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Issue 21.2 of the Review for Religious, 1962. ; FRANCIS J. WEBER The Relics of Christ The spiritual value of a relic is directly proportional to the devotion it inspires in those who venerate it. Apart from this spiritual significance, the relic is merely a his-torical curiosity. It may or may not be of archaeological value to the museums of the world. The official attitude of the Church regarding individual relics is one of extreme reserve. In most cases, the Church prudently withholds definitive judgment on even the most demonstrably ancient relics. In fact, while reluctant to proclaim the authenticity of a particular reli.c, the Church has not infrequently withdrawn from public Veneration relics whose claims were found to be dubious or spurious. In recent memory, this has happened in the case of "St. Philomena," center of a devoted cult for more than a cen-tury, though she had never been formally canonized and nothing actually was known of her life. Despite the many miracles attributed to the relics of this supposed second century martyr, unearthed from a catacomb in 1802, mod-ern research shed doubt on the authenticity of the re-mains. It should be noted that the decree of the Sacred Congre-gation of Rites in 1961 dropping the feast of St. Philomena from the liturgical calendar did not touch on the validity of the miracles attributed to her intercession. They may well have been genuine miracles performed by God be-cause of the faith and devotion of those who prayed for them. The oldest and most cherished of Christian. relics nat-urally are those reputed to have been connected with the holy person of Jesus Christ Himself. Those few that are still extant, for the most part, have sufficient historical documentation to merit scholarly attention. It must be borne in mind that the honor and veneration given to these objects is directed primarily to Christ. Hence, in, some cases where documentation establishes only doubtful authenticity, the Church is certainly jus-tified in remaining silent, if it is understood that in so doing the Church is not giving positive approval and if 4, 4. Francis J. Weber, a dPiorcieesste o of ft hLeo As rAchn-- geles, is presently assigned to Catholic University, Wash-ington 17, D.C. VOLUME 21, 1962 79 4. 4. Francis ~. Weber REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 80 greater honor and glory are thereby rendered to Almighty God. Our approach to this obscure and sometimes contro-versial subject is that of the historian, who presents only the facts, leaving conclusions to the reader, The True Cross The Cross on which our Savior died has been tradi-tionally the most precious of all Christian relics. Tiny splinters of the True Cross have been so widely distributed that, in the words of St. Cyril, "the whole inhabited earth is full of relics from the wood of the Cross." St. Helena is credited with discovery of the True Cro:;s in 327 A.D.1 Early testimony of the fathers, among them Ambrose, Jerome, Sozomen, and Theodoret, recounts this marvelous event in copious detail. The Cross was found in an abandoned cistern near Mount Calvary. Identifica-tion as the True Cross, according to St. Ambrose, was easy enough since the titulus was still affixed. To commemo-rate this great occasion, St. Helena orderd a magnificent basilica to be erected over the H61y Sepulchre. She gave it the name of St. Constantius in honor of her son, the Roman emperor. When Helena returned to Rome, the relics were placed in the Sessorian Basilica, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. A substantial segment, of the. Cross-was left in Jerusalem where it annually attracted thousands of devout pilgrims. It was captured in the seventh century by Khosru II, the Persian conqueror. When the holy relic was returned by Heraclius in 628, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was instituted. The Jerusalem relic was divided many times. When certain of these fragments fell into the hands of the Mohammedans, the Crusades were inspired to restore them. An extensive and intensive study of the True Cross was made and published in 1870 by Rohault de Fleury. After examination of all extant fragments claimed to be from the True Cross, he drew up a minute catalogue of them, with precise weights and measurements. His findings proved that if all known pieces of the True Cross were put together, they would consitute less than one-third of the original Cross. This effectively silenced skeptics who had scoffed that the total of supposed fragments was bigger than the Cross itself. De Fleury's calculations2 were based on a cross of pine wood weighing an estimated 75 kilograms. The volume of 1 Louis de Combres, The Finding of the True Cross (London: Trubner, 1907). = Charles Rohault de Fleury, Mdraoire sur les instruments de la Passion (Paris: Lesort, 1870), pp. 97-179. this. cross would have been approximately 178 million cubic millimeters. Known volume of the existing relics does not exceed ,t0 million cubic millimeters. 0 Crux ave, spes unica! The Title of the Cross There are many fanciful legen~ls associated with the dis-covery of the True Cross by St. Helena. The manner of distinguishing the True Cross of Christ .from those of the two thieves is usually related with colorful if not his-torically accurate circumstances. However, St. Ambrose testifies there was no problem in identifying the True Cross as the titulus or title-piece was still intact. Other writers corroborate this account, notably Sts. Cyrils and Jerome. As has been the case with so many holy relics, the titulus was divided into seveial pieces. The Diary of Etheria lo-cates a piece of the titulus in Jerusalem in 380 A.D, Helena undoubtedly brought a part of the title back to Rome with her. Regrettably, there is no further documentation avail-able on the fate of the Jerusalem relic, For some reason, very likely to protect it from invaders, the Roman relic seems to.have been walled up in an arch of Santa Croce by Placidus Valentinian III in the fifth century. In the twelfth century it was accidentally un-earthed by Gherardo Caccianemici, titular cardinal and later Pope Lucius II. The future pontiff placed his seal on the reliquary and replaced it in its hiding place. In 1492 Cardinal Mendoza of Toledo rediscovered the relic which he immediately presented to the then Holy Father, Innocent VIII. A papal bull, Admirabile Sacra-mentum, was issued, after which the titulus was exposed for public veneration in Santa Croce. The title-piece is of wood, about nine by five inches in size, and comprises two-and-one-half lines of faded in-scription. Hebrew, Greek and Latin characters are dis-cernible, all of which axe printed in reverse, a practice common with the Romans of the time of Christ. The Shroud of Turin It is recorded in Chapter 27 of St. Matthew how Joseph. of Arimathea wrapped the body of Jesus in a "dean linen cloth." No further mention of this funeral shroud appears in Christian literature until the time of St. Nino4 (d. ~38), who relates how Peter removed the shroud from the tomb shortly after the Resurrection. The fourteenth century Byzantine historian, Nicephorus Callista, tells how this 8Philip Gonnet, De Sancti Cyrilli Hiersolymitani Catechismt~ (Paris: 1876). ¯ Edward Wuenschel, C.Ss.R.0 Sell-Portrait oI Christ (Esopus, New York: Holy Shroud Guild, 1954). ÷ ÷ ÷ Relics ot Christ VOLUME 21, 1962 81 4. Francis $. Weber REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Holy Shroud, soaked with the blood of Christ and bearing an image of His holy face, found its way to Constantino-. pie: "Pulcheria, Empress of the East, having built a basil-ica. at Blachernes in 436, piously deposited there the fu. neral linens of Our Savior, which had just been rediscov-. ered and which the Empress Eudoxia had sent to her." Eyewitnesses to the presence of the Holy Shroud at Con-stantinople are recorded in the Annals of 631, 640, 749, 1157 and 1171 A.D. During the Fourth Crusade, the Holy Shroud was sur. rendered in recompense to Otho de la Roche, Duke of Athens and Sparta. The Duke in 1204 sent the prized relic to his father in France. Soon after, it came into possession of the Bishop of Besan~on. A fire caused minor damage to the shroud in 1349. Later that same year, it was stolen from its case in Besan~on Cathedral and given to King Philip IV who in turn gave it to Geoffrey, Count of Char., ney and Lord of Lirey. There is documentary evidence ¯ that it was at Lirey in 1360. During the Hundred Years War, the Holy Shroud wa:; handed over by Geoffrey's granddaughter to the House of Savoy for safekeeping. In 1454, Pope Sixtus IV directed the Duke of Savoy, Louis I, to build a shrine for the shroud at his Chambery residence. During the troubled war years of the sixteenth century, the Holy Shroud was moved from town to town in France. It narrowly missed being destroyed a second time by fire in 1532, and in fact its corners were noticeably singed. At the request of the aged Charles Borromeo, the shroud in 1578 was brought to Turin where it has re-mained for the past four hundred years. It is presently preserved in the black marble chapel specially built for it behind the city's beautiful fifteenth century cathedral. Several pronouncements by the Holy See leave litth: doubt regarding the Church's official attitude toward the Turin Shroud. An Office and a Mass were formally ap-proved by Pope Julius II in the bull Romanus Ponti[ex issued in 1506. Sixtus IV had previously stated that in thbl Holy Shroud "men may look upon the true blood and portrait of Jesus Christ Himself." A remarkable discovery was made in .1898, when a pho-tograph of the Turin Shroud revealed the faint, blurred image on the ancient linen to be an actual "negative" produced by vapors from a human body covered witll spices. The negative of the modern photo~a negative of a negative, thus producing a positive--offered a far more pronounced picture of a human face than was previously recognizable. ChemiCally, this "vapograph" was caused by the am-moniacal emanations from the surface of the body after an unusually violent death. It has been proved experimen-tally that these vapors are capable of producing a deep reddish brown stain which would vary in intensity with the distance from a cloth soaked with oil and aloes. Hence the image of Christ's face on the shroud is a natural nega-tive. This modern evidence, together with the identification of human bloodstains, prompted Dr. Paul Vignon to read a brilliant paper before the Acaddmie des Sciences, in which he suggested that any explanation denying the authenticity of the Turin Shroud would be scientifically inaccurate. It might also be mentioned that, the impression on the shroud of the Grown of Thorns is in perfect conformity with the "helmet type" of crown displayed at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Further, the nail wounds are not in the palms of the hands but in the wrists. It has been re-alized only in our own times that this was a physical neces-sity, for nails in the palms .of the hands would not have been able to sustain the weight of a human body. One of the major opponents and critics of the Turin Shroud was the anti-pope Clement VII, first of the Avig-non Pretenders. His opposition apparently stemmed from a vague charge made by the Bishop of Troyes that the shroud was the work of a local craftsman skilled in the subtle art of simulating antique handiwork. Other shrouds, thirty in all, each purporting to be the genuine article, have turned up through the centuries. Most notable are thosestill preserved at Besan~on, Ca-douin, and Champiegne. These shrouds likewise bear im-pressions alleged to be those of Christ's face and body. However, the preponderance of ,historical evidence seems to leave no doubt that among all the claimants, only the Shroud of Turin has a valid pretension to au-thenticity. The Pillar of the Scourging The column of the Praetorium to which Christ was bound during His scourging was discovered in the For-tress of Antonia in 373 A.D., according to a chronicle penned by St. Ephrem. St. Paulinus of Nola,5 writing after 409, refers to several relics of the Passion, among them "the pillar at which He was scourged." Philip of Brosserius saw the pillar in the Church of the Holy Se-pulchre in 1285. Some time before the end of the four-teenth century it was broken and one part was sent to Constantinople. An interesting Christian" tradition, dating back to .the See Letter 310f Paulinus. ÷ ÷ ÷ Relics o] Christ VOLUME 21, 1962 83 ÷ ÷ ÷ F~ancis $. Webe~ REVIEW I:OR REI.I~IOUS 84 fourth century, holds that Christ was actually scourged twice. St. John Chrysostom tells us this second flagellation took place at the house of Caiaphas after the mock trial. This tradition finds prominent mention in early chroni-cles. The pillar used for the second scourging was reserved in the Church of Mount Sion, the Cenacle, where St. Jerome reported he saw it. During the Persian invasion, it too seems to have been broken into several pieces. The portion left at the Cenacle was lost in 1537. The other part was returned to a church subsequently erected on the sit~ of the house of Caiaphas. Here it was venerated until the fourteenth century, when it completely disappeared. In 1222 A.D., Giovanni Cardinal Colonna, papal envoy to the Orient, returned to Rome with a fragment of the Pillar of the Scourging, apparently given him by the Sara-cens. He enshrined it in his titular church of St. Praxedes, where it may be seen today. The Roman pillar is of mar-ble, about two feet four inches high. It is.probably one of the parts of the Praetorian column. Its counterpart in Jerusalem is of a different material and may have formed the lower part of the pillar. The Holy Stairs Among the many treasures brought back from the Holy Land by St. Helena was the marble staircase from the palace of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. It is still extant,e The stone steps number twenty-eight and are said. to have been sanctified by the feet of Christ himself when He as-cended this stairway at the Praetorium. The stairway, reconstructed in Rome, originally formed part of the old Lateran Palace, leading into a chapel dedi-cated to St. Sylvester. When the Lateran Palace was torn down by Pope Sixtus V in 1589, the stairs were moved to their present location. Today the Scala Sancta constitutes the entranceway to the Holy of Holies~ an old private papal chapelY In its present site, the Scala Sancta is flanked by additional stair-wells on either side. Traditionally the Holy Stairs are ascended only on one's knees. The last pope to ascend the stairway in this fashion was Plus IX on the eve of his exile from Rome in 1870. Pope St. Pius X decreed a plenary indulgence for those who devoutly ascend the Scala Sancta on their knees as testimony of their love for Christ. Replicas of the Scala Sancta have been erected at Lourdes and other centers of pilgrimage. e Herbert Thursfon, The Holy Year o] Jubilee (Westminster: New-man, 1949). ~ Philippe Lauer, Le trdsor de Sancta Sanctorum (Paris: Leroux, t~o~). The Soldier's Lance Mention is made of the soldier's lance in Chapter 19 of St. John. In his account of the Savior's death, St. John re-lates that "one of the soldiers opened His side with a spear . " The first extra-Biblical.~mention of~,this relic seems to be by Anthony of P~efiZ~, who wrot~'~a~;he saw the Crown of Thorns and "the lance with which He was struck in the side," in the Basilica of Mount Sion.s A miniature of the renowned Syriac manuscript, illu-minated by Rabulas.in 586, assigns the name Longinus to the soldier whose lance pierced the crucified Christ. Gas-siodorus and Gregory of Tours speak of a spear venerated at Jerusalem, which was thought to be identical with that mentioned in Scripture. After the fall of Jerusalem in 615 A.D., several of the major relics of the Passion fell into the hands of the Per-sians. The Chronicon Paschale relates that a piece of the soldier's lance came into the possession of Nicetas, who enclosed it in an icon and presented it to Santa Sophia in Constantinople. In 1241 the Holy Lance was given to King St. Louis for Sainte Chapelle in Paris. No trace of this part of the lance has been found since it was lost during the French Revolu-tion, some time after its removal to the Bibliothkque Na-tionale. The second and larger part of the shaft of the soldier's iance was reported seen by Arculpus in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem about 670 A.D. Later it was taken to Constantinople, where Sir John Mandeville writes about it. It was sent to Pope Innocent VIII in 1492 in return for favors shown to the captured Zizin, brother of Sultan Bajazet. At request of the French hierarchy, during the pontifi-cate of Benedict XIV an investigation was conducted to ascertain the .relation, if any, between the two relics, one at Paris, the other at Rome. A papal brief, issued after the inquiry, concluded that both relics were originally parts of the same shaft. Several other supposedly genuine Ho!y Lances are pre-served in various treasuries of Europe, but none of the others offers a valid claim to authenticity. Even the story told by William of Malmesbury about the Holy Lance given to King Athelstan of England is historically in-accurate. Since the tragic loss of ihe Paris relic, only the Roman lance remains. It is exposed each year for veneration dur-ing Holy Week by the Archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica. 8 Francois Martin, Reliques de la Passion (Paris: Lethielleux, 1897). 4- 4- 4- Relics of Christ VOLUME 21, 1962 85 + + + F~ancis ~. Webe~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 86 Veronica's Veil According to the historian Eusebius in his commentary on the Legend of Abgar and according to remarks con-tained in the apocryphal work Mors Pilati, several au-thentic portraits of Jesus Christ were made at various times during His lifetime. The oldest and most authenticated of these images has been known to Romans for centuries as the Vera Icon or Veil of Veronica. So highly has this image been held in Roman esteem, that a Mass celebrating it was composed and inserted into at least one of the early Augsburg Missals.9 There is no reference in Scripture to a woman offering her veil to Christ during His Sacred Passion. But it is highly plausible that there was such a compassionate soul among those who followed Christ on His way to Mount Calvary. The incident itself is undoubtedly worthy of some credibility, since it has found its expression since very early times in the Christian devotion of the Stations of the Cross. Apparently the holy woman in question, known in pious legend only as Veronica, found her way to Rome, where she presented her Vera Icon---True Picture--to Pope Clement I. The veil, ostensibly bearing the image of the suffering Jesus miraculously pressed into it, was vener-ated in several places until the pontificate of John VII who had it enclosed in an ornate reliquary. During the ensuing centuries, the Holy See has exhibited particular solicitude for this precious relic. It had been reserved to the Pope's own chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, where it is ex, posed briefly during Holy Week for veneration by the faithful. The Holy Grail A whole cycle of romantic legends has been woven about the theme of the Holy Grail,1° but the legendary quests, inspiring though they may be, add nothing to the few slim historical facts available. Of the two notable "pretenders" to genuine Grailship, one alone merits se-rious consideration. And while tl~e chalice displayed at Valencia is not generally accepted as genuine by histo-rians, its proponents present a tolerable case in its behalf. An account by Bishop Siuri of Cordoba relates that the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper was brought to~ Rome by St. Peter soon after the death of Mary. It was used frequently at Papal Masses until the pontificate of Sixtus II. During the persecutions of Valerian, St. Lawrence sent the chalice to his native Huesca in the northern part of o Sainte Veronique, apostre de l'Aquitaine (Toulouse: 1877). a0 Nutt, Studies o[ the Holy Grail (London: 1888). the Spanish peninsula where the Holy Grail remained until 713 when it was removed to San Juan de la Pena for protective custody during the Moslem invasion. A deed of exchange, dated September 26, 1399, testifies that King Martin acquired the Holy Grail for his private chapel in the Palace of the Aljaferia. About 1424 .the chalice was moved to Valencia by King Alfonso V. The chalice has remained at Valencia since the fifteenth cen-tury except for a brief period during the Spanish Civil War when part of the cathedral was burned by the Com-munists. It was restored to its chapel in the Metropolitan Cathedral at Valencia by the Franco government in 1937. Artistically, the Holy Grail is Corinthian in styling,ix made of agate or Oriental carnelian. The handles on ei-ther side are common appurtenances for drinking vessels of its period. The costly pearls, rubies, and emeralds were added much later. The Crown of Thorns St. Paulinus of Nola, writing early in the fifth century, is the first of the chroniclers to mention specifically "the thorns with which Our Lord was crowned." Other early writers allude apparently to this relic of the Passion, but their comments are vague and inconclusive. Writing about 570, Cassiodorus speaks of "the thorny crown, which was set upon the head of our Redeemer in order that all the thorns of the world might be gathered together and broken." The pilgrimage of the monk Ber-nard establishes that the Crown Of Thorns was still at Mount Sion in 870. According to fairly recent studies, the whole crown was transferred to Byzantium about 1063, although many ot the thorns must have been removed at an earlier date. The Latin Emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin II, offered the Crown of Thorns to St. Louis in 1238. After lengthy ne-gotiations with the Venetians, the r(lic was taken to Paris and placed in the newly built Sainte Chapelle where it remained an object of national devotion until the French Revolution. For security, the crown was placed in the BibliothOque Nationale during the bloody days of the upheaval. In 1806, it was restored to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was en-shrined in its present rock crystal reliquary in 1896. All that is left to be seen today is the circlet of rushes, devoid of any thorns. What remained of the original sixty or seventy thorns were apparently removed by St. Louis and deposited in separate reliquaries. The king and his successors distributed the thorns until nothing remained at Paris but the circlet. The Holy Chalice o/the Last Supper (Valencia: 1958). 4. 4. + Relics o] Christ VOLUME 21, 1962 Francis J. Weber REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 88 Reportedly there are more than 700 "holy thorns" scat-tered around the world. But only those traceable to St. Louis, to one of the emperors, or to St. Helena are genu-ine. Such authentic thorns aCe at Cluny, St. Praxedes in Rome, Santa Croce, and at Aachen, to mention but a few. The Nails There seems to be little agreement among Biblical scholars on the number of nails used to fasten our Blessed Lord to His Cross. Religious art of the early Middle Ages almost unanimously depicts the crucified Savior with four nails~ In the thirteenth century, however, it became in-creasingly common to represent the feet of Christ as placed one over the other and pierced with a single nail. Either of these methods is compatible with the informa-tion we have about the punishment of crucifixion as practiced by the Romans. The earliest authors, among them St. Ambrose, speak only of two nails.12 And it is a point of interest that the two oldest known representations of the Crucifixion, the carved door of Santa Sabina in Rome and the Ivory Panel in the British Museum, show no signs of nails in the feet. The most commonly accepted opinion is that there were three nails that actually touched the body of Christ. This is borne out by the evidence of the Shroud of Turin. In addition, there were probably another three nails used for the titulus, the seat block, and the foot rest. St. Ambrose and St. Jerome speak of the discovery of the nails in Jerusalem by Constantine's mother, St. Hel-ena, in the third century. Sozomen notes in passing that St. Helena had no trouble identifying the nails. One of the nails was fashioned into an imperial diadem for the emperor. This Iron Crown of Lombardy is now at Manza. Another nail was made into a bit for the imperial horse. This relic is believed to be the same as the one at Carpentas. A third nail was venerated for many years in Jerusalem before being moved to Rome's Santa Croce by Pope Gregory the Great. Several European treasuries claim to possess one or more of the true nails, but their, authenticity is clouded with the passage of time. Most of the confusion regarding the thirty or more known spurious nails can be traced to the well-intentioned Charles Borromeo who had reproduc-tions made of the nails and gave them out as memorials of the Passion. Conclusion These, then, are the more commonly accepted relics as-sociated with the holy person of Jesus Christ, our Savior. u De Combres, op. cir. If they have served to increase devotion to Almighty God, they have fulfilled their noble purpose. A saintly priest was once heard to exclaim: "Our Savior's greatest bequest to His children was not a treasury filled with mere material relics, but a golden tabernacle in which He Himself resides to be our fo6d~f6r all ~tei'nit~.!: 4. Relics ot Christ VOLIJME 21, ~962 89 EDWARD J. STOKES, S.J. Examination of Conscience for Local Superiors ÷ Edward J. Stokes, S.J., is Professor o[ Canon Law at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Munde-lein, Illinois. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 90 In the summer of 1961 Father Edward J. Stokes, s.J.0 was asked to conduct the annual retreat for a group of local superiors. One of the projects he asked them to do during the retreat was to compose on the basis of their own experience an examination of conscience to be used by local superiors at the time of the monthly recollection, the annual retreat, or at any other suitable time. The ques-tions submitted by this group of local superiors were syn-thethized by Father Stokes who then submitted them to the REvmw. The questions were further revised by Father John E. Becket, S.J., of the editorial staff of the REw~w; the final version of them is given in the following pages. Readers, whether superiors or subjects, who have ideas for the improvement of this examination of conscience either by way of addition, deletion, or emendation are urged to submit their views to the Rzwvw. If enough of such improvements are received, a newly revised version of the examination of conscience for local superiors will be published in a later issue of the R~viEw. Personal Religious Li[e 1. Do I strive to come closer to Christ by leading the life of union and interior peace with Him? Do I do everything in, with, and for Christ? 2. Am I afraid of sanctity because of the demands that it will make on me? 3. Have I forgotten that if I live better, I will pray bet-ter, and that if I pray better, I will live better? 4. Am I firmly convinced of our Lord's words: If you love me, my Father will love you and we will come to you and make our abode with you? 5. Am I convinced that this office of superior, when ful-filled to the best of my ability, is a source of sanctification for me? 6. To be a superior means to carry a cross. How often do I thank our Lord for the privilege of suffering with Him? 7. Am I a superior truly aware of my ownnothingness? 8. When I suffer discouragement, is it because I have not succeeded in doing God's will or because I have not succeeded in pleasing men? ~-,, . ~ °~' ~ 9. Am I deeply convinced that if I have done my best to fulfill God's will, I have succeeded? 10. Do I accept as personal any recognition, privilege, or service accorded me by reason of my office as superior? 11. How often do I make a Holy Hour in petition for the solution of a problem or to obtain a special grace for my fellow religious or myself? Ever a Holy Hour of thanks-giving? 12. Do I make the Sacred Heart of Jesus the King and Center of our religious house and Mary its Queen? 13. Do I take St. Joseph as the advocate and the pro-tector of the interior life of each one dwelling in our house? Personal Recollection and Prayer 14. Am I convinced that recollection is an absolute ne-cessity for any progress in the life of prayer? 15. Is my spirit of recollection such that it provides an atmosphere conducive to prayer? 16. How do I prepare the points of meditation in the evening? 17. What special meditation has drawn me closer to Christ?_ 18. Do I sometimes excuse myself from my prayers by telling myself that this or that duty must take first place? 19. Have I given full time. to my prayers or have I hur-ried through them in order to get to my other work? 20. Does the demand for great activity cause distractions in my prayers or perhaps lead me to neglect prayer; or does it rather make me realize my dependence on God? 21. Have I said common vocal prayers reverently and not annoyed others by my haste? 22. Am I observant of recollection immediately after breakfast? 23. Do I make a special effort to keep recollected on the days when it seems especially impossible? 24. Do I ever revert to God's presence in me throughout the day, to adore Him, thank Him, love Him, speak to Him about the needs of soul and body, my own, and those of my fellow religious? Confession 25. Do I make it a point to confess my added responsi-bility by reason of my office when I confess criticism of su-periors or priests? ÷ ÷ ÷ local Superiors VOLUME 21, 1962 91 4, 4, E. ]. Stokes, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 92 26. Do I make it a point to confess my added respons.i-bility as a superior when I confess failure to exercise ju:~- tice or charity in dealing with my.fell0w religioug? 27. Do I take advantage of my weekly confessions to re-ceive spiritdal direction? 28. Have my confessions been hurried due to an in-efficient planning of my time? Particular Examen 29. Is my particular examen specific? 30. Do I make a tie-in of retreat resolutions, the particu-lar examen, and weekly confession? 31. Do I make a daily examination of the motives that govern my external life? 32. Do I make my particular examen a vital part of my day as a religious? Mortification 33. Do I realize that my chief mortification is to tie found in the justice and the charity of my dealings with others? 34. Am I willing to perform one interior and one exte-rior act of mortification each day in order to obtain the blessing of our Lord on my community? Charity 35. Is love for others the outstanding virtue in my life? 36. Have I deliberately practised acting towards Christ in each person I meet? 37. Do I appreciate the importance of my personal charity to this community as a cell of the Mystical Body? Faith 38. Are the mysteries of Christianity the basis of my re-ligious life? 39. Have I made the connection between these mys-teries and the Rule, or have I let concern with the Rule obscure my reliance on broader Christian principles? Hope 40. Am I aware of the need for Christ's help in sanctify-ing myself by governing others? 41. Do I realize that Christ is able to utilize my faults in sanctifying others? Principles of Government 42. Do I realize that the most exalted duty of a su-perior is care for the spiritual life of his subjects? 43. Do I seek to serve God by serving my fellow re-ligious always and everywhere? 44. Do I pray regularly for the spiritual well-being and growth of those in my house? 45. Do I try to help each religious to develop a deep inferior life by my words and by my example? 46. Do I give my fellow religious an example of the love of regularity? . 47. Do I try to help my fellow religious develop a ready and loving acceptance of God's holy will by the example of my own acceptance of it in all my difficulties, trials, and failures as well as in my joys and success? 48. Do I realize and am I firmly convinced that seeing, accepting, and willing all that God wills for me in every circumstance of my life is the essence of sanctity; and do I teach my fellow religious this? 49. Am I trying to establish in my fellow 'religious a sense of the Mystical Body so that they are able to com-municate spiritually one with another? 50. Do I look for Christ in the problem religious? in the impudent child in the classroom? Do I see Him looking at me through the eyes of all my charges, seeking my love and devotion? 51. How often have I passed a fellow religious in the hall without noticing and greeting him? 52. In making use of the aspiration, "Praise be to Jesus Christ" during the periods of recollection, do I really try to see Christ present in that person?' 53. Did I personally visit at least one sick person of the parish or community, or delegate a religious to do so? 54. Have I in any way, by actions or words, shown a mere toleration for lay persons associated with our work? Or have I accepted them as allies in our work? Community Exercises 55. Do I faithfully observe the daily order? 56. Do I realize that as superior I set the tone and the spirit of the house, in recollection, cheerfulness, peace, hospitality? 57. Do I let human respect interfere with the duty I have as superior to insist on charity and the observance of the rules in my community? 58. Do I miss or am I late for spiritual exercises unless for a grave reason? 59. What community exercises have I missed in the past month? My reasons? Did I make them up at another time, or did I let them go through neglect or carelessness? 60. What can be done to make the chapter of faults more effective? 61. Do I create a family spirit? 62. Is my recreation self-centered? Do I do what I want and not talk or .do too much of the talking? Local Superiors VOLUME 21, 1962 95 ]. Stokes, FOR R~:LIGIOUS 94 63. Do I endeavor to make community recreation an exercise of wholesome family spirit? 64. Is my house truly a religious house or does it have the impersonality of a modern railroad station? Personal Qualities 65. Am I even-tempered? 66. Do I show true joy in my work? 67. Have I betrayed immaturity and lack of courage by disproportionate manifestations of disappointment and discouragement? 68. Do I allow my feelings to regulate my actions? 69. Do I have a good sense of humor? 70. How much self-pity does my countenance mirror when things go wrong? 71. Am I approachable? 72. Do I try, as far as possible, to treat all my fellow re-ligious in the same way--not showing any partiality or favoritism? Have I excluded any or passed them over iu the sharing of responsibility or favors? Are the same few always near me? 73. Do I treat as sacred anything that a fellow religious tells me in confidence? 74. How many times in the past month have I been im-patient with my fellow religious? 75. How do I act or react when I know that one of my fellow religious has offended me? Do I~take it in a Christ:- like way or do I hold-a grudge? Do I consider violations of rule as offenses against me? 76. Do I as superior always show exterior peace, calm, and happiness? I must do this if I am going to be the un-derstanding, religious superior that I should be. 77. In the presence of outsiders do I always show great loyalty to each and every member of my community? 78, Am I as reserved as I should be while visiting in the parlor? 79. Am I kind to all lay people, regardless of how much they can, orhave helped financially or otherwise--look-ing to the good of their souls first and foremost? Government 80. Do I run a disorganized house so that my subjects tend to say: "We never know what we are going to do next"? 81. Do I get all the facts before I make a decision? 82. Do I hesitate in making the decisions that I must as superior? Do I harm my fellow religious by my habit of procrastination? 83. Am I under someone's influence in the decisions that I make, an older religious or a former superior? 84. Do I contradict my orders, thus making it difficult to know what is my will? 85. Am I available to my fellow religious? 86. Am I open to suggestions? 87. Do I delegate responsibility and do I trust those to whom I have delegated it? If a duty is not being done as I would, do I give it to someone else or take over myself rather than try to help? Do I show interest without in-terfering? 88. Do I give authority as well as responsibility to re-ligious when I give them a job? 89. Am I a politician in dealing with my fellow religious instead of a Christlike superior? 90. Am I unnecessarily secretive in trivial matters, keep-ing the community guessing? Do I not see that this will cause bad feelings? 91. Do I talk uncharitably or show displeasure to one of my subjects about another subject in the house? 92. Should I not close my eyes to many insignificant petty things? Should I not use tact and by my example bring it about that these failings and imperfections will vanish--al'though perhaps not totally? 93. How have I controlled the conversation at table? Was I alert always to see to it that it never became un-charitable or critical, especially regarding students? 94. Do I initiate conversation regarding worthwhile reading? 95. Do I give the required instruction time to the young religious? Do I conscientiously prepare these instructions? 96. Do I complain about fnoney? Am I overly anxious regarding finances? 97. What is my attitude toward the suggestions, deci-sions, or orders of extern superiors in the institution in which our community works? Fellow Religious 98. Do I as superior treat my subjedts as mature, dedi-cated persons? 99. Do I trust my fellow religious and have confidence in them and show them that I do by the way I treat them? 100. Do I correct all when only one needs the correc-tion? Do I not see that this causes much criticism and irritated discussion? 101. Do all the members of the community feel that they belong and are an important part of the whole? 102. Do I give my fellow religious encouragement and show them gratitude for the good work that they are doing? A pat on the back does not cost much but it means a great deal especially to those inclined to get discouraged at times. 103. Have I within the last month made it a point to 4. Local Superiors VOLUME 21, 1962 95 .÷ ÷ ÷ E. ]. Stokes, .S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 96 compliment or praise or show attention, at least in some small way, to each religious in my charge? 104. Has each of my subjects received some word of praise (not flattery) from me recently? 105. Do I encourage group discussions so that all the community can express themselves? Do I see that such discussions are well-prepared and stimulating? 106. Do I see to it that the rest of the community share,,i in the rich contributions that some of its members can give, those, for example, who have had special oppor-tunities for studies? 107. Do I seek to serve God by serving my fellow re-ligious always and everywhere? 108. Do I show concern for the trials and crosses of my fellow religious? 109. How often do I check and consider the welfare of ¯ each of my subjects--spiritual and physical? 110. Is understanding the essence of my charity? Do I try to put myself in the subject's place and realize his emotions, attitudes, and difficulties--or is my charity based solely on my own attitude and outlook on life? He might not always want done to him what I would want done to me. I must try to understand his viewpoint. 111. Is each religious an individual to me? 112. Do my fellow religious.feel wanted and valued by me? 113. Do my fellow religious find the quality of thought-fulness in me? 114. Do I make it a habit to direct my attention to each religious individually at least once during the day? 115. Have I tried to satisfy each one's basic need to be accepted, the need for belonging? 116. Have I made use of each one's talents (all of them), or do I level them down to an equal share from each? Do I, then, expect only three talents from one who has and can give ten talents? 117. Do I take too much ~or granted the conscientious and well-balanced religious who does not demand my at-tention? 118. Do I give each individual religious my undivided attention regardless of who he is and how often he may come to me in a given day? 119. Do I make a sincere effort to speak to each re-ligious some time each day? 120. Do I give a sufficient amount of time to those who need to talk over with me the question of students who may be a problem to them? This could be a problem of behavior or some method that would help teaching. If a teacher is weak in discipline, this is a good means of gently getting across the fact that the child is not always at fault. 121. How well uo I "listen" when religious come for permissions, advice, and such? With preoccupation? With patience? With haste or annoyance? And this especially at difficult times? Or am I gracious, patient, helpful, Christlike? Have I shown impatience with those who come to me with trifles? Which of them? Do I r~ally listen when a religious is telling me something---or am I finish-ing up this job or starting another? 122. Have I treated each religious the same behind his back as I have to his face? 123. Do I control my hurt when one of the religious tells lies about me to religious of our own house? 124. Can my subjects sway my will by flattery? 125. Do I afford my subjects the opportunity of sug-gesting spiritual reading books? 126. What have I done to encourage professional read-ing on the part of my subjects? Do I give them an ex-ample in this regard? Do I ever check,up on them on this point? 127. Do I seek to prepare my fellow religious for fu-ture responsible positions in the community? ÷ Local Superiors VOLUME 21, 1962 97 KATIE ROCK Restoration, with a Difference 4. + 4. Katie Rock lives at 200 Oak Street, Falls Church. Vir-ginia. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 98 Washington, D.C. is a city of contrasts. There are beau-tiful green expanses and there are dark, depressing alleys. There are massive monuments and tremendous buildingsl and there are rows and rows of shabby, run-down homes. Happily, there is city-wide slum-clearance consciousness; and already in some parts of town the monotonous rows are being converted into magnificent Town Houses with every modern feature. Restoration is taking place for many reasons, but unfortunately the power and profit motives seem the big reason. It is therefore refreshing to know that some are bringing their talents and inspiration to the restoration simply because they want to have part in "restoring all things to Christ." An assignment enhanced by my own curiosity took me to Foggy Bottom, the latest dilapidated section to be-come the site of intensive re-making. Situated only one.~ half mile from the White House, it is bounded roughly by Georgetown, George Washington University, the new State Department Building, and the Potomac River. This was my first visit to Foggy Bottom since it became "fash-ionable," and I was so fascinated as I walked down the narrow streets that I stopped to browse a bit. Gradually tiny broken-down row houses are being transformed into confortable city homes. Interesting colors, small but per.; fect gardens, unique combinations of contemporary and forsaken styling are attractive and appealing. Among the private homes there are apartment hotels arising. ¯ It was fun to speculate about the insides of these color., ful homes as I walked along the old brick sidewalks. Oc.; casionally a brass plate revealed an M.D. was occupant, or a navy captain, or a professor. A baby carriage in a tiny yard indicated there is new life in Foggy Bottom, too; When I arrived at my destination, the corner of H and 25th Streets, I stopped in wonder and admiration. Be-fore me was a turreted three-story structure of brick, painted a soft yellow with black trim which offsets awe-somely the octagon-shaped tower, dormer, and windows. There is a terrace in front, a landscaped yard, and I peeped onto a sheltered patio. A lacy black iron fence surrounds the property and a brass plate announces that this is the home of Melita god~ck,~A.I.A, g: Associates. I was welcomed inside by Melita, who introduced me to her assistant, Bernice, and after' being made to feel at home, I settled down to hear the story of a wonderful new venture into the new frontiers of our faith. Who is Melita? The decor and art work and religious atmosphere of this first floor indicate an unusual life. Melita was born in Milan, Italy, and educated at Vienna Polytechnic. She is a convert to Catholicism. Although she is an artist and sculptress, her professional experience and livelihood have mainly been centered On architec-ture. Twelve years were spent with other firms. Included in her work with those firms were high schools in Arling-ton, Virginia, and Rockville, Maryland, commercial buildings and a shopping center, a drive-in restaurant, hospitals.and the huge Medical Center of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and many government buildings ranging from a missile base to renovations of Post Offices. Since establishing her private firm about three years ago, Melita has designed the Queen Anne's Lane Town Houses in Foggy Bottom valued at :~1,000,000 (and which won for her a Goid Medallion award), many residences, the Consolata Missions Semi-nary in Buffalo, New York, the Ayles~ord Retreat Center in Chicago, and remodeling of churches in southern Mary-land. For the Government, among other projects, she modified a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. There is another facet to Melita's background. Dur-ing the 1940's she worked for four years in the Harlem Friendship House, engaged in interracial work, apolo-getics, and the practice of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. During this time she had rich experi-ences. She undertook a formal course in philosophy un-der Jacques Maritain. She learned the principles of social justice from the best of its exponents, Father John La- Farge, S.J., Baroness Catherine de Hueck Doherty, the Sheeds, and others. During these years, she developed a great love for liturgical music through the influence of other wonderful visitors to Friendship House, one of whom was Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand. More and more, as years went by, Melita!s ability in. architecture and her various artistic talents became an integrated venture. And the motivating force in her life was her religion. Her love of designing, composing, creat-ing, on the one hand, and her love of God and her fellow-man on the other were beginning to congeal into one idea. + + + Restoration VOLUME 21, 1962 99 ÷ ÷ Katie Rock REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS I00 In 1956, Melita took several months off from work to take a trip around the world, studying and observing the architecture of many lands and plans of other countries to meet the changes of modern life. Her first stop was Australia where she visited her brother, an engineer there. Then she visited the Philippines, Thailand, and India, observing certain unique and desirable aspects of Far Eastern architecture. From India she proceeded to the Holy Land, and this part of her journey provided a re-treat, as she put the world out of mind and became ab-sorbed in the life of our Lord. Her travels continued in Turkey, on to Italy where she lingered in Rome, then to Spain and France. In Germany she studied problems in-volved in regional planning for mining. Because of a serious interest in necessity for inter-diocesan planning, Melita was deeply interested in the episcopal planning bureau in Belgium, by which city churches and rural churches and schools are planned according to needs of city, suburban, or rural life. Here in Belgium, Melita observed the tremendous effect of "Young Christian Workers" in Catholic activity. The last stop was England, then home to sift and appraise the ideas and inspiration from her round-the-world journey. In 1958, Melita began her own firm, specializing in providing for her clients complete architectural, engi-neering, and planning service combined with interior decorating. The firm has the services of excellent consul-tants in engineering and financing. When the firm was first Organized, .Melita and Bernice lived and worked in the Potomac Plaza Apartments. One day a For Sale sign went up on a deserted, dilapidated dwelling across the street from the apartment. Curiosity and vision sent Me-lita on an inspection tour. The unusual lines and the lovely view of the Potomac from the third floor tower captured Melita's heart. And the creaky stairs, plaster-bare walls and cobwebs provided a challenge to Melita's pro-fessional ability. The house today seems to say it was joy as well as work that restored it to its immense liveability and unusual beauty. So much for Melita, the architect, for she is more than an artist and an architect. Melita has vision and percep-tion and appreciation for beauty not touched by human hands. Designing is not only a business with her but a God-given talent in which she expresses the love of God in her soul. Creative art, Melita told me, is the remedy man needs in this age of technology, assembly lines, and automation. These things, cold and impersonal, produce ragged nerves and tensions and strike at man's very soul, leaving him unmindful of the purpose for which his Crea-tor put him on earth. Into all forms of art--painting, poetry, music, and so forth---goes one's own personality, reflecting a personal relationship with the Heavenly Father. The closer to God man is, ~the truer his work, and the more he will choose a good and proper use of ma-terials. In the arts a man may find peace and contentment for he may use his.creativ.e ability' to transform his inner energy in a satisfying manner,~, ~, Happily, Melita sees her obligation to use her creative ability to promote a Christian society, a Christian com-munity life. Melita is taking the giant step of using her profession solely for the glory of God and for love of her neighbor with no profit except the profit of peace in her own heart. Others have done this; for example, Dr. Albert Schweitzer and Dr. Tom Dooley and Geo.rge Washington Carver. Her heart and will having been entrusted to God some time ago, Melita began sifting ideas about putting her philosophy into practice. Then ideas had to be translated into blueprints, and these blueprints needed and received approval from her auxiliary Bishop, Most Reverend Philip M. Hannan, chancellor of the archdiocese. Then came discussions with many wise and prudent friends: spiritual directors, teachers, fellow artists, other archi-tects, and even mothers of children who are awakening to the needs of our frustrated society. Far from relying solely on her own ideas, Melita sought and listened to ~he counsel of all. The result was a plan to begin a secular institute of the design professions to be called Regina Institute. A secular institute is an association of lay people living in the world but bound by the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, performing duties suitable for their talents for the love of God. Though popular and plentiful in Europe, secular institutes are just emerging in our coun-try. Their specific purposes vary widely. In Madonna House, for instance, workers live among the poor, teach-ing crafts and catechism, nursing the sick and feeding the hungry. In the Company of St. 'Paul, members teach, work in the Government, and so forth. This is a quiet life~ there is nothing in their dress to indicate they are an organization dedicated to Christ. Members simply strive to live as "Christs" among those needy in goods or in spirit. Regina Institute is taking another direction. First of all, Melita is concerned with the arts in the service of the Church's liturgy. She would like to assist in setting stand-ards for the quality of sacred art just as Benedictines have set a standard for sacred music. Second, she is endeavor-ing to bring the Incarnation into society by bringing Christian attitudes into the building professions and in-dustry and into city planning. The Christian philosophy of man and the social teachings of the Church are being Restoration VOLUME 21, 1962 ]0! Katie Ro~k REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 102 applied, thus supporting such contemporary projects as open occupancy, adequate housing, and so forth. Third, Melita and associates try to teach all of us the visual arts and their spiritual and cultural values. My visit showed me a great deal about the practice of these ideals and the life of this infant group. Melita and Bernice filled in a picture of a day in Regina House, tak-ing me on a tour of the house as they talked about their Rule. Recently Gwen moved in with Melita and Bernice. For the present they are living according to the Rule of the Third Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Melita has served as novice mistress of the St. Therese Chapter in Washington for eleven years. The Rule seeks to instill in its followers the spirit of constant prayer and love. Early each morning the group leaves for St. Stephen's Church nearby for a halfihour.of.meditation before 7:30 Mass. Breakfast follows, then they recite in ~ommon Prime, Terce and Sext from the Little 01~ce. (On.nice days they do so on the patio which they call their "clois-ter.") At 9:00 work begins. Lunch is at 12:30, followed by None and Vespers, then free time. At 2:00 they go back to work until dinner. At 7:30 comes Compline, Matins, and Lauds, and after that there is recreation-- long walks in nice weather, singing or reading at other times. One day of each.month is spent in retreat. There are three floors in l~egina House. The first con-tains the dining area and kitchen opening onto the patio, Bernice's office, and a music area. Melita plays the piano, and there is also a stereo arid many fine records, including Gregorian chant and classical music. On the second floor, we entered a work and study spa.ce. I was fascinated with the dozens of books and their range of subjects, from the culture of the Far East to the philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright. There are books in German and French and Spanish, books on philosophy, Catholic Action, and the liturgy, books on ancient architecture and books on mod-ern design. Attractive chairs and a lovely view are invit-ing. Melita's bedroom, also on this floor, shows all her separate interests united in her one endeavor. There are beautiful religious objects, side by side with a drawing board (she is currently working on a dental laboratory) and there were several sketches in process, both water colors and oils. On the third floor are more drawing boards. This floor also serves as a workshop for other projects. Bernice finds time to make beautiful cards by a linoleum process fea-turing Melita's impressionistic designs. Bernice has a talent for dress designing and sewing; also she does lovely ceramic tile work. I noticed several clay models of build-ings as well as wooden models; Melita explained these help her visualize her ideas. Certainly the first purpose'of this institute is sanctifi-cation of its members. Theystrive for a four-fold contact with Christ: Christ the Life, through prayer.and the sacra-ments; Christ the Truth, through study and meditation; Christ the Way, through i~bedience; and Christ the Worker, through creative human effort for love of God. Melita invites young people inclined towards the design arts, who would like to dedicate their service to God, to talk to her. Regina House is large enough to house several women. If men apply, perhaps a home close by will be found for them, while work and prayer will be centered in Regina House. The necessity for meals and housekeep-ing means the Institute must attract also "artists" of the kitchen and "masters" of the broom. In fact, Melita is ready to consider anyone who is willing to share her ideals and approach, and invites those interested to con-tact her at 801 25th St. N.W., Washington 7, D.C. So sold was I by my visit that I was ready to apply-- but Melita just won't take a mother of eight growing children. Reluctantly I said "good-bye" and went out the big black door and the lacy iron gate. I looked back with new appreciation at Regina House which today so sur-passes in beauty and liveability its original design. From the ordinary it has become majestic. I left, believing that Melita's plan for it also far surpasses the ordinary Chris-tian way of living and that its tower truly points to Heaven and its eternal history is just beginning. ÷ ÷ ÷ Restoration VOLUME 21, 1962 103 WALTER DE BONT, O.P. Identity Crisis and the Male Novice Walter de Bont, O.P., is a member of the faculty o! the Catholic University in Nijmegen, Hol-land. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 104 Beginners' Failings Father Lacordaire,1 the day after his entry into the novitiate, confided to the master of novices: "Father, I can't stay here; these young men are childish and quite silly. They think everything is funny," "It would be a shame," the priest answered, "if the former preacher of Notre Dame of Paris should, by a hasty departure, give the world the impression that his entrance into religion had not been thoroughly consid-ered. Wait a while, then." Three weeks later the master of novices asked him, "When are you leaving?" "But I do not wish to go, so long as you are willing to keep me." "But what of your young companions who are so silly?" "Father," said Lacordaire, a little embarrassed, "I am the silliest of them all." In all the novitiates of the world since the beginning of monasticism there h~tve been young men, and some not so young, who were "a little silly." No matter how more or less normal they were a few weeks.previously, before they had left "the world," here they become affected by a whole series of strange phenomena which spiritual authors call "beginners' failings" (see especially St. John of the Cross, Dark Night, 1, 1-7). Using the material furnished by the experiment described below, the following section will give a rapid and pseudonymous portrait of certain "types" who betray the curious behavior encountered among be-ginners. *This article is translated with permission from the original article, "La crise d'identit~ du novice," which appeared in Suppld-ment de la Vie Spirituelle, 1961, pp. 295-325. The translation is by the Reverend John E. Becket, S.J. Passing Vagaries Brother Clement suddenly develops a phobia for drafts; underground currents beneath his bed keep him from sleeping; he wonders whether the spinach from the garden has enough iron to supply his needs; the light bulb on his work table endangers his eyes; and so on. No one has de-scribed more humorously than St. Teresa of Avila this kind of hypochondriac novice who seems "to have entered the cloister solely to labor at staving off death." She her-self, for that matter, knew this temptation of seeking "not to lose one's repose here below and still to enjoy God in heaven." John is a real gourmet--in search of spiritual delicacies. All his efforts are aimed at getting the satisfaction of a very sensible devotion from' prayer; In his :better moments he feels inundated with grace and spends hours in the chapel. When consolation no longer comes to him, he is desolate and lamentsin the blackest sorrow. At such times he passes the time of meditation breaking in books. Guy fears to embark on the road to perfection, excusing himself as one who was not meant to accomplish great things. He even thanks God for not making him too in-telligent. Comparing himseff with others, he has already lost all courage. Some suffer from quite peculiar sexual problems. At the very moment of prayer, confession, or communion, sexual feelings and reactions surge up. Cassian has already spoken of a brother "who enjoyed constant purity of heart and body, having merited it by reason of his circumspection and humility, and who was never afflicted with nocturnal emissions. But whenever he prepared for communion, he was sullied by an impure flow in his sleep. For a long time fear kept him from participating in the sacred mys-teries" (ConIerences, 22, 6). And then there are the pilgrims of ,the absolute with pure and perfect ideals. They are so punctual in their ex-ercises that you can set your watch by them; but they easily forget that the rule is merely a means to love God and their neighbor better. Burning with enthusiasm, they seem to have sanctity within their grasp. Lacking patience, they try to force the ascent toward God with Draconian measures. The novitiate is the decisive year in which holi-ness must be achieved. For them profession is a final set-tlement and not a decisive beginning. Or else there are the grim ascetics. In his enthusiasm for purity, Henry Suso did not scratch, nor even touch, any part of his body. Throughout the day he abstained from all drink. In the evening at the sprinkling with holy water, he opened his dry lips and gaped toward the 'sprinkler, hoping that a tiny drop of water would fall on his arid 4. + + Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 ]05 4. W. de Bont, OJL REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 106 tongue. At the age of forty, luckily, when "his whole na-ture was so devastated that nothing was left for him but to die or leave off his austerities," he opted for life and threw his whole arsenal of instruments of penance into the lake. For most of these novitiate "follies" are only temporary. Sooner or later good sense reasserts its rights, and the spiritual life of the subject becomes more balanced. St. Teresa had already clearly sensed that this bizarre conduct of the novice-beginner was somewhat forced and not genuine: Anything which gets the better of us to such an extent that we think our reason is not free must be considered suspicious, for in that way we shall never gain freedom of spirit, one of the marks of which is that we can find God in all things even while we are thinking of them. Anything other than this is spiritual bondage, and, apart from the harm which it does to the body, it constrains the soul and retards its growth (Book of the Foun-dations, Chapter 6, from The Complete Works ot Saint Teresa oI Jesus, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers, Volume III, p. 32 [London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1946]). If "our reason is not [completely] free," then we are not fully on the plane of moral defects, but partially on that of psychic determinisms. And it is precisely the psychic aspect of these, phenomena that we propose to study in this article which has no other aim than to throw some light by the help of modern depth psychology on this strange being whom the masters of the spiritual life have been ob-serving for centuries, the beginner par excellence, the novice, and on his imperfections. The perspective of this article must, then, be clearly emphasized. This is not a work of spiritual theology. The theologian contemplates the events of the novitiate with the eyes of faith; he sees there the hand of God and the conflict between grace and sin. The perspective of this article is much more modest; it is, to put it simply, psychological. Without in any way denying the workings of grace, we shall systematically ab-stract from them; for the designs of God and the ways of grace are not apprehended by the purely human ways of kno~ving which alone are at the disposal of the psychol-ogist. While leaving aside the supernatural aspect of the growth of the novice, we are bound to point out that this aspect tias been amply clarified by the masters of spiritual theology from Cassian and St. Benedict to St. John of the Cross and contemporary authors. Working Hypothesis and Methodology To initiate the psychological study of the novice and of his "imperfections," we took as "subjects" twenty-eight male novices belonging to two quite different communi-ties. We asked for volunteers only, but in each novitiate everyone volunteered. The age of our subjects varied from eighteen to twenty-two years. The level of their previous instruction was for the most part uniform, and they were about equally divided between those, from rural and those from urban backgrounds. The experiment was made dur-ing the fourth month of the/novitiate. i~ A double series of tools was used, since our aim was to clarify certain problems of the spiritual life. of the sub-jects by a study of their personality in the course of evolu-tion. a) For the study of personality, projection tests were used, especially the Rorschach and the Thematic Apper-ception Test (T.A.T.), since these two tests are universally recognized as highly useful for this purpose. The admin-istration of the Rorschach was preceded by the drawing of a human figure, so that the subject might implicitly per-ceive that a creative effort was expected of him. b) For the study of their spiritual life, the novices were asked to write a four-page essay entitled "The Ideal and the Difficulties of My Spiritual Life." c) To complete our information from the character-ological as well as the spiritual side, we conducted inter-views of about an hour with each subject, his master of novices, and the assistant to the master of novices. It was striking, especially in going over the Rorschach protocols, to see the number of signs of anxiety, of ten-sion, and of disintegration. Equally striking, however, were the efforts at synthesis. Given the age. and the situa-tion of our subjects, this called to mind the psychological situation described by Erik Erikson under the name of "identity crisis" (see Erik Erikson, "The Problem of Ego Identity" in Identity and the Lqe Cycle, volume one of "Psychological Issues" [New York: International Univer-sities Press, 1959]). As a matter of fact, the novice is a young adult, around eighteen to twenty years of age. As others become doctors, engineers, and fathers of families, he, at the end of his adolescence, chose in a more or less definitive way the role he wanted to play in adult society: that of religious or priest. This role is the result and syn-thesis of his entire previous development. In this connec-tion, Erikson uses the word "identity" because in this role the young man ought to be able to accomplish the best he is capable of while at the same time promoting the aims of society. The novitiate is his first serious testing of this role; he is vested in the religious habit and he follows the rules of his community as they are adapted for re-cruits. What does this identity of pries.t-religious become in the novitiate? Is the young man able to realize it here in the way in which he dreamed of doing? Does the com-munity he has chosen respect this identity? If these ques-tions receive a more or less negative answer, .a crisis oc- VOLUME 21, 1962 curs, an identity crisis because it is the novice's identity that is brought into question. As with every crisis it is manifested by certain symptoms; and one may assume that the imperfections of beginners are precisely the signs of this crisis on the religious plane. Our hypothesis then is this: The novitiate induces in the young religious a crisis about his identity, about the role he wishes to play in life, a role which is the end prod-uct of all his previous development; this crisis comes from the fact that this role is threatened by the novitiate; and the imperfections of beginners are the symptoms of this crisis. In order to understand this hypothesis better, a more ample presentation must be made of Erikson's notion of identity. This will be done in several of the following sec~ tions. ÷ ÷ ÷ W. de Bwnt, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 108 Identity, Synthesis of the Personality During adolescence all the impulses of earlier life re-appear accompanied by a strong genital drive. It is the characteristic work of the male adolescent to subordinate this chaos of impulses under genitality and find them their proper object, a girl. But this adjustment of one's infan-tile heritage to one's new acquisitions does not confine itself solely to the level of impulsive life; it equally con-cerns the other functions of the personality, the ego and the superego and their identifications. For the young man. must subordinate his previous identifications to a new kind of identification, an ultimate identity learned in so-cial contacts and competitive apprenticeship with his equals. These new identifications no longer have the ca-priciousness of infancy or the experimental fervor o youth; with extreme urgency they impel the young indio. vidual toward choices and decisions which progressively conduct him to a final definition of himself, to an irrev-ocable configuration of rol~s, and then to lifelong com-mitments. The normal adolescent performs this reintegration him. self, using spontaneously chosen adults and older adbles-cents as his models. But the age at which this synthesis is completed varies considerably. The more complicated a civilization is, the longer it takes its members to integrate their personality and find their place in society. At the bee ginning of our era people were married at Sixteen, a thing that rarely happens today. Suso entered the novitiate ar thirteen, whereas nowadays even canon law considers thi.~ too early. Moreover it would seem that workers or farm people come to adulthood before members of the profes. sional classes who have more to integrate and spend a longer time in training. Finally, the presence of acute conflicts can make this integration even more difficult and slow. At the worst, they may even render such integration impossible and the subject becomes neurotic or psychotic. Identity, a Psychosocial Reality This ultimate identity of which we have been speaking is unique for each individual because no two ,develop in identically the same way. '~Id~e'~,er, it is fa~'~O~ being individualistic. A person becomes himself only in a given society and in order to live in that society according to that identity. Ideally, identity implies that one is most oneself when one is most in relation with others and that our personal values and ideals coincide for the most part with those of the environment which is accepted by the person and in which he feels himself accepted. It is of ex-treme importance for the formation of the identity of the young man that society respond to him and that he receive a function and a status which integrates him into the community. In order to take his place in society the young man must acquire the skillful use of his principal ability and fulfill it in some activity. He should enjoy the exercise of this activity, .the companionship which it furnishes, and its traditions. Finally he must receive a setof teachings which allow him to see the meaning of life: religion, philosophy, or some ideology. Speaking psychosocially, the'h, identity is the role, integrated into the character, which the indi-vidual wishes to play in society and for which he expects the approbation of society in order to give meaning to his life. After the psychosexual delay of the period of latency there must, in consequence, be another delay, adolescence, so that the already sexually adult young man may, by freely experiencing different roles, find himself a place in some section of society, a place which in its definiteness seems made uniquely for him. The Genesis o[ Identity Identity must not be confused with identification. The simple addition of infantile identifications (the child act-ing like his parents, his brothers, his uncles, his teachers, his friends.) never results in a functioning personality. These identifications are too disparate and too contra-dictory; they are, moreover, often far from being socially acceptable or realistic, since the child's imagination dis-torts the image of his. parents or other models to suit his own needs. The final identity which emerges in the course of adolescence and which at the end of its development is largely fixed, is rather a new configuration which includes all previous usable identifications while transcending them all. They are transformed to make a whole which is unique and reasonably coherent. This new configuration ought to be achieved in such a way that in it the physical 4. VOLUME 21, 1962 ]~9 ÷ ÷ W. d~ Bont, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS constitution of the young man, his affective needs, his best liked capacities, his effective defense mechanisms, and his successful sublimations find their rightful use. The formation of personal identity, then, has its roots in the most distant past of the individual, a past often lost in the clouds of the unconscious. It begins with the first introjections and projections of the baby whose relative integration depends on a mutually satisfying relationship between the child and his mother. For it is she who must give him that basic trust in himself and in others which is at the foundation of any process of becoming social. Then follow the different identifications of childhood which will be the more successful according as.their proto-types show themselves to be both loving and firm. The last step of the formation of the ultimate identity begins when the usefulness of identifications is over. It consists of the repudiation of some infantile identifications and an absorptive assimilation of others of them into a new configuration, which in its turn depends on the proc-ess by which a society (or the subgroups of a society) "identify" the young man by recognizing him as someone who ought to have turned out as he did and who is ac-cepted as he is. Society in its turn feels "recognized" by the individual who demands to be accepted, or profoundly and aggressively rejected by the individual who seems un-interested in any social integration. Identity manifests itself, then, in the role which the young man is going to play in society. Identity Crisis When the young man, emerging from.adolescence with his newly acquired identity, does not find in society the place he needs in order to continue to be what he has been and to develop still more, he runs the risk of a crisis. His ambitions may be too vast, society too different from his ideal; certain aspects of his identity may be poorly de-veloped in relation to what is demanded by the customs of his milieu from the viewpoint of sex, occupation, or in the area of academic or athletic competition. This constitutes a failure, at least a partial and provisional one. The at-tempt to enter into a relationship with society will piti-lessly reveal any weakness up to now latent in his identity. There results a state of confusion with the following symp-toms: a feeling of isolation, a breakdown of the feeling of personal continuity, shame, inability to enjoy any ac-tivity, a sense of enduring life rather than of actively living it, a distorted perspective of time, and finally, an extreme mistrust of others as if society were in opposition to what the subject wants to be. But no matter how many neurotic or psychotic symp-toms may be discovered, an identity crisis is not a sickness. Rather, it is a normal crisis, that is, a normal phase of sharp conflict characterized by an apparent wavering in the strength of the ego, but also by great possibilities for growth. Neurotic and psychotic crises are characterized by a tendency to perpetuate themselves because o~ a loss of defensive energy and ~i deep social isolation.~ A'grOWth crisis, on the contrary, is relatively more easy to overcome and is characterized by an abundance of utilizab!e energy. This energy, doubtless, causes the reawakening of dormant anxieties and engenders new conflicts; but it supports the ego in the functions it has newly acqtiired or developed during the search for new opportunities or for, new rela-tions which society is more than ever ready to offer. What appeared as the .onset of a neurosis is often only a quite acute crisis which dissipates itself and helps more than it harms the formation of the subject's identity. Some cases, however, reach a less fortunate outcome: derangement, suicide, or a confirmed case of nerves. We have already briefly mentioned the characteristic symptoms of the identity crisis, now it will be worthwhile to give a more ample description of them by contrasting them with the dimensions of an ultimate identity success-fully achieved. The Dimensions of Identity and Its Crisis At each stage of man's psychosocial, development cer-tain criteria allow us to see whether the individual has passed through this phase successfully or whether he has failed. So it is with the baby's crisis of trust (in the oral stage of development); with the crisis of autonomy at the age of two (during the anal phase); with the crisis of in-itiative around the age of five years (the age of the Oedipus complex); with the assimilation of work during the time of schooling; the crises brought about by marriage and the birth of children; and the problems posed by maturity and old age. What interests us here are the criteria which let us evaluate the identity crisis in the passage from puberty to adulthood. Erikson gives eight criteria which show whether the young man has succeeded in building up for himself in accordance with his possibilities an ultimate identity which is both balanced and accepted by his environment, or whether he remains at grips with an outgrown identity which is deficient and replete with conflicts. As has just been said, each growth crisis reawakens sleeping anxieties, the relics of old battles in former crises which were buried but not done away with. In the identity crisis certain con-flicts of preceding stages of psychosocial development are reawakened. This reawakening evidently does not bring these conflicts forward under the shape which they had when the subject was still a baby or a small child, but in a Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 ÷ ÷ W. d~ Bont, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS way that is colored by his current development. The first four dimensions of the identity crisis mentioned by Erik. son are reawakenings of former crises which, as we have mentioned, have to do with trust in o~hers and in oneself, personal autonomy from others, the ability to take the ini.~ tiatives by which one becomes "someone," and the ability to do one's work well. But the young man is not formed by his past alone; he is also stretching towards the future; The last three dimensions of the identity crisis are then foretastes of the problems which he will have to resolve later on in his life when he marries, when he becomes a fafher, or when he .reckons up the balance of his whoh: life. ¯ Here then are the eight criteria or dimensions of the identity crisis: a) Presence. or absence of a perspective in life. The young man in the grips of an identity crisis manifests a confused attitude toward time which may be more or less grave according to the case. He sees no prospects for him-self in life. Since his identity is not well defined and he is fully confused with regard to his place in society, his con-fidence in the future is completely overturned. He is in despair, even if this shows up as a headlong precipitancy with which he tries to reach his goal, like the student who, for an elementary examination in biology, studies only the most advanced articles. This is a derivative revival of the impatience found in the child who has not yet realized that all human activity realizes itself only gradually in obedience to the progressive nature of time rather than all at once as if by magic. When the young man resolves his crisis and begins 'to become himself, when he synthesizes the different aspects of his character and finds his place in society, this co:a-fused attitude toward the temporal element of his life is changed into a rich diversity of prospects; at the same time he becomes open to the temporal dimension as indispen-sable for every building up of his personality. Moreover, through the temporal dimension of the ideology which it offers him, society can help the young man to rediscover the feeling that his past and his future have a meaning. Most religions, philosophies, or political doctrines teach that there is a meaning and a direction to life. Even though such an ideology may not be altogether realistic and may represent a certain simplification of the order of things, still, in such a situation its pedagogical usefulness is real. b) Self-certainty or self-consciousness. The young man going through an identity crisis is characterized next by insecurity, by a doubting of himself accompanied by shame at what he is or has been. What reappear are the social characteristics of the anal stage. Once he has regained at a higher level the balance which he had achieved before, the new sense of his own meaning gives him the necessary assurance to face life and to assume his chosen role in society. Here again, in the recovery of assurance, social surroundings can be a powerful aid by the uniformity of conduct, arid ,sometimes of~:clbthing, which they impose, often without even demanding them by an explicit code. With the help of this uniformity, the young man, though in a state of confusion, may tempo-rarily hide his shame and his doubts until his identity is sufficiently reestablished. c) Free experimentation with roles or its absence. The healthy young man's entrance into adult society is char-acterized by the provisional adoption of a great variety of roles and initiatives, each of which is tested by a process of trial and error in order to .decide which is better for him so that he may make a final choice which will determine the principal content of his adult life. This is a prolonga-tion of the child play of the Oedipal age in which the child sought to overcome anxiety by his identifications; the child of four who plays at driving a bus attains, in this way, at least in his imagination, equality with the adults he fears, especially his parents (the castration complex of classical psychoanalysis). But in certain cases, especially if adoles-cence is unduly prolonged, the opposite of this free ex-pe. rimentation with roles is found. To characterize this other extreme, Erikson speaks of negative identity, that is, "an identity perversely based on all those identifications and roles which, at critical stages of development, had been presented to the individual as most undesirable or dangerous, and yet also as most real" ("The Problem of Ego Identity," op. cit., p. 131). The 'young man whose mother is always saying, "If you act that wa~ you will turn out like your uncle [a drunkard]" can end up precisely that; he identifies himself with what is forbidden because it is more real for him than the positive ideal which' his mother never spoke of with such eloquence. According to some recent research (that of Adelaide Johnson and her staff) juvenile delinquency (in the area of aggressivity)and perversion (in the sexual area) are frequently the result of such largely negative education. But there are still other ways to renounce a free experimentation with roles; for example, the renouncement of personal identity in an ex-treme conformism which tries to root out everything which goes against even the excessive demands of the en-vironment. Here again the different segments of society offer the young man initiations or confirmations which are apt to encourage the spirit o[ initiative while channeling it and allaying the reawakening of Oedipal guilt. "They strive, within an atmosphere of mythical timelessness, to com- . 4- 4- 4- VOLUME 21, 1962 113 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. ~e Bo~t, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS bine some. form of sacrifice or submission with an energetic guidance toward sanctioned and circumscribed ways of action--a combination which assures the development in the novice of an optimum of compliance with a maximum sense of fellowship and free choice" ("The Problem of Ego Identity," op. cit., p. 144). d) Anticipation of achievement or work paralysis. The next characteristic of the adolescent who is initiating him-self into society is the anticipation of success. He feels able to accomplish something, to fulfill his function in the. community in such a way that the other members will re-pay him by their esteem. This is a prolongation of the ap-plication to school work during the period of latency. When things go poorly, the subject, instead of feeling him-self able to assume his role, is paralysed in the work he is doing either because his ambitions are too vast or because his environment has no place for his special capacities or does not give him the recognition he hopes for. Or he risks everything to gain everything and throws himself." prematurely into an intellectual or social activity which is extravagant and rigid and which may in the end com. pletely destroy his personal happiness, if not his physical existence: At the root of ~ill these forms of work pathology we find, according to Erikson, a reawakening of Oedipal competition and of the rivalry with his brothers or sisters. The different segments of society help those who are the process of learning and of trying out their social role by offering them .a certain provisional status, that of ap-prentice or student--with all that these imply of duties, competition, freedom, and also of potential integration into the hierarchy of jobs and of classes, as in associations for young adults (for example, political parties have their sections for youth which act ~s an initiation into adult life). e) Identity or confusion. The most general character-istic of the young man who has not yet achieved interior and social balance is confusion. This is the global result of all the imbalances set up by the reawakening of old conflicts and of all the confused attitudes which come from the fact that the ~oung man is still unable to take his place in the community of adults. A multiplicity of contradic-tory roles results. Two souls come to exist in one body, as the hermit and the power mad man did in Francisco Jimfinez de Cisneros (Le Cardinal d'Espagne), or ~2z~chiely and Tenebroso-Cavernoso in Father Joseph, the grey emi-nence, "combining in his own person the oddly assorted characters of Metternich and Savonarola" (Aldous Huxley, Grey Eminence [New York and London: Harper, 1941], p. 128). Nevertheless, when the conflict has been crystal-lized, that is, become irreversible, we no longer speak of an identity crisis or of confusion, but of neurosis (sympto- matic or characterological) and of psychosis in which the 'T' has become someone else in the complete collapse of the sense of oneself, as in the case of the novice who, having divested himself in choir, appeared on the altar before the community piously assembled for a ho.ly hour and said, "I am the Immaculate C6nceptiofi."'~ The opposite of this confusion, which emerges in a more or less definitive way at the end of a successful ado-lescente, is identity. It is the feeling of having integrated into one's person all the valuable elements of one's child-hood heritage in order to give oneself with all one's forces .to love, to work, and to the social commitments, of adult life. We need not develop this sinc~ it has already been treated in previous sections of this article. f) Sexual identity or bisexual.conIusion. We come now to the ch~aracteristics of the identity crisis which are not derived from old, preadolescent' conflicts reawakened by physical maturation, but which are rather the precursors of conflicts which will find their climax and their.resolu-tion later in the ages of preadulthood, adulthood, or ma-turity, The proper task of the preadult period is intimacy, es-pecially sexual intimacy, with a partner. According to Erikson the "utopia of genitality" ought to include: mu-tual orgasm with a loved partner of the opposite sex with whom one is willing and able to share mutual responsibil-ity and with whom one is willing and able to adjust the cycles of work, procreation, and recreation in such a way as to assure their offspring a similar satisfactory develop-ment. As for the celibate, "a human being should be po-tentially able to accomplish mutuality of genital orgasm, but he should also be so constituted as to bear frustration in the matter without undue regression wherever consider-ations of reality and loyalty call for it" (Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society [New York: Norton, 1950], p. 230). Whoever fails at this stage becomes an isolated personality. In the identity crisis the precursors of these extremes are seen. The one who will later succeed in entering into a true intimacy with another is the one who succeeds in integrating into his personality the true characteristics of his sex, who sees himself both consciously and uncon-sciously as pertaining to his sex, and not more or less to the other sex. In those periods when the personality is less structured, and especially in irreversible pathological cases, there is a clear incapacity to assume the role proper to one's sex, a confusion of masculine and feminine traits which exceeds the relative confusion which' is normal at the beginning of adolescence. Intimacy presupposes, therefore, a sense of one's iden-tity, a capacity to be oneself on the sexual level as on other levels: "The condition of a true twoness is that one must ÷ ÷ VOLUME 21, 1962 115' 4. 4. 4. W. de Bont, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS first become onself" (Erik Erikson, "Growth and Crises of ~he 'Healthy Personality' " in Personality in Nature, So-ciety, and Cultizre, C. Kluckhohn and H. Murray, eds. [New York: Knopf, 1956], p. 222). Anyone who has .not achieved his own identity can not have intimate relations with another. He will take refuge in a sterile isolation for fear of losing himself completely; or else he will turn him-self over to another body and soul borrowing the identity of the other to fill up his own void, in this way vainly seeking to resolve an identification which was not success- [ul in childhood. Different societies have very different means of helping through these difficulties the young man who is already physiologically, though not socially, adult: by demanding complete sexual continence; or by permitting sexual ac-tivities which do not lead to definitive social engagements; or by stimulating sexual play without intercourse (pet-ting). The purpose of this prop is to stimulate and to strengthen the ego and its identity. g) Authority: orientation or conIusion. The adulthood of a truly healthy man ought to be characterized by pro-. creativeness; this means assuming responsibility for' the. next generation by parenthood or by other forms of al-truism and creativity. A failure along this line means that' one is absorbed in his own problems instead of placing his energy at the service of others. This is a victory for narcissism: "Individuals who do not develop generativity often begin to indulge themselves as if they were their own one and only child" (Erikson, "Growth and Crisis of the 'H~althy Personality,' " op. cir., p. 223). What forecasts this approaching procreativeness in the young man is the ability to be either a leader or a follower according to circumstances. The attitude of the subject {n everything that conc(rns authority (exercising it or obey., ing it) is realistic. Any future failure of procreativity be-trays itself in the inability to lead or to follow when one of these two relationships is required. It is especially in sub-groups of his.companionsthat society gives the adolescent the opportunity to try out this strength in the area of aw thority. h) Ideological orientation or conIusion o] ideals. When he has arrived at maturity, the normal man has the sense of having completed his task as far as possible. He accepts responsibility for what he has made of his life and of his personal abilities. Having helped others to become them-selves, he can now pass on this responsibility to the next generation and withdraw from the scene. The man, on the contrary, who has not realized his potentialities for the service of others will experience despair and disgust with himself. He would like to begin his life over but realises that it is too late. His life is a failure whether he admits it to himself or hides it by projecting the blame onto others. This was the case with Father Joseph, that "grey emi-nence" whose double identity was mentioned above. At the end of his life, he felt the bitterness and frustration of a man who has seen God, but who, through his own fault, has lost Him in the attempt t6i'ser~ two mastersJ~loser to us, we have the story of, Sister Luke' and of all those who leave their communities around the age of forty. These two possible attitudes which can emerge at the crisis of maturity are foreshadowed with the'young man by an ideological orientation, "a choice among many val-ues of those which demand our allegiance"; or on the con-trary, by a chaos of ideals without connection or sy.nthe-sis. Society helps the young man here by proposing a variety of ideologies each of which may be useful to him in proportion to its internal consistency. The above paragraphs are a brief presentation of the eight criteria which, according to Erikson, show whether and how the young man succeeds in constructing an iden-tity of his own. If in one or other of the eight areas listed he does not succeed in extricating himself from the confu-sion engendered by this indispensable maturation of his personal identity, he risks becoming the victim of a more or less profound psychic derangement, which may assume the shape of one of the classical forms so thoroughly stud-ied by clinical psychology: symptomatic neurosis, charac-ter neurosis, delinquency, psychosis, and so on. In spite of the interest there might be in studying these personality troubles as functions of the eight dimensions enunciated by Erikson, it is more to our purpose to apply the light of what has been said about the identity crisis of the young man to a study of the problem of the novice, of his quest for identity, and of the crises which this quest may involve. Identity Crisis in the Novitiate The young man who arrives at the door of the novitiate already possesses a certain identity which is more or less well-founded. It shows itself in the choice he has made: to become a celibate instead of marrying; instead of becom-ing a doctor, engineer, or grocer, he aspires to a function in the Church. Moreover, he has chosen this particular community rather than some other. All these factors (cel-ibacy, priesthood, community) are so many aspects of the role which he wishes to play in life. Vaguely he sees him-self in the future as such and such a person, with a more or less specific function, whether it be that of preacher, pro-fessor, pastor, or diplomat attached to a nunciature. This role is the end product of the candidate's total past life, the synthesis of his previous psychic development, But after four months of ttie novitiate (the stage at which the novices who were the subject of our experiment had arrived), the ÷ ÷ ÷ Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 W. d~ Bont~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS great majority o[ novices are plunged into a more or less pronounced Crisis o[ identity. Signs oI the Crisis In the tests a considerable number of confusion symp-toms were.found, many more than in a group of students of the same age and background who were beginning their studies at a university. We cannot enter here into the more minute d~tails of these symptoms because of their too tech-nical nature; nevertheless, the following should at least be mentioned: a) The universal presence of a considerable anxiety. Anxiety is always an experience of the disintegration of the sell when old conflicts renew their attack. b) Equally striking was the great number of poor in-terpretations in the Rorschach, although they ought not to appear in a normal protocol. Even by using the Ameri-can scoring system of.Klopfer who tends to diminish their number, twenty-two out of twenty-eight novices gave them. This indicates a certain loss of contact with reality which is experienced as too hard, a retreat into phantasy which accompanies the identity crisis. c) Almost all the novices suffered from bisexual con-fusion with a reemergence of feminine traits. This was not manifested in overt sexual responses (except in two cases),, for the novitiate for the most part suppresses overt manifestations of sexuality. But it was visible, for example, in the defective sexual identifications given to the human figures on the Rorschach.cards and those of the T.A.T. (sixteen novices out of twenty-eight). d) Besides, seventeen out of twenty-eight subjects had a deficient image of their own body, according to their drawing of a human figure. This should not be surprising, for the image (more or less unconscious) we have of our own body is a visualisation of our identity. It is very sen-sitive to the influences of the environment; for example, to the interpretative power of clothing. The substitution of the religious garb, a skirt, for lay dress (masculine) has, from this point of view, a profound effect on one's sense of one's identity. "We identify ourselves with others by means of clothes. We become like them. By imitating their clothes we change our postural image of the body by taking over the postural image of others. Clothes can thu:; become a means of changing our body-image completely" (Paul Schilder, The Image and Appearance ol the Human Body [New York: International Universities Press, 1950], p. 204). The great number of deficient images of the body means that our subjects were in a siate of transition between their former identity (the "old man") and their new one. At the level of conscious behavior the crisis betrays it- self in all kinds of sentimental, per~ectionistic, depressive or even mildly paranoid traits. Brother Claude feels sad-dened by the November weather; another is not at ease working with the lay brothers in the garden; Robert thinks that his companions have something~against him when his prayer is not going well; Josephofeels depressed because he may not go out; and the imagination of John-Paul takes refuge in the past. As' for authority, almost all had a poorly balanced attitude, falling either into an exaggerated sub-missiveness or into revolt, or ifito indiscreet exercise of their own authority. Examples of these will be given later. The majority of the novices, then, manifested the two dimensions of the identity crisis which are at the heart of the religious life, for they relate to the vows of chastity and obedience: bisexual confusion and confusion with re-gard to authority. Catalysts of the Crisis The causes of the identity crisis can be summarized in this way: There is crisis, confusion, and disintegration be-cause the novitiate calls into question the initial identity with which the young man came to the novitiate. a) The young man already had a certain role in life before his entrance into the novitiate; he was president of his class, a member of Catholic Action, a well-known foot-ball player. He had a status in his environment, and be-cause of it he enjoyed the esteem of others. Entrance into the novitiate puts an end to all this. He changes his envir-onment and he must remake his reputation. Former modes of satisfaction no longer exist. A whole network of rela-tionships is broken; and it was precisely within this net-work that he found his own place, that he had realized, provisionally but really, his identity. All this he has to do over again. The impossibility of living out his identity in the old way almost inevitably causes a disintegration. The aspirations of the subject and almost their entire psychic substructure remain in suspension until they can be replaced by others or be reaffirmed. Before his novitiate Claude was in love with a some-what maternal girl who was a great help to him in his dif-ficulties. She forced him to become open, although in his own words he had tried to kill his sensitivity. She made an opening in his armor; he could communicate his ideal instead of pursuing it all alone. Separation from her at his entrance into the novitiate was difficult for him. His mem-ories of tenderness keep him alternating between melan-choly and aggressiveness. Arthur, the son of a farmer, is a young man whose strong ambition was enough to assure his success in stud-ies at the rural high school he attended, though from time to time he got on the nerves of his companions. In the ÷ ÷ VOLUME 21, 1962 ll9 novitiate he is more or less forgotten, for the smarter city boys leave him in the shadows. They take in with ease and naturalness everything that he had to fight hard for with an unremitting labor which had in turn cut him off from his modest origins. He can no longer play the role into which he had thrown all his energy. He has lost his place in society. He becomes depressed, grows still more ambi-tious in doing the Work of the novitiate, and becomes over sensitive to the least remarks of others. As for John-Paul, the role he wishes to play in life can be adequately summed up as that of an important priest, very esteemed by his people. Already at college he had to be first in the class to get admiration; and later, feeling himself crowded too closely by the other students, he plunged himself into extracurricular activities for the same reason. But the novitiate, the first step toward the realization of his identity as a priest, becomes a place of frustration and crisis. There he is far from college where he played a role of the highest rank and equally far from a friend whose affection gave him a sense of personal value. Here no one knows him. Hence his homesickness. During meditation he thinks of his friend, of past times, especially of those scenes in which he played an eminent role; or else he thinks of the future, he sees himself in the pulpit as a preacher. Evidently John-Paul is hypersensitive to the impression which he makes on the other novices; for example, in his reading at table. He takes great care with his hair, gives it a real coiffure, and contemplates himself in the mirror. b) Entry into the novitiate not only deprives the sub-ject of a part of his previous identity, but the community also wishes to change the candidate who comes to it in order to make him into a man who bears the community'.