now, more than five. centuries after her birth, the spirit of Angela Merici can be felt here. A street bearing her name leads into the town; a stone plaque marks the place Frances M. Biscoglio wrote about Julian of Norwich for our issue of May-June 1988. Her address is Department of Literature, Language, and Communication; Mercy College; 555 Broadway; Dobbs Ferry, New York 10522. heritages September- October 1997 of her birth. The most dramatic reminder of her presence is a life-size stone statue that dominates the center of the piazza. Mounted high on a pedestal, Angela stands with her head turned toward heaven, right hand over her heart, left hand grasping a tall pilgrim's staff. On the front of the pedestal is written: "S. Angela Merici, Patrona della Cittg." Who was this remarkable woman of the Renaissance whose innovative work in the education of girls spread from northern Italy through the Italian peninsula and into Europe and the Americas and eventually the rest of th'b world? She was born in 1474 to Giovanni Merici and Biancosa Biancosi. Her early days were happy ones, spent on the farm tl~at her father owned and operated. Within several years, however, she suffered the loss of her sister and of both her parents, so that "between the ages of twelve and fifteen she was certainly left an orphan" (Caraman, p. 10). At that time she went to live with her maternal uncle at Salb, returning to the family farm at Desenzano when she was twenty. She was to remain there for the next twenty years. During the obscure years at Salb and Desenzano, two events gready affected her life. At Salb she became a lay tertiary, a mem-ber of the Third Order of St. Francis: Later at Desenzano she had a mystical experience in which she saw~ a company of angels and virgins in procession; among them was her deceased sister, who told her that she would one day found a religious company of women. Angela's commitment to the Franciscan observance continued; she followed a life of prayer, fasting, penance, and works of charity among the families of Desenzano and the neigh-boring towns. In 1516, at the suggestion of her Franciscan supe-riors, Angela went to Brescia to console a friend who had lost her two sons in the war with France. It was here that her apostolate began to take shape, since Brescia at this time had been plunged into the political, moral, and spiritual turmoil that marked the beginnings of the Reformation. Irene Mahoney OSU sketches.the history of this northern Italian city before Angela arrived there: The city to which Angela wa's sent had once beeffa model of vitality and. prosperity, but by 1516 it had suffered the ravages of war and of spiritual decay. Less than four years earlier, the citizens, rising in rebellion against the French forces which occupied the city, 'went down in defeat a~ainst the superior strength of their invaders. Totally out of hand, the soldiers killed and raped and looted . . . and innumer-~ able churches and public buildings were sacked. By the end Review for Religious of the uprising the material resources of the city were in shambles. The spiritual resources of Brescia had long been dissi-pated. Brescia was perhaps no worse than many other Italian cities where the bishop rarely visited his diocese,, where clergy were either absent or living dissolutely, where sem-inaries and monasteries were places of license and igno-rance, (p. 7) In this milieu Angela alleviated the suffering and misery of the poor, the destitute, the orphaned, and particularly the incur-abili of Brescia--those who had contracted the dreaded syphilis, and whom many hospitals would not accept. Her reputation for holiness spread throughout the city, and she was called Suor'Angela (Sister Angela). At this time she began her association with the Oratory of Divine Love, a lay organiza-tion newly established in Brescia by Bartolomeo Stella. With its emphasis on persona! Christian perfection and works of charity, the Oratory was a powerful and "inconspicuous. method of reform" within the church (Waters, p. 17); it also had great influence on Angela. It is note-worthy that the small group of women who worked with her .in the Oratory were those who would later form the nucleus of her company. Angela remained in Brescia for four-teen years, leaving the c.ity only to go on various pilgrimages to Mantua, Varallo, the Holy Land, and in 1'525 .to Rome. Pope Clement VII was so impressed with her work at the Ospedale de'Incurabili in Brescia that he pleaded with her to stay in Rome and work for the luoghi pii (religious institutions) there. Angela declined. By this time her eyes were set toward Brescia, for she knew that the foundations of her company would be rooted there. By 1530 Angela had gathered around her the beginning of the commu-nity: twelve women--some widows, some girls--all of whom wished to spend their lives providing for the people's physical, moral, and spiritual needs. Angela chose to place her group under By 1530 Angela had gathered around her the beginning of the community, twelve women wishing to spend their lives providing for the people's physical, moral, and spiritual needs. September-October 1997 Biscoglio * Angela Merici the patronage of St. Ursula, a legendary third-century British princess martyred at Cologne along with a retinue of young women.