~ image and likeness; in other words, a religious with the spirit of his order. It is far from accepting the candidate as he is. The community has quite fixed ideas about what its members ought to become. Certain aspects of the nov-ice's previous identity, therefore, are necessarily destined for elimination while others must be developed to a more considerable degree. This is a changing of habits with its intellectual accompaniment--indoctrination. The conditions necessary for all indoctrination are (see Erikson, Young Man Luther [New York: Norton, 1958], p. 134): Isolation from the exterior world: family, friends, the old environment. Restriction of the sources of sensory stimulation and an immense value-increase in the power of words. The elimination of all private life, emphasis being placed on common life. Common devotion to the leaders who constitute and represent the community. The novitiate is a closed society; no influence is toler-ated there which would compromise the work of reforma-tion and indoctrination. Consequently no girls, no going out, no radio and television,.rio~,p6cket moridy~V~i~y~ ~ew visits. As for papers and magazines, only the more pious and serious ones will be allowed, In order to occupy the mind of the novice now emptied of worldly concerns, it is filled with spiritual teaching. So that he may be put on. the right road, the candidate is submitted to a daily pro-gram that is rigorous and unchanging and thateventually forms his mind as drops of water wear away stone. He is required to judge his own failings in the twice-daily ex-aminations of conscience. He may have no other company than that of the people who embody or partake of the desired ideal: the master of novices, his assistant, the other novices; there is no other model with whom he may iden-tify. The novitiate is, then, a dosed society in which the voice of indoctrination reverberates like an echo in an empty cave. For a change so profound must be brought about in the young man that once he has set out into the world upon his apostolic mission his' new identity must be the one which prevails over all previous attachments. He must himself become a representative and an incarnation of the spirit of his institute. That the "old man" feels uneasy in this hothouse should not be surprising. For example: Brother Yves states that: the isolation from people causes me some trouble, for I feel the need to be fully accepted as I am and also to be understood . My greatest fear about religious life and particularly about common life is that I may cease to be myself in order to fall into line. I fear a conformity in which all would be superficial and artificial, in which nothing would be assimilated, made per-sonal. I do not desire conformity, uniformity, stoic equanimity in my life. Here we discover an interesting difference between the two novitiates we have studied. In one, spiritual forma-tion is much more intense than in the other. The novices give reports of their spiritual progress to the master of novices, who follows and directs them very closely. The other master of novices, on the contrary, is a proponent of less exacting methods. In the "tight" novitiate, certain of the young men regressed to a point that was not reached by comparable novices in the more relaxed novitiate. Their crisis was more violent, for inevitably the less ac-ceptable aspects of their old identity were attacked with greater force. c) A third cause of the identity crisis in the novitiate ¯ comes from the fact that the previous ideas of the young man about the community of his choice are rarely real- 4. 4. 4. Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 121 ÷ ÷ ÷ 1¥. 4~ Bo~t, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 17.2 istic. Most often they are based on an idealized image of certain members of the community whom he knew before he entered either personally or through reading. He may imagine that every Franciscan is a Poverello, every Jesuit a Teilhard da Chardin, and every Dominican a Sertil-langes. He wishes to become like them. But he finds out very quickly that most of the members of the religious community are far from being the incarnation of this ideal, and then the novice frequently wonders whether his place is in the institute he has chosen, since it is of so little help to growth in his present identity. When Brother Irenaeus triumphantly ascertains that certain of the old fatheks do not practice what is demanded of the novices, his pride and his mistrust are the means by which he pro-tects his own high ideal. Francis, on the other hand, criti-cizes his fellow novices: they should be more perfect. He can't understand why they should be looking out the win-dow, why they should quarrel, or why they slip apples into their pockets after dinner to eat them in .their rooms. All this is personally disgusting to him. "If they entered religion to act like that . " And he is sorry that "medi-ocrity is not only found in the world, but also in the cloister." His excessive criticism is a means of defending himself against the temptation to do what they are doing, a temp-tation which is inadmissible because of a too rigid con-science. d) Finally, most communities have a great number of ministries to perform. It is often the decision of superiors which determines what role will later be assigned to the novice; whether he will be a missionary, a professor of apologetics, a parish priest, a teacher of the young, or the treasurer of the house. For one who has set his heart on the role of missionary, for example, obedience may create from the novitiate on a climate of uncertainty, a doubt about the possibility of realizing his role in life, his iden-tity. For we must not forget that one's identity is a synthe-sis of all one's previous development and hence it is not changed as one changes clothes. The novice ought, never-theless, to leave himself open to the possibility that the vow of obedience may make altogether a different thing of his life than what he thought. So it is that John-Paul wonders whether his superiors will let him go to the mis-sion where "the pagans, once converted to the faith of the gospel, will know better than the people of this coun-try the value of a priest." For he seeks everywhere the love and security he has up till now not found, and it was this quest which impelled him toward the priesthood. These four inevitable factors provoke an identity crisis in the novice which can go just "short of psychotic dis-sociation" (Erikson, Young Man Luther, op. cit., p. 134). This is a kind of fragmentation of the ego, a breakdown of the personality synthesis in a clash with the new en-vironment. The breach which the impact of this environ-ment makes in the synthesis is always located at its weakest point; that is, in certain conflicts Of the past Which Were poorly dealt with. In this serise,, the novitiate,brlngg .OUt the worst in oneself; the combined pressure of competition, adaptation to the level of the environment and the very rigid mode of life causes even the smallest weakness in the identity of the novice to burst fortl~. Beginners' Faults as Dimensions of the Crisis We can now parallel" the faults of beginners with Erik-son's eight dimensions of the identity crisis; for, according to our thesis, these faults are their equivalents in the re-ligious domain. As a matter of fact, it is not only the sogial life of the candidate which is troubled, but his spiritual life; all the more so since this constitutes the principal content of the life of the group and its members. We re-peat, we are studying the spiritual life here only under its psychological aspect and not at all under its theological aspect. a) Loss of perspective, the first of the dimensions of the identity crisis, betrays itself on the spiritual plane by a lack of patience, by a failure to apprehend that religious development has both its heights and its depths as does any other human evolution. This quest for the immediate is evident in spiritual gluttony and in its counterpart, dis-taste for spiritual realities when they do not procure a sensible satisfaction. It is equally to be found in those who wish. to push precipitously ahead. In his spiritual life Brother Mark seeks the love and consolation he did not receive enough of when he was little. In high school he created an environment for him-self which answered more or less adequately to his needs. But the change of environment deprives him of this sup-port and obliges him.to seek it elsewhere, in God. He seeks "the divine presence, a mysterious presence which I try to locate in myself without success. Each of my members dis-covers new sensations at this moment.". But when the quest does not succeed, "I feel a kind of di~sgust without reason or apparent motive. At such times Jesus does not seem to satisfy me; I thirst for something else too vague to be men-tioned or clearly defined." For Andrew, the need to rush ahead and a false apostolic zeal arose when common life and the demands of the no-vitiate for a change in his habits simultaneously reinforced a precocious superego and the unacceptable impulseg he was trying to harness] The unrealistic demands proper to these last two "imperfections" cause this novice not to feel at home with his less demanding comrades and his father ÷ ÷ ÷ Identity Crisis VOLUME 21~ 1962 ÷ W. de Bont, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS master who are themselves far from accepting with benev-olence this excess of zeal. To novices who have such difficulties the religious com-munity provides a helpful balancing factor in the per-spective of the future it opens to them. They are told of the various stages of the spiritual life; in the religious life there is a step-by-step education over several years (no-vitiate, philosophical and theological studies, ordina-tion.). There is a daily program set up in detail and firmly enforced. Finally, the candidate is promised cer-tain success in this world or in the next if he perseveres. b) Lack of assurance manifests itself in all those im-perfections which seek to hide certain defects by an im-moderate reaction: excessive shame for faults, a too literal adherence to the rules, indiscrete mortifications. Two ex-amples have already been given (B~'others Irenaeus and Francis). The novitiate offers the novices a provisional protection against their initial clumsiness in the unifor-mity it imposes in observances, clothing, spirituality. With this protection the novice is able to regain little by little the confidence in himself which was upset by the causes listed above. c) Pusillanimity in the spiritual life can be considered a failure to experiment with various roles; and certain forms of jealousy (of the progress of others) and of hypo-chondria (in connection with fasting, for example) can be considered as derivatives of Oedipal conduct. So it was that Henry, who was not able to identify with his dead father in order to attain, at least in his imagination, a superiority over his brothers which would give him a spe-cial title to the love of fiis mother, wished to carry on his apostolate in such a way that "after my departure people will forget completely that I was ever around, and that it was I who handled mattersY Fearing competition he does not dare to push himself forward. By always doing exacdy as the others, by effacing himself, he denies that he is dif-ferent, jealous, guilty of favoritism. In this case, the novitiate tries above all to encourage him to attempt one role, that of the apprentice religious. The novitiate is nothing else but an initiation into this role, begun with the taking of the habit as an exterior sign of the status which will be had henceforth in the com-munity and continued every day in the life of the novice. d) Paralysis about work clearly reveals itself in the dif-ficulties which the novice has from time to time in his spirit.ual exercises, meditation, examination of conscience, recitation of the Breviary. For Henry, for example, exami-nations of conscience remain at the surface of his person-ality. He fears lest his jealousy and anxiety come to the surface. Religious educators do everything in the noviti- ate to allow positive fulfillment, by teaching the novice suitable methods for achieving success in this domain. e) Lack of identity or confusion of roles manifests itself in a vague feeling of not b.eing at home in the novitiate, by nostalgia for the past, by the impo.ssibility of finding a place and a role in the communi~y: Examples Were" given above. The novitiate seeks to remedy this by encouraging the recruit to identify with his community by proposing to him in an exclusive way the spirit of the congregation or the order. f) Bisexual confusion manifests itself by all sorts of dif-ficulties with sex: the sexualization of religious life, for example, in sexual impulses at the moment of communion or confession; in particular friendships unddr the cloak of a spiritual relationship; in scruples about ~bad thoughts." Brother Guy, for example, transfers to Christ and St. John his tender feelings about a friend whom he has left in the world: You must have embraced very tenderly, as gently as do two beloved people spontaneously when one has acquired the other's special admiration; when one wishes to protest more deeply his profound joy in and friendly respect for the other. I would have liked to spend with the two of you those long evenings beneath the stars, as I had the happiness to spend them with James, speaking no doubt of Your ambitions, become those of Jol~n s~nce You loved him so tenderly, and he loved You. This transfer is meant to fill the void left by the impos-sibility of continuing an earthly friendship. What the novice should learn here, with the help of his spiritual director, is to renounce the exercise of his sex-ual faculty while at the same time .developing his manli-ness. This is impossible unless this renunciation is in-spired by valid and for the most part conscious motives ("for the kingdom.of God'i)and as little as possible af-fected by fear, shame, distaste, or guilt. g) The lack of reasonable attitudes with respect to au-thority is expressed by a crowd of symptoms: an extrava-gant docility, revolt against authority, a kind of freezing up in relations with superiors; too great a zeal to convert others where the aim is much more to resolve one's own problems than to help one's neighbor. 'Michael, for ex-ample, is so docile as to worry the master of novices some-what. He wants to be told what to do; he never resists; he has the spirit of. sacrifice; anything may be asked of him. If he is nettled, he gives a start and then merely smiles. His spiritual ideal is~ complete abandonment to God. He wishes to forget himself in order to be concerned only for God and His interests. Michael is a young man Whose mother thwarted him in his desire :for masculine inde-pendence. At the conscious level he submitted but uncon-sciously he rebelled against her. In the novitiate obedience 4. 4. Identity Crisis 1~5 4- REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is a most important matter and there are very few possi-bilities for aggressivity (for example, sports) left open to him. His problem, then, is accentuated. It may be under-stood, then, that for him God and the master of novices are conceived after the image of his mother. Peter's sense of his priestly mission still has "some end other than a supernatural one." The reason for this is that by a slightly megalomaniac identification with pater-nal authority, of which he makes himself the prophet, he is protecting himself against a feeling of persecution. The image he has of his father is split into two, and his feelings are equally divided. Everything good about his father is projected into God, everything bad into the devil. Accord-ingly, to save the world by his apostolate means in fact to preserve the connection with the good parent (God) and to eliminate the bad (the devil). Since the novitiate is a completely masculine society and at the 'same time by it.~ nature demands obedience, it further accentuates the con. flicts about sexuality and authority which underlie thi:~ apostolic identity (according to psychoan.alytic theory, the paranoid personality is rooted in homosexualized relation-ships with the father, the representative of authority in the family); but at the same time it makes the experience o[ the apostolate impossible for the time being. One may not go out during .the novitiate, and so the balance of forces in Peter is upset. The master of novices will have the difficult task of teaching the novices the just mean between the docility of a sheep and revolt at the barricades, as in the case of the novice who barricaded his door when the superior knocked to get him to rise (he always got up late). To give the novices certain opportunities for leadership frora the novitiate on may contribute to the development of the orientation which is desirable in this domain. h) Finally, a confusion of ideals is the most obvious thing about the novices who do not yet know whether they want to stay or leave the novitiate to return to the world or who hesitate to choose among several communities, Brother Mark has grave doubts about his perseverance because he is torn between a "worldly" past made entic-ing by the admiration he commanded at school and tile frustrations of his present conventual life caused by the lack of tenderness and esteem received from others. Spir-itual training here seeks to take away all ambivalence by presenting the novice with the ideology of his order and excluding all other ideologies (newspapers are ban-ishedl). A certain simplification results from this which sometimes becomes a caricature; one novice will think he is living the "pure gospel" because he walks .around in sandals as the apostles did; another will think he has found the perfect balance between contemplation and action because in his community Compline is sung in common before sleep. When the new identity of the nov-ice is sufficiently established, this simplification will no longer be necessary. Psychologically speaking, the faults of beginners are merely attempts to maintain'. Or to reestablish 15rovision-ally the psychic equilibrium which has been upset by the impact of the environment, an impact which has struck the novice at the weakest points of his former identity. As Father Mailloux has said, they are not "typically pathological reactions per se, but rather.irrational modes of expression, upon which the psychic apparatus will normally fall back whenever an individual is unable to cope with a stressful situation in some rational man-ner" (Rev. Noel Mailloux, O.P., "Sanctity and the Prob-lem of Neurosis," Pastoral Psychology, 10 [February, 1959], 40). For in successful cases the novice readjusts; he incorporates the identity elements offered him by the religious environment into the best which his identity al-ready has and gets rid of the less acceptable elements. Having provoked the crisis, a well-directed novitiate helps also to heal it. And once the adaptation is made and the novice has regained his place, this time in the community of his choice, his beginner's faults disappear like hay fever when the season has passed. In less successful cases, there is a failure. Concord be-tween' the identity of the novice and the demands or the support of the environment remains impossible: The reasons may come from two quarters: a lack of flexibility in the subject consequent upon an identity too charged with conflict as with the brother of the barricades cited above who left his community a little later,, or on the part of the community which is unable to Offer the novice the place which he seeks for his gifts and his particular abilities as in that sufficiently large novitiaite where .eighty percent of the novices left because of a master of novices still living spiritually in the nineteenth' century. The shock was the greater for them as their previous educa-tion was the more liberal. Conclusion We have studied in this article the psychological side of this night of the senses which the novitiate arouses by its very nature. By uprooting the candidate from his for-mer environment, it deprives him of the support which his identity enjoyed before in order to invite him to a higher spiritual balance. Our perspective, it is true, has been a restricted one; we have described only what the novitiate may have in common with any identity crisis studied by the psychologist. On this plane, the crisis of the novice resembles that of a young man who prepares 4. ÷ Identity Crisis VOLUME 21, 1962 W. de Bo~t, 0~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]28 himself for army service at West Point, or who leaves hi.q small-town home to go to a large, university--although course the crisis has a different content according as concerns military formation, the situation of a student, or religious training---celibacy and examinations of con-science do not figure largely in a military perspective. For methodological reasons we have left aside that which con~ .stitutes the very essence of the life of the novitiate: the introduction to the life of consecration to God to which by His grace He has invited the novice. It is this properly spiritual aspect which masters of novices are best ac-quainted with, and they can guide themselves in this by a solidly established spiritual theology. Our only inten-tion has been to draw their attention to the psychological side of this introduction to sanctity, a side which it 'is better not to be totally ignorant of. The "follies" of nov-ices should not be seen as faults which are exclusively in the moral order, as pride, for example, considered as the capita) sin. There is question rather of provisional, and unsuccessful efforts to adapt oneself to a new situation; hence they are normal phenomena which always arise under one form or another when a man must remake the synthesis of his personality. Nevertheless, they are real difficulties and not imaginary, often very painful for the subject who undergoes them and annoying for those around him. The wisdom of an alert master of novices will assuage much of this human pain, and this the more so as he knows better the identity of the novice in ques. tion, with its strong points and its weak. This present article is limited to describing the iden-tity crisis of the novice. It does not pretend to furnish the elements of a possible prognostication. If almost all nov, ices undergo this crisis in some degree or other, how, among so many of the "imperfect," can those who will persevere be singled out from those who will leave or merely mark time for the rest of their lives? This is an important question, for the novitiate terminates with a profession which, even though it be temporary, repre-sents a real and very profound commitment. Certain re-marks of St. John of the Cross (Dark Night, 1, 9) coukl provide us with a point of departure for such a consid- ¯ eration; but this task must be reserved to a later article. PAUL W. O'BRIEN, S.J. Introducing the Young Sister to Prayer One of the problems facing the young sister is learning to pray. She h~is probably been pra

Issue 24.3 of the Review for Religious, 1965. ; Counseling and Religious Life by Vincent S. Conigliaro, M.D. 337 Mortification by William J. Rewak, S.J. 363 Mary and the Protestant Mind by Elsie Gibson 383 The Mass and Religious Life by Jean Galot, S.J. 399 Devotion to the Sacred Heart by Anton Morgenroth, C.S.Sp. 418 Priest as Mediator ~ by Andrew Weigert, S.J. 429 Religious Life by Sister Elaine Marie, S.L. 436 Election: Choice of Faith .by Carl F. Starkloff, S.J. 444 Our Old Testament Fathers by John Navone, S.J. 455 Poems 461 Survey of Roman Documents 463 Views, News, Previews 467 Questiom and Auswers 473 Book Reviews 478 VINCENT S. CONIGLIARO, M.D. Counseling and Other Psychological Aspects of Religious Counseling,* a technique and a philosophy of treat-ment and human relatedness, is a topic of importance to both psychoanalysts and religious persons, both in a general and in a specific context: in a general context, because both psychoanalysts and religious persons work with human beings and are committed to a profession of service; and in a specific context, because religious sisters may be affected by mental problems as often as other individuals. Thus, in reflecting on counseling in the religious life one cannot help reflecting also on the problems making counseling necessary, the problems, in other words, about which one administers counseling; and on the factors behind these problems, that is, why these problems occur in the first place. Members of religious orders have been the victims of diverse, benevolent and malevolent, prejudices for cen-turies. One problem with prejudice is that sooner or later its victim comes to believe the prejudice himself and begins to think, feel, and act along the prejudiced stereotypes culture and/or society set up for him; this is why prejudice is always detrimental. As an example, one may think of just one of the many prejudices that have been formulated against the American negro: the prejudice whereby the negro is "good-natured," "basi-cally lazy," "clownish," a. jocular Amos or Andy. Even- # This paper was derived from a talk given by the writer on No-vember 9, 1964, at the Maryknoll Mother House; Ossining, New York; the paper was sent to the REvmw in December, 1964. 4- Vincent Conigli-aro, M.D., a prac-tising psychoana-lyst and member of the faculty of Ford-ham University, ihas offices at 104 East 40th Street; New York 17, New York. VOLUME 24, 1965 337 + ÷ ÷ Vincent $. Conigliaro, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 338 tually, some negroes began to believe the stereotype themselves and behaved as if they could only be an ineffectual nice-guy Amos or a scheming, shrewd Andy-- or the other way around--I could never tell the two apart. Among the many prejudices formed about Catholic religious orders, there is one that proclaims that "mem-bers of Catholic religious orders are, by the very fact of being that, singularly immune from mental disorders"; or the opposite one, announcing that "members of Catholic religious orders are, by the very fact of being that, singularly prone to become mentally sick." Both prejudices of course are just that, pre-judgments, based on little factual evidence and substantiated by super-ficial experimentations. The facts actually suggest that (a) members of Catholic religious orders do not become mentally ill significantly more often or significantly less often than members of other religious orders; when they do become ill more often, this relates more to circumstantial problems (that is, poor screening of applicants) than to essential fea-tures of religious life; (b) members of religious orders do not become mentally ill significantly more often or less often than members of other tightly organized, rigidly structured organizations, for instance the Army; (c) neither the essential nor the accidental characteristics of religious life make, per se, a significant difference in the incidence of mental disease among the members of Catholic religious orders; (d) the occasional severity in degree of mental illness encountered among members of Catholic religious orders is not related to the essential or accidental characteristics of religious life, but to socio-cultural characteristics at large (for instance the socio-cultural concept that "to have a mental illness is dis-graceful"; treatment, thus, is sought too late, when the illness has been given the time to become severe); and (e) that the intrinsic and extrinsic features of religious life will be, psychologically, an asset or a liability ac-cording to the way each individual reacts to them in terms of life history, heredity, and childhood experi-ences. It may be of interest to examine both prejudices more closely. The first view holds that Catholic religious life is the best guarantee against emotional upsets and claims that members of Catholic religious orders rarely become affected by mental disease. This view is mostly held by members of religious orders; it was frequently expressed to me by the superiors of sisters I have treated or by the priest-counselors I have trained and supervised. The basis of this prejudice is wishful thinking and con-fusion between the natural and supernatural aspects of religious life. This view equates the symptoms of mental illness with the illness itself: ."There are no visible signs of illness; ergo, there is no illness . " I am reminded of an article recently published in a religious journal implying that religious life may actually "cure" neurotic symptoms. The writer of the article first listed some of the traits that may be symptomatic of a neurotic per-sonality, that is, self-centeredness, hypersensitivity, im-maturity; then observed, rightly enough, that religious life is essentially antithetical to such traits: and then concluded that religious life will thus automatically dis-pose of these neurotic traits: religious life, being theo-centered, will dispose of self-centeredness; being giving-hess, will dispose of selfishness; requiring spiritual ma-turity, will dispose of immaturity. One rather suspects that all theocenteredness, givingness, and spiritual ma-turity will do is to veil, temporarily, those neurotic traits they were supposed to have cured. This prejudice, actually, is quite unfair to the re-ligious sister. It suggests that the supernatural aspects of the sister's vocation will sustain not only her soul, which it does, but also her mind, even when natural causes, going all the way back to her childhood, act as a constant irritant; it holds that since she is isolated from the anxieties of the "real world outside," she should have no anxieties from the convent world (which happens to be equally real); and that since she is surrounded by the silence of the cloister, she will not hear the loud clatter of human problems: as if silence, at times, could not be many times louder than the loudest noise. This prejudice also engenders unrealistic attitudes; the religious sister feels supernaturally protected against the frailties of the human mind, and is led to believe that, by sheer virtue of the spiritual direction of her life, whatever factors there were that started operating, years before, toward the development of a psychosis or a neurosis will magically cease to operate. When she ex-periences signs of a mental illness, she feels disillusioned and as if God Himself did not live up to His part in a bargain He had never made; and she feels like a freakish rarity, the only one cursed by an illness that was not supposed to occur, the exception to the rule, thus adding to the anxiety and anguish of a neurosis the painful feeling of being an oddity. In a sister I treated, the latter feeling constituted a very intense symptom that, while mainly determined by a complicated intrapsychic proc-ess, was supported by the prejudiced belief that "reli-gious sisters are not supposed to become mentally ill . " This prejudice creates a problem also in treatment: the sister may be unwilling to unveil her problem to a superior who could take remedial steps; or, once treat- 4- 4- 4- Counseling VOLUME 24, 1965 339 ÷ + ÷ Vincent S. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 340 ment has started, may be little cooperative and may rationalize her resistance to change by believing that "she can only get better through prayer . " In a case I recently worked with, it was the patient's superior who felt sister should not receive psychotherapy and should only help herself with prayers: "Good sisters do not be-come mentally ill . " On the other side of the coin is the prejudice holding, equally erroneously, that members of Catholic religious orders become mentally ill significantly more often than other persons. This view is mostly held by persons who are not in the religious life, are not Catholics, and, fre-quently, not religious. I believe this prejudice is mainly based on hostility; or on a lack of understanding of what is entailed in the religious life. The danger of this view is that already unbalanced members of religious orders lead a life of trepidation based on the neurotic fear that they will become overtly mentally ill (psychotic, "insane") because "everyone says so . " Here, too, this fear is overdetermined and related to an unconscious intra-psychic process; here, too, however, these patients "latch on" to the prejudice to express unconscious needs. In a priest I treated, the idea that he was going to become insane---because everyone he knew believed that "all priests, sooner or later, become insane"--had become a true obsessional idea; it expressed, among other things, his unconscious desire "to become insane" (more exactly, his unconscious drive to lose all controls and inhibitions) and his need to impute the responsibility of his insanity to those who believed that "all priests, sooner or later, become insane . " At the basis of this prejudice is also the fact that the religious life does have features which, in borderline personalities, may tip the balance in the direction of mental illness. A better understanding of these features will help to understand how religious life may contribute to t,he development of a mental illness. I want to make sure that I am well understood on this point. I am not suggesting that religious life may be the cause of mental disorders; I am saying that some features of religious life, when operating on a personality that has been af-fected by specific childhood occurrences, may precipitate, or "trigger," mental illness. This "trigger effect," evi-dently, may be set up just as effectively by college life, army life, marriage, as it can by religious life: once the keg is filled with dynamite, the explosion may be set up just as well by a spark of electricity, a match, or a gradual increase in room temperature. Which features of religious life act as a trigger on what kind of personality-- this is what may be quite important to reflect on. One might start by reflecting on the spiritual essence of religious life. Considering that this journal is widely read among members of religious orders, there is a bit of "carrying coals to Newcastle" in reflecting on this sub-ject at all. It must be remembered, however, that the specialist, knowledgeable as he is on the most minute detail of his specialty, often misses what may be too basic for him to remember. Basic psychiatric and psy-choanalytic concepts have been pointed out to me by friends who were neither psychiatrists nor psychoanalysts; and I myself have been able to point out basic points on music or art to musicians or artist friends of mine. As a lay person, as a "non-specialist" on religious life, I understand religious life as a life of greater growth in greater union with God~ All of us are born with the potentials for greater and greater participation to a transcendental existence in God; but those in the reli-gious life have the greatest chance of achieving the greatest participation. This spiritual participation, how-ever, can only be realized if the personality is sound; and a healthy supernatural life cannot exist without a sound, well-integrated psychic life. The old Latin saying mens sana in corpore sano can indeed be complemented with religio, sana in mente sana. It must be realized that the accidental properties of religious life may appeal to different personalities for different reasons. Just as one may become a psychiatrist or a surgeon for a combination of healthy, unhealthy, conscious, and unconscious reasons--and a good psy-chiatrist is usually one who, finally, is in his profession more for healthy and conscious reasons than for un-healthy and unconscious ones--it is also possible to enter the religious life with a combination of healthy, un-healthy, conscious, and unconscious motivations. Un-balanced personalities, the individuals with the "keg of dynamite" beneath the placid exterior, may enter the religious life attracted not by its spiritual features but by what these persons unconsciously consider useful for their neurotic needs. When the latent neurotic individual has been attracted to the religious life, religious life will indeed have the "trigger effect" mentioned before. Some examples at this point may be helpful. Religious life, through its essence, offers, to the healthy, opportunities for spiritual and existential richness and for the fullest expression of one's personality; to the unhealthy, opportunities for an impoverished, restricted existence (again spiritually and existentially) and for the fullest expression of one's neuroses. Such features of religious life as the vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty, may attract the latent neurotic personality not 4- 4- 4. Counseling VOLUME 24, 1965 ÷ 4. + Vincen£ $. Conigllaro, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS because of their essential spirituality but because of the opportunities they offer for neurotic defenses and neu-rotic acting-out. The healthy religious sister has a greater chance of experiencing the transcendental union with God, not in spite of, but because of her vows; the unhealthy sister uses the vows to express instinctual drives and neurotic defenses. In the latent neurotic, the vow of chastity may be appealing for reasons having little to do with spir-ituality, that is, emotional frigidity, fear of love, fear of sex, homosexual tendencies. The all-female environment may be chosen not in order to be chaste to better serve God but because of fear of closeness to anyone. This sister will be fearful of any and all emotional involve-ments, will stand aloof, and will withdraw from every-one, God included. Similar situations have been found with regard to the vow of obedience. As it was once ex-plained to me by a sister student of mine, this vow is "a listening to the will of God as it is expressed through one's community, environment and, ultimately, supe-rior"; a "dialogue in charity," with the superior as the "master listener" fashioning the dialogue between the sisters and God and evaluating what has been heard as the will of God. The sister who enters the convent with healthy motivations can afford to be obedient: she can see God's will beyond the superior's will; the sister with unresolved authority problems cannot be obedient with-out hostility (and the superior affected by the same problem will tend to abuse her authority and provoke rightful resentments). In the obsessive-compulsive per-sonality, which, under a meekly submissive and ingra-tiatingly passive surface, much anger and rebelliousness are concealed, vows of obedience will have a strong neu-rotic appeal to begin with (unconscious wishes to placate authority~ neurotic resolutions of total passivity and total submission) and will trigger, later, serious conflicts. Sister may role-play complete obedience and submission to the point of making no contributions whatsoever to the community life; she may be passive and overdependent; have no intiative; obey automatically, making no repre-sentations even when representations are called for; and create a mockery of authority and a caricature of obedi-ence by indulging in what has been called "whole obedi-ence" as contrasted to "holy obedience." The vow of poverty, too, essentially beautiful (with no material possessions one can better pursue the knowl-edge of God) may be appealing not for spiritual.reasons but because of unconscious feelings about money, love, and possessions. A sister may enter the religious life because of insecurity and the semi-conscious realization that although in the convent she may not have personal possessions, her basic needs will be adequately met. A sister I treated equated having money and possessions with having evidence of being loved. She created a prob-lem in the community by hoarding things, demanding expensive clothes and privileges, requiring costly medical treatments (and feeling intensely guilty when her demands were acceded to). When she did initiate psy-chiatric treatment, the matter of payments was a monthly crisis. She reacted to the fact that the com-munity was disbursing funds for her health not with realistic gratitude--or realistic concern--but with intense guilt (at the fact that a neurotic fantasy about which she had much ambivalence was being satisfied). If the neurotic needs of the religious are actually met by some of the accidental features of religious life, why, then, is there a conflict? I[ a sister with neurotic feelings about authority enters the religious life to find a better disguise--or a better expression--for these feelings and, in some o~ the accidental features of religious life does meet this opportunity, then, again, why is there a con-flict? One way to understand this is by realizing that human drives are arranged by "polarities": we love and hate, like and dislike, are active and passive, assertive and sub-missive, dependent and independent. In the healthy personality these polar extremes are harmoniously inte-grated and blended in the overall economy of personality, and there is no conflict. In the neurotic personality each polarity, as it were, is treated separately by the executive agency of personality, the ego; and each holds separately and simultaneously prospects of security and insecurity, pleasure and pain. Thus, by being overdependent, one is taken care of, but one's needs for prestige and successful competition are frustrated; and by being over-assertive one fulfills one's needs ~or power and status, but one's need to be loved, cuddled, mothered are frustrated. As an example, a sister with unresolved authority problems enters the convent to placate her superego by total sub-missiveness; this will fulfill the polarity of dependency, passivity, submission; but the opposite polarity, which energizes rebelliousness and independence, will have to be vigorously repressed and will remain frustrated. This will result in a worsening of the authority problem; symptomatologically, there will be dissatisfaction (frustra-tion of one polarity); chronic fatigue (because of the need to divert psychic energy to the task of repressing the polarities of rebelliousness and independence); periodic explosions (during which the polarities energizing sub-mission and passivity are frustrated); feelings of guilt; and so forth . One is reminded of what is found in the neurotic marriage, in which the partners marry one + ÷ ÷ 343 4. Vincent S. Conigllaro, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 344 another because each offers the other the opportunity for the disguise and the release of unconscious drives. The man with latent homosexual problems marries a frigid, cold woman; the outwardly efficient, "strong" male (the type who exaggerates the outward signs of masculinity because of deep seated feelings of inadequacy) marries a woman who under a calm and restrained exterior is assertive and domineering; a woman with unconscious sexual anxieties marries an impotent male; and so forth . In these cases too, the neurotic bargain is fulfilled and the unconscious expectations which have led to the marriage in the first place are being satisfied: this is why the marriage fails or is beset by severe incompati-bility. I am reminded of a patient in my recent experience, a bright and attractive woman with severely disturbed ideas on sex and much anxiety and guilt about any type of sexual involvement; these feelings were unconsciously rationalized by the conception that sex is "always degrad-ing" and "inherently dirty." She did not marry until the age of thirty-two: the healthy, eligible males who had appeared on the scene up to that time had not been "attractive" enough to her neurotic expectations. She finally met the "right" man: an extremely puritanic, neurotically judgmental individual who consciously visu-alized sex as dirty and degrading; he would subtly "seduce" her into giving in to rather innocent exchanges of affection and would then reject her by sternly lecturing her on the basic depravity of all women. After sixteen months of formal engagement, she married him primarily because she had found in him the external counterpart of her own rigid, punitive superego. It can be easily antic-ipated that this couple's marriage was extremely un-satisfactory. They found each other unbearable; he felt she was shamelessly passionate and "se.xy"; she felt he was sadistically judgmental and critical; and they both acted as though neither had had any idea (in sixteen months of engagementl) of what the other was "really like." The neurotic polarities of each of these individuals were being fulfilled through the neurotic marriage at the expense of intense anxiety, rage, and guilt. In the latent neurotic personality, religious life may trigger neurotic symptoms through some of its accidental features. While the essence of religious life is immutable, its accidental elements, the ways this essence expresses itself, are necessarily mutable and in a state of constant transition and adjustment to changing socio-cultural conditions. The transition itself may be disturbing to the rigid, obsessive personality. A sister I once treated could have functioned satisfactorily only if the Church had gone back to medieval times. A priest once told a colleague of mine, with much anxiety and bitterness: "They are changing my Church, Doctor; they are chang-ing my Church" (in reference to the Ecumenical Council). Some sisters' neurotic structure is such that they only accept meditation and contemplation, to the total exclu-sion of action; and they do this more for neurotic than spiritual reasons. It is also important to realize that religious orders are a world of their own, a society with its own culture (some religious orders even call themselves "societies"). The fact that there are to be rules is inherent in any society; but the religious societies are particularly bound by rules (the etymology of the Word "religious" is "rule-bound"). Some religious societies are very rigidly set up; there may be a rigid ordering of time (the "horarium," the setting down of every hour and activity of one's day from rising to retiring) or a rigid ordering of authority, community rank, behavior (the book of cus-toms). This system of rules may indeed appeal to a rigid personality or to persons with problems about routines, schedules, and time tables. These persons, again, will be attracted not by the spirit behind the rules but by the rules themselves, the scheduling for its own sake, the opportunities thus offered for neurotic defenses or neu-rotic acting out. Religious life indeed may, with its essential or transi-tional features, trigger neurotic symptoms in the latent neurotic personality. It may seem that this point is being belabored. Yet, in reading the religious journals read by most sisters, one finds cause for concern over the explana-tions prevalently given as to the causes o~ mental dis-orders among the religious. While the situation has im-proved considerably in the last fifteen years, there still prevails a lack of awareness of what really should be remedied; and why; and how. Often, we still bark up the wrong tree or beg the issue or believe that sister is neu-rotic simply because she has a difficult superior or because her order is a very rigid one, completely overlooking the fact that most probably these sisters had a neurotic prob-lem to begin with and the environment to which they are now overreacting has only brought the neurotic con-flict to light. I am reminded of a question asked by a group of sisters (and recently published in a religious journal) on the subject of the measures suggested by the Church to reduce tensions among the religious. The answer, as given by a well known and justly respected priest, gives cause to ponder; it suggests that, while the Church has recognized the importance of childhood in the causation of mental disorders, and, at least by implication, the importance of counseling and psychotherapy--these factors (childhood) ÷ ÷ ÷ Counseling VOLUME 24, 1965 345 ÷ ÷ ÷ Vincent S. Conigliaro, M~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 346 and these measures (counseling and psychotherapy) are, too often, seen as the least important. According to the above source, among the remedies suggested by the Church are, mainly, such remedies as avoidance of a disordered and restless life, a minimum of calm and peace, avoidance of overwork, enactment of the rule of silence (thus the availability of cloisters), vacations and weekly days off, and so forth . All these measures, I suggest, are far from meaningless; but also far from sufficient. All these measures are important; without them there will be anxiety and tension, but there will be anxieties and tensions in spite of them. A restless and disordered life most often is not a cause of mental illness but a symptom, just as the ability to live a joyful and pleasurable life is a manifestation of good mental health, not a cause. I remember a sister I once treated for a severe compulsive character neurosis, with symptoms of depression, scrupulosity, perfectionism, and chronic fatigue. She had been told (innumerable times) to take some days off and have a good vacation; for at least two years her rigid, grandiose, self-punitive personality had prevented her from doing so: there was too much to do and no one could do it as well as she. Sister was not tense because of overwork: she was tense and overworked because of a deeper common cause. When she was finally ordered to take a vacation and have fun, she worked strenuously and grimly at having fun with no benefit whatsoever from either vacation or recreation. Committed Catholics and psychoanalysts will grow equally concerned over the fact that we still too often believe that emotional illness among the religious is caused by such spiritual reasons as spiritual frustration or the feeling of not having attained the vocational ideal of apostolic sanctity. Spiritual frustrations, again, are more often symptoms than causes of mental illness; and to relate them to incomplete spiritual formation, poor spiritual training, and so forth, is often inaccurate. The psychotic sister will not feel better mentally by leading a better spiritual life; she will lead a better spiritual life when she feels better mentally. The sister with an authority problem will not become more obedient solely by forcing herself to become more obedient; and the sister obsessed with impure thoughts will not be able to solve her problem only with prayer. All this does not question the supernatural power of prayer; it simply questions whether the neurotic or psychotic sister can truly pray, or, better, how receptive one is to grace while in a state of severe neurosis or psychosis. The point, at any rate, is that if these sisters were able to be spiritually obedient, religiously fulfilled, prayerful, and so forth, they would not have these mental problems to begin with. Thus it is often a mistake, for a spiritual director or superior, to simply demand of the neurotic sister to pray more, implying that if she does, this will resolve all problems. When sister finds herself unable to do so, she will feel guilty and become more anxious and depressed; or an emotional problem which could have been cleared in a relatively short time (had counseling or psycho-therapy been administered immediately) is treated psy-chiatrically after months of attempts at treating it by supernatural means, and it may be too late. Evidently, the total answer to the mental problems of the religious does not lie only in counseling and psycho-therapy; but the latter should play a larger role than it played up to five or ten years ago and even larger than the role played now, a time in which the Catholic Church has already made so many strides in pastoral counseling,x The mental problem of the religious, I believe, can only be approached through a holistic concept in which supe-riors, sisters, social workers or psychologists, spiritual directors, pastoral counselors, and psychotherapists make available to the disturbed sister all available means to 1 The history and development of the Iona Institute of Pastoral Counseling well exemplifies these strides and the Church's positive attitudes on mental health. In 1959, Dr. Alfred Joyce, a New York psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, offered his services for a program of talks and seminars on pastoral counseling at the St. Francis of Assisi Church and Monastery in New York City. The Franciscan Provincial, Father Celsus Wheeler, O.F.M., and a Franciscan psychologist, Father George Fianagan, O.F.M., Ph.D., supported the program enthusiasti-cally and the following year Dr. Joyce, this writer, Dr. L. Moreault, Mr. F. Peropat and Dr. J. Vaccaro, under the leadership of Dr. Joyce, founded the St. Francis Institute for Pastora! Counseling, a pioneer-ing institute offering a two-year curriculum on the theory and practice of pastoral counseling. With greater and greater support be-ing received from the New York Archdiocese and Francis Cardinal Spellman, and through the dynamic encouragement of Monsignor George Kelley, Director of the Family Life Bureau of the New York Archdiocese, in 1962 the five founders of the St. Francis Institute transferred to Iona College (New Rochelle, New York) and associ-ated themselves to Brother John Egan, Chairman of the Department of Psychology of the College, to form the Iona Institute for Pastoral Counseling, the only institute of its kind in the Eastern United States. Since 1962 the institute, under the leadership of Dr. Joyce, has offered to larger and larger groups of Catholic priests (total enrollment for 1964-1965 was just under one hundred students) a unique, com-prehensive, three-year curriculum of courses and clinical supervision leading to a Master's Degree in Pastoral Counseling. The Institute's program is designed to develop in its students greater awareness of the psychological dimensions of the problems encountered in pas-toral activity; to foster understanding of the conscious and uncon-scious processes operating in a counseling relationship; and, in general, to increase the effectiveness of the Catholic priest's pastoral work. The Institute's program, therefore, is quite consistent with recent directives of the Holy See, that is, directives which have emphasized the need for the development and refinement of the special competencies required for the pastoral ministry in the twentieth century. + + Counseling VOLUME 24, 1965 ÷ ÷ Fin~en~ $. Conigliaro~ M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS help herself, including prayer and spiritual self-improve-ment but also including counseling and psychological self-improvement. In a truly holistic approach one would also include preventative concepts and work toward the improvement of the existing screening procedures for the applicants to the religious life, the improvement and modernization of training programs for the religious, and the inclusion in these training programs of psychological considerations (mental hygiene concepts of education, group dynamics of training, and so forth). The latter, I believe, can be done very successfully without com-promising in the least the spiritual and religious con-siderations of training. One can think of counseling and the religious sister in many different ways. One may think of counseling admin-istered by a sister who has been trained in the theory and technique of counseling and who gives counseling to the sisters in her own house; the sister counselor may be the superior or another sister. One may think of counsel-ing administered by a trained sister who practices counseling as part of her own missionary, teaching, nurs-ing, or social work, in which case the counselee may be another sister or a lay person, male or female, adult, adolescent, or child. One may think of counseling in terms of "diagnostic counseling," "motivational counseling" and "therapeutic counseling." Finally, one may think of counseling as a philosophy of life, an existential commit-ment, a philosophy of deeper understanding of human psychology and human motivations, by which the trained sister becomes, in the house where she lives or at her place of work, a very valuable trouble shooter and "sig-nificant figure." One may think in terms of the superior of a house who has had enough training in counseling or psychology to do counseling with the sisters of her own house as soon as a problem arises and before it becomes too serious. This may be a "diagnostic counseling," in which the superior, after two, three, or four interviews, is able to recognize the "danger signals" of mental illness, can differentiate them from the symptoms of a strictly reli-gious or moral problem, and is therefore in the position of advising remedial steps. It may be a "motivational counseling," in which the superior has a number of sessions with the disturbed sister for the purpose of help-ing the sister to recognize the psychogenic nature of the difficulty and preparing her for therapeutic counseling or psychotherapy. It may finally be "therapeutic counseling" in which the superior, by using the technique of counsel-ing, helps the sister to help herself. I am convinced that it is administratively unfeasible for the superior of a community to do counseling with her own sisters; and, it administratively feasible, I am still convinced it would not be advisable therapeutically be-cause of the very nature o[ the superior's status in the community: the fact that she is, by virtue and necessity, identified with "authority" and because of the psycho-dynamic dimensions of being the "mother" superior. Better, then, for another sister to be the "house-counselor"; even in this case, however, it will be helpful it the superior is sympathetic to, and understanding of, the philosophy and the techniques of counseling; it will avoid friction between superior and house counselor and the unbalancing of the group dynamics of a religious community. Incidentally, should there be a "house counselor"? Should counseling be at all administered in the house, within the community, b~ an "insider"? I am convinced there are important advantages to doing so-- at least initially. This is in keeping with modem mental hygiene concepts, that is, the concept of "emotional first aid stations." Industrial psychiatrists have found that optimal results were often obtained by treating situa-tionally triggered emotional crises "on the job." In research on this subject I published a few years ago, I felt that the system of having a full time mental hygiene team on the premises is very advantageous. By having a house counselor, emotional emergencies can be handled on a truly emergency basis; situational and reactive crises can be approached more insightfully and with more perma-nent results. To conduct diagnostic and motivational counseling within the community appears advantageous also from a practical and financial standpoint. Finally, disturbed sisters may flatly refuse to see an outsider (especially lay) counselor or psychotherapist or may co-operate with the outsider only superficially. The presence of a house counselor on the premises and the fact that counseling is being practiced within the house may indeed have a disturbing effect on the group dynamics of a community, at least in some houses. This, however, is more an indication for, than against, the presence of a house counselor. If the community group dynamics can be unbalanced by her presence, then there already are neurotic processes operating under the sur-face. The processes would be triggered anyway by other "irritants"; they might as well be triggered by the house counselor, who can understand and treat group anxieties and individual anxieties. Some of the problems that may be triggered by the house counselor are: anxiety about the sister who is undergoing counseling ("There, but for the grace of God, go I"); resentments about the time she spends with the counselor or the superior (a form of sibling rivalry); anger (and envy) at the apparent fact that she is given ÷ Counseling VOLUME 24~ 1965 ÷ ÷ ÷ Vincent S. Conigliaro, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 350 special privileges and dispensations (a sister I once treated said about another sister also in treatment: "They are letting her get away with murder . "); and so forth. Some of these problems might perhaps be prevented by utilizing a house counselor from a different house. A Maryknoll superior I recently spoke with suggested that two trained sisters from the same order but from two dit~erent houses could be exchanged between the two houses and be "on call." Parenthetically, I do not believe that one needs to be alarmed at the thought of a nonmedical sister counselor practicing "diagnostic" counseling. Although the formal diagnosis of any dis-order, whether "physical" or "mental," remains within the province of the medical doctor (psychiatrist or medical psychoanalyst), a well trained counselor is quali-fied to evaluate the severity of a mental disorder, formu-late hypotheses as to its course and prognosis, and differ-entiate it from solely moral or religious problems. What one should fear, rather, are the "snap diagnoses" made by untrained individuals in any walk of life: in the case of the religious sister, the diagnosis, "spiritual problem," with the prescription, "prayer, three times a day," for a problem that is mainly emotional in nature and needs counseling (or psychotherapy) as well. I referred above to the "understanding superior." I wonder how many sisters, troubled emotionally and mentally, did not feel, at some point, that it was-"all mother superior's fault., if she only had more under-standing . " I also wonder how many superiors, whose sisters were in the throes of a severe mental problem, did not feel, at some point: ". It's all my fault., if I had only had more understanding . " (I also wonder if some psychiatrists, in treating sisters with emotional problems, have not at times felt that it was ". all mother superior's fault., if she had only had more understanding . "). I believe there is something significant here and worth-while looking into. At times, undoubtedly, the superior is largely respon-sible for a sister's emotional problem as a "trigger factor," as precipitating element. More often, however, the superior is blamed because of the need for scapegoats, be-cause of the psychological tendency to explain difficulties in simple black and white, "good guy, bad guy" terms, and, finally, because of a specific psychological function called "transference." The truth of the matter is that to blame it all on the superior is incorrect; and if it is incorrect, it is also unfair: unfair to the sister, who likes to believe that changing houses will solve all her problems (she will go through one, two transfers to realize, after several cycles of heightened hope and frustrating letdown, that nothing has really changed in her mental status); and unfair to the superior, who will unrealistically blame her-self for her sisters' emotional problems and use this self-condemnation as a nucleus for her own neurosis. The interpersonal relationship of sister--superior is necessarily a very complex one; here, too, we find that in both its essential and accidental characteristics it offers opportunities for spiritual and psychological enrichment to the healthy and for neurotic expressions to the neu-rotic. The superior has full and unquestioned authority, because she represents, supernaturally, the will of God; the healthy sister willfully chooses to submit and defer because she can see the transcendental aspects of her submission and deference; the neurotic sister or superior sees, rather, a symbolic relationship between an omnipo-tent mother-figure and an infantile daughter-figure. Once the relationship has been unconsciously visualized in these symbolic terms, the development of "transferential" reactions is highly likely, because the relationship is already a "transferential" one. "Transference," I believe, explains why the disturbed sister is too ready to put all the blame on the superior or why the superior is ready to put all the blame on herself (or, in opposite cases, on her "insubordinate daughters"). It also explains why everything the superior does, the rewards she administers, the punishments she metes out, the assignments she makes, the time she take to reply to the sisters' mail, even her very traits of personality, become, at times, a matter of life or death for some sisters. ~Vhat is "transference?" Transference is an unrealistic emotional posture which supposedly occurs only in psy-choanalytic psychotherapy but which also develops, in varying degrees of unreality, in other intimate emotional relationships (husband and wife, soldier and N.C.O. on the battle line, pastor and priest, superior and sister, and so forth). In transference, one feels about a contemporary figure not the feelings it deserves because of what this figure realistically is, but the feelings one felt about significant figures from one's childhood, whom the con-temporary figure symbolically represents. In transference, the patient sees his analyst not as what he is but as he saw his own father and/or mother; and feels about his analyst the quality and quantity of feelings appropriate not to the analyst but to his own father and/or mother. Similarly, in transference the sister sees the superior not as the superior objectively is, but as she saw, as a child, her own parents; and her feelings about the superior are not proportionately related to what the superior, objectively, is, does, stands for, but to the feelings the sister had, as a child, about her parents. Transference motivates behavior as well as feelings and thoughts; in transference, the sister will behave, toward 4- 4- 4- ÷ ÷ + Vincent S. Coniglia~o, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the superior, not realistically but "transferentially," not as sister-to-superior but as daughter-to-mother. Transfer-ence is "remembering through actions and feelings." In psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the development of transference is facilitated by some of the essential and accidental features of the treatment itself and may be fostered by the therapist (a skillful therapist encourages the appropriate quantity and quality of transference and uses it for his patient's benefit). The accidental features of religious life will also encourage transferential relationships and painful, neurotic transferential reac-tions. But, again, not per se, but in direct proportion to the mental health of superior and sister. Such features as the fact that sisters are referred to as "daughters" and superiors are addressed as "mothers". the psycho-logica. 1 message that may be contained in the very word "superior". the reality of the superior's unquestioned authority over the sisters., the vow of obedience., and other accidental features of religious life will not by themselves "infantil-ize" the sister or "mother-ize" the superior; but the sisters will be infantilized (and the superior motherized) who, from the depth of their un-conscious and latent neuroses, had already looked go these features as opportunities for the release of latent neurotic drives. The very fact that there are so many obedient, submissive, and deferent religious sisters who are, at the same time, joyful, vibrant, productive creatures, with attractive, vital, and no less feminine personalities is a living admonishment against believing that the poten-tially infantilizing (to the neurotic) features of religious life must necessarily (that is, also in the healthy) cause transferential relationships and reactions. Whether the superior is a trained counselor or not and whether her qualities of "understanding" will be rightly perceived by sisters wearing or not wearing transference-colored glasses, there can be little doubt that the "understanding" superior will contribute to the pre-vention of emotional crises in her community. Too often one thinks of an understanding superior as someone who smiles, agrees, and gets emotionally involved with her sisters or who is gentle and unassertive and goes around giving realistic or unrealistic reassurances or who shows total approval of whatever neurotic behavior is exhibited on the part of her sisters. This actually is more the stereotype for a neurotic superior than for an under-standing one. I remember a priest counselor whom I once supervised. He was counseling a hostile, resentful, rebellious adoles-cent whose father was rigidly authoritarian and coldly punitive. The counselee acted out his hostility in the counseling situation itself by being.consistently late for his sessions or breaking appointments without previously canceling them. The counselor was extremely "under-standing," remarked about the patient's lateness only casually and gave him a full-session time by cutting into his own rest periods, feebly joked about the cancelations and, to his own great inconvenience, rescheduled make-up appointments, and made sure not to appear in the least annoyed at his patient's erratic behavior. The counselor's conscious rationale for his "understanding" was: "I want him to see that there are understanding people in this world . 1 don't want him to think that everybody is as bad as his father . " In reality his "understanding" covered his own neurotic feelings about hostility and assertion; he neurotically equated justifiable annoyance (at having his schedule continuously disrupted) with irrational rage and rigidly controlled the former to avoid the risk of expressing the latter. Another counselor I supervised managed to convey to his patient his tacit approval of the patient's practically delinquent behavior; in this case the "understanding" dis-guised the counselor's own neurotic rebelliousness and hostility against authority. The giving of unrealistic reassurances (also often seen as a sign of "understanding") may actually be a symptom of neurosis. I remember the case of a sister with a paranoid char-acter neurosis, very intelligent but extremely disagreeable because of her mistrusting, hostile personality. Sister believed the other sisters disliked and resented her be-cause of her scholastic accomplishments; and her superior usually reacted to these complaints by "reassuringly" telling her that when one is very bright one may be resented by those who are less bright, and telling her not to worry, the other sisters really liked her. The con-scious rationale of this "understanding" was: "Sister is too sick to be told that the other sisters do dislike her. and for her arrogance and imperiousness, rather than for her brilliance . " In reality, this "understanding" covered the superior's unconscious fear of the paranoid sister and only resulted in the consolidation and strengthening of sister's hostility and disagreeableness. Real understanding--whether in the knowledgeable superior or in the trained counselor--basically cor-responds to the ability to understand human psychology and, especially, the complexity of human motivations. This understanding, which the counselor obtains from training, the superior can only derive through her own studies, readings, and observation, since in the great majority of cases we are not born endowed with it. "Intui-tive understanding," "horse sense," the "knack of under-standing people," are either an altogether di~erent quality of understanding (the superficial understanding of ÷ ÷ ÷ Counseling VOLUME 24, 1965 353 ÷ ÷ ÷ Vincent S. Coniglidro, M.D. REV|EW FOR RELIG|OUS few, superficial situations) or the major ingredient of often catastrophic "snap diagnoses" (the simplified con-clusions on "what really bothers" our fellow human beings). If this is fully realized, the superior who has little understanding should not blame her constitution, heredity, luck, or intelligence~in most cases she only needs to study, read, and observe. I am not implying that every superior should go to medical school and eventually specialize in psychiatry. I am suggesting, however, that any investment she will make in courses and lectures on human psychology will pay huge dividends in terms of house morale, a smoothly growing community, and her own peace of mind. Actually, it is a wonder that so many superiors, in spite of very little training in human psy-chology, do such a creditable job as leaders of a com-munity. Industry or government would not expect such a performance from untrained leaders of theirs who were to operate under conditions as difficult as most superiors (unisexual environment, closeness of quarters, the ever present possibility of transferential developments and transferential reactions; and so forth). If real understanding is to work--for the house as a whole, for the sisters, and for the superior herself---it must be mature and loving. It must be loving, or there will r~ot be the concern, care, interest motivating one human being to want to understand another (or, at least, to want to apply this u. nderstanding for healing purposes); and it must be mature, or it may be a neurotically motivated understanding in ~which the superior distorts the sister's demands because of unconscious needs to do so or understands these demands rightly but out of proportion to the total picture and more for her own needs than sister's. The positive features and attributes of real understand-ing can best be discussed in reference to counseling and religious counselors. Some of these features will be of great interest also to the superior: the superior who, without being a counselor or without intending to be-come one, wants to achieve, through her own efforts, personal interest, and dedication, real understanding of her sisters. This superior, however, would not be fair to herself if she expected to attain the quality of under-standing of the trained counselor just by following "a few simple rules," listening to the house counselors' "talk-ing shop," or reading a few articles, like this, at best just glossing over a few aspects of counseling theory. Both in real life and in the understanding of human psy-chology, there are no short cuts; and there are no instant substitutes for the understanding that can be derived only from years of studies, readings, and observation. The trained counselor attains a specialized quality of understanding of human psychology. A house counselor, through the time and effort invested in a comprehensive curriculum on theory and technique of counseling, can recognize, diagnose (in the connotation given before), and prognostically evaluate the signs and symptoms of healthy and unhealthy mental functioning. She can determine which patients are an indication for therapeutic counsel-ing and which patients, an indication for motivational counseling, should be referred to a psychotherapist, psy-chiatrist, or psychoanalyst. With the patients with whom she practices therapeutic counseling she knows, after evaluating the patient,s ego strength, environmental conditions within which the patient functions, and the overall circumstances surrounding the counseling rela-tionship, what techniques of counseling to follow and for how long. The counselor knows that human behavior and the symptoms of emotional disturbances are always over-determined (related to multiple causes and factors) and that the more disturbed is behavior, the more distressing a symptom, the more critical a crisis, the less likely it is that just one or two factors are responsible. Consequently, she will not "jump to conclusions," oversimplify, dispense quick, superficial "diagnoses" ("What really bothers you, Sister, is this and that"). She also knows that presenting symptoms and initial complaints are often a disguise for more distressing and intimate problems. Thus she waits beyond the first few sessions before concluding that sister has told her the "whole story" or even the "real story." She knows the inherently devious and implicitly mimetic nature of defense mechanisms; within herself, therefore, in the process of privately evaluating and understanding her counselee's problems, she will not take "no" (or "yes") for an answer, will not accept every-thing at its face value, will try to read between the lines of the counselee's manifest verbalization, will obtain clues from nonverbal communication, and will, in fewer words, constantly try to understand the dynamic motiva-tions, the "why," the "latent,'.' of her counselee's com-munication. (The really understanding superior may well try to remember this. Sister may come to see her to discuss problem "A"; whether sister knows it or not, she may actually be in the superior's office to discuss problems "B" or "C." The patient, knowledgeable, and, especially, un-hurried superior, will help sister to come to the real problem by prolonging the first interview, by non-direc-tive prodding--"is anything else on your mind, Sister?" is much better than "Is this (or that) what is really on your mind, Sisterl" and, especially, by asking sister to come in again "to talk more about problem A or any-thing else that might be on your mind, Sister . ") 4- 4- 4- Counseling + ÷ Vineent S. Conlgliaro, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 356 The counselor knows that even truly distressing symp-toms may only be a first line of defense the personality uses against even more distressing problems and con-flicts. The counselee of a priest I supervised was literally torn apart by persistent masturbatory behavior con-sistently accompanied by vivid heterosexual fantasies; yet this behavior was only a cover-up for very frighten-ing, still unconscious, homosexual problems. A sister I treated was painfully convinced (and so was her superior) that she had a severe sexual problem as she was mainly obsessed with obscene fantasies and per-secuted by sexual compulsions; after several months (and a dream in which she discovered a knife hidden by stacks of pornographic literature) it became apparent that she was using obscene fantasies also to punish herself for unconscious fantasies of a sadistic nature against the superior (and her mother). Thus the counselor knows better than to prematurely remove symptoms or defenses, lest the problems so disguised come to the fore, thus causing disintegration of the whole personality and psychosis. The counselor knows that the best way to counsel is, often, by the "non-directive, minimal activity" technique. Within this technique the counselor, after having ascertained (with a minimum of activity and direction) the quality and severity of the counselee's problem, assumes an "actively passive" posture. She patiently listens; benevolently and calmly waits out pauses of silence; asks few or no questions; stimulates the counselee's continuity of communication by nonverbal means (nodding, assenting, saying "Uhm-uhm") or, verbally, by repeating the counselee's terminal sentence; echoes and reflects back, in simpler, clearer, more concise phraseology the counselee's utterances, and so forth. With the mildest counseling problems this approach is therapeutic in itself and is both means and end. The counselor becomes the counselee's oral vehicle; and the counselee, just by listening to the counselor's clearer re-formulations of the problem, can see solutions or the roads towards them. With most counseling problems this approach is very valuable as a means to an end, as it provides the counselor with material through which she will be able to help the sister to help herself. (A little tip for the superior: "true" listening, with minimal ac-tivity and direction, will cause the "true" problem to shape itself in its clearest outlines under her very eyes.) An important point, made just in passing before, is the one to the effect that light attempts at premature removal of symptoms can be catastrophic. Freud spoke of "wild psychoanalysis"; in a sense, one can talk of "wild counseling." In "wild counseling," the counselor tells the patient what to do; advises; judges; prescribes courses of action; removes symptoms or eliminates defenses; prods too actively, eliciting too much too soon, all this without knowing enough of his counselee's personality structure and whether the patient can safely ~ollow the prescription or in ignorance of the adaptive and defensive meaning of normal and abnormal be-havior. One of the most important discoveries of psychoanalysis was that psychic disorders have a meaning and represent partly successful attempts at defensive adaptation. Even the most distressing symptoms are a partly successful defense---without the distressing symptom of hysterical mutism, the hysteric would be hced with the more distressing problem of wishing to verbalize highly ex-ceptionable sexual desires; without the embarrassing symptom of "trigger-finger paralysis" (a hysteric condition of soldiers on the battle line), the patient would be ~aced with the more serious problem of wanting to press the trigger of a rifle aimed at his own sergeant; without the torturing symptom of persecutory thinking, the schizophrenic would be faced with the much more painful problem of having homosexual desires. The dis-comfort of hysterical mutism, trigger-finger paralysis, and persecutory ideation are a psychic bargain compared with the discomfort the psychic apparatus would experi-ence were it to face, in raw state, the sexual desires, the murderous aggression, and the homosexuality that mutism, paralysis, and persecutory delusions stand for. Thus, if we remove one line of defense, a more drastic defense will be set up and, with it, a more severe mental illness. I remember the patient who came to the emer-gency room of a city hospital in a wheelchair because of hysterical paralysis of both her legs. A brash and eager young psychiatric interne decided he would omnipotently remove the paralysis by hypnotic suggestion. The patient did walk out of the hospital on her own legs; once home, however, she became severely depressed and attempted suicide. The hysterical paralysis was, to her personality structure, an indispensable prop; deprived of that prop prematurely (that is, without any preliminary work on her ego), her personality could only cave in; the process could only be arrested by the setting up of more primitive defenses (more drastic "props"), for instance, the defense of depression. Counseling can be powerful medicine. Words and advice are to the counselor what scalpel and clamps are to the surgeon. Wrong counsel and ill-timed advice can have disastrous effects. I remember a patient "counseled" into borderline psychosis by her own G.P. A twenty-eight year old girl, beautiful and quite feminine, she had never been 4- ~,ounseling VOLUME 357 ÷ 4. ÷ Vincent $. Conigliaro, M~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS engaged, married, or romantically involved, She had consulted her physician because of ill-defined heart and stomach symptoms, fatigue, sleeplessness, and choking sensations; the physician correctly diagnosed hysteria. In discussing her social life, he was struck by the fact that she never went out with men; he took the explanations she gave (shyness, moral reasons) about her sexual isola-tion at their face value and proceeded to persuade her into going out. After several sessions of "counseling" she reluctantly agreed to go out on a date. Shortly after the first date (and having given in to a very minor physical exchange of affection) she became depressed and with-drawn. Again, the physician accepted the explanations she gave for her depression (moral guilt) at their face value and counseled her to be "more broadminded." She became more depressed and withdrawn and eventually attempted suicide. Several weeks after she had finally en-tered psychotherapy, it was found that at the ages of five and nine she had been sexually molested by a psycho-pathic father. Unconsciously, she had come to associate adult sexuality with the incestuous sexuality experienced at five and nine; and the guilt, horror, and remorse at-tached to the latter had become associated to the former; thus sexuality had to be shunned in all its forms and manifestations. Deprived of her defenses of shyness, ti-midity, and sexual isolation, the patient could only ex-perience severe anxiety, depression, and guilt. The above examples refer to situations in which "wild counseling" was both erroneous from a psychoanalytic point of view and faulty from an ethical and moral standpoint. Yet examples can be given of morally un-exceptionable counseling that is equally "wild" from a psychodynamic point of view. A judgmental and psycho-dynamically imprudent pastoral counselor once strongly advised a young man to give up compulsive masturbation at all costs; the counselee did, at the cost of severe homo-sexual panic and suicidal behavior. A couple was once treated in marital counseling; he was a drug addict, moody, manipulative, exploitative, sadistic, occasionally violent; she, the unnervingly patient and "holy" type of woman who goes through life proudly protesting her humility and vigorously proclaiming her martyrlike good-ness in the face of unbearable male provocations. The counselor did not see that this was a neurotic marriage and that this woman (fully aware of her husband's long record of addiction at the time she had married him) had done so to fulfill her masochistic needs and express her controlling and manipulative polarities in the least obtrusive way. The counselor also failed to realize that this woman had a need to foster her husband's addiction (for example, she used to express astonishment at the fact that her husband always managed to steal the groceries money to buy drugs; in actuality, it was she who would unconsciously "forget" some money [always just the right amount for "a fix"] on her dresser for her husband to steal) and that his addiction was an essential '"prop" to her personality. When the counselor finally persuaded her to separate from her husband, she became severely depressed and became an alcoholic. As indicated before, the counselor should be both mature and loving; without these qualities, the most sophisticated psychological understanding will be basi-cally vitiated; and counseling will remain ineffectual. The psychoanalyst's personal maturity can be assured, in most cases, by the fact that he is demanded to undergo inten-sive personal psychoanalysis before he is o~cially per-mitted to psychoanalyze others; the counselor's maturity can only be assured by rigorous screening procedures at the time he applies for training; constant supervision during training gives the additional opportunity to certify as counselors only those who have demonstrated the needed maturity. Why should the counselor be mature (the quality of "loving," I would like to suggest, is an inevitable by-phenomenon of maturity) is self-evident. The mature and loving counselor practices counseling in terms of his counselee's needs--not his own. He is actively passive and non-directive because he believes in the rationale of this technique--not because he is uninterested or because he wishes to work as little as possible. When he gives active counsel, he does so because he honestly believes that it is right to do s~not because, by so doing, the counselee will love, admire, and respect him or "get off his back.~' The mature counselor responds to his patients realisti-cally and not in terms of neurotic reactions set up in him by the counselee's attitudes, symptoms, or values. He can be acceptant of his counselee's behavior, without condon-ing or approving it. He does not "judge" the counselee's actions; rather, he helps him to understand why he acts this or that way and what results can be anticipated from these actions. In being loving, the mature counselor is also capable o~ the adequate measure of self-love and self-respect, without which, I might suggest, there may be no genuine and consistent love and respect of others. A few examples may be given which will clearly in-dicate the maturity or the immaturity of the counselor. A lay counselor I supervised always managed to ask his counselees very personal questions of a sexual nature not to clarify his views on relevant aspects of his patients' personality but to fulfill, vicariously, neurotic sexual needs of his own. Examples given before (while we were 4- Counseling VOLUME 24, 1965 359 ÷ ÷ + Vincent S. Conlgliaro, M~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS on the subject of the "understanding superior" and "understanding coun.selor") indicated how the counselor (or the superior) responded in terms of their own neurotic needs rather than their patients'. One pastoral counselor's sternly judgmental reaction to the rage exhibited by one of his counselees was less related to the patient's prob-lems with sadism than it was to the counselor's fear of his own hostility. Sometimes the counselor's immaturity first creates problems to the counselor himself which will then be transmitted to the counseling relationship and the counselee. A counselor I once supervised, incapable of mature self-love and self-respect, became very anxious because of his inability to resist his counselees' manipula-tions and dependency. He allowed counselees to contact him at home, at all hours of the day or night; the more dependent they became on him (and the more they in-convenienced and disrupted his family life), the more he resented them and the more he felt he had to "make up" for his hostility by giving in to their manipulations and dependency, thus getting involved in a self-perpetuat-ing vicious circle. Immature~or insufficiently trained--counselors may want to terminate a counseling relationship for a com-bination of '"right," conscious reasons (that is, the pa-tient is too sick and needs psychotherapy) and uncon-scious, "wrong" reasons (that is, hostility set up by the patient's values, attitudes, habits, and so forth). These counselors may feel so guilty, unconsciously, for the "wrong" reasons that they may be unable to recommend termination on the basis of the conscious, "right" reasons. They may present the "right" reasons to their counselees in such ambivalent, confusing fashion that the counselees sense the existence of hidden hostility, perceive the recommendation to terminate as '"rejection," and neu-rotically cling to the relationship: "interminable counsel-ing." On the other hand, an untrained pastor I know (truly and genuinely loving--of others; not enough, per-haps, of himself) often feels he does not have the right to refuse or deny anyone and gets involved in intermi-nable counseling in a different way: the parishioner keeps on coming, once, twice a week, to the rectory, refuses to be referred to a psychiatrist, and clings to the unhappy and helpless priest for years. Sometimes it is a superior who makes herself un-realistically available to her sisters. She is "willing" to practice informal counseling at any time during office hours (and beyond) and is unable to turn down any sister's request for "a few minutes of time." This superior may be taking too literally the Christian, ethical, or professional obligation to make oneself available to those who suffer, forgetting the equally ethical and Christian obligation to be good to oneself. One superior I knew refused no one coming in to see her, no matter how busy she was, how many deadlines she had to meet, and how many unfinished tasks were before her. She made her-self available "so that sister won't feel rejected."; her inner discomfort and tension, however, inevitably diffused to the counseling relationship. She would listen superficially and be exposed to the risk of making super-ficial, premature comments; or, while she "listened," her eyes would dart to the typewriter or steal a glance at the wristwatch; or her hands would tap impatiently by the telephone or tug at the crucifix ("Dear God, help me be patient."). The sisters she "listened" to inevitably received the message and felt just as rejected as if they had been asked to return later. A more self-loving superior will do better (by herself and by the sister) by recognizing her right (and her duty, perhaps, to herself) to tell sister warmly but firmly that she will take just a few minutes right away to discusse the matter of an appointment: which will be given within the day if sister feels the matter is that important, later, if sister feels her problem is not that urgent. I am suggesting, then, that when counselor, superior, pastor have sufficient mature self-love and self-respect (at least enough of it to resist the temptation of making themselves unrealistically, or masochistically, available to others) they will, at the same time, be capable of mature, joyful, and genuine love of others. (Could it be that "love thy neighbor as thyself" really means that one has as much obligation to love oneself as to love one's neighbor? And that this beautiful maxim, read between the lines, suggests that without mature self-Jove there cannot be mature other-love?) ! On the subject of "mature and loving understanding," it may be very appropriate to conclude by briefly reflect-ing on the question of values and counseling. While the counselee's values should have little relevance to the counselor's effectiveness, the same cannot be said of the counselor's values. ("Values" here is meant on a broad ethical and philosophical plane, not only on a religious or moral plane.) At the risk of being considered an incorrigible idealist, I should like to suggest that the effective counselor (like the effective psychotherapist) must be, above all, a decent, good human being. If he is not to be, at best a sterile and antiseptic technician, at worst a manipulator and a hidden persuader, he must be committed to a philosophy of integrity, love and respect of others, self-love and self-respect. The attributes of maturity, loving-ness, and understanding will ulti-mately be inherent and intrinsic in the man's existential ÷ ÷ ÷ Counseling VOLUME 24, 1965 36] integrity and ethical commitment. He cannot be auto-cratic, manipulative, devious outside of office hours, and genuinely permissive, truthful (to himself and his work), and sincere in his office; by the same token, he cannot be weak, manipulable, neurotically self-effacing outside of his office and reasonably assertive, reliable, and helpful during office hours. He need not be "perfect" (whatever this word may connote in his personal weltanschauung), but honest. He need not feel that he must make no mis, takes; all he needs is mental alertness to the mistakes he makes and the emotional courage to recognize them and try to do his best to rectify them. He need not be a self-righteous crusader for love, freedom, and a democratic philosophy of life, but someone who does his best to love, be free, and set others free. I began by noting that "counseling, as a technique and a philosophy of human relatedness., is important to both psychoanalysts and religious persons. (who) both work with human beings and are both committed to a profession of service . " In closing, I should like to suggest that both psychoanalysts (or psychotherapists, counselors, and so forth) and religious persons (or pastoral counselors, house counselors, and so forth), be-cause of the specific quality of their relatedness to the human beings they work with, are alike also in this respect: the measure of their success in their work is, to a large extent, a measure of their existential richness and integrity. ,4" 4. + Vincent $. onigliaro, M.D. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS WILLIAM J. REWAK, S.J. Mortification: An Entry inta the Christ-Mystery I. Aversion of Modern Man In the spirit of the Church's aggiornamento, there is a great demand today for authenticity in moral and ascetical theology, a demand for new and valid expres-sions for the old values. A value is a value, after all, not because it is traditional but because it is an authentic expression of my personal relationship to God and to other people. We are aware of, and fear, the crystalliza-tion of the primary Christian experiences. It has often happened that the Church---or more exactly, institutions and individuals within the Church---have bequeathed to succeeding generations rites, methods, and customs with-out any inner ideal and spirit. Such a stagnation of the original value can occur in any human experience: mysticism can degenerate into magic and ritualism; prophecy is always in danger of crumbling into moral-lsm. So the original value, idea, must forever be reex-pressed; it must grow within the historical context and be reinterpreted in the light of changing modes of thought. At the same time, it must keep a strong hold on the primitive experience. It is for this reason we will investigate the New Testament doctrine on mortifica-tion. A theology of mortification is badly needed. The pres-ent doctrine is inadequate, for it has not kept pace with the advancements in Sci'ipture and other branches of theology. At the present, we are reacting against a moral theology that has emphasized sin and progressing towards a positive program of Christian life: doing good in the service of a generous charity. The idea of morti-fication, then, which according to many manuals is practiced either as a punishment for past sins or as a deterrent against future sins must be reappraised,x What ~$ee P. J. Meyer, s.J., Science o] the Saints (~t. Louis: Herder, ÷ ÷ ÷ William J. Re-wak, s.J., is a mem-ber of Regis Col-lege; 3425 Ba~.view Avenue; Wallow-dale, Ontario; Can-ada. VOLUME 24, 1965 4, 4, 4, William ~. Rewak, 5.1. REVIEW FOR REL]G~OUS 564 is objected to is not that sinful man needs mortification, but that theories of mortification seem to bypass Christ and have for their starting point, their raison d'etre, the fact of sin. Every natural philosophy tried to elimi-nate "sin"; the Stoics were concerned with perfection, but only natural perfection. A Christian existential view of sin cannot fall into this trap. Many wish to find their mortification in the daily struggle involved in working for their neighbor, in the apostolate. The absolute value itself of mortification is not always questioned; a blank rejection would be an act of infidelity to the Word of God. What is vehe-mently questioned is selpchosen mortification: corporal punishments, voluntary acts of abnegation of the intel-lect and will, all those acts, freely chosen, which hurt our pride or human respect. Their necessity is question-able in the light of the very real difficulties confronting the apostle in today's pluralistic society, in a world where the general breakdown of morality requires a new and more refined, more soul-searching response in his communication with his neighbor. There is no doubt about it: mortification is the daily fare for the dedi-cated apostle. Why opt for additional, self-chosen acts of mortification? Mortification has too often been identified with ex-traordinary corporal austerities. The ordinary apostle, not given to sackcloth and ashes, hairshirts, dank caves, and bloody lacerations, is sincerely seeking an "ordi-nary" saint. He wants as an example someone who must stay strong and healthy in order to perform manfully, joyfully, and effectively the tasks of a university pro-fessor, a retreat master, or a Catholic businessman. Besides, corporal austerities are currently out of favor as a result of the renewed "theology of matter." We have, it is hoped, at least theoretically banished all traces of Platonism and Jansenism from our books and lectures on spirituality. There is today an emphasis on the sacramentality of matter, an emphasis fostered by the late Teilhard de Chardin. The body, the world of the material and concrete, are all good and will con-tribute in their own specialized way to the glory of the kingdom to be revealed in us. If corporal austerities are to be retained, they must be based on a more solid foundation than the Jansenistic distrust of the ma-terial. 2 1902), pp. 88-91. Father Meyer's primary reason for practicing morti-fication is "as an atonement for past sins"; and it is "still more neces-sary as a preservative from future sins." This obviously needs quali-fication and completion. i We use the terms "Jansenistic" and "Jansenism" because they are readily intelligible to the modem reader. It must be admitted, how-ever, that the use of such terms is more for convenience than for Older spiritual books, books which influenced the ascetical teachers of the first half of this century, are notoriously negative in tone: If we were to count all the miseries of human life, we should never have done. Holy Job says, "The life of man is a per- Detual warfare upon earth, and his days are like the days of a hired servant that labours from sun-rising to sun-set" (Job vii. 1, 2). Several of the old philosophers had such a lively sense of this truth, that some of them said, they could not tell whether to call nature a mother or a step-mother, because she has sub-jected us to so many miseries. Others again used to say, it were better never to be born, or at least to die as soon as we were strict and complete historical accuracy. An explanation is therefore in order. We urge the reader to consult Louis Bouyer, The Spiritual-ity o] the New Testament and the Fathers, trans. Mary P. Ryan (London: Burns and Oates, 196~) for an excellent account of the problem of gnosis in the early Church. Contrary to modern popular belief, Father states, there was a legitimate gnosis sought by St. Paul and by the early fathers; one has only to think of the formulation of the First Epistle to the Corinthians on knowing God even as we are known (1 Cor 13:12; see also Eph 3:19 and Phil 3:7-11). And this is a knowledge which is really an experience of God, in the love of the Spirit. St. Ignatius of Antioch says: "Why do we not all become wise in receiving the gnosis of God, Jesus Christ?" (p. 246). Gnosis for primitive Christianity was an experiential knowledge of the mysteries of the Father's plan for salvation. But at the same time the natural Greek philosophers themselves were seeking ~alvation through a gnosis of their own. These influences came in turn to form Christian gnosis. "Eons or angels descended in endless cascades from a pleroma in which everything is divine, towards a foreign matter in which everything is mired and becomes degenerate. To this fall, which is one with creation itself, is opposed the mission of the Logos, more or less strictly identified with the man Jesus. But since salvation is nothing but the recovery of an con fallen into mat-ter, the incarnation could be only apparent. It must lead, in fact, to a salvation which is not a redemption of the whole of man, but a disengagement in man of what has never ceased to be immortal 'spirit,' that is to say, an escape from the bonds of the body and the world . The cross of the Saviour only frees our soul along with his from the chains of the body" (p. 223). It is immediately apparent that the grandfather of the heretical positions of the Jansenists, Puritans, Albigensians, Manicheans, is Greek Gnosticism--a corrod-ing rationalism which understood nothing of the true Gnosis, the Word of God. It is not the Logos of Hellenistic syncretism that we, as Christians, come to know, but the Word made flesh. This is why so many spiritual writers of the last few centuries have misfired with their ascetical doctrine; they were influenced by the same rationalism that has threatened Christianity from the beginning and is too often the error of Christian "humanism": the adoption of ascetical prac-tices for the purification and reintegration of the purely natural man, with no consideration for the priority of the interpersonal relation-ship between man and God. The early Greek Gnostic sought an apatheia: the calming of all disordered tendencies, rendering him insensible to outside influence. The Christian Gnosdc also sought apatheia, but it was attained through perfect submission to charity. This in no way meant an extinction of the human, "but rather its unification in which everything is taken up and transfigured which is worthy of being so" (p. 274). Christian asceticism must begin from faith, from the Word of God; it must proceed from the Spirit of love speaking within us. + + .I-Mortification VOLUME 24, 1965 365 4. 4. 4. William J. Rewak, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 366 born; nay, some of them have gone so far as to say, there are but few persons, that would accept of life after having made an experiment of it, that is, if it were possible to make a trial of it beforehand,s If one were to take this seriously, he would have to regret that God ever uttered a fiat. Having disposed of the object, the author turns to the subject: Cast your eyes on yourself, and you will find there motives enough of humility. Do but consider what you were before you were born, what you are since you have been born and what you are like to be after your death. Before your birth, you were a filthy matter unworthy to be named, at present you are a dunghill covered with snow, and in a short time you will be meat for worms.~ An adequate understanding of the Incarnation can surely dispel such gross misconceptions of God's creation. But it is precisely upon such misconceptions that the author--and other authors--have based their arguments for mortification. Little wonder modern man is repelled. An unhappy refrain running through most spiritual manuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is A bstine et sustine! Refrain and endure,s Cast unwillingly into a flaming abyss of sin where even the apostolate is fraught with unimaginable dangers, mortification alone will lead us to "perfection." And this is perhaps the worst aberration of rationalistic moralism: the use of ascetical practices not for establishing and maintaining a dialogue with God but for the stoical perfection of all the virtues. Most spiritual books of the last century offered detailed instructions on how to develop the virtues of fortitude, for example, or temperance, chastity. And the first means was always mortification--as they understood it. "We must possess more virtues; through them only can we reach our end. Here comes in the aid of self-denial and self-discip-line." 0 Another section of the book explained the ob-stacles to the acquiring of these virtues;7 and a third sec-tion enticed the reader with such titles as "Of the Spiritual and Temporal Advantages Promised to Virtue in this Life, s Rev. F. Lewis, O.P., The Sinner's Guide (Dublin: Richard Coyne, 1825), p. 162. ~ Ibid., p. 271. ~ See, for example, Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J., Practice o! Perfec-tion and Christian Virtues, trans. Joseph Rickaby, S.J. (London: Manresa Press, 1929), p. 567; and Meyer, Science of the Saints, p. 97. °Moritz Meschler, s.J., Three Fundamental Principles of the Spiritual Life (Westminster: Newman, 1945), p. 80. The author seri-ously calls his book "Christian Asceticism in a Waist-Coat Pocket" (p. v). 7See John Baptist Scaramelli, S.J., The Directorium Asceticum, trans, at St. Bueno's College, North Wales (4 vols.; London: R. and T. Washbourne, 1902), v. 2. This second of four volumes is devoted en-tirely to the manifold obstacles to Christian "virtue" and the means for overcoming them--penance and mortification. and particularly of Twelve Extraordinary Privileges be-longing to it" s or "Some Easy Kinds of Mortification." 9 Such pragmatic spirituality, which is nothing but the victory of reason over animality, lacks a real Christian motive based on Christ's entry into our life through baptism and the sacraments. Fortunately, we have recovered the notion that per-fection is not the piling up of virtues, computer-fashion; it is more fundamental, it is Chrigt-centered. We see Christ as the focal point of all our religious activity, of all our apostolic activity, of all human relations; and when an author bids us go forth from our father's house because "in the shelter of the religious life, separated from the world, from all that might .have occupied your thoughts and your hearts, you live for God alone," 10 we cannot believe him. Or if someone counsels us: "If the religious vocation demands the abandonment of the parental roof, sons and daughters must sacrifice their affections for parents and relatives that they may gain thereby Christ's promise of eternal life," or asserts that friendships are dangerous because "friendship between proper parties that has for object their mutual spiritual advancement is rare and found only among saints," 11 we can hardly take him seriously. The author is too much like those of whom P~guy wrote that "they think they love God because they don't love anyone." Mortification and sacrifice have often been put in opposition to joy. Come, my children, when pain, sacrifice, and duty press heavily upon you, when you experience dryness and disgust, endeavour to make, if you will, a dry and bitter act of love of God . Fervour and sensible devotion is good for small minds; shake off these feminine ways, aspire to something more noble, more vigorous. As for ourselves, we have had not one quarter of an hour's consolation in forty years.~ Hard saying for a generation that is experiencing the ascetical consequences of St. Paul's theology of the Res-urrection. Surely sacrifice and consolation, as authentic expressions of God's Good News, must somehow be re-lated. But most authors of moral guidebooks struggled with this "problem" of pleasure, happiness, consolation, and could not easily reconcile it with Christ's example of suffering. There exists in fact the problem of pleasure. Readily enough ~ Lewis, Sinner's Guide, p. 85. ~ Meyer, Science oJ the Saints, p. 101. 10 P~re de Ravignan, S.J., ConIerences on the Spiritual LiIe, trans. Mrs. Abel Ram (London: Washbourne, 1877), p. 185. Italics mine. ~aMonsignor P. J. Stockman, Manual o] Christian Per]ection (Hollywood, Calif.), p. 611. ~ De Ravignan, ConJerences, p. 191. Mortification VOLUME 24, 196S 367 4. 4. William ]. Rewak, 8.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS $68 does the concept of pleasure evoke the idea of something which, morally, has little to recommend it, or at the most, something which is to be tolerated. Living in the memory of Christ, the Christian soul with difficulty separates sanctity from suffering. Is it not by the cross that Christ redeemed and sanctified us? How can pleasure, then, be integrated into the moral life? Does this life not seem, on the contrary, to exclude it? Is there a place for pleasure in the context of a life of selbcontrol?18 And the author solves this conundrum by consoling his readers with the distinction that the essence of an act is what determines it and not the pleasure that may sur-round or follow upon it. Pleasure is outside the moral law: if the act is good, the pleasure is good; if the act is bad, the pleasure is bad. It is, he states, permitted to renounce this pleasure for a superior motive; but it is sometimes better to accept it, especially if it leads to virtue; and it may not always be possible to exclude it.14 Such a treatment of pleasure and consolation strikes the modern reader as negative, moralistic, and exces-sively rationalistic. It has not embodied the spirit of St. Paul: "They will forbid marriage, and will enjoin ab-stinence from foods, which God has created to be par-taken of with thanksgiving by the faithful and by those who know the truth. For every creature of God is good and nothing is to be rejected that is accepted with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer:' (1 Tim 4:3-5). One last remark, and this first part will have per-formed its function. Mortification has been strongly identified with the devotions centering around the idea of reparation. We supposedly mortify our flesh to al-leviate the pain of the lash as it struck Christ during His passion; we kneel for hours to repair for the sins which are causing Him pain and sorrow. Sentimentality has conjured up the image of a Sacred Heart, sitting on the banks of the Loire, weeping and bewailing the sins which men are committing. Such misguided devotions can readily develop into dolorism, a perverted anguish which plays on false feelings of guilt; and for the modern psychology-oriented intellectual, this" is territory to be shunned. Mortification, if it is to be Christian, must turn one away from the self and towards Christ and ="I1 existe de fait un probl~me du plaisir. Assez ais~ment le con-cept de plaisir ~voque l'id~e d'une chose moralement peu recom-mandable, d'une tolerance tout au plus. Vivant du souvenir du Christ, l'fime chr~tienne dissocie malais~raent la saintet~ de la soul-france: n'est-ce point par la croix que le Christ vous a rachet~s et sanctifi~s? Peut-on donc integrer le plaisir clans la vie morale? Ne convient-il au contraire de l'en exclure? Peut-on lui assigner une place clans le gouvernement de soi-m~me?" Dora Odon Lottin, Aux sources de notre grandeur morale (Editions de l'Abbaye du Mont Cesar, 1946), p. 32. a~ Ibid., pp. 33-4. man. Sentimentality has no place in the authentic Chris-tian experience of reparation. It is the sum of all these inaccuracies, these exaggera-tions, these inauthentic expressions of Christian asceti-cism, which are causing the current questioning, if not the rejection, of mortification. If we are to retain morti-fication and sacrifice as indispensable e|ements of Chris-tian life, they must be integrated into the scheme of the "Christ-life" of which St. Paul is the outstanding interpreter. We have to make what we mean intelligible to modern Christians so that, as Karl Rahner says, "they will not think that 'sacrifice' is an expression for that misanthropy and secret hatred of life felt by failures who are incapable of courageously enjoying life and this world and the glory of human existence." a~ H. New Testament Doctrine on Mortification We have been using the term "mortification" in its popular sense, meaning all those acts of abnegation, of sacrifice, which are commonly understood as "mortify-ing." It is time now, however, to clarify the meaning of the three words ordinarily used interchangeably as synonyms: abnegation, renouncement, and mortification; and we will present, in the main, Fr. Iren~e Hausherr's distinctions,a6 This analysis will lead us into a further study of the Pauline texts on mortification. The Synoptics have all preserved the saying: "If any-one wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." a7 Fr. Hausherr has pointed out that in the Scriptures, when abnegate, "to deny," concerns a duty, there is always the same direct object: oneself. We cannot, strictly speaking, deny ourselves; that is, negate ourselves. We cannot deny what we really are. The abnegation demanded by Christ consists in denying, or not attributing to myself, that which I am not. The great truth about myself is that I am a creature ---or better, a son---of God; negatively speaking, I am not God. This elementary negation constitutes the es-sence of abnegate, of the "denial" of oneself. It is, to be sure, an intellectual judgment on my condition as a creature, a fully free human commitment to adore and praise the God Who has entered my life. But to stop here would enclose us in the same narrow straits of rationalism that hemmed in former ascetical writers. This basic abnegation--the adoration of God---demands that I act as a creature; but it demands primarily that ~ Karl Rahner, S.J., The Christian Commitment, trans. Cecily Hastings (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), p. 167. l~Iren~e Hausherr, S.J., "Abnegation, renouncement, mortifica-tion," Christus, v. 22 (1959), pp. 182-95. a7 Mt 16:24. See also Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23. Mortification VOLUME 24, a965 William ]. Rewak, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 370 my filial relationship to God, which is discerned by faith, take precedence over and therefore exclude the primacy of every purely natural reference to self, and this in consequence of the existential character of the supernatural order of redemption I am now living. Transposed into life, this principle demands acts of mortification. The commandment "to renounce" appears in only one text: "He who does not renounce all that he pos-sesses cannot be my disciple" (Lk 14:33). Christ is here again referring to all men, to whoever wishes to follow Him; it is therefore not a counsel but a command, a Christian duty. Obviously, the degree of embodiment of this renunciation will vary for every person and every state in life. Renunciation for a religious is not the same as renunciation for a layman. Although the specific command, "to renounce," does not appear elsewhere, there are related texts: "If your right eye is an occasion of sin to you, pluck it out . " (Mr 5:29); "If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you possess, give it to the poor, and come, follow me" (Mt 19:21); "And anyone who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or moth.er, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundred-fold and shall possess life everlasting" (Mt 19:29). The first Matthaean text is hypothetical but is uni-versal in its application. The remaining two texts refer to those who have decided to follow the counsels, since "to leave" is not commanded, it is optional. Luke has seemed to use the same logion, but the tone is harsh: anyone comes to me and he does not hate his mother and his son and his brother and his sisters, and himself, he cannot be my disciple" (Lk 14:26). In this context, "to hate" someone is to love him less than God, or better, to discern by faith that love of the Father grounds our love for other men. "To leave" is not a duty (except in the hypothetical case of an occasion of sin); but "to hate" and "to re-nounce" are obligations which fall on every Christian, as they indicate the relation that should exist between a son and a Father. Abnegation, then, refers to the subject: my self-love will be characterized and determined by my love for the Father. Renouncement refers to the persons or things outside the subject: all created things will be loved in the Father and through the Spirit because they are ex-pressions of God's love for me. "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5:5). Transposed into life, both of these principles demand acts of mortification. It is St. Paul who uses the word "mortification," and the first text we wish to examine is Col 3:5: "Therefore, mortify your members which are on earth." Some have understood this text literally to refer to punishment of the physical body. The Greek word for mortify, nekro-sate, does mean "to cause to die"; but St. Paul is not asking for the physical amputation of our members, he has too great a respect for the body: "Learn how to possess your vessel [body] in holiness and honor" (1 Th 4:4). But neither should the word be weakened to merely mean "suffer," for this, too, would have no precedent in Pauline doctrine. The word "members," then, can-not refer to our physical members; and in the context of the passage, there is an interpretation given to the word. Appearing in apposition to "members" are: "im-morality, uncleanness, lust, evil desire, and covetousness (which is a form of idol worship)" (Col 3:5). What we must put to death, what we must "mortify," are the dis-ordered affections which proceed from blunted self-love, a self-love not grounded in the Father's love, in Paul's terminology, the "flesh," sarx. Now the works of the flesh [sarx] are manifest, which are immorality, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, jealousies, angers, quarrels, factions, par-ties, envies, murders, drunkenness, carouslngs and such like . And they who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires (Gal 5:19-21,24). The effects of selfish egoism destroy the beauty and the harmony of the Christian person. All these sins which Paul enumerates set a man against his neighbor, against God, even against himself. We must "crucify" the source of this disorder, our "flesh," in order that we may "walk in the Spirit" (Gal 5:16). Mortifying the flesh will produce the "fruit of the Spirit: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, modesty, continency" (Gal 5: 22-3). The primacy of the spirit of charity in our lives is evidence that we have "risen with Christ": If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, shall appear, then you too will appear with him in glory. ThereIore, mortify your members . " (Col 3:1-5). Paul is inviting us to the state of mortification, in the interests of our resurrected life. "If by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live" (Rom 8:13). Egdism must be mortified and sensuality curbed; then we live in the full supernatural sense. And here we begin to touch upon a basic Pauline theme. For Paul, the fundamental law of the spiritual life is a dying and a living with Christ. This occurs sacra-÷ ÷ ÷ Mortifwatlon VOLUME 24, 1965 371 4, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 372 mentally in baptism and it is of this he speaks to the Colossians. Perhaps his most explicit statement is in the epistle to the Romans: Do you not know that all we who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? For we were buried with him by means 6f baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ has arisen from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:3-4). The spiritual life is union with Christ; but this is a fellowship with His death and life. We die and rise again sacramentally in baptism, an invisible action which must be fully manifested and made effective in our daily lives. The sacramental, ontological change we undergo in baptism must have a corresponding effect on our moral and ascetical conduct,is Only in this way, by uniting ourselves sacramentally and ascetically to Christ's earthly activity of suffering, can we obtain a freedom from sin and our final resurrection: For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as dung that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a justice of my own which is from the Law, but that which is from faith in Christ, the justice from God based upon faith; so that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering: become like to him in death, in the hope that somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead (Phil 3:8-11). Fr. F. X. Durrwell states: These texts do not say that the remission of sin is gained in virtue of the merit acquired in the past by that death---one must not water down the reality of a single word of Scripture on the ground of reason being unable to cope with it; they say that it is gained in a communion in that immolationTM. Only by entering completely into the mystery of Christ, by uniting our sufferings to His in such a way that they are no longer our sufferings but Christ's--"l bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body" (Gal 6:lT)-~can we truly become a "new creation" (Gal fi:lS) and enter upon the glorious life awaiting us. And so a radical transformation has already taken place at baptism: "As many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ" (Gal 3:27); "You were heretofore darkness but now light" (Eph 5:8); "The law of the spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, hath delivered me from the law of sin and death" (Rom 8:2). In the Chris-tian life, however, there is a vast difference between establishing a beachhead and the full experience of ~ Concerning this Pauline theme, see Alfred Wikenhauser, Pauline Mysticism (New York: Herder and Herder, 1960), pp. 149-56; and F. X. Dun'well, In the Redeeming Christ (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), pp. 84-90. ~ Durrwell, In the Redeeming Christ, p. 85. victory--the pleroma. In principle, Christ's death and resurrection and our sacramental participation in it have destroyed the inevitable domination of "the lusts of the flesh" (Gal 5:16); but the possibility of sin remains. The Christian life is a life of struggle, as Paul knew so well from his own personal experience and fa'om his ex-periences with the imperfections of the early Christian communities. But Christian suffering, the appropriation in our own person of the passion and death of Christ, must reflect the same motive that inspired the exinanitio: the redemp-tion of man and of the universe. "For we the living are constantly being handed over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh. Thus death is at work in us, but life in you" (2 Cor 4:11-2). Only to the extent that what is exclusively natural in us dies can the life of Christ become manifest in us in the form of apostolic activity. The death of the apostle is the necessary condition for the life of the Church and her members. And every Christian is an apostle. Only to the extent that we "bear about in our body the dying of Jesus" (2 Cot 4:I0) can we effectively continue the redemption by applying its saving activity to men. And here we reach the basic reason for all mortification: it is an entry into the mystery of Christ, a communion in His suffering, for the purpose of prolonging His re-demption in the world through the Church. His activity in Jerusalem two thousand years ago was not ineffica-cious for the present age; He effected the transforma-tion at that point in time, but He continues it in His glorified state through the members of His Church who recapitulate in their lives His redeeming experience. "Therefore I pray you not to be disheartened at my tribulations for you, for they are your glory" (Eph 3:13). The most important statement of this theme appears in Col 1:24: "I rejoice now in the sufferings I bear for your sake, and what is lacking of the sufferings of Christ I fill up in my flesh for his body which is the Church." Paul does not mean, of course, that he must supply by his sacrifices the defects in the sufferings of the historical Christ. Interpreting "the sufferings of Christ," Fr. Benoit says they are, in general, the tribula-tions of the apostolic life;2° while Fr. Wikenhauser ap-plies them more personally, stating they are Paul's own sufferings.21 These interpretations do not do injustice to Paul's thought; as he says elsewhere, "the sufferings ~o Pierre Benoit, "L'Epitre aux Colossiens," Bible de Jdrusalem (Paris: Cerf, 1959), p. 60, footnote (b). m Wikenhauser, Pauline Mysticism, p. 161. ÷ ÷ Mortification VOLUME 37~ of Christ abound in us" (2 Cor 1:5), meaning his own sufferings. At any rate, all reputable scholars agree with the general tenor of the text: Paul, and all Christians, must express in their lives Christ's passion and death for the salvation of the members of the Mystical Body, the Church. Quite simply, "they live no longer for them-selves" (2 Cot 5:15). And this salvation of the Body of Christ is a source of great joy for Paul, a joy that is a participation in the Resurrection: "For our present light affliction, which is for the moment, prepares for us an etei-nal weight of glory that is beyond all measure" (2 Cot 4:17). Com-munion with Christ in His death necessarily means com-munion in His Resurrection, for this too is the moral and ascetical prolongation of baptism. The Resurrection should be lived, as mortification and suffering are lived. The apostle is a man of joy: "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also through Christ does our comfort abound" (2 Cor 1:15). It is in the letter to the Philippians, written during a harsh and humiliating im-prisonment, that Paul overflows with joy--a word that appears in this epistle eleven times because of the fellowship he experiences with his converts who them-selves have endured suffering for the sake of the gospel: "I have you in my heart, all of you, alike in my chains, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, as sharers in my joy" (Phil 1:7). In summary, Paul puts great emphasis on the mystical and sacramental fellowship in Christ that is effected at baptism; but he is equally insistent that Christians must foster in their lives a personal relationship founded on imitation--and this can only be done by re-experienc-ing Christ's life, performing the same redeeming activity He performed. To be one with Him in glory, we must be one with Him in suffering. This is the only way we know, the only way given to us by which we can be saved: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny him-self, take up his cross and follow me" (Mr 16:24). III. Some Conclusions ÷ ÷ + William I. Rewak, Sd. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS And what then is mortification? Most basically, it is a state of having died with Christ so that we may live with him, We must make more explicit, however, a dis-tinction which until now has only been implied: St. Paul is speaking primarily about absolute mortification, the state we all must enter as a result of our communion in baptism with Christ. Every Christian is called to this state; and the requirements are the same: the "putting to death" of the disordered inclinations and affections that are ours as a result of original sin.2~ We do not "mortify" the body, properly speaking; we mortify our flesh, sarx, the urge we possess to disassociate our in-terests from God's interests. And we do this that through us the Body of Christ, the Church, may live the Res-urrection more fully. But a problem remains. For this absolute principle of the spiritual life must be appropriated by each Chris-tian and embodied in his daily life. The acts of mortifi-cation, therefore, by which we make St. Paul's principle our constant concern, we term relative mortification. For these acts are always relative, to our state in life, to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and to the force of the disordered affections which remain in us. It is this we are concerned with now and it is under this heading we discuss selpchosen, freely imposed mortifica-tion. We live as members of a Church; all our Christian acts are ecclesiological--through, with, and in the struc-ture Christ set up for our sanctification. The existence of sin in any one of its members stops the flow of grace in a particular area and impedes there the growth of the Christ-life. Mortification does serve, then, as punishment for sin and as a deterrent against future sin, as the manuals have pointed out; but sin must be seen in the context of the Mystical Body, of charity: "For you have been called to liberty, brethren; only do not use liberty as an occasion for sensuality, but by charity serve one another" (Gal 5:13). We mortify our disordered affec-tions so that nothing will hinder us from entering into a meaningful dialogue with God and with our neighbor. We must make of our lives a dynamic redemption--a redemption that is continued through our Christian acts of prayer and mortification, in the Church, for mankind. It is in the light of this Christian experience, for example, that we seek the meaning of reparation. Acts directed to reparation are performed principally to further the penetration of the Christ-life in the members of the Church: the Church suffering and the Church militant. They are intended to "repair" the damage done by sin, to heal the wounds which Christ--in His members m St. Ignatius of Loyola insists that a "disordered affection" is an affection which does not take into account the action of God in our life. To mortify this affection, (I) w~ starve it by not allowing it to exercise its influence and (2) we pray that God may change this af-fection. It is obvious how important Ignatius considered both the initiative and the decisive influence of God's action in us; for this reason he puts great emphasis on the necessity of prayer when troubled by "inordinate attachments." See Spiritual Exercises, Nos. 16, 157. ÷ ÷ ÷ Mortit~ation VOLUME Z4, 1965 375 ÷ ÷ William J. Rewak, Sd. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS --has suffered, to open the channels of sanctification that we all may live healthy, grace-filled lives. Christ does not suffer, but His members do: the loss of grace, caused by the power of sin. The dialogue must be re-established, and our acts of mortification do effect, in ourselves and in our neighbor, through the mercy of God, the resurgence of the Christ-life. For within the mystery of the Mystical Body, there is room for mutual help--and this in the sphere of grace alone. This re-vealed fact in itself attests to the mysterious character of the organic union of this Body: "For we the living are constantly being handed over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal bodies. Thus death is at work in us, but li[e in you" (2 Cor 4:11-2). But many Christians, agreeing with the general nec-essity of mortification, point to the apostolate, as we have indicated, as source enough of that "dying" Paul insists we must undergo for ourselves and our brothers in Christ. Failure in the apostolate, the limitations of our personality in dealing with others, the rejection of love, the inability to be effective--these are real crosses to be borne by every apostle. They point also to the one great abiding mortifica-tion, the acceptance of personal death. Karl Rahner has said: We have only to recall that death, as an act of man, is pre-cisely that event which gathers up the whole of the personal human life of the individual into one consummation. We have only, too, to recall, as Eutychius (A.D. 582) said, that there oc-curs "pragmatically" in death what had occurred mystically at the sacramental heights of Christian experience, in Baptism and in the Eucharist, namely our assimilation to the death of the Lord.~ And the death of the Lord was not an easy one. But self-chosen mortification, we affirm, performs ex-actly the same function, and that is one of the reasons it is so necessary. Just as personal death demands activity on the part of the Christian, so should our mortification, for mortification prepares us for and establishes a begin-ning and an acceptance of our final assimilation to the death of the Lord. Acceptance of suffering, of the crosses meted out to us in our apostolate, has great value; but it does not reach the depths of the personality as our self-chosen acts do. It is easier to accept .the loss of something we hold dear than to throw it away of ourselves. The blame can al-ways be put on circumstance, on someone else, even on God; and this is a consoling thought, for it is hard to ~a Karl Rahner, S.J., On the Theology of Death (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964), p. 77. blame ourselves, to freely commit ourselves to a dying in Christ. Penances imposed from without are .not free from the nonchalance and superficiality of routine. What may pass for a religious act may often be unthinking obedience. As Fr. Rahner says: One has only to have heard something, however little, about depth psychology, repression, substitution, self-deception, etc., to have to agree that thousands of "religious" and "moral" acts can take place in man which are induced by training, imitation, suggestion, mere instruction from without and a "good will" which does not reach to the real kernel of the person; acts which are not really religious acts because they do not stem from that level of personality, supernaturally elevated and ab-solutely individual, whose free fulfillment they must be if they are to signify, before God, the creation of an eternally valid life?' To maturely and effectively create a situation in which I turn back upon myself the hand of penance and deal a death-blow to self-love, is a fearful thing. Self-love is frightened of it; but self-love, inasmuch as it opposes God's interests and plans for me, must be hammered, molded, that a "new man" might appear whose affections are ordered to one end: that the Lord may appear in us. This creation of an act of mortification, then, reaches profound depths; it engages the whole personality, calls for a personal commitment that acceptance of suffering alone cannot command. What St. Paul calIs sarx--"im-morality, uncleanness, lust, evil desire and covetousness" (Col 3:5)---is rooted out only with dogged and ruthless persistence. "This kind can be cast out only by prayer and fasting" (Mk 9:18). Those who would reject all forms of mortification are, unwittingly, Platonists--any of the forms of false Gnosticism--for they make of us angels who do not need to be on the offensive against attacks of the "flesh"; they would not subscribe to a real Incarnation. Freely-chosen acts of mortification do prepare us for death because they anticipate it; but they also prepare us for the moral and physical suffering which we have admitted will be ours in the apostolate. There is no question of will power here: performing ten acts of morti-fication will not make my will ten times stronger than it was. It does increase our faith, our insight into the suffering Christ as He appears in mankind. We cannot make quick improvisations when Christ approaches in the sufferings we have not chosen. If we have begged for the grace of faith--for that is what we do when we "practice" mortification--it will not be lacking when the crosses He has prepared for us appear. To recognize Christ, where He is and who He is, is the fruit of a life of faith; this does not come full-blown from our hearts; it is the result of much hard labor. The Christian Commitment, p. 88. + + Mortification VOLUME 24, 1965 William ~. Rewak, SJ. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Besides, Christ has given us an example. It is surely not a coincidence that before His public life He fasted and prayed in the desert for forty days. This unique and signal attention to the Father for the good of men is our invitation to imitate Christ at this salvific moment of His life. We need not retire to the desert, conceived of as a geographical place. But the inner quiet, the fast-ing, doing battle with each one's personal "devil" re-stores an equilibrium that leaves us docile to the inspira-tions of the Spirit. Some type of solitude is necessary for every Christian, be he a contemplative, a diocesan priest, a lay apostle, or the busy parent of a large family. This solitude will take different forms, dictated by the person's own. spiritual potential, the age he lives in, the labors he must perform as a citizen in a highly complex social and economic structure. But some type of inner quiet seems mandatory for true growth in the Christian spirit: Solitude is a terrible trial, for it serves to crack open and burst apart the shell of our superficial securities. It opens out to us the unknown abyss that we all carry within us. And. soli-tude discloses the fact that these abysses are haunted: it is not only the depths of our own soul, unknown to us, that we dis-cover, but the obscure powers that are as it were lurking there, whose slaves we must inevitably remain as long as we are not aware of them. In truth, this awareness would destroy us, if it were not illuminated by the light of faith. Only Christ,, can open out to us with impunity "the mystery of iniquity, be-cause he alone, in us today as ]or us in the past, can confront it successfully.~ ~Bouyer, Spirituality, p. 313. Apropos of the "flight into the desert," Father Bouyer is at pains to dispel the misconceived notions surrounding the early Christian hermits. They were not inspired by net-Platonic spirituality; on the contrary, he states, there was nothing more evangelical than their primary motivation. Speaking of St. Antony, he says, "Anchoritism did not make Antony a con-templative unconcerned with the fate of his brothers; it made him a spiritual father beyond all others" (p. 315). He quotes the beautiful passage ~rom the Vita of St. Antony where, after twenty years, friends break down the hermit's door in their enthusiasm to be with him and to imitate him. This is what they find: "Antony came out, as one initiated into the mysteries in the secret of the temple and inspired by a divine breath. Thus, for the first time, those who had come saw him. They were lost in wonder: his aspect had remained the same; he was neither fat from lack of physical exercise nor emaciated by his fastings and struggle against the demons, but just as they had known him before his withdrawal. Spiritually pure, he was neither shrunken with regret nor swollen with pleasure; in him neither laughter nor sadness; the multitude did not trouble him, having so many people greeting him gave him no excessive joy: always equal to himself, governed by reason, natural" (p. 314). Antony recognized that solitude allowed him to discover the obscure forces he had within himself and to discover the means to cast these forces out. Solitude was not an end in itself: it was a victory of one Spirit over the others that made him seek it. "Men can no longer tempt him, separate him from God. On the contrary, it is he who now finds himself in a position to guide them, to lead them to God. Here Mortification in the form of a retreat, in the form of fasting, became a part of Christ's plan of the redemp-tion; we can do no better than to make it a part of the role we play in the redemption¯ And this is surely the key: by mortification we enter into the Christ-mystery. We become His Body, resuming in our lives His redemptive acts, pleading with the Father for the salvation of man; for mortification is a language, not a sign. It is a response to a Person who has initiated a dialogue with me through baptism and the sacraments and through His reve~led Word. God's action in history is a word to me now; I can only trespond by placing myself before Him as His son, by per~forming acts which indicate my willingness to accept His love, to treat Him as Father¯ I accept Him as the bes.t part of my life, the whole of my life. This is prayer, of course; and mortification, as a language, is an essent, al part of my prayer life. All of my acts as a Christian. are a prayer, and they all contribute to the consolation I should experience--as a Christian--in formal~ prayer. The formal prayer itself fills the reservoirs of f~ith and love, just as formal, self-chosen acts of moruficatlon do, so that my effectiveness in the Mystical Body, through Christ in me, is increased a hundredfold. My formal mortification will result in lived mortification. I The af-fections become ordered, their false security uhmasked by a judicious use of corporal and spiritual p.enances, and the inmost person is calmly and confidently la~d open to receive God's Word. I It must not be forgotten, however, that theseI acts are relative to my present insertion into the mystery of Christ; and so all must be ruled by an expertl discern-ment of spirits. To codify too carefully pemtentlal prac-tices in the novitiate, for example, destroys the'ir mean-ing and their effectiveness; it stultifies ~nventlveness and I often just creates matter for humorous stones. Young religious, no less than young lay people, must be edu-cated in the reality of sin in their lives, in the part they must play in salvation history; and only in this way, I ¯ through the direction of a wise spiritual father, ,will they discover the path of mortification which is suitable to them. result Uniformity of ascetical practices is often the~ of pragmatic spirituality. If everybody performs an act of mortification at a certain time in a predetermaned way, there is an implied assurance that all are r~ortifying themselves. This is hardly the case. St. Ignatius, la mystic who was keenly aware of the value of acts of Oortifica-anchoritism reveals how httle it is a way of escaping from charity. On the contrary, ~t ~s simply the means of effectively ga~m.ng integral charity" (p. 315). ÷ ÷ Mortification VOLUME 24, 1965 379 ÷ William ]. Rewak~ sd. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 380 tion, refused to set down any rules governing their performance: ¯. it does not seem good that in those things which regard ~Pgnsr,a ywear,t cmheindigtast iaonnd a ondth setru dayu,s oter rciotirepso,r aaln eyx reurclies essh souuclhd abse f alasti-d down for them except that which a discreet charity will dictate to each: provided, nevertheless, that their confessor is always consulted . ~ It is for this reason some countries and dioceses have cur-tailed or abolished the fasting rules. This action does not indicate the depreciation of the value of penance; it has been made obvious that the Christian obligation of penance now devolves upon the individual who, guided by the Holy Spirit and insured against error by the advice of his confessor, will perform more spontaneously and therefore more effectively the penitential practices suitable for him.27 It is not necessary that mortification be identified with corporal austerities, though these will ordinarily be useful to some extent. The best way 0f seeking mortifica-tion is in the sphere of human relations. There is much need here for broadening the scope of our penitential practices: seeking the solutions to others' problems, standing up for others' rights in the face of ridicule, intelligent obedience to legitimate authority--being a Christian individual, in other words, in a world where conformity is a despotic fashion. Father David Stanley says this was the real mistake of the Judaizers: they could not be Christian individuals in a society which con-sidered the cross of Christ a folly and a stumbling-block.~ s "As many as wish to please in the flesh compel you to be circumcised simply that they may not suffer persecution for the cross of Christ" (Gal 6:12). The state of mortification is a state of love; for love is the source of the dialogue that takes place between ~".non videtur in iis quae ad orationem, meditationem et studium pertinent, ut nec in corporali exercitatione ieiuniorum, vigiliarum aut aliarum return ad austeritatem vel corporis casti-gationem spectantium, ulla regula eis praescribenda, nisi quam discreta caritas unicuique dictaverit; dum tamen semper Confessarius consulatur . " Constitutions o! the Society of Jesus, P. VI, c. 3, n. 1 08~). ~ See Paul J. Bernadicou, $.J., "Penance and Freedom," R~vmw FOR Ra~LIOIOUS, v. 23 (1964), pp. 418-9, Father Bernadicou writes with conviction and persuasiveness of the need for expert spiritual guid-ance in the sphere of mortification. Karl Rahner applies this same principle of each one's unique entrance into and expression of the mystery of Christ to the problem of the relation between the indi-vidual and the Church, and here also insists upon the application of the discernment of spirits. See "The Individual and the Church," Nature and Grace, trans. Dinah Wharton (London: Sheed and Ward, 1963). ~ David Stanley, s.J., Christ's Resurrection in Pauline Soteriology (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1961)0 p. 78. man and God and results in man's response of faith, prayer, and acts of mortification. Love is forgetfulness of self because of the neighbor who is loved with the charity of Christ, and what else but this is an act of true penance? Kenunciation, then, cannot but be an exer-cise in joy, for where there is love, there is joy. Our self-chosen acts of mortification, performed at times in great spiritual unrest, are tokens of confidence: Man implicitly recognizes that he does not know where his true happiness lies and that it is hidden from him, but God knows it ~or him. He perceives it through the signs which reveal it to him: the escape from Egypt, the land of slavery, the crossing of the desert under God's guidance, the hope which dwelt in the heart of the wandering host making its way to the Promised Land. The desert is the apprenticeship of an austere joy which is like the dawn on the horizon of conscience.~ We do share in Christ's resurrection, having shared in his death; and consolation will ever be the keynote of authentic Christian experience. But the fullness of joy is not yet ours for we live in the eschatological age, an age of tension between time and eternity, hope and fulfillment. Acts of mortification take on, in this con-text, the character of witness. Asceticism is the eschato-logical attitude of the Church, an attitude that is most acute in religiou

Issue 21.1 of the Review for Religious, 1962. ; Volume 1962 21 EDITORIAL OFFICE St. Mary's College St. Marys, Kansas BUSINESS OFFICE 428 E. Preston St. Baltimore 2, Maryland ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITORS John E. Becker, S.J. Emile G. McAnany, S.J. DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS Questions and Answers Joseph F. Gallen, Woodstock College Woodstock, Maryland Book Reviews Earl A. Weis, S.J. West Baden College West Baden Springs, Indiana Published in January, March, May, July, September, Novem-ber on the fifteenth of the month. REVIEW FOR RELI-GIOUS is indexed in the CATHOLIC PERIODICAL IN-DEX. CONGREGATION OF RELIGIOUS Extern Sisters of Monasteries of Nuns AN INSTRUCTION TOGETHER WITH STATUTES CONCERNING THE SISTERS ENGAGED IN THE EXTERNAL SERVICE OF MONASTERIES OF NUNS. TheI characteristic condition of nuns living within cloister is such that in order to safeguard their life of recol-lection, it is necessary that there be certain persons to take care of the business and affairs of the monastery outside the cloister. Accordingly, therehas never been a time when there was a lack of pious women who generally lived out-side the cloister and who were not obligated by any bonds which properly speaking could be called the bonds of re-ligious life. Such women were given the title of oblates, mandates, portresses, or some other such name. In the course of time, however, these pious women ex-pressed a desire for a more intimate participation in the life of the cloistered nuns; and in various places they were permitted to remain obligated to the external service of a monastery after making a special resolution, .promise, oath, or vow. Moregver, there were rules, constitutions, and statutes which were approved by the Holy See and which consecrated this proposal of,leading their life in a religious way. In modern times the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, Conditio plurium monasteriorum, of July 16, 1931, effected and regulated this state as a stable one of sisters with simple religious vows. These sisters (see Statuta a sororibus externis monasteriorum monialium cuiusque Ordinis servanda [Statutes [or the Extern Sisters.of Monas-teries of Nuns o[ Every Oi'der], n. 4) were declared to be "members of the community they serve and participants in the same spiritual goods as the nuns." In order, how-ever, that the juridical incorporation of the sisters into the community should not endanger the contemplative life of ¯ The original text of this document appeared in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, v. 53 (1961), pp. 371-80. Extern Sisters VOLUME 21~ 1962 1 4" ÷ Congregation oy Religious REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS the nuns, a general norm was laid down according to which the sisters were to live in. a part of the monastery outside of papal cloister. The experience, however, of the last thirty years has clearly shown that a number of things in the Statutes of 1931 need to be modified by adapting them to more recent pontifical documents concerning the life of nuns, by omit-ting certain prescriptions of common law already included in the constitutions of nuns, and by accommodating them more closely to the tules and constitutions of the second Order to which the sisters belong. Accordingly, the Sacred Congregation of Religious has decided to make a new, shorter, but complete edition of the previously mentioned Statutes. The following points, however, are to be noted. 1. Monasteries of nuns which do.not have sisters for ex-ternal. service and do not need them since the external ser-vice of the monastery is taken care of by secular persons of known worth who have been chosen with the consent of the lbcal ordinary and who live outside of cloister are not obliged to inaugurate this class of sisters. 2. Where the rules or constitutions of a given order ex-pressly prescribe and regulate the external service 6f sisters for a monastery of nuns, the canonical dispositions by which this service is governed retain their full force, pro-vided they are not contrary to the sacred canons nor to the apostolic konstitution, Sponsa Christi. 3.If for the sake of better preserving the spirit of their own foundation and vocation the nuns of an Order wish to insert into their own constitutions special dispositions for the external service of the monastery, they are free to draw up such dispositions, which, however, are to be sub-mitted for the approbation of the Sacred Congregation of Religious. Afer a similar approbation by the same congregation, such prescriptions may also be inserted into the statutes of those federations erected by the Holy See which preserve within the same Order a somewhat diversified practice of regular observance. HOwever, the prescriptions to be added either to the constitutions or to the statutes of the federation according to the nature of the Order are to be conformed to the following gen.eral statutes. Chapter 1: On the Duties and Place of Residence o[ Sisters Devoted to External Service ARTICLE I § I. With the consent of the chapter and with the ap-proval of the local ordinary as well as that of the regular superior if they are subject to one, monasteries of nuns may make provisions for sisters destined for external ser-vice whose principal duty will be to serve the monastery in those external matters which can not be cared for by the cloistered members. § 2. Moderate works of the apostolate connected with the monastery but performed outside papal cloister may be considered as part of the external service, to.which~ the sisters are destined. ~ "'~ ~ , :~'~, ARTICLE 2 The extern sisters are members of the community of their monastery, and in the orderof precedence come after the choir nuns and the lay sisters (conversaq);. they profess the same rule and constitutions as their fellow religious the nuns, but by reason of their proper office they are sub-ject to the present statutes which repeal some prescriptions of the rule and the constitutions. § 1. Without prejudice to article 4, the extern sisters have a residence which is annexed to the monastery and which is subject to common cloister (see canon 604 and the instruction Inter cetera, n. 73), though not within the limits of the papal cloister of the nuns (see the instruction, Inter cetera, n. 11 b; 44 b). Accordingly, they may not enter the part of the monastery reserved for the nuns except in accordance with the provisions made in these statutes. § 2. Without prejudice to the stricter law of individual monasteries, the superior with the consent of her council and with the approbation of the local ordinary and of the regular superior if there be one, has the right to permit the extern sisters to meet at times with the nuns inside the cloister of the monastery for sake of piety or instruction as well as for eating and recreating together, care' being taken that nothing detrimental follows from this. At these times, the sisters, even though they should be questioned impru-dently, should refrain from referring to things they have sebn or heard outside the monastery; they should especially keep silent about matters which do not set a good.'bxample or which can disturb peace ~nd application 6f mind. The superior with her councilors should watch over these mat-ters; and if the entrance of the sisters into the monastery furnishes the occasion for abuses, suitable remedies should be used. § 3. In accordance with the, judgment of the superior and her council together with a previous and at least a general approbation of the local ordinary and of the regu-lar superior if there be one, the sisters living outside the cloister may at times be used for the internal dut'ies of the monastery, care being .taken that they do not habitually associate with the nuns. § 4. What is said in this article about the entrance of the ÷ 4- + Exterrt Sisters VOLUME 21, 1962 ÷ ÷ ÷ Congregation o~ Religious REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 4 sisters into cloister holds as well for postulants and for novices of the second year of novitiate. ARTICLE § 1. Attention being given to the spirit and nature of each order as well as to the number of nuns living in a monastery, monasteries, after a previous vote of the chap. ter and, in the case of monasteries belonging to a federa-tion, after hearing the council Of the federation, may with the approbation of the Holy See permit the extern sisters to be habitually within the limits of the cloister of the monastery, even though they are not bound by the law of papal cloister. In this case precautions should be taken that such association of the sisters with the nuns bound by the law of cloister does not harm the spirit of recollection; besides other precautions, a kind of separation should be instituted within the cloister similar to that prescribed for the novitiate (canon 564, § 1), and the sisters should be forbidden to relate to the nuns the things that happen outside of cloister. § 2. Since they are not bound by the law of papal clois-ter, sisters who habitually live within the cloister, may, ac-cording to the jud .gment of the superior, leave the cloister for the external service or work of the monastery or for another just and reasonable cause. Without violation of the discipline and the purpose of the postulancy and the novitiate (canon 565), the same provision holds also for novices even 'of the first year of the novitiate and for the postulants, if the postulancy, accord-ing to the norm of article 9, § 2, is made within the clois-ter. ARTICLE The residence and other places outside the limits of cloister destined for the extern si~ters are subject to the vigilance and visitation not only of the local ordinary and of the regular superior if there be one, but also, due pre-scriptions being observed, of the superior of the monastery and of the moderator of the federation in the case of fed-erated monasteries (see the instruction, Inter cetera, n. 24, 5°). ARTICLE § 1. In order that works of the apostolate be exercised in monasteries in a stable way according to the norm of article 1, § 2, besides the previous approval of the local or-dinary and of the regular superior if there be one, the ap-probation of the Holy See is required. § 2. In exercising the works of the apostolate, the sisters should follow the norms set down by the local ordinary. ARTICLE 7 § 1. The habit of the sisters should be the same as that of the nuns, suitably accommodated, however, by the chap-ter to the purpose of external service according to the circumstances of time and place. : . ~ § 2. With regard to'th~ ~eii~s :habit in of one and the same ~ederation, the sisters, as far as pos-sible, should be dressed in the same way. Chapter 2: On the Training o[ Extern Sisters Aa'rIcL~ 8 In admitting and forming extern sisters, the same con-ditions should be observed as those prescribed in the con-stitution~ for the nuns of the monastery, account being ~aken, however, o~ the former's special role. The superior with her council should see to it that only those asp.irants are accepted who are mature in judgment and conspicuous for more than ordinary piety, in order that in their deal-ings with seculars, especially outside the monastery, they may give an outstanding example. Ax~cL~ 9 § 1. The postulancy should last one year; the superior, however, having heard her council, may reduce this time to six months or prolong it for another six months beyond the year, according as seems necessary for the fitting prepa-ration. of a postulant for the novitiate. § 2. The postulancy should be made in the residence of the sisters in order that the postulants may be exercised and tested in their proper duties. Nevertheless, in accordance with the judgment of the superior and her council and with the approval of the local ordinary and of the regular superior if there be one, the postulancy can be made within the monastery; that is, within the cloister of the nuns, without prejudice, how-ever, to the statutes of the federation if it is the case, of a federated monastery nor to article 4, § 2. ARTICLE 10 § 1~ The novitiate is to last for two years. The first of these years is strictly canonical; and although these novices are not bound by the law of papal cloister, it is to be made together with the novices within the cloister of each mon-astery or, if it is a case of a federation, of another monas-tery of the federation. This year, in order to be valid, mus, t be whole and continuous according to tile norms of law. § 2. In order that the novices be exercised in their proper works, the second year of the novitiate should be made in the proper residence of the sisters under the vigi, lance of a specially designated sister who is to givea report E~tern Sisters VOLUME ~'1, 1962 5 lllll! I ÷ .t- ongregation ot l~liglous REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 6 to the mistress of novices. Two months before profession, the novices should refrain completely from external ser-vice and remain within the novitiate of the monastery in order that there under the direction of the mistress of novices they may be able to prepare themselves more tran-quilly for profession. § 3. In accordance with the judgment of the superior and her council and with the approval of the local or-dinary and of the regular superior if there be one, this second year also can be made within the monastery with-out, however, the novices being bound by papal cloister. § 4. In training the novices in religious life, while in-structions and conferences are to be given in the same way as is prescribed in the constitutions for the novitiate of nuns, special care should be taken to give them instruc-tions in the external matters and affairs for which they are destined. A~T~CLE 11 The novitiate made by extern sisters is not valid for choir nuns or for lay sisters (conversis); nor is the novitiate made for choir nuns or for lay sisters valid for extern sis-ters. ARTICLE 12 § 1. On the completion of the novitiate, the novice should make a profession of simple temporary vows for six years; these should be renewed yearly, at least during the first three-year period. At the end of the six years, they should make a profession of simple, but perpetual vows or return to the world. § 2. In making the profession the rite of each monastery should be retained with necessary changes, however, being made. The first religious profession following the novitiate is to be made by 'the sisters within the cloister of the mon-astery; the renovations of vows, as well as the perpetual profession, should be made outside of cloister at the choir grille of the nuns. However, in accordance with the judg-ment of the superior and her council and with the ap-proval of the local ordinary and of the regular supe~-ior it there be one, these may be made within the cloister. § 8. The formula of' profession should be the same as that of the nuns with the necessary additions and changes; for each profession of the sisters should be made in the quality of an extern sister according to the rule and con-stitutions of the monastery as well as according to the proper statutes for extern sisters approved by the Apostolic See. § 1. Without prejudice to the prescriptions of the con-stitutions concerning the cession of administration and the disposition of the use and usufruct of property, according to the norm of the common law (canon 569, §'1 and canon 580, § 1) every professed of simple vows, whether perpetual or temporary, unless something else is provided for in the constitutions, retains the ownership of her prop-erty and the capacity of.~acqu~rlng.~other 'property:- Lest, however, the extern sisters be solicitous about their prop-erty, even before their profession of temporary vows they should freely make a civilly valid will with regard to pres-ent property as well as to whatever may come to them in the future. They may not change this without the permis-siqn of the Holy See or, if the matter is urgent and there is no time for recourse to the Holy See, without the permis-sion of the superior of the monastery i~ which the sister is a, ctually living. § 2. Without prejudice to any ivtdult granted by the Holy See, the sisters can not renounce their property or abdicate it gratuitously. § 3. The cession or disposition which is treated in canon 569 can be changed by a professed sister not indeed by her own personal decision unless the constitutions allow this, but with the permission of her superior as well as of the local ordinary and of the regular superior if there be one, pro.vided a change which involves a notable part of her property is not made in favor of the monastery. In case of departure from the monastery this cession and disposition lose their force. § 4. Whatever the sister acquires by her own industry or by reason of the monastery, she acquires for the monas-tery. Chapter 3: On the Discipline of the Extern Sisters ARTICLE 14 § 1. The sisters, no less than the nuns, are subject to the superior of the monastery in all things, both with regard to religious discipline and to the service to be done by them. It is the duty of~ the superior to prescribe the habitual order of their exercises for the sisters and to provide in a maternal way whatever is necessary for them to lead their common and individual lives. § 2. The superior can delegate one 6f the extern sisters or a nun mature in prudence and age and professed of perpetual vows to watch that everything pertaining to discipline or service is carried out in an orderly way ac-cording to the commands of the superior. This sister should prudently make what reports are necessary to the superior or to some other nun designated for this and should receive instructions from her. ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Congregation Religious REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 8 ARTICLE 15, § I. The superior should see to it that the extern sisters perform the exercises of piety which are. contained in the rule and constitutions except those which are proper to the choir nuns: § 2. With regard to Holy Communion and to confession, the prescriptions contained in the constitutions for the nuns should be observed. § 3. With regard to occasional confessions, the sisters enjoy the faculties .which are granted to religious women not bound by papal cloister; namely, if a sister for peace of conscience goes to a confessor approved for women by the local ordinary, the confession is valid and licit, when made in a church or an oratory even a semi-public one or in any other place legitimately destined for the confessions of women or of religious women or legitimately designated as such for a particular confession (see canon 522). § 4. With the consent of the superior and the approval of the local ordinary'and of the regular superior if there be one, the spiritual exercises mentioned ih § 1 may be made by the extern sisters inside the cloister of the nuns. ARTICLE 16 As far as possible, the duties of piety treated in the pre-ceding article should be made by the sisters in common. The sisters should also eat and recreate in common. ARTICLE 17 With regard to the laws of abstinence and fast proper to each Order by reason of the rule and the constitutions, the superior should treat the extern sisters mategnally, dispens-ing in these matters insofar as there is real need. It is de-sirable that in each Order or at least in each federation there be set up the same norm for the observance by the sisters of such proper laws. ARTICLE 18 § 1. The sisters should remain at home, diligently en-gaging in prayer and work; and they should not go outside except to care for the business of the monastery or for some other reasonable cause and with the express per-mission of the superior; nor should they leave the house singly without a just cause and the permission of the su-perior. When they go.out, they should be mindful of their state in their conduct and speech with seculars; and by manifesting modesty, piety, meekness, urbanity, and the greatest reverence, they should be a source of edification to all. § 2. The superior may not permit the sisters to live out-side the house except for a just cause and for as short a time as possible; for an absence which exceeds a month there is required the permission of the local ordinary and of the regular superior if there be one; for an absence, moreover, which lasts beyond six months, the permission of the Apostolic See is necessary. ARTICLE 19 § 1. A sick sister who, in the judgment of the physician or the superior, can not be conveniently cared for in the external residence, may be brought into cloister; and her cloistered fellow religious should take care of her with the greatest charity, offering their help kindly and solicitously. § 2. In the same way, aged sisters who ha~;e become in-capable of external service and who lack suitable assistance in the external residence may, with the permission of the superior to be granted with the consent of the council and with the approval of the local ordinary and of the regular superior if there be one, be admitted into the monastery. § 3. The superior, however, should be vigilant lest on this occasion the discipline of the nuns, especially the spirit of recollection which should always flourish within the cloister, should suffer harm. The matter having been taken up with His Holiness John XXIII in an audience granted to His Eminence the cardinal prefect on March 1, 1961, the Sacred Congrega-tion of Religious in accordance with the commission given it by the apostolic constitution, Sponsa Christi, of Novem-ber 21, 1950 (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, v. 43. [1951], p. 5) and by reason of the powers conferred on it, prescribes and commands that the present norms and statutes concerning the extern sisters of monasteries be put into observa-tion. All contrary matters notwithstanding. Given at Rome, March 25, 1961. VALERIUS Cardinal VALERI, Prefect L.~S. Paul Philippe, O.P., Secretary + 4- + Extern Si~ter$ VOLUME 21, 1962 9 MSGR. AGOSTINO CASAROLI Papal Plan for Latin America Msgr. Casaroli rep-resented the Ponti-ficihl Commission for Latin America at the Second Na-tional Congress of Religious. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 10 It is indeed an honor and a privilege for me to bring you distinguished members of this great assembly1, the cordial greetings, the thanks, and the good wishes of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. When the Holy See was informed that the Congress of the Major Religious Superiors of the United States was to consider the problems confronting the Church in Latin America as part of its program of studies and delibera-tions, Archbishop Samore, Vice-President of the Pontifical Commission and Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, was designated to rep-resent the Commission at this gathering and to speak to you of the struggles, of the desires, and of the hopes of the Church in those countries. Undoubtedly Archbishop Samore was the person most qualified to accomplish this mandate, not only because of the prestige of his office in the Church, but particularly be-cause of the deep knowledge he has of questions concei:n-ing all the facets and perspectives of the situation in Latin America where he spent three years as Apostolic Nuncio to Colombia. Moreover, Archbishop Samore also knows the great generosity and the resources of the Church in the United States where he spent some years at the Apostolic Delegation in Washington. But above all, his passionate and unstinting dedication to the cause of the Church in Latin America, which for many years has been one of the main concerns of his life, would have made him, perhaps, the best informed and most authoritative speaker at this convention on that subject. Unfortunately, recent sorrowful events have prevented him from being present here for a task that he considered as a mission to be accomplished for the Church itself. Since I am not in a position to speak with his eloquence 1 This is the text of a speech delivered by Msgr. Casaroli at the Second National Congress of Religious on August 17, 1961. and his personal authority, I shall limit myself to submit-ting briefly for your consideration some objective facts and remarks. Their compelling eloque.nce together with the heartrending appeals of the Popes in favor of Latin Amer-ica will, I am confident, lead you to adopt positive resolu-tions such as the Holy See eagerly expects, from~this as-sembly and from the magnificent group of thousands of men and women religious you represent. The appeal of the Holy See in favor of Latin America is fundamentally based on two considerations to which no true son of the Church, much less religious men and women, can remain indifferent. First, that duty of charity by which the family, the Body, which constitutes the Catholic Church, feels as its own the problems and needs Of each of its parts; all the more so when such needs and problems are more serious and the part of the Church affected hy them is more important. Second, the interest--in the highest and noblest sense of the word---of the entire Catholic Church, since weakness of or dangers to Christian life in such an important sector of the Church, as undoubtedly Latin America is, repre-sents for it a serious menace, while progress there repre-sents a bright promise. Here are a few facts to support these two propositions: 1. The importance of Latin America to the Church; first of all, its numerical importance, since, with about one hundred and eighty million inhabitants, the over-whelming majority of them Catholic, Latin America rep-resents about a third of world Catholicism in numbers. Moreover, the demographic increase of Latin Americam noted, not always without alarm, by sociologists, econo-mists, and political experts--together with the fact that children are traditionally baptized in the Church of their parents even if the latter are not practical churchgoers, would seem to indicate that such increase will augment proportionally in the future. Secondly, an importance arising from the fact that the twenty nations of Latin America, frequently acting en bloc, exercise in international assemblies--which often treat of principles and questions of vital interest to the Churchma very considerable influence. A third motive of importance is the richness of Latin- American Catholicism--although still rather potential than actual--both in quantity and quality, with the con-sequences deriving therefrom for the future development of Catholicism and its spread throughout the world. 2. This sector of Catholicismwimposing as it is both in numbers and unity, in sincerity and solidity of senti-ment, so heroic in times of persecution, so strongly resist-ing internal insufficiencies and dangers from without~ yet surfer's from perilous elemental weaknesses of structure. ÷ ÷ ÷ Latin America VOLUME 21, 1962 ]! ÷ ÷ ÷ Msgr. Casaroli REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]~ Characteristically, these weaknesses are manifested and in a way summarized by the well-known lack of clergy, and indeed of all apostolic workers, in Latin America; a lack which is at the same time the cause and the result of the dangerous situation there, aggravated by the greater menace of the enemies of Catholicism in those countries. Such enemies and such menaces are particularly--as Pope Pius XII declared to the Second World Congress of the Apostolate of the Laity.in October, 1957--"the inroads of Protestant sects; the secularization of .the whole way of life; Marxism, the influence of which is felt in the uni-versities and is very active, even dominant, in almost all labor organizations; and finally a disquieting practice of spiritism." This list, we might add, is only indicative. 3. Faced with this situation, and foreseeing its future developments, some people, pessimists who lack confi-dence in Divine Providence and the Church's supernat-ural resources and who very often are not objective in observing and judging things as they are in reality, even wonder whether in a few decades Latin America will still be a Catholic continent or if it will not rather be com-pletely lost to the Church. The Holy See does not at all share such pessimistic views. On the other hand, the Holy See does not ignore the danger there might be, if oppor-tune measures are not taken or if they are not taken suffi-ciently urgently. The mere possibility that even part of a continent hold-ing such an important place in the Church could be lost to her is more than enough motive to excite in her chil-dren, and particularly in you religious that feeling of dutiful charity and interest mentioned above. 4. In contrast with these deprecable and deprecated possibilities, there shine forth the luminous prospects em-phasized with such eloquence and paternal satisfaction by the Sovereign Pontiffs when speaking of Latin America; but always on condition that the necessary efforts and sac-rifices be made now, with wise generosity and without delay. His Holiness Pope John XXIII, speaking on March 25, 1960, to the Fathers and Mothers General of Institutes of Perfection, asserted: The future of the Church in the vast territories of Latin America appears rich in ineffable promise; and We nourish the firm conviction that Catholic spirit and life :in those regions have in themselves sufficient strength to encourage the most optimistic hopes for the future. Those treasures Of spiritual wealth so profusely bestowed there in the past, and yet more those which will be given with full hands in the future, will .surely give rise to rich fruits of holiness and grace, to the greater joy of the Chui'ch of God. Earlier still, Pope'Pius XII had affirmed with prophetic confidence: renWdeer earde b caocnkf iad ethnot uthsaatn tdhfeo lbdeln Tefhietsr en owwil lr eccoemivee dth we idlla yla wterh ebne Latin America will be able to give back to the entire Church Christ all that it has received; when, as We hope, it shall have put to use those ample and powerful energies which seem only to await the hands of the pr rhieis t, that they may at once be employed for the honor and wo.s P.~o;~f Gx.ozd:., 'a~n;d~,l ;t~h et '~ spread; of Christ's ,~t~r :~l~'b6iesiarn Kingdom on earth (P~us Ch'risti, 1955). ¯ Hence, the conclusions to be drawn ~rom these con-siderations, which could anal sh6uld be developed at greater length, are the ~ollowing: First, the Church~that ~is, all o~ us who, with the Pope, the Bishops and our brothers in the Faith, constitute the Church~has the duty o~ collaboration so that not even a small part o~ that precious heritage o~ the Catholic religion which is Latin America should be lost; second, that the Church has the sacred duty o~ aiding those apostolic ~orces, mostly still latent in Latin-American Catholicism, to activate them-selves, so that their strong support may be.relied upon to engage with high hopes o~ success in the great adventure o~ the conquest o[ the world to the.truth o~ the [aith and to the beauties o[Ghristian living. What is the Church doing, what is the Holy See doing, in regard to the religious problem o~ Latin America? It ¯ would take too long to answer exhaustively or even sum-marily; a ~ew indications are all we can give. First o[ all, it must be said that Latin-American Cathol-icism~ bishops, clergy, religious and ~aith[ul~is reso-lutely working tc~ break the -vicious circle in which it seems to be imprisoned. Good results have been and are being obtained, admirable, praiseworthy, ~ull o~ promise ~or the ~uture. We must also, with all [raternal charity, but also with necessary objectivity, add that the disproportion between the available means, especially o~ personnel, and the ever-growing gravity o[ the tasks to accomplish and the perils to avert is so great, that humanly speaking it would seem impossible, or at least extremely difficult, ~or Latin-Amer-ican Catholicism to be able, unaided, to overcome this critical situation in time. The work o~ the Holy See then, especially in most re-cent times, has been exercised in a two~old effort: (a) that o~ encouraging, aiding and promoting the initiative o~ the Latin-American hierarchy, clergy, religious institutes, and laity; and (b) that o~ encouraging, requesting and discovering collaboration therein ~rom other ~parts o~ the great Catholic ~amily. Regarding the first point, and apart ~rom what concerns the single dioceses or nations, I shall only recall the con-vocation o~ a General Conference o~ the Latin-American Episcopate in Rio de Janeiro in the year 1955 in order to VOLUME ÷ ÷ Msgr. Casaroli REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 14 study the problem together and lay the bases for a vigor- .ous collective effort; then the constitution in 1956 of a permanent office for contact and collaboration between the hierarchies of the various Latin-American countries, called the Latin-American Episcopal Council (CELAM), with its General Secretariat located in Bogat~; and con-sequently the establishment of the Latin-American Reli-gious Conference (CL-AR) in 1958. Passing to the second point, and omitting for brevity's sake anyreference to the collaboration furnished by Spain, Belgium, and other European countries, I shall recall only the meeting held in Washington, D. C., in November, 1959, between representatives of the hierarchies of the United States of America and Canada, and of Latin America, which prepared the foundations of a more in-tense and more closely organized apostolic cooperation of the two great North American nations in favor of those nations situated south of the Rio Grande. As a matter of fact, the Holy See has very great con-fidence, as regards a concerted "Catholic Action" in f.avor of Latin America, in the resources and the generosity of the Catholics of the United States and of Canada, that is to say, concretely, of the bishops, priests, and men and women religious. It is clear that, first of all and above all, this refers to resources of personnel, o~ men and women. In fact, this is the whole purpose of the presence among you of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America in my humble person; namely, to tell you how greatly the Holy See and the Pontifical Commission count upon the understanding and generosity of your religious institutes to aid Latin America; to urge you to respond heartily to its pressing appeal for this work, which the Holy See con-siders essential for the general interests of the Church; and, if necessary, to work together with you to prepare a plan of assistance according to the desires expressed by the Holy See. Of course, the Holy See is quite well aware of all that American religious communities--with their approxi-mately 2,700 members who are now in Latin America-- are already doing in this sense. Their spirit of helpfulness and collaboration has been admirably proven, and the Holy See is sincerely and deeply grateful. But the need is felt to request yet more from your generosity, just as more is being asked also from the generosity of other parts o[ the Church in favor of Latin America. Among the papers which Archbishop Samore had pre-pared for this meeting, I have found a reference to some possible objections, and I quote his own words in this re-gard: It may be objected:First, that just as numerous needs require your presence here in your own country: And I reply:This is true. You do great good here, and yet, in spite of your great numbers, there are not enough of you to meet the evergrowing exigencies of the modern apostolate. But it is also true that in comparison you are much more numerous in proportion to total Catholic population than your confreres in :Latin America. In the United States, for a total Catholic population of about 41,000,000 souls, you had in 1960 more than 21,000 i-eligious priests, 10,000 religious brothers ~rid 170,000 religi0iJs- 'si~ters. Certainly, for the more or less one hundred and eighty mil-lions of Catholics of Latin-America--a total more than four times greater than yours---we are very far from your total num-ber of more than 200,000 members of religious communities and institutes of perfection. You can see how great is the dispropor-tion. You, then, are rich, rich in personnel. And it is from you that personnel is Sought, in the confidence that the Lord will reward you for the generosity with which you give, by sending you ever more numerous vocations.Indeed, I know of particular cases in which, after the acceptance by a particular congregation, for a supernatural motive and at the cost of no little sacrifice, of new fields of apostolic endeavor, their vocations were actually muhi-plied in a geometrical progression. Thus once more the word of the Gospel was verified:Give and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and flowing over . Second, it may be objected that you are already answering the appeal made in favor of other continents. This too is true. And here too you deserve the highest admiration for what you are doing. But it remains true that we ask from him who has. Be sure I shall never say:Go to Latin America rather than to other countries; I should be guilty of a serious fault and would feel remorse for it. But I do venture to say:Go, even more than you do now, in even greater numbers, to Latin America, without diminishing your efforts and your contribution in favor of other parts of the earth. These are the words of Archbishop Samore; and I be-lieve they remain valid and convincing. And thus we may pass on to the third and last point to consider; namely, what aid does the Holy See expect for Latin America from the religious communities of men and women of the United States, over and above that assistance already being given. I spoke earlier of a "plan"--a popular word nowadays, but truly appropriate in our case. That which the Ghurch feels it necessary to do for Latin America cannot be done through isolated and uncoordinated efforts, no matter how numerous or immediately efficacious they might be. The field is so vast, the urgency so great, and the danger of being circumvented, by enemy forces so real, that all such efforts must be added together, properly channeled, opportunely coordinated, and organically promoted. We could even speak of a real apostolic strategy, to assemble every possible° means, (which resuh always in less than those needed), so that none is lost, none underutilized; to determine the fundamental points of attack and defense; and to concentrate there a common effort so that, by God's grace, action may be prompt, timely, and effective. ÷ ÷ ÷ Latin America VOLUME 21, 1962 15 Msgr. Ca~aroli REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 16 We all recall that His Holiness Pope John XXIII, in, his discourse' to thos.e.attending the third meeting of the' CELAM in Rome, spoke of the opportuneness of setting up a double program for Latin America: a long-term program to solve the basic problems; and an immediate short-term one. Th~ basic solution would be that Latin America succeed in being self-sufficient for its own needs and, we may add, capable also of givi~ng a full and valu-able contribution towards the progress of the universal Church. The collaboration of outside forces should also be aimed towards this end; although immediate needs and exigencies must not be forgotten or neglected, nor yet be given precedence over the long-term basic solution. On its side, the Holy See saw to the establishmeni in 1958 of a "high command" for this effort; namely, the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, which has the duty of "studying in a unified way the fundamental prob-lems of Catholic life in Latin America, and to promote the closest collaboration between the various sacred con-gregations and offices interested in their solution." In their own respective spheres and ranks, the CELAM and CLAR have analagous purposes and aims. On its part, the hierarchy of the United States of America has set up in the National Catholic Welfare Conference a Latin America Bureau (LAB), with. a dynamic and ex-perienced director in the person of Father John J: Con-sidine, M.M. In order the better to coordinate the collaboration re-quested of your communities, it might appear opportune to instruct the Secretariats of your two Conferences to act directly or in cooperation with this Latin America Bureau as the circumstances dictate. In any case, the offices already set up~--together with the Pontifical representatives in the various countriesm can doubtless favor the study and effective realization of an opportune plan. In particular, it becomes possible to coordinate the requests of the ordinaries of each single country, so that the Pontifical Commission for Latin America can consider and evaluate their priority of im-portance and urgency, and recommend them to those or-ganizations or religious communities best ableto ~ope with them. In order that such a plan be realistic, it is of course necessary to know and study, not only the requests pre-sented, but also the means available to meet them. For this reason, the Pontifical Commission would be most greafful to this assembly if, on its part, it were to prepare at least the fundamental lines of a plan of its own. Such a plan should manifest approximately what means and personnel they will place at the disposal of the Holy See and the Pontifical Commission from the men and women religious of the United States of America. Archbishop Samore, in the name of'the Pontifical Com-mission, intended to propose to you a great Ten-Year Plan o[ aid to Latin America, by means of personnel and of foundations, thus corresp6iading to the.needs and requests already received and listed by the Latin America Bureau, and to those which will arrive later. The archbishop's personal knowledge of the generosity of American religous communities, confirmed by their actual contribution in so many diverse fields, encouraged him to make this pro-posal, which I now submit to you in the name of the Pontifical Commission: A Ten-Year Plan: for the decade of the 1960's whiEh may be decisive for the destiny of Latin America even in religious matters, with all the consequences for the Church either for good or evil. If an extraordinarily generous and wise effort is made within those ten years, we have every reason to expect that, with God's help, the battle will be won. A Great Plan: great on the part of the Holy See, of Latin America, and of the Church in general. Great, so the Holy See-hopes, in the contribution of the North American nations, so closely linked to those of Latin America. And great also on your part. This, then, is an appeal to the magnanimity of your communities, and presupposes generosity, self-sacrifice, lofty ideas and great love, love for the Church of Christ, love for God. The concrete content and scope of such a plan is some-thing you must be so kind as to study together among yourselves. Certainly, immense progress would already be made if every community represented here were formally to un-dertake to make, especially during the next ten years, a truly generous contribution of personnel and foundations in favor of the Church in Latin America. Naturally this should be a contribution within the limits of each com-munity's abilities, but also to the extent of your possibil-ities, measured in a great spirit of generosity, sacrifice, and love for the Church, and also measured against the re-quests presented in a plan organized and coordinated by the competent offices. A plan such as this would comprise several divisions, just a few of which we may briefly review: a) direct pastoral ministry, either in parishes, or in groups of parishes such as a deanery, or occasionally in entire ecclesiastical jurisdictions such as Prelatures Nul-lius, Vicariates, and Prefectures Apostolic; b) seminaries; c) educational activities, particularly the foundation of Latin America 17 4. 4. 4. Msgr. Casaroli REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 18 American schools, which are so necessary and so strongly desired in Latin America, in a special manner in order to combat the perilous propaganda spread by such schools directed by Protestant sects; d) catechetical activities; e) charitable activities, health programs, social service. This list is merely partial and indicative; but I feel that each of the communities repre~en.ted here today can al-ready see the part it could play therein, either to begin its apostolate in Latin America or to enlarge and intensify those works that several have already undertaken there. Is it worth while making more precise engagements? Is it opportune for each community to determine now a cer-tain percentage of its personnel which will be set aside for the service of the Church in Latin America? The judgment and the decision is left to you. However, interpreting the mind of the Pontifical Commission, I offer you an ideal toward which we reque.st every province to strive. This ideal is the following, namely, that each religious province aim to contribute to Latin America in the next ten years a tithe--ten percent--0f its present membership as of this current year. For example, if the present membership is 500, the ideal would be to con-tribute by the end of this decade fifty members for Latin America. Naturally, all will not be able to achieve this ideal. But it may be possible to reach at least ninety or eighty .per cent of it. For myself, I should like to add one further considera-tion: In no case, should personnel of what might be called inferior quality be set.aside for this work. The Church's cause in Latin America requires that your communities make the sacrifice and have the generosity to devote to it some of the best and most qualified of the vocations sent to them by the Lord. To you, and to the committee you will elect to consider and study this point of your program, let us leave the task of moving forward. The saintly and fatherly Pastor, whom God has set over His Church in our day, when speaking to the Superiors General of the Institutes of Perfection on March 25, 1960, said, "It is necessary that all those who wish to share in the Apostolic anxiety of Our heart, should make every effort and every sacrifice to meet the expectations of that great continent, Latin America." With that prayer, the Holy Father includes his gratitude and his benediction upon all those of his children who give a generous response. COLUMBAN BROWNING, C.P. Woman's Highest Fulfillment Every year hundreds of young women leave behind them family, friends, and the natural joys that might be theirs and enter the religious life. And every year hun-dreds of women go to their eternal reward after having lived their years in the service of God and their fellow man in religion. This vast army of generous women is one of the glories of Mother Church and one of the most con-vincing proofs of her divinity. Such generosity on so large a scale can find its explanation only in the grace of God that leads these women in their youth to the religious state and enables them to persevere in it until death. The world instinctively admires these many women who live their lives in so unselfish a fashion. A religious reception or profession ceremony fills the standers-by with awe and admiration, and they feel instinctively that there is something of God in what they witness. And indeed there is. A religious vocation and the response to that call is always the work of God. What many admiring idealists fail to realize is that the path the young religious enters upon is not an easy one. They admire the generosity of the young woman, but they are no( sufficiently aware of what that generosity costs her. In the practical order, these admirers fail to grasp how really human the young religious is and remains. An ele-ment of "angelism" pervades the thoughts of many out-siders about religious. This attitude is a tribute to the holi-ness of life that has produced it, but it still fails to grasp the genuine heroism of the religious. The young woman who enters religion is just as truly human and as fully a woman as are her classmates who enter the married state. Entering religion means that a young woman surrenders herself to God, making the com-plete gift of her entire self to Him. The greatest offering she makes is that of her womanhood itself, sublimating all her womanly instincts and ambitions to higher ends and 4. 4. 4- Columban Brown-ing. C.P., is the Rec-tor of St. Gabriel Monastery, 1100 63rd Street, Des Moines 11. Iowa. VOLUME 21, 1962 ]9 Columban Browning, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 20 purposes. It is precisely in this sacrifice of the natural for the supernatural that the greatest heroism is required, a heroism that cannot exist without the grace of God. And the greatest challenge that the religious faces is how to find in this sublimation the happiness and fulfilment of her deepest womanly aspirations. Because this matter is so.vital to the religious life and because understandably some religious meet with practi-cal difficulties in meeting this challenge, it requires and deserves a proper understanding of the factors involved. In this artidle we shall endeavour to discuss this problem and seek a practical solution to help religious meet the challenge. Factors of the Problem Understanding this problem requires asa starting point an appreciation of woman's nature itself. A full analysis of woman's nature could, of course, require volnmes. But let us here review only briefly the basic characteristics of woman. We can best understand woman's nature by considering it from the point of view of God's plan and purpose. And when we look for God's plan and.purpose we find the key to that plan in the fact that He has given her the body, the mind, and the heart of a mother. Pius XII high-lighted this fact when he said: Every woman is destined to be a mother; a mother in the physical sense of the word, or in a more spiritual and higher but no less real meaning. The Creator has disposed to this end the entire being of woman, her organism, and even more her spirit, and above all her exquisite sensibility. So that a woman cannot see and fully understand all the problems of human life otherwise than under the family aspect (Duties oI Woman in the Social and Political Order, Oct. 21, 1945). Woman is physically prepared for motherhood. She is also psychologically and emotionally disposed for it to the extent that motherhood is the most basic specific craving of a normal woman. Furthermore, she is altrocentric by nature, seeking her fulfillment in another whom she loves and by whom she wants to be loved. It is this that leads a woman to seek a husband and that qualifies her to bestow her undivided love on the child that is the fruit of her motherhood. Since motherhood is the basic orientation of her nature, it is not difficult to single out what is the most character-istic virtue of woman. It is the virtue that makes her motherhood possible and fruitful, the virtue of love. Her heart is filled with a mother's supply of love, and it is a love that must be given in some way. The ordinary young woman finds the object of this love in her husband and her children. In bestowing this love she finds her deepest fulfillment. Woman has by nature other characteristic virtues, of course. But without enumerating them let us merely say here that in her all the other virtues are the servants of love. In a woman who understands her nature propdrly and tries to practice intelligent!y.the vir~tue of love, all the other virtues will follow in due "bi-ddr. Withbt, t that,love at the center of things, the other virtues will also be im-possible to her. This is, in summary, the basic'pattern~of~woman's na-ture as planned by God. This nature is possessed by every normal woman and it is the thing that determines her thinking, her instincts, and her manner of acting. It is easy to see how a woman finds the normal fulfillment of her nature in an ideal marriage. The married woman finds in her husband someone to love and by whom to be loved. In her marriage there: is a complete giving of her-self and sharing of her love, including the physical shar-ing and giving that begets children. In her child, the married woman finds a further outlet for her love and a deep exhilaration of fulfillment. ~ But what about the woman who enters religion? She is and always remains as truly a woman as does her class-mate who marries. She has the same nature, physically, psychologically, and emotionally as her classmate. But she enters a state in which none of these ordinary means of fulfillment are present. She has no husband to love or who will love her, and no ohe in whom she finds a. omparable outlet on the same plane. She has no way of giving her-self in precisely the same way that the married woman has, nor will she ever enjoy the deeply satisfying experi-ence of physical motherhood. The question obviously arises: Is such a one destined inevitably to frustration and the impossibility of fulfill-ment? The answer is just as obvious. We simply cannot doubt that the religious woman, can find fulfillment of her womanly nature. The way of life that a sister lives finds its inspiration in the words and example of our Lord Himself. And the fruits of sanctity in the thousands of woman before her in the same way of life is proof enough that such a woman can find real fulfillment. Indeed, all we need as proof of this is to come' to know just one sister who has lived her religious life successfully. She radiates the best of womanhood to a degree that any other woman can only envy. Her life bears out the truth of the state-ment of Leon Bloy: "The holier a woman, the more she is a woman." Principles of Solution_ When we attempt to explain how a ~eligious can attain fulfillment, a twofold point of view presents itself. The first is the speculative point of view, or considering it + + + Woman's Fulfillment VOLUME 21, 1962 21 4. 4. otumban Browning, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 22 from abstract principles. The second a.pproach is from the practical plane. Speculatively, or in the abstract, the answer to the ques-tion is relatively simple. It may be stated this way: The religious woman sublimates all her noble womanly quali-ties and aspirations and finds fulfillment of all on a higher plane. In other words, she dedicates her womanhood in all its fullness to God. And the fulfillment that she fails to find naturally in marriage and motherhood, she finds supernaturally through a total giving of self to God. The love that makes her capable of being a good wife and mother she centers more exclusively on God. This love takes on a new dignity and richness in her dedicated state in that it is more supernatural. Her desire to be a mother finds its sublimation in that, through sacrificing physical motherhood, she achieves a spiritual motherhood toward all souls, and especially toward those whom she personally helps. Thus, on the supernatural plane, one that is richer in true and lasting goods, the religious sister finds an out-let for all her natural inclinations. And in so doing she attains a fulfillment that is really' higher and more reward-ing than is possible for the married woman. Pope Pius XII stated this very clearly in his encyclical on virginity: Finally, it may not be asserted, as some do, that the mutual help which is sought in Christian marriage is a more effective aid in striving for personal sanctity than the solitude of the heart, as they term it, of virgins and celibates. For although all those who have embraced a life of perfect chastity have de-prived themselves of the expression of human love permitted in the married state, nonetheless it cannot therefore be affirmed that because of this privation they have diminished the human personality. For they receive from the Giver of heavenly gifts something spiritual which far exceeds the mutual help which husband and wife confe~ upon each other. They consecrate themselves to Him who is their source, and who shares with them His divine life, and thus personality suffers no loss, but gains immensely. For who, more than the virgin, can apply to himself that marvellous phrase of the Apostle Paul: "I live, now not I; but Christ lives in me" (Sacra virginitas, NCWC edition, n. 39). As we stated before, this is treating the matter from the speculative, or abstract, point of view. And no one can question the validity of this statement of the question. The religious finds fulfillment on an higher plane, devot-ing her womanhood to higher things through the sacrifice of natural goods. When we turn to the discussion of the practical aspects of the same problem, we are guided, of course, by the principles just stated. But since on the practical plane we are concerned with how the individual may realize the ideal in her own life, we are immediately confronted with some difficulty. This difficulty arises from the fact that this higher fulfillment is supernatural. The area of the supernatural is an area of faith. Any supernatural living must be evaluated by principles of faith and all its rewards are supernati~ral. But'just~ as the supernatural life of grace does not destroy the soul's natural life and inclinations, so in our thinking the f~ict that we are guided by faith does not destroy our natural outlook and inclinations. In fact this natural outlook is often the more spontaneous one and needs to be super-naturalized by an act of the will. And it is precisely in the difficulty of maintaining a supernatural outlook on her life of dedication to God in its day by day unfolding that a problem can arise in the life of the individual religious. The goods that she has sacrificed are more tangible and can sometimes be more real to her just because they are natural. The supernatural goods she seeks are spiritual and intangible and can tend at times to be rather unreal to her. In the concrete, then, the conflict amounts to this: The religious is very conscious of her basic natural inclinations and knows that they are toward things that are very real to her. She has a clear idea of what a husband is and is awi~re of her innate desire to be loved by one. She knows what a baby is and feels the instinctive desire for her own baby. She is aware that she has sacrificed these natural goods in order to love and be loved by God and to become a mother of many souls spiritually. But these latter things she cannot see clearly because they are spiritual and super-natural. Sometimes they may appear very unreal to her as in times of greater darkness of soul or discouragement. The remedy in such a conflict is, of course, to use her will to apply the principles of faith to her life in its con-crete circumstances. She needs to remember that super-natural goods are of more worth. ~than natural ones, that goods are not to be evaluated only as they bear on this life, but in the light of eternity. It is in this way that the religious can preserve and deepen her basic spirit of dedi-cation to God. And in the process her faith will deepen enabling her to see the goods she seeks as all the more desirable and rewarding. The sting of sacrifice may always remain because natural inclinations always remain with us as long as we are in this world. But as faith grows, even the sacrifice can become a source of deep joy and peace. Christian tradition is full of evidence of this fact. A case in point is the love poems of St. John of the Cross. The themes of suffering and love are so intermingled in these poems as to be almost indistinguishable. The follow-ing verse is given as an example: 4- Womat~'$ Fulfillment VOLUME 21, 1962 ÷ ÷ olumban Browning~ .P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 24 0 cautery most tenderl O gash that is my guerdonl O gentle handl O touch how softly thrillingl Eternal life you render, Raise of all debts the burden And change my death to life, even while killingl (Poems of St. John of the Gross, translated by Roy Campbell, Penguin edition, p. 59) Sublimation in Practice A religious can easily understand that the principles stated above are true. She finds it easy to see that ideally the religious should find fulfillment through the sublima-tion of all that ig good in her womanly nature to higher goals. She has no difficulty either in seeing that there can be an amount of difficulty in actual practice. This comes from the fact that she is seeking goods that are seen only through faith while all around her she can see attainable goals of the human order that appeal to her. But because the transfer from theory to practice is not always easy, let us attempt to spell out a little more in detail what a reli-gious can do to help herself attain the goal for which she has sacrificed so much. As in all things else, so here, the proper attitude of mind is important. What a sister thinks about her way of life will determine in great part how successfully she lives it. And the attitude of mind that is so important here is that of faith. A faith that merely recognizes the principles stated above is not enough. A living spirit of faith has to be developed and deepened. Without this, the religious can never really attain what she is seeking. But when her faith is strong to the point of being an habitual attitude of mind, she will find in it the motives for living her life positively and happily. Regarding the need for and the role of faith in the consecrated woman, Father Perrin, O,P. says in his excellent little book, Virginity: By her physical constitution, also, and by her sensitiveness, woman is subject to variability and instability. Faith endows her with the stability of being supported by Him Who is the Savior and who changeth not. She is dependent upon Him who is peace both quieting and fulfilling. In feminine virginity the abundance and vigor of faith are more evident for more special reasons. It follows from St. Paul's words: "The head of the woman is the man" that unless she wishes to be a truncated being, a woman without a husband on earth must have Christ as her head (J. M. Perrin, O.P., Virginity [Westminister: Newman, 1955], p. 96). Guided by a spirit of faith, the sister must keep the deep conviction of the supremacy of the supernatural over the natural, of the eternal over the temporal. This means practically in her case that she is pursuing supernatural and eternal goods while the married woman is seeking what are more immediately natural and tem-poral goods. This does not mean to imply, of course, that the married woman is seeking only natural goods but merely that her immediate goals are natural and tem-poral. True, the married woman's, lqve for her husband will remain in heaven and be, a,;s0urce'o[ joy foi-,;he~ But it will be completely overshadowed by her love for God, The natural goods of marriage, which are the ones the re-ligious gives up when she enters religion, are primarily goods of this world. By contrast, the things that the re-ligious seeks are primarily eternal, Her grasp of them here on earth remains very limited but her faith will tell her that they are an anticipation of the union with God that is eternal in heaven, A religious needs a strong and persevering conviction of faith on this point or else she will begin to think too much of the things she has given up and that inevitably brings conflict. This same spirit of faith will show the religious ever more clearly the. necessity and the joy of loving Christ with all her heart. We have stated that love is woman's most characteristic virtue and that her love is something that she must give in some way. Pius XII tells us how the religious is to give her love: Certainly it is the love of Christ that ~arges a virgin to retire behind convent wails and remain there all her life in order to contemplate and love the heavenly Spouse more easily and without hindrance; certainly it is the same love that strongly inspires her to spend her life and strength in works of mercy for the sake of her neighbor (Sacra virginitas, NCWC edition, n. 39). The religious must also remember that since love always contains an element of suffering, this must necessarily be so in her life. In fact, this is all the more certain to be present in her life from the very fact that Christ is her Spouse. Regarding this Father Perrin says: Virginity, in sum, is too closely united with Christ, too near His tastes, too aware of what the service of redemption requires not to carry a profound imprint of the Cross. The union with Christ itself, undoubtedly, is enough to enable the virgin to participate in the mortification of Jesus Christ . The willing-ness of virginity for the mystical union will set the sign of the Cross on the whole life, something necessary to remember in order to understand many of the pages of hagiography at their just value (Perrin, op. cit., p. 103). ÷ Could it be that the difficulty that some meet with in ÷ their efforts at sublimation comes principally from their ÷ failure to grasp in a practical way the need for suffering Woman's in the giving of their love? These would do well to recall t~ullltlraent the many ways in which a mother suffers in the giving of her love and in the full implications of her motherhood. It may unquestionably be said that to the degree that VOLUME 21, 1962 25 + + Columban Browning, C~P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 26 the religious grows in the personal love for our Lord, to the same degree will she attain the higher fulfillment she seeks: "Christian virginity is devised for love as the lungs are devised for air" (Perrin, op. cit., p. 99). But when we say~ this, it is important to remember that the love we refer to is not the predominantly emotional feeling that is some-times called love. This type of love may have a great part in leading a young woman into marriage, but even there, it is not enough for happiness in marriage. The religious, too, may sometimes experience something of this feeling but it is not the love that can and must nourish her life. That love is a higher supernatural love that can be entirely independent of any feeling and that is far more enduring and rewarding. It is a love, in other words, that cannot be gauged by how one reacts to things on a given day but by perseverance in self-giving. After all that we have said, must we conclude that the religious woman must free herself from all those qualities of love that we think of as precisely human and womanly? By no means. It is upon her human womanly qualities that these supernatural qualities are based. For all the supernatural faith and love that must animate her, the religious must still remain thoroughly human in the best sense of the word. All that is good in her nature must be developed and used for the glory of God and the good of others. She must use the warmth of her human love es-pecially in her efforts to win others to God and in her dealings with her fellow religious. But at the same time she must remember that this human love has been dedi-cated to God to serve a higher supernatural end. That such an ideal is possible of attainment is clear from the following words of Pius XII: Chastity and virginity (which imply also the inner renuncia-tion of all sensual affection) do not estrange souls from this world. They rather awaken and deepen the energies needed for wider and higher offices beyond the limit of individual families. Today there are many teaching and nursing sisters who, in the best sense of the word, are nearer to life than the average person in the world (Pius XII, Apostolic Exhortation to the Interna-tional Congress o[ Nuns Devoted to the Teaching of Girls, Sept. 13, 1951). The religious has ever within her reach all the means to foster this spirit of faith and love that will enable her to find fulfillment. The sacraments, prayer, spiritual reading, and other spiritual exercises enter daily into the life of a religious. Nourishing herself faithfully at these sources of grace, she can daily strengthen her faith and deepen her love. And as she comes to live more on the supernatural level, she will tend to think less of the na-tural joys she has given up in terms of sacrifice. She will rather think of them as a small price to pay for the deep happiness she finds. Her craving to bestow her love will find its deepest fulfillment in loving God and his children. Her desire to be loved will come to rest in the calm as-surance that God's love for her is constant and unchang-ing. Her motherly instinct will find its fullest outlet as she sees herself as the mother" of~many souls spiritually. An amount of struggle may still remain for the simple reason that she will always retain her basic natural orien-tation. But perseverance will bring to the religious a ful-fillment known only to the woman who has surrendered her womanhood in its entirety to God. ÷ ÷ ÷ Woman's Fulfillment VOLUME 21, 1962 MOTHER MARY ANTHONY Cornelia Connelly and the Spiri of Suffering Obedience Mother MaryAn-thony, S.H.C.J. teaches English at Rosemont College, Rosemont, Pennsyl-vania. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Cornelia Connelly,1 who founded the Society of the Holy Child Jesus (S.H.C.J.) in England in 1846, saw her work spread to America in 1862 when the first foundation was made in Pennsylvania. Today, a hundred years later, the Society has twenty-eight houses in this country. On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the Society in this country, this article is offered as a slight memorial to her founder. The heritage of any religious family is a living tradi-tion distinctive in starting point and attitude (an area hard to define), less so in means, toward a goal recogniz-able in generally accepted terms. The initial channeling is traced by the instrument God has chosen and guided first to discern, then to execute a pattern which against the ground of particular time and circumstance will manifest in new detail God's plan for "filling up what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ." Uniqueness resides in the individuality of the instrument, the religious" founder, and in his or her perception of the role of the new insti-tute within the larger grouping that is the Church. This perception, however it may communicate itself person-to-person from the founder to the ever widening circle of disciples, is ultimately formulated in the rule of the con-gregation where the solemn ratification of Mother Church safeguards it from distortion. But the sense of mission, of the public life, as it were, of the fully integrated society presupposes a deep interior-ity, a known way to God that constitutes the individual 1 This article has been approved for publication by the Reverend Desmond McCarthy, promoter of the faith, Diocese of S6uthwark, England. spirituality o[ its members. Personal sanctification and the salvation of souls are the twin goals of religious pro-fession, and the former is the matrix. In what concerns the intimate relations of the soul with God the greatest delicacy is only fitting. Prescriptive norms as such can point the path, then set the soul free to follow '~the draw-ing of that Love and the voice of that Calling." Lived example best helps the hesitant. The working out of the unit figure in the design, seen as God .sees it harmonious and whole, is learned indeed by heart, by loving study of the actual steps to perfection of the one who first lived the teachings cherished now by a growing spiritual family. Cornelia Connelly (1809-1879), foundress of. the So-ciety of the Holy Child Jesus, gives her children just such guidance--a rnle distilled from praye.rful experience and tried in the fire of the unitive life amidst the demands of the teaching apostolate. To her words then for definitive statement, to her life for burning confirmation. And in both the same pattern 'is discernible--love, suffering, obe-dience (conformity to God's will). These come through consistently as motive, means, and end. According to the end and. spirit, of our special, vocatlon,. mysteries of the most subhme teaching are to be found ~n the humble and hidden life of the Holy Child Jesus, in which God manifests in a most wonderful manner the .treasures of His Mercy and of His boundless Love. In that Divine Child, en-closed for nine months in the womb of His Virgin Mother, born in a stable, exposed to suffering and poverty, fleeing into Egypt, hidden and labouring in a humble workshop, is found our Divine Master, our Model and our Spouse; and from the living wells of His perfect humility, His divine charity, and His ab-solute obedience, we are to receive the spirit of the Holy Child Jesus (Rule S.H.C.J., par. 2). In this school of Divine Science, contemplating the Eternal Wisdom in the lowliness of His Humanity, we should seek to attain the knowledge of our own nothingness and misery, and that of His infinite love and mercy; we should learn to uproot the evil inclinations of our corrupt hearts, and to cultivate therein the germ of practical mortification, studying in the ex-ample of a hidden God the sweetness of suffering and contempt, that we may thus rejoice to labour and to die with Him in the constant practice of poverty, chastity, and obedience (Rule S.H.C~J., par. 3). In the rule on humility (adapted from that of St. Ig-natius), we are bidden. "with our whole strength to ac-cept and desire what Christ our Lord loved and em-braced" to the extent of wishing "to suffer insults, false witness, and injuries., through the desire of imitating our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and of being clothed with His shame," so conforming our lives to His. The order and emphasis are seen to be constant. Love is. motive, stressed as knowledge that moves the will, not as emotion. Suffering is means, chosen because of the exam-ple of Christ, never in isolation. Obedience is end, per- + + + Cornelia Connelly VOLUME 21, 1962 29 fect union in the conformity of our will with God's. The rule on obedience reiterates this forcefully: "All should give themselves up to perfect obedience, recognising the Superior whoever she may be in the place of Christ our Lord"; "they ought to have before their eyes God, our Creator and Lord, for love of Whom they obey His crea-ture"; "All should be prompt at the voice of the Superior as at the voice of Christ our Lord"; "Let each one con-vince herself that those who live under obedience ought to let themselves be ruled and guided by Divine Providence through their Superiors"; "the Sisters should endeavour to accustom themselves to regard not her whom they obey, but rather Him for Whose sake they all obey, Christ our Lord"; "Each one attending to her own duties and office should patiently await, as from the hand of God, what-ever may be decided for her." A directive at once comprehensive and specific opens the purely ascetical Chapter 19 of the Rule: From the Hidden Life of our Divine Spouse we should learn the value we ought to set on prayer and the interior life, making them the basis of our spiritual perfection, and the fountain whence we should draw help and strength to perform in a perfect manner the duties of charity in our active life. ÷ ÷ ÷ Mother Ma~y Anthony REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 3O This focuses the attention of Mother Connelly's daughters on the phase of our Lord's life which is least immediately suggestive of suffering, but from the earliest references the association is unmistakable--"In that Divine Child. ex-posed to suffering and poverty., is found our Model"; "studying in the example of a hidden God the sweetness of suffering and contempt." Love and obedience are in-evitably linked with childhood; what insight joins to these suffering, even makes it central? A grasp perhaps of the utter emptying--exinanivit seipsum---of the Incarna-tion, most compellingly evident in the dependence of the Child. This would indeed be best appreciated by one who had known natural motherhood. We recall the image of that Pieth of February 2, 1840--C6rnelia, the grieving mother, holding the body of her two-year old son. He had died in her arms after severe burns resulting from an accident at play near a vat of boiling sugar at their Louisiana home. This incident had followed swiftly upon an oblation made in response to a sudden inspiration of grace. Over-whelmed with a sense of gratitude and wellbeing in the joy of home life and the fervor of conversion, she had cried: "O my God, if all this happiness be not for Thy glory and the good of my soul--take it from me. I make the sacrific!!" This scene prompts further consideration of Cornelia Connelly's unusual vocation and its acceptance in the spirit of the suffering obedience of Christ. Her unques-tioning docility to ecclesiastical advisors who considered genuine her husband's call to the priesthood and coun-seled the separation it entailed, was truly grounded in the faith of Abraham. She knew as no one else could know the heart of the man who wa~ h~r hfsband.' Did-she:foresee his defection? She knew as no one but a mother could how this strange step would scar her children. Even had the wise and generous provision made for them been carried out, the three living Connelly children would have had much to adjust to in their uprooted and anomalous situa-tion. Mercifully hidden from Cornelia at the time of these decisions was the mad violation of agreement by which their father removed them from her influence and suc-ceeded in estranging them from her and from their Catho-lic faith.2 There was no ram in the thicket for Cornelia. But God raised up children as from the ashes of her holocaust. Her apostolate of education was chiefly among the young, those in whom she bade her daughters "constantly strive to see Jesus," and whom they are to lead "to taste and to embrace the sweet yoke which He offers them." Her choice of the Epiphany as the day on which members of her Society renew their vows points up this double mani-festation, the recognition and response of self-oblation, and the giving of Christ in the self-giving of their lives. Nor may we overlook the relation of the first Epiphany to the slaying of the innocents. To dwell exclusively on the sacrificial aspects of Cor-nelia Connelly's life and teachings is to miss the most dis-tinctive if most paradoxical characteristic of her spirit, its joyfuI simplicity. A brief re-examination ofthe texts al-ready quoted discloses this note: "studying in the example of a hidden God the sweetness of suffering and contempt, that we may thus rejoice to labour and to die with Him," "to taste and to embrace the sweet yoke which He offers." Elsewhere in the Rule we read: "All should cultivate a spirit of joy and spiritual contentment"; "the whole coun-tenance should express cheerfulness and peace." We have here the deep and resonant gaudiurn of Ad-vent, the sense of ancient sacrifice fulfilled and hope brought to fruition, the joy of the mother in her expected child. Cornelia's womanly gift of creating a home as focal point and radiant center of natural happiness has been transformed into Mother Connelly's sure supernatural ~ The Earl o[ Shrewsbury and the Borghese family were to see to the education of the Connelly boys, Mercer (already at Stonyhurst) and Frank when old enough. The daughter, Adeline, was to remain with her mother. Pierce Connelly took all three to Italy with him when he lost the lawsuit by which he hoped to regain power over Cornelia. 4- ÷ ÷ Corneliu ¢onnelly VOLUME 2~ ~962 instinct for making a religious house or noviceship ol: school a Nazareth whose inmates grow in age and grace. with liberty of spirit and loving guidance. It is less saying "no" to nature than "yes" to God. Positive joyous accept.~ ance of God's way made known through ordinary means, this is the heritage of tlie Sisters of the Holy Child. ÷ ÷ ÷ Mother Mary Anthony REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 32 CHARLES B. TRUNDLE, s.J. I, ove and Perfect Chastity God is love, wrote St. John the evangelist. Because this is true, only those who love can possess God during this life and the next. To love is therefore man's greatest necessity: so it always was and so it will always be. Love is the key to life, or better, it is life itself, A man must love if he is to have life in him; this is God's law, a law based on God's own nature and therefore universal, eternal; and necessary. God did not conceal this law from mankind; he did not leave it to chance for man to discover. He did not say: "I will let men find out for themselves the secret of enter-ing into friendship with Me. Those who stumble upon this truth and live according to it, I will reward; those who fail, I will punish." God's love could not let mankind be ignorant in a matter of such importance. The goodness of God moved Him, rather, to establish a school of love, a school almost all men would desire to enter, a school teaching lessons most men would be will-ing to learn. This divinely founded school is marriage. Without marriage, it has been said, most men and women would not achieve the degree of love of which they are capable. And without marriage few children would re-ceive the love which is essential not only for their well-being but even for their continued existence. What kind of love is learned in the school of marriage? It is the love that typifies the mature adult; namely, a love of someone else for his sake, not for one's own. It is the love that characterizes God Himself who loves not that He may receive but that He may give. On the human level perhaps the purest expression of this love is that of a parent for his child. It is this kind of love which is man's best preparation for heaven, for it makes man most like God. It is certain that such a high degree of unselfish love is not to be reached without a long training; accordingly, ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles B. Trundle, S.J. teaches religion at the University of Scranton, Scranton 10, Pennsylvania. VOLUME 21, 1962 Ch~r/~s B. Trund/~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS God has' established some preparatory stages through which human beings normally pass. First, there is the complete self-love of the infant. This is good and a part of God's plan. The baby is just getting his foothold on earth; if he did not make known his hunger, his discom-fort, his needs by day and night, his very existence might be threatened. Soon.the child's love breaks the bonds of self and begins to include an ever widening field of persons: his parents, his brothers and sisters, the neighbors, his classmates, the members of his "gang," and after a brief period of aver-sion the opposite sex. There are, however--and this is to be expected---varying amounts of self-love in all these relationships. Some of them are heavily freighted with a love of gratitude; that is, the love is based on what the other has done or can do for the youth rather than for the other person's worth in himself. In the usual course of events, with the development of sexual maturity in all areas (emotional, intellectual, and spiritual as well as physical), one falls in love with a particular member of the other sex. Normally this love culminates in the establishment of a permanent relation-ship between the two, the state that we call marriage. The preliminary steps have been taken and the two now begin (if their schooling is to be successful) to live the profession vowed at the wedding, to love the other more than self. The couple is happy to express their inner union in a new way by becoming physically one (a unity which God selected as a fitting symbol of the union of Christ and His Church). The pair may be content with this new growth in love, but God has even further plans for them. Nor-mally, he blesses their bodily union with an extension of their love for each other: a new life, their child, is con-ceived and born. Almost without choosing it, the father and the mother are now led to new heights 6f unselfish love. Economies are made, painfully perhaps, but basically in a willing manner, in the areas of recreation, clothing, food, and so forth. Time schedules are altered to fit in with the needs of the newcomer. It may seem, in fact, that one's whole life is revolutionized by the arrival of the infant son or daughter. For the first time, perhaps, many parents will come to know what it means to love another without thought for oneself. An even further development of love is possible, how-ever. The parents' interests and concerns widen con-stantly with the growth of their children. They become attentive to the educational opportunities of their com-munity; they may get deeply involved in the scouts, in Little League baseball, taking on the role of coach or den mother and so forth. Decent literature, safety patrols, medical advances are important to them, as are a hundred other areas touching their child's life. Going along with all this is usually a widening of the heart, a breaking down of old confining walls to extend the limits of love to more and more of God's children. The father who has learned his iessons well in.the school of love can sympathize deeply with other parents who may lose their sons and daughters in a dreadful fire; he can feel for other families who are burdened by poverty, poor health, or other trials. He will wish to help them, if he can, by contributing of his own time and money. Wider and wider his heart becomes until it is much more like the heart of God; until it becomes perfect as his Father's who makes the sun to shine upon both just and unjust and the rain to fall upon the fields of both sinner and saint. Not all are willing, of course, to learn in the school of love; some rebel against its teacher, fail miserably at its lessons. Whatever the cause of this failure may be (very often, perhaps, because someone failed the learner at an earlier stage), God does not wish it to be so. There is nothing new in what has been said up to this point. What bears highlighting is this: the role and pur-pose of sex on the path to love which is traveled by the ordinary man and woman. If neither sex offered the other deeply satisfying intellectual, spiritual, and emotional completion, how few there would be who would enter the married state with its permanent obligations and bur-dens. If there were no physical attraction between male and female, how few couples would be herioc or unselfish enough to bring children into this troubled world! The divine strategy, then, should be noted well. God places in mankind strong appetites, powerful desires which win his heart and encourage his mind and will to make such com-mitments as they would never make by themselves. God does not intend marriage as an end in itself, therefore, but rather as a means to an end; that is to say, as a setting or school in which most men and women best learn how to love. This is one reason why every marriage, whether its participants are aware of it or not, possesses great dignity in the eyes of God. If the married state is dear to God because it can help man become more God-like, the state of consecrated chastity is far more precious to Him. And for this reason: the religious professes to begin his life where the married may be said to end his. By making the three vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity the religious cuts him-self off from the great obstacles to universal love. He enters a religious community so that he may be able to devote himself more completely to the works of love. He sacrifices the privilege of having his own family so that"he ÷ ÷ Love and Perfect Chastity VOLUME 21, 1962 Charles B. Trundle REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS may be a father, a brother, a sister, or a mother to all. He will never meet or serve all people, of course, but he does pray for all and he does make himself free and well-disposed to receive wholeheartedly anyone God may send to him in the course of his apostolic life. Freed from the duty and privilege of loving exclusively one husband or wife and six or a dozen children, he professes to give his love to every soul as if it alone were his only concern. Needless to say, some religious fail .in their own school of love and most of them must work for years to fulfill the ambitious goal they chose with God's grace at the time of their first vows. Be that as it may, the religious life in itself is aimed more directly at loving and serving God and all mankind, and this is one reason for its greater dignity in the eyes of both God and man. Since the young religious bypasses marriage in order to place himself further along the.road to God, he has no need for the God-designed means that lead to the married state; namely, sex. Nevertheless, he possesses it. God does not usually work miracles; he does not tamper with or mutilate His creatures. Accordingly, the sexual faculties (spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical) may be expected to be operative in the religious as in any other person of comparable age, education, background, and so on. As a matter of fact, because of a religious' greater sen-sitivity to beauty, generosity, and goodness, these faculties may be even more active than in his counterpart in the world. No religious may expect, therefore, to escape the strongly appealing call of marriage and of all the legiti-mate activities that comprise it. The responsibility for this is not his, but God's. For it was He who designed the faculties and it was His wisdom which added the pleasure to their use so that man would be led willingly to the grand purposes God had in mind for him. This attrac-tion, then; may be expected as a normal experience for most people; it is part of God's general plan for the hu-man race. It is unfortunate that some religious do not have a wholesome attitude ~regarding this very important area of life. One hears the complaint from those tempted; "But all this is so incompatible with my state in lifel" It is only one small, false step to that most disco.uraging conclusion: "Therefore, I am not a good relig!ous." How much more realistic and better would it be to say: "How important it must be to lovel Here is God, remind-ing me through faculties He designed for this very pur-pose that I must be sure to love if I am to have any part with Him. If others need this reminder, how much more do I, for love is. my chosen profession." Better still, he may even voice these thoughts as a prayer: "Dear God, I thank You for this reminder of the necessity of love in every life. But You Yourself have in-vited me to love in a higher and more Christlike way. Give me the grace, please, to carry off my gift to You suc-cessfully and without tension, worry, or fear. Never for-get, Lord, that it is Your doin~ ~h~it I f~el~th~ :appeal of Your school of love in the world; it is Your doing, too, that I have left the world to love You more. You have placed me between the two: I know that You will pro-vide." 4. 4" 4. Love and Peryect Chastity VOLUME 21, 1962 37 PHILIP C. ROND, M.D. Early Recognition of Emotional Illness Dr. Rond, 1500 W. Third Avenue, Co-lumbus 12, Ohio, is Chairman of the Section of Psychia-try at Mr. Carmel Hospital, Colum-bus, Ohio. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS For many--too manymyears there existed the notion that there was no need to be concerned with mental illness in religious because it was extremely rare. Then, too, prayer and devotion were considered a panacea for emo-tional ills such as worry, depression, and so forth; no one needed special medico-psychological help if he or she would just pray fervently. So, besides denial, devotion was prescribed by non-medical persons as a substitute prescrip-tion for medico-psychological help, in order to preserve our religious resources as intact as possible for the higher calling and services they provide. The Medical Corps of the military has the objective "to maintain the fighting strength" using the best 'available techniques. This motto could be modified for religious, "to maintain the devotional strength" using the.best avail-able techniques. This latter would include early recogni-tion of emotional troubles and/or the need for specialized help, from non-medical religious superiors and personnel, and psychiatry. Religious are men and women from all socio-economic backgrounds who carry with them into their spiritual lives their own personality traits, molded by their experiences prior to entering the religious community. Because of these features they may at one time or another develop emotional conflicts with or without associated physical complaints requiring medico-social-psychological aid. First aid could come from within the community, from those trained to handle these conditions. Later, but not too late, .outside professional help should be obtained, especially while the religious is still at his or her daily duties. The needed professional medico-psychological help for the concomitants of their tensions can relieve them of the suffering which makes them pQor community associates and inefficient attendants to their religious duties. The early signals of emotional distress can be put into two main categories: namely, those of habit pattern (be-havior) disturbances, and of physical (bodily) disturbances. The early recognition of these signals depends upon the open-minded, unprejudiced acceptance of emotional prob-lems as specific, actual entities by those in authority in religious communities. So, whileywe d~s~ribe sigfig:' for Which to watch, we are trusting that those who should be alert are not denying the importance of being attentive to them. Dividing the early symptoms into two categories does not exclude the possibility of overlapping of these symptoms. However, if there is alertness to signals from one or the other of these two areas, the sharper will be the perception of significant clues. First, regarding symptoms in the behavior category area, these are based upon knowledge of the individual prior to the devolopment of the changes. Every good leader knows his or her personnel well enough to have such a baseline of reference. The moving of disturbed personnel without the transmission of sufficient personality information puts the receiving superior in the unfortunate position of not having a baseline of normality from which to evaluate, and often precludes early proper action in a given case. Unprejudiced personality assessments should accompany every normal transferee. Disturbed personnel should be moved only with considerable planning in which the in-dividual's needs take precedence over the superior's or the community's needs. Knowing individuals' basic behaviorisms or habit pat-terns, we can proceed to compare them with themselves (not ourselves or others) periodically, casually, thought-fully. The very early signals are almost too numerous to mention but consist of such things as the development of a persistent inability to arise easily at the appointed time or go to bed and to sleep at the appointed hour; a change in eating habits, in appetite; a restlessness, a diminution in attention span; irritability, fussiness; nervousness at devo-tions; inability to perform the usual duties assigned; de-velopment of nervous habits such as eye twitching, fore-head wrinkling, na~al sniffing, head jerking, foot tapping, leg rocking; withdrawing, overaggressiveness, moodiness, silliness, and so forth. In the early stages help is almost 100% effective in stop-ping the progress of the disorder and preventing it from going on to a serious condition. At this point the relief may come from discussing matters with a wise superior. Early referral for professional guidance, diagnosis, and advice, can still keep the role of the therapist in the com-munity, with the superior, or his or her appointed rep-resentatives, with the psychiatrist acting only in the con-sultant role. These early behavioral changes are the result of an individual's efforts to deal with an anxiety that is Emotional Illness VOLUMI~ 21~ 1962 Philip . RoncI REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 40 new or too intense, or accumulative from a number of factors uniting with a crescendo effect. The new behav-iorisms may not necessarily be bad in themselves but they indicate a serious conflict situation which, while un-healthy, is often not so deeply fixated as to require in-tensive short or long term psychotherapy, removal from the current setting for therapeutic attention, or any medicine. An ounce of prevention---early recognition-- may make it possible to provide help from within the community. It is to be anticipated that early recognition of signifi-cant behavior changes will improve, as acceptance of them as meaningful is well understood in the community. There are those who are referred to as having always been a little different. However, there is always a point where it should not be accepted without special consideration. Then there are those about whom it is said, "They were 'so normal,' we just couldn't believe it." In the first instance delay with help may occur because "it's expected" behavior. In the second case people may not believe their eyes, until the behavior becomes so bizarre or unacceptable that action must be taken. If we will look on the early behavioral and/ or physical symptoms as ways of asking for help we can justify an earlier move to assist. This way of asking for help results from the fact that the symptoms, a resolution arrived at quite automatically, are quite indifferent to the pressures of social mores. They are admissible because they operate so smoothly within the ego function as not to have to be denied or rejected. Many neurotics are probably happy for the development of a physical symptom be-cause this offers them a reason (acceptable) to seek medical aid. Purely psychological symptoms do not warrant seek-ing help for many because of the social stigma attached even by intelligent people. The second category of body signals or disturbances can and do involve all the bod~, systems and organs, heart, lungs, muscles, bones and joints, excretory system, and sensory system. The specific body complaints are, like the behavioral ones, too numerous to mention, The social-emotional etiology of them is the item to be stressed. Too often insistence by the individual, and/or the superior, that the physical complaint has a structural origin which will be found, has delayed recovery, prolonged incapacity and led to many lost hours of fervent, undistracted devo-tion the world requires so badly. Early medical evaluation is very important for the individual and for eliminating lost devotional hours. The body signals, as the behavior signals, are recognized by their newness in the individual, their lack of responsive-ness to the usual medical procedures, their intensity, and often a bizarre quality in the complaint or in the relating of it; by their association or tie-in with a gradually built up source of emotional tension which reaches a peak, or the sudden development of an emotional charge which has overwhelmed the personality defenses. The signals may be recognized by anyone. Those especial!y close to the situation should be respected When the~ report" shch ob-servations to their superiors who are a little more removed from the case. Early recognition usually implies quick recovery. Better to have pursued a false early signal with a medico-psycho-logical checkup which proves, negative than to have de-layed and produced a medico-psychological cripple with associated impaired devotional capabilities. As the supe-rior and his or her staff develop a competency in counsel-ing, one would expect much relief from the tension effects for the human individual in the religious life and com-munity living. Then the early recognition of signals of emotional turmoil will mean even better results, reflected in a maintenance of a greater operational devotional strength and capacity. Early recognition of emotional dis-orders also must include spotting the person in a com-munity who, because of his or her position, may be the precipitating cause, in oneor more other individuals, of emotional crises with their behavioral and/or bodily com-plaints. The precipitators often are blind to their un-healthy faculty, but many, with help, can see what they do. If insight cannot be gained, removal often is as neces-sary as removal of a focus of infection in the body. In conclusion, early recognition of the signs of emo-tional illness involves co~nparison of the religious behavior and/or physical status with his or her previous behavioral habits and physical state. This may be done by peers or superiors. It requires an open-mindedness about such con-ditions being possible and acceptable and treatable ill-nesses. The treatment of such conditions will vary depending upon the intensity of the distnrbance and the facilities and capabilities of those in the community. Referral for minor emotional problems to the psychiatrist will diminish as the skills in the community to handle them develop. But until such trained personnel are available within the re-ligious community early referral for medico-psychological help should be too early rather than too late. Emotional Illness VOLUME 21, lq62 41 JAMES MICHAEL LEE Notes Toward Lay Spirituality 4. 4. .I. Dr. Lee, 217 Wash- ~ngton Street, Hart-ford 6, Connecticut, ~s a member of thi~ faculty of St. Joseph College, West Hart-ford, Connecticut. "~EVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 42 Like every practicing lay Catholic the world over, I went to Mass last Sunday. Nothing unusual about that. And there was nothing unusual about the sermon either. The preacher gave rather clear instructions on how the layman interested in saving his soul should act in the world. He recalled the story of Moses and the Edomites (Num 20: 14-21). The great Israelite leader wished to pass through the land of Edom en route to the Promised Land. He therefore sent a message to the Edomite King saying: "Kindly let us pass through your country. We will not cross any fields or vineyards, or drink any well water, but will go straight along the royal road without turning to the right or to the left until we have passed through your territory." The priest then told us that this passage should serve as the rule of life for all Catholics. Laymen should pass directly on the royal road to heaven and should nei-ther look around at the world nor enjoy its pleasures. Like many a practicing. Catholic the world over, I did some spiritual reading last Sunday. Nothing unusual about that. And there was nothing unusual about the con-tent of the book either. The spiritual writer exhorted his readers to steel themselves against the things of this world so that they may attain glory in the next. He warned that Christians can grow closer to God only by flying directly to Him, and that this flight would be made impossible if we concern ourselves with earthly things. This is standard spiritual fare, and Catholic lay people have been and still are subjected to it from pulpit and page. This approach views the spiritual life as a system of defenses against a hostile world which is literally hell-bent on our destruction. The higher we advance in the spiritual life, the more sturdy will be our defenses. If only the world could be eliminated, then would we attain God! But it is obvious that we cannot eliminate the world as it exists out-side of ourselves. We can make repeated acts of the will saying, "World, cease to existI' but the stubborn world re-mains despite our strongest will acts. The only other course of action, therefore, is to eliminate the world as it exists within ourselves. This can be accomplished by con-stantly directing our thoughts away from the world and focusing our attention on a~n0n~orldly reality, such as God as He is in heaven. In this way the world.will cease to become a part of us, and', if we are vigilant and steadfast, we will attain a state of otherworldliness. This approach to lay spirituality has at least four major defects, any one of which is sufficient to cast serious doubts on its validity as a means of attaining perfection. These four include psychological unsoundness, existential un-soundness, unsuitability, and lack of historical basis. Cer- .tainly this almost exclusively negativistic approach does violence to our humanity. We cannot escape our meta-physical situation. We were made to see, to touch, to hear. Without these our mind would wither, dry up. Over and over again St. Thomas reiterates the necessity of contact with the world outside of us if we are to come to an aware-ness of ourselves. Indeed we know ourselves precisely by knowing others. Our minds and senses were given to us not to negate or deny the real, but rather, as Ghrist did, to draw all things to ourselves and thus to God Man has a double task, namely to enrich himself by expanding him-self so as to take in all reality, and to enrich reality by re-deeming it. All baptized Catholics are other Christs, and as such it is their task to share with Him in the redemption of all things. Man confronts reality as a co-redeemer, as Mouroux has observed. Just as the grass became a bit greener because Christ walked the earth~ so it should be-come greener still because we have walked the earth. ality not only has a duty to us, but we also have a duty to reality. This reciprocal obligation and enrichment cannot be fulfilled by shutting the world out, but rather by letting it flood in and inebriate us. "To be a Christian is to carry the whole world in your heart," said Zundel rightly. The liturgy is an excellent example of how the Church uses the senses to bring the outside world into the wor-shiper, to fill him to the bursting point with sensations of every sort. The beautiful vestments, the altar with its tabernacle and linens, the movement of the ministers all fill the worshiper with visual delight. Gorgeous singing, whether pain chant or polyphony, fills the room with its resonance and melody while the powerfully fragrant smell of the incense wafts about and clings tenaciously, to both building and nostrils. The Church opens to us the beauty of God's world, so that we may fill ourselves to satiety. Ought we not, then, open ourselves to the world? This exclusively negativistic approach to lay spiritual living is also unsound from an existential point of view. Lay Spirituality VOLUME 21, 1962 43 lames M. Lee R~V|EW FOR RELIGIOUS 44 Did not God'create the world? If He did, if He really did, and if creation is continuous and ongoing as the theolo-gians .say, then Godis somehow intimately in that world. Every cause is somehow in its effect. God is in the world more than just by power, just as the composer is in his symphony more than just by his creation of it. This is not pantheism, but rather a realization of the deep .bond be-tween God and His world. Certain of the Greek Fathers were very conscious of God's intimacy in and with the world. All things sing with God, to paraphrase Aristotle. The world is not evil; it is worldliness that is evil. World-liness is a psychological state of man's mind about the world; it is an inordinate, disproportionate love of the world. The world, God's world, cannot be blamed for its misuse in man's mind. God has given us the world so that by it we may return to Him--not in spite of it, but pre-cisely through it. Indeed it can be said that without the world we cannot approach God except by infused con-templation, which is granted only to a very few. If the world were so e,~il, then why will God restore it to man after the resurrection of the body? The world, is man's natural environment. I~ he but lets it be, it can become his supernatural environment also. But for this to come to pass he must look at the worl, d with the eyes of Christ, not with the eyes of Jansenius. The work of that great French Jesuit of this century, Teilhard de Chardin, has done much to give Catholics 'a proper vision of the world. By placing Christ squarely in matter, Chardin has effected a revolution in the spiritual life and in so doing has made the most profound theologi-cal advance Of the century. Chardin did not say that Christ was matter, but rather that He permeated matter. Conse-quently the world deserves our love and respect for the God-soaked reality it is. Man can accept the world, add to it by his co-redemptive faculty or detract from it by giving it.attributes it does not possess. The latter is worldlinessi Strangely, we take away from the dignity of the world when we add to it that which it does not possess. The Chardinian revolution bids us face the magnificent world for what it really is, not run away from it and call this shrinking sanctity. The exclusively negativistic approach to lay spirituality is .further defective because it is almost totally unsuitable to the layman's life in the mode and manner in which he lives it. Unlike most spiritual writers and many priestg, the layman lives completely in the world. Farmers see the beauty of the wheat fields glistening in the sun. Doctors see.the wonderful advances which science has made tb help mankind. After a day's toil, workers in offices arid factories feel the warmth of human friendship. Mathema- ticians become enraptured over the harmony of numbers. Concert audiences are enthralled over the delights of a superbly played symphony. Travellers to Europe are ec-static over the art treasures they find there. Surely they do not really believe that the world is evil and should be fled. They have seen too much of g0od~n~ss, too much.of beauty, too much of love, and yes, too much of G0d.in the world. What happens when the lay Catholic listens to a sermon or reads a book telling him to steel himself against the world? He perhaps assents (if he does not become bored) and then proceeds to act as if nothing was ever spoken or ever read. This course of action clearly indicates that he does not really believe the world is evil and to be avoided. The layman is not a spiritual schizophrenic, as he is some-times .accused, simply because.he never believed what the preacher or spiritual writer said. The result is that many words are uttered by preacher and page which are really wasted. No lay person in his right mind takes them se-riously. Father Thomas Stack, the prominent American litur-gist, complains that spiritual preaching and writing are rarely done with the layman in mind, but rather are in-tended for people who live in some ideal world. The lay-man knows the goodness of the world by practical contact and resists attempts by speculators who tell him that what he sees is an illusion. What is needed is spiritual teaching for the layman. The fourth major defect in an exclusively negativistic approach is that those great figures of Christianity who lived in the world just simply did not believe it, judging by their words and deeds. Christ did not walk through the fields and vineyards on the royal road, neither looking to the right nor to the left. Rather He went right into the midst of the fields and gathered there the fruit of the wheat; and He went into the midst of the vineyard and pressed the juice of the grape. And He blessed both, and gave the world Himself foreverl He left us a sign, not only that we might know Him, but that we might know the proper way to deal with the world. What can be more rep-resentative of the world than bread and wine? Christ did not steel Himself against the world, or reject it; He blessed it and made it divine. The world became Christl One of Christ's greatest servants, St. Francis of Assisi, was a man who knew how to confront the world. He did not despise it, or curse it, or steel himself against it. He opened his soul to it, let it pour in upon his soul, for he knew that simultaneously there flowed in God. St. Francis knew the Christ-like way of confronting a bird, or a blade of grass, or the ocean. In his extraordinarily beautiful and moving Canticle of Brother Sun, St. Francis points the way Lay Spirituality VOLUME 21j 1962 45 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 46 toward proper confrontation of man to world. In this Can-ticle, the Saint takes the various realities of the world, the sun, the moon, the wind, fire, and so forth, and thanks God for what these realities are in themselves. Is St. Francis here denying the relation of God to matter, or holding that God is not deeply imbedded in the world? A close analysis of the Canticle reveals precisely the opposite. The first verse, on the other hand, speaks of the complete ineffa-bility of God; indeed St. Francis here notes that no man is worthy even to mention God. And then in the next verse the holy man of Assisi launches immediately into his praises of the world. Is there a lacuna in the Canticle? Nol St. Francis realized that reality is a paradox, that while no man could mention God, yet every man could mention Him at every moment of his life by properly confronting that world which He made and in which He was deeply imbedded. We do not live in a divided world, with an. abyss separating the natural and supernatural. Rather we live in one world where the natural and the supernatural interpenetrate each other in a fused reality. It was this way before the Fall; and after the Fall, the intense heat of Christ's love as manifested in His life and death acted as a tremendous fusion force to bring about once again the interwoven universe. St. Francis saw all this. We should profit from his life and teaching. Is this article a condemnation of the via negativa, the negative way to spiritual perfection? Certainly notl Rather it is a condemnation of an exclusively negative approach. No one can deny that Christ; or St. Francis, or any other saint for that mater employed the via negativa. However, this article attempts to show that the via positiva, the posi-tive way, is not only an important and necessary avenue to spiritual perfection, but is in fact more suited to lay spirituality than the negative way. It is not a case of a mutually exclusive either/or, but rather of an inclusive both/and. In their deepest existential reality the via nega-tiva and the via positiva merge and become one. The lay-man must use both ways, but for him the primacy belongs to the positive way. Spiritual writers and preachers should remember this when preparing their messages to the faith-ful. Undoubtedly one of the greatest Pontiffs of modern times was Pope Pius XII. Those of us who met him could not fail but to be profoundly struck by his deep sanctity. When this holy man of God lay dying, he asked for music to be played for him. He obviously felt that in his last mo-ments on earth, music would draw him closer tothe God he had served so well throughout his lifetime. What type of music did the saintly Pope ask for in his last hour? Gre- gorian chant? Spiritual motets? Nol He requested that Bee-thoven's First Symphony be played. Here was a deeply devout man, believed by many to be in heaven now, who in those crucial moments just before death, saw God more in "secular" reality than in professedly spiritual !reality. Here was the via positiva iri ~ictionl, ÷ ÷ ÷ Lay Sp~rituaUty VOLUME 21, 1962 R. F. SMITH, s.j. Survey of Roman Documents R. F. Smith, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS This article will summarize the documents which ap-peared in ,4cta Apostolicae Sedis during August, 1961. All page references in the article will be to the 1961 Acta (vi 53). Three A llocutions On June 12, 1961 (pp. 495-99), Pope John XXIII ad-dressed the members of the Central Commission for the preparation of Vatican Council II on the occasion of the commission's first session. The Pope outlined the work of the commission which will consist in considering the prob-lems of the convocation of the council and in examining the preliminary drafts submitted by the other preparatory commissions of the council. His Holiness told the members of the commission that the coming council will leave art indelible mark on the history of the Church. On June 20, 1961 (pp. 499-503), the Vicar of Christ again addressed the same Central Committee, this time on the occasion of the closing of the first sessions of the corn, mission--sessions which were concerned with the member-ship of the council, procedural matters in the council, and the language of the council. The language is to be Latin, though the vernacular will be used when opportunity or necessity requires it. The Pope then proceeded to give the objectives of the council: the renewal of the holiness of the clergy; the effective instruction of the faithful in the truth:; of faith and of Christian morality; the right formation adolescents; the spread of the social apostolate; and the formation of a missionary soul in every Christian. On July 6, 1961 (pp. 503-04), the Pope addressed the members of the Commission for the Lay Apostolate for Vatican Council II. Through the commission he exhorted all the faithful to increased prayer for world peace. Miscellaneous Documents On August. 12, 1961 (pp. 525-27), His Holiness pub-lished the text of his handwritten letter constituting Amleto Cardinal Cicognani Secretary of State. On July 9, 1961 (pp. 504-06), John XXIII sent a radio message for the conclusion of the Seventh'~Na~i0nal Marlan~C0nven-tion of France held at Lisieux. He told his listeners that all Christians of whatever state of life were enveloped in the motherhood of the Blessed Virgin who does for all Chris-tians what every mother does for her child. The Pope in-sisted thatdevotion to the. Blessed Virgin is a mark of a person who is truly C~tholic. On June 20, 1961 (p. 507), the Holy Office issued a.warn-ing, telling those who. treat of Scripture to do so with pru-dence and reverence. They should be mindful o~ the teach-ings of the. fathers, of the magisterium of the Church, and of the sense of the Church. They should also be careful not to disturb the consciences of the faithful and not to violate the truths of faith. On June 26, 1961 (pp. 507-08), the Holy Office issued a decree placing on the Index Jean steinmann's La vie de Jdsus (Paris: Club des Librairies de France, 1959). On May 10, 1961 (pp. 513-16), the Sacred Congregation of Rites approved the reassumption" of the cause of BIessed Matthias Murumba, martyr~ and his twenty companion martyrs of Uganda. The martyrs died in 1886 and were beatified in 1920. On November 9, 1960 (pp. 517-20), the same congregation approved the introduction of the cause of the Servant of God, Brother Andrew (1845-1937), of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. On June 5, 1961 (p. 521), the Sacred Apostolic Peniten-tiary granted an indulgence of three years whenever a visitor to St. Peter's kisses the foot of the statue of St. Peter there and says the invocation, "St. Peter, pray for us." On June 9, 1961 (pp. 521~23), the Penitentiary approved a list of indulgences that may be gained by members of the Pontifical Work of Priestly Vocations. ÷ 4. ÷ Roman Documents VOLUME 2't', 1962 49 Viems/ Nets/ In Memoriam: Adam C. Ellis, S.]. (1889-1961) On November 25, 1961, in St. Louis, Missouri, oc-curred the death of Adam C. Ellis, S.J., one of the three co-founders of REw~w FoR RE~o~o~Js. Father Ellis was born in Buffalo, New York, entered the So-ciety of Jesus in 1905, was ordained in 1921, received his doctorate in 1926 from the Gregorian University, and for most of the rest of his life taught canon law at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. He was the co-author of Canon Law:,4 Text and a Commentary and the translator-reviser of Religious Men and Women in Church Law and Handbook of Cere-monies. Father Ellis was a zealous worker in behalf of the religious of the United States and deserves a remembrance in their prayers and good works. May he rest in peace. 4. 4. 4, Views, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Instruction from Congregation of Religious On February 2, 1961, the Sacred Congregation of Reli+ gious directed a new document to major religious superiors entitled Instruction to the Superiors of Religious Corn.,~ munities., on the Careful Selection and Training of Candidates. An English translation of the document can be purchased for one dollar from Sister Formation Bulletin., Ottumwa Heights College, Ottumwa Heights, Iowa. Seminary Statistics for the United States The July, 1961, Seminary Newsletter of the National Catholic Educational Association gives a statistical sum.~ mary of United States seminaries for the academic year 1960-61. According to the report there are 96 American diocesan seminaries; of these 28 are major seminaries, while 49 are minor seminaries and the remaining 19 com-prise both major and minor departments. During the same period in the United States there were 295 religious house~; of formation. Of these 106 were major seminaries; 122; minor seminaries; and 67 were combination major-minor seminaries. During the same period there was a total of 23,319 candidates for the diocesan priesthood and 19,629 for the religious priesthood, giving a complete total of 42,948 candidates for the priesthood in 1960-61. One re- mark would seem in order: the 23,319 candidates for the diocesan priesthood are cared for in 95 seminaries, while the smaller number of religious candidates (19,629) are found distributed in 295 houses offormation. This would seem to indicate that clerical religious groups of the United States might well'consider a consolidatingof theii" seminary institutions by grouping the seminary institu-tions of several orders or congregations into larger units. Retreat Conferences Fifteen retreat conferences for lay persons are available either on long play records or on magnetic tape. The con-ferences are given by the Reverend Raphael C.:McCarthy, s.J., retreat director at Sacred Heart Retreat House~ Se-dalia, Colorado. Each album of the records or each copy of the tape costs ~14.95 and can be ordered from Father McCarthy at the above address. The Church in Africa Herder-Korrespondenz for August, 1961, gives statistics illustrating the growth of the Church in Africa between 1949 and 1959. In 1949 there were 11,000,000 Catholics on the continent; in 1959 this number had increased to 20,200,000, a gain of 84%. The largest percentage increase was found in West Africa where Church.membership dur-ing the decade increased 120%; North Africa had the low-est increase, 37%. In eight countries of Africa Catholics form more than one-fourth of the total population. On the other hand two countries are listed as being without Cath-olics: British Somaliland and Mauretania, both of which are entirely Mohammedan in reiigious allegiance. The Church in Spain Raz6n y Fe for March, 1961, has a statistical survey of many facets of Church life in Spain. The following points from the article may be of interest. In 1960 in Spain there were 24,504 diocesan priests and 8,319 religious priests. In the same year there were 20,583 professed men religious and 71,309 professed women religious. In the academic year 1959-60, 5,302 men applied for admittance to Spanish seminaries; of these 4,173 were accepted, the other 1,129 being rejected. The latest available statistics show that Spain has 22,628 seminarians. A survey of more than 17,000 of these showed that roughly 25% were from large cities, another 25% from small towns, and the remaining 50% from rural areas. A similar survey of seminarians on an economic basis disclosed that out of 17,053 seminarians whose backgrounds were investigated 917 were from the upper class, 8,698 fr6m the middle class, and 7,438 from the lower class. ÷ ÷ ÷ Prev~ws VOLUME 21, 1962 51 ÷ ÷ ¥iews, News, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS The article also furnishes some data on the number of non-Catholics in Spain (including, therefore, Jews and Orthodox). In 1960 there were between 15,561 and 18,716 non-Catholics in Spain divided among fourteen different religious groups. The largest single group is that of the Plymouth Brethren who in 1960 counted between 4,815 and 5,615 membex;s. Missionary Bishops of the World L'Osservatore Romano oJ May 18, 1961, provides statis-tics on the number and origin of missionary bis.hops throughout the world (exclusive of missionary auxiliary bishops). As of May 15, 1961, there were 196 such bishops in Africa, 64 in the Americas, 153 in Asia, 8 in Europe, and 55 in Oceania, making a total of 476. Of these 289 were born in Europe, 54 in the Americas, 73 in Asia, 32 in Af-rica, and 28 in Oceania. The above figures do not take into account data for countries dominated by Communism. Twenty-Year Index A twenty-year index to REviEw FOR REI~e~OtJS is in preparation. The proposed index will have four parts: author-title index of articles; subject index; author-title index of book reviews; and a canon law index. It is hoped that the index will be ready by the end of 1962. New African Congregation According to International Fides Service of September 2, 1961, a new congregation of religious women was founded in December, 1960, in the diocese of Luluabourg in Africa. On August 22, 1961, the first.four members of the congregation received their habits; and a new postulant was received at the same time. The new congregation is called by the name of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Guide to Meetings A recent publication of the National Catholic Educa-tional Association will prove useful to those engaged in education. Entitled Calendar of Meetings of 195 National and Educational Associations, 1961-62, it lists by date meetings that have been scheduled for the present aca-demic year. The publication is available for seventy-five cents from NCEA Research Office, 1785 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington 6, D.C. [The following answers are given by Father Joseph F. Gallen, s.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] Shou

Issue 28.2 of the Review for Religious, 1969. ; EDIT~)R R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITOR John L. Treloar, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editors, and the assistant edRor, as wel! as books for review, should be sent to ~EVIE~,V FOR RELIOIOUSj 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63~o3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 32t Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ~9~o6. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by facuhy members of the School of Divinity of Saint Louis University, ~be editoria| ot~ices being located at 612 llumboldt Building; .539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. 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Questions for answering should be seni to the address of the Questions and Answers editor, MARCH ~969 VOLUME 28 NUMBER 2 ANDRE AUW, C.P. The Evangelical Counsels: Ways of Becoming Free- Many years ago a young man walked into a Jewish synagogue and at the time for the readings, arose, took the scroll that was handed to Him, and read the follow-ing lines: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good tidings to the afflicted, He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, Toproclaim liberty to the captives, Andthe opening of the prison to those who are bound. The young man, of course, was Jesus Christ, a man sent by God to be a liberator of men: And His mission was never more beautifully described than in those words of Isaiah which he read to the assembly: "He has sent'me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to .those who are bound." The mission was one of liberation, of enabling men to become free. If it is true that our mission as religious is the same as Christ's mission, then it is important thatwe .examine the vows, and the counsels on which they are based, in the light of freedom. And so I have chosen to do this, tO discuss the vows as possible means of liberating us as persons, so that we can help others to become liberated. I would like to begin this consideration of the vows with a personal reflection that might serve as a frame-work for my approach. For the past five years I have been working with a great variety of groups: college students, married couples, priests, religious--men and women of all faiths or of no faith. And I have been surprised at the consistency of their impressions of re-ligious, Gradually I have been able to weave together a fabric + ÷ ÷ Andre Auw, C.P., writes from the Center for Students of the Person; P.O. Box 2157; La Jolla, California 92037. VOLUME 28," 1969 .175 Andre Auw, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS from their attitudes and responses. It is a fabric that is not pleasant to touch. I have the impression that their one dominant way of evaluating us is ~in terms of free-dom. For the most part they see us as terribly unfree. They see us as dedicated, well-intentioned men and women, who are, nevertheless, imprisoned by our way of life, trapped by our traditions, hemmed in, and, as the c.ollege students say, "hung up" by our systems and legal prescriptions. The most vocal expression of these feelings has come from the college student groups. And perhaps that is why my initial reaction to this consistent message was one of annoyance and irritation. I found myself rather defensive at what seemed to be an adolescent smugness on the part of these students, and at what appeared to be a. very unfair and unbalanced evaluation. Not all reli-gious are so rigid, unfree, trapped, and hemmed in. That was my initial reaction, But when I reflected a little more I discovered that I was reacting to things I did not want to believe could be true. And when I could be more honest with myself, I had to admit that this is the very image that many religious, including myself, have projected. My pondering also gave me some other valuable in-formation. Not only were these people telling me things about myself that I found hard to hear. They were also trying to tell me things about themselves which they found hard to bear. They were speaking of their fears. Seeing me unfree they were reminded of their own fear of never becoming free enough to be a mature loving person. They thought of their fear of being swallowed up in an impersonal, computerized society, of their fear of .being trapped by outdated traditions and hemmed in by unreasonable laws. All of their fears and frustrations which have been spilling out in bloody streaks from Watts to Washington, D.C., from the lawns of Berkeley to the halls of Columbia, were freshly underlined. It seems that they had turned toward, me, a religious, in hope, but finding me unfree, had turned away from me in sadness. They felt they must search elsewhere to find someone free enough to be able to show them the way to freedom. ¯ And so it seems to me to be a vital need to consider the vows in the light of freedom, to measure them by the manner in which they measure up as liberating forces in our lives. Nietzsche once said: "If they¯want me to believe in their God. they are going to have to sing better hymns for me; they are going to have to show me that they are men who have been liberated." Mod-ern man is saying the same thing to us today. He knows the message of Christ is essentially ]iberative, and be wants to see how well that message has liberated the religious who call themselves witnesses, before he will. consider buying it. In order to understand the vows as ways of becoming free we should understand what we mean by .freedom. It is not the ability to do whatever pleases me. That is narcissism. St. Paul has described it beautifully in the following instruction to the Galatians: "You should be free to serve one another in love" (Gal 5:14). And Doctor Carl Rogers spells that out a little more sharply when he talks about "a freedom which. [man] courageously uses to live his potentialities., which assists [him] in becoming human, in relating to others, in being a per-son." This is a freedom which makes us responsible lovers, concerned about responding sensitiveIy to others and not inhibited by the shadows of our own fears. How can the vows be ways of enabling us as religious to possess this kind of freedom? Let us examine them separately. First, poverty. What is there about this way of being a.nd living which can be liberating for us? In view of the definition of freedom as the ability to serve my brother in love, I would see poverty as a statement of value. For me, the true spirit of poverty is a way of being which can help me to tell my brother that I consider him more important than the material possessions I can acquire. And by not being so dependent upon .having things I am truly freer to share myself with others. Not needing to satisfy so many of my own desires, I can be more open and responsive to the needs of others. This is certainly the accent that we find in Scripture. Having things or not having things is of secondary importance in New Testament reflection on poverty. The emphasis is not on having, but on being: being able to "be" for others. The tragedy of the rich man Dives in the Lazarus story is not that he was wealthy, but that his wealth had made him insensitive and in-capable of meeting the needs of his suffering brother. There is, I feel, a parallel today in the attitude of people towards the poverty of religious. I do not be-lieve that intelligent people are harshly critical of us be-cause we possess large buildings and bank accounts. But they are severely critical when our buildings or our money keep us aloof and uninvolved in serious social issues. They can tolerate our need for some kind of. status but they cannot forgive us when we are incapable of service. As religious we need help in order to appreciate pov-erty as a way of freeing us from the paralyzing effect of accumulated material possessions. Freeing us from the demands of our own egos, so that we can walk--or even + + + The Counsels VOLUME 28, 1969 177 4- REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS run--to meet the needs of others. And so that we can do this without wanting a lot of "extras." When we do not have this spirit, something rather ugly happens to us even though we do not consciously promote it. We become very protective of our own in-terests. Speaking in another context, Charles Davis re-ferred to this self-service: The official church is racked with fear, insecurity and anxiety, with a consequent intolerance and lack of love. And what frustrates any effort at remedy is the perpetual dominance of the system over the person., the system always comes first. I would like to hope that I could become a different kind of religious, one who is seen as valuing the human person above any thing or system. I would like to be seen by those whom I serve as poor in material posses-sions, but rich in caring, unselfish as I serve them, and sometimes even a bit joyous in the sharing of myself: what I am and what I have as a Christ-person. This is the kind of witness that modern man needs and wants. He is terribly frustrated and unhappy with his accumulated wealth. He finds the things he possesses getting in the way of his relationships with the people he loves. And he does not know how to free himself. He needs people who can show him a new set of values and a new way of being with people. And finally, in regard to poverty, it is worthwhile re-calling that when Christ, after the miracle of Naim, was asked: "Are you the Messiah?" He responded not by pointing to the miracle of new life given to a dead man. Instead, He said: "Go and tell John what you see., the poor have the gospel preached to them." That was, and is still, the sign par excellence of the messianic liberator. It is the sign that shows people what Christ and His message are all about. Next let us examine obedience as a way of becoming free. I especially like Father Van Kaam's concept of obedience. It is taken from the root meaning of the word, "obaudire," which means "to hear." For me, obedience can be a wonderfully freeing thing when it is understood as a sensitive listening to the heartbeat of the Christian community. I think I would also add, a responsive and responsible listening. This means that those in authority and those under them have a need to listen to one an-other, to listen together to those they are committed to serve. It is responsive, and this implies a kind of generous spontaneity which is far removed from docile acceptance of an order. And it is responsible, which implies the recognition of an obligation that stems from a love com-mitment. For many the word obedience conjures up fantasies of force and control and restriction. How then can obedience be seen as a liberating force? I believe that one factor which can truly make obedience liberating is the factor of trust. The social and behavioral scientists have done con-siderable work in the area of authority relationships and they have discovered some interesting facts. They have found that when a climate of trust exists in a group, the people who are in positions of authority, are more re-laxed and do not feel a need to maintain tight kontrol and supervision. They are inclined to be open to sug-gestions for change. Those who are working for them tend to produce better and to assume responsibility for the welfare of the group as well as for the work they must do individually. One of the elements which Doctor Jack Gibb isolated in groups where authority relationships were poor was the attitude on the part of those in positions of leadership. These leaders held two assumptions regarding those who worked for them: that they were not to be trusted, and that they were irresponsible. Unfortunately, in many cases, these assumptions became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy which created the very conditions that man-agement sought to avoid. There may well be similar assumptions on the part of religious superiors. We have had a long heritage of pro-tectiveness, and it is hard to effectively break away frown these patterns. Undoubtedly the atmosphere of trust is much better now than it was ten years ago, but there most likely is still a great deal of work to be done in religious communities in this area. Our obedience can be lib-erating for us only when, together, we can begin to as-sume that we can be trusted and that we can be re-sponsible for ourselves. Paradoxical as it may sound, a person must be truly independent before he can surrender himself to another. Thus I, as a religious, must experience your trust and my own responsibility before I can surrender my needs and desires in such a way that together we can listen sensi-tively to the needs of the community we serve. It is then, and only then, that I can find it possible to accept a diffi-cult assignment or perform unpleasant tasks as a respon-sive and responsible lover. Doctor Carl Rogers has said that in order to be a really effective teacher a person must have a profound trust in the human organism and its potentialities. Otherwise he will cram the student full of all the information he thinks is good for him rather than help the student to learn what is important for him. Having worked with Doctor Rogers I can state that this is not mere theory for him; it is the way he functions with people. He pre- + + + The Counsels VOLUME 28, 1969 179 ÷ ÷ ÷ Andre Auw, C~P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS' fers to be gullible, to take people at face value, .and to believe the things they say to him. And oddly enough, people are so warmed by this kind of unconditional ac-ceptance that they soon stop telling lies and cease trying to impress. They find they no longer have to hide their refil feelings, and it is a very wonderful experience for them. By experiencing the trust of a loving person they were.able to begin to surrender a bit of themselves. I believe it is this kind of trust which is needed to transform our understanding of obedience. Obedience should not make us docile conformists, but responsible lovers. Today more than ever before we need a concept of obedience which will enable, us to assume responsi-bility for our actions and our lives. We need greater power to freely surrender our self-centered desires and needs. The example of Peter in the New Testament seems to be a striking illustration of the kind of obedience I am talking about. Peter began his authority relationship with Christ feeling very insecure. He made a great many mistakes, yet each time he did so, Christ confirmed him as a person by making him feel that He still trusted him. The peak experience for Peter came during the meet-ing with Christ outside the palace of the high priest. Peter, ashamed at his betrayal, finally found the courage to look at Christ, and that loving glance of the Master made Peter aware that Christ still believed in him, still trusted him. It was only after this that Peter felt secure enough to accept the responsible task of shepherding the flock for Christ. It was Christ's trust of Peter that made' possible the entrusting of the flock to him. And it was this same trust that transformed Peter into a re-sponsive and responsible lover. This is a way of being that modern man wants to dis-cover very badly. He finds it so hard to reach beyond the limits of his own ego. He is searching for someone who can show him an obedience which is an exercise of responsibility freely chosen, and yet something binding and demanding because that is the way of love. Modern man needs to experience this kind of trust-filled loving so that he too can become free to love. He wants to be able to say in the words of The Little Prince: "I am re-sponsible for my rose." That would be for him the state-ment of a truly obedient man, rejoicing in an obedience which is richly liberating. Finally we come to the vow of celibate love. I have chosen to discuss it under this title rather than that of chastity because I believe this best expresses, the real meaning o.f the vow. There has been so much written on celibacy in the past year that I iliad it difficult say something which will ,1 not be excessively redundant. Perhaps the best approach will be to share some of my reactions to recent articles that I have read. Frankly, I am not impressed byo being told that I am an eschatological sign because I am a celibate. I really do not think that the men and women who come in contact with me are go.ing to experience a love that. is redeeming simply by being aware that I can point to a way they will love one another in heaven. They need to know how to love here and now. I am not denying the theology of eschatological witness; I am saying that it is not a good enough reason to justify my be!ng a celibate. But perhaps the thing that disturbs me most about recent discussions on celibacy is the somewhat naive as-sumption that the celibate way of life "ex se" or. auto-matically will produce good results; that it will make us better lovers. Anyone who has worked closely with re-ligious in different communities 'knows that this simply is not an assumption based on fact. The fact is that we find it hard to be generous and warm lovers, in com-munity as well as out of community. And for me that is the very heart of the matter: being able to love others humanly, warmly. One of the most beautiful compliments that I.have re-ceived is a statement that has poignantly sad overtones: "You know you don't seem like a priest; you're so hu-man." What kind of celibacy is it that 'contributes to such an image? On the other hand I am equally disturbedby propo-nents of some undefined "third way," who speak so un-realistically of married love. Marriage can be just as de-humanizing as celibacy, as any counselor knows. Sexual expression :without sexual integration can be just as dev-astating for married persons as the lack of sexual expres, sion without-sexual integration can be for celibates. Neither marriage nor celibacy guarantees any(hing in the way of mature loving. However, both can be Ways of becoming free in order to grow as lovers. Both demand sexual integration as a prerequisite for personal fulfill-ment. And botl~ take a great deal of work and pain and perseverance and patience.' What then is there about the celibate .way of loving which can be for a religiousa liberating experience? First of all, I believe that celibacy, lovingly and. freely embraced, enabIes me to say to those I am committed to serve that I can love them in a way which is rich and deep and truly human, but in a way which is not demanding. And this is a magnificently freeingkind of awareness. It means that when I have accepted my sexuality and be-gun to integrate if, I can add another dimension to my VOLUME ~'St 2.969 "~, ; ISt 4, 4, Andre Auw, C.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 18~ relationships. I can show people what it means to love someone just ~for himself. Not for his usefulness or phys-ical attractiveness. Not for his fine mind or remarkable talents, but just for himself. I can show him a way of loving and living which inte-grates se~xuality in a way that is different from married people. "It is a way which recognizes the splendor of sexuality, but which at the same time chooses to refrain from sexual .expression. I can show this person how to love both men and women warmly and deeply, with tenderness and even affection, without the overriding fear of automatic sexual involvement. And this, I believe, is precisely the kind of loving that modern man is hungry for. He is very confused by his sexuality, and it has become for him the alpha and omega of his existence. Deep within him he senses that ful-fillment iiavolves more than sex, but he finds it hard to translate this vague inner feeling into the language of everyday living because he does not find enough lovers who think much differently from the way he does. Modern man can learn a great deal from a religious who appreciates his sexuality enough to give it just enough importance in his life, but no more than that. How much it can mean for the confused modern to experi-ence a love which accepts him not for anything he has, but only for what he is. This alone is enough to be redemptive for many men and women. It seems as if there is in the heart of man a yearning for the model lover who is strong enough in serf-mastery to be free to be a kind of savior for others. In the folklore of most nations and tribes there are redemptive figures who, most often, were celibates during the time of their inessianic mission. We have only to recall the mythical warriors of the Far East and of-Indian culture, the many versioned prince myths of the early Middle Ages, the knights of King Arthur, and even in our own coun-try, the man of the West, the hero of the desert and prairie. Let us think of this last figure [or a moment. In story and song he has been pictured as a man of great physi-cal and moral strength. But primarily he is a man on a redemptive mission, living only for others. He rides into a town, bringing his honesty and integrity. He is manly; but also gentle with women. He is compassion-ate toward the poor and helpless. He stamps out evil and plants the seeds of goodness and truth. He brings sal~cation to a village. And when his redemptive mission is accomplished, this celibate lover accepts the love that people can give him in return for his, but he never de-mands it. Then, 'his work finished, he rides of[ alone to anbther ~¢illage and other people who need his kind of loving in order to be redeemed, to be liberated. In a similar way the modern religious celibate ac-complishes his redemptive mission. What he really gives to others is a portion of his own gift of freedom. He too will have to "ride" alone, but only in the sense of not having a single exclusive love relationship. For as he grows in his own mature sense of .freedom he ,will 'be enriched by many deep and beautiful love relationships. And this too becomes a gift to be shared with others, the gift of knowing how to put love and sexuality into a splendid and yet practical perspective. The task of integrating these two elements is always a difficult one. But one insight is very important. A sister, during a weekend workshop with .married couples, ex-pressed it well. She said: "You know, before this Week-end I had planned to leave my religious community. But now, I'm not so sure. You see, I thought my problems were the problems of a celibate religious, and I dis-covered that they are the problems of a woman. I found married women with the same basic problems, and they are making better adjustments to. them than I have been doing." This is so very true. Most of our problems are ,not the result of our celibacy but of our humanness. Neither marriage nor sexual intercourse will resolve our ten-sions. These will be resolved when we learn how to be-come truly human and loving. Then it will be possible for the celibate way of life to be rewarding for us and redeeming for others. It is then that we can demonstrate to others a love that is most beautiful because it is least demanding. Celibacy will not automatically make us great lovers, but a lover who understands and values his celibacy can be a model lover for others, a lover who is free enough to be able to free others. Certainly it is this kind of loving that is needed so desperately today by modern man who no longer feels lovable or loved. It may well be that only when he .ex. periences such undemanding love will he be ~onvinced of the genuine value of Christ's love. It may be that he will be able to believe in the celibate lover of Calvary only after he has come to believe in other celibates who can surrender, as He did, one of the most priceless gifts that God has given them. Perhaps .then, when he sees us free enough to surrender our sexuality for his sake, he may come to believe that he really is worth sav-ing and that God does care about him after all. It is a knowledge that many men still seek when they come ih contact with celibate lovers. These, then, are some of my reflections on the vows as ways of becoming free. I would like to understand the vows as ways of enabling us to be free enough to make it possible for others to believe in themselves. I would.like ÷ ÷ ÷ The Counsels,~ . VOLUME' 28~' 1969" '° :. ,183 + to think that we can be free from the obsessive need to accumulate things, free to surrender ourselves to others, free to love deeply and warmly. And that is why I feel that we must seek new insights concerning the vows. A young high school student, talking, about religious life and the vows, was asked what kind of religious com-munity he would have if he were to start one tomorrow, The young man said: "Well; I don't think I would make them take any vows." But then he paused and reflected on that, and he added a sentence that sums up the whole meaning of the vows and the religious life. He said: "Unless it would be possible to take a vow., to love." If that were truly the spirit behind our vows, they would be, for us, ways of becoming free. Finally, it is well to remember that the way of the vows is the way of Christ Himself. It is the way of a man with a mission to set men free. And the men of Christ's time were not so very different from the men of our day: angry, restless, rebellious, indifferent, frightened, and insecure, yet searching for a Christ-person who would be their liberator. Christ walked into their midst, heard their cry, and showed them a way of life that was for them a way of freedom. He showed them how to be free~ from the de-humanizing demands of the law and tradition, free from the imprisoning fear of what people might say, free from the overconcern about food and power and sex. Christ showed them a way of poverty and obedience and celibate love. Today we, as .religious, stand in the place of Christ to continue His redemptive mission, to be His witnesses. If we can find better ways to be what we say we are, then we too can arise in the assembly and announce to the world that we also have been sent to "bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound." And hopefully, people will hear us not because of what we say, but because of what we are: witnesses. Perhaps the following lines spell that out for us in clearer language: A witness is A man who stands out Because he is not afraid to stand up A man who outreaches others Because he reaches out to other.s Andre Auw, C~P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 184 A man who lifts others up Because he bends down to their weakness A man whose heart has grown great Because he has learned to become small A witness is all this and more He is a man who walks across the wastelands Of human lives And uncovers hidden springs A man who opens windows everywhere To the sunlight and springtime fragrance Of the risen Christ And passing through the doors of seILfilled hearts He lights and leaves behind An everlasting flame Ultimately a witness is a man who does all these things Because He is not afraid To love. The CoUnsels VOLUME 28, 1969 I85 CARL J. PETER Culture and the Vocation Crisis Carl J. Peter teaches theology and lives at Curley Hall, Box 49; Cath-olic University of America in Wash-ington, D.C. 20017. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS A change has occurred in the way young men and women view the prospect of becoming a priest, lay brother, or nun. At the very least they manifest less en-thusiasm or inclination along these lines. One may ask when this began or indeed inquire whether it has not just begun. Few, I think, will challenge the proposition itself. This change of attitude is very definitely evidenced by those who have matriculated in the Catholic school sys-tem. One encounters it in the Mary and Johnny of whom but a few years back while they were still on the primary level in parochial schools, we asked why they could not read. All of this is true and will be conceded by those who regard the situation as healthy no less than by those who regard it as disastrous. Religious Convictions and the Young The change in question has causes that are closely connected with religious conviction or its lack. There is an obvious hesitancy on the part of youth, an unwilling-ness or an unreadiness to embrace as a state of life the ministry of the gospel in its traditional form. But it is a great oversimplification, I feel, to assign as a total ex-planation a weakening or loss of faith. In some cases, + precisely the opposite is true. + At least many of the young people involved are any- + thing other than lacking in generosity. Interest in im-proving the lot of tbeir fellow man characterizes their mental and emotional outlook. Here is where the diffi-culty lies. In ever increasing numbers they fail to see this humanitarian interest connected with the life of the priesthood, sisterhood, and brotherhood. One may contend that this is because of the present conditions in which these callings are lived and exercised, because, for example, so much of a priest's time and 18fi energy is spent in activities that have no apparent con- nection with the betterment of mankind or at least one that is very minimal. Devoting each Monday to counting the collection; running off the Sunday bulletin on the rectory or parish duplicator; keeping the books for the school hot lunch program--the instances could be multi-plied. Now it is surely a mistake to associate a priest's work exclusively with such activities. But to ask young people to ignore this aspect is expecting a bit too much. A large part of the problem with regard to vocations is that prospective candidates see too much activity on the part of the cleric or religious" too little connected with making mankind's future better than its past. Liturgy and a Life Choice But this is not all. Even in cultic functions associated with the administration of the sacraments, there is real difficulty. Whether humanity is genuinely better off be-cause of all this divine worship is a question posed over and over again. Here it is not a matter of poorly or sel-dom exercised functions of the priest but rather the im-portance pure and simple of such fimctions in the world at all. Many adults recognize this and conclude that the vocation crisis connected with such questioning is really a crisis of faith. My contention, however, is that at least some of these difficulties and doubts in the religious realm are caused by a cultural change that affects the entire world of man in all its facets. The crisis of vocations is connected often enough with a corresponding crisis of faith. This is not so much because many have simply ceased to believe but rather because the atmosphere in which they have grown up and live demands a choice between conflict-ing values, religious ones included. As a result, young people find it both harder to reject the latter outright and yet more difficult as well to embrace them fully. The reason is that our day is one of cultural transformation with all that this involves. If this is anything other than self-evident, it is nevertheless important. The Meaning of Cultural Change To make the statement that culture has a great deal to do with the unrest experienced by youth and indeed believers in general is hardly a novelty today. It is intro-duced into the present context with the hope that it will be more than a mere repetition. To achieve this will re-quire making an effort to clarify what is meant by cul-tural change. Only then will others be able to judge whether this is in fact what is taking place with profound religious consequences. Such explanation is precisely what is lacking in a number of other attempts to trace the believer's troubles to this same source. Vocation Crisis VOLUME 28, 1969 18'/ Carl .I. Peter REVIE%' FOR RELIGIOUS Examples may be of help. Leslie Dewart has con-nected the present plight Of Christianity with a retention of Hellenism or Hellenistic culture.x There is nothing to be gained from adding one more name to the list of critics of The Future of Belief.2 It is, however, a far from easy task to determine what he means by Hellenism. And yet this is quite important for his contention. Something very similar is true of Bishop John Robin-son. 8 He contends that the present difficulties of Chris-tianity are in great part connected with the fact that fundamental truths are being rejected wholesale because they are presented in a "supranaturalistic" mode of thought: The latter is surely a cultural phenomenon, but one that is extremely vague. It seems to involve a world picture with God outside the physical and psychic uni-verse but intervening now and again. To retain such a world picture, he writes, is incompatible with being a truly modern man. Meaningful truths fall under the weight of their utterly unacceptable trappings that bear witness to a dead culture. But here precisely is his problem. God, for Robinson, is not intended to be the product of a culture. Yet if one cannot tell what you mean by the latter, you do run the risk of having others hard pressed to determine whether you really stand for a God who endures despite a cultural change. At this point some are probably wondering whether it is not precisely a crisis o[ faith that must be dealt with. Perhaps it is. But to no small degree it is first of all a cultural crisis leaving its marks on all of us. Bishop Robinson may not have been successful in explaining what he means by a change of culture. He has never-theless described well the period in which we are living. It is the age of the overlap, the period in which some-thing very new is still in the process of emerging. Ours is a period of tension or dialectic. Hopefully a beneficial synthesis will be the outcome. One thing is sure; neither of the two extremes in the present picture culturally is likely to remain as is. Both are going to be modified and remarkably so. But it is the present state that must be analyzed, again with the observation that understanding what is happening is a first step toward dealing reason-ably and effectively with the situation. Good practice depends on an accurate assessment of what is involved. Dewart and Robinson call attention to the pangs in-volved in the change through which we are living. Both are agreed on this. An old culture is in the process 1 Leslie Dewart, The Future of Belie[ (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966). '-' See the remarks of Jaroslav Pelikan and Bernard J. F. Lonergan in Theological Studies, v. 28 (1967), pp. 352-6 and 336-51 respec-tively. s John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (London: SCM, 1963). of dying. It does not offer a form that religious belief will find viable in the future.4 In my opinion they are correct; the. cultural state we are now in cannot last. Indeed it takes no prophet to see that it will not. An-other thing is equally sure. Things will not revert to the way they were before all this began, whenever that was. The present situation makes that abundantly clear. Culture and Values Our age is.witnessing a remarkable conflict of values, and they are not directly religious in nature. At least they can be and are embraced by those who avowedly profess or practice no religion at all as well as by various types of believers in a Supreme Being. Now if this is true, it is also a prerequisite for understanding the cultural crisis of the present. For what 3[ mean by culture involves at0 the very least values and indeed a'more or less connected set of values. My contention is that we are living in a period of.history where there is a particularly fierce struggle between two opposing sets of purely human values. If some sort of synthesis is the most likely and desirable outcome, still, living in the overlap can be confusing. Two sets of values compete; each has something ~o be said for it, something to commend it. For many this is stimulating, but for no small number, ever increasing knowledge, acquaintance, and experience preclude, decisions on a clear course of action. In fact at times the result is paralysis or choices no sooner made than regretted, commitments given and then retracted. But if a convict of values can lead to these practical consequences, what sort of values are in question? The Good and Its Modes Getting things done or a sense of practical "know-how" has from the earliest days been a characteristic of our country. Indeed, it was very quickly identified ~with Yankees and their ingenuity. To put this another way, achievemerit and performance are values long esteemed by our society. And yet as ea'rly as the War between the States they were sought after in two radically opposed ¯ ways. Preservation of a heritage was the performance one section of the nation desired; improvement, refine. ment, elimination of defects and evils inspired the other. Concretely the value of performance, know-how, or achievement was realized in two conflicting ways. Given the question of freedom and human dign.ity, it is dear ~For a case along the same line but developed with heavy dependence on American Pragmatism as a philosophical basis, see Eugene Fontinell, "Religious Trtith in a Relational and Processive World," Cross Currents, v. 16 (1967), pp. 283-315. 4- 4- 4- ¥ocation Crisis VOLUME 28, ,196~ Carl ~ J.~ Peter REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 190 that a moral issue was at stake. But there were other as-pects as well; for instance, strict or loose construction of the Constitution. Both forms of interpretation were religiously' neutral if not secular. Both likewise had ref-erence to the value of performance. But the way the lat-ter was realized in North and South led to tension, strife, and conflict. The situation afterwards was never the same again. There is something in this history that repeats itself. Clinging to tradition and the progress achieved in the past claims the allegiance of certain minds and hearts. It is likely true that this will always be the case. Still others are no less moved by the desire to strike out and move ahead in man's endless effort to better his~lot on this planet. Education offers another example. The value of a teacher's performance is judged in terms of pedagogical goals. Some maintain the educator aims at handing on truth, with the supposition that humanity has already achieved it in a way that can be improved but never fundamentally surpassed. By instinct and. reasoned con-viction others look for the teacher or professor to en-gage together with the student in a quest for truth. The assumption is that there is always more worth looking for and in comparison with which the knowledge at-tained is partial and incomplete. Now neither of these attitudes toward pedagogical goals is directly religious. Neither is exclusively demanded by Catholic faith. But the adoption of either as a value has religious implica-tions. An illustration may be of assistance. A question arises that is new and demands some sort of response or answer. Before doing anything else, the man or woman influenced by the value of preserving truth will attempt to solve the present case by recourse to precedents. Only too often this involves making the present in its unique-ness conform, whether it really does or not, with norms that were established earlier but without the slightest intention of binding all future generations. The value of preserving truth and past achievements translates itself religiously into that of fidelity. If the past has no claim to direct our own religious history, then there was no uniqueness in the event we call the Incarnation. Then God has not involved Himself irrevocably and finally in the history of man long before 'our day. When one re-gards0 education as a process of passing on certain truths, he is predisposed to be concerned religiously with the fidelity of God and man. A cultural value, namely pi:eserving the accomplishments of the past, can and does have profound religious consequences in thought and action. But education can also be conceived of as performance involving an unending quest [or truth. In this case, when one makes the transposition to a religious level, the goal is a search for the God who even after revelation in Jesus is still a mystery and to know whom is really to be yet groping even when one gropes with the aid of infallible direction. St. Paul offers a good example of this. In his Epistle to the Romans he spends three chapters (9-11) studying the will of God as concretely realized in the plan of salvation for Gentile and Jew. Interpreting the hist6ry of his own day as God's saving providence, he obviously presupposes that man can .know the divine will. And yet he concludes with a hymn proclaiming "that no one realiy knows the mind of the Lord. All subsequent Christian theology has been an at-tempt to grapple with the great mystery that God remains even after He reveals Himself to man. His ways are mysterious and yet sure, free and yet faithful. To em-phasize one over the Other leads to a lopsided theology. But why would one be inclined to do this? The reason is clear enough. There is a tendency to do so, one deriving from culture today especially. That culture is complex; it evokes diverse responses, some calculated to preserve the truth and goodness that have already been achieved and others aimed at improving both in the future. The result is cultural tension with theological consequences of the first order. When a question arises on a religious or doctrinal level, for those inclined to revere the past it is not a matter of being faithful pure and simple. There is a cultural fac-tor inclining them to their position. Others are more ready to strike out [or the new and unknown. Here it is the mystery of God and His dealings with man that will enthrall them. What has been said of Him in the past, even in infallible "utterances, is true enough but insuffi-cient. Their great law is: "Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me." They do not wish to worship idols rather than the true God; and it is no less idolatrous to worship one's image of God than it is to adore wood, or stone, or precious metals. Here again, however, the inclination is not purely religious; it is cultural. These are the men and women who in any event are more moved by a goal that is worthwhile and possible than by achievements that are already a fact but with clear defects. ,4pplication to Present Conditions It is in the realm of attitudes that one must look for evidence of culture or values held in esteem or disrepute. Our culture involves an ambivalence of attitudes with regard to the present in its relation to the future. ÷ ÷ ÷ VOLUME 28° 1969 .!. ÷ Carl I. Peter REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 19~ Contemporary forms are generally considered inade-quate in the long run to meet humanity's needs of the near future. If one insists that this is not true in the religious sphere, youth is expected to assert that m6- rality and faith are somehow not part of the changing world. This is only too evidently false. It is also discourag-ing. If true, it would surely follow that from neither could man hope for much improvement. When the past is loved too much and present values, cherished too intensely, the inevitable result is that fewer and fewer young people will spend their lives ina performance directed to preserving it. This attitude has been wide-spread and is showing its effects. The cultural cry of more and more of the young is "On to the Future" by radical change of the present. Confronted with the evils man has injected into his world, they find an attractiveness in this value. That it conflicts with the former is obvious. That the result is confusion, tension, unease, unwillingness or inability to commit oneself fully to one or the other is not sur-prising. Neither value is directly religious. Each has religious implications and does sometimes presuppose a lessening or even loss of religious commitment. But to concentrate on this would be to try to cure a symptom. Our whole society knows it must change and change radically. And yet unless we learn from the past, from its successes as well as its failures, we shall grope with-out any guidelines or the slightest assurance that what we learn today will help tomorrow and not hinder, Man's leap forward came.from a spirit of adventure and a lack of willingness to be content with the status quo. This is true of man whether he professed a religion or not. Youth today knows it. They look for a willingness to take this risk in religion and its leaders. But they also realize that man's advance has been accompanied by a multiplication of evils in the form of wars, famine, and untold human suffering. It was paid for in the form of untold labor and often shortened life spans "of pioneers. Today many of them are asking whether progress at such a price and with such attendant evils is worth it after all. It is a question of values and attitudes. Not a few seem to choose neither content-ment with the past nor striving to improve the future, at least not by joining existing organizations to achieve this. In the sense of the two alternatives, they seem to be opting out as close to altogether as is possible. Among their eiders, those who cling to the past do so not wholly because of faith, and those who strive to ob-tain the improvement of the future surely are not so motivated solely because of basic religious conviction or its lack. It is in both cases a cultural response elicited by the world in which they live. To be cautious is a value; to be adventuresome no less so. Neither in itself is reli-gious. Those inclined to esteem the former expect it most of all in religion; those who prefer the latter look for it above all in the area of faith and faith-inspired life. There is a crisis all right, but one stemming fi:om a com-plex culture or set of opposing values, each of which has something to be said for it. How easy it would all be if it were otherwise. It would be a mistake to overlook this when considering the situation of young men and women choosing or living out a religious vocation. Maximum E~ciency versus Involvement There is another pair of values related to achievement. Is the latter the work of one or many? Some are loners and find it hard to be any other way. But today it is extremely difficult to stand alone in achievement. The individual source of inspiration, one overseer or director iqith the power to make decisions--this leads at times to unquestionably greater efficiency and permits the de-termination of responsible agents in various fields. For some this is still a most desirable good. Society needs the great man as leader; the Church, the truly independent bishop and pope. But for others worthwhile goals are achieved only in the close cooperation of many laboring in a basically similar frame of mind despite difficulties. This implies the initiative not only of the leader but of many cooperating and participating as fully as possible in the endeavor. Neither attitude is basically religious. This is again witnessed in the pedagogical order. Why do so many professors today have such trouble with classes when they employ the lecture system? The latter is surely not something religious or irreligious. Nor is it that professors lecture without the ability of their predecessors. And yet in ever increasing numbers, courses based solely on this method are being phased out be-cause they are not being heard or listened to. The teacher who simply lectures today has to be a lot better than one who did the same fifty years ago just to accomplish as much. The reason is simple. To such an approach there is opposition that is neither religious nor irreligious but rather cultural. It arises from the conviction that truth and other values are to be sought not solely or primarily through the energy of one man directing the receptivity of others but through the combined efforts of many. The planning of seminary curricula is taking note of this. So must the charting of course for a parish or diocese if they are to achieve their respective goals. To think that papal primacy, episcopal collegiality, or lay initiative will not be affected by this cultural factor is disastrous, especially in dealing with prospective vocations. If this ÷ ÷ ÷ Vocation Crisis VOLUME 28, ].9~9 Cad ]. Peter REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]94 is obviously hard for some to accept, it is important nonetheless. Achievements of the Paso Some men and women tend to concentrate on the good that has already been attained and are pleased with past efforts as well as optimistic about the state of the union, whatever union may be involved. Others view past achievements with guarded reserve or more often criti-cism, positive or negative. These are human attitudes not particularly connected with religion more than with politics or economics. But they do affect the way one re-gards formulations of Christian faith. Have the conciliar determinations helped or are they, though true, in their own way very limited? As regards present institutions, few adamantly deny they have accomplished some, indeed tremendous good. But what of the defects? They are pres-ent as well. Revelation does not direct attention to either exclusively. The way one evaluates other things will have a great deal of influence here. But that is clearly in the realm of rational attitudes more or less con-sciously adopted; namely, culture and not religion di-rectly as such. Analysis or Comprehensive View Is it the big picture or the details that are most im-portant? There is no divine law answering this. In terms of values, is it generality and simplicity in viewing a phenomenon as a whole or rather attention to its com-plexity that matters? Emphasis on the latter assures that whatever is said or decided today may well have to be modified tomorrow. Decisions taken may have to be reconsidered or retracted. Contrariwise one may aim at certain values that at least as goals do not change but are ever more closely approximated. The affective con-sequences of both approaches are clear enough. Com-mitments in the one frame of reference can hardly be irrevocable; in the other they can surely be so. On a practical religious level, are all decisions subject to re-call at will, for example, to the existence of a God, an after-life, the imperative of working to make life better [or others? Or are they simply the best one can give here and now? It is clear that conflicting cultural values have in this instance created tension in human life, not least of all in its religious sphere. Certainty and Conjecture To continue, is certainty a value above others, or is statistical probability all man can ~chieve in most in-stances? But certainty is popularly connected with hope.-- one does not hope unless convinced there is a good chance o~ getting or doing or being what is hoped for. And yet probability is likewise connected with hope; one does not hope for what is already a sure thing, somethingpr~deter-mined and open in no way to chance. To what does one aspire, the certain or the probable?. The Marxist experiences this. Should he hope for the classless society or not? If he does not because he feels that it is certain to come about, lethargy.will likely result. But if its appearance is not inevitable, his efforts alter all may be futile, all of which need not but may lead to despair. As to the Christian, must he hope that the divine kingdom come? If its advent cannot be frus-trated, what need to hope; if otherwise,, why hope when alter all sheer chance may reign supreme?. Antithetical Ideals I have tried to indicate certain human values in two connected sets. They deal with the practical, .the order o~ doing and achievement. Preservation of the past through the work of the leader who sees and inspires others to grasp the whole picture wi.th optimism c6upled with caution and deliberate pace regarding change--this is one set. And yet there is another in competition: the improvement o~ the future through the.cooperation o[ many in thought, action, and suffering, with attention to the manifold of details accompanied with criticism of past failures and a sense of urgency for future reme-dies. These interconnected values art both vying for man's acceptance at the present time. He has opted for neither. Confronted by them both, he is very often at a loss; now this and now that seems better. They affect the very depth of his being and yet are religious only in the sense of having to do with the meaning of life, a mean-ing he has to choose freely. Still his relations with or-ganized religion cannot but be affected by this tension, unrest, and hesitancy. Because religion is obviously con-nected with these values though by no means identical with them, he is probably as interested as at any time in his history with religion as an academic discipline but as disinclined as never before to see any religious organi-zation as offering a permanent way of life for himself. This has affected the attitude o~ many toward religious vocations in particular. In my opinion it justifies the proposition that the so-called vocation crisis is only indirectly a crisis of faith and directly one of culture. Religious Ministry in the Overlap More is called for today than detached analysis in this area. This is especially true in the case of those who are convinced that an increase in the number of religious vocations is o~ great importance for the Church and the 4- .4- 4- Vocation Crisis VOLUME 28, 1969 195 rest of humanity. As a result it may not be out of place to offer a number of suggestions. They will deal with atti-tudes that can be fostered with the aim of encouraging priestly and religious vocations during the period of the cultural overlap. First of all, in both of the competing sets of values, practical certainty is present and operative. The certainty of conviction makes men cling to the past; it drives others to strive for the future. This is certainty at least strong enough to be the guiding rationale and emo-tional factor for living a whole li~e. Too much certainty with regard to the past was an error. A great price has been paid for it. Today, youth is actually afraid of being certain and yet often paralyzed because uncertain. The man who strives for change is doing so only because of a practical conviction that striving is important, worth-while, possible, and not futile. In this sense, certainty is no more missing in him than in' his counterpart. If this impression can be conveyed to youth, the certainty of basic truths of faith will be less repellent. Secondly, another value found in both sets is persever-ance. It is because of a deep-rooted conviction that does not change that the men of science change hypotheses. A religious conviction once thought over and adopted need not shut a man off Lrom the way other men adopt in living. It should not make him closed. Indeed he can be open precisely because he has made a fundamental decision. No one is more closed than he who has made no decision at all regarding the meaning of life. Fre-quently such a man's desire to be open precludes his doing anything of lasting significance. To be con-temporary is not to be a Hamlet. To be ever ready to learn more regarding life's meaning is not to be ready to change one's mind because of simple discouragement or the realization that difficulties will in all likelihood never be completely removed. The applicability of this lesson to the realm of priestly and religious vocations is obvious. It will not, however, be grasped unless one re-calls that these are matters not merely of faith and revela-tion but also of culture. Carl 1. Peter REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS i JOSEPH E. MULLIGAN, s.J. The Religious Dimension of Human Love The current experimentation with various styles of religiou~ dress is certainly a welcome development in the post-conciliar Church. It is becoming clear to Cath-olics and non-Catholics alike that today's sister is very much a woman of the twentieth century, a woman con-secrated to God and united with Christ and at the very same time intensely concerned about the joys and problems, successes and failures of the present world. She is sensitive to the needs of modern men and women, open to new trends in human thought'(such as personal-ism and Christian existentialism)~ efficient in her use of modern means of serving humanity, and orientated to the near and distant future in her apostoli.c thinking. Au courant styles of religious dress do not insure that all this will be true of every sister who dons the new garb, but at the very least it can be said that the new fashions do not militate against the entirely proper "new image" now being created by today's sisters both young and old. Updated religious habits may even foster an interior aggiornamento where it is lacking or lagging; and where the Spirit has already begun to "renew the face of the earth" so that the love enkindled by Him can shine forth for all to see, the sister will welcome the external change as a true sign of the interior renewal which is under way. While the new fashions serve this purpose of bringing today's sister visibly into the twentieth century, they also serve to bring out the distinctly feminine quality of the Christian charity which fills her heart and inspires her life of service. This important point is receiving its due attention by psychologists, counselors, and theologians; here we need only mention the fact that the changes in the dress o[ religious women are closely associated with the emergence, in their own consciousness and in that of all the world, of their God-given and God-beloved ÷ ÷ ÷ Joseph Mulligan, &J., is a member of Bellarmine School of Theology; North Aurora, Illinois 6O542. VOLUME 28, 1969 ÷ Mulligan, $.1. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 198 femininity. How important it is that the feminine, ma-ternal dimension of the love of God, whom we always address as Father and whom we almost always think of in masculine terms, be incarnated and effectively com-municated to the human family. In this connection we readily recognize (it is not a question of "admitting," as if grudgingly) the truth of a point suggested by a famous psychologist: that in Christian piety a tender devotion to Mary fulfills a profound need of the human heart and soul, namely, to relate to a heavenly Mother. It is true, of course, that God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son manifest many of the qualities ordinarily associated with human mother-hood: tenderness, mercy, compassion, and above all, love which is given profusely without demanding a com-mensurate response. But it is Mary who, in the religious consciousness of the faithful, is the Mother par excellence, showering upon her children her maternal love and re-ceiving from them, often though not always, their love and trust in return. The religious woman has a position in the divine economy of salvation analogous to that of Mary. In the eminently feminine charity shown by the religious teacher, nurse, home missionary, and others, the human family can see and feel the maternal qualities of the boundless love of God for them. The sister can bring this love directly into the classroom, hospital, or home--and in this the sister can be more effective than Mary in com-municating the love of God to men. For Mary is present to her children only in times of prayer, and the experi-ence of her love requires faith; the sister can be present to the human family in all situations of life and in very concrete ways which are perfectly visible to "natural" eyes. Adaptations in dress, then, are worthwhile and valu-able in at least these two important respects: in placing sisters visibly in the midst of the twentieth century and in accentuating the distinctly feminine characteristics of their love and service to mankind. In most instances the adaptation of which we are speaking has taken the form of a reduction or lightening of the habit to the extent that some sisters have only a 'veil of some sort (or even less) as the external symbol of 'their consecration to God and their special union with Christ. This trend is entirely praiseworthy, as we have stated above. How-ever, the question soon arises about the necessity of re-taining any distinctive signs. Should. the nursing sister simply wear the same uni-form as that of her colleagues in the profession? Should the teaching sister wear a variety of styles readily oh, tainable at the downtown department store? Should the i home missionary don a smart and comfortable business woman's suit? In the opinion of this male observer, the answer is a qualified "no." This is undoubtedly the opin-ion of the vast majority of sisters: there is deep value in the external symbols of one's religious profession. Pre-cisely what forms these symbols should take in order that they be appropriate for our modern age'is a matter which will have to be handled largely through experi-mentation; developments to date have been in the right direction, but certainly not definitive (perhaps we should expect and accept constant adaptation in this matter, as in the liturgy). Though all agree on the necessity of retaining symbols, be they ever so "modernized," it may prove worthwhile to review one of the most substantial reasons for our insistence upon retaining externals of some sort. To this writer, one of the most cogent "arguments" for the existence and activity of God is the astounding love which breaks out (who can say how often?) in this world of ours. This love can be "astounding" even if it be only a kind word at the right time, a friendly "hello" offered in passing, or a thoughtful gesture only slightly out of the ordinary. The more dramatic or "heroic" act of love--such as the total personal commitment of marriage or of the religious life--is all the more revela-tory of the power of God operative in the hearts of men. Experience teaches us that there is something wonder-ful in a person who has risen above the childish and petty egocentrism which in various forms infects hu-manity. And in divine revelation we have a clear state-ment of the truth to which experience opens us: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Though this writer finds this train of thought most interesting and helpful, many in our modern world find it something less than immediately exciting. The con-nection between human love at its best and the power of God very often goes unnoticed. Deep, strong love (in many cases of a calibre worthy of imitation by many a nominal Christian) abounds in the heart and soul of a great number of men who consider themselves "atheists" or "agnostics" or "secular humanists" but who probably qualify as "anonymous Christians." We have good reasons as well as strong inclinations to consider these noble hu-man persons as brothers of Christ and sons of God, heirs of the same eternal life which we Christians hope to at-tain (see Mt 95:31--45). The modern man who is truly Christlike in his charity is surely a brother of Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is indeed the Spirit of Love. Such a person need only be brought to an explicit awareness of his true position before God. Whether this Human Love VOLUME 28, 1969 199 J. E. Mulligan, S.I. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 2O0 exp1icitation is absolutely necessary for salvation, is a theological question which we cannot take up here; that it is.desirable and beneficial for the person, that it is the will of God, and that it is the proper task of the mission-ary Church cannot be doubted. How then is the connection between great human love and the power of God to be drawn clearly in the minds of men? How will men of good will come to real-ize their true religious identity? Surely this wonderful moment of recognition can follow immediately upon a strong experience of being loved with a love surpassing the powers of our wounded human nature. Who can know the unsearchable ways of God, the ways in which He can make His presence known in the hearts of men? What we can know, however, is that God has estab-lished in His Church certain "ordinary" ways by which men should be able to see the connection of which we are speaking, that is, the religious context of all genuine human love. The liturgy, for instance, consists basically of ritual acts of human love, no less authentic for being ritual, set in an abundantly sacred context; the religious life as a visible institution is meant also to be a sign Of the intimate link between love and Love. The woman who loves her neighbor with a striking love and who clearly derives the sustenance for this extraordinary love from her union with God stands as a powerful sign of the connection with which we are concerned. The religious proclaims to the world that love, and especially continuing growth in love, depends upon our cooperation with the Spirit of Love whom Jesus Christ pours forth upon humanity, thereby accom-plishing the work of redemption. If this proclamation is to be effective, however, two elements must be safe-guarded and nurtured: the fraternal love must be sincere and genuine, or else it will strike no one and will fail to touch off the wonder which points to God; secondly, the person showing this genuine love must also show some clear sign of her relationship with God, or else her love will be viewed as nothing more than the highest flowering o[ the human spirit. A true combination of both these elements can be nothing short of overwhelming. The student will be deeply struck one day, perhaps far in the future, by the inestimable service given him by the sister in the seventh grade; and he will ask him-self whether her union with God, somehow manifest, might have had anything to do with her capacity to love so generously and so constantly. The patient in the hospital will find kindness and competent care in the person of the nursing sister at a time when he is most in need of these precious gifts; he will undoubtedly find himself wondering whether her slightly distinctive uni- form may signify a Power greater than herself gently assisting her human heart. The family in Appalachia or in one of our big city ghettoes, olSpressed and exploited by an unconcerned affluent society, will be touched by the "no strings attached" help given by the visiting sister; the family will see that this remarkable woman is in love with both God and them at the same time, as if the one love is identical with the other. This, then, is one reason (to this writer the most im-portant and most meaningful) for retaining some form of distinctive religious dress. By all means, let sisters continue to experiment with new styles in an attempt to find more appropriate twentieth century symbols of religious profession. Also, let sisters continue to try on new and appropriate fashions which will not bushel-basket that femininity which is absolutely essential for incarnating the love of God in all its breadth and beauty. However, for the reason which we have suggested in the latter part of this article and for other reasons which may be equally cogent, let us not throw out the baby (appropriate and necessary symbolism) with the bath (outmoded and "sexuality neutralizing" costumes). The religious must be in tune with the times, di.stinctly masculine or feminine, a living proof of the connection between true human love and the Spirit of Love. 4, VOLUME.28, 1969 201 THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. Biblical Concept of Virginal Love Thomas Dubay, S.M., teaches at Russell College; 2300 Adeline Drive; Burlingame, Cali-fornia 94010. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 202 Half an eye trained on recent ,religious thin.king in-forms one that a great deal of literature has appeared in the last decade on the psychology of loving in the Chris: tian context. For the most part this has been a praise-worthy effort to broaden the place and sharpen the orientation of human love within the ecclesial commu-nity; yet one still frequently finds considerable diver-gence of view among, religious men and women as to how the generally agreed upon norms are to be prac-ticed in concrete situations. We wish in this essay not simply to tread over worn terrain but to suggest some specifics, specifics stemming from Scripture and virgin-ity. We primarily envision religious women, although with some modifications what we say concerns men as well. Philosophical Roots Even though our main intent is Biblical and practical, we may preface our discussion with several philosophical considerations. In the long run practical solutions to knotty problems are no better than their (often merely assumed and unexpressed) theoretical substructure. At the same time speculation must always be in touch with experience, with concrete, here and now reality. Because she is a person, a human person, a feminine human person, the sister must love warmly. Her love must appear, be visible. Why? Because virginal love is incarnated, not angelic. It is human and a witness to humans. For a reason we shall point out later this is to say that it is affectionate. But because we are at the moment dealing with philosophy, not theology, we may leave the witness aside. Virginal love is incarnated and therefore affectionate because it is human love--steeped in supernatural moti-vation, of course, but still human. In fact, it cannot be anything else but' human. No being can act otherwise than as it is. We never expect a duck to perform as a camel. A woman can love only as a woman, a human being ot the feminine sex. Now human nature is in-carnated spirit, a dual reality, material-spiritual. Man is not monistic. Merleau-Ponty's negation ot a fundamental dualism in man is an oversimplification of human exist-ence. Man is not merely a body-subject, an I-body. The profound dualism in his sense-intellect knowing, to cite one example, is an irreducible pluralism that renders a human monism an inadequate explanation of available evidence. Human love, therefore, must also be dual,, it it is to be tully human and not something else. Like its source, the person, man's love must be rooted in spirit but shown through matter, conceived in soul but en-fleshed in body. Affectionate love is simply love incar-nated. It is a love that appears. One need not syllogize to its existence. As a daughter of Eve the religious woman does not loveproperly and fully until she loves affectionately. She is no exception to the roots of reality, no metaphysical oddity. She loves as she is. There is yet another reason why the virgin's love for 1hen is warm, composite, incarnated. It is a reason rooted in the deepest center of her being. She is good, a person good, and goodness tends to pour itself out. She is a social good, so she must pour herself out into others and receive these others back into herself. A woman (and a man, too, but not quite so pronouncedly) is never satis-fied until she loves. She cannot be satisfied unless she loves, for until she loves incarnatedly she is violating a law of being: goodness goes out; person goodness loves persons and shows it. This ontological factor works in the opposite direction as well. Because she is good and beautiful, the sister re-quires that her goodness and beauty be acknowledged, recognized in a way she can see and experience. To say this psychologically, she needs a strong self image, a self image she can derive only from others, from their appreciation and shown love. This is to say once again that deeply rooted in her human make-up is a need to receive affection. What we are implying, then, is that the religious woman's consecration does not exempt her from the laws of human nature or from the metaphysical structure ot the real. Scriptural Roots But still more must be said. There are supernatural reasons as well as natural ones tot saying that religious are to love warmly. Christian love is human love. It must therefore be affectionate. Shakespeare was pointing in the right direction when he observed that "they do Yirginal Love VOLUME ~'8, 1969 203 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 204 not love that do not show their love." x Christ himself was affectionate. He embraced children for no other verifiable reason than to love warmly and to show it. He "looked with love" on the rich young man, which is nothing other than to gaze affectionately. He wept at Lazarus' tomb, a remarkable display of feeling in a man. He who could fearlessly castigate the Pharisees could also correct Martha tenderly by repeating her name twice as a preface to his admonition. The letters of Paul, Peter, and John are replete with expressions of endearment and concern. Where could these originally rough men have learned this Christian way of loving if not from Christ? The Master had already made it clear that a Christian ¯ can be detected in the world by his observable love. Men are to see how we love, be struck by it, and con-clude from this sight who we are.2 Affectionate love can be seen. Cold or neutral love may not be noticed even when it is proved by deed., witness the merely efficient nurse. In any event merely willed love does not draw men as the Christian is to draw them. If the reli-gious is a gospel woman, she is an affectionate woman. She may be nothing else. Practical Implications So much for basic principles. They are plain, hardly subject to hot dispute. Not so, however, with concrete situations, problems, objections. Even a casual acquaint-ance with convent life makes clear that the whole area of close love relationships has been, and still often enough remains, subject to misunderstanding, to excess, to de-fect. One underestimates the complexities and depths of human nature if he believes that in this matter ~pecifics are as easy to handle as generalities. Because we think we recognize the difficulties inherent in our subject, our intent here is modest. We wish to propose some real questions and to suggest, for whatever value they may have, some honest answers. - How does a consecrated woman show a warm love in a manner appropriate to her state? Our first reaction to this question is to note that ordinarily a woman is a better judge of feminine warmth than a man is. And if she happens to be at the same time a holy woman, she knows by a kind of instinct how to love rightly. Yet a man may presume to suggest a few guides. Obviously enough, marks of affection vary greatly with the situa-tion of the recipient. A sister rightly embraces a first-grade boy who has fallen down the staircase, but she is The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1, Scene 2. Jn 13:M-5. likely to show her concern in another manner toward a twelfth-grader beset with a teenage problem. The New Testament offers many examples of what a holy, adult affection is like. There is the cordial, warm greeting,8 the holy kiss,4 the affectionate embrace,~ the loving gaze,n a warmth of manner in speech,r a kindly gentleness in the face of a brother's faults,s a tenderness and love in correcting others,9 a deep interest in the in-dividual and his concerns,1° an openness to all,ix a com-forting of those in trial and sorrowA~ Peter sums it all up in saying that our love is to be sincere and intense.~3 A prayerful study of these texts and many others like them will disclose to mogt of us that we have a long way to go before we love as Christians are supposed to love. Because the virgin is a model of evangelical life, she may not be anything but affectionate. The program of how this is to be done is plain enough in the Gosp.els and Epistles. She will find its implementation a lifetime task. She ma~ find it helpful to, work at this task in her par-ticular examen, taking as her specific guides one Scrip-tural theme or text at a time. Doing this she cannot help becoming a lovable woman. Is there not danger to chastity in this warm love? Yes, of course, there is danger, just as there is danger in the pursuance of any good, even the spiritual goods of the intellect. But one may not always solve "excess prob-lems" by removing the possibility of excess through a radical uprooting of the good. When the Master re-flected on the risk of worldliness in His apostles, He did not meet the problem by shutting off the possibility. Rather He explicity declared that they were to remain in the dangerous situation, in the world, but were to be kept free from being tainted by it.14 It is interesting, too, ~hat nowhere (as far as we can find) does the New Testa-ment indicate a concern about the dangers found in a holy affection. Perhaps the reason is that the genuine SRom 1:7; 16:3-16; 1 Cor 16:19; Phil 4:21-3; Col 4:7-18. ~Lk 15:20; Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Th 5:26; I Pt 4:14. ~ Mk 10:16; Acts 20:37-8. ~ Mk 10:21. ~Rom I:11; 1 Cor 4:17; 15:58; 16:24; 2 Cor 7:~,I~; 10:I; Phil 1:7-8; 4:1; 1 Th 2:7-8,20; ~:1-7; 1 Tm 1:2; 1 Jn 2:1,7,12,14,18,28; ~ Jn 1,5,11; Jude ~,20. s Eph 4:2,~2; 2 Tim 2:24-5; 1 Pt 3:8-9. ~ Lk 10:41; 1 Cor 4:14; 2 Cor 2:4-8; Gal 6:1; Col ~:12-~. xo 1 Cor 12:26; 2 Cor 12:14-5; Phil 2:17-8; 1 Th 2:11. ~x 2 Cor 6:11-3. ~2 Cor 1:3-4; 7:6-7; 1~:11; £ph 6:22; Col 2:1-2; 1 Th 5:11; 2 Tim 1:16; Phlm 20. xs I Pt 1:22. :~Jn 17:14-7: "They are not oI the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not pray that thou take them out of the world, but that thou keep them ~rom evil." ¥irglnal Love VOLUME 28, 1969 205 ÷ ÷ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 206 man of God and the holy virgin know plainly enough-- because their honesty bares the deceitful motive--why really they are affectionate and how their love is ap-propriately shown. Warm affection is risky for the fool-ish virgin, the worldly virgin, but not for the wise and prayerful one. On the contrary, for the latter this kind of sisterly love protects and fosters her dedicated chastity: "Everyone should remember--superiors especially--that chastity has stronger safeguards in a community when true fraternal love thrives among its members." ~g If a sister is a woman of deep contemplative prayer, we need have little fear that her warm love for others will pose any proximate danger to her purity or to theirs. If she is not a prayerful woman, the opposite may well be the case. May a sister [oster a close [riendship with a priest or layman? At the outset of this article we already im-plied our affirmative reaction to this question. The ex-ample of Christ's love for Martha and Mary and that of the saints for persons of the opposite sex (for example, Teresa and Gratian, Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal) demand this affirmative response. And so does com-mon sense. Sexual love neither is co-terminous with geni-tal- sexual love nor requires it. The sexes are comple-mentary not only on the physical level but also on the emotional, intellectual, volitional, and supernatural lev-els. an The fact that the consecrated woman benefits from masculine influences (such as teaching, spiritual direc-tion) in her formation (and do not men profit £rom feminine influences in theirs?) suggests that she may grow as a religious woman through friendship with a man. Now all of this is being said with increasing frequency both in print and in private conference. But something else has also to be said. And it is rarely said. That this kind of close friendship be advisable demands conditions and qualifications. Not any apparently good male-female relationship may be said to correspond to that of Teresa and Gratian or Francis and Jane. We have already in-dicated what some of these qualifications are. Most of us would agree that a sister should show a sincere warmth toward all men and women, but we are not agreed as to what overdemonstrativeness may be. For our part we cannot share the view that embracing is a suitable sign of affection between religious persons of the opposite sexes. The current multiplication of tragedy that scan-dalizes the faithful and ruins consecrated lives plainly ~ Vatican II, Decree on Religious LiIe, n. 12. ~ See Chapter 3 of von Hildebrand's Man and Woman for a help-ful explanation of this complementarity. shows how naive this view really is. Some people learn only by personal disaster that they are like the rest of men. A propensity toward physical demonstrativeness suggests strongly that the friendship is not on the high-est supernatural level, that it is not thoroughly immersed in God, in a mutually deep prayer life. Unreasonably frequent or protracted conversations and deliberate ro-mantic daydreaming likewise cause one to wonder whether there is question of the love of the Holy Spirit. The virgin is concerned with the things of the Lord that she may be holy in body and in spirit and that she may .pray without distraction. In our view that priest or sister ~s naive who feels that long and frequent visits, kissing and embracing are conductive to the love of the Chris-tian virgin. If this is what "the third way" means, there is no third way. Even aside from the obvious.question of chastity, one may wonder regarding this type of relation-ship how intently the religious can be concerned with the things of the Lord, how deeply she can be committed to her life of contemplation and apostolic action. From the positive point of view a sister may rest as-sured that her love is fully virginal if the thought of the other suggests to her mind the thought of God; if the relationship really helps her to a deeper prayer life, a perfect observance of her rule, an evangelical spirit of detachment, a more profound loyalty to her own vir-ginal vocation and to the members of her own commu-nity, a ~niversal warmth toward others; if their con-versation or correspondence is concerned mainly with God and His affairs. If these norms for virginal love are correct, one may speculate that this sort of friendship is not at all as common as may be supposed. Is affectionate love compatible with the detachment demanded by the New Testament? Twenty years ago many of us would have returned an unhesitatingly nega; tive answer to this question or we would have at least felt inclined to such an answer. Today we more easily understand that warm love and evangelical detachment are reconcilable, although not too many are able to bar. monize new psychology with old spirituality. The prob-lem here, of course, is not a clash between oldness and newness but between sound psychology and twisted spir-ituality. Both affectionate love and gospel austerity are as valid today as they ever were, for the New Testament plainly teaches both of them over and over again. The simplistic mind is uncomfortable with complex dualities and it seeks to resolve a paradox by denying one pole of it. Two decades ago it was common to deny that warmly shown love was proper in a religious, while today it is popular to say that detachment is passd. Yet the New Testament teaches both the .one and the ÷ ÷ ÷ Virginal VOLUME 28~ 1969' " ÷ ÷ Thomas l~bay REVIEW FOP. RELIGIOUS 208 other. It is the same Christ who demands that we re-nounce all things (Lk 14:33) and who embraces children warmly (Mk 10:16). The same John teaches that we must die like grain buried in the ground (Jn 12:24-5) and yet deals with the recipient~ of his first letter with remark-able terms of endearment (1 Jn 2, passim). The first letter of Peter warns against "selfish passions" (1 Pt 2:11), encourages a joy in sufferings (4:12-3) and at the same time urges intense brotherly love shown with a "kiss of love" (1:22; 5:14). The same Paul who cautions against superfluities and himself has nothing (1 Tim 6:7-8; 2 Cor 6:10) also loves his Christians with the warmth and tenderness of a deeply affectionate father (passim). Nowhere in the new revelation do we read the least hint of a clash. Why? Simply because affectionate love is by no means the same as selfish love. On the contrary, it is often a crucifying love. Showing affection to an attractive person is a delight, to a dull or cold individual it is a thorn. Moreover--and this is important and not always under-stood-- we should not see a dichotomy between loving God wholly and our neighbor warmly. Even less should we suppose an opposition. Precisely because Christian love is both one and incarnated but with several objects (God, ourselves, angels, neighbor), it must be warmly shown. This is why St. Paul looked upon the Romans as "God's beloved" (1:7). Because they were God's dear ones, they necessarily became Paul's dear ones in a virile yet intimate sense. Unshown love is a partial self-contradiction. We find this same warm affection in the most austere and detached of God's saints, for they knew what affectionate love and genuine detachment really mean. They did not live by caricature. One need only read the correspondence of an Augustine, a John Chrys-ostom, a Teresa of Avila, a Francis de Sales to see what we mean, Even John of the Cross (andwho could be remotely tempted to conceive him as lacking in detach-ment?), a man short on words but long on deeds, is said to have walked 30 or 40 miles barefooted to visit his warmly loved nuns at Beas. What we are saying, of course, is by no means opposed to the traditional detach-ment doctrine of these same saints. There is a certain in-tellectual snobbery implied in the suggestion one hears today that the goodness and value of love between the sexes, even between religious, is quite a new discovery unknown to our elders in the faith. And there is no little theological inadequacy implied in thinking that this kind of love somehow rules out an integral evangel-ical asceticism. How does One become affectionate? This apparently naive question is really a worthwhile question, one that is susceptible of several interpretations: How does a sister acquire a warm manner toward unattractive personali-ties? How does one love affectionately who feels no warmth toward anyone? How does a person deepen a warm manner she already possesses to some extent, yet not sufficiently? We shall take up each problem in turn. First, how can a sister who does love some people warmly acquire a warmth toward others whom she finds unappealing? If a woman (or man) can love some per-sons warmly and deeply, her problem is motivational, not psychological, when she is cold toward others. Ba-sically she is capable of full human love, since as a matter of fact she does love humanly the few people that appeal to her. But she does not see that the others are also lova-ble and so she is not at all inclined to go out toward them. She needs to develop a largeness of heart, an op-timism of viewpoint that searches out beauty and good-ness, the largeness and optimism of St, Paul who saw enough beauty and goodness in his new (but far from perfect) Christians that he could view them as "God's beloved." If God loves a man, that man must somehow be lovable. It is our task to find out how. The warmth is then easier to come by. Yet it is not come. by without a concomitant spirit of sacrifice. If affection is to be shown toall men and not only to a select few,~the cross of self-denial must indeed be taken up daily. Otherwise we can-not be disciples, if the mark of a disciple is a love men can see and experience. A more perplexing problem (for the person who ex-periences it) is a total lack of affectionate feeling toward others. The problem is not only perplexing; it is likely to be both deep and of long standing. Its roots go back in most cases to an early home life in which little warm love was shown. Though the adult devoid of affection-ate feelings may say she needs neither manifestations of love from others nor her own showing of it to them, she is nevertheless a psychologically starved person. She may not understand what has happened to her, but she has built walls about her person. She is encapsuled. She is dying a death. She is in a state of psychological famine, dying of lovelessness. What can be done for this person who does not know how to love humanly and in a feminine manner? She may need professional therapy. She surely" needs a friend, a close friend. She needs understanding and ac-ceptance. She needs to learn that she is worthwhile, lovable. When she is accepted, understood, loved suffi-ciently, she will slowly become capable of returning love, of warming up to others. But the process is slow. All concerned with her problem need patience, herself included. + + + VOLUME 28, 1969 209 ÷ ÷ Thomas Duba~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 210 We may pause here to insist that the deeply felt need (even in a sister) to love and to be loved is no imperfec-tion. On the contrary, the deeper the need, the nobler the woman. It is the person who feels no need that is ill, for she is affectionately numb. On the physical level loss of appetite indicates illness, while hunger points to health and the consumption of vital energy. So also a hunger for love, real love, points toward psychological well-being, for deeply hidden in the recesses of the hu-man person is .the ontological clamor that goodness and beauty be recognized by another's love. Our final question: how does a religious who can and does love warmly develop and deepen her capacity for virginal affection? She must be herself, of course. She must grow normally as a woman with all the inner richness this implies. Genuine love is rooted. It cannot grow from the surface, from an inner vacuum. From the point of view of how this love is to be manifested the sister learns how a Christian virgin loves warmly by ob-serving those among her companions who do know how. Yet affection is not as easily taught as table manners. There is a universality about its signs, but there is also the uniquencess of the individual, and what is more unique than personal love? Still, a sister should be able to learn from the more finely developed among her companions how the consecrated woman shows her love for men. She learns, too, from her inborn reactions toward the opposite sex. Probably one reason why God made the sexes mutually attractive is that men and women learn from mutual relations how to show concern, warmth, cordiality toward members of their own sex. A normal, woman finds that affability toward men comes more naturally and easily than toward women. (And this is surely true also in the case of the man toward women.) Even though she does not show marks of love toward other women in exactly the same ways as toward men, she should learn much from the latter expe.riences, stemming as they do from her inborn feminine inclina-tion. Heterosexual love (which is not, of course, co-ter-ruinous with genital-sexual love), we may then say, is a partial model of human love in general. It is therefore a model for the virgin also, for she remains a sexual being with all the qualities and beauties this implies. The sister further develops her affectionate manner by a careful and prayerful contemplation of the gospel. After she has diligently studied her Christ embracing children for no other reason but to show warmth in His love, "looking with love" (a mysterious phrase) on a rich youth, correcting Martha in so gentle and tender a man-ner, weeping at Lazarus' tomb, she turns for further guidance to John, Peter, and especially to Paul. The letters of these virile (and before their conversion, crude) men are replete with examples of how to show affection in an adult manner. As an evangelical woman the sister should be filled with their spirit and practice. The final source from which the religious learns to love warmly: contemplation, deep contemplation, es-pecially infused contemplation. It is no accident that St. Paul reminds his Thessalonians that they "have learned from God to love one another" (1 Th 4:9). There is no better teacher of warmth and tenderness than He who could utter the divine verse recorded by Luke: "While he [a sinner] was still a long way off, his hther saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly" (Jerusalem Bible). One cannot get more affectionate than this. In the profound center of her own being where Love is more present to her womanly heart than she herself is the sister can find out how to be a loving woman. Though her indwelling Beloved teaches without words, He pours out from her deepest center the very love by Which she loves Him and others. Through the tenderness of His inner infusions she tastes and sees how good He is. She learns from experience that those who seek the Lord want for no good thing. Her good is to take refuge in the Lord she bears in her bosom and from Him she discovers what tenderness is like. So true is it that the contemplative learns from her inabiding Beloved how to be a lover herself, that we would suspect as inauthentic any alleged contemplation that is not accompanied by a warm love for others, or, at the very least, by a sincere, persevering effort in that direction. Contemplation cannot be walled in, aseptic, sterile. By its own inner dynamism, a vertical and horizontal en. ergy, it must burst out into love for men. Together with the instruction of Sacred Scripture and the love flowing out of the sacraments contemplation is the source of deep human love. All of which is to say that the sister must be a Scriptural woman, an ecclesia1 woman, a contemplative woman, if she is going to be a profoundly loving woman. 4. 4. VOLUME 28, 1969 PLACID STROIK, O.F.M. Sanctification and Conquest in the World With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land that we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own (JFK's Inaugural Address, January 1961). Once active faith in God's presence in the world takes hold of a man it begins to give direction to his actions. Not only does God's work really become his own, but also his work becomes the work of God. It is also a fact of experience that as things are it is impossible [or God to Work in this world without us. Very often we speak of God's great gifts to us "and all His marvelous works for us. At the same time we fail to realize the vast interplay and amount of work God has put into our hands to bring these gifts and works to their full development. Just as it is theologically incor-rect and misleading to expect salvation and sanctifica-tion through purely human effort, so also it is misleading to expect salvation even as a gift to come to us without. our effort of respgnse and acceptanc.e of this gift. It is much worse and also very unchristian to think that our faith with its heavy stress on another world and on be-coming holy has somehow absolved us from effort in building this world. ÷ Reconciling Upward and Forward ElYorts Pladd Stroik, O.F.M., is a mem-ber o[ the Francis. can Friars; Pulaski, Wisconsin 54162., ' REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 212 Historically it has always been a problem for followers of Christ to somehow bring together the vertical upward effort of sanctification and the horizontal forward effort of human progress and the conquest of the world. Over and over again the questions have been asked: Are they in opposition to each other? Is one just an acciden-tal backdrop to the other? Is there any inner connection between the two? In our present day these questions are extremely fundamental and are at the basis for much of the rethinking and turmoil going on in our religious doctrines and practices. Theologians as well as scientists are fast becoming aware of man's ability in the conquest of nature, the wor!d, and human life itself. This is beginning to put traditional religious ideas out of business. At one time, God, faith, the supernatural, and grace explained a lot of what happens around us. But now, man seems to get more answers and assurance out of things like space exploration, industrial and technical development, and human relations skills. As men put more and more ef-fort into understanding and controlling the universe we touch, see, and hear everyday, there is the conclusion developing that religious ideals and ideas no longer have a place in human life. The simple reasser.tion that God is alive and that He is important is not as convincing nor attractive as a heart transplant or a flight to the moon. That simply will not do. What is needed is a fresh outlook toward the way in which the process of becoming holy is somehow harmoniously interwoven with the human effort exerted in the direction of un-derstanding, building up, and controlling this universe. Such a fresh outlook will demand that we first of all get rid of all our false notions: about God and the world being in opposition to each other; about the supernatural being the best and the natural something that is second best or a mere accidental prelude to the supernatural; about the "afterlife" .being the sole im-portant thing and "nowlife" being a burdensome punish-ment. For many of us this also means trying to under-stand the correct way in which this present earthly life is a preparation for an open direct life with God. It means realizing that the universe is not some accidental stage play wherein what we do or what we build is meaningless unless we did it with a good intention and for the glory of God. What is required is the under-standing that the final coming of. Christ, just as His first coming, is conditioned by the development of man-kind. Because the full glory of Christ is intimately hound up with mankind it is also dependent upon the development of mankind. While the establishment of the new heavens and new earth spoken of in the Apoca-lypse is something Christ alone can bring about, it does not mean that they will appear out of the clear blue sky. Rather the unification that is evidently taking place among mankind seems to warrant the idea that until this unification is complete the entrance of the new heaven and new earth will not take place. The unification of mankind is not some kind of arbi-trary arrangement of individuals. It is in a very deep sense'th+ union brought about by the power and force of ÷ ÷ Conquest in World VOLUME 28, 1969 PlacidSOtt.Foi.lM~., REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS love which is everywhere at work in the world. It is the same power which was at work on the first day of creation and is at work in the technological develop-ment of the world. It operates also in the specifically sanctifying deeds of the Incarnation, redemption, and their extensions, the sacraments. It is here that we can see the close connection between sanctification and de-velopment of the world. They are two efforts working in the same direction--the unification ~of mankind. Sanctification without the development of the world is unthinkable, just as development of the world without the painful redemptive efforts displayed and symbolized on the cross is an impossibility. The development of the world could not take place unless the effort to get rid of evil and disorganization were made as.well as the effort to see that truth, goodness, and beauty triumph. Sanctification must involve human endeavor and the op-eration of those powers which make a person to be a person, namely, his will, intelligence, and consciousness. As men use these powers in building up the world they are likewise working at their own unification. In this way the upward movement of becoming holy like God takes place while the forward movement of develop-ment of the universe is also taking place. The work of God and the work of man are constantly interchanging. We are not only becoming like God thru our work, but our work is more and more revealing God to us. Far from being in opposition, God's work of sanctification and man's work of building the universe are seen as two sides of the same coin or two paths to the same goal and destination. The sacred and the secular are closer to each other than we realize. Sanctification and Unification of the World It seems to be an unavoidable conclusion based pri-marily on man's experience .that the universe has been in a dynamic process of development and that the develop-ment is still going on. Looked at in its broadest sense, this development is best described as fulfilling the incompleteness of the creature and bringing organiza-tion and harmony to the disorder, failure, and disunity found at every level of created .being. Another way of looking at this is to think in terms of.°getting rid.of the evil, both moral and physical, that accounts for mechanical failures as well as the failures of the human will to choose the good. On this level we can see sanctification and unification working on the same broad principle. Sanctification is directed to furthering the God-centered harmonious functioning of man's powers of intellect, will, and consciousness, while unifi-cation is directed to an increasing organization of .the physical elements of the universe. In both the moral and physical sphere, mankind has had to wait for the proper time and the proper understanding of how these parts can better function together. Between the two processes of sanctification and,unifi-cation there is an exchange and an interdependence. For one thing, the harmonious functioning of man on the moral and spiritual level is obviously tied to a proper development of the physical well-being of the body. It does not guarantee good order on the moral level, but it is a condition. Health and wealth at a certain level are indispensable. We all know and experience that forced poverty has a way of crippling man's judgement of right and wrong, his sense of justice, and his esteem for his neighbor's welfare. Further, we should consider how the spread of the gospel, the development of moral value systems, and the knowledge of the sacramental means of sanctification are all dependent upon the proper use of mass communi-cations and upon a proper understanding of human re-lations and the difl~erent cultural values of a given group. On the other hand, sanctification and specifically Christian holiness and man's moral value systems as they develop and improve do assert a controlling effect on the direction and expression of physical evolution and technological advancement. For a very common ex-ample we can take the peaceful uses of nuclear energy which the moral values of nations are bringing about. Endeavor and Endurance for the Christian Today Because of the close interplay between the develop-ment of the .world and man's union with God, any religious ethic that separates the two is doomed not only to be unattractive but eventually will be proved to be erroneous. A legal morality of do's and don't's must give way to a dynamic morality of conquest. The pro-gram for a Christian today must be one that envisions union with God in and thru the world. In attaining this union, it is fundamental for Chris-tians to accept and understand that the universe by God's plan has been locked dead center on Christ. The world as we know it is headed toward Christ as its center and fullness. Every development both of material growth and spiritual growth is aimed at building up a new heaven and new earth, centered in Christ. In this conquest, the Christian consciously and all men by their very existence are called to collaborate enthusiastically, knowing that by their fidelity and obedience and also thru the work they have accomplished, they are com-pleting this universe. Each person must sincerely work at development. His + + ÷ Conquest in the World VOLUME 28, 1969 O~.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS own personal development and the conquest of the world are to be done not simply to keep oneself busy and out of trouble but because this effort is vital to the building up of the universe. All effort that promotes and directly increases the general consciousness of mankind is the best effort. The highest moral principles guiding hu-man action are not those which protect and safeguard man's rights and duties, but those Which promote the best development of the person, society, and the world. In other words, those things which are in the direction of growth of the spirit of man are good, and what is best is that what assures the highest development of the spiritual powers of the earth. If our action furthers the unification and development of the world and the peo-ple in it, it is a good action. The question comes up as to how we can determine if our action furthers growth. Basically our general goal is to increase personal responsibility, freedom, and hu-man consciousness. This is not an easy order, and that is "why emphasis must be placed on the three charac-teristics of human endeavor that will allow for the de-velopment of human consciousness and personal re-sponsibility: Purity, charity, and self-denial are three basic strengths which provide for the necessary growth. When speaking of purity it is important to under-stand it in a dynamic sense, not in any passive restrictive sense. Purity is that power which seeks to organize all our personal energies along the lines of personal whole-ness and integrity--getting rid of those elements in us which tend to pull our forces in a thousand disorganized directions. In unifying the powers of man, purity brings about a conquest and achievement which frees the person for an ever greater expression of the power of love. Purity seeks the unification of the person, while charity is directed to the unification of persons among themselves. For many of us love or charity is simply a command to avoid hurting our neighbor or overstep-ping his rights. This is a rather narrow, negative view of charity. It fails to take in the dynamic element of active furthering of the growth of our neighbor and of the whole universe. Love as energy in its widest sense is the power which draws all things together. It has a synthesizing effect. Love when it takes on the form of Christian charity is all the more powerful because it is the effort of unification, but now in Christ and thru Christ. Charity inspired by Christ is charity which moves and advances mankind and the whole universe toward Him. In the final analysis, love is not only positive and dynamic, but universal and totally directed to building up the world into a unity in Christ. For the Christian who is sincerely interested in the true progress and development of the world, the mes-sage of the cross in terms of self-denial, detachment, and renunciation is as important as seeing a computer operate an assembly line and a turbine generator light a city. He knows and experiences the detachment that must go into an enthusiastic collaboration with the whole human effort in furthering the growth of the world toward the fullness of Christ. In accomplishing any ideal, the difficult labor involved is necessarily a victory over selfishness and egotistical laziness. This detachment thru .action on the material of life is a continuation of and is patterned on the method ex-pressed in the Incarnation--immersion and insertion into the world so as to transform and lead the world to God. But experience shows us that the most radical trans-formation of people and things takes place not thru a simple laborious effort to create and produce but thru the endurance of evils and failures, stresses and painful strains including that of death. A world that is still in the process of development must of necessity have fail-ures and faults for the simple reason that it is not com-plete. Thru the plan of God and man's cooperation, the failures can be brought to serve a higher purpose. Even the impurity in a stone can be made to add beauty and tone to the final product. A moral defect thru the trans-formation of repentance can be the occasion of a greater good. All of the suffering involved in the endurance of evil and that of death has for its final aim the union of man with God in and thru Christ. Such union cannot take place without a going out of oneself. Union revolves around love and love means giving oneself to the one loved. Death in our world is the process by which the final and complete union with God is accomplished. It is the decentering of our self and centering on God. This involves a change of state, but in all development at a certain point a complete rearrangement of elements is necessary for the further functioning on a higher level. The significance of Christ's necessary death and His new form of life after it is a fact of history which is able to give validity and assurance to all men that death is not the end of all but the door to a change of life. Contemporary Man and the Future It is easy enough for modem man to exert the effort to build a new world if the dangers and ris~ are not too great. The vast development of the world which we are now experiencing is not an absolute guarantee that man's progress will always be forward and upward. The 4- ÷ .Conquest in the VOLUME 28, 1969 " 217 temptation to revolt in the face of great odds and diffi-culties is as possible as it ever was. As man becomes more complex and his consciousness more highly developed, the possibilities for further progress are just as good as the possibilities for destruction. It all depends how man chooses to use his powers--in the direction of greater growth in true Christian life or in selfish temporary satisfaction. The urgency to get out of oneself and build a better world for all men is not a call to be answered later. The forces involved in a developing universe are forces that are centered in Christ and ultimately in God the Father. Christ's invitation to be with Him and gather or else to be against Him and scatter is both a promise and a threat that either we build with Him or be cast aside into unending disorganization and disunity. Heaven and hell are as real as they are totally opposite each other. Heaven is full of life in perfect harmony. Hell is empty life in total discord. Man at every point in history must simply choose to build the earth and its spiritual forces in and with Christ or to build a "nothing" out-side Him. + 4. + P/~id O.F.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS CARLO A. WEBER, S.J. The Field oJ Combat: Neurotic or Existential Guilt There is no domain in which the acute problem of communication between theology and psychology is more evident than in the experience of guilt. Stormy en-counters on the nature and origins of the experience, its place in human development, its effects on human lives wage on without much hope of resolution, largely because the language, the symbols, and the context of the discussion are not the same for all the contestants. The field of combat is common to all; but the rules of the game are not ~he same. A split-level mode of com-munication has prevailed. Jung remarked of this en-counter that " . both appear to use the same language, but the language calls up in their minds two totally different fields of association. Both [theologians and psychologists] can apparently use the same concept, and then are bound to acknowledge to their amazement that they are speaking of two different things." And to make the issue even more complex, one can add the profes-sional legalist to the lists. For from yet another stance, the lawyer is also concerned with problems of guilt. The experience of guilt, then, is the common playing field for theologians, psychologists, lawyers. But for each, it means whatever the methodological conditioning of his own discipline obliges it to mean. For the moral theologian, it has generally suggested reprehensibility, culpability, blame-worthiness, sin. For the lawyer, it means, specifically, responsibility before the law, civil or ecclesiastical, or criminality as determined by legal can-ons. And for the psychologist, in sharp contrast, it im-plies rather a first-level symptom, the crippling expres-sion of a depreciating self-concept, perhaps the residue of a super-ego-oriented childhood training. + 4- ,I, Carlo A. Weber, S,J., is Director o[ Psychological Serv-ices; Loyola Univer-sity of Los Angeles; Los Angeles, Cali-fornia 90045. VOLUME 28, 1969 219 Carlo Weber, $.l. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 220 When the discussants in the dialogue use the same word to denote such utterly different things, communica-tion soon dissolves into futile bickering over semantics. Guilt is sin; guilt is crime; guilt is symptom. The vocal sounds one hears in the dialogue alert the same signals; but the phenomena signalized are in no way the same. In such a conversation of nonmeanings, a fruitless and frus-trating collision course is inevitable. It is like approach-ing a railroad crossing without the slightest assurance that the waving semaphore symbolizes an approaching train or an unimpeded right-of-way. One would be better off without the semaphore in such a case; and so we might be better off without the word "guilt." The "guilt-language," as the "God-language" in many instances, or the "soul-language," oi other similar efforts at non-communication might best be scrapped, that we might attempt an uncluttered look at the phenomenological realities and then allow a new language to emerge to fit the reality. Orwell's "New-speak," or Cattell's crypto-scientific system of operational definitions in psycho-metrics may, however wild they first seem, be something of the answer. We might well avoid the confusion that always arises from previous connotations to a word by introducing entirely different sound associations. The present state of affairs, then, is largely one in which the language of guilt tends to divide authorities rather than to aid communication between them. When the psychologist hears his legal associate describe a man's guilt in court and watches him step nimbly through what appears to be a maze of legal fictions, he finds the process frightfully objective, abstract, impersonal, inhuman. But the lawyer is not really describing the psychologist's "guilt." The theologian is properly horri-fied, on the other hand, when he hears the psychologist's attempts to gloss over the reality of guilt and speak of it as some neurotic myth. This, to him, is a form of "psy-chologizing"-- foggy, anarchic, and sentimental. But the psychologist is not, in fact, describing the theologian's "guilt" either; indeed, if he is loyal to his methodology, he has nothing to say of it. One could, of course, con-tinue with this litany of misunderstanding; the cross-cultural impasses are possibly as evident as the semantic circus of an international diplomatic conference. Though it may be next to impossible to draw meaning from this semantic labyrinth, we are, nonetheless, stuck with it. It is of value to note that within the verbal en-tente, orientations which have traditionally set the con-testants apart do emerge. It may be helpful to try to clarify them. For the psychologist, guilt is strictly a sub-jective phenomenon, a feeling, if you will, that can be-come almost the pervasive element of one's inner experi- ence. The psychologist, as such, is little concerned about the external, objective counterpart of the experience. His world, as a clinician, is the perceptual world, not pre-cisely the accuracy of the percepts. Whether one's feeling of guilt, therefore, is rooted in anti-social actions, or in an interiorized, guilt-ridden self-concept is not pre-cisely the point. It is now the individual's feeling; and the psychologist deals with it as such. He also realizes that the intensity of the experience is not necessarily in proportion to the quality of an external action or event. One individual may experience crushing guilt subsequent to running a red light at a deserted intersection; another may remain blandly guilt-free after bludgeoning a harm-less old lady's skull. Such a feeling of guilt is clearly not the function of some specific external action; but it is rather the correlate and the expression of his own inner awareness of his value, or rather the lack of it. The inner awareness is the point of differentiation for the psycholo-gist. For both the moral theologian and the lawyer, however, there is an objective emphasis in the philosophy of guilt. An objective norm which has been violated is the criterion according to which one assesses guilt. That norm, of course, is not the same for both. For the lawyer, it is the civil or common law. For the moralist, it is the "will of God," expressed either through canon law, or the magisterium of a teaching Church, or the Sacred Books, or the natural law. But in each case, the norm is an external one; and guilt is the function of a violation of that norm. Once that has been established, the legalist can turn his atten-tion to the degree of individual-culpability, for example, knowledge of the existence of the norm, consciousness at the moment of violation, presence or absence of over-whelming emotional or physical duress, and so forth. So long as we can reasonably assume some subject-ob-ject dichotomy, these two arrangements appear to be quite different. The moral theologian and the lawyer, both with their own specific articulation of the norm of behavior, regard guilt as the individual's posture be-fore the law; the psychologist sees it more as the individ-ual's posture before himself. That there is room for an overlapping of these dimensions is as true as the fact that the subject-object dichotomy is not crystal clear; but, with that qualification, the criteria are different, and so also are the semantic worlds built around the two points of view. Unfortunately, the tradition of morality in the West has been heavily legal since the days when the Latin rite was imposed on the Western Church. And with the Latin rite came the Roman tradition which was one of law and legal prescriptions. The language and the emphasis of Guilt VOLUME 28, 1969 Carlo Weber, $.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 222 the Western Church, when addressing itself to questions of mor~ility and guilt, has been on the side of law. Moral textbooks became classic examples of legal casu-istry. Room was always left, to be sure, for the "subjec-tive," as preserved in the distinction between formal and material sin; but the bulk of any discussion inevi-tably turned about a consideration of the objective or material guilt. Scarcely more than a condescending nod was given to the presence of the subjective element as the final determinant of sinfulness, with something of a begrudging acknowledgement that that aspect, after all, was the most important. But no effort at all was ex-pended, until very recent times, in attempting to provide some phenomenological map of the subjective. Perhaps the futility of that prospect obliged the moralists to turn their attention to the legal puzzle that was, after all, more intellectually satisfying and a good deal more comfort-able. One would suggest, mindful of the discussions swirling about Pope Paul's encyclical, Humanae vitae, that it is clear that the legal emphasis is still the pre[ vailing attitude of the official Church. The rupture within the Church is precisely a function of the person versus Law approaches to morality and guilt. When the law becomes the criterion for human be-havior, the stage is set for casuistic thinking :about morality. This implies a mental "set" in which one is concerned chiefly with the degree of deviation from the norm. How far, for example, can I deviate from the statement of the law and still be safe? Or, at what point of deviation do I stray from the area of safety to the do-main in which I must be classified as a sinner, if it be a moral law, or a criminal, if it be a civil law? Legal guilt is the consequence of straying outside the latitude which the law allows. In that area the legalo-moralist conducts his conceptual jousting. Only recently have attempts been made to bring about a wedding of the law and the personal in the various modes of situational ethics. And this, of course, is both the effect of the communion of psychologists and theologians and a stimulating rein-forcement for it. The norm becomes more an ideal which one strives to approach continuously throughout his life rather than a law from which one deviates. Neurotic Guilt The genesis of neurotic guilt, as described by the psychopathologist, follows a commonly described nuclear process that was most brilliantly outlined originally by Karen Horney. There are four discernible stages. The process begins with a faulty personality development in childhood. The child, whose first self-concept, as such, is the result of the interiorization of the value placed upon him by his parents, sees himself as those significant people in his life see him. If the child is rejected, un-wanted, ignored, neglected, he begins at an .early stage in psychological development to see himself as unworthy, unlovable. This is a fairly obvious situation and need not be explored at any length. The rejected child anticipates rejection' from others because that is the extent of his experience; and he can, in gross instances, unconsciously provoke rejection by hostile, abrasive conduct, precisely because of this expected response pattern. Such a child is almost bound to "always hurt the one he loves." At the other extreme of parental reaction, the child can be overprotected in his early years. The result is the absence of any process of growth into independence. The custo-dial love of the parent prevents the possibility of growth, and the child remains weak, helpless, dependent. In terms of the growth of a self-concept, the child will tend to see himself in the same manner and behave as such. No one is unfamiliar with the suffocating, devouring, .de-structive mother-child relationship, described first by Strecker, who coined the phrases "Morn" and "Mom-ism" in his classic, Their Mothers" Sons. The notion has become virtually a household word since, made even more popular with the expression of theories of a bur-geoning matriarchal society. Interestingly enough, the effect on the self-concept of the child of both rejection and overprotection is ap-proximately the same. These are simply two sides of the same coin. In either case, the child is not being valued for himself. The rejected child is not loved at all; the overprotected child is not loved, except as the mirror reflection of the mother, whose narcissistic needs are pro-jected on him. In both instances, the child disappears. This is also true, but not to the same extent, in the situa-tion where the parents' love for the child is conditional. The child is loved providing he follows certain ground rules established by the parents. Ground rules are essen-tial, of course, but they ought not to be the condition for acceptance. If they are, the child sees himself as valuable and lovable only as long as he continues to ful-fill the regulations for being loved. He ,must continue to perform the tasks prescribed; and, in time, the task-oriented process becomes a way of life. Whether the child is rejected, overprotected or conditionally-loved, the effect, in varying degrees, is the same. The child perceives him-self as inadequate, unlovable, helpless, or constantly in need of proving his value. The moral analogue to the psychological feeling of ineptness or inadequacy is the feeling of guilt. The latter is merely a translation 'of the same feeling from psycho-logical language to moral language. To say, in a psycho-÷ ÷ 4- Guilt VOLUME 28, 1969 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS logical context;.that I am weak, flaccid,, incompetent, un-lovable is the same as saying, in a moral context, I am bad, sinful, guilty. The difference here between the neu-rotic guilt and genuine forms of responsible guilt lies in the difference between the phrase "I am bad" and the statement "I do bad things." The former is a description of the basic personality of the self-depreciating neurotic; the latter a description of occasional activity. The most apt expression of the neurotic guilt feeling was given me, quite incidentally, by a woman patient, who was in-credibly scrupulous. For her, every action was a sin. In a therapy session, she remarked, rather in passing: "You know, sin is in my veins." And with this cryptic obser-vation, she sums it all up. "Sin, badness, is as much a part of me as my very blood. It describes my life, my being, my essence, as it were. And since I am, in es-sence, sinful, every action, which, in fact, is an expres-sion of my nature, must be sinful. I shall either discover it there, as the scrupulou

Issue 31.6 of the Review for Religious, 1972. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, S.J. QUESTIONS ANI) ANSWERS EDI'I'OR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editor, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be .sen.t to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Build-ing; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S,].; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by I~dculty members of the School of I)ivinity of St. Louis University. the editorial offices beihg located at 612 Humboldt Bnilding; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright © 1972 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Printed in U.S.A. ¯ Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.25. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year, $11.00 for two years; other countries: $7.00 a year. $13.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or r~encwal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U.S.A. cur-rency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Renewals and new subscriptions should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Manuscripts, editori-al correspondence, and books for review shonld be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 tlumboldt Building; 539 North (;rand Boule-yard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of the Questions and Answers editor. NOVEMBER 1972 VOLUME 31 NUMBER 6 CAttAL BRENI)AN DALY, D.D. Prayer in the Modern World [Cahal Brendan Daly, D.D., is the Bishop of Ardagh and lives at Bishop's House; St. Michael's; Longford, Ireland. The article was a lecture at the Carmelite College; Castlemartyr, County Cork and was first published in Mount Carmel, Spring 1972, pp. 204-12; Summer 19"72, pp. 23-35. The article is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editor of Mount Carmel. ] In the New Testament we not only find the example of prayer given us by Our Divine Lord, and the discipline of prayer as it existed in the first Christian community, but we find above all a theology of prayer. In fact, we find the whole message and mission of our Lord Himself presented to us in a context of prayer. The New Testament is, if you like, a whole theology of prayer. It is usual nowadays in modern theology to speak of Christ as the Man for others, and of course He certainly is; but we must not forget that before and above all else Christ is the Man for the Father. Christ is the Adorer of the Father; and it is only then and because of this that He is the Man for others. This is reflected in the commandments given by our divine Lord Himself in the form: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God" - this is the first commandment; the second, like to it indeed, but nevertheless, second to it, is the commandment to love our neighbor. In an age of horizontalism we do not need to remember this. But there is a crisis of prayer at the present time. It is a crisis, I think, which goes deeper than prayer, affecting faith itself. The contemporary religious crisis is one that involves our very sense of God, the reality of His transcendent Being, and of our relationship with Him. It could hardly be denied, l am afraid that through a one-sided emphasis on this-worldly values, we may be neglecting the direct service of the wholly Other who is God - the rights of man perhaps coming to rival, if not eclipse, in our consciousness, the rights and claims of God. But surely the first thing required of a People of God is "Godliness" - the sense of God which that untranslatable old English word "Godliness" conveys. Worship is God's "Worthship," our acknowledgement of what God is worth, it is our avowal that God is worth a lifetime of our praise, and admiration and adoration, and service and thanks - our attempt to pay tribute to the "worthness" of God. Is the crisis of prayer not just the obverse side of a decline in this recognition of God's "worthship"? But there are several prevalent themes of modern discussion which are contributing, I think, to the modern crisis of prayer. It is suggested, for example, that prayer should be spontaneous and not rule-regulated; that it should be communitarian rather than individual; that it can take the form of a dialogue and service among our fellow men, rather than of silent personal converse with God. The Bishop of Woolwich Perhaps one of the best known exponents of some of these themes is the former 902 Review fox Religious, Volume 31, 197216 Bishop of Woolwich, above all in his book Honest to God. This has a chapter on prayer - a chapter which contains many beautiful and profound things, including as I remember it, the opening sentence which is that "Prayer and Ethics are the two sides of one and the same coin." This I think is a very profound thought, that Christian morality is simply our prayer applied to living and our living is our prayer carried out in act. There are other helpful thoughts as well in that chapter. But the general thrust of the Bishop of Woolwich's thinking is away from the idea of personal withdrawal and aloneness with God: away from the contemplative aspect of prayer at least, to prayer as engagement, prayer as involvement, as dialogue and as service. The Bishop would, I think, regret having to withdraw from the world and the neighbor into what he might be tempted to call the ghetto of aloneness in order to pray. He would prefer to find God and to serve Him and to worship Him in the neighbor, in dialogue and service with the neighbor. Now this of course is excellent, but nevertheless one needs to ask some questions about this. It seems to me that some very penetrating questions have been put to the Bishop about this by a fellow Anglican called Martin Thornton in a little book, which is very impressive to my mind, called TheRock and theRiver. In this book, Martin Thornton remarks that while reading Honest to God,and, above all, this chapter on prayer, he finds himself on practically every page, scribbling in the margin cryptic letters "Y.B.H." and he said almost certainly if his books were being looked over after his death by his executors (or anyone else) they would wonder what on earth "Y.B.H." could mean, but he tells us that they mean "YES, BUT HOW?" The point that he wants to make is that it is magnificent to be able to find God in our neighbor; it is wonderful to be able to be conscious of the presence of God in the neighbor, and to be conscious of the presence of the adorable God in our work, in our apostolate, in whatever. It is possible, but very difficult. How are we going to arrive there? Then Martin Thornton goes on (because he is himself a specialist of the spiritual life, and of the history of mystical theology), to remind us that this is in fact what traditional spiritual writers called habitual recollection or the habitual sense of the presence of God. But, he said, you will find that the saints and the great doctors of prayer have all of them warned us that this is a culmination, a climax of the spiritual effort. It is what mystical writers and saints might hope to arrive at and to achieve fitfully and partially at the end of years and years of disciplined effort. Whereas he fears the Bishop of Woolwich thinks that anyone can do this at the drop of a hat. He says that this is too naive by half- it just does not happen that way. Spontaneity and Discipline The title that Mr. Thornton gives to his book, The Rock and the River, is deliberately symbolic. The river for him is the spontaneity of prayer - the habitual sense of the presence of God always, not requiring certain periods set apart for it, but coming spontaneously and naturally in the course of doing other things. This for him, spontaneity, is represented by the river - the river of the continuous novelty and joy of the finding of God. But the river flows from the rock - a deep Biblical theme - and the rock is fidelity; the rock is constancy; the rock is the discipline of fidelity and constancy in our relations with the constant and faithful God. He insists that all experience, including our own, will tell us that unless we practice this discipline, which Mr. Thornton calls the Rule, the Regula, and unless we are faithful to that discipline, we won't have the spontaneity either. By the regula, he is referring in a general way to the rules of disciplined prayer that have Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 903 been left to us in all the great spiritual traditions and religious families. Surely he is faithful to human pyschology and pedagogy in that insistence. Surely in this as in any other spiritual domain spontaneity does not come naturally, it doesn't just happen - spontaneity is acquired. If you want to acquire spontaneity in your practice and your love of music, you've got to go through the hard monotonous humdrum discipline of practice. If you do, but only if you do, then you will eventually arrive at an informed but spontaneous enjoyment of music. So it is surely with any other human skill. Spontaneity is acquired by discipline. We should not contrast the spontaneity with the discipline. Similarly it is only at the price of disciplined, controlled and persistent prayer life that we will arrive at habitual recollection, or have joy in the moments of our prayer. The Example of Jesus This is true, as I said, psychologically; it is true pedagogically. But what is much more important is to approach this problem of prayer from the standpoint of the New Testament itself, and what it tells us about the practice of our divine Lord Himself, and the insights it gives us into the place of prayer in the life of Christ and in the life of the Christian. A careful study of Christ's own personal prayer life in the Gospels shows that He adhered strictly to a daily discipline of rule-regulated prayer. The rules were precisely those prevailing in contemporary Jewish piety; but Christ deepened and extended their observance as he did with every detail of Jewish religious practice. Every pious Jew, for example, in Jesus' time recited the Shema, or the Jewish creed, first thing on waking and last thing before sleeping. The words are based on Deuteronomy: "The Lord our God is the one Lord - you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength." Jesus observed this custom faithfully as did all his disciples. For instance, when the rich young man asked our Lord "What must 1 do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus had only to remind him of the prayer he said that morning. This is what He does in fact when He says to him: "What is written in the law? How do you recite this?" (because the Jew normally recited his prayers aloud). Our Lord was simply asking him: "Do you remember your morning prayer? Do you remember what you said this morning?" This practice of morning and night prayer was regarded as an absolute minimum of religious practice and it is significant that in Jewish thought to omit morning and night prayer would be, in effect, to cut oneself off from the religious community. It was a minimum of recognition of God, a minimum of witness to the transcendence of God, without which one could not be regarded as a member of the praying community, the priestly community, which was the People of God. The pious Jew was further obliged to pray at least six times every day, and this of course is the basis of the Breviary, the Office, the Prayer of the Church, with its afternoon and evening hours. The many references that we find in the Gospels to Jesus' prayer are to be understood in relation to this rule of prayer. When Jesus impresses on the disciples the need to pray continually and never to lose heart, he is not referring, strictly speaking, to acquiring the sense of the habitual presence of God. The word "continually" has a technical meaning. Our Lord is referring to the regular, disciplined, rule-regulated periods of prayer in the course of the day; what He is requiring of them is faithfulness to the daily discipline of fixed times and rules of daily prayer. It is interesting that it is in that very same paragraph of St. Luke's Gospel that Jesus so poignantly asks "When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith upon the earth?" a question which challenges every one of us always, but 904 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 above all now at this time of crisis. It seems to follow from this conjunction that to find faith on earth, according to the teaching of the Gospel, is one and the same thing as to find persevering prayer on the earth. It is also full of deep significance that each single one of Jesus' answers to the temptations of the devil are taken from the Biblical prayer-formulae prescribed for the daily prayer of the Jews. Every one of them is part of what one might call a domestic or personal liturgy of the pious Jew. The lesson surely is that prayer is our defense against the temptations which the devil continually brings against our faith. The Jewish Practice of Prayer We have in recent years had tremendous new light shed upon the prayer life of our Lord from a somewhat unexpected source - a Jew who knows very well the cultural tradition of the Jewish people. That is to say, it has been brought to public attention, because this man I am going to refer to has been of course depending a great deal on the research of more primary scholars. He is himself a more popular writer, but nevertheless one of impressive stature. He is a French Jew called Robert Aron; and he has written a number of books based on his knowledge of Jewish tradition and Jewish religious practice, to illuminate for us the pages of the Gospel. His two best-known books are: Les annbes obscures de Jksus (The Hidden Years of Jesus) and Ainsi priait J~sus Enfant (This ls how the Boy Jesus Prayed). Both are published by Grasset. Now Aron has shown how the whole life of the devout Jew in Jesus' time was saturated with prayer. One of the interesting quotations he gives us from Jewish tradition is: "Whoever enjoys anything whatever in this world without first saying a prayer commits an untruthfulness." The prayer or blessing which preceded and which followed every important act of the day would have been taught to Jesus as a child by His holy Mother and would have been part of His whole human religious psychology. The Apostles were faithful to Jesus' example and to His precepts. The Acts of the Apostles frequently referred to the observance of the fixed hours of daily prayer. St. Paul again and again talks of praying continually, praying without ceasing, praying day and night, praying always. He urges his converts to keep praying, to be "persevering in your prayers." Again I repeat, St. Paul is not talking about habitual recollection. He is talking about fixed and undeviating hours and rules of prayer. What he is urging in all these passages is fidelity to the regular hours of prayer. Indeed the whole of the day was, as I have just said, consecrated for the faithful Jew by prayer; there were prayers of thanksgiving or blessings to accompany every action, function, and happening, whether of work, leisure, or recreation, in everyday life. We know from the Gospels how Jesus observed these blessings, these prayers before and after meals, before journeys, before arrivals, before seasons, before preaching or teaching, before acts of healing, miracles, and so on. St. Paul followed His example when he bids us to be always and everywhere giving thanks to God who is our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a certain disaffection now from prayer of this kind, from the practice, for example, of blessings before and after meals, before and after journeys and undertakings; but it is salutary to remember that it came directly from Christ our Lord Himself. Of course it certainly is not part of the essence of our faith that we observe a particular set of fixed rules of prayer. Many of you know that this insistence could and sometimes did become a sort of legalism and a sort of spiritual burden which hindered rather than helped progress in prayer. One can bind heavy and insupportable burdens in this matter of devotions, trimmings, added to essential Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 9O5 liturgical prayer. Nevertheless, it is vital that there should be recalls of the presence of God in the course of one's day, and that in the course of one's life there should be moments of withdrawal from human contacts in order to be alone with God. This I think is absolutely fundamental in Christian life, both from psychological and from deeply theological reasons. Here again the contrast between spontaneity and regulation has been exaggerated and the contrast between love and law in this, as in many other spheres, has been overdone. After all, love creates its own self-imposed laws; and in any sphere you like to take of human relationships, you can easily see this. The man who says he is too busy earning money for his family, or for his wife or fiancee, to have any time to recall her birthday, or to remember her anniversaries, or to think of giving her a present, would be a humbug. Love is made of thoughtfulnesses of this kind. Love is the willing acceptance, the joyful acceptance, of certain patterns of conduct, which manifest our fidelity and which make our love to be real rather than just verbal. Law is the expression of love, and when it is, it is no longer felt as law, it is no longer felt as a burden. This perhaps is why some prayer practices became burdens, because they could not be assimilated into one's love of God. Nevertheless that there should be time for this withdrawal is indispensable, to remember what life is about, and what we are here for, to remember that we are a People of God. Those of us who are committed to the following, the exclusive following of Christ, have special need for these regular moments of intensive recall of who it is that we have chosen, or rather, who He is who has chosen us. Prayer and Eschatology A very meaningful contemporary way of expressing this is to say that these moments of withdrawal are necessary in order to give us an eschatological dimension, an awareness of what it is to be waiting for the Lord to come in glory. Schillebeeckx has some very interesting remarks in his book on celibacy. He suggests that the deepest meaning of celibacy is that a man who is really waiting for the Lord to come in glory has not time to be bothered with all the distractions and so on that are necessary to have a courtship and a marriage and to look after a family. He is too completely absorbed in the thought of the coming of the Lord and in the need of preparedness for the coming Lord to be bothered with anything else but the affairs of the kingdom. This 1 think is a very valid phenomenonological and existentialist explanation of the meaning and the relevance of celibacy. In passing, Schillebeeckx remarks, and 1 think that this too is profound, that this in fact is the basis of the Church's practice of fasting and of self-denial generally. Someone who is really intensely, excitedly waiting for a tremendous event to break through can't think of anything else, he can't think of eating, he doesn't even feel hungry. The Church, knowing that as an eschatological community we ought to have this feeling of excited waiting, on tip-toe of expectation for this great thing to break through, adopts the external behavior-pattern (e.g. not eating)which corresponds to the inner feeling. If we were really waiting for something important to happen, or for someone really loved to come, we couldn't be bothered to be hungry. The Church feels that we can as it were invert the process, induce the appropriate feeling by adopting the relevant behavior. Now it seems to me that in a similar way fixed times and moments of awareness of God are indispensable if we are to have the mentality of a people of faith, of a people of hope, of a people constantly aware that we have not here a lasting kingdom, but we seek one that is to come in Christ, "who is, who was, and who is to come." 9O6 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 Jesus, however, was not content with the rule-regulated prayer of the Jews; He deepened it, and He stressed the need for personal commitment rather than conformity, and for interior sincerity rather than routine. Jesus reinforced the rules, but He wrote them on the heart rather than as the Pharisees did on the palm and the forehead. You will remember what seems to us the incredible foolishness of the Pharisees in taking the words of Deuteronomy literally. Deuteronomy says: "You are to write this law on the palm of your hand and carry it perpetually before your eyes so that you shall never waking or sleeping, forget this law." The Pharisees did just that; they wrote sentences of the Law out on bits of paper and carried them in the palms of their hands and wrote them out on a phylactery, and carried it in front of their eyes and thought that this was carrying out the Law. But Jesus wanted the rules to be written on the heart, to be assimilated into our lives, rather than carried out legalistically. He told us therefore to pray to the Father in secret. Jesus' Solitary Prayer Jesus also extended the fixed hours of prayer, turning the regular evening prayer of the Jews into night-long vigils ending only with the dawn. The Gospels are at pains deliberately to emphasize that these were vigils of solitary prayer. The Gospels make a special point of remarking that Jesus left the crowds behind even when they needed Him, even when they clamored for Him and followed pathetically after Him, looking for His help and His healing. Jesus deliberately turned His back on people that needed Him, in order to be alone with His Father - this we must never forget. Here is how St. Mark described it: "That evening after sunset, they brought to Him all who were sick and those who were possessed by devils; the whole town came crowding around the door. In the morning, long before dawn, He got up and He left the house and He went off to a lonely place, and He prayed there. Simon and his companions set out in search of Him. When they found Him they said 'Everybody is looking for you.' " Later, St. Mark continues, after the miracle of the loaves, He Himself sent the crowds away, after saying good-bye to them: "He went off into the hills to pray, and about the fourth watch of the night, He came to His disciples." This was about 3 to 6 a.m. He came to His disciples after hours of vigil, hours of solitary prayer alone by night. "He came to them walking on the water." St. Luke is even more explicit. St. Luke says: "I-Iis reputation continued to grow, and large crowds would gather to hear him, and to have their sicknesses cured, but he would always go off to some place where he could be alone and pray." Not just once, not just a few times, but regularly, habitually, he would "always" go off "to some place where He could be alone and pray." Again, St. Luke writes: "He went out to the hills to pray and He spent the whole night in prayer to God." This was before the vocation, the calling of the disciples. "When day came, he summoned his disciples and he picked out twelve of them and called them Apostles." It is not fanciful, it is theologically accurate, to say that the vocation of each one of us was involved in that vocation of the twelve, for our vocation is only a prolongation of theirs; therefore, our vocation too was included in the prayer of Christ. St. Luke's Theology of Prayer St. Luke shows Christ's whole life as spent in an atmosphere of prayer. Indeed he interprets Christ's whole mission in terms of a theology of prayer. St. Luke's Gospel begins, remember, with prayer in the temple, and it ends with Jesus ascending into Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 907 lleaven in the posture of prayer, in the gesture of blessing. The blessing is not just any blessing, it is the blessing of the Holy Spirit and the promise of the Father. It is Jesus' prayer that brings this promise to fulfillment; it is Jesus' prayer that brings down the only true blessing, the gift of the Holy Spirit to the world. Then let us never forget that there is a continuity between St. Luke's first Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and what we might call his second gospel, the gospel of the Church and of the Holy Spirit, which is the Acts of the Apostles. There is a parallelism of structure between the two. St. Luke's Gospel, his gospel of Jesus Christ, begins with prayer in the Temple and with the Annunciation and it ends with waiting in the temple for the promise of the Father to be given by the blessing of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles begins again in the Holy City and the Temple where they are to remain continually in prayer, praising God all the time and waiting for the power from on high and for the mission which in the power of the Spirit will send them to the ends of the earth. There is a parallelism between the conception of Jesus and the conception of the Church in St. Luke which is most striking and is theologically very profound. The Gospel begins with prayer in the Temple and the coming of the Holy Spirit, which makes Mary the Mother of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles opens with a description of the Apostles joined in continuous prayer with Mary the Mother of Jesus waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit to give birth to the Church. In truth we have to say that St. Luke has a clearly developed theology of prayer in which Jesus' whole life and work are explained in terms of prayer. Now this is not just a personal idea of St. Luke. This is divinely revealed and inspired instruction about the mystery of Christ as a mystery of salvation consummated in prayer. This revelation occurs with particular intensity at four points in St. Luke's Gospel: the Annunciation, the Baptism of our Lord, the Transfiguration, and the Ascension. Now there are remarkable parallelisms between these four scenes, these four theophanies if you like, in St. Luke's Gospel. These elements are constant throughout the Synoptic Gospels of course, but they are presented with particular vividness and explicitness in St. Luke. In each of these scenes we note the manifestation of the shekinah, the cloud of divine glory which everywhere in the Bible marks the awesome presence of God. Again, let me remark in passing that there has been a lot of nonsense talked about the "myths" of the Gospel and the need to "demythologize" the Gospel in order to get at its fundamental truth. Often this turns out to be a parabolic kind of truth, which has nothing to do with facts but is simply a subjective conviction of being addressed by God now, in my existential situation in the present. But what we have in the Gospels is not myth at all, but a technical, theological language. You couldn't expect the sacred writers to use our kind of language wltich has developed in our sort of Greco-Latin culture. Inevitably what they had to use was the theological language of a Semitic culture and particularly of a Biblical people. They used the theological language of the Old Testament. But make no mistake about it, the language of the Bible is not just the simple anthropomorphic talk of a people who knew no better; it is the work of a highly sophisticated and developed theology, with its own clearly recognized theological symbols. One of these is the cloud. The cloud is a theological description of the presence of the all-holy God. We have this cloud of divine glory in all of these scenes that I talked about. One could of course write a whole library of books about the theology of the shekinah in the Old and in the New Testaments. This cloud of divine glory marks above all God's presence in the Tent or Tabernacle where He dwelt among His people in the desert and it marked His presence in the 908 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 197216 Holy of Holies in the Temple of the Holy City. The Transfiguration Now, with this background, let us look first at the scene of the Transfiguration. St. Luke is careful to point out in all these passages that our Lord was in prayer, before the manifestation of the cloud of divine glory occurred. St. Luke is careful, for example, to point out that it was to pray that Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain of Transfiguration, and that it was as He prayed that the fulguration of divine glory pervaded His body. So St. Luke is not telling us only about the actual event in the life of our Lord. He is also, in parenthesis, implicitly telling us about our prayer life as Christians. Here again we have an instance of the great blessings and graces that modern exegesis has brought to the Church. We can see now that the New Testament writers were all the time recalling the actual words, the actual events of the life of our Lord in the context of the Church, in the context of the life of the Church, in the context of the liturgy, and above all in the context of the Holy Eucharist. Therefore we are getting two messages all the time in the New Testament, one about what our Lord did in the past, and one about how the Church experiences her Lord in the liturgy of today. That is one of the reasons why the Gospels are never merely an account of what did happen once, long ago in history. They are always also a revelation, an unveiling, of what is happening now in our liturgy of today, which is essentially the same as the liturgy of the early Church. To return to this scene of the Transfiguration. This was the epiphany of God made one with human flesh in the body of Jesus, and it reveals Jesus as the new Tent, the new Tabernacle, the new Temple, replacing the old Tent, and replacing the existing Temple, and becoming then and for all time the only place where God could be encountered and worshiped in all future history. This incidentally, is why St. Luke smiles as it were at the nffive foolishness of poor old Peter - Peter said: "Let's make three tents." St. Luke is telling us in part: "Poor Peter, don't mind him. He didn't know what he was saying, he didn't know that there is only one tent, not three. There is only one tent where God dwells with men, the Tent of Christ's Body." We enter that Tent in prayer; and every time we pray in the name of Jesus, we enter already into the glory of God present in the Body of His Son. That's why it is good for us to pray. It is good for us to be here in prayer with Jesus in the glory of the Father. Never are we more praying in the name of Jesus than when we are praying in the Mass or before the Blessed Sacrament, because this is the transfigured Body. The Body of Christ in the Eucharist is the Temple, the only Temple of access to the Father. After the radiant glory of God had transfigured Christ's body, the cloud became a dark shadow enveloping Jesus along with Moses and Elias who stood by to acknowledge Him as the author of the new and eternal covenant. Not only here, but frequently, in fact habitually, you find this ambivalence about the cloud of divine glory. It is at once light and darkness. It is radiant blinding light, but also impenetrable, mysterious darkness. These are not contradictory. God's glory is darkness by excess of blinding light. When the light of the sun is at its most luminous, it is fatal to look directly into it, for example during an eclipse. So it is with the radiance of God's light. That is what it means to say God is mystery. At this point, out of the cloud comes a voice - the voice of the eternal Father: "This is my Son, the Chosen One, listen to him." Now we know why the cloud is Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 909 dark. The darkness is the same as the darkness that covered Calvary at the time of Christ's death. This is not just an astronomical phenomenon; this is mystery, this is revelation, this is the language of Biblical theology. It was the cloud of God's glory that covered Calvary when Christ was dying. Here, in the dark cloud of the Transfiguration we have the revelation of the coming Passion. These words "This is my Son," are taken from the prophet Isaiah and they refer to the Suffering Servant, not just the Son, but the suffering Son. When we are told to listen to Him, we are being told to listen to the lesson of His Passion. Here we have the revelation that Jesus is God's Temple precisely in and because of His Passion. It is because Jesus suffers that He enters into glory and brings us with Him into the Father's glory. Jesus the True Temple This theology of the Temple is, again, a tremendous new insight of recent exegesis and of recent theology. Take for example something that always puzzled us, 1 think, namely the question of what it means that, at the death of Christ, the veil of the Temple is rent in two from the top to the bottom. We must recall that in the Jewish Temple there were separate compartments for different categories of worshipers. There was one for the women who were not allowed to come more than to just the outer precincts. Beyond this there were the ordinary priestly people, the lay men. Beyond this was the place set apart for the priests. Finally beyond the inmost veil, was the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest himself could enter, and he only once a year. Beyond this veil the High Priest dared to enter only backward, for fear of looking at where the glory of God dwelt. But when Christ dies, the veil is torn apart, the curtains are all drawn back. There are no separations, no boundaries, no barriers, any more. We can all come up without distinction, without exclusion into the very presence of divine glory. We do this every day in our Mass and at our Holy Communion. This is one example of the central importance of the theology of the Temple in the reading of the Gospel. But, to return again to the Transfiguration; here we are entering into the heart of the mystery of Christian prayer. When we pray we are made one with Jesus in His prayer. This means we become one with Jesus in His divine Sonship; and over us when we pray the same voice of the Eternal Father is spoken "This is my Son, my Chosen One." Again, another example of the supposedly mythological, but really theological language of the Bible is to be noted in the words, "the heavens were opened." This means that the separation between God and man which sin is, is abolished by the redemption of Christ, and that in Christ we already share in the life of heaven, we are already admitted into the presence of the Father. That is what the opening of the heavens means. This happens in Jesus Christ and happens in our lives every time we pray. Every time we pray, the heavens are opened over us and around us, and we are enveloped with Jesus in the same love with which the Father loves His Son. It is not so much we who pray then, as the Beloved Son who prays in us. Or, as St. Paul says, it is the Spirit of adoption, it is the Spirit of the Son making us sons, who is given us by Christ to pray in us with groanings that are ineffable. All that we have to do when we pray - because we do get discouraged in our efforts and we feel we are making such a poor fist of it - but really all we've got to do is to try to remove the distractions which impede Christ from praying in us. We have only, as it were, to stand back and let Christ pray in us, let the Holy Spirit pray in us, to remove the distractions which impede and try to create the conditions which permit the Son and the Spirit to pray in us. The word "pray-in" is familiar now, but all Christian prayer is really Christ's "pray-in" in us. Christian 910 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 prayer is essentially Christ praying in us, and the Spirit praying in us. Therefore in us and through us as we pray glory is given to the eternal Father by the Son in us, through the Holy Spirit in us, as it was in the beginning and is now and ever shall be for ever and ever. St. John's Theology of Prayer We note in passing that this revelation of the meaning and the mystery of Jesus and prayer in St. Luke's Gospel agrees completely with the Gospel of St. John. In the very prologue of St. John's Gospel, we read: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us." We know that these words are again a reference to the cloud of divine glory and the Tent of God's dwelling, because the words really mean "He pitched His tent [God's Tent] amongst us." These words are not just a description, but also a theology. Christ becomes in His very flesh the temple of true prayer, prayer which really encounters God, really gets through to God, really opens the heavens for us and reconciles man to God; and this is made possible through Christ's Passion. Note that the very first act of faith in Christ is that which is given by John the Baptist immediately afterwards in St. John's Gospel in the form "Look, there is the Lamb of God." This is the first act of faith in Christ, and we repeat it every day at Mass. Another reference to Christ's Passion is found when Jesus later says to the Samaritan woman that worship will not any longer be in any privileged place, but "true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth." A certain Protestant tradition, not a universal one, but a certain Protestant tradition has tended to interpret this in an anti-institutional and anti-liturgical sense. Worship in spirit and in truth would be something like Quaker worship where there would be no priesthood, no liturgy, and so on. This could not be further from the thought of St. John. St. John is the most sacramental, the most liturgical, the most eucharistic and the most ecclesial of all the evangelists. The words "spirit and truth" refer not to some disembodied deinstitutionalised form of spirituality; they refer to Jesus' own risen Body. There is no contrast between body and spirit. All the related contrasts, so often made nowadays between spirit and institution, between spirit and structure, are alien to the thought of St. John and indeed of the whole of the New Testament. Christ's Body is spirit, Christ's risen Body is life-giving spirit. To worship the Father in spirit and in truth is to worship the Father above all in and through the Holy Eucharist which is the Body of Christ. "Spirit and truth" is Christ's own risen and glorified Body become life-giving spirit. Here St. John is absolutely one with St. Paul. What Jesus is saying here is that His risen Body is the only Christian temple, and that it is only through His Body that we come to God. Therefore, the apex, what the Constitution on the Liturgy calls the source and the summit, of all Christian spirituality, is the Holy Mass, where God's Spirit (in the words of the Eucharistic prayer), "comes upon these gifts to make them holy so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." This is the moment when the words of our Lord to the Samaritan woman are realized and we become "true worshipers of God, the kind of worshipers the Father wants, worshiping Him in spirit and in truth." The Baptism of Our Lord Now, let us turn briefly to the Baptism of our Lord which contains another revelation of the mystery of Christian prayer. St. Luke again characteristically tells us that Jesus, after His own Baptism, was in prayer when heaven opened, and the Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 911 Holy Spirit came down upon Him, and the voice of the Father sounded over Him: "You are my Son, the Beloved, my favor rests on you." The mystery of our baptism is included in that of the Baptism of our Lord. We are baptized in order to pray - it is as siraple as that. We are baptized in order to pray in union with Jesus and indeed in His very person. Baptism, which the more traditional way of speaking called christening (a much more beautiful terns: christening) is our "oneing" with Christ. "One-ing" is another of those untranslatable old English words which you find in the medieval mystics - oneing with Christ. That is what our baptism means. We never realize this oneness with Christ more than when we pray. When we pray, as the Council puts it, we are "sons in the Son," and the voice of the Father is say-ing over us when we pray, as it said over Christ when He prayed - "You are my Son, the Beloved, my favor rests on you." Prayer is the highest exercise and the supreme fulfillment of our baptism. The baptized People of God are before and above all a praying people. The Ascension Finally we come to the mysteries of Ascension and Pentecost. The Ascension is another manifestation of the mystery of prayer. Jesus ascends to the Father enveloped in the cloud of divine glory. Remember the disciples were not interested in what the weather was like on the day when our Lord ascended, and the whole cloud is not something that happened to be there because it was a nice summer's day. The cloud is also the theological description of the glory of the Father into which Christ entered when He left earthly vision. Jesus ascends to the Father, therefore, enveloped in the same radiant cloud of divine glory that we have seen at the Annunciation, at the Baptism, and at the Transfiguration. He ascends in an attitude of blessing, the attitude of prayer which He keeps forever in heaven in the Father's presence. His blessing is above all else the gift of the Spirit, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The priest at Mass is acting in His name, vicariously giving Christ's own Ascension blessing to Christ's people when he says "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." In a sense - in a very true sense - the liturgy, the Eucharist above all, is the proof that it is all true. After His Resurrection, Christ invariably greets His people, His community, with the words "Peace be with you." If in our liturgy we can be greeted by His representative with the words "Peace be with you," this is the proof that it is true that Christ has risen and is with us. Nobody can give us peace, nobody has the right to say "Peace" except Christ. Therefore, if peace is given to us, if it is present in our liturgy, this is the proof that it is all true and that Christ is living and is here. Pentecost and Prayer The coming of the Holy Spirit on the infant Church is also linked with prayer. This time it is prayer "together with Mary the Mother of Jesus." 1 have said in passing already that it is certain that St. Luke intends to call attention to the analogy between the conception of Jesus which he describes in the Gospel and the birth of the Church which he describes in Acts. In both the glory, the glory of God and the overshadowing of the spirit, marks the end of the separation between God and man, and it shows that in Christ, in the Church, God has come to live in the very midst of His own and in prayer we infallibly meet Him in Christ and in the Church. Mary the Mother of Jesus is there, with an indispensable place in the mystery of salvation and with an irreplaceable part in the prayer of the Christian. In 912 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 passing it might be worth asking ourselves to what extent some of the problems and troubles in the Church today are linked with the manifest and deplorable decline' in devotion to our Blessed Lady. The Our Father I have said that the People of God is above all a people that prays. Now this is shown very clearly in the Evangelists' account of how Christ gave a special prayer, the "Our Father" to His disciples. The disciples had just watched Jesus praying, and when He finished one of them said: "Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples." For the Jews in that particular cultural situation a religious group was identified by its specific form of praying. So the disciples are really asking for a prayer which will mark them as members of Christ's new Messianic people, partakers already of the coming kingdom of God. In answer Jesus gives them the Our Father. Its most striking word is the word Father. Jesus never once prayed without calling God "Father." But what is not usually recognized is that neither the Old Testament, nor Jewish tradition ever addressed God as Father. This is a remarkable fact. It has been brought to our notice by (among others) a Lutheran exegete called Joachim Jeremias. This vocative use of the word "Father" in praying to God is new and unique in the prayer of Jesus and in that of His followers after Him. What is even more striking is that Jesus uses a special term for "Father" in speaking to God, the word "Abba." This is a family word, a child's endearing word for father, "my dear Father." It would be going too far and would suggest something childish to say that He called God "Dada" - "Abba" is a familial, not a familiar term - "my dear Father." Never before in history did any man dare to speak so intimately and so affectionately to God. Jesus in the Gospel, according to Jeremias' count, uses it 177 times. This term is something characteristic of Jesus' own prayer and of Jesus' own attitude to His Father. Jeremias in one of his books called The Central Message of the New Testament regards this as perhaps the central message and says that even if we had nothing else than this to prove the special, absolutely unique Sonship, the divine Sonship and therefore the Divine nature of Christ, His use of the term "Abba" for Father would be enough. This is the supreme manifestation of the unique filial relationship between Jesus and His Father. The disciples never ceased to be amazed at this way of addressing God. They were even frightened by it. They couldn't bring themselves without an effort to repeat the words after Him. The touching effect is that when they say the words after Jesus they always repeat his own words "Abba" in the very language that Jesus used, Aramaic, even when they didn't use or know the language. This explains the odd sort of repetitions, or duplications that you get in St. Paul, "Abba," "Father," the two words mean the same thing; but the disciples could not say "Father" to God without reminding themselves that Jesus said "Abba" and that He ordered them to say it after Him. This was as though to say: "We couldn't say it unless He did and He told us to do so." This is the explanation of our own introduction to the Our Father in the liturgy: "Because of the divine command and following the divine example we dare to say Our Father." I am afraid the translation that ICEL have given here is not a good one. "We pray with confidence." This is not enough. It does not convey the full force of the Latin words, "audemus dicere": "We make bold to say," "We dare to say." This is what the Church has always meant by this introduction to the Our Father. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 913 But the Our Father is not just a prayer that we say; it's a prayer that makes itself true as we say it. God becomes our dear Father, and we become His favorite children, in and through and with Jesus Christ when we pray. That is what our prayer is, our sharing in the mystery of the Divine Sonship, our entering into the unique relationship between Jesus and His Father which is expressed by His use of the word "'Abba" - "'my dear Father." The Our Father is the realization of our salvation, it is the proof that we are saved. If we were not baptized we could not say it. That is why every baptized person in the early Church was given the Our Father to learn by heart (which is perhaps a commentary on a certain reaction at the present time against prescribed forms of prayer for children). Here is what St. Paul says to the Galatians: "The proof that you are sons is that God has sent the spirit of his son into your heart, the spirit that cries 'Abba Father,' and it is this that makes you a son." The whole theology 1 have been trying to suggest to you is contained in that sentence - "the proof that you are sons is that God has sent the spirit of his son into your heart, the spirit that cries 'Abba,' 'Father,' and it is this that makes you a son." The kingdom has come when we pray Our Father. The glory of the final coming is already present and we share in that glory in the very heart of the blessed Trinity. Jeremias has said that the Our Father is eschatology making itself true as we say it - eschatoiogy realizing itself - a very profound thought. Infallibility of Prayer 1 have said that the Our Father, and indeed all Christian prayer, makes itself true as we say it by the power and in the person of Christ. Now we are bound by Our Lord's own words to believe that prayer is infallible, that every true prayer is infallibly heard. What then are we to say of unanswered prayer? There can be no answer to this problem, in the light of the Gospel, other than that no prayer is unanswered if it is in the name of Jesus. What Jesus Himself said was: "Whatever you ask the Father in my name, will be granted to you." Note the qualification, "in My Name." If a prayer is in His name truly, truly and really in His name, then it must be answered by the power and promise of our Divine Lord Himself. Jesus said something even stranger; He said: "Whatever you ask the Father in my name, believe that you have already received it, and it will be given to you." Is this some curious, almost pathological form of auto-suggestion? It cannot be. But there is a mystery here and it is the New Testament which gives us the key to this mystery. No prayer is unanswered, because every prayer admits us to the presence and the glory of God. In heaven's name, what else have we to pray for but that? What else do we want but that? Is God not enough for us? Every prayer gives us oneness with Christ, and again, in heaven's name, what are we praying for but that? What do we want, but that? What do we need but that? Is Christ not enough for us? St. Paul said "Since God did not spare his own Son but gave him up to benefit us all, has he not also with him given us everything." Is there anything he has refused? Like Jesus Himself, then, we can thank the Father before our prayers are answered. You remember our Lord, before the raising of Lazarus, said: "I thank You, Father, because You have heard my prayer." Prayer is our privilege before it is our duty. The same is true of our faith. Karl Barth says that what we should be saying now is not, "You are bound to believe," but "You are permitted to believe." The faith is a privilege, not a burden, and so is prayer. All our prayers are answered in Christ - Christ is the answer to our prayer. All our prayers end with "Amen." The word 914 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 does not mean so much "may it be so," but rather "it is so." It is so in Christ. Christ is God's Arden to our prayer. St. Paul says: "With Him it is always "Yes" and however many the promises God has made the "Yes" to them all is in Him." And He goes on to say: "That is why it is through Him, that we answer "Amen" to the praise of God." Prayer is in crisis in the modern world. T. S. Eliot in "The Rock" says: Endless invention, endless experiment brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness knowledge of speech but not of silence knowledge of words but ignorance of the Word all our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries brings us further from God and nearer to the dust. There is a certain truth even though a certain pessimism in what Eliot says. But it is consoling to recall another great man of our time, the outstanding humanist and servant of humanity who was Dag Hammerskjold. It was prayer and specifically the Our Father which inspired Hammerskjold to give his life for others. "Murderous Angels" notwithstanding, Hammerskjold was a very great man. "The only value of a life," says Hammerskjold, "is its content for others; and therefore in my great loneliness, to serve others. How incredibly great is what I have been given and how meaningless is what I have to sacrifice. 'Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done.' You wake from dreams of doom and then for a moment you know beyond all the noise and the gestures, you know the only real thing, love's calm unwavering flame in the half light of an early dawn." In this Carmelite setting, I am happy to end by suggesting that this is a contemporary echo of St. Teresa's epilogue of her life of prayer, written on a scrap of paper found after her death in her breviary in 1582: "Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you, All things pass, God never changes, Patience attains all that it strives for. He who has God is lacking in nothing. Only God is enough. Solo Dios Basra." SISTER MARY GARASCIA, C.I'P.S. Prayer and Spirituality ISister Mary Garascia is a member of the Theology Department of Gerard High School; 2252 North Forty-fourth Street; Phoenix, Arizona 85008.1 Introduction It is Fall as these thoughts are being written, and across the nation the past summer produced the usual spate of chapters and meetings which will in turn generate programs and conferences and discussions in the community houses of American religious this apostolic year. Private prayer continues to be one of the most frequently discussed topics, demonstrating the persistent concern felt by many sisters with this area of their religious life. The statements which follow are not a systematic development of the nature or methods of prayer; neither are they original. They are, it is hoped, things which are said too softly or too seldom, and which may help to give discussions of prayer and spirituality a certain perspective. Perspective on Prayer: Prayer as Positive Perhaps the idea that is most often not uttered at the beginning of prayer discussions is that prayer is supposed to be a positive human experience. It should be, in general, enjoyable and easy. Prayer is an experience of contact with God, and the God of Christianity is the Approachable One. Both the Old and New Testaments present God as a departure from the magical-mysterious pagan gods and the philosophical-mystery gods of the Greco-Roman world. God is revealed, instead, to be lover, friend, father, savior. Because that is the way God is, Jesus could respond with the simple and natural Our Father when someone asked Him how to pray. Certainly at times prayer will be difficult because life itself is, at times, difficult. But the times when prayer is a deeply rewarding experience should predominate. A God who must be sought in tortuous ways is not lovable or attractive, nor is He the God of Jesus. The "dark night" of the mystics is not meant to characterize the spiritual life of man. It is only a temporary stage, as all suffering and dying is temporary and is oriented toward resurrection and future life. Probably the first rule of prayer should be to enjoy God, to relax and pray naturally. It should be clear, whenever prayer is discussed, that behind all the words there lurks a God of nearness, approachability, and overflowing generosity. Perspective on Prayer: Prayer and Autobiography Possibly one reason why prayer becomes unnatural or strained is that it becomes separated from autobiography) Each person writes a story with his life. The story IMichael Novak, Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 43-87. 916 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 is sequential and hopefully has direction and meaning. If a person is religious, his story is also religious. In other words, if he were to tell his story to another, he could not tell it merely in terms of vital statistics, places of residence or employment, achievements, and so on. All these things would be seen by the religious person in terms of a greater reality: the times, places, and experiences when God entered his life, the development of his own religious consciousness. Prayer needs as its ground an awareness and appreciation by the praying person of his own religious story. The person prays not to an unfamiliar God, but to a God whom he has come to know in a process of time and experience, to a God whom he can take for granted on the one hand, and yet to a God who enters his life so constantly and insistently that their relationship is a continual source of awe and rejoicing to him. With this consciousness of story, prayer takes place at the meaning core of the person. It can never become an exercise or a duty because it is always an extension of experience. It will more often be affectively rewarding, as it should be, and natural. An underlying assumption of this point of view is that a person is willing to trust himself and his own religious experiences. This is not to say that man never errs, becoming proud, presumptuous, idolatrous, or that it is not important to imitate others or seek guidance. But there quickly comes a point when the praying person must accept the fact that God has spoken to him, is really calling him in a unique way. Unless he accepts God in this way, believing and accepting his own experience of God, prayer will tend to be marked by insecurity, darkness, distance. Perspective on Prayer: Prayer and Conversion The notion of trusting one's religious experience in order to pray leads to considering how important the quality of religious experience is. All the methods, spiritual systems, directors, and rules with which prayer gets surrounded have only one purpose: to lead the person toward certain basic conversion experiences. These are the peak experiences of the person's religious story, the turning points when the person begins defining himself in terms of his relationship with God, the point of decision to believe in the face of insufficient evidence, the assent to take seriously certain gospel precepts. These conversion points are absolutely essential if prayer is to be more than a passing phenomenon. Once certain conversions have been experienced, changes in the cultural underpinnings of prayer, such as theological upheavals or the declining influence of organized religion, are not perceived as basically threatening to prayer life. Pseudo oppositions like work and prayer, God and neighbor, resolve themselves into situations of healthy and prayer-supporting tension, if they continue to be of concern at all. Preoccupation with how to pray or with the quality of one's prayer tends to disappear, and the person begins, in freedom, to seek out for himself his own prayer rhythm. Finally, through conversion the person becomes capable of handling suffering, the great testing-point of anyone's spiritual life. It is hard to stop being concerned about methods, rules, spiritual systems because of the recent past history of ascetical training which, unfortunately, came to be dominated by the personal spiritualities of Saints Teresa and John of the Cross. Thomas Merton, one of the most serious pray-ers of contemporary America, also said some of the most freeing things about prayer: Systems are fine, up to a point, but all they are for is to help you get to the point where there is no more system, where you deal with God absolutely in your freedom and his Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 917 freedom.2 There is really no opposition., between praying alone and being with people. Both are true, both are right, and you don't divide one against the other and say it's purely horizontal or purely vertical. It is both horizontal and vertical, and you should follow what is right for you at a given time. When you are dealing with people for as long as it works, go on dealing with people; when you get tired of dealing with people, go pray alone. There comes a time when you just get tired of a particular prayer form unless you have a charism of never getting tired of it! All right, that is your charism, your thing. But most of us should simply follow the natural rhythm of the way we are constituted, and follow the Holy Spirit. There is a time and a place for everything,a Sometimes statements such as Merton's are accepted up to the "yes-but" point. Yes, but is it not possible, if a person really lets himself go, does his own thing, that he may cease to pray, or pray very infrequently? Yes, of course, it is possible, because man always has the option of choosing things which bring him death instead of life. The reasonable person will be aware of the possibility and take reasonable precautions. However, this possible catastrophe will certainly be the unusual and extraordinary case. Every person who walks along a street risks being hit by a car, but only the neurotic stay home. Perhaps this statement sounds facetious, but it is based on some of the assumptions already developed: that prayer is, basically, a happy and rewarding experience and therefore even very busy people will come back to it with the naturalness of a man seeking recreating leisure; that prayer is an outflowing of religious experiences so deep that the idea of a converted man forgetting God would be as unthinkable as the Jews forgetting Jerusalem during the exile.'* Finally, fidelity is not something that can be produced by following a regimen: Fidelity does not come out of a personality we have safely banked. Fidelity arises from our inter-relationship with the flow of life. It is something that comes out of a person who is mature enough to deepen his convictions in moments when they are severely challenged. Fidelity, in other words, is not something that exists because we stay the same. It is a dynamic quality that exists because we are capable of growth and constructive change,s Out of the desire for God and the pleasure of his company will flow a certain discipline. Prayer will be chosen over other things because it is important, at the core of the meaning system of the person. The search for God will seem worthy of time and energy. The person who has experienced conversion will find it hard to forget the experience; he will tend to remain conscious of the possibility of future conversions and will work to keep himself open to conversion. Any worthwhile human endeavor has its built-in asceticism. Someone once pointed out that there are three ways of viewing man: as evil, as good but with certain dangerous impulses which need caution, or as growth-oriented. Everything written above opts for the growth-oriented view of man, who relates to a God of abundance and nearness, and a prayer life which feels good and is guilt free and peace-filled.6 2Thomas Merton, "Prayer, Tradition, and Experience," Sisters Today, February 1971, p. 28"/; see also the same author's "The Life That Unifies," Sisters Today, October 19"/0, p. '71. 3Thomas Merton, "Prayer, Personalism, and the Spirit," Sisters Today, November 1970, pp. 133-4. 4 Psalm 13"/:5-7. 5Eugene Kennedy, In the Spirit, in the Flesh (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971), p. 85. 6George A. Lane, S.J., Christian Spirituality (Chicago: Argus, 1968), p. 92. 918 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 Spirituality in Crisis For some time, even years, there has been talk of a prayer crisis; and certainly the universal and continuing concern with prayer among religious would point to the existence of many problems in this area. However, there is another way to see the situation. All types of prayer are problematic these days, personal private prayer, group prayer, formal liturgical prayer. It is possible that the reason why prayer problems are so resistant to solution is that there is an underlying spirituality crisis. There have been so many fundamental changes in Church and culture that prayer has been placed in an impossible position: it is expected to help the person combat secularism, to support his faith, to keep him from becoming lost in work, to save him from mere humanism, to aid him to achieve emotional calm and survive crises, to give meaning to his life, to put him in contact with God, and so on. No wonder there is a prayer crisis. Prayer is carrying the whole burden of what should be the shared task of a viable spirituality. Prayer has come to dominate spirituality when actually prayer is only one function or aspect of a man's spiritual life. Perhaps the best solution to prayer problems is to forget them for a time and turn to the task of finding paths to God which cut through and join together all the reaches of the world of the praying person. Space does not permit a description of forces which have caused a breakdown in spirituality, a discussion of schools of spirituality, or even a definitive definition of the word. As a working definition, spirituality can be thought of as a particular style of approach to union with God,7 an approach which encompasses elements like prayer, penance, activity, and so forth. Personal spiritualities will differ in accord with personality, level and type of intelligence, perception of reality, life experiences, and other individualizing factors. Yet much of a man's approach to God is shaped in common with other men out of the culture in which he lives. Today man's life is the product of a period of cultural erosion of faith and spirituality, and he confronts a world deprived of a generally accepted integrating principle. Many people have come to accept as normal a schizoid world of oppositions:8 individual-community, freedom-law, service-prayer, human-divine, and so on. The need is to seek a more unified approach to God, one in which the whole life of man, rather than mainly his prayer, becomes the point of interaction between man and God. This task belongs to the whole Church, to dialogue, and to time. Below are listed some rather obvious and not at all original areas where the discussion could begin. The reader will want to add others. Sacramentality "To be, so to speak, submerged by the 'divine milieu' of the whole universe., is the fundamental gift for which man can only pray: Lord, that I may see.''8 Seeing the world as a sacrament is a very Christian thing to do, for the Incarnation has transfigured all nature starting with the unique sacredness of the Son of God. A sacramental spirituality is probably the only answer to a world of increasing secularity since the sacramental order of things does not set itself in opposition to the secular order. Man needs, therefore, to come to experience the secular world as 7james Carroll, Prayer from Where We Are (Dayton: Pflaum, 1970), p. 16. 8Thomas Sartory, "Changes in Christian Spirituality," in Life in the Spirit ed. Hans Kiing (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), p. 82. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 919 a sacred sign. How can this happen? How can man's awareness of and receptivity to signs be increased? In addition to answering these questions, the search for a viable spirituality needs to speak to the problem of evil, suffering, death, frustration, anxiety, and the other negative elements of life in order that these, too, may be sacred contact points. Work Jobs in American society today are regarded as mainly functional: they supply the money to take care of the person's needs. Few people claim to have any great feeling of reverence for or dedication to the goals of their employers. In addition there is an enormous distrust of the society's institutions, a distrust which increases even as more and more people are employed by them. Religious up to the present time have stood in sharp contrast to this picture. However, in the face of open placement, vacations, increased freetime, higher salaries, doubt about institutional apostolates, and so on, there is a need to reaffirm a spirituality of work. Work is not just a means to purchase leisure. The work of a religious is dedicated work. It must be seen as and really be redemptive and fiealing. Religious can bring a permanence of dedication to their work. They are capable of being neutral persons, free of the need to seek power and to manipulate others, a freedom facilitated by the vows. If work is perceived as redemptive, it will no longer divide the spiritual life of the person; it will nourish it. A Renewed Asceticism "To continue to make ourselves present to others requires a possession of ourselves and a sensitivity to our own complexity that all too few people develop.''9 "Growth in maturity requires death to selfishness, irresponsibility, undisciplined instinct so that we may rise to a new life of mature, generous, and trusting freedom.''~° Man today is helped to have deep insights into himself through the advances and availability of education and psycholog)). These resources should make it increasingly possible to choose a way to God which fits the particular personality structure of each individual. But living spiritually requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline which is perhaps not obvious to those who set out to "do their own thing." A person has only a certain amount of time and psychic energy. If these are used on self-defeating or self-destroying activities, there is no possibility of praying well or serving well. Living spiritually means, for example, declaring all out war on the moods and depressions which Americans love to indulge in; it means forsaking jealousy and infighting and competition for status; it means facing old age gracefully; it means ceasing any form of manipulation of others; it means really forgiving other community members for things that happened at their hands in the past; it means facing reality about ourselves. If a person is to be a sign of Christ, he must first be a fairly attractive human person. Christian spirituality should help the person to be in tune with himself and to accept himself and to direct his self. "Prayer, then, takes place by a man's believing acceptance of himself, by laying hold in a discriminating and yet reconciling way, of all the levels of his life, including feelings, sexuality, and the body, to hear the music, not of his own making, which is sounded at the root of his being." i ~ 9Kennedy, In the Spirit, p. 42. 10Andrew Greeley, "The New Agenda," Critic, May-June 1972, pp. 4 I-2. Gregory Baum, Man Becoming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 83. 920 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 A Communitarian Spirituality Spirituality flows from community. The Biblical concept of salvation is of a saved people and of individuals who work out their holiness within the salvation community. The sociology of knowledge reveals the disturbing truth that man never knows God definitively but only God as he is perceived and defined by men today. Peter Berger says that under the immense array of human projections there are indicators of a reality that is truly other, and that it is important to turn to all religious traditions, past and present, to recapture their "moments of truth," the sacred contact points of each age, their signals of transcendence.12 A spirituality which moves away from absolute and changeless conceptualizations must become grounded in a deep trust in the presence of the Spirit in the living community. Theqe must also be a corresponding willingness to expose oneself to the community for the guidance which saves a spirituality from becoming magical or singular or presumptive, and a willingness to share one's spiritual riches with the community. A communitarian spirituality will be especially needed as the pressing moral issues of the next decade arise, issues for which there are no adequate precedents or philosophical principles and about which Christians cannot afford to remain neutral or undecided. Finally, the spirituality of today must be concerned with creating a society in which the next generation will find it just a little easier to seek God. It is, in fact, within the energy-sapping fight to build a better world for mankind that some of the most profound contacts between God and men take place. Conclusion What has been said about prayer and spirituality is incomplete and ignores most aspects of both topics. Prayer is basically a joyful, simple openness to God, no matter what else it is made out to be; but prayer is in turn dependent on the whole of the spiritual life style of a person. "I have one longing only: to grasp what is hidden behind appearances, to ferret out that mystery which brings me to birth and then kills me, to discover if behind the visible and unceasing stream of the world an invisible and immutable presence is hiding." ~ a 12peter Berger, A Rumor of Angels (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 59, 99-112. 13N. Kazantzakis, Saviors of God (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), p. 51. JOHN WILCKEN, S.J. Religious Life in the Church I John Wilcken is a professor of theology and lives at 175 Royal Pole; Parkville, Victoria 3052 ; Australia. ] it is probably true to say that religious life has always been a problem in the Church. I do not find this fact either surprising or alarming. I think religious life is of very great importance in the Church -- I am thinking here primarily of the Catholic Church - and it has a tremendously important part to play in the Church's life. Briefly, religious must keep the Church faithful to the radical demands of the gospel. But inevitably religious will sometimes - perhaps often - be unequal to this task, and then their lukewarmness and infidelity will be a source of serious harm in the Church. For both these reasons, that is, the importance of their task and the inevitability that they will at times be unequal to this task, religious are always likely to be a problem in the Church. Where religious are in earnest, they are a problem because they are challenging "vested interests"; where they are lax, they are a trial to those who have the welfare of the Church at heart. Whatever they do, religious must resign themselves to being a problem. This problem was well to the fore in the debates and behind-the-scenes struggles of Vatican I1. The struggle crystallized in what might seem to be a relatively unimportant procedural question, namely whether there should be in the Constitu-tion on the Church a separate chapter on religious) The European group of bishops and theologians who had the leadership at the Council - men like Karl Rahner and Cardinal Doepfner - wanted religious life to be dealt with in the general chapter on the holiness of the Church. Thus they hoped to avoid perpetuating the impression that there are two standards of holiness in the Catholic Church, namely the following of the evangelical counsels in religious life for those who aim at perfection, and the following of the commandments in secular life for those who simply aim at salvation. But the bishops who had been religious and the major superiors of religious orders felt that this would be an undervaluing of the importance of religious life and pressed for a separate chapter on religious. On paper the religious superiors won - there is a separate chapter on religious - but one might consider that the result was really a compromise, since Chapters 5 and 6 of the Constitution on the Church are really one long chapter with an artificial division in the middle. It has been constantly pointed out that the theology of religious has not yet been satisfactorily worked out and that Vatican 11 has certainly not said the last word in this matter. The main treatment of the subject is in paragraph 44 of the Constitution on the Church, a paragraph which is somewhat confused in its Isee the discussion of this in R. M. Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (New York: Hawthorn, 1967), pp. IO3-9. 922 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 structure. It makes a number of different statements not very clearly connected with each other and remains finally somewhat unsatisfactory. One might take from it two propositions which are helpful. The first is this: Furthermore, it [i.e., religious life] not only witnesses to the fact of a new and eternal life acquired by the redemption of Christ. It foretells the resurrected state and the glory of the heavenly kingdom. Religious life is here presented as a form of kerygma: it is a sign of God's kingdom. The second proposition is: Thus, although the religious state constituted by the profession of the counsels does not belong to the hierarchical structure of the Church, nevertheless it belongs inseparably to her life and holiness. The close connection between religious life and the Church is here emphasized; and it is pointed out that the connection is not with the institutional structures of the Church, but with "her life and holiness." There is another quite illuminating reference to religious life earlier in the Constitution on the Church, namely in paragraph 31 where the Council is distinguishing the special contribution of lay people in the world from that of clergy and religious. Here we are told that "by their state in life, religious give splendid and striking testimony that the world cannot be transfigured and offered to God without the spirit of the beatitudes." Once again religious life is presented as a form of kerygma: it is a sign indicating how the world is to be transformed and offered to God. There is also a helpful reference in paragraph 18 of the decree on the Church's missionary activity. It reads: Right from the planting stage of the Church, the religious life should be carefully fostered. This not only confers precious and absolutely necessary assistance on missionary activity. By a more inward consecration made to God in the Church, it also luminously manifests and signifies the inner nature of the Christian calling. This reference I find particularly significant. Once more religious life is seen as kerygma, but the vital importance of this sign is brought out. One gets the impression that the true nature of the Church cannot be manifested to people in mission lands unless religious life is there to reveal her inner life. Once more religious life is seen as belonging inseparably to the Church's life and holiness. Moreover, there is here a mention of diakonia: "precious and absolutely necessary assistance" is conferred on missionary activity. Vatican II has helpful things to say about religious life, but scarcely provides an adequate theology. The close connection between religious life and the nature of the Church is mentioned, but this ecclesiological view is not sufficiently developed. The Council in general tends to adopt a kerygmatic approach to theology and in speaking of religious life stresses the kerygmatic aspect. The aspects of koinonia and diakonia do not get adequate treatment. The term "religious life" is a rather odd-sounding one, and it has recently come trader considerable attack, for example in the book Experiences in Community by Gabriel Moran and Maria Harris.2 The word "religious," meaning someone belong-ing to a community of sisters, brothers, or priests, is simply a translation of the Latin religiosus or religiosa, and perhaps the word is more bearable in Latin. Canon 487 of the Code of Canon Law, which came into force in 1918, gives this description: 2(New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), pp. 54-7. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 923 "Fbe religious state is a stable manner of living in community, by which the faithful undertake, besides obedience to the commandments which bind everyone, also the ob~rvance of the evangelical counsels, by vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty. This description comes from a body of law. It portrays a state of affairs that had already existed for many centuries and codifies legally a life structure which had first been worked out in practice. Moreover this description - which is over 50 years old - reflects a theology that is now out-of-date. The clearcut distinction between those who merely seek to obey the commandments and those who undertake the practice of the counsels was rejected by Vatican II which saw the whole people of God as called to perfection {Lumen gentium, no. 40) and recognized that the practice of the evangelical counsels is not restricted to those in religious life (Lumen gentium, no. 39). Briefly, the Code of Canon Law describes a way of Christian life which had in fact existed in the Church for many centuries and describes it in accordance with theological ideas which have now been superseded. The aim of this article is to reflect theologically on this phenomenon known as religious life which exists in the world at the present time and has existed in the Church in varying forms for many centuries. The approach is theological, rather than sociological, although 1 think my conclusions would to a considerable extent be in harmony with the views of such sociologists as Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch.3 So the starting point for reflection is religious life as it actually does exist and as it has actually existed for so long. It seems to me that what makes religious life important is that in this state of life the gospel message has been lived out in a radical and thorough-going way, thus giving leadership and inspiration to the rest of the Church. This radical interpretation of the gospel need not, of course, be limited to those in religious life. But it has happened, as a matter of history, that in the Catholic Church this thorough-going acceptance of the gospel demands has been a feature of religious life in particular. Those wishing to respond in a special way to the call of Christ have, very frequently, found themselves drawn to religious life, and have seen this kind of life as giving them scope for the following of Christ's call. Now there are, of course, Churches today which do not encourage religious life, and presumably the radicalism of the Gospel message is preserved in them in some other way. I am speaking of those Churches in which religious life is in fact encouraged, notably the Catholic Church. The matter might be expressed in another way. There are certain very important values in the New Testament which have, in fact, been preserved in the Catholic Church largely by means of religious life. Whether they will continue to be preserved in this way may seem uncertain to many people. Clearly the styles of religious life are changing rapidly; and a new form of dedicated Christian life that of the secular institute - has appeared. What seems quite certain is that the fundamental values of the gospel must be, and will be, preserved somehow. Leadership must be given by those who are willing to follow Christ so whole-heartedly that the pattern of their lives will be radically changed. In this way the complete dedication of the whole Church to Christ will be both signified and strengthened. Moreover, the unity of the human race which Christ brought about by His death and resurrection will be exemplified in a community life that triumphs 3See, for example, J. Milton Yinger, "The Sociology of Ernest Troeltsch," in An Introduc-tion to the History of Sociology ed. H. E. Barnes (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1948), pp. 311-2. 924 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 over differences of background, character, and natural interests. And the service of mankind which Christ the suffering servant came to render will be continued. That is, leadership will be given in the kerygma, the koinonia, and the diakonia of the Church. To put it another way, the faith, the charity, and the hope of the Church will be strikingly manifested. First, let us consider the role of religious in the kerygma, or proclamation of faith, of the Church. There is, I think, a fairly general consensus among New Testament scholars that the center of Jesus' preaching was His proclamation of the kingdom (or reign) of God. He declared that the definitive intervention of God in history, to wttich the Jews had looked forward so eagerly (see Daniel 7), was near at hand and, indeed, already beginning. God was acting decisively in the world through the preaching and work of Jesus Himself, and men were called to accept this preaching in faith. But the acceptance of this preaching was no small matter because Jesus made radical demands on people, involving a marked change in their way of life. The demands of the Sermon on the Mount were drastic enough, but particular people also received individual calls - Peter, Andrew, James, and John had to leave all to follow Jesus; the rich young man was asked to sell all his goods and give the money to the poor. The followers of Jesus were promised hardship and persecution. Loyalty to Christ had to come before the closest family ties. The Apostle Paul, who is perhaps the New Testament figure about whom we know most, found that his meeting with the risen Christ changed his life out of all recognition. He regarded all his earlier religious privileges as worthless. He led an apostolic life which involved constant labor, hardship, and persecution; and he seems to have regarded his sufferings as precisely the visible guarantee of the genuineness of his apostleship (see 2 Cor 11). He remained unmarried to devote himself fully to the Lord (1 Cor 7). In the apostolic period and during the early centuries of the Church, martyrdom was often looked upon with longing as the crown of the Christian's life. Paul wanted "to be gone and be with Christ" (Phil 1:23). Ignatius of Antioch implored the Roman Christians not to intercede for him with the civil authorities lest his martyrdom be prevented. Cyprian's letters reflect the persecuted Church's extra-ordinary esteem for the glory of martyrdom. Thus the early Church had this consciousness that Christ's preaching called for a radical response - a response that could even be so total as the sacrifice of life itself. This spirit of total self-giving was seen as essential to the Church's life. But the Church was not always persecuted. The possibilities of martyrdom grew less - especially after Constantine had guaranteed to the Christians freedom of worship, and even more so by the end of the 4th century when Christianity had become the sole accepted religion. But the spirit of total self-giving still had to be preserved in the Church. Leadership had to be given by those who undertook the radical living out of the gospel message. The Church's willingness to renounce everything for the sake of Christ still had to be signified and exemplified. St. Anthony, in the middle of the third century, set the example of the renunciation of earthly goods for the sake of Christ. Hearing the gospel of the rich young man one day at Mass, he felt that the words were addressed directly to himself, and he carried out literally the command of Christ. He lived a solitary life in the desert as a hermit. By the beginning of the 4th century, organized religious life had begun with the monastery of St. Pachomius. Thus when the age of persecution was passing and the possibility of martyrdom becoming less, a new way was being discovered of making a total response to the gospel message, namely the living of the monastic or Review for Religious, Volume 3 I, 1972/6 925 eremitical life. This kind of life must be seen entirely in the context of the Church. With the acceptance of Christianity by civil society, there was the danger of too much accommodation to comfortable living. The Church's way of safeguarding itself from this danger was to demonstrate in a striking way that the following of Christ makes total demands on the person. This was signified and exemplified by the monks and hermits. The monastic and eremitical life might be looked on as a social manifestation of the Church's faith in Christ. And there is an added reason why one should see religious life as belonging to the Church as a whole. Recruitment to religious life must come continually from the ranks of the whole Church. A sect can propagate itself, since children born into the families of the sect will presumably follow the beliefs of their parents. On the other hand, monasteries of celibate monks and nuns must draw their recruits continually from the Church as a whole. Thus religious life is a function of the whole Church, manifesting the Church's faith and proclaiming the radical demands made on mankind by the Gospel.* Next 1 want to consider the role of religious in connection with the Church's koinonia. Vatican II speaks of the Church as the sacrament of union and unity: By her relationship with Christ, the Church is a kind of ~crament or sign of intimate union with God, and of the unity of all mankind. She is also an instrument for the achievement of such union and unity (Lumen gentium no. 1 ). There are two aspects of the Church's sacramentality mentioned here: the Church is the sacrament firstly of union with God and secondly of the unity of mankind. The Church must first of all remain utterly obedient to God and closely united with Christ. The vine and branches image brings out admirably the necessity of union with Christ: "I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). This union with Christ, which is based on faith and love, must be nourished by prayer: the Church must be a praying community. And 1 want to discuss now the union (or koinonia) with God through prayer. The Gospels speak surprisingly often of the prayer of Jesus Himself. Even Mark's account of the early public ministry of Jesus, with the impression it creates of intense activity and of the crowds continually pressing on Jesus(see Mk 1:45; 3:9; 3:20; 4:1), includes several references to His prayer. After the evening of cures at Capernaum, Jesus went off to a lonely place early in the morning and prayed there (Mk 1:35). Again, after the first miracle of the loaves, Jesus sent the crowds away and went off into the hills to pray (Mk 6:46). Matthew and Luke give an account of Jesus' instructions on prayer and record their versions of the Our Father (Mt 6:7-15; 7:7-11 and parallels in Luke). Luke in Acts describes the early Church as a praying community. For example, there is that verse at the end of Chapter 2 which is almost a definition of the Church: "These remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brother-hood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers" (v. 42). After Peter and John had been released by the Sanhedrin, Luke describes the prayer of the community (Acts 4:23-31). Paul, in Chapter 12 of Second Corinthians speaks of his mystical experiences when he was caught up into the third heaven (2 Cor 12:1-6). He frequently speaks of his prayer of thanksgiving at the beginning of his epistles (e.g., 4On religious life as sign, see Karl Rahner, "The Theology of the Religious Life" in Religious Orders in the Modert~ World by Gerard Huyghe and others (London: Chapman, 1965), pp. 41-75. 926 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 Rom 1:8; 1 Cor 1:4); and he tells the Thessalonians to "pray constantly" (I Thes 5:17). The Church must be a praying community. It must be in union, that is, in koinonia, with the Father and the Son. The Church must be the sacrament of this koinonia, that is, its sign and instrument. But prayer, as we all know, is difficult, and leadership must be given in this matter. In Chapter 7 of First Corinthians Paul at least hints at where this leadership might come from. "An unmarried man can devote himself to the Lord's affairs, all he need worry about is pleasing the Lord" (v. 32), he writes, and a little later he adds, "In the same way an unmarried woman, like a young girl, can devote herself to the Lord's affairs; all she need worry about is being holy in body and spirit" (v. 34). The one freed from earthly cares can devote himself or herself more fully to those of heaven. Then again, the author of First Timothy writes of widows as people who can give themselves fully to prayer: "But a woman who is really widowed and left without anybody can give herself up to God and consecrate all her days and nights to petitions and prayer" (1 Tim 5:5). In fact profound prayer has always been seen as one of the absolute essentials of religious life - and this is true also of the orders founded specifically for external apostolic works. For example, a characteristic phrase to describe the Jesuit is, "contemplative in action," and this phrase indicates that the Jesuit, for all his outside activity, is meant to be a man dedicated to prayer. And of course the great contemplative orders of the Church, Cistercians, Carthusians, and so on, have been centers of prayer and sources of teaching on prayer for the whole Church. Thus one of the vitally important roles of religious life has been to give leadership in prayer, or koinonia with the Father and the Son. The second aspect of the Church's sacramentality mentioned by Vatican II is to be a sign and instrument of the unity of mankind. This function of unifying mankind through the grace of God is very solidly founded in the New Testament. When Jesus was asked, "And who is my neighbour?" He replied with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10), thus indicating that there is no place in Christian love for any kind of bigotry or prejudice. In the Fourth Gospel Jesus speaks of community charity as the sign of Christian discipleship: "By this love that you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples" (Jn 13:35). Presumably, this love must triumph over natural causes of division, such as differences of temperament, interest, background and so forth. Paul brings out explicitly the fact that Christ has rendered unimportant the natural distinctions between people: "All baptized in Christ, you have all clothed yourselves in Christ, and there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:27-8). Thus Christ came to bring mankind to the unity of charity in spite of the natural causes of division in the world. Vatican II sees the Church as the sign and cause of this unity. I would like to give two illustrations from the New Testament of how this koinonia function of the Church was lived out in practice. One is Paul's collection of money for the poor of the Jerusalem Church. As is well known, this was not simply an act of charity on the part of the Gentile Christian Churches. It was a "peace offering" to the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, Paul's effort to heal the deep division between the Jewish and Gentile wings of the primitive Church. If the saints of Jerusalem accepted this money offering, Paul hoped that this would represent their full acceptance of the Gentile Christians as brothers in Christ. Differences of culture and tradition could not be allowed to divide the Christian Church. This was a striking and wonderful example of Christian koinonia, and Paul Review for Refigious, Volume 31, 1972/6 927 labored untiringly for its success. The other example of early Christian koinonia is the description in Acts of the primitive Jerusalem community. Luke describes the early Christians as living together, sharing their goods, owning everything in common, and being united heart and soul. Certainly this is an idealized picture. Even the account in Acts gives hints of the divisions that were there from the beginning. There is the Ananias and Sapphira episode, and, more significantly, the dispute between Hellenists and Hebrews in Chapter 6. One might have expected that the Greek-speaking Jews, who had had experience of living outside Palestine in the broader context of the Hellenistic world, would have found it hard to get on with their fellow-countrymen of Palestine, who knew nothing but Jewish culture and tradition. The division seems to have been so sharp that it resulted in the setting up of a separate organization for the Greek-speaking Jews, namely, the appointment of the Seven. Nevertheless, in spite of the very real natural divisions that were there from the beginning, Luke sees this earliest period of the Church's history as exemplifying in a remarkable way the unity and charity that Christ came to bring. Even the division caused by private property seems to disappear, and there is the sharing of possessions and the common ownership of property. There is a joy and fellowship in this group of believers that is seen as a direct result of Christ's resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The implication seems to be that Christ has destroyed division in the world and brought unity to the human race. Even the account of Pentecost at the beginning of Acts,Chapter 2 confirms this: the coming of the Holy Spirit has destroyed the language barrier. And this fact of the restoration of the unity of mankind does not remain hidden. The phenomenon of tongues at Pentecost was apparent to all and remarked on publicly (Acts 2:7-1 I). Luke tells us a little later that the community of believers was "looked up to by everyone" (Acts 2:47). The infant Church is the sign and the beginning of united mankind. The radical manifestation of this in Luke's account is the sharing of goods and the common ownership of property. What actually happened in this matter of property in the early Church is not clear. Certainly Luke looks upon common ownership as an ideal for the Church, as something that occurred back in the Golden Age, in the Church's first fervor. Presumably, there was some basis in fact for the traditions that came down to Luke. But the practice of common ownership did not last long in the Church at large. The exercise of charity in the matter of material goods certainly did last, and the Christians continued to show strikingly their love and concern for one another: "See how they love one another, and how ready they are to die for each other" (Tertullian). But it is easy for fervor in these matters to grow less: the pull of material possessions is strong, and the causes of division in mankind are both manifold and powerful. Yet the Church must continue to be the sign and cause of unity in the human race. Christ came to make mankind a community of love, and the Church must strive constantly towards this goal. Those who want to give wholehearted obedience to Christ's call to unity and koinonia have felt themselves drawn to community life within the Church. There, property is no longer a division, and the choice of one's fellows is entirely in God's hands: one does not choose one's companions in religious life, but must accept in love the brothers or sisters whom God sends. The love of Christ and the common vocation must triumph over natural differences and antipathies. In this way the koinonia of the Church is lived out in a radical way, and an example of community life is given which may be an inspiration to others. 928 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 This is the task of religious. Of course, they often find themselves unequal to the task. There can be bitterness and division in religious communities, just as there can be anywhere else in the world. But the structure of religious life is one which, of itself, calls for a radical living out of Christian koinonia, of Christian charity: one accepts in love the companions whom God sends, regardless of natural antipathies. Christ's love must triumph over natural inclinations. One other point could be mentioned in this connection. Religious are often spoken of as an eschatological sign. For myself, I do not find the relationship of religious to eschatology particularly enlightening - unless one is simply referring to the fact that the Church is essentially an eschatological community and that religious life "belongs inseparably to her life and holiness" (Lumen gentium, no. 44). But it is significant that both the examples of koinonia in the New Testament which I mentioned do seem to have an eschatological dimension: Paul does seem to have seen his collection for the saints of Jerusalem as being in some sense an eschatological event, and the primitive communism of the early Christians was no doubt largely due to their expectation of an early Parousia.5 However, I do not want to stress too much this aspect. Suffice it to say that religious life is essentially eschatological precisely because the Church is essentially an eschatological com-munity. The word diakonia is heard a great deal in theological discussion these days, and the Church is being thought of more and more as the "Servant Church." This function of diakonia is connected with recent writing on the theology of hope and "political theology.''6 The servant Church, the Church concerned with the renovation of the present social order in the light of its hope for the future, necessarily enters into the public life of mankind. The Church can never remain a purely private organization, just as Jesus of Nazareth could not remain simply a private person. The preaching of Jesus - His denunciation of legalism and hypo-crisy, His stress on rightness of heart before God and genuine love of neighbor,His proclamation of the kingdom of God and call to repentance - this preaching soon brought Him into conflict with the upholders of the established order. And His own manner of life - His going out to the sick and the distressed, His forgiveness of sinners and table-fellowship with tax-collectors, His acceptance of the outcasts of society - this manner of life was a disturbance of the normal social order. Yet His great popularity, the crowds that came to hear and be helped by Him, showed that He was a force in the land to be reckoned with. The gospelHe preached, the human values He stood for, made Him into a "radical" in the best sense of the word: one who got to the roots of the problem. He manifested in His own life of service God's universal love for mankind, especially for the sick and suffering. His life and preaching were a dynamic force which was in fact to transform human society - and it was to do this by being continued in the life and preaching of the Church. It is not easy for the Church to preserve this true Christian radicalism. Again, leadership must be given - and in fact it has always been given, for example by many outstanding bishops of the patristic period. But this leadership in social radicalism came to be taken over, to a considerable extent, by religious orders. For example, the Benedictine monasteries gave stability and order to a world falling 5See the discussion of Paul's enterprise in K. F. Nickle, The Collection: A Study in Paul's Strategy (Naperville, Illinois: Allenson, 1966), pp. 129-42. 6See J. Metz, The Theology of the World (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), especially Chapter 5, "The Church and the World in the Light of a 'Political Theology.' " Review for Refigious, Volume 31, 1972/6 929 into chaos after the decline of Rome. The Franciscans brought the spirit of the gospel and of poverty to a medieval Church weakened by wealth and power. The many teaching and nursing orders founded since the Reformation were established precisely to care for children and sick people who were being neglected. Mother Teresa's Missionary Sisters of Charity were founded to meet the problem of utter destitution in our contemporary world. Meeting the real needs of people who cannot help themselves requires dedication and self-sacrifice; yet it is a vital task for the Church. This task has often been carried out by religious orders. In fact, this is how religious orders came to be founded. A great need is recognized, a gifted founder or foundress gathers together a group of dedicated people, and thus a new religious order arises - this is the general pattern for the foundation of religious orders. And this pattern implies the giving of leadership in the Church's task of reforming and renewing society. It is a manifestation of the Church's hope - hope in the possibilities of this world's social institutions, and confidence that God is in fact working to transform our world. 1 am not saying, of course, that religious orders are the only groups of people that give leadership in this matter of renovating society. Nor would I claim that all religious orders today are clear on their social task - this is far from the case. But I do wish to claim that the essential thrust of a religious order - seen especially at its foundation - involves leadership in the renovation of society. And this, I think, is true even of contemplative orders. They too, in their own way, deeply influence social life. The heart of the Church's life can, I think, be summed up in those three words: kerygma, koinonia, diakonia. Vatican 11 states that religious life belongs inseparably to the Church's life and holiness (Lumen gentium, no. 44). 1 have been trying to expand this statement by showing that the task of religious orders is to give leadership in the Church's kerygma, koinonia, and diakonia. To put it another way: the Church proclaims radical renunciation for the sake of the kingdom, a union with Christ resulting in a living together of human beings in charity despite human divisions, and a service to the world that transforms society. Religious orders were founded precisely in order to give leadership in the putting of this program into practice. Whether an order should survive or not depends, 1 suppose, on whether or not it is still giving this leadership. I would like to make a couple of further comments before going on to a brief discussion of the future of religious life. What I have said about religious may possibly give the impression that it is all a rather emotional affair, and very grim and serious. This is, of course, simply not true of religious life as it is actually lived. Like all Christian living, religious life must be characterized by sober wisdom and a spirit of Christian joy. The New Testament does not have a great deal to say about wisdom - except to say that Christ is our wisdom (Jn !:1-14; 1 Cor 1:30) -and we have to go back to the wonderful sapiential books of the Old Testament. Monastic spiritual writing through the centuries has in fact been filled with healthy, down-to-earth commonsense, and this surely is one of the things that has made possible the survival of religious life. One might mention also the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, written with such prayer and labor by St. Ignatius Loyola. These have been so influential over the last few centuries precisely because they are so realistic, practical, and wise. Then, in the matter of Christian joy, religious life has been able to survive also because of the spirit of deep happiness that has been preserved there. Trials and problems abound, as they do everywhere in this world, but those who really have a divine call to religious life find in it a joy that they have 930 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 never known elsewhere. One might cite St. Teresa of Avila in this connection. In spite of the incredible trials and hardships of her life, she remained a very merry soul, a source of joy and happiness for the communities in which she lived. Finally, something should be said about the future of religious life. There are certainly the prophets of doom. For some people, the age of religious life in the Church is simply over. I do not myself share this view. No doubt there are more stormy days ahead for religious orders in the Church; and they will, of course, continue to change - this is essential if they are to survive. Those that refuse to change, or to change soon enough, will be in a dangerous situation. But it seems to me that religious life in its essentials corresponds so fully to the Gospel message that it will last as long as the Church lasts. No doubt the Christian values preserved and encouraged in religious life could be preserved in other ways; but, given the Church's actual traditions, I cannot see this particular way of preserving them dropping out altogether. Keeping in mind the analysis given in the body of this paper, I would like to outline what seem to me to be the essential elements of religious life which must be preserved in the various changes that are taking place. The first is the celibate life. Jesus called for the willingness to make radical renunciations for the sake of the kingdom even to the extent of changing the whole pattern of one's life. Paul saw the celibate state as extremely helpful for the full dedication of oneself to God (I Cor 7). In fact, throughout the centuries of Christian history people have felt themselves called to make this radical renuncia-tion for the sake of the kingdom. I do not anticipate that this vocation will cease in the Church. Although the eremitical life had its vogue in the early centuries, the Church has found by experience that life in community is more helpful. Not only is there mutual support, but a demonstration is given of the power of Christian love which can transcend the natural barriers between people. But the existence of community immediately raises also the problem of authority. These communities will have to demonstrate to the world that the kind of authority described in the Gospels (e.g., "anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant" - Mk 10:43) can be lived out in practice. Those called to celibate community life will need to be sustained by a deep spirit of prayer, and their communities will need to be centers of prayer for the whole Church. Prayer is difficult, but essential. The whole Church needs inspiration and instruction from these communities. Property is one of the sources of division among people. Wealth, against which we are so constantly warned in the Gospels, seems constantly to bring with it pride, lack of concern, selfishness, harshness. These communities will need to guard against these dangers by the sharing of possessions and moderate living. Finally, there must be essentially an outward look. These are communities of the Church, peopled by vocations from the Church at large. Religious must give leadership in the humble service of mankind, especially where the needs are greatest. To sum up the picture: celibate life, in community, under an authority of service, prayerful, moderate in style of living, not divided by property barriers, existing for the service, of mankind. In this picture I am merely trying to describe the evangelical essentials. Many other elements will have to come in - such as wider; even world-wide, organization. But if we try to keep our eyes fixed on the essentials, which are firmly based in the New Testament, we are in a better position to see that the changes which do take place are in the right direction. JOIIN CARROLL FUTRELL, S.J. Living Consecrated Celibacy Today [John Carroll FutreU, S.J., is the Director of the Spirituality Program of the Divinity School of St. Louis University; 220 North Spring Avenue; St. Louis, Missouri 63108; an Indonesian translation of this article has appeared in the October 1972 issue ofRohan£ I The meaning and value of consecrated celibacy as a Christian way of life has been severely challenged during the last few years, not only by Freudian or secularized mentalities, but also even by priests and religious who at one time made the permanent commitment to a life of consecrated celibacy. It has been argued that a life of consecrated celibacy is unnatural and inhuman, and that, consequently, no celibate can attain true personal fulfillment and human maturity. The life of celibacy has been attacked as an at least implicit belittling of marriage as a Christian way of life, as contempt for a less perfect vocation for those who are incapable of living the "perfect" life of virginity. The law of the Latin rite which requires celibacy of its priests has been attacked as an unjustifiable act of tyranny denying the basic human right of human fulfilhnent through sexual union to men who wish to be ordained. Undoubtedly, these arguments have had influence upon some persons who have left the priesthood or the religious life in order to marry. These theories also brought about the aberrations of the "Third Way" a few years ago, which was a naive attempt to enjoy affective fulfillment in an exclusive relationship with another individu',d of the other sex through all the bodily expressions of love short of sexu',d union. The purpose of the following reflections is not to discuss or defend the law of celibacy for priests in the Latin rite. This law has been studied and controverted in many books and articles during recent years. It is well to recall, however, that any community has the right and the duty to demand certain qualifications of those members of the community called upon to carry out specific functions within it. A "job description" always includes the qualities which the community feels the persons who are to serve it in particular capacities should possess. It is not, therefore, a violation of human rights that for historical reasons the Church decided that its priests in the Latin rite should be chosen from only those among the faithful to whom the charism of virginity has been given. Whether in the light of contemporary pastoral needs it is a wise decision to retain this law universally is another question. But the issue is one of pastoral discernment, not of violated human rights. The following reflections are concerned, rather, with the meaning of consecrated celibacy as an authentic Christian alternative, a specific and valuable vocation within the Church both for individual persons and for those called to celibate communities. After recalling the basic motivation for celibacy as a Christian way of life, some practical considerations will be offered on the particular challenges in the contemporary world to those persons who feel called to live their lives as 932 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 consecrated celibates. First of all, it should be recalled that celibacy is a charism - a special divine gifting of the Holy Spirit to individual persons for the service of the whole People of God and of all mankind. Christ said that only those can make themselves "eunuchs" for the sake of the kingdom of heaven "to whom it is granted" (Mt 19:10-2). In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul, in his instructions on marriage and virginity, after remarking that he would be happy if all remained as himself celibate, adds that, nevertheless, "everybody has his own particular gifts from God, one with a gift for one thing and another with a gift for the opposite" (7:7). The Holy Spirit pours out a variety of charismatic gifts upon the members of the community of the faithful for the good of the entire body. The foot needs the hand, the hand the eye, the eye the ear (1 Cor 12:12-30). Thus, those who receive the charism of celibacy are given a gift from the Spirit which is authentic and valuable for the whole people. To discern that one has been given this charism and to choose to accept it and to live out its consequences is not a priori~ to destroy the possibility of true human fulfillment and maturity. This depends upon the way a person integrates his celibacy into his growth as a person. Human maturity and fulfillment are no more automatically achieved through sexual union in or out of marriage than they are through consecrated celibacy. There is abundant human evidence to demonstrate this fact. Human beings are totally sexual beings, and to come to human fulfillment we must assume our sexuality in our personal integration through a growing maturity of loving, finally leading us to the full expression of our deepest urge to love - totally self-giving love - which is also what gives human meaning to physical sexual union. But human sexuality is not identical with genitality. There are other authentic ways to express the deepest meaning of human sexuality, which is to enter into personal union with other persons through self-giving love. It is the experience and the expression of personal, self-giving love which is the fulfillment of human sexuality, whether this expression is through physical sexual union or through a life of consecrated celibacy. To discern that one has received the charism of celibacy and to choose to accept it is not a belittling of marriage, whatever may at times have been the mistaken attitudes of certain individuals. It is not as a matter of fact to show contempt for marriage if otte recogtttzes that cottsectated celibacy ts a Christian alternative (chosen by Jesus and by St. Paul also) and that one is called to it. Whether one Christian vocation is "better" or "more perfect" than another is at best a theoretical question, the answer to which depends upon the norms one uses to establish his hierarchy of values. For the individual person, this question is always concrete, existential, and relative: "What is better for me? What am 1 called to through the gifting of the Holy Spirit to me?" The fundamental motive to live a life of consecrated celibacy is the experience through the charismatic gift of celibacy of being called to give all one's love totally and personally to Jesus Christ and to symbolize the totality of this love by foregoing the physically sexual expression of love during one's whole life. Consecrated celibacy, then, is grounded in an all-encompassing personal relationship of love with Jesus Christ, whatever other secondary values it may involve, such as mobility and freedom for apostolic service. The functional value of celibacy cannot be the fundamental reason for living it. For one thing, in certain circumstances. good functional arguments can be given for non-celibate apostles. Furthermore, merely functional motivation will be inadequate for most ~persons to live con- Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 933 secrated celibacy authentically and deeply for a lifetime. Their celibacy must be experienced as the full exercise of their love for Jesus energizing their love for all other persons. Only a celibacy which is the human expression of deep personal love for and identification with Jesus Christ, Himself a celibate for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, can bring the consecrated celibate to true growth as a mature human person who gradually experiences progressive self-fulfillment through his personal relation-ship with Jesus and his life of witness and service to mankind. He grows to authentic personal development through the experience of being like Jesus and with Jesus a "man for others," who gives away his life in love to all other men and women through his celibacy. Consecrated celibacy, then, is a sign embodied in a human life of the true meaning of all personal love which in every case, including marriage, is realized only through self-giving to the other. Consecrated celibacy also has a unique value as a striking, visible witness to mankind of the depth of the faith and hope of the People of God in the complete fulfillment of the kingdom of God when the Lord Jesus will come again and God will be all in all in the Parousia. Those who, following a charism from the Holy Spirit "bar themselves from marrying for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 19: 12), give the same testimony of their whole lives and of all their love to belief and hope in the Paschal good news of Jesus Christ which a martyr gives through his death. Through his life-time fidelity to his commitment of love, the consecrated celibate is a living sign of the Church's belief in the irrevocable promise of God, in His eternal fidelity. The celibate's renunciation of the physical expression of love is proclamation in one human life of the Church's hearing of the word of the Lord that love will never end. Consecrated celibacy is perhaps the most telling testimony of faith in Christ's promise of everlasting life, of life after death. Men can feel that the celibate is a fool, but they must confess that the faith and hope of Christians is powerful indeed, since it can inspire men and women to such a life, to such a love of Jesus who is encountered only in faith, to such a hope in God as the Absolute Future of man. The first practical challenge to the person who feels called to the life of consecrated celibacy is to discern authentically that he truly possesses this charism, a discernment which must be confirmed by the community if his vocation is to enter a religious congregation. A charism is known by its visible effects. The presence of the charism of celibacy is discerned, therefore, by evaluating the psychological, emotional, and spiritual maturity of a person for indications that he is capable of living a life of authentic celibacy. At the beginning of such a life, it is necessarily a matter of judging the foundation within the young person for growth into a full life of consecrated celibacy. One important evidence of possessing this foundation is the fact that he has no great emotional or moral problems in living a chaste life already. It is necessary also to ascertain that his motivation for chastity is based upon a true appreciation of human sexuality at the person's level of human maturity and spiritual development and not upon fearful anxieties or false notions about sexuality. Since the fundamental motive for freely choosing to respond to the charism of celibacy is personal love for Jesus Christ, it must be discerned that the person's desire for this life is rooted in his faith experience of the person of the risen Jesus. The growth and depth and permanence of this charism depends upon the growth and depth and permanence of his personal relationship with Jesus in love, which depends upon his continuing and deepening life of prayer. Thus, he must have 934 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 initiated already an ongoing practice of profound personal prayer and be convinced of the need of continuing it and growing in it throughout his lifetime. The second practical challenge to the consecrated celibate is the authentic living out of the consequences of his commitment. Each individual must possess a realistic recognition of the necessary consequences in his concrete life style of commitment to consecrated celibacy. That is to say, he must conduct himself in his interior, personal life and in his external behavior and in his relationships with other people in a way that will guarantee constant and loyal authentic living of his celibacy. The individual exigencies of such a life style are relative to the great variety of temperaments and the psychological and physiological conditions and experiences of individual persons. Therefore, it is impossible to give more than a few very obvious general prescriptions. What is required of each person is absolute honesty with himself before God in discerning his concrete actions in here and now situations, so that he does not permit himself to behave in a way that will "chip away" at his authentic celibacy, rather than in a way that will deepen it and strengthen it. To guarantee this honesty in such a delicate area of life, true openness with a competent spiritual director is of great importance. Particularly, the celibate must be sensitive to "non-verbal" communication - the risk of sending messages to other persons which go counter to a relationship of truly celibate love, even when the verbal conversation is quite in accord with it. A truly honest person who prayerfully reflects upon the authenticity of his living of celibacy develops this sensitivity and will be aware when a relationship is beginning to be dangerous to his own celibacy or detrimental to another person. Most celibates will at times experience "falling in love" with someone. Perhaps even more often, at least after several years of authentically living celibacy, they will experience others falling in love with them, when this is not reciprocal. Here, the celibate's temptation may well be to a subtle form of seduction or manipulation of the other person because of the flattery he enjoys. Any of these situations must be confronted with the means honestly discerned as those demanded in order to maintain true celibacy and true charity. These means might range all the way from non-verbal communication, through discussing the situation with the other person, to the necessity for completely breaking off the relationship. Once more, true prayerful discernment and the help of a spiritual director are necessary to discover what actions are called for in each concrete situation. The consecrated celibate must accept the fact that in freely choosing to respond to this charism he is deciding to live the rest of his life in tension with "the couple that might have been," just as any person who makes a life commitment to a specific personal identity must live in tension with what he might have chosen to become. The "couple that might have been" may be one face or a succession of faces. At certain moments of life, this tension will be felt as a heavy burden, a true cross, especially when one wants to share a great joy or a great grief with another person in the way of sharing that can only develop within the uniquely intimate relationship of marriage. It is perhaps in moments such as these that the celibate is aware of making the least falsified act of love of God that he will make until his ultimate act of love on his owrt death bed. A third practical challenge to the consecrated celibate is to achieve true, human, affective fulfillment within his life of celibacy. Human, affective fulfillment is developed only through the self-transcending experience of love with other persons. Thus, the celibate must have truly complementary relationships of love with other human persons - celibates and non-celibates, men and women. The "incomplete- Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/6 935 ness" that seeks completion through self-giving love relationships with other persons is at the root of human sexuality, and the integration of sexuality into consecrated celibacy requires such complementary relationships. What is renounced by choosing to respond to the charism of celibacy is the relationship of exchtsive complementarity with one other human person, as happens in marriage. The celibate must experience the relationship of exclusive complementarity in his personal love relationship with Jesus Christ encountered in faith. This means that the celibate must have a deep pr

Issue 24.2 of the Review for Religious, 1965. ; The Major Superior an~ Her Subjects' Vocation by Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. 161 Approach to Mental Prayer by Thomas Dubay, S.M. 188 To Be Samaritans All by Michael M. Dorcy, S.J. 201 The Insecure Junior Sister by Sister Jean de Milan, S.G.C. 209 The Prayer of Christ by Yves M.-J. Congar, O.P, 221 Weep--There Is No Other Way by George A. Maloney, S.J. 239 Nun in the World by Mother M. Claudia, I.H.M. 244 Conte.mplation by Ladislas M. Ors'j, S.J. 248 The Superior as Community Counselor by Sister Angelina Marie, C.D.P. 265 For Teresa, Dying of Cancer by T. J. Steele, S.J. 273 Survey of Roman Documents 274 Views, News, Preview~ 280 Questions and Answers 286 Book Reviews 293 VOLUV_~ 24 NUMBER 2 March 1965 ASSOCIATE EDITORS Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Augustine G. Ellard, S.J. ASSISTANT EDITORS Ralph F. Taylor, S.J. William J. Weiler, S.J" DEPARTMENTAL EDITORS Questions and Answers Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Woodstock College Woodstock, Mar~l~md o~ i63 Book Reviews ~ormtm Weyand, S.J. Bellarmine School of Theology of Loyola University o30 South Lincoln Way North Aurora, Illinois 6o543 ÷ ÷ Edited with ecclesiastical approval by the faculty of St. Mary's College, the Divinity School of St. Louis University. Published bi-monthly and copyright, 1965, by Review for Religious at 428 East Preston St., Baltimore, Md. 21202. Printed in USA. Second class postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland. Single copies: 60 cents. Subscription USA and Canada: $3.00 a year, $5.75 for two years; other countries: $3.35 a year. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order. Checks and money orders should be made payable to Review for Religious in U. S. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to repre-sent Review for Religious. Change of address requesta should include former address. Renewals, new subscriptions, changes of ad-dress and business corres~ondence should be sent to: Review for Religious, 428 E. Preston Strut, Baltimore, Maryland 21902. Manu-scripts and editorial correspondence should be sent to: Review for Religious, St. Mary's College, St. Mary's, Kausa~ 66536. Quesdous and books for review should be sent to the respective departmental editors. MARCH I 965 VOLUME o4 NUMBER ~ CHARLES A. SCHLECK, C.S.C. The Major Superior and the Meaning of Her Subjects' Vocation If* one were to investigate the various pontifical docu-ments having special reference to religious communities, he would find them often referring to these as "fami-lies." This seemingly simple expression contains within itself a whole host of suggestions, and in the end would seem to be the nucleus for the spirit (and this would include even the government) and spirituality of every religious community. For these, as we know, have their existence and strength from their communion and inti-mate connection with the end of the Church itself--to lead men to the acquisition of holiness. And how im-portant they are for the life of the Church has been clearly stated by Pope Pius XII in rather striking and forceful terms: The Church would not fully correspond to the will of our Lord, nor would the eyes of the majority of men be raised to her in hope and joy as a standard set up unto the nations or as a sign standing in the heavens, unless there were found in her some who more by example than by word, were especially re-splendent with the beauty of the Gospel? This role of the religious community is not at all foreign to the economy of salvation established by God. All communication between God and man has tended to adopt a sacramental medium--language, representa- ¯ In the summer of 1962 Father Schleck gave a series of six lectures to the Conference of Major Superiors of the United States. The pres-ent article is a revised version of the first of these conferences. The other five conferences will be published in revised form in later issues of the REVI£W. 1Address to Superiors General, February 11, 1958, in The States o] PerIection, ed. Gaston Courtois (Westminster: Newman, 1962), pp. 317-8. Fr. Charles A. Schleck, C.8.C., teaches theology at Holy Cross College; 4001 Harewood Road, N.E.; Wash-ington, D.C. 20017. VOLUME 24, 161 ÷ ÷ ÷ Cha~es A. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 16~ tion, the written or the spoken word, events, customs, even garb and dress. It is in this work, that is, in bring-ing before men the visible mark of holiness characteriz-ing and setting off the true Church of Christ, that religious superiors, especially major superiors, are as-sociated with the Church and her bishops and sovereign pontiff, either by receiving jurisdiction as is true of ~nale exempt orders, or by receiving dominative power by reason oF the approbation of the rules and constitu-tions peculiar to a religious institute.2 Thus, while it is the work of the Holy Spirit to begin, and to nourish and foster, and to bring to consummation the work of grace or of God's special love for those called to the religious life, still He associates with Himself in this work and service, so-called secondary causes or auxiliary instruments in whom He wishes to incarnate His own power and love and through whom He wishes this to be communicated to others. It is for this reason that the Apostle Peter writes: Whatever the endowment God has given you, use it in service to one another like good dispensers of God's mercy; if one does some service, let him do it with the strength which God sup-plies, so that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ? In you, however, this governing role was meant to take definite shape and form. This is evident from the very nature of a religious community which we have called, just above, a family. For a family is a group of persons ruled or governed by those who have been established over it by God--a father and a mother. And this is most important for our present considerations. For the characteristic virtue of family life is not legal justice, or human activity on a quid pro quo basis, but rather piet)~, a potential part of the virtue of justice, adding to it the modification which is brought about by the intimacies and warmth of family life. It is the virtue of justice, we might say, with a heart. For all of you the manner of governing that is to be looked for and expected by all, both those inside the religious life and those outside, even those who view your communi-ties from a distance, must always be that of a woman, a mother. Indeed the title which all or most of you bear quite clearly indicates this wish and ardent hope of the Church and the entire family oF God. This title is at one and the same time the measure and indicator oF your function and task and also the measure oF the crowning glory which God intends for each of you in assigning you your particular role in the Church. For if it is He who elects you or appoints you to your task as He did Ibid. 1 Pt 4:10-1. the Mother of the Lord, He at the same time, as He did for her, makes available for you all the graces both ac-cording to their extension and intensity that are de-manded in the work entrusted to you.4 God made every woman by nature generous, merciful, and compassion-ate; and He gave her the desire to offer herself for others. He implanted in her as her essential spirit and movement the spirit of giving, of molding, of forming, of clothing whatever she touches, of mothering it, and of loving it. And the most noble aspect of this mother-hood is the lifting up of those persons she calls her children to God. That is why the motherhood officially given to you by the Church is the most sublime that could possibly be given to any woman. In a religious community of sisters the governing power is given into the hands of women that they as mothers might lead those under them to the common goal of the entire Christian community--the eternal participation of the body-person of Christ in the mar-riage feast of the Lamb. The role of anyone entrusted with shepherding others has very well been pointed out by Isaiah: It is thine to restore those bound in darkness to freedom and light; it is thine to pasture the flock of God and provide feeding grounds for them as they make their way through barren up-lands. Under your care they will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the heat of the noon-day sun overpower them. For you will be to them a merciful shepherd that will lead them to welling fountains and give them to drink of life-giving water? In you this shepherding assumes a rather well-defined mode of expression. It is to be accomplished in accord-ance with the precise externalization which human nature takes in its being found in women rather than in men. It is precisely by using the qualities and gifts peculiar to women that you make your service contribu-tion to the glory of God and to the welfare of His Church and of your own communities. And this service contribution which you make to these ends is most im-portant today. For the Church was meant to be a mighty organization, hierarchical, structured, full of honor and dignity, having its laws and penalties and the power to enforce them. But the Church was also meant to be a Mother, patient, kind, gentle, tender, full of understanding and compassion. Both you and your subjects are always at hand to remind the Church of this maternal aspect of her mission. It is more than evident from the many writings that have appeared on the subject in recent years that a woman called to the religious life is not at all deprived See Summa theologiae, 3, q.27, a.4. h 49:44. ÷ ÷ ÷ Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 ]63 ÷ 4. ÷ Charles A. SchCle.c~k.C, . REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 164 of motherhood. Rather she is called to exercise this function of her being in a much more intensive and ex-tensive manner than is possible in marriage. It is a motherhood that nourishes and molds and centers its whole activity on the life of Christ. By the grace of her vocation she receives in a single fulfillment the two deepest longings of a woman's heart--her woman's desire for motherhood, and her virgin's desire to be wholly God's, wholly surrendered to Him. All this is quite clear in the case of the ordinary religious sister. But I wonder how often those called to exercise supreme authority in service within religious communities of women realize that they are not at all dispensed from this work of woman but rather are called to exercise a more noble and more universal expression of this same function. They are called by God's providence to exer-cise this same activity in reference to the "more illustri-ous portion of the flock of Christ," those who by God's special predilection and love have been called to the vocation of virginity, which is the marriage of a human person with the Lord. Like the work of the Mother of God in redemption, yours is that of associate, con-tributing under the Spirit and with the Spirit to the work of your subjects' sanctification as Mary did in reference to the Church--as a partner, as a woman, and as a mother. In Christ we are given to see that all is priestly. In Mary we are given to see that all is womanly, all is motherly. Her role in the sanctification of the human race was different from that of Christ. Her "merit," her sacrificial oblation, her ransom, all were those of a woman, a mother. She worked along with Christ her Son, but not as an equal, not as one engaged in the same order of operation. Her office was addi-tional, complementary. It is true that oftentimes this work is most difficult, much more diffficult than the motherhood exercised by your subjects. But the greater the motherhood to which one is called, the more suffering and the more participa-tion in the cross-mystery must she expect to fall to her lot. Nor is this so strange. It will always be true that a mother's greatest suffering is interior, that which cen-ters around the emotions, that which involves anxiety, worry, and concern. And usually it comes only at the end of her function when she finds herself no longer in complete control of the minds and hearts of the persons under her, when she must deal with them no longer as children but as mature adults destined to their own proper creativity and life. Since this is always the situa-tion in which major superiors are called to exercise their office of ministry and service, they know with their election or appointment the rather difficult phase of motherhood to which the5, are called. It was because of this difficulty that the late sovereign pontiff Pius XII attemped to recall the image which the major superior must attempt to cultivate in the eyes of her religious: It is no doubt true, as psychology affirms, that the woman in-vested with authority does not succeed as easily as a man in finding the exact formula for combining strictness with kind-ness, and establishing the balance between them. This is an added reason for cultivating your motherly sentiments. You can say that the vows have exacted from your Sisters as from your-selves a great sacrifice. They have renounced their family, the happiness of marriage and the intimacy of the home. It is a sacrifice of great value, of decisive importance for the apostolate of the Church, but it is still a sacrifice. Those of your Sisters who are the most high-souled and refined, are the ones who feel this detachment most keenly. The words of Christ "no one put-ting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the king-dom of God" finds its application to the full, and nowadays, too, without reserve. But the religious order must take the place of the family as far as possible, and it is you, the superiors general, who are expected in the first instance to breathe the warmth of family affection into the community life of the Sisters. You must, therefore, yourselves be motherly in your exterior behavior, in your words and your writings, even if sometimes this calls for the exercise of self-restraint; but above all, be motherly in your innermost thoughts, your judgments, and as far as possible, your sympathetic feeling. Pray every day to Mary the Mother of Jesus and our mother, to teach you how to be motherly." It is quite evident that your motherhood is to reflect and in a sense continue to image that of Mary. And Mary's motherhood is one that is pure, stainless, free from every trace of contamination of the shadow, of the terrible aspect of the mother-image, of the destructive wiles of the "anima," of the desire to possess or be un-scrupulous in protecting and reducing to childishness the creative powers of those under her, of refusing to give them up to their destiny which is for them also, each in her turn and each according to her own way, to give fruit to the life of the Church of God. Thus your motherhood centers around women, not girls; and it must never become maternalistic or harmful or destruc-tive to their legitimate growth as distinct persons, to their adjustments to society and adult life. It is the proper task of a real mother to foster her daughter's competence and well-defined independence, rather than their opposites. To accomplish this task many things ought to be found in you. First, there should be a workable knowl-edge of the principles of spiritual theology, of the ~ Address to Superiors General, September 15, 1952, in The States o[ Per/ection, p. 217. 4. 4. Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 166 history and forms of the religious life in history, an experiential knowledge and almost the founder's or foundress' love for your own religious community, its constitutions, its customs, the authors of its spirituality, and its activities or apostolates. To this there shouId also be added a practical knowledge of the canon law governing religious communities of women, a practical knowledge of feminine psychology, and some principles of guidance. Second, there should also be present a discretion or prudence that is like wisdom, reaching from end to end. This would include tact, winning manners, knowledge of the human heart at its various levels of development--the young, the mature, the mid-die- aged, and the old. This discretion and prudence for our present consideration will also include a motherly vigilance, a dispassionate firmness that is without weak-ness, the ability to foresee and anticipate the needs of soul and body, an unfailing patience, and a zeal that is tem-perate, that knows how to wait and to seek out or receive those who come to you moved by God's grace. A third element or ingredient that you should possess is experi. ence, of the various apostolates, actually exercised if pos-sible or at least vicarious, of the problems and the diffi-culties they normally cause to religious; also an experience and awareness of human failings, not the least of which are your own failings and half-acknowledged shortcom-ings, a grasp of your assets and liabilities which would give you a proper and ordered self-love, with the desire to employ the former and guard against and make up for the latter, through the normal channels of the Christian life, not the least of which is consultation and personal direction. Finally, genuine holiness ol lile is required. For you ought to be not so much a teacher or one who hands out practical rules of life, of doing, and of making, nor just an interpreter of your community's spirit, but first and foremost a master of its life. For it is your privilege and obligation to see to it that the young life which God entrusts to you is begun correctly, or brought to birth in the novitiate, and then formed and made viable in your juniorates, and matured and intensified and deepened throughout the entire course of its existence in your religious family. For the motherhood with which you are entrusted by the Church does not end until you are relieved of your responsibility or until one or other of your subjects closes her eyes in death in order to greet her Lord in life. The perpetuity and continuation of a fervent community (and the life and vitality of the Church depends more upon this than upon numbers) rests with the major superiors' capacity to maintain and deepen in their subjects the spirit of the Church and of the founder or foundress whose exemplary causes they are meant to be.7 In treating of this quality or ingredient of holiness last, it is not my intention to consider it as the least important of all. Second to prudence it occupies the most important place perhaps. Knowledge in itself is not fruitful. It must be united with love. And how else can religious be taught the ways o[ God, schooled in the Lord's service if their own superiors do not possess these? You must remember that your subjects have entered religion in order to seek sanctity according to this way of life. And this is to be learned from those who are set over them in the intinaacy of their community life. It is along this line that much more stress could be laid today. The quality of the teaching of any master of the Christian life--and this is the primary role of superiors: to lead her subjects to sanctity--will be that of her own life. A young and generous soul will find no better way to learn renuncia-tion or surrender through charity than by following in the path of one who herself is practicing these same things. A secret strength goes out from her and is in some way imparted to those who come in contact with her. The ability to love the religious life and to instill this love into others is most important today when it is so easy not only for those outside the religious life, but even for those inside, to be or to become confused in their "vision of the special function and immutable im-portance of the religious state within the Church." s The primary work of a superior is to teach her subjects how to love God, how to make the gift of oneself the surrender of one's personal mystery to God and the service of the Church, a living reality. Since the religious life is essentially a theologal life, a life of faith, hope, and love, and a sacramental repre-sentation of the transcendent goal of the Christian community--the paschal mystery--it is important that these be lived by those in charge. No long dissertation or reasoning or logic will affect others on these points. The superior must live these, for it is only by being a living exemplar of them that she can really hope to exert her teaching on others. As St. Gregory the Great writes: Like Moses, a superior ought to be seen frequently going in and out of the tabernacle and while there caught up in con-templation such that when she comes out she may give hersel[ over to the needs of her subjects and tasks. She must be known as one who truly serves God and His Church.' T See The Gilts o[ the Holy spirit (Notre Dame: St. Mary's College, 1961), pp. 1 ft. 8Address to All Religious, May 23, 1964; N.C.W.C. ed., pp. 6-7. 8Pastoral Care, II, 5 ("Ancient Christian Writers," v. 11 [West-minster: Newman, 1950], pp. 56-8 passim. 4. Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 167 + + Charles A. $chleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 168 Such a life would be appreciated by almost all who saw it. It would be like the light shining on the moun-tain or the city built thereon. And this is as it should be. For while a superior should not seek the praise of others in conducting herself, this does not mean that she should not seek to be loved; but she should seek this in order that this love might prove to be a path leading to the Lord. It is most ditIicult for one who is not loved by her subjects, however well she might preach, or exhort, and provide logic for the life o[ holiness, to find a sym-pathetic hearing from those who make up her audience. "!'his exhortation to holiness is always most timely for anyone in at~thority. Often it happens that when a person undertakes the cares o[ government her heart becomes distracted by the many things demanding her attention. And then she may find that she neglects that which is most important. For when one in authority implicates herself more than is needful with what is external, it is as though she were so occupied with the actual journey that she forgets the destination. The net result is that she becomes a stranger to self-examination and is no longer aware of her own faults and the great harm that is perhaps being given to others. The care of the inner life cannot be relaxed for the sake of pre-occupying herself with external matters. On the other hand respect for the inner life should not bring about any neglect of the external either, for this is also an essential means of her sanctification and her service of Christ and His Church.a° This balance should be main-tained above all by the major superiors of religious communities. Otherwise, it is most likely that the life of her subjects will grow languid because even though they may wish to make spiritual progress, they are con-fronted with a stumbling block in the example of those over them. When the head languishes, it is rather diffi-cult for the members to retain their vigor. It is in vain that an army seeking victory over the enemy follows its leader if she has lost her way. While the office to which you have been chosen by divine providence lays upon you many duties and func-tions- administrator, organizer, pioneer, missionary, counselor, psychologist, financier (a kind of jack-of-all-trades)-- the one which overshadows all and which sub- 10 This need of the major superior, indeed of every superior, is one more reason why superiors should employ the rule of subsidiarity-- the tendency to delegate and subdelegate, especially in large institu-tions. St. Gregory again provides us with the pertinent text: "Subjects are to transmit inferior matters, so that superiors are left to fre-quently attend to the higher things, so that the eye which is set above for guiding the steps of the body may not be annoyed by dust. For all superiors are the heads of their subjects and should look forward that the feet may not go astray" Pastoral Care, pp. 68, ft. sumes them and colors them or affects them is that of being a woman and mother at the service of the com-munity. Only to the degree that this spirit permeates these functions will they be conducive to your own holi-ness, to that of your community, and to that of the Church.lz Of all these various services, however, the one which is most immediately connected with mother-hood by reason of the very nature of the society which you govern and direct is that of seeing to the spiritual development of your religious. In the series of confer-ences that we are engaged upon here, it is this aspect of your special "vocation" within a vocation that has fallen to me. By reason of the limitation of time and the vast-ness of the pertinent matter on this subject, only a few basic considerations along these lines can be taken up. They are meant to serve as directives and approaches which each of you might follow up through reading and prayer and consultation in regard to the same and other topics falling within the scope of this task. It was sug-gested by one of the members of the executive com-mittee that the areas of the vows, especially the positive aspects, and that of the apostolate might be treated. As a result the following general topics have been chosen, each, of course, with its necessary further delineations: (1) the major superior and the vocation of her subjects; (2) religious poverty and sanctification; (3) virginity and sanctification; (4) religious obedience and sanctification; (5) common life and sanctification; and (6) the apostolate and sanctification. In following out these considerations it will be my intention wherever possible to treat them both from the point of view of theory and practice, at least along general lines, such that the practice may be seen to flow out of and be governed by the theory of the topic dis-cussed. It is true that most of the problems which you encounter in the course of your ministry are of a practi-cal nature, demanding practical and concrete or down-to- earth decisions. Still it seems to me that unless you are acquainted with the directive principles which pru-nA similar idea was indicated by Pius XII in reference to the spirit which should underlie the use of canon law: "Canon law like everything else in the Church is wholly directed to the care of souls, so that by the aid and guidance of laws, too, men may secure the pos-session of the truth and grace of Christ, and may live, grow, and die in holiness, piety, and fidelity to faith. Whether in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, or in the exercise of judicial functions, or in giving the benefit of his advice to the sacred ministers, or the faithful, the canonist should constantly recall to mind that he must render an account for the welfare of souls to whom he can render great services, but to whom he can also do great harm" (Address on the Fourth Cen-tenary of the Gregorian University, October 17, 1953, in The Catholic Priesthood, ed. Pierre Veuillot [Westminster: Newman, 1957], bk. 2, pp. 270-1). ÷ ÷ ÷ Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 169 4, + + Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 170 dential judgment has to follow in coming to a decision affecting an existential here-and-now situation, it is very easy to be or to become confused (especially by reason of the complicated circumstances of today's religious life) and so arrive at a decision which would not be the best. Such a decision could easily inflict a sometimes serious harm, if not immediately at least in the future, to the lives of not only individuals but also that of your entire community and to the very life of the Church itself. It could also harm the image and therefore the effectiveness of the religious sister who occupies a more respected place here in our own country than perhaps in any other place in the world. The Major Superior and the Meaning of the Vocation of Her Subjects It is axiomatic that the whole order of grace has been ordered by God and is communicated to man in accord-ance with the nature he possesses. Thus the subject or person receiving divine communication will incarnate it and make it visible, will show its effects in a way that is patterned after the very nature of the subject. The very nature of God and His love-relationship to man were meant to be reflected not only in Christ but in all of those who would be incorporated into His body-person, the Church. For the Church is the sacramental continuation of Christ who is the perfect self-expression o~ the Father. She is His body, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone, as we find foreshadowed already in Genesisa2 and stated by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.~3 While human nature is essentially or fun-damentally the same in both man and woman, we find it existing in each of them with profound differences and modes of expression. And this foundation and the deepest significance of this sexual polarity originates not just in nature alone or from God as the author of nature, but in the supernatural sphere or from God as the author of man's supernatural existence. According to the Bible, it is in the polarity of man and woman where we find the image and likeness of God, in fact so much so that only in man and woman taken together do we find and discover what one author has called "the blessed icon of God." In fact it would seem that we must conclude that the physical and biological differences which we find exist-ing between man and woman indicate or point to some-thing much more profound, and that is the difference of soul or human spark, the difference of personality, which exists on all and every level of their being-- ~ Gn 2:23. ~8 Eph 5:22 ft. intellectual, volitional, and emotional, as well as physi-cal and biological. Consequently, when God's grace-communication incarnates itself in woman it takes on a shape and form different from that found in man, and it expresses itself along very well-defined lines. Thus, to understand and to be able to guide or direct or form or shape or mold the life and dynamism of the woman in the order of grace, demands that one know what she is in the order of nature.14 If we were to analyze or look into the overall makeup of woman on all the levels mentioned above, we would see first of all that she is much more alTective or love-directed than man in her approach to reality. It is for this reason that she tends towards the personal and the living. To cherish, to keep, and to protect what is per-sonal and living--this is her natural, her authentically feminine propensity.15 She was created by God to be the complement of man, subject to him in domestic or family life. She was to be the heart and soul of man, of the human race, its vital force, like the human heart that moves the hnman body to action. She has received and she possesses human nature in such a way that its loving force, its receiving capacity, its conserving capacity, its pondering capacity, and its formative, molding capacity are rather strikingly manifest. Indeed it is because she possesses these capacities that she by reason of her entire personality, her body, her soul, her powers of under-standing, her capacity for love, her almost inexhaustible devotion, is made to mother the human race in one capacity or another. She is made to know it as only a mother can know it, in all of its depths, its sublime potentialities, and also in its most embarrassing and material and temporal needs. It is for this reason that God has endowed woman with a family instinct, a maternal instinct, which can be used to build a human family or something far more extensive, the family of man or the family of God. A woman is potentially mother not only in reference to individual beings, but in reference to nature as a whole, to the whole world. And this is rather important for us to recall. For once stress is laid upon this view of woman, her need and power to create in cooperation with man, it can be seen that this need and power is something that can quite easily go beyond the limited confines of the husband-wife couple and encompass all the relations existing between men and women in reference to the human family. This direct and intimate relationship with persons rather x'See F. X. Arnold, Man and Woman (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963). The entire work is excellent on this point. ~ The Writings o] Edith Stein, ed. Hilda Graef (London: Peter Own, 1956), p. 161. ÷ ÷ ÷ Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24~ "1965 '4" 4. Charles A. Schleck, C.$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS than with things tends to make her world compact, which is not to be understood in the sense of narrow, but rather as a concentration on what is near at hand. And this is usually true even in her professional world if she lives in such, where she might happen to be an educator, a doctor, a social worker, or a nurse. She brings to this compact world where she functions warmth and a new atmosphere. From all this it should be clear that it is not right for woman to dodge or side-step this mission, to isolate her interests, to make her life too self-centered. She exists for humanity such that every talent she has received must be put at the dis-posal of the hnman family. This analysis of woman would also show that she is in.tuitive, that she has received human nature in such a way that its intuitive ability would be rather clearly set out. She was made to understand the deep sense of the inner values of things, of their spiritual content as well as or even more than their material or temporal con-tent. Thus in the sphere of her intelligence we find a profound difference between her and man. She usually has a finer perception, a better taste, a greater potenti-ality for sensibility and tact. She possesses a greater ability for visual perception, for the visual understand-ing of the world. Her senses are more open to external attractions. In fact it is this very power of observation that is a necessary complement of her intuition, since her judgment (good or bad) is formed by a rapid, almost simultaneous, look into and through the elements of a situation. It is because she is more intuitive that she was made to reveal the deep and the more profound levels of our being which she knows not so much by cold reason-ing or by speculation or by theoretical analysis, as by intuition, by instinct, by connaturality, by an identifica-tion, by a deep and warm knowledge that understands humanity much more intimately than does man. It is her mission to understand humanity, its weaknesses and infirmities, even its sins. It is her mission even to sympa-thize with these without ever, however, consenting to them. It is her mission to encourage, to prevent, to direct, not so much by governing or dominating--for in dominating she destroys both others and herself---as by being, by example, and by living. Thus the role of woman because she is intuitive is to suggest and inspire, not to be an activist principally, but rather a contempla-tive. She is expected to be intelligent but not opinion-ated, submissive but able to lead especially by urging to activity, unassertive but capable, intuitive but clear thinking, not over-active yet quietly efficient. It is in these ways that she is meant to redeem every situation by coming forward with her immense power to heal humanity by being its seer and its poet, and by so act-ing to achieve her place and fulfill herself. An analysis of woman would also indicate that she is more emotional than man; that the emotional side of her life is an essential part of it; that it is an integral part of her so-called "passivity"; that it is the goal, whether conscious or otherwise, of much of her en-deavor and striving. She is frequently preoccupied with surface agitation because of her need to give emotional satisfaction to others and to receive it in turn from them. It is this very deep need for receiving emotional satis-faction that also brings to the fore woman's need for another. She is dependent on others because she hopes to gain from them the security which satisfied emotional needs and wants effect in her. Unless a woman has found this other source of emotional satisfaction, or unless she has sublimated it in relation to a higher person and his interests, she becomes restless, unsatisfied, and frus-trated. She is made to love and to be loved, and she cannot find her sufficiency in herself. That is why a woman who is selfish and self-centered is an anomaly that is more distressing to encounter than a selfish man. For she has denied her nature, as it were, when she ceases to exist for others; and in doing this she has dried up at its source the possibility of those emotional experiences so vital to her person. This need for emotional satisfaction would also seem to account for the woman's impulse of self-surrender, her capacity to yield or to open herself to one who advances towards her with love. Deep down in her being woman knows that her role is one of submission, that only by renunciation can she become her true self. That is why an essential part of her person and her emotional need moves her to submit since this is fulfilled by such a re-sponse. And unless a woman can find one to whom she can submit in love, she will find that her love will not flower and that her emotional need will not be satisfied. This ingredient of self-surrender so evident in the woman's makeup must not be confused with pure pas-sivity as some often think. Woman is actively passive. Her activity is directed more towards the emanation of her personality, in her protection of and care for what she has received and conceived. Thus her person im-plies an active yielding and acceptance of what comes to her in love. It is this very quality which makes woman a unifying force in God's plan. For she is meant to act as an icon or image of humanity's attitude toward God. It is for this reason that we have running through the whole of salvation history the image of the woman pointing out again and again that humanity must be-come feminine before God, open to His advance, ready 4- + Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24 1965 4, 4, 4, Chades A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]?4 to be receptive, ready to yield to His every word and request. Thus it is the woman and not the man who is the archetype of humanity's relationship with God. She is symbolic of the only power which man has in reger-ence to God's love. Thus the childlike quality that we often find among women saints is not to be confused with a weak and playful infantilism. It is rather the longing for and the expression of that security which we can recognize as a rather profound condition of the finest women in history. Its essence is innocent confi-dence, based on that childlikeness which the Lord de-mands for the kingdom of heaven. It is the magnani-mous surrender of oneself, the total sacrifice of self, and unlimited confidence in God's power and fatherly goodness. Thus woman is a sign of faith taken in its biblical sense, faith which expects nothing from man, but relies wholly on God. When these ingredients of woman are found per-fectly in an individual, they would seem to present us with a picture of the divine idea of a human nature that is perfect and truly complete at least in reference to God. And they are found in one person, one woman, the Mother of God. Our Lady provides us not merely with a prototype or archetype of woman redeemed, but of mankind, humanity redeemed. This is the meaning of the Immaculate Conception. It is merely the revela-tion to us of the human being when still unfallen, of the undesecrated countenance of the creature man, of the perfect image of God in man as it existed when the "'fiat" of God's creative activity rested upon him in the dawn of his creation. Indeed what would seem to come from prolonged meditation on the purpose and image of Mary, what seems to sum up her entire personality is her simplicity, which is not so much a virtue as rather the culmination of her perfect and balanced harmonious activity. It is the expression of a real inward unity and purpose. It is opposed to multiplicity and diversity of aims and in-tentions. It is a life entirely directed to God. And sim-plicity is a mark of divinity or of the divine. Mary had a nature that was incapable of pretense, of going too far, or of stopping too short of the mark. She never added anything to what had to be said or done, nor did she ever subtract anything. That is why what we find most attractive in Mary is her complete self-possession in spite of the plethora of grace and divine favor that was given to her as the Mother of God and as the archetype of humanity. She always and everywhere preserved what was natural to her feminine makeup.16 That one person, one woman should be able to l~Ibid., p. 125. transcend the differentiation of the sexes before God is not an entirely unusual phenomenon. It has been said that many important personages such as geniuses and saints have been able to stand above this differentiation in sex, that they have been able to unite in themselves the qualities of both man and woman in a creative harmony. And we may well ask ourselves whether this transcending of natural barriers is not perhaps the highest effect of the workings of grace. If we were to study the treatise on God the Trinity, we would soon discover that the image of woman reflects rather closely that of the Third Person in the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. He is called Love, Breath or Kiss, Gift, and His operation in the economy of salvation is that of a mother-principle. He is called Love, the Person of Love in the Trinity because He proceeds by way of volitional activity in God. To fall into the realm of metaphysics for a moment, we might say that the pro-cession of love or rather that which proceeds through the activity of love proceeds as spirit; spirit, however, signifies or expresses a certain vital or life-giving move-ment and impulse. The activity of love produces an inclination or an out-going or a giving, and this is no less true in the case of the activity of love in God. Thus the Holy Spirit is movement, secret mysterious activity in His very Being, just as is love as found among crea-tures. That is why, perhaps, when He is described in Sacred Scripture it is always in terms and ideas and ex-pressions implying motion or movement--spiritus, that is, wind, breath, or breeze; or He is compared to a river or fountain that flows from the throne of the Lamb.17 It is for this reason that the fathers of the Church are fond of referring to the Holy Spirit as the breath or kiss of the Father and the Son, the most secret but sweet kiss. And this is quite correct. For a kiss is an expression of unity and a means to it. And if anywhere there is not only oneness of love, but also oneness of life be-tween persons, if anywhere lovers are of one spirit and are one spirit, surely this is true within the mystery of the Godhead. Between the Father and the Son there are not merely two lives that melt into one; there is only one life and one heart, one love-producing activity. Thus the breath or the kiss of the Father and the Son cannot be merely a vehicle or medium to procure unity of life in God; it is rather its expression. Hence the Father and the Son do not pour out their breath of life into each other by their kiss, but from the interior of their common heart they pour it into a third Person, one in whom the oneness of their love and their life is ~'See Jn 3:8; 7:38-9; 20:22-3; Ap 22:1 ff. Superior anal Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 175 ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles A. C.$.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 176 manifested and made visible or expressed.IS It is pre-cisely because He proceeds by way of love and is Love that the Holy Spirit is the most mysterious of the Per-sons in God. Love is much more ineffable than the activity of the mind. For while the latter produces a definite term, a word or an idea, the former, love, pro-duces no term but only a movement toward, an out-going. This is the reason why as soon as we try to de-scribe love we must have recourse to metaphors and similes as we find in the Canticle of Canticles or in the Sequence for the feast of Pentecost. Yet for all this note of movement which is attached to the Person of the Holy Spirit, He is never to be considered as restless or feverish in His quest for any object. Like the other two Persons of the Godhead He possesses all objects, being eternally within them. And like them He is "semper agens et semper quietus" to use a phrase of St. Augustine, always active and yet always at rest. Again, the Holy Spirit is called Gift, One who is to be possessed by the one to whom He is given. This implies that He Himself possesses an aptitude and readiness to be given or the ability and desire to give Himself. A gift, however, implies a free and gratuitous and unreturnable donation the motivating force of which is love. Thus the first thing that we give to another whom we truly and genuinely love is that love by which we wish what is most conducive to his personal well-being. Personal love, therefore, is the first gift that we give to another; and it is the root of all the other gifts that we might impart to this other, for example, the use of one's body in mar-riage. Thus in the life of grace, the first thing that God gives us is Himself, as Personal Love, as Gift, that can be possessed and enjoyed and freely so. From this it should be clear that in speaking of the Holy Spirit as the Gift, we do not intend to deny that in a sense the Word of God also can be said to be God's gift to man in the incarnation and again in the mystery of the divine indwelling. Yet the title would not be as properly the Word's as it is that of the Holy Spirit. Gift is that which proceeds by way o{ love activity, which notion as we have seen is proper to the Holy Spirit. Finally, when the Holy Spirit is sent on mission we see that it is always as sign and mother-principle. He is a sign of the divine renewal that takes place within us as a result of God's love--purity and charity; and He is also the forming principle uniting those who have been created according to the image and likeness of God with their Creator and Father. He is the Sanctifier or the bond linking up man with God. Thus His prerogatives ~s M. J. Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity (St. Louis: Herder, 19t7), pp, 183-4, 188, of Love and Gift are most strikingly evident in the work of man's sanctification. It is for this reason that one of the scholastic theologians mentions that when the hu-man person embraces God or surrenders himself to Him in grace, He receives the kiss of God's mouth and the breath of His Spirit. The powers of the person are made perfect and they are elevated to a higher plane of activity. And when this conversion or this turning to God or surrender to Him is intense, then this kiss is so completely efficacious that the individual drinking in God's Spirit becomes totally transformed by Him. And it is then with sobriety and modesty that this individual allows its love and giving to overflow on others according to their worth and necessity, not giving itself wholly over to them nor seeking them for itself but only for God. This we see in the case of the Church. For she was begun by the kiss of the divine mouth, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the mouth of God and embracing in His kiss the Father and Son. And she in turn exists only for one purpose--to communicate the kiss of the divine mouth to others.1~ From this it would seem logical to conclude that there is a very definite affinity or similarity, not perfect in every or all respects to be sure but at least in many, between the woman and the Holy Spirit, such that her mission when actually and really lived even in the natural order would partially imply her being a reflec-tion of God as Personal Love and Gift or Subsistent Breath. The ideas of love and gift and breath imply movement, an outgoing or communicating activity. And the woman is known for her ability to love and to give herself, to sacrifice herself for the benefit of others, to surrender herself in total donation. And she is also known for her ability to urge on gently, irresistibly, and persuasively, like a soft ocean breeze bellying a ship's sails and moving it to port. Certainly this is the work of the Holy Spirit through His gifts and His own presence in man; and this would also seem to be the role of woman--to be a strong yet gentle impulse urging the whole of humanity on to its last goal, communion with the beloved. And finally the woman is mother-principle, or the one to whose lot it falls to communicate flesh and blood or to be at the service of life; and what she gives, life, she is meant to give in a permanent and unreturn-able sort of way. Consequently, we can say that partially at least the woman's vocation and mission is to imitate and con-tinue through space and time as a sign or symbol and cause the mission of the Holy Spirit--to lead humanity 4- 4- 4- Superior and Vocation ~John of St. Thomas, The Gifts of the Holy Ghost (New York:VOLUME 24, 1965 Sheed and Ward, 1954), pp. 37-8. 177 Charles A. SchCl.eSc.Ck., REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 178 back to God by showing it that God is a God of love and of gift; by showing it that its duty is to find God, to go back to Him, to love Him by an unreturnable gift of self in the darkness and mysteriousness of a deep faith and trust. And I believe we might say that the woman would represent and personify the Holy Spirit not partially, but wholly, not merely in her origin, but also in her nature, if, without being wife and mother, she could be the center of love between father and son in a family as a virgin. When we come to the consideration of the religious sister we should not expect her vocation to be contrary to her fundamental vocation of woman. Rather we would expect it to lie along the same lines. And yet because of the increased perfection of her vocation in the order of grace we would expect it to lie much further along the road, such that it would enable her to realize and achieve or fulfill her vocation of woman much more profoundly. And I believe that even a rather brief analysis of the sister's role or place in the Church would bear this out. She is given to the Church as a sign, a visible sign of not one but rather of several realities. And because she is a sign, because she acts as a visible and public witness in the Church, she is given to the Church and to the humanity intended to belong to the Church as a visible parable, or a graphic picture, or model or icon or type, for all to see, of the intimate rela-tionship which the whole of humanity is meant to have with God. We mentioned above that all communication between God and man has tended to adopt a sacra-mental or sign-medium--either that of language or events or representations or personifications (for exam-ple, Judith, Moses, the Virgin Mary). And this is no less true of the sister's vocation. Because her role with rela-tion to man is sacramental, everything about her should indicate what she stands for---her dress or garb, the houses where she lives, the entire rhythm and disposition of her life. She is meant to indicate publicly that man belongs entirely to God, that one day he will have to live only for Him and only with Him. She is meant to indi-cate publicly that man belongs entirely to God, that one day it will have to live only for Him and only with Him. She is meant to indicate perpetually not in herself alone, but in the institution which she gives life to during the course of her earthly life, that man is called to experience God's personal love, that he is intended to receive His special attention, that he is called to enter into a relation-ship with God that can best be signified by the bridal rela-tionship, by the union existing between man and wife. Thus the sister is meant to be revelatory in the fullest sense of this word. There is a tradition which runs through revelation, as we mentioned, placing the woman firmly on this side of heaven and identified with God's chosen people, His Ecclesia. It is the feminine image or archetype, which stands for the whole of humanity, for God's chosen and elect. In this role she is not meant to be wife to husband in the sense of being merely an object for masculine projections. She is meant to indicate that the whole of mankind especially in the order of grace is the object of God's special predilection, that it receives all that it has, especially in this order, uniquely from God, as a woman, the body-person of her husband, receives her glory and her name from her husband. This would seem to be at least something of the theological mystery or the reli-gious significance of the woman consecrated to God within the framework of a religious community. And it is for this reason no doubt that her ever further unveil-ing so often means the breakdown of her public mission and of her mystery or sacrament before the People of God and before all called to belong to this People. Per-haps we might identify this unveiling today with the contemporary trend that attempts to prove or demon-strate that woman can make her best contribution to human progress by being not merely equal to man, but identical with him, instead of by being herself. There is a common desire and a legitimate curiosity within the human race to see the goal to which it is divinely destined, to catch while still here on earth a glimpse of itself in glory. And this is given to it in the vocation of the religious sister. This is part of the mean-ing of the reception of the habit assigning her a public mission in the Church and before humanity--to be a sign of humanity's belonging to God as His bride. It is in this way I think that the Sister is meant to be a sign permanently and visibly present in the world of the sublime privilege and compulsory destiny of the whole of humanity--to be open and docile and obedient to the plan of salvation, as a bride is open to her husband.2° How important this is for the vocation of your sub-jects can be seen from the fact that woman insofar as she is directed toward man and toward the love of man re-tains her bridal character throughout her entire exist-ence. Thus a wife in her attitude toward the husband she loves remains a bride throughout her entire life. For the bridal quality of the woman is merely a repre-sentation of her love in its undying and unending re-newal. If this is true of the ordinary woman, it should be even more true of the virgin who is consecrated to Christ. For she by special commission of the Church ~ ¥ictor White, O. P., Soul and Psyche (New York: Harper, 1960), pp. 12 ft. ÷ ÷ ÷ Superior Vocation VOLUME 24, Z965 ]79 + 4. 4. Charles A. SchCle.Sck.C,. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]80 pronouncing on her call from Christ is set aside to be a permanent and symbolic or sacramental renewal in sign of the Church's and of each person's bridal rela-tionship to the Lord. In a much more visible way by her virgin's vocation and by her habit is her bridal quality renewed and her wedding day continuously and daily represented and repeated before humanity. And how perfectly this function and mission or public assignment corresponds with the ingredients of her natural vocation. Surrender to another in personal en-counter is the deepest longing of a woman's heart. When a woman makes this surrender to another creature she is underestimating her worth; and she is, perhaps with-out knowing it, making demands which no creature can possibly fulfill. Only God can receive us in such a way that He fills the quasi-infinite and inexhaustible demands of the human heart to love and to be loved. That is why the aim of the religious life--complete surrender to God--is also the one adequate fulfillment of woman's longing. From this we can see why the "fiat" of the Mother of God at the Annunciation, and its continuation throughout her entire life, and the profession of the religious sister is a visible symbol of humanity's essential religious quality, surrender to God, openness to Him. In a very special way then tlfis atti-tude is truly the special charisma, the ecclesial function of the sister in the Church. And she should not forget that the idea of charisma means not the working out of one's own career designs, but rather the obliterating of one's own person to the point of its becoming an instru-ment of service to the ecclesial community and to hu-manity as a whole. In addition to the religious sister's being a sign of the relationship of humanity with God, she is also meant to be a sign of God's relationship to the world of man. And this is one of love and concern. Thus she is meant to assume the interests and concerns of Eternal Love, or she is meant to reflect and place before the whole of humanity the personal and intense and warm love which God has for it. And she reflects these concerns and interests, even anxiety, in a light that is peculiarly her own; that is, in a maternal light. Thus the religious woman's love dynamism is not only not annihilated in her being called to assume her ecclesial function; it is rather given new life and becomes far more extensive that that of "she who hath husband." 21 It is meant to assume the status and the proportions of the God-man Himself. Thus God by calling her to the religious life communicates to the woman together with the grace of her vocation something that was not there before. This is .o~ Is 5-t: I. a divine dynamism or vitality which makes her every ac-tivity, her every response to God a form of fruitfulness and motherhood. Even though her apostolic work may be rather quiet and performed in relative hiddenness and obscurity, it is still a dynamic power or force that transforms and gives life to all that it touches. That is why her woman's natural desire is not at all annihilated. Rather, it is made to expand as she assumes more and more fully the perspectives of a daughter of the Church. The woman who is called sister is a mother in the high-est sense of the word. This was very strongly asserted by the late sovereign pontiff, Pope Pius XII, in an ad-dress given in May of 1956: The Catholic Church, depository of the divine designs, teaches the higher fruitfulness of lives entirely consecrated to God and to neighbor. Here the complete renunciation of the family should make possible the completely disinterested spiritual ac-tion which proceeds not from any fear of life and its responsi-bilities, but from the perception of the true destinies of man, created to the image and likeness of God and in search of uni-versal love, which no fleshly attachment can limit. That is the most sublime fecundity and the most desirable which man can seek, the fecundity which transcends the biological order and reaches straight into that of the spirit.~ This truth is more important for us to recall than ever before. There is no such thing as a woman's right to a child. There is only the right of the child to a mother. For a woman to be a physician, a guardian, a teacher, or a nurse is not a profession in the masculine sense of the word. It is the form which her spiritual motherhood is to take in God's designs. Thus a profes-sion is not just a substitute for the unmarried woman's lack of physical motherhood. Rather it is the working out of the never failing motherliness that is in every genuine woman. And this is the more true, the more her motherhood turns around those things which are regarded as the timeless possessions of humanity, the cultural and religious values of the human race. Thus in the Church by reason of her religious mission and her apostolate as mother, the sister has her place beside the bearer of religious fatherhood, beside the priesthood of the man. And in this respect she is like the Church who in her character as mother is a cooper-ating principle with the one working within her, Christ Himself. Perhaps it is in this vision of her vocation where we discover the fundamental reason why it was fitting that the priesthood was never entrusted to the woman. The priesthood could not be confided to a woman because then the very meaning and significance which she communicates to man would be annihilated. ~ Address to Doctors on Fertility and Sterility, May 19, 1956; see The States o] Perfection, p. 288, n. 624b. 4. 4. 4. Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 ]8] REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS She is excluded from the hierarchy not becanse she is unequal to man but because she is not identical to him. This exclusion is a recognition of the distinctiveness and individuality of the woman. It is a witness to the fact that there are distinctly feminine tasks in the Church which demand the presence of women. Thus this exclusion far from being motivated from any dis-dain for woman springs from a reverence and respect for the true nature of woman, for the peculiar talents and gifts which God has given humanity in her. In fact in her not being capable of the priesthood she renders the priesthood its most outstanding service. For she teaches it by that very fact that the priesthood institnted by Christ is a service rather than a lordship and that it is a service of joy. Its object is agap~ or charity, brotherhood and the bond of love. And charity is above all not a matter of organization, but one of interior disposition of faith that is active in love. Here we find the special domain of the woman's devotion and gener-osity and youthful unselfishness.~3 It is these same thoughts which prompted Plus XII to write in 1957: We do not have to reaffirm Our certainty that Religious women are indispensable in many fields of the Catholic aposto-late, particularly in the field of education and scholastic activity, no less than in the field of charity. The Church's missionary work would for a long time now have been unthinkable without the participation of the Sisters; and in many fields, where the sacred hierarchy is in charge, the labors of the Sisters are indispensable for the well-organized care of souls. Without their help, the Church would have been compelled to relinquish many op-portunities for progress, and many positions, already painfully won, would probably have had to be abandoned. With the aso sistance of your maternal hands, beloved daughters, the Church is able to support the aged in their declining years; with your warmth of heart the Church is able to warm the hearts of tiny orphans; with your fervor of self-dedication, the Church is able to minister to the sick." The Limitations and Weaknesses of Woman In all this analysis of the woman's vocation and mis-sion in nature and in religion, we are not to forget that in the present fallen order of the human race, these ideal qualities and expressions of her image are always the goal or end after which she is constantly striving, a goal that has been ideally reached only by one indi-vidual, the Virgin Mother of God, and this only through a most special and singular grace. The reason for this need for constant effort stems from the fact that the fall withdrew a unifying force which would have kept in Arnold, Man and Woman, passim. Address to Nursing Sisters, April 25, 1957, in The States o] Per- Jection, pp. 286--7. harmony and balance and unity the various ingredients mentioned above. Thus your subjects must be made aware of these different limitations during the course of their formation and also afterwards, since they mani-fest themselves at different age-levels of our human existence. This education should be geared in such a way as to make them aware of the particular spiritual opportunities which are offered to religious women through the presence of these limiting factors and to make them aware of the various protections available against the spiritual decline to which they are then exposed. Without attempting in any way to present an exhaus-tive list of these limitations and weaknesses, the follow-ing thoughts in reference to them might prove to be helpful at least by way of area analysis. We mentioned above that the woman tends toward the personal and the living, toward the whole of things; that she tends to cherish, to keep and protect; that she tends not so much toward the abstract but rather to the concrete. This tendency toward the personal and living and con-crete can, however, become unwholesomely exaggerated. On the one hand she is inclined to be at times extrava-gantly concerned with her own person and problems and to expect the same interest from others, in the case of sisters, their superiors and fellow sisters. This brings about the tendency to anxiety, to depression, the desire to be recognized, to be given attention, to be loved. This situation can be increased when there is question of slight or serious emotional instability, or even by simple glandular disturbance, or by the rhythm of the woman's body activity. It is from this lack of and yet desire for security and acceptance that there can come diffidence, shyness, timidity, even hostility. On the other hand, this over-concentration on the personal can lead to an unmeasured interest in others, which mani-fests itself by way of curiosity, gossip, indiscreet longing to penetrate into the more intimate part of the lives of others, fellow sisters, pupils, and so forth. Again the tendency which she has toward wholeness can lead to an "explosive" use of her energy, to a superficial nib-bling in all directions without any real unifying end or goal. The tendency which she has to cherish, to keep, and to protect can lead to a possessiveness that far exceeds anything required by her work or associations with others. And finally her tendency to the concrete in preference to the abstract can easily cut off from her vision those things which lie outside her immediate environment, or from the broader view which she ought to be taking of things. Added to these there are other weaknesses which can 4. + + Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 183 ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles A. Schleck, C.S.C. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]84 find their way into the life of woman, such as her tend-ency to an anthropomorphic idea of God which could lead to an over-familiarity with Him or to a sentimen-talized relationship with Him such that she would lack the true reverence for Him which she ought to have. Again, we find that she has an inclination to seIf-de-lusion and to suggestibility; that she is easily persuaded and influenced by appearances rather than by reason and logic. In fact it was this tendency that made Shake-speare have one of his female characters remark: "I have no other but a woman's reason: I think him so because I think him so." Likewise because of her strong emo-tional needs we find that at times when these are not satisfied, she can be capricious, moody, unstable, extrav-agant, unpredictable, and rather weak of will. And lastly, but certainly not the least important weakness which can be found in woman is the peculiar expression which her conflicts with authority assume. Generally speaking a thorough analysis of such conflicts would usually indicate that they are not so much with the concept or notion of authority as rather with persons in authority. This would seem to follow from the woman's being occupied more with persons than with abstract ideas.~5 While all these things might seem to pertain more to the realm of mere human psychology and to be espe-cially due to the irresolution of the normal crises of human life--those of vocation, identity, intimacy, par-enthood, integrity, and prayer and action,~6 you should attempt to make your religious see that they provide them with the normal channels through which God Himself works out their salvation. They should be seen as the ordinary "dark nights" through which most religious must pass to come closer to God. Just as He makes use of human instruments to effect our holiness, so too does He make use of the ordinary happenings and situations of human life--physical, biological, emo-tional, moral, and intellectual crises--to lead us closer to Himself. Such an attitude, of course, cannot be achieved unless your subjects are educated to and constantly re-minded of the fact that they must regard the circum-stances of life--at all levels--as given and provided for by God. It is through these very ordinary events of life that grace is made visible and available for them in these rather human "sacramental" forms. It is in this way that you can hope to impress upon your religious ~nW. Demal, O.S.B., Pastoral Psychology in Practice (New York: Kenedy, 1955), pp. 54 ft. ~ For an excellent treatment of these crises, see Barry McLaughlin, S.J., Nature, Grace, and Religious Development (Westminster: New-man, 1964), pp. 1-128. the fact that they are women and that they possess some or all of the weaknesses of women in our fallen economy; that this is something they should not only accept, but in a sense respect and even reverence, seeing in them the peculiar destiny and glory which God Him-self has singled out for them. It is only in this way that the whole of life can become one continuous sacra-mental encounter with God who continues to reveal Himself through the things that are made and through the things that happen. It is only in proportion as they learn to see these things in this light that they can hope to receive in exchange for their surrender to them the life and deepening faith which He promises in return.27 Conclusion While it is impossible for major superiors to person-ally form all their subjects in reference to what has preceded, still it would seem that they would contribute greatly to the spiritual improvement of their communi-ties if they saw to it that these notions of the woman's vocation and mission in the plan of God were system-atically communicated to their religious throughout the years of their formation. It is only in this way that they can expect their religious (1) to make their precise and proper contribution to God's plan, to the work of the Church, to the apostolates o~ the community, and to their own sanctification; (2) to protect themselves against their weaknesses and the harm these could cause to the realization of the various ends and goals of their ecclesial mission; and (3) to make them aware of and able to use for encounter with God the rich gifts and humbling limi-tations of their own personalities. It is only in this way that they like Mary and the Church whom they continue to embody can provide humanity with a concrete theology of mankind or humanity redeemed. It is for this reason that I would suggest that in your visitations and personal interviews with your subjects, these ideas be frequently presented and recalled. By yourselves knowing and appreciating and loving the woman's and the sister's vocation, public function, and problems, and by making this quite evident to your communities, you will show your maternal interest in them as a family and as persons. And once this becomes evident in you, there is greater hope that the family image which ought to characterize the religious life will become an actual reality. There is greater hope that each and all of your subjects will combine all the voca-tions open to woman and reflect the virtues that are proper to them. For as virgins they must continue to ~ Adrien Yon Speyer, Meditations on the Gospel o[ St. John (Lon-don: Collins, 1959), p. 43. + + + Superior and Vocation VOLUME 24, 1965 185 ÷ ÷ ÷ Charles ,4. $chCle.cSk.C, . REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 186 reflect Mary's humility, her simplicity, her naturalness, her silence, her thoughtfulness, her reflectiveness, her caution or reserve, her complete dependence on grace, and her profound faith both in the world of the present and in that of the future. As spouses of Christ, they must practice a perfect personal fidelity to the one they have chosen; for this is the essential relationship existing between bride and bridegroom reflected so strikingly in Mary, the image or archetype of the Church standing at the foot of the Cross. To maintain this fidelity in-violate will at times demand heroic fortitude in the face of the difficulties that come not only from without but most often from within. And finally as mother, they are to practice or cultivate a sense of and use of the social virtues, of the deep interest and consideration and concern for the needs of others. For motherhood implies an encompassing care and attention, the giving of nourishment and shelter, an activity that is marked by its tenderness and gentleness yet firmness, for the weak and fragile things that are being brought forth in Christ. It demands the exact opposite of selfishness and undue self-interest, of worry and anxiety about oneself and one's personal needs, it is rather characterized by self-sacrifice, by resourcefulness, by the ability and desire to give of one's time and energy to and for others, and by laying at the disposal of the race whatever gifts and qualities God may have given her. Your task today is of gigantic proportions. For how evident is our need for a new Pentecost, for the reign of the Spirit and of His influence and His gentle rule; for love of God and obedience, submission, reverence and a sense of the sacred; for purity, warmth, and fresh-ness; for spontaneity, poetry, and the Godward force-- all of which are presented to us in the picture of the woman redeemed. In a sense we can truthfully say that the greatest need in the modern world is for the truly feminine. For to be wise, to learn wisdom, demands that one be feminine to reality, to let reality flood in, to be molded by reality and so achieve a certain fullness from our absorption of it; to rest in reality, and so achieve a certain peace. In the Consolation of Boethius it is a woman who leads him to Wisdom. Her mission is to tell him, a prisoner in the dungeon, that if he had not cast away the weapons she had given him, he would have been invincible against the attacks of evil fortune. And then she attempts to lead him gently back to the realization that not in gaining possession of anything, but only in obedience and love to and for God, will we find eternal happiness and peace. And the world has need of this collaboration. It has a profound need for women who know how to say to God "fiat," to keep all things in their hearts; it has need for women who can bring the world back to a sense of unity, of religion, and of peace. It must return to the simple things, the human things, to the mystery of life and death, of birth and redemption. And it will find these in the woman who reflects in her very body the constant rhythm of nature itself, who holds the secret of life and who knows instinctively that esse is better than agere, being is so much more than doing. That is why she is a sign of the eternal. Again, we can say that woman has need of women who are genuinely themselves. For she has been and is still attempting to find her role too much in the world of man. The world without women is more the world of adolescents than the world of men. It is a world that easily shakes off its transcendental ties. The all-too-masculine activity of self-reliance and self-redemption has dimmed man's vision of the transcendent. Before this will be rectified, mankind must once more become feminine; that is, receptive of the "Word" which con-stantly seeks entrance into its womb. The profound consolation that woman can bring and give to mankind is her faith in the immeasurable ac-tivity and efficacy of forces that are hidden and invis-ible. For the divine creative force can break forth from God to renew the face of the earth only on condition that the earth lifts up its face with its single contribu-tion: "Be it done to me according to thy word." This is the feminine power which Mary shares with all her sex who will follow her in her love and renunciation. Every woman is made for mercy, love, understanding, and mediation. But it is only when all these are ele-vated by grace that they give her a mission and a mean-ing no longer merely human and terrestrial, but divine and infinite. That is why mankind will find its way to paradise only when it meets the loving woman whose eyes rest in and on God. From all this, one thing stands out quite clearly: To be a woman is a vocation with peculiar and profound responsibilities not only to oneself but to the whole of humanity. Woman is still and let us hope she will re-main the eternal mystery. We would not want to find the solution to her in the discovery of scientific facts alone. For it is from the mystery which she is and which she has received from and in God that human-ity's ideals and inspirations arise and that the super-natural civilization which is the work of the Spirit will finally be achieved. This is your supreme task--to see to it that this is brought about in the women under your charge. And the fact that in God's plan the highest human person is a woman should only serve to spur you on in the accomplishment of your special ecclesial mission. ÷ 4, ÷ Superior and Focation VOLUME 24, 1965 18'/ THOMAS DUBAY,S.M. Psychological Considerations in Our Approach to Mental Prayer ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M., is spiritual director at Notre Dame Seminary; 2001 South Carroll-ton Avenue; New Orleans, Louisiana 70118. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 188 If we wish to get a man to visit and speak with a friend of ours, we talk not about the theory of conversation but about our friend. Rudimentary psychology suggests that men and women alike are inclined to communicate not by understanding abstract theories of communication but by being drawn to attractive personalities. Yet in teaching mental prayer to our young religious in postulancies, novitiates, juniorates, and seminaries we often introduce them into a supremely interpersonal familiarity through impersonal conceptual analyses and pointed outlines. We are not wholly unlike a man who in order to get Jim to date Joan explains what dating is about rather than what Joan is like. We propose in this essay to advance the thesis that a psychologically natural and humanly appealing approach to instruction in and the practice of mental prayer is through a scripturally and theologically orientated appre-ciation of the mystery of the Trinity indwelling in the souls of the just through charity. We feel that once a young novice or seminarian (or veteran, for that matter) grasps the astonishing God-and-man intimacy implied in the in-dwelling mystery as Sacred Scripture presents it, the whole concept of mental prayer will not only appear to be a nor-mal, expected next step but also an appealingly attractive occupation. And surely it is a chief function of any teacher to make his subject appealing, interesting, challenging. If, however, the divine inhabitation is presented to in-telligent young people for the purpose of moving them to a living of it, we feel that the teacher should avoid isolated approaches: merely speculative on the one hand or merely pietistic on the other. Few are moved by the former alone and no one is much enlightened by the latter alone. Hence, we prefer to begin by a study of Sacred Scripture, first the Old Testament and then the New. The Ancient Intimacy A careful research into the scriptural deposit dealing with God and man relationships will convince one that the theme underlying the whole divine message is an al-most incredibly beautiful desire on the part of God to be familiar with man. A demonstration of this fact is too vast a project to present exhaustively here, but if one studies Deuteronomy, the prophets, and the wisdom literature thoughtfully, he cannot fail to be impressed with the re-markable expressions Yahweh uses to indicate His desire to love and cherish and even fondle His people. Though we cannot attempt a complete exposition of this truth within the confines of our present discussion, we do wish to suggest a few illustrations of what we mean by the divine desire for interpersonal intimacy with man. These illustrations will serve to exemplify our intent in speaking of a scripturally orientated appreciation of men-tal prayer. Somewhat as the fully bloomed flower is contained in the tightly enclosed bud, so is the interindwelling mys-tery (the New Testament does not speak merely of an in-dwelling) of divine intimacy in the new dispensation con-tained in the many themed God-and-man familiarity of the old. Yahweh prepared the human family for the super-natural divine inhabitation by the gradual unfolding of His desire for a tender and mutual love between Himself and His intellectual creatures. In the Old Testament God uses several concrete images to make clear to the Hebrews how deep is His love and concern for them. He declares that His love is like a mar-ried love: He who has become your husband is your Maker. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back . With enduring love I take pity on you, says the Lord your redeemer (Is 54:5,7-8). Then He says that His affection is like parental affection: + It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them into my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I ÷ fostered them like one raises an infant to his cheeks. Yet, though + I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their Approach toMental healer . How could I give you up, O Ephraim?. My heart is Prayer overwhehned, my pity is stirred (Hos 11:3-4,8). It would be difficult in any language to express a more concerned, a more touching, an even fondling intimacy. VOLUME 24, 1965 189 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 19~ Further, the divine love must be returned, a privilege that is also an obligation, an obligation enunciated with unusual solemnity and insistence on its being taught and remembered: Hear, O Israeli The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! There-fore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates (Dt 6:4-9). Tender concern has its root in love. A mother is anx-iously solicitous for her sick child precisely because she loves. Yahweh is at pains to convince Israel of His touch-ing concern because He loves with an inconceivably greater love. He uses the image of a father's strong care for his son: You saw how the Lord, your God, carried you, as a man carries his child, all along your journey until you arrived at this place (Dr l:~l). The divine eye is set even on the steps of a man and on each of his bones: His eyes are upon the ways of man, and he beholds all his steps (Jb 34:21) . He watches over all his bones; not one of them shall be broken (Ps 33:21). He cannot forget His human children: Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you (Is 49:15). It can come as no wonder, then, that the pious Hebrew responds with an utter and intimate trust toward this loving-kindness of his God. He piles image upon image to express it: I love you, O Lord, my strength, O Lord, my rock, my for-tress, my deliverer. My God, my rock of refuge, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my strongholdl Praised be the Lord, I exclaim, and I am safe from my enemies (Ps 17:2-4). His trust is implicit: I believe that I shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord (Ps 26:13-4). His confidence is optimistic: Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord; let us acclaim the rock of our salvation. Let us greet him with thanksgiving; let us joyfully sing psahns to him (Ps 94:1-2). This loving trust brings a man very close indeed to his God, willing to pray to Him, eager to find fulfillment in Him: One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gaze on the loveli-ness of the Lord (Ps 26:4). Even in the old dispensation we may note how strikingly these interpersonal relations brought man near to God. No less than six or seven times in one short prayer does the Psalmist declare his proximity to his Maker: With you I shall always be; you have hold o[ my right hand; with your counsel you guide me, and in the end you will re-ceive me in glory. Whom else have I in heaven? And when I am with you, the earth delights me not. Though my flesh and my heart waste away, God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever. For indeed, they who withdraw [rom you perish; you destroy everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me, to be near God is my good; to make the Lord God my refuge (Ps 72:23-8). One must agree that this is a far from an indirect prep-aration for the indwelling mystery. Finally, we may not omit the yearning for God and the solid joy in the Lord themes so characteristic of any con-templative soul. If we can instill into our novices and seminarians a never to be lost sense of the Hebrew ve-hemence in pursuing God in prayer, whatever else we may do toward their proper formation, we have succeeded in planting their steps firmly and probably perpetually in a prayerful approach to the religious life. To us one of the most remarkable traits of Psalter spir-ituality is this vehemence of the Psalmist's longing for God. By any standard of judgment it is extraordinary. It betrays a lofty sanctity, a deep sense of the divine reality, a vibrant awareness that only Yahweh is the health of the soul. And this too is exactly what our young religious need to learn first in their initial meeting with mental prayer. One likes to imagine what kind of pray-ers we would turn out of our novitiates if we could merely begin to instill the following sentiments into their young hearts: As the hind longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, 0 God. Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God?. 0 God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water . As with the riches of a banquet shall my. soul be satisfied, and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you. I will remember you upon nay couch, and through the night-watches I will meditate on you: that you are my help, and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy. My soul clings fast to you . I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like parched land . I gasp with open mouth in my yearning for your commands. How lovely is your dwelling place, 0 Lord of hostsl My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God . I had rather one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere . You will show me the 4, 4, 4, A tfl~roach to M~ntal Prayer VOLUME 24, 1965 191 + ÷ + Thomas Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 192 path to life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever . Only in God be at rest, my soul (Ps 41:2-3; 62:2-3,6-9; 142:6; 118:131; 83:2-3,11; 15:11; 61:6). If we religious sincerely possess these sentiments, not much more is required. It seems to us that this magnificent Old Testament invi-tation to intimacy with God (developed, of course, at greater length) is the psychologically sound introduction to mental prayer. Nothing is so appealing as Sacred Scrip-ture and nothing so compels a man to want to converse with another as the realization that this other loves him and is actually yearning for a conversation. And such is precisely the Old Testament story. It needs to be mastered by our formation personnel and presented to our young candidates. The New Interinclwelling Intimacy The new revelation uttered by the Word expands the old dispensation familiarity into the divine inhabitation in the souls of the just. If one examines the Gospels and Epistles without presuppositions stemming from diverse schools of theology, he will conclude, we submit, that however one looks upon the indwelling mystery as the New Testament presents it, he must characterize it as closely bound up with interpersonal relationships between the Trinity and the soul. The matter is not primarily spatial or local. God is naturally present everywhere, and the Jews who listened to Jesus knew that fact well from the clear statements of it in their sacred books. A new, supernatural presence seems to leave out of direct con-sideration-- but by no means denies--the natural immen-sity of God, His omnipresent power and His all-pene-trating knowledge. Hence, a priori we might expect that if God is present in the rational creature in some new manner, the newness may be an interpersonal affair, not a mere stark, physical location. Such it is. The indwelling of the Trinity in the souls of the just according to the new revelation is a super-natural, personal familiarity revolving around a mutual knowing and loving, an intimacy tailor-made for initiat-ing and fostering a life of mental prayer and recollected converse. Some Illustrations We may with profit examine a few instances of what we mean in saying that the indwelling presence revolves about the interpersonal relationships of mutual love and knowl-edge (and, consequently, delight). 1. The mutual love relationship. Of all interpersonal relations the most intimate and satisfying is a two-way love. Now it is surely no accident that according to the New Testament love is both a condition and a conse-quence of the Trinity's new supernatural presence in cer-tain men. I[ you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to dwell with you forever . He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him . I~ anyone love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him . The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us . God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him (Jn 14:15-6,21,23; Rom 5:5; 1 Jn 4:16). Whatever the indwelling mystery means, it surely in-cludes some marvelous mutual love relationship between God and man. And what better preparation for grasping the concept and raison d'etre of mental prayer could one ask than a vivid realization of this fact? 2. The new knowledge relationship. Love presupposes knowledge. A carrot cannot love even on a sensitive level because it cannot know. We would expect, therefore, that if the new supernatural God and man intimacy demands a new love, it would imply a new knowledge. And so it does. In indwelling contexts we find in the New Testa-ment more than one reference to God somehow manifest-ing Himself to those who love Him. We learn that the indwelling Spirit somehow instructs His temple, that a man who does not love cannot really come to know God. You shall know him [the Spirit of truth], because he will dwell with you, and be in you . He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him . You, however, are not carnal but spiritual, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you . The Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit that we are sons of God . In this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us . Everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love (Jn 14:17, 21; Rom 8:9,16; 1 Jn 3:24; 4:7-8). Again, how could we better prepare a young religious for a life of contemplating divine Truth than to help him understand this facet of the divine inhabitation, namely, that the Spirit of truth Himself is pouring out the light by which the soul progressively grows in an appreciation of divine reality? The more the young sister, brother, and seminarian realize this communal aspect of mental prayer the less they are inclined to take the dim view that their meditation is an individualistc, isolated, futile experience. 3. The interpersonal relations implied in "abiding, dwelling, temple." There is a vast difference between a stark, naked, merely material presence of one thing to an-other and a warm, personal, mutual knowledge-love-joy presence. If I take a bus trip with a total stranger at my + ÷ ÷ A ~rt oach to Mental Prayer VOLUME 2,~, 1965 193 ÷ ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 194 side (who will not communicate with me), I am alone even though the bus be jammed with fifty passengers. If, how-ever, I journey with a dear friend, the situation is totally changed even though the rest of the bus be empty. For in-tellectual beings spatial presence is only a condition for full presence; and full presence is effected by mutual know-ing, loving, enjoying. It is significant that when the New Testament speaks of the divine inhabitation the words used usually imply much more than what we have called a stark, naked, material presence--as water is present in a jug. They imply a local inbeing, of course, but, much more, they imply the knowl-edge- love-delight presence of persons. In revelation Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are said to abide, dwell, to be given to us, to be in a temple, to be a joy, to be tasted. He will give you another Advocate to dwell with you for-ever, the Spirit of truth . We will come to him and make our abode with him . Abide in me and I in you . He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit .Abide in my love . These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full . The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us . Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?. Do you not know that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? ¯. Crave as newborn babes, pure spiritual milk, dlat by it you may grow to salvation; if, indeed, you have tasted that the Lord is sweet. Draw near to him . He who abides in love abides in God, and God in him (Jn 14:16,23; 15:4,5,9,11; Rom 5:5; 1 Cot 3:16; 6:19; 1 Pt 2:2-4; 1 Jn 4:16). Why are these words significant? Furniture is in a house, but it does not abide there; it does not dwell; it is not given to the house; nor is it a joy to the house. Persons, however, do abide and dwell in the house. They possess the building that may be given to them and they are a joy to one another. God is in an atom, a tree, a star. But they are not His temple, nor does He abide and dwell in them. And they in turn cannot enjoy and taste Him since they cannot know. God is also in the sinner and the pagan. But they are not his temple either, nor does He dwell in them. While both can know intellectually and the sinner may even pos-sess faith, neither possesses the unifying force of love. Nei-ther can taste and see how good the Lord is. Now all this, too, is immensely significant [or teaching and appreciating mental prayer. If this God Who is sought in prayer is so close that He can be tasted, so interested that He indwells, so good that He is given, He becomes a very easy to talk to God, a very easy to love God. And this is precisely what we are trying to get our young religious to do: to converse familiarly, to love ardently. At this point one may ask where he may find reference material on these interpersonal and indwelling relations in the Old and New Testaments. We are not aware of any work on the indwelling mystery that does what we here envision. We have ourselves for some considerable time been working on the interpersonal relations between God and man in the old dispensation and the indwelling mys-tery in the new. This much at least is now apparent, that if one does justice to the data available--and we mean scriptural and theological data--he will have a suitable introduction to an appreciation of mental prayer. We see no reason why novice mistresses and seminary professors cannot with patient study construct adequate courses on their own. 4. Activity of the Trinity within. Most of us conceive mental prayer chiefly as man's activity. God is principally an object reached by our reflections and affections, a lis-tener to what we have to say. It is we who reflect and seek and say. There is a partial truth here, namely, that man does think and will and attain his God. But it is only partial because all of his thinking, willing, attaining originate from the Fountain of all that is and operates. The children of men, we are told, have their fill of the prime gifts of your house; from your de-lightful stream you give them to drink. For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we see light (Ps 35:9-10). This Fountain pours out life and light from within the soul. He is not a far away God acting at a distance. He is so close He is within; He is dynamically present giving every act in mental prayer, every act of any virtue: The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your mind whatever I have said to you . He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit: for without me you can do nothing . The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us . Whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God . In like manner the Spirit helps our weakness (Jn 14:26; 15:5; Rom 5:5; 8:14,26). Both the young novice and the seasoned contemplative should realize that their prayer is anything but a solo flight to God. Their very seeking to pray is a gift given by ÷ their indwelling Guests. All the more are their acts of ÷ faith, hope, charity, adoration so many outpourings of the ÷ Fountain within, Approacl~ to MenUg Prayer for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself pleads for us with unutterable groanings. And he who searches the hearts knows what the Spirit desires, that he pleads for the saints according to God (Rom 8:26-7). VOLUME 24, 1965 Thoroughness in Instruction Introductory instruction for our religious in the inter-personal relationships implied in the indwelling mystery cannot, in our opinion, be adequately given in a twenty-or thirty-minute explanation--not even in two or three half-hour conferences. We feel that our brief discussion in this article is not sufficiently developed for instructional purposes except insofar as it points out a general direction. To leave a deep impact not easily forgotten, the novice master or mistress should develop the indwelling mystery scripturally and theologically for perhaps eight or ten conferences. The novices will then be intellectually and psychologically prepared to see clearly that mental prayer is nothing other than a knowing-loving-delighting inter-personal familiarity with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwelling within their very beings. They are much less likely to get lost or entangled in the intricacies of points and methods, and much less subject to imagining that mental prayer is a refined sort of intellectual study period in matters spiritual. Thoma~ Dubay, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 196 Methods and the Indwelling All this suggests a further question. If mental prayer is essentially an interpersonal converse on deeply intimate terms, what becomes of "points for meditation," intellec-tual considerations, truths thought out in a discursive manner? And especially if higher mental prayer is a sim-ple loving attention to the three divine Guests, why should the beginner be encouraged to engage in reflections? It is not our intention to add to the perhaps too volu-minous literature on meditation methods, but we do wish to offer several observations regarding them in the light of what we have thus far said. Once we grant that mental prayer is an interpersonal familiarity with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then over-board immediately goes the notion that discursive medita-tion is a kind of study period in the spiritual life or, even less, that it implies a time for an elaborate examination of conscience. No doubt the beginner does learn about God and himself through meditation. And this is good. No doubt either that he does occasionally examine his con-duct in view of his reflections and aspirations. Good also~ provided this is kept within bounds. But, and this is im-portant, mental prayer is not primarily aimed at learning or at examining. It is primarily directed to yearning after, desiring, praising, loving God. The Psalms are inspired prayers. How much specula-tion do we find in them? How much examination? Very little. But we do find a large number of variegated expressions of praise, admiration, petition, gratitude, trust, love, long-ing--- expressions that disclose a sublime degree of sanctity in their authors. To illustrate our point we may remind ourselves of the Psalmist's ardent pining after God so im-portant to anyone who is to progress rapidly. We ask the reader to recall the strong words and the brilliant imagery the Hebrew spontaneously used to express his need for Yahweh. If before the intimacy of the indwelling presence was known men could be so vehement in their longing for God, we are hardly expecting too much when we look for the same vehemence after the revelation of the mys-tery. Beginners and the Intellectual Element These observations that mental prayer is neither mere speculation nor self-examination would seem to suggest that our instruction of novices should play down the cog-nitive elements in meditation and emphasize the affective. And this would seem especially to be the case with young sisters whose feminine nature is less inclined to specu-lation. This inference is only partially valid. For the typical be-ginner, masculine or feminine, we may not rule out dis-cursive reflection. Neither our comments nor feminine nature require that we treat human nature, even feminine human nature, as though it were not human. It remains true in prayer and it remains true for women that nothing is willed unless it is first known. This point we shall dis-cuss from the point of view of the young sister, for what we say of her applies a fortiori to the brother or seminar-ian. To say that the vast majority of young sisters do not or should not use their imaginations and reasoning power (discursive procedure) in meditation seems to us to sup-pose that the feminine psychology of cognition-appetition is not a fully human psychology. This position seems to suggest that by some sort of angelic, non-discursive intui-tion the young sister knows her prayer relations to God, while the young seminarian or brother must laboriously reason about and conclude to them. We readily grant that some young religious women even as novices are not inclined to discursive procedures at prayer but rather tend to an affective and at times highly simple prayer. But to us this does not prove that young sisters in general can dispense with imagining Christ in His human nature and with reasoning to proper motiva-tion in practicing the theological and moral virtues in meditation. All this proves is that God leads some souls more rapidly than others or, in other cases, that the young woman already understands through instruction and spir-itual reading the motives for seeking Christ and practicing ÷ ÷ ÷ A l~t~roavh to Mental Prayer VOLUME 24, 196.5 ]97 + ÷ ÷ Thomas Dubay, S.M. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ]98 the virtues. In either case the religious feels no need for discursive reasoning. We doubt, however, that these cases are typical. Being human, women cannot be essentially different in their mental processes from men. And if we urged most young women in our novitiates to dispense with discursive re-flection and get on to affections immediately, most of them would be operating in a vacuum. Without solid intellec-tual basis their prayer could easily degenerate into mere emotionalism. St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa of Avila (both of whom understood feminine psychology to no small degree) supposed that the ordinary young woman imagined and recalled and reasoned in her early attempts at meditation. The former in his Introduction to a Devout Life (a work originally composed for women) tells Philothea how to make considerations at her mental prayer (Part 2, Chap-ter 5) and in the meditations he actually offers Francis presents many truths for reflection. St. Teresa, a genius both in feminine psychology and in mental prayer, told her sisters that it was good for them to meditate on God's works if they could, and this, she sup-posed by the advice she gave, was the usual case. When she speaks of beginners in prayer, more than once she refers to meditation on the life of Christ. We may note, for example, Chapter 11 in her Life and Chapter 2 of the First Mansions of the Interior Castle. A novice mistress, there-fore, needs a good deal of tact to know when to allow ex-ceptions to the rule, when to permit a young sister to omit imagination and reasoning and when to urge them. A psychological approach to instructing in mental prayer through the indwelling mystery does not require that we abandon the cognitive elements in discursive med-itation; but it does require that we see them in a proper perspective: not mere speculation nor self-examination but as a human requirement for the interpersonal relations of knowing-loving-enjoying the Trinity within. The young religious reflects on reasons for yearning after God not merely for the sake of understanding the divine goodness but for the sake of actual yearning. And the same is true of praising, sorrowing, thanking, wondering, loving, and all the rest. For the beginner discourse in meditation is a means to the end. It is not the end. Advantages of the Indwelling Approach There are several reasons why formation personnel should begin instruction in mental prayer with the divine familiarity-indwelling themes rather than with concep-tual analyses and methodologies. First of all, what we have proposed is realistic and there is nothing so effective as measuring up to reality. Prayer is converse. Not study. Not examination. And God is near, so near He is within. We do not speak with the Father, His Son, and their Holy Spirit by a supernatural telephone line. To teach mental prayer merely as methodology or examination is to teach either artificiality or particular examen. Secondly, when the young novice or postulant first hears about meditation set in this framework, it appears as nor-mal, warm, human. It is appealing, what one would ex-pect. l'Vho is not attracted to conversing with a charming person--and especially when this charming person is like-wise longing to converse? One of the obstacles facing some young men and women just leaving the world is the feel-ing that God is distant, uninterested, or, more likely, dis-pleased with them. Sometimes these youngsters have a vivid recollection of their past unfaithfulness; and they consequently experience difficulty in looking upon God as close, concerned, caring about them. This approach to prayer life through the divine Word itself can do much to break down distrust and fear. Thirdly, our proposed instruction should get the nov-ices immediately into the heart and purpose of mental prayer: the exercise of the theological virtues and the virtue of religion. If it is true that meditation is not pri-marily aimed at learning what the spiritual life is about (classes, conferences, and spritual reading take care o[ that), a method of mental prayer is commendable insofar as it leads one to acts of faith, hope, charity, and the praise of God. To begin instruction by the various methods and points seems to be saying to young novices: "I am going to show you how you can learn more about God and about yourself, so that you may apply this knowledge to your daily life by uprooting your faults and practicing the vir-tues in action." This is good, to be sure, but misdirected all the same. Genuine mental prayer does aid mightily in uprooting faults and practicing virtues, but this result comes preponderantly through growth in love. Here we may add a parenthesis that is by no means ir-relevant. Why do so many priests later give up any serious practice of mental prayer and why do veteran brothers and sisters sometimes find this exercise almost meaningless? Although the chief reason is a neglect of grace somewhere along the line, yet we suspect that a partial culprit is in-struction that presented meditation as virtues to be ac-quired rather than a lovable God to be pursued. One can get tired of reflecting on and even practicing obedience, humility, purity for abstract reasons, but he cannot get tired of pursuing someone he loves. Even in deep aridity the faithful soul who has been pursuing God finds an ir-resistible charm in intensifying the pursuit: O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines Approach to Mental Prayer VOLUME 24, 1965 ]99 ÷ Thomas Dubay, $.M. and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water . For your kindness is a greater good than life; my lips shall glorify you . I will remember you upon my couch, and through the night-watches I will meditate on you. My soul clings fast to you (Ps 62:2,4,7,9). Our fourth reason for suggesting this supernatural in-timacy- indwelling approach to mental prayer is that the moral virtues automatically develop once a man or woman is rightly ordered to God. Experiencing through prayer the patience and gentleness of the divine goodness to man is a powerful spur for a man to be patient and gentle with his fellows. And contemplatives know from experience that the indwelling Spirit gives more humility through infused love than they could acquire in months of medita-tion on their own lowliness. A soul which is on intimate terms with God is a soul rapidly shedding its faults. Our approach to mental prayer is aimed precisely at developing this intimacy. The final reason is the most basic and ultimate of all. The indwelling approach being utterly real is a beginning of the end. It is an intrusion of time into eternity. Man's final, inexpressible destiny is a knowing-loving-enjoying absorption in the Trinity: This is everlasting life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ . We see now through a mirror in an obscure manner, but then face to face . Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he appears, we shall be like to him, for we shall see him just as he is . Eye has not seen or ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him (Jn 17:3; 1 Cot 13:12; 1 Jn 3:2; 1 Cor 2:9). Pope Leo XIII has observed that there is no substantial difference between the indwelling of earth and that of heaven. The diversity is one of state or condition: now we believe, then we see; now we love and enjoy imperfectly, interruptedly, then we love and enjoy perfectly, without interruption. Man's occupation with God on earth, there-fore, should resemble that of heaven insofar as his condi-tion permits. Living the indwelling mystery in the young religious' prayer Iife should be the beginning of an eternal intimacy: "Mary has chosen the best part, and it will not be taken away from her" (Lk 10:42). REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 900 MICHAEL M. DORCY, S.J. To Be Samaritans All We are all occasionally stopped by the embarrassing question put by others or by our deeper selves: "What is this thing called Christianity all about?" One begins pawing through the prolific--perhaps too prolific-- thematic variations to discover the underlying theme. Incorporated, often encrusted, as it is in its so many varying articulations, the essential Christian message becomes a forbidding complexity. But at its core the Christian message is disarmingly simple, although the living-out of it may be far from a simple matter. For the early Christians the Christian message was the good news, the best news yet. Paul called for a simple acceptance of Christ dead and resurrected. His epistolary explanation of the Christian vocation addressed to the saints at Ephesus has its beauty in the straightforward way in which Paul says: In those days there was no Christ for you . You were strangers to the covenant, with no promise to hope for, with the world about you and no God. But now you are in Jesus Christ; now through the blood of Christ, you have been brought close, you who were once far away. (Eph 2:12-13). The Christian today who remains attuned to his call stands out against his non-believing fellows as one who believes that life is neither absurd nor its own explana-tion, an end in itself. For the Christian, temporal existence has a meaning and a value of its own; but he is at the same time aware that life has another side to it, a side that opens out onto eternity. And he realizes that the temporal ultimately derives its value from the presence of the Eternal within time itself. For the Christian, his-tory is the concrete unfolding of the wisdom and love of God. He believes in a God who is basically a family, who authored life out of love and who labors now in time, trying to end the rift between Himself and man for which man is, and feels himself, responsible. This God, revealing Himself as a God who cares, has in the pivotal event of human history finally, physically entered time in the flesh-taking activity of the Second Person of the divine family, whose life, death, and resurrection evi- Michael M. Dorcy, s.J., is a fac-ulty member of Marquette Univer-sity High School; 3401 West Wiscon-sin Avenue; Mil-waukee, Wisconsin 53208. VOLUME 241 1965 201 Michael Dotty, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 202 dence and effect a plan whereby all men are joined to Him and would live as adopted sons within the family of God. In short, the Christian's God has said: "I have loved you, man! I love you now. This only do I ask in return: Love me." And man fumbles for a response: "God, You tell us to love You. But how do we love You?" God an-swers simply: "If you have seen, really seen, your brother, you have seen God. If you love your brother, you love Me." The Christian confronted with God's tale of love tries to answer by carving his own love story in time. But love is not an easy notion either to understand or to live by. In the New Testament which is the text for the school of love one finds passages which are more helpful than others for discerning what is precisely Christian about Christian love. One such place is the parable of the Good Samaritan where one finds in a compactness perhaps nowhere else equalled in all of Sacred Scripture the es-sentials of the love that was Christ's. Here we have the type of the Christian, of the man whose life completely revolves around authentic love. In the person of the Samaritan, Christ draws a portrait of Himself. Significantly, once when accused by some of the Jews of "being a Samaritan and possessed," Christ an-swered: "I am not possessed" (Jn 8:48-9). The Samaritan of the parable is described in terms which elsewhere throughout the Gospels the evangelists have reserved for Christ. The Samaritan is moved to compassion (literally, stirred in his inwards) as was Christ when He saw the multitudes and took pity on them, or when He melted away under the tears of the widow at Naim (Lk 7:12-3). The story itself is simple, but forever new and rich in meaning: A man was once traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Bandits attacked him. They stripped and beat him and left him to die. A priest chanced by, going along the same road. He saw the victim but went to the other side and continued on his way. Then a levite came by. He too saw him but went on. A Samaritan was also journeying by. Drawing near, he saw him. And he was touched to the heart at the sight. He went up to him, bandaged his wounds, and applied oil and wine to them. Then he put him on his own mount and brought him to an inn where he cared for him. The next day he gave two silver pieces to the innkeeper. "Take care of him," he said, "and whatever it costs I'll pay when I return." "Which o[ the three, in your opinion, acted as a neighbor to the man who had fallen into the hands of the bandits?" He answered: "The one who showed him mercy." "Go," Jesus told him, "and do the same." The Cast of Characters: The Man Without Qualities One can derive much from looking in turn at the characters who make up the story. We know next to nothing (and everything) about the man who was done in by the robbers. He is Oudeis No-Name, the man without qualities (or rather, a man deprived of all but the most insignificant of qualities, that of situs: he was "journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho"). Without name, or race, or nationality, or status in society, quali-tatively denuded of all, he is left physically naked, al-most lifeless by the wayside. He is man in the raw, any one of us, a pilgrim, homo viator, man-on-the-make, man-on-the-move, a fellow traveller on the road of life. To give him any qualities, to endow him with some de-terminations, as we instinctively try to do, is to limit the extensiveness and inclusiveness of the notion of love that is being presented. The Priest and the Levite: The Fatality of Conscious- Hess The priest and the levite are the type of those who fail in the school of love. Representative, first of all, of the twofold division of the tribe of Levi, they are the em-bodiment of the hierarchy of the old dispensation, a dispensation devoid of real freedom. They are actually men enslaved, clutching their alien gods which go by a thousand different names. They are enslaved to the various tyrannies of categorical and legalistic thinking, to idealisms which overlook the here-and-now individual in the name of futurity or collectivity. Here are the Pharisees who rejected Christ because He eluded those preconceived, static, and depersonalized archetypes which they had of the Messiah. Here, too, is the misguided spectator-priest of today who passes by life in the names of celibacy, intellectual pursuits, prayer, and a host of other things. Here is the religious man who has offered himself to God, so wrapped up and tightly closed that God Himself, as Claudel says somewhere, would break His fingernails trying to pry him open. Here is the re-ligious who has detached himself from everything except his detachment. Here is that devastating brood, the im-personal apostles of personalism, and those in love with "love" and nothing more. Here are those who are caught in what Pope John called "the fallacy of overlooking the little good at our disposal in the name of the unrealiza-ble 'better'." Here are men dedicated to "tomorrow" and who use and abuse today for their own ends; men who labor tirelessly for a vague, amorphous, impersonal "Society" and who step all over the people who live next door. Here are the men who will be charitable when things are set, conditions right--men who will dictate their own circumstances, name their own times. Here are men whose effectiveness is dissolved into nothingness because in the name of religion they flee the "world," Samaritans All VOLUME 24, 1965 203 Miclmel Dotty, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 204 forgetting that the spiritual exists for the world and that the function of the Church is to embrace the world much as a lifeguard does a drowning man or much as the Samaritan did the wounded wayfarer. These are men, in short, who have never really learned to say "we." They are those who would leap from the temporal, blind to the fact that God works immanently under their very noses, in the very next face that they meet. It is significant that the priest and the levite are repre-sentative of a class which today we would label "intel-lectuals." Here is the type of man minutely portrayed by such contemporary thinkers and writers as Thomas Mann and Andrd Malraux. These are men who are un-able to bridge through action that gulf of detachment which necessarily follows upon consciousness. In a sense it is man's fate, but paramountly it is the intellectual's scourge. For unlike the animals whose response is quick and instinctual, man with his withinness can, even in the thick of the most violent physical activity, reflect and debate and prolong to eternity that increment be-tween impulse and act. The man who is unable to bridge the gap, who becomes isolated on his "magic mountain," ultimately becomes a man who is untrue, since he neg-lects the truth of his convictions and commitments which can come only in the completion afforded by the act itself. The Samaritan: Spontaneity and Commitment The actions of the Samaritan have much to tell us about true love. The love that was his, that was Christ's, and that Christ would have our own, is a love marked by compassion, spontaneity, personal and lasting commit-ment. The Samaritan was a man who traditionally had in-herited and experienced apartheid---of locale, of creed, of social and political relationships. It should be remem-bered what sentiments the mention of a Samaritan would have evoked on the part of a first-century Jew. The Samaritan was the archetype of the alien, the Stranger, the heretic, the lost-one: in just the preceding chapter (9:52) Luke relates how the Sons of Thunder wanted to call down fire upon a Samaritan village; Christ's dealings with the woman at the well (Jn 4:5) were viewed askance by the disciples. But the appearance in the Gospels of the Samaritans as real individuals en-countered by Christ defies any categorical imposition of traits. A Samaritan was the only one of the ten lepers who returned to thank our Lord (Lk 17:17). He was a man committed, and a man who remained lastingly committed as did the Samaritan of the parable. The Samaritan woman at the well On 4:5) was a woman immediately attractive to us because of her honesty, simplicity, openness, and spontaneity. She wanted to share the goodness that had come her way. She brought others to Christ, and "they heard and believed for themselves." The Samaritan of the parable is a man marked by the spontaneity of his reaction. Both his emotional re-sponse and its resultant action are quick and full. Un-like the priest or the levite who stand for intellectual detachment, the Samaritan is instinctive, but in a thoroughly human way. He is a man who has cultivated receptivity. He is attuned to his entire surroundings. He does not channel or restrict the arena of his purview or of his action. He is open to all. He takes in all he passes by, ready and alert to act. He realizes that his first re-sponsibility is always to that which is at hand. He is completely arrested by the sight of affliction in another human being. "He took pity on him": the Greek word (esplagthtdso-mai) suggests a very human, a very physical emotion. Literally, he was stirred in his bowels (splfigthnos). It is a strong emotion, a pure emotion. And it is a loadstone to action. At times it must override the strict logic of justice or the dictatorship of a false prudence. Another name it has is mercy. What we see is a physical, particular, defi-nitely directed reaction to a particular and concrete in-stance of human affliction. The result of this spontaneous compassion is a spon-taneous recourse to action. The action is immediate and adjusted to the circumstances; it is the "little good at one's immediate disposal." Perhaps the Samaritan was later moved to take positive action towards effecting legislation for better and safer road travel. But this vi-sion of the "better," of the long-range good, did not obliterate the definite and immediate need of the robber victim. And primarily interested in conveying the dis-tinctive, primary, and essential note of Christian charity, Christ did not think it important to incorporate the long-range notion within the parable at all. That is not where the difficulty lies. The visionary can, as the priest and the levite had, blind himself to the live-a-day world in terms of which he is summoned to live out his vocation. The larger view, the looking-toward-tomorrow, are noble and necessary operations. Yet, they are never to be assumed as surro-gates for the immediate needs of today. The prompt and immediate action of the Samaritan protects him from the self-deceit endemic to the vision-ary. A man can easily deceive himself as regards his re-lationship to God, but he cannot as easily do so about his treatment of his neighbor. The truth of love lies in ÷ + + Samaritans All rot.urgE 24, 1,~,5 205 Michael Doroj, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 206 its "deed" (1 Jn 3:18). And St. John further warns us about self-deceit in this matter: "If any man boasts of loving God while he hates his own brother, he is a liar. He has seen his brother and has no love for him; what love can he have for the God he has never seen?" (1 Jn 4:20). These are harsh words in all but the ears ot~ the Samaritan. The Samaritan is remarkable for the sense of commit-ment he shows as he accepts the challenge and responsi-bility which the priest and

Issue 18.3 of the Review for Religious, 1959. ; Review for Religious MAY 15, 1959. Apostolic Indulgences of John .XXIII 129 Allocution to Contemplative Nuns 133 By Pius XII Current Spiritual Writing 143 By Thomas G. O'Callaghan, S.J. Practice of the Holy See 156 By Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Headdresses and Driving Sur~rey of .Roman Documents Views, News, Previews Questions and Answers Book Reviews and Notices 169 170 177 179 183 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 3 Volume 18 May 15, 1959 Number 3 OUR CONTRIBUTORS FRANK C. BRENNAN is stationed at St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN is professor oi: ascet-ical and mystical theology at Weston College, Weston 93, Massa-chusetts. JOSEPH F. GALLEN, the editor of our Question and An-swer Department, is professor of Canon Law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, May, 1959. Vol. 18, No. 3. Published bi-monthly by The Queen's Work, 3115 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. Edited by the Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ec-clesiastical approval. Second class mail privilege authorized .at St. Louis, Mis-souri. Copyright, 1959, by The Queen's Work. Subscription price in U. S. A. and Canada: 3 dollars a year; 50 cents a copy. Printed in U. S. A. Editor: R. F. Smith, S.J. Associate Editors: Augustine G. Ellard, S.J.; Gerald Kelly, S.J.; Henry Willmering, S.J. Assistant Editors: John E. necker, S.J.; Robert F. Weiss, S.J. Departmental Editors: Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; Ehrl A. Weis, S.J. Please send all renewals, new subscriptions, and business correspondence to: Review for Religious, 3115 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis 18, Missouri. Please send all manuscripts and editorial correspondence to: Review for Religious, St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. Apostolic Indulgences ot: John XXIII [The original text of which the following pages are a translation appeared in /lcta /l/wstolicac Sedis, 51 (1959), 48-50. The enumeration in "the translation is taken from the original document.] APOSTOLIC INDULGENCES which the Supreme Pon-tiff John XXIII in an audience with the undersigned 'Cardinal Major Penitentiary on November 22, 1958, granted to the faithful who possess a pious or religious article blessed by the Pontiff or by a priest having the competent power and who fulfill certain prescribed conditions. The Indulgences i. Whoever is accustomed to recite at least once a week the Lord's chaplet [coronam Dominicam]; or one of the chaplets of the Blessed Virgin Mary; or a rosary or at least a third part of it; or the Little Office of the same Blessed Virgin Mary; or at least Vespers or a nocturn together with Lauds of the Office of the Dead; or the penitential or gr~ldual psalms; or is accustomed to perform at least once a week one of those works which are known as the !'works of mercy," for example, to help the poor, to visit the sick, to datechize the uninstructed, to pray for the living and the dead, and so forth; or to attend Mass; may, provided the conditions of sacramental confession, Holy Communion, and some prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff are observed, gain a plenary indulgence on ¯ the following days: the Nativity of our Lord, Epiphany, Easter, the Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, the feast of the Sacred Heart, Christ the King; the Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, Nativity, Immaculate Conception, Maternity, and Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the feast of her Queenship; the Nativity of St. John the Baptist; both feasts of St. Joseph, the Spouse of the Virgin Mother of God (March 19 and May 1); the feasts of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, John, Thomas, 129 APOSTOLIC INDULGENCES Review for Religious Philip and James, Baitholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude, Matthias; and the feast of All Saints. If, however, a person does not make a sacramental con-fession and go to Holy Communion but nevertheless prays with a contrite heart for some time [aliquantisper] for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff, he may gain on each of the above-mentioned days a partial indulgence of seven years. Moreover, whoever performs one of the aforementioned works of piety or charity may gain, each time he does so, a partial indulgence of three years. 2. Priests who, if they are not prevented.by a legitimate impediment, are accustomed to celebrate daily the holy sacrifice of the Mass may gain a plenary indulgence on the above rden-tioned feasts, provided they confess sacramentally and pray for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. Moreover, as often as they say Mass they may gain a partial indulgence of five years. 3. Whoever is bound to the recitation of the Divine Office may, when he fulfills this obligation, gain a plenary indulgence on the feast days mentioned above, provided the conditions of sacramental confession, of Holy Communion, and of prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father are fulfilled. Whoever does this at least with a~ contrite heart may gain each time a partial indulgence of five years. 4. Whoever recites at dawn, at noon, and at evening, or does so as soon as he can after thos~ times,the prayer which is popularly called the Angelus and during the Paschal Season the Regina Caeli; or whoever, being ignorant of these prayers, says the Hail Mary five times; likewise whoever around the first part of the night recites the psalm De Profundis, or, if he does not know this, says an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Eternal Rest Grant unto Them, .may gain a partial indulgence of five hundred days. 130 May, 1959 APOSTOLIC INDULGENCES 5. The same indulgence may be gained by one who on any Friday piously meditates for a time [aliquantult~m] on t~e passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ and devoutly recites three times the Our Father and the Hail Mary. 6. Whoever, after examining his conscience, sincerely de-testing his sins, and resolving to amend himself, will devoutly recite an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be to the Father in honor of the Most Blessed Trinity; or recites five times the Glory Be to the Father in memoryof the five wounds of our Lord Jesus Christ, may gain an indulgence of three hundred days. 7. Whoever prays for those in their agony by reciting for them "at least once an Our Father and a Hail Mary may gain a partial indulgence of one hundred days. 8. Finally whoever in the moment of death will devoutly commend his soul to God and, after making a good confession and receiving Holy Communion, or at least being, contrite, will devoutly invoke, if possible with his lipg, otherwise at least in his heart, the most holy name of Jesus, and will patiently accept his death from the hand of the Lord as the wages for sin, may gain a plenary indulgence. Cautions 1. The only articles capable of receiving the blessing for gaining the apostolic indulgences are chaplets, rosaries, crosses, crucifixes, small religious statues, holy medals, provided they are not made of tin, lead, hollow glass, or other similar material which can be easily broken or destroyed. 2. Images of the saints must not represent any except those duly canonized or mentioned in approved martyrologies. 3. In order that a person may gain the apostolic in-dulgences, it is necessary that he carry on his person or decently keep in his home one of the articles blessed by the Sovereign Pontiff himself or by a priest who hasthe requisite faculty. 131 APOSTOLIC INDULGENCES 4. By the express declaration of His Holiness, this con-cession of apostolic indulgences in no way derogates from in-dulgences which may have been granted at other times by Supreme Pontiffs for the prayers, pious exercises, or works mentioned above. Given at Rome, in the palace of the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary, on November 22, 1958. L. oS. N. Card. Canali, Major Penitentiary I. Rossi, Secretary 132 Plus XIl's AIIocution to Clois!:ered Con!:emplat:ives Translal:ed by Frank C. Brennan, S.J. [The first and second parts of this allocution were published in the January and March issues of the REVIEW ~'Og gE~.ICIOIJS; this is the third and last part. The successive parts of the allocution were broadcast by Plus XII on July 19, July 26, and August 2, 1958. The offical text is to be found in Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS)', .50 (1958), 562-586. All divisions and subtitles in the translation are also found iv. tb.e official, text.~ PART III: LIVE THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE The Practice of the Contemplative Life in the Light of the Knowledge and Love of Contemplation WHILE TREATING the knowledge and love of the con-templative life in the first two parts of this allocution, We did not neglect, beloved daughters, to point out some practical applications of the principles which We were empha-sizing. In order to promote a fuller understanding of Our discourse, it is important to go beyond merely theoretic~il and abstract considerations and take account of the concrete effects which a more profound knowledge and a more ardent love of the contemplative life can have on its actual practice. Since We need not repeat in this third part wh.at We have already said, We will recall the necessity of translating into action ¯ what we know and love more deeply and then consider the actual practice of the contemplative life, with respect both to its essential element, which is contemplation itself, and to its sec-ondary elements, especially monastic work. As We pointed out in the first part of Our allocution, one's knowledge of the contemplative life is enriched and deepened by the daily fulfillment of its obligations. Love of the con-templative life neces,sarily engenders attitudes through which this love is expressed and without which it would be nothing but a delusion. In this constant interaction which normally conditions 133 P~us XII Review for Religious the regular progress of a religious life, the predominant element will a.lways be the interior life which gives to external actions all their meaning and value. It is from the heart of a man-that good or evil designs spring;' it .is his intention which explains his acts and gives them their moral significance. But this inten-tion alone will not suffice; it must be actualized: "He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me,''2 says Jesus. And again: "You are my friends if you do the things I command you.''~ By contrast, whoever neglects to ful-fill the divine precepts finds himself excluded from the King-dom: "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father.''4 The Fulfillment of the Essential Duty of the Contemplative Life: Interior Contemplation These basic principles apply, also to the contemplative life. To desire the contemplative life, however ardently, is not enough; one must actually dedicate oneself to it and accept the sacrifices which it requires. For contemplation, understood as the union of the mind and heart with God, is the essential characteristic of the contemplative life. We established this in the first part of Our allocution where We cited the chief texts which prove it. Here We add two more, which We draw from" the instruction Inter caetera of March 25, 1956, ¯ and whic.h reiterate the preeminence of contemplatibn in your life. "Minor cloister does not admit of ~iny kind of ministry, but only such as is compatible with the contemplative life of the whole community and of each nun.''5 "Those ministries which are undertaken with discernment and moderation in accordance with the character and spirit of the order must tend to reinforce rather than disturb and prevent the life of 1Cf. Mk 7:21. 2 Jn 14:21. 3Jn 15:14. 4 Mt 7:21. 5AAS, 48 {1956), 520, n. 41a. 134 May, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES true' contemplation.''° "Such works are the teaching of Chris-tian doctrine, religious instruction, the education of young girls and of children, retreats and spiritual exercises for women, the preparation of candidates for First Communion, works of charity for the relief of the gick and the poor."''7 The con-templative life does not consist essentially in the external pro-fession of a religious discipline which is only the framework of contemplation. Religious discipline sustains, encourages, and preserves the contemplative life; but it does not actually con-stitute it. To repea~, therefore, what We have said already, We earnestly exhort you to give yourselves with all your hearts to contemplative prayer as to your essential duty for which you have renounced the world. This prindple has nothing directly to do with the fre-quency and duration of spiritual exercises. The intensity of an exercise is not necessarily measured by its length. While the ministries permitted to contemplative nuns may prevent them from devoting long hours each day to contemplative prayer, there still remains enough time to satisfy this essential obligation. The Fulfillment of Secondary Duties Which Perfect the Contemplative Life Along with "the essential and indispensable elements which constitute the first and principal end of the contempla-tive life of cloistered nuns," the apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi singles out others which ar~e not indispensable but which do perfect the contemplative life and are calculated to safeguard it. Among these are the cloister, exercises of piety, of prayer, and of mortification.8 The sixth and seventh articles of the same constitution deal with the nature and jurid-ical structure of cloistered con~ents, with their autonomy, and" with the possibility of their forming federations and confe~l-" °Ibid., n. 41b. Ibid., n. 41c. sCf. AAS, 43 (1951), 10. 135 PIus XII Review fo,r Rcligiows erations? On some of these points the Church lays dowri precise requi.rements which must be met;. on others, however, she merely expresses an invitation and a preference which should receive careful and respectful consideration. It is on!y right that convents and orders of cloistered nuns esteem, pro-tect, and remain faithful to the distinctive spirit of their order. It would be unjust not to take account of this. But they should defend it without narrow-mindedness or rigidity to say nothing of a certain obstinacy which opposes every legitimate development and resists every kind of adaptation even though the common good requires it. It can happen that a nun is asked to leave her convent and to establish herself elsewhere for some greater good or for a serious reason. It is true, of course, that no one can impose on a religious, against her will, any obligations which go beyond the provisions of her vows. But one might ask just to what degree stability really constitutes an essential right of cloistered nuns. The Holy See has the right to modify the constitutions ofan order together with their prescriptions concerning stability. But if these changes affect essential points of law, thenthe members are not bound, by virtue of their vows, to accept the new constitutions. They must be given the choice of leaving the order which undergoes modi-fications of this kind. At the same time a nun can freely renounce her own rights and consent to the request which, with the approval of the Holy See, is made of her.1° We recognize the gravity of such a step and what it might cost the individual religious, but We would exhort her to accept this sacrifice unless there are grave reasons for declining. Whenever there is question of the secondary elements which play only an auxiliary role in the religious life, convents and individual nuns should be ready to accept the interchange of ideas and the mutual collaboration which the Holy See Ibid., pp. 17-19. loCf. Sponsa Christi, a. 7, § 8, n. 3; AAS, 43 (1951), 19. 136 May, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES has proposed to them. In-particular, they should try to estab-lish respectful and open relations with the Sacred Congregation of Religious since the Congregation does not intend to ignore existing rights but rather wishes to take into account the desires of monasteries or orders of nuns. This collaboration is par-ticularly desirable whenever there is question of forming fed-erations of convents or orders, or even of fo'rming confed-erations of federations. The text of Sponsa Christi clearly states that there is no thought of doing violence to the just independence of par-ticular convents, but rather of protecting and insuring it. Strive, therefore, to cooperate with the competent ecclesiastical author-ity in order to further the adaptation and salutary evolution which the Church desires. One Element in Particular: Monastic Work We are deeply interested in the application of the norms concerning work, because this has a bearing not only on the welfare of every contemplative convent and order, but also on the welfare of the universal Church which, in many places, requires the cooperation of all its available forces. Having already discussed the necessity of work in general and its appropriateness for contemplative ordersW, e here concent.rate on the application of those provisionsset forth in the constitution Sponsa Christi. In the first part of that constitution, We said that ';We are moved, even forced, to apply these reasonable adjustments to the life of cloistered nuns because of reports We have received from all parts of the world informing us of the distress in which many nuns live. Indeed, there are convents which are close to starvation, misery, and destitution, while in others life is very difficult because of severe material privations. Still other convents, without being in desperate straits, find them-selves on the decline because they are isolated and separated from all the others. Furthermore, the laws of cloister are 137 P~os XII Review for Religious sometimes too rigid, thus giving rise to serious difflculties.''n The normal and most readily available remedy for these ills is some kind of'work on the part of the nuns themselves. For this reason We call on them to undertake such work 'and thus provide for themselves the necessities of life rather than have immediate recourse to the goodness and charity of others. This request is addressed also to those who are not actually destitute and are not for this reason forced to earn their daily bread by the work of their hands. They too might somehow earn enough to satisfy the law of Christian charity toward the poor. We further urge you to develop and perfect your manual abilities so as to be able to adapt yourselves to circumstances in accordance with article 8, paragraph 3, number 2 of the constitution Sponsa Christi.12 This same article summarizes the norms concerning work by stating at the outset that "monastic work, in which contemplative nuns should be engaged, ought to be, as far as possible, in accordance with the Rule, the con-stitutions, and the traditions of each order.''~3 Some consti-tutioris provide for determined .works which are generally of an apostolic nature. Others, on the contrary, make no provisions of this kind. The work "should be so organized that it will secure for the nuns a definite and suitable sustenance by adding to other sources of income.''14 Local ordinaries and superiors are bound to see to it "that such necessary, suitable, and re-munerative work is never lacking to the nuns.''~ Finally, the article emphasizes the duty which the nuns have in conscience not only to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, but also to perfect themselves each day, as circumstances demand, by different kinds of work.~6 Do not let Our call to labor go unheeded; but make use of all the means at your disposal and of every opportunity Ibid., pp. 10-11. Ibid., p. 19. Ibid., a. 8, § 1. Ibid., § 2. Ibld., § 3, n. 1. Ibid., § 3, n. 2. 138 May, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES you can contrive to earn something, if not to meet ygur owrt pressing needs, then at least in order to alleviate the misery of others. Note also that some serious occupation, .adapted to your strength, is an efficacious way of preserving one's mental balance or of regaining it if it has been disturbed. In this way you will avoid the damaging effects which complete seclu-sion and the relative monotony of daily life in the cloister can exercise on certain temperaments. Conclusion We close Our allocution, beloved daughters, by repeating that invitation to the apostolate which formed the conclusioh of~the constitutiori Sponsa Christi. It ~s an invitation based on the great commandment to love God and our neighbor as well .as on the will of the Church. Charity towards our neighbor in'cludes all human.beings,. all their needs, all their sufferings. It is most especially pr.e,. occupied with their eternal salvation. Nuns can exercise this~ apostolate ~,hich the Church entrusts to them in three wa, ys: by the example of Christian ,.perfection which silently ~raws the faithful to Christ, by public and private prayer, by. pe.n.- ances generously undertaken even beyond the prescriptic~ns of the rule at the behest of one's °wholehearted. love of ,the. Lord. In its dispositive part, the constitution Sponsao Christi tdois dtiinffgeuriesnhte fso drmiffse roefn tth kei cnodns toefm apploastitvoeli cli fweo. rSko mcoer rneuspnos~n dairneg committed by their constitutions to the exterior apostolate; they should continue in this apostolate. Others do engage or have engaged to 'some extent in '~ipostolic works even though their constitutions mention only tl'i~ contemplati~,e life. They should continue such work; or if they havd abandoni~d i~,' they should resume it in accordance with current needs. Still other contemplative nuns, in obedience to their rules and constitutions, live only the life of contemplation. They should adhere to it unless they are forced by necessity to perform 139 Plus XII Review for Religious some kind of exterior apostolate for a time. It is evident that these exclusively contemplative nuns participate in the apos-tolate of love through example, prayer, and penance. We would also like to direct your thoughts to that more sublime and more. universal apostolate of the Church, the Spouse of Christ, of which the Apostle of the Gentiles" and St. John's speak. The apostolate of the Church is based on .her world-wide mission to all men and to all nations in every age of the world--to Christians and pagans, to believers and unbelievers. This mission derives from the Father: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that those who believe in him may not perish but have life everlasting. For God did not send his Son into the world in order to judge. the world, but that the world might be saved through him.'9 This mission is confided to the Church by Christ: "As the Father has sent me, I also send you.''-~° "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them . I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.'"-" This mission is accomplished in the Holy Spirit: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be witness for me . . . even to the very ends of th~ earth.''2"~ Hence this. mission of the" Church proceeds ultimately from the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No mission is more sublime, more sacred, or more universal either in its origin o~ in its object. What is the object of this mission if not to make known to all men t,he true God, one and indivisible in the Trinity of Persons, and God's plan of redemption implemented through ,7 2 Cor 11:2. lSJn 20:21-23; 21:16-17; Apoc 21. 19Jn 3:16-17. ' '.'0 Jn 20:21. ", Mt 28:18-20. '-''Act 1:8. 140 May, 1959 CLOISTERED CONTEMPLATIVES His Son and through the Church founded by Christ to per-petuate His work. The Church has received the complete deposit of faith, and of grace. She possesses all of revealed truth and all the means of salvation bequeathed to her by the Redeemer: baptism,~3 the Eucharist, the priesthood: "Do this in commemoration of me";~4 the conferring of the Holy Spirit through the imposition of hands of the Apostles;"~3 the remis-sion of sins: "Receive ye the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them";"6 and the government of the faithful by the power of jurisdiction which she exercises in the name of Christ and with the abiding assistance of the Holy Spirit.~v Here we have a brief description of the divine riches with which the Lord has endowed His Church to the end that she may fulfill her apostolic mission amidst all the uncer-tainties of this earthly life and march down through the ages without having the gales of hell prevail against her."~ Let the unconquerable force which animates this apos-tolate of the Church take hold of your minds and your hearts. It will fill you with peace and joy! "Take courage, I have overcome the world.'''-'° In mounting ever higher and closer ¯ to God, you widen your horizons and become that much more qualified to find the true way on this earth. Far from narrowly confining you within the walls of your convent, your uniorl with God expands your mind and heart to the very limits of the world making them coextensive with the world and with. Christ's redemptive work being carried on in the Church. Let this be your guide; let it sustain all your efforts and reward them with abundant fruit. We "beg our Lord graciously to favor you with His choicest gifts and to perfect the work which He has begun in you to 2aMt 28:19. "4Lk 22:19. 25Act 8:17. 2°Jn 20:23. 27Cf. Jn 21:16-17. 28Cf. Mt 16:18. 29Jn 16:33. 141 P~es XII His greater glory. As a pledge of these divine graces, We impart to you with all Our Heart Our paternal and apostolic benediction. 142 Current: Spiri!:ual Wri!:ing Thomas G. O'Callaghan, S.,J. Prayer ST. THOMAS says that in our acts of worship the exterior, bodily act is ordered to the interior act of the soul; for it is .this latter which is the more important (II-II, q. 84, a. 2). Thus, an exterior act of adoration, a bow or genuflec-tion~ is made for the sake of fostering interior adoration. Rev-erent exterior gestures of humility will usually help to arouse the heart to humble itself before God, to submit itself to Him. But it is also true, as the" Angelic Doctor teaches, that an exterior act of worship ought to proceed from the interior act. In this way exterior acts of adoration are normally the expres-sion of interior acts. Therefore, exterior acts of worship ought both to proceed from, and also to be ordered to, interior acts of worship. Understanding this relation of the exterior to the interior in the worship of God, it is interesting to read an article of l~tienne Robo on the use of the hands in prayer.~ Gestures with the hands can very easily express ideas or interior attitudes. To shake a fist at someone is to threaten violence; a traffic officer holds up his hand to stop traffic and then waves it on; a beggar holds out his hand as a request for alms. Thus, it would be quite normal to expect that in prayer our hands could and should express interior dispositions. In the days of the Old Testament to lift one's hands above the head, with eyes raised toward heaven, was a gesture of supplication. David asked the Lord to consider the lifting up of his hands as an evening sacrifice. During and even after the time of Christ this was still a typical gesture of prayer. "Pray with Your Hands," F~'ors/ti~, XXXIII, 14-18. 143 THOMAS G. 0'CALLAGHAN Review for Religious A modification of this .was to pray'with the arms extended in the form of a cross, a practice which Tertullian recom-mended, since it proclaimed the Passion of Christ. However, because such a practice was very tiring, an attenuated version of this was introduced. One sees in the catacombs paintings of the early Christians praying with their ai:ms "flexed to some slight extent and the hands, wide open, palms outward, are not raised above the shoulders. The shape of the cross is re-tained but on a less ample scale." This is very similar to the gesture of the priest at Mass when he is reading the Orations or the Canon. Our present custom of holding the hands palm to palm againsf one another seems to be of Germanic origin. When a vassal received a grant of land from his feudal lord, in order to express his fidelity and loyalty to his lord, he would kneel before him and place his joined hands between the hands of his lord. This custom, because it could represent so perfectly our dependence upon God, the Lord to whom we owe fidelity and service, was adopted by the Church as an attitude of prayer. All these gestures are external acts which are expressive of interior dispositions. But also, if we use them with rev-erence, they will, as St. Thomas taught, help to foster interior devotion and prayerfulness. In reading the letters of St. Paul, Father Lyonnet, S.J., remarks,'-' one is impressed with the frequent references which he makes to prayer. Very often Paul speaks about his own prayer, telling those to whom he writes that he has been thank-ing God for the graces which our Lord has granted them, or that he is begging God fo~ the graces which they need. At other times he is exhorting others to pray. It might also be noted that in most of these places where Paul is speaking about prayer, . the prayer has an apostolic quality to it; it is in ""Un aspect de la 'pri~re apostolique' d'apr~s saint Paul," Christus, V (1958), 222-29. 144 May, 1959 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING some way concerned with the promotion of the' Kingdom of God. When Paul speaks about prayer, especially the prayer of petition, he seems to suggest that prayer is a kind of strftggle, an engagement between the soul and God. It is not only that "night and day we pray;" but prayer is addressed to God "with. extreme insistence" (I Thess 3:10). He .asks the Romans "to strive together with me in your prayers to God" (Rom 15:30); and Epaphras, St. Paul wri~s, "does not cease striving" for the Colossians in his prayers (Col 4:12). Paul's way of speak-ing of prayer as a persistent struggle recalls our Lord's parable of the importunate friend whose prayer was heard because of his persistence (Lk 11:5-10). Both Christ and Paul make it clear that in prayer we should strive with persistence to be heard. Judging from their teaching, it seems that God wants to be pressed with requests, so that t.hrough our insistent prayer we may wrest from Him what we desire. Does that mean that by our insistent prayer we move God to do that which at first He did not want to do, as if we could exert an .influence on God Himself? Or might it mean that God is not a very loving Father, nor is He always disposed to give His children what will help them? By no means. Such a mentality would be based on a very false idea of divine transcendence and love. When Paul, following the teaching of Christ, emphasizes the notion of struggling, striving in prayer, what h~ is trying to do is to underline the necessity of prayer. But prayer is necessary, as St. Thomas teaches, not in regard to God, ds if He needed to be informed of our desires, or as if.prayer were necessary to dispose Him to grant us our requests. God always knows our desires and is always disposed to grant us His gifts. Prayer rather is necessary from our part; for it is, partially at least, through prayer that we become suitably disposed to receive His gifts. Prayer does not dispose God ~to give; it 145 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGI-IAN Review for Religious disposes~us to receive from Him the graces and blessings which He in/His fatherly love desires to give us. !wT~hish teaching of St. Thomas applies primarily to the prayer ich the Christian addresses to God for himself. But it may also be applied, Father Lyonnet believes, to the prayer which an apostle addresses to God for others, particularly those en-trusted to his care. God wishes to use us. as His apostles for the salvation and sanctification of others. He wants us to be His instruments in the work of redemption. Too often, how-ever, we are not fit instruments for God's salvific work. It is prayer--all prayer, no doubt, but especially prayer for others --which disposes us to .be suitable apostolic instruments, fit for promoting the Kingdom of Christ. Thus, without exercis-ing any influence on God, without intending to change the will of God, which could only be a will of love, prayer has the purpose of making the apostle a suitable instrumen~ of God, and allowing God to realize in and thro. ugh him His designs of love: Celibacy Sex is a fact of life which is here to stay; and it is very important that those who are preparing to live a life of celi-bacy, whether as priests or religious, should acquire sound attitudes toward it. Many excellent .suggestions for establishing these attitudes are given in a fine article by Father W. Bert-rams, S.J.a Although his remarks are directed primar.ily to seminarians--and it is mostly in reference to them that we will explain a few of his ideas here--most of the article is applicable to religious also. The priesthood demands a complete and undivided dedi-cation of on~eself to Christ and His Church. This is a very positive thing, and it is only this positive oblation of oneself which fully explains the obligation of celibacy. Because he 3 *'De efformando in clericis genuino fundamento cae[ibatus suscipiendi," Periodica, XLVII (1958), 3-28. 146 May, 1959 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING dedicates himself to Christ, the priest cannot give himself to another; he must live a celibate life. Something similar takes place in marriage. When a young man gets married, he dedi-cates himself to his wife--and she to him--and it is because of this positive dedication to her that he may not give himself to another. In this sense the positive dedication of oneself to Christ in the priesthood (or religious life) is sometimes called a spiritual marriage between Christ and the priest (or Christ and the religious). During the course of their studies, then, clerics should strive to acquire this positive attitude toward celibacy. Certainly it is far more beneficial and healthy than the merely negative attitude of "I must not sin against chastity." It is the positive aspect, the dedication of oneself to Christ, which should be dominant in the soul. Another point which Father Bertrams makes is that a person dedicated to the celibate life should have a healthy atti-tude, not a fearful and anxious one, toward his own body. One's body is a work of God; and thus reverence, not fear, is due it. Also, although one might possibly bemisled by an expression which is sometimes used, there is no such a thing as an "indecent part" ot: the body. Thus, it would not be honest and objective to consider one's body, or certain parts of it, almost exclusively as an occasion of sin. Such an atti-tude would make the general subject of sex an object of fear, and it would create many difficulties which a person with a healthy attitude toward his body would not experience. The sexual faculty is not evil in itself; it is good. Like any other natural faculty, however, it must be subordinated -to reason. Thus, control of this faculty is required. But the process of educating oneself to this control supposes that one first admit t.hat sex and sexual appetites do exist, and that they will at times manifest themselves. Some people are not always willing to admit this to themselves, or they keep wishing that it were not so. They must simply learn to accept the present 147 THOMAS G. 0'CALLAGHAN Review for Religiou.~" divinely-established order of Providence, an order in which sex, according to the will of God, has its proper place. From the fact that sexual appetites do at times manifest themsel~es, and even strongly, it is clear that sexual tempta-tions "do exist. These appetites, therefore, [lave to be con-trolled; for if they are not, they lead to sin. In this sense sex can be dangerous. But to see the dangers of sex practically ev~erywhere is just not being objective. It is true that today there are .found in public life many sexual stimulants, and these can easily cause some indeliberate sexual thoughts and reactions. That is quite normal; in fact, for a person never to react to these stimulants would possibly be a "sign of some natural de-fect. But, for a well-balanced person, not every sexual reaction to these stimulants is really deserving of the name of tempta-tion; they are not real inducements to sin. Many are slight and pass quicklyl.and the best thing to do is to pay no attention to them. To consider these reactions as true, temptations, and to be continually trying to avoid them, would only make one overanxious and hypersensitive. This state of anxiety could easily turn these slight reactions into strong temptations. Another point in Father Bertrams's article touches on the question of the choice of a celibate life in preference to the married state. Since attraction for members of the other sex is natural and fairly strong and ordinarily leads to "marriage, the choice of a ceiibate life should be made only after mature deliberation. Seminarians should realize, in reflecting on this choice, that marriage is noi something good merely in the abstract. When they renounce marriage, they renounce some-thing which could be for them an excellent personal good, a source .of perfection, happiness, and salvation. But they are renouncing this sacramental state for the sake of a higher good, a more ~omplete dedication to Christ and a more perfect service of His Church. And even after they make that choice of a celibate life, they should not expect the natural and human tendency toward married and family life simply to disappear. 148 May, 1959 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING But for them personally the celibate life is still a greater good, and by cooperating with the graces of their state the other tendency can be controlled. These and many other of the observations .which Father Bertrams makes are very prudent and are well worth study and reflection. St. Th~r~se of Lisieux The recently published critical edition of the original autobiographical manuscripts of St. Th~r~se of Lisieux (cf. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 17 [1959], 145-47) has been the occasion of intensified interest in the spirituality of this beauti-ful Carmelite saint. The original text is being carefully studied, and also closely compared with the text which Mother Agnes edited--and in many ways rewrote~and which has been known in English as The Story of a Soul. One of the purposes of this study and comparison is to discover whether our present picture of Th~r~se's spiritual life should be modified in any significant way. An excellent article which considers this prob-lem has been written by Father Noel Dermot of the Holy Child, O.C.D.4 We would like to mention briefly just one or two of the points which he discusses. When Mother Agnes edited Th~r~se's manuscripts, she omitted a great number of passages. From a study of these passages it is evident that her intention was not to show Th~r~se" as being holier or better than she really was. The only pas-sage which could cause some doubt in this regard is the one in which St. Th~r~se speaks about her difficulty in saying the rosary. She admitted that saying the rosary took more out of her than a hair-shirt would. No matter how hard she tried, she could not meditate on the mysteries of the rosary. This caused her great distress. Since she did have a strong personal love for the Blessed Mother, she just could not understand 4"The Published Manuscripts and the 'Histoire d'une Ame,' " Ephemer-ides Carraeliticae, IX (1958), 3-31. 149 THOMAS G. 0'CALLAGHAN Review ]o~" Religious why saying prayers in Mary's honor should be difficult. Never-theless, it. was difficult and a real trial for her. This might be comforting to many of us; but we should not hastily assume, as Father Noel prudently notes, "that the Saint's distractions were on the same level as our own." Th~r~se could not fix her attention on the mysteries, "not because her mind is far from God, and full of worldly or selfish preoccupations, but rather because her mind is fixed ~on God in a simpler and higher way. It is in fact a matter in which the Saint suffered from the lack of sufficiently skilled direction, which would assure her that Our Lady is more hon-ored by a simple loving regard toward herself, or her Divine Son, than by the repetition of set prayers." Another point, which may be of interest .to mention here, is that one of the most striking characteristics of Th~r~se's manuscripts is the constant use of the name of Jesus. Father Noel .observes, in speaking of the editor's notes in the critical edition of the Autobiography, that "the citations under J/sus in the Table des citations occupy ten columns." 'This is an indication of the central and dominant place which Jesus held in the life of Th~r~se of the Infant Jesus. (She never refers to Jesus as Our Lord, and only once as Christ.) Her autobiography is the story of a great love, "the love of Jesus for Th~i~se and of Th~r~se for Jesus." Obedience The spiritual life is primarily and basically a relationship between persons. First, it is a personal relationship with the three Persons of the Trinity. The three key virtues of the spiritual life, the theological virtues'of faith, hope, and charity, are personal relationships with the Persons of God. One be-lieves God; one hopes in God; one loves God. There are also, as is obvious, our personal relationships with the Blessed Mother, the saints, the angels, and others. Personal contacts therefore are at the very heart of the spiritual life. 150 May, 1959 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING Yet there is a very real.danger for religious to become impersonal in their spiritual lives. They can easily fall into what might be called the trap of impersonalism. This is espe-cially true, as Father Ryan, O.P., points out, in regard to obedience.~ Religious are certainly desirous ot: being obedient, because the faithful observance of rules is a very important part of religious life. But there is a definite danger of making obedience something impersonal, as if it were nothing more than conformity with a set of rules and regulations. "Primarily it is not this. We do not obey," says Father Ryan, "an abstract code of laws, we obey people . " This personal aspect of obedience is certainly brought out in Sckipture. Our Lord obeyed His Father; He asked His followers to obey those who are their temporal lords. Children are told to obey their parents, servants their masters, and wives their husbands. Scripture makes it quite clear that obedi-ence is a personal relationship. Obedience is never mere conformity to law. It is a vir-tue which gov.erns the relationship between living persons, be-tween a subject and his superior. Since in the Christian dis-pensation the superior is a representative of Christ, possessing authority from Christ, obedience is basically a personal relation-ship with a living Christ. This is a point which often has to be stressed, because otherwise obedience can easily degenerate into legalism, into mere conformity with impersonal rules. When this occurs, the religious life loses much' of its meaning. It is failing to be what it should be, a person to person rela-tionship with the living Person of Christ. The Contemplative Life It was interesting to see in a recent issue of Jubilee that a group of Camaldolese hermits have started their order's first foundation in America.6 They have acquired an ideal location S"The Vows of Religion: II Religious Obedience," The Life o.~ the Spirit, XIII (1958), 242-49. °"The Camaldolese Come to America," Jubilee, December, 1958. 151 Review for Religious on California's Monterey peninsula, six hundred acres of peaceful and secluded property overlooking the Pacific. This will be only thdir second house outsi~le of Italy; the other is in Poland. The Congregation of Camaldolese Monk Hermits was founded by St. Romuald in the eleventh century. The prop-erty. on which he built his monastery was the .gift of Count Maldolo. Thus, the name Camaldolese originated by "shorten-ing the phrase ~.arnl~us MalJoH (the field of Maldolo). The Camaldolese are an independent branch of the Benedic-tine order. Their foundation adapted the Benedictine Rule so that it would include hermits, and-thus provide for the eremitical as well as the cenobitical life. "Although the recent trend within the Order has been to emphasize the cenobitical life, the foundation in America will be solely eremitical." Along with the new foundation of the Carthusians in Vermont and the extraordinary growth of Trappist vocations during the last fifteen years, the arrival of the Camaldolese is another indication of the growth of the contemplative life in America. The hermit's life is such a hidden one that it is rare that an individual hermit, at least in Western Christendom, becomes well known. Yet during the last fifty years there have been two hermits who have gained some fame. The better known of these two was Charles de Foucauld, the French ascetic who was murdered in the Hoggar desert more than forty years ago. The other, who died not quite three years ago, was an English convert, Monsignor John Hawes, better known as Fra Jerome, and perhaps still better known as The Hermit of Cat Island, since this is the title given to a recent biography of him. Those who will not have the opportunity of reading this book will find a brief but interesting account of his life in "A Hermit of the Twentieth Century," written by' Michael Hanbury, one of Hawes's friends.7 7"A Hermit.of the Twentieth Century," The Month, XX (1958), 295-301. 152 ¯ May, 1959 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING It was while working as an architect in London that John Hawes met a retired Anglican bishop, who persuaded him to take Anglican orders. A ~few years l.ater he went as a mission-ary to the Bahamas, where part of his missionary activity was the construction of several Anglican churches. But doubts about his faith were disturbing his life; and after three years he left for New York and soon was received into the Church by another recent convert, Father Paul Francis of Graymoor, the founder of the Society of the Atonement. The following year found Hawes studying for the priesthood at the Beda, Rome. After ordination Father Hawes went to Weit Australia, and there he labored diligently for twenty-four years in his "twin roles of missionary and busy architect." After these arduous years, and although already past sixty, .he asked his bishop if he might be allowed to try what he believed to be his het.mit's vocation. Permission was granted on ~he conditior~ that he write his memoirs. In the spring of 1940 Hawes returned to the Bahamas, to Cat Island. He built a tiny three-room hermitage, his cell six feet by four, and his kitchen even smaller, and began his hermit's life. Although his solitude was not extreme--for he was still called on at times for some missionary and even architectural work---often he saw no one for three or four days at a time. Thus he spent the last fifteen years of his life in prayer, fasting, and penance, sharing with, Christ the solitude and sorrows of Gethsemani. Sacred Scripture Are we biblical Arians or biblical Docetists? The ques-tion is an interesting one, and so is the answer given by.H.J. Richards in ','The Word of God Incarnate.''8 This article should be of special interest to priests or nuns who are teach-ing the Bible in high school or college. SScripture, X (1958), 44-48. 153 THOMAS G. O'CALLAGHAN Review /or Religious In the early Church two heresies distorted the revealed truth about the Word Incarnate. At one extreme Arianism treated Christ '~as if he was exclusively human, with the divine about him no more than superimposed by a sort o~ adoption." At the other extreme was Docetism, which made Him almost exclusively divine, the human being mere appearance: Between these two extremes lies the truth: the Incarnate Word, one Person in two natures, one Completely human and the other completely divine. There has also been a similar double error about the Bible, that other "Word of God incarnate." The biblical Arian considers the Bible as "an exclusively human book which has beef~ subsequently approved of and adopted by God," while the biblical Docetist imagines it as "an exclusively divine work, with the various human authors acting merely as God's dictaphones." It is also between these two extremes that one finds the truth: the Bible is completely human and completely divine. Fifty years ago the danger was to .be a biblical Arian. Research and new discoveries in archeology, anthropology, geology, and so ~orth, were putting the Bible in the full light of its human context. This brought on the temptation to consider it as a purely human work. The Church condemned such a position, and insisted that the Bible was the word of God. But that teaching did not give us the right to lapse into a sort of biblical Docetism. We always need a scientific approach to the Bible, and this for the purpose of under-standing it properly. For "this book is so thoroughly human that from the first page to the last every possible human allowance has to be made if we are to understand it." , We must not forget that the Bible ;s not a single book, but a whole collection of them, and that the human authors who composed these books thought and wrote like men of their times, not like men of our day and civilization. Their. 154 May, 1959 CURRENT SPIRITUAL WRITING approach to things was that of a Semite, not of a Westerner. Therefore, it is not strange that they expressed themselves in various "literary forms for which no equivalent exists in our own literature. Each of these must be recognized, for what it is, and judged according to the rules of that form. Otherwise we will only understand the meaning of the words, "not the meaning of' the man who wrote them." Thus, there is always a need of a scientific approach to the Bible which, although completely divine, is also human through and through. For unless we grasp the meaning of its human authors, we will never fully appreciate what it is :hat God is trying to say to us. 155 Pr c!:ice ot: !:he Holy See Joseph F. ~oallen, S.J. CANON 509, § 1, obliges all superiors to inform their sub-jects of all decrees of the Holy See concerning religious and to enforce such decrees. .The activity and mind and will of the Holy See are alsd revealed, and sometimes in a more practical manner, by approved constitutions and com-munications addressed to individual religious institutes. An article drawn from these sources was published in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in 1953. This article is based on the same sources concerning lay institutes from January 1, 1954. The order of materi~il" followed in the article is the usual order of the chapters of constitutions of lay institutes. This is the second part of a series of three. 7. Religious profession. (a) Place of first temporary pro-fession. A congregation whose novitiate had been destroyed by fire received permission to hold the ceremonies of reception and profession in a public church. Canon 574, § 1 clearly commands for liceity that the first temporary profession should be made in a novitiate house. The code prescribes nothing about the place of the other temporary professions or of per-petual profession, but the place for these may be determined by the particular constitutions. Any institute whatever that wishes to hold the first temporary profession outside the no-vitiate house must secure a dispensation from the Holy See. Reasons such as the lack of a suitable place in the novitiate house, the difficulty or inconvenience to externs in reaching this house, the edification of the faithful, and the fostering of vocations justify the. petition of an indult to make the first professionelsewhere, for example, in a parish church.13 (b) Five years of temporary vows. A mother general requested ~°~ Larraona, Commentarium Pro Religiosis, 38-1957-218; REVIEW FOR RE-LIGIOUS; 12-1953-264. 156 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE permission to hold an extraordinary general chapter ~o discuss the extension of temporary profession from three to five years. The Sacred Congr.egation replied in 1957 as follows: "Since it is now the practice of this Sacred Congregation to require five years of temporary vows, we do not feel that it is neces-sary to convoke an extraordinary general chapter, to discuss the matter. It will be sufficient, if your council and ,yourself agree on the proposal, to make a formal petition to this Con-gregation to introduce the five-year period of temporary vows as an experiment until the next regular general chapter is held~ The general chapter should then discuss the matter and submit a petition for a change in your constitutions in this regard. This Sacred Congregation does not impose the change on those communities whose constitutions were approved before the present practice was introduced.'~'~ The sense of this reply seems to be that all congregations applying "for. pontifical ap-proval must demand five" years of temlSorary profession. The temporary vows may then be prolonged only f6r a year. The five years may be variously divided, for .example, five annual professions, three annual professions arid one of two years, or two annual professions and one of three ~,ear~s. ~ This new prac-tice of the Holy See is an added reason why the same extension should be studied by all institutes that'have only three years of temporary vows. The inauguration of juniorates and the consequent reduction of time of probation in the active life before perpetual profession had already led many institutes to study,._ and some to adopt, this extension.14 (c) Anticipated renewal of temporary vows. Canon. 5~7, § 1 perm!ts that a renewal be anticipated, but not by more than a month, (August 15, 1958 - July 15, 19'58). Constitutions recently approved are stating more frequently that an anticipated renewal expires only on the day on which a non-anticipated renewal would have expired. This matter was explained in the REVIEW FOR RE-LIGIOUS, 17-1958-60-6I. (d) Reception of profession. In~.lay Ibid., 12o1953-266-6~;" 15-1956-322.' 157 JOSEPH 1~. GALLEN Review for Religious institutes, the constant practice of the Holy See is ~that the vows are received by the superior general, or higher superior, and his or her delegates. More recent constitutions provide for the difficulty caused by the lack of an express delegation. For example, some state: "In default of an express delegation, the local superior is to be considered as delegated with the faculty of subdelegating." Those that have renewals of temporary vows frequently make the following provision: "Local superiors and their legitimate substitutes are delegated by the constitu-tions to receive the renewal of vows and with power also to subdelegate." It would have been better in the latter type of institute to have included also the first provision. The legiti-mate substitutes are the assistants or vicars of local superiors. The enti~e matter of reception was explained in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 8-1949:130-39; and the necessity of recep-tion in juridical renewals was emphasized in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 16-1957-113. (e) Resumption of solemn vows. The progressive resumption of solemn vows by monasteries of nuns continues. This matter was fully explained in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 16-1957-255-56. (f) Solemn vows in an institute of active purpose. One institute of women has been an order for centuries, that is, a religious institute in which at least some of the members should have taken solemn vows according to the particular laws of the institute. It has also been engaged in teaching outside its own monasteries. In other words, its work of teaching in no way differed from the manner in which this apostolate is exercised by congregations of sisters. This institute, while fully retaining the active end described above, was permitted to resume solemn vows by. a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, July 23, 1956. We therefore have a centralized order of nuns, whose works are exercised also outside their monastery, and who have a papal cloister similar to the papal cloister of men and not too distant from the common or episcopal cloister of congregations of sisters. Papal cloister is consequently now to be divided into 158 May, 1959 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE major, minor, ahd the special cloister proper to this institute of women and to a very few similar institutes of women.1~ All making their noviceship at the time ot~ the decree and all admitted thereafter are to make solemn profession. Simple temporary vows are made first~ for a period ot~ five years, which are followed by a profession of simple perpetual vows. After about ten years of simple vows and ordinarily at the end of the third probation, the religious is admitted to solemn prot~ession: This order is obliged to the daily choral recitation of at least part of the Divine Office, but the obliga/- tion is only that ot~ the constitutions. The religious recite the whole Office daily with these exceptions: they recite only one nocturn ot~ Matins and only one of the Little Hours ot~ Terce, Sext, and None. It is recommended that at least Vespers be sung .on Sundays and feast days. Religious who are students may be dispensed entirely from the office (c. 589, § 2). The nuns are permitted to go out for a special purpose, that is, the apostolate, preparation for. or supplementing of preparation for the apostolate, for purposes related to aposto-lic works, health, the accomplishment of a civic or religious duty, the service of the order, and necessary collaboration with other religious institutes. They are t~orbidden to go out for any personal satisfaction or interest °not foreseen by the constitutions. "The following persons may enter the part the house reserved for the religious, in case of necessity, at the discretion of the sul3erior: maids, workmen, doctors, architects and others." "Priests may enter the enclosure to administer the sacraments to th~ sick, or to assist the dying, according to the prescriptions ot~ canon law." "Seculars may be shown over [the part ot~ the house reserved for the works-] when the local superior thinks fit, with a view to the admission of pupils. Besides, parents may be authorized to see their children in the infirmary. Under conditions decided upon by l~Guti~rrez, Commentarium Pro Religiosis, 35-1956-263; J. Fohl, L'Ann~e Canonique, 4-1956-183. o . 159 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious the local superior, former pupils~, may be admitted into this part of the house, as well as persons connected with any good works directed by .the community either in groups on fixed da.ys .or ~separately. The same rule applies to those who may be called UPOn to share the work of the house: priests, teachers, doctors, business advisers, domestic help, 'contractors, workmen and others." The parlors have no grille, and there is no turn. The excommunication of canon 2342 is restricted" to passive cloister, that is, entering the section reserved for the religiot~s, and is worded in the constitutions as follows: "Every person entering without permission into the part o~ the house reserved for the religious, and also the religious who [~ring them in or admit therri within the enclosure incur excommunication reserved [simply] to the Holy See." 8. Poverty. (a) Buildings and cells. Some recent con-stitutions contain the wise provision that the buildings and their furnishings are to be marked by religious poverty, simplicity, and dignity. Several congregations, with at least equal wisdom, enact that each sister is .to' have her own cell. Some enjoin this absolutely; others as far as ik' is possible. (b) Collections in schools. One congregation enacted the following prudent and necessary provision: "Requests for gifts either for the school or for the congregation made by the teachers to the pupils" must be infrequent and submitted be-foreharid to the superiors. The latter will be cautious" in grant-ing permissions." (c) Making a will in an order. In its reply to a quinquennial report, the Sacred Congregation instructed a superioress of a monastery of nuns that the novices, since they were destined for solemn profession, were not obliged to make a will. This is true. It is also true that they are not forbidden to make a will. In my own opinion, these novices are to be strongly urged to make a will if they actually own property and especially if the interval between the noviceship and solemn profession is very long.1° (d) Renunciation of 16 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 15-1956.159-60. 160 May, 1959 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE patrimony in a congregation. In permitting at least two re-ligious of congregations to renounce their property in favor of their institute, the Sacred Congregation added the conditions: "provided the rights .of no third party were involved and that all the property, would be returned to the religious in the event. of his or her departure from the institute." This whole matter was explained in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 12-1953-257-59. 9. Confession and Communion. (a) Frequency of con-fession. In the past, the constitutions of lay institutes almost u.niversally directly commanded the religious to go to confession at least once a week. Later many constitutions were phrased in the wording of.canon 595, § 1, 3°: "Superiors shall take care that all the religious approach the sacrament of penance at least once a week." Constitutions are now appearing with the following Wording: "The religious "will usually go to confession at least once a week."° Frequency of confession was-explained in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 16-1957-116-17. (b) Occa-sional confessor. Recent constitutions frequently add to the canon on this confessor the prescription that all are obliged to observe religio~us discipline ifi the use of their right. T/~is is evident in itself~ and was contained in a reply of the Sacred Congregation of Religious, December 1, 1921.17 '(c) Supple-mentary confessors and opportunity of confession before Mass. In its. reply to one quinquennial report, the Sacred Congrega-tion made the very interesting and practical comment: "The superioresses shall carefully see to it, even consulting the re-spective local ordinaries on these points, that the sisters do not .lack supplementary confessors nor the opportunity of confession before Mass." This entire matter was expl.ained in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 9-1950-140-52. The Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments reiter~ited in 1938 that it "is especially im-portant, that they ~-the faitht~ul who live in communities] should hav~ the opportunity to make a confession also shortly before the time ot~ Communion.''is Even though this was emphasized Bouscaren, Canon Law Digest, I, 296-97. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 9-1950-146-49. 161 JOSEPH F. GADLEN Review for Religious in 1938, the ready opportunity of such a daily confession for lay religious is still most rare. (d) Interference in internal government. Some recent constitutions add the following sentence to the canon that forbids the ordinary or extraordinary confessor to interfere in internal government: "Therefore, the sisters shall treat with the confessors only matters that concern their own soul." This principle admits exceptions, for example, a councilor may licitly ask a priest in confession what is the more expedient, the more practical policy to follow in ~ matter of government. The pertinent canon was explained in the REVIEW FOR RI~LIGIOUS, 17-1958-255-5& (e) Frequency of Communion. Constitutions approved by the Holy See from about 1939 until recent years uniformly coiatained an article of the following type: "Superiors shall plainly tell their subjects that they are gratified at their frequent reception of Holy Com-munion, but that they see nothing to reprehend in those who do not receive so frequently, since this can be (or is) a sign of a tender and delicate conscience." This article, was taken from the Reserved Instruction on Daily Communion and Pre-cautions to be taken against Abuses, section, c, a).19 Some recent constitutions have the. same or a similar article; others have nothing on this point; some say that Communion need not or is not to be received according to rank; and perhaps the best expression is the following: "Superiors shall carefully eliminate anything that might interfere with the liberty of the individual religious to receive or abstain from Holy Com-munion." The elimination of precedence in receiving Com-munion is something with which I can agree, but I most seriously doubt the efficacy that is often attributed to it.2° One may also legitimately inquire what efficacy this elimination has when the religious continue to sit in the cha~pel according to rank. The great practical and effective means in this matter is the opportunity of confession before daily Mass. 19 Bouscaren, 05. cir., II, 213. ~0 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 9-1950-149; 15-1956-25. 162 May, 1959 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE 10. Religious exercises. (a) Mass. The feast of the canonized founder or foundress of a religious institute, even if the institute is not obliged to the Divine Office and does not have a proper calendar, is celebrated in the institute as a double of the first class, One monastery of Poor Clare Colettine nuns received an indult from the Sacred Congregation of Rites permitting the celebration of the feast of St. Collette as a double of the first class. A congregation of sisters Secured an ~ipdult to celebrate the feast of its patron under the same rite. T~is congregation was also permitted to celebrate several other Ma,sses, for example, ~hat of Mother of Mercy, on May 12. Thins, is from the Masses for Certain Places, and is given in the Miss~al for the Saturday before the fourth Sunday of July. One co~ngregation of St. Joseph was permitted to celebrate a votive ~,ass of St. Joseph in the principal oratory of the' mother house on\the first Wednesday of every month, provided some pious exercise was held in honor of St. Joseph. The following days were excluded: a double of the first or second class; a privileged feria!, octave, or vigil; Lent; and a feast of St. Joseph. One institute prepared and received permission to celebrate a private votive Mass of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Divine Teacher. The introduction to "the Mass states that Christ is teacher of mankind by a threefold title: 1° because by His doctrine He has introduced us into the most profound secrets of the Divinity and has revealed its most intimate mysteries; 2° by His example He has traced the path we must follow to God; 3° and by His grace He has made possible the practice of what He preached. (b) Office. A few congregations have substituted the Short Breviary in English for the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a lesser number have changed to English in the recitation of the latter. The change to the Short Breviary merits general study.~1 It is more in conformity with the liturgy and possesses the highly desirable advantage of being in English. (c) Particular examen at noon and the general examen in the 51 A Shor~ Breviary, edited by William G. Heidt, O.S.B., The Liturgical Press, St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minn. 163 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review for Religious evening. This old aversion of mine continues to appear in constitutions. As we have said before: "This has always seemed to me to be a strange practice. There is no doubt that the general examen may, be separated from the particular and that the general may be confined to the evening, although the preferable practice for religious is to make both together. The strangeness is found in making the particular only at noon. Is it the intention to strive for the conquest of a particular defect or the acquisition of a particular virtue for only half the day? If not, isn't it rather unnatural to examine oneself on this matter from noon to noon?''~-* 11. Cloister. (a) Papal cloister and extern sisters. It was made clear in the second general congress on the states of perfection that the Holy See favors a greater integration of the extern sisters in the life of the monastery and particularly by a greater facility for them to enter the cloister. A summary of the indults granted to several monasteries of the United States in this respect was published in the REYIEW FOR 16-1957-48. Two other monasteries obtained indults of greater moment. These permit the extern sisters to live within the papal enclosure and to perform the religious exercises and other duties of "common'life with the nuns. I do not know the reasons that were given in either of these petitions. (b) Entering and going out from papal enclosure. One nun was granted an indult to leave her monastery for three years to be mistress of novices in another monastery of the same order. A renewal of such an indult may be requested on its expiration, as was done in a similar case for a nun to continue as superioress of another monastery. One monastery Obtained an indult that permits the superioress to leave the enclosure for inspection of the quarters of the extern si~ters. A sister who was writirig a doctoral dissertation on medieval architecture was permitted to visit, all the monasteries of one order in a particular country, provided she had in each case the permission of the 22 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 13-1954-131. 164 May, 1959 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE superioress of the monastery and of the ~ocal ordinary. (c) Locked doors. One monastery of nuns received an indult to leave the dormitory doors within the monastery unlocked during the night to permit the nuns to go to the choir for nocturnal adoration and also to comply with the regulations of the Fire Prevention Bureau. The locked dormitory doors must have been the result of the particuhr law of this order. I was happy to see that a fire prevention bureau had finally made its influence felt in this matter. We have had several disastrous and fatal fires in the United States within the past few years. It would be well to reflect that very many of our ecclesiastical and religious buildings are old and that many of them can be accurately termed fire-traps. The death of a religious woman because of a locked door would be a harrowing accident; it also would not look v~ell in the newspapers nor in the public reports of an investigation. I wish to emphasize here what has been previously said in the REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS: "The National Fire Association states that its standards '. are widely used by law enforcing authorities in addition to their general use .as guides to fire safety.' In its pamphlet, Building ¯ Exits Code, this association states: 'All doors used in connection with exits shall be so arranged as to be always readily opened . from the side from which egress is made. Locks, if provided, shall not require a key to operate from the inside. Latches or other releasing devices to open doors shall be of simple types, the method of operation of which is obvious even in darkness.' This standard is not specifically applied to such residences as convents or religious houses in general,, but it is extended to very similar residences, e. g., apartment houses, which are defined as '. residence buildings providing sleep-ing accommodations for 20 or more persons, such as conven-tional apartments, tenement houses, lodging houses, dormitories, multi-family houses, etc.'''23 (d) Parlors. In reply to two quinquennial reports, the Sacred Congregation stated: "In all 231bid., 15-1956-284-85; 16-1957-52-53. 165 JOSEPH F. GALLEN Review fo~" Religious houses the parlors should be so arranged that what takes place in them may be seen from outside." Although this is not expressly commanded by any law of the Church, the pertinent question of the quinquennial report presupposes that the parlors of all religious houses are of this nature. (e) Chaplain's quarters. The quinquennial" report inquires and the constitu-tions of religious women very frequently prescribe that, 'ithe quarters reserved for chaplains, confessors, and preachers are to have a separate entrance and no internal communication with the sections occupied by the religious women." Those apt to reside in such houses are the chaplains and priests who are professors in a college conducted by religious women. It would often be high!y inconvenient and costly to erect a separate entrance for the chaplain or to exclude any internal communica-tion with the sections occupied by the religious women. Con-stitutions are sometimes worded: "If the chaplain lives in the house of the sisters, his apartments as far as possible shall have a separate entrance and shall have no communication with the part of the house occupied by the sisters." (f) Absence. A sister was given permission by the Holy See to reside outside all houses of her institute for a year to prepare a doctoral dissertation. Canon 606, ~ 2 gives superiors the faculty of per-mitting such an absence for longer than six months for the purpose of study or work within the scope of the institute. This study includes private study, for example, in a library or archives. (g) Greater precaution in some countries. The follow-ing article in one set of constitutions is a good illustration of the greater precautions that must be observed in some countries. "Because of native customs~ the mentality of the . . . and his usual interpretation of the association of men and women, it is of suprem~ importance that sisters shall not go into the house of a priest, nor be in any place whatever with a priest or brother or any man, unless in the company of others. "If necessity requires private conversation with the above mentioned, it shall be held in a room open to all." 166 May, 1959 PRACTICE OF THE HOLY SEE 12. Correspondence. Exempt correspondence with the local ordinary. On November 27, 1947, the Code Commission replied that ."exempt religious, in the cases in which they are subject to the ordinary, can, according to canon 611, freely send to the said ordinary and receive from him letters subject to no inspection.''24 It was deduced from this reply that non-exempt religious have this same right only in matters in which they are subject to the local ordinary,s5 Therefore, several con-stitutions of lay institutes recently approved by the Holy See no longer state, "to the local ordinary to whom they are subject," but, "to the local ordinary' in matters in which they are subject to him." 13. Works of the institute. (a) Formation. In replyii~g to a quinquennial report, the Sacred Congregation stated: "The mother general shall labor strenuously for the best possible formation of the novices and postulants, since this is the prin-cipal source of the increase of the congregation." Would that this had been said to all and that the proper education and continued spiritual formation of the junior .professed had been included! A few congregations of sisters have introduced a period of preparation, usually of a month, before perpetual profession,s° A gratifying number now prescribe the juniorate in their constitutions,s7 An even greater number ake imposing the renovation or spiritual renewal. It is usually stated to be of about six weeks' duration and to be made about the tenth year after first pr0fession.28 (b) Works. A comment made to one mother general in answer to her quinquennial report was: "The superior general should be reminded of theobserva-tion made by this Sacred Congregation in response to her previous report, namely, that the sisters should not be burdened with too much work, perhaps to the detriment of their spiritual Bouscaren, 01~. cir., III, 253. Guti6rrez, Commentarium Pro Religiosis, 27-1948-160-61. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, 12-1953-267. sT Ibid., 12-1953-266-67; 14-1955-297-98; 15-1956-317-18. Ibid., 12-1953-267; 15-1956-318. 167 JOSEPH F. GALLEN welfare. Because of this danger, the superiors should take care that the spiritual exercises, when omitted, are made up." Would again that this observation had been addressed to all. mothers general! One set of constitutions recently approved by the Holy See contains the wise provision: "Our sisters are forbidden to take charge of sacristies except ~he sacristy con-nected with the community chapel." This prohibition could well have been extended to several other similar types of work. A few congregations are insisting in their constitutions on the necessity of a suitable library in each house. Higher superiors should inspect the libraries or advert to the absence of them,, in their canonical visitation and should insist on a proper annual outlay for books.~' The following articles of recently approved constitutions are worthy of study by all: "The sisters have the duty to serve all; but the superior shall be vigilant that they do not give their services to the wealthy, when the poor are in need of them, unless higher motives dictate otherwise." "Sisters shall be very careful to do and say nothing that might be construed as disparagement of native customs and manners. Nor shall they try to impose on native people ou~ customs, except such as make for better moral and health conditions." (The rest of this article will appear in the J.uly issue.) ~9 Ibid., 12-1953-26; 269. 168 bleaddresses and Driving [The number of sisters .who drive cars has been steadily increasing in recent years nor is the increase likely to cease. If they drive, they should, as was noted in REVIEW FOg RELIClOUS, 16 (1957), 113, have unrestricted lateral vision, something that is impossible with the headdresses of many institutes of women. It is good, therefore, to see that the Sacred Congregation of Re-ligious has taken cognizance of this need in the following letter.] SACRA CONGREGAZIONE DEI RELIGIOSI Prot. N. 85607~8 O1615 December 17, 1958 Dear Reverend Mother, This Sacred Congregation of Religious would be grateful to you if you would communicate the following to all the members of your Conference of Major Superiors of Women's Institutes in the United States, and to all non-members as well, if this is possible. It is the mind of this Sacred Congregation that the headdresses of those Sisters, who are allowed by their Superiors to drive cars, should be modified, while they are driving, in such a way as to insure unimpeded vision. Though this may involve a temporary departure from the prescriptions of the Constitutions, such a departure is justifiable, especially in view of the danger involved in drivihg without as clear vision as. possible on all sides. Asking God to bless you and the Conference, I remain dear Reverend Mother, Faithfully yours in Christ, (Signed) Valerio Card. Valeri Prefect Reverend Mother M. Maurice Tobin, R.S.M. President, National Executive Committei~ Conference of Major Superiors of Women's Institutes, U.S.A. Bradley Boulevard and Kentsdale Drive Bethesda 14, Maryland, U.S.A. 169 Survey ot: Roman Documents R. F. Smith, S.J. THE DOCUMENTS which appearedin Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS) during December, 1958, and January, 1959, will be surveyed in the following pages. All page references to AAS throughout the article will be accompanied by the year of publica-tion of AAS. Activities of Pope John XXIII On November 12, 1958 (AAS, 1958, p. 922), John XXIII issued a motu probrio in which he bestowed special privileges on the clerical conclavists who were present when he was elected Pope; besides giving them a privilege with regard to benefices they may acquire in the future, he also extended to them the privilege of using a portable altar for a reasonable cause and in accordance with the norms of canon 822,. § 3. To the tttotu l~rolSrio is attached a list of the conclavists benefitting by these privileges (AAS, 1958, pp. 923-25). On November 23, 1958, the Pontiff took official possession of his cathedral church, the Lateran Basilica; a detailed account of the ceremony is given in AAS, 1958, pp. 909-21. During the Mass which was celebrated on the occasion the Holy Father delivered a homily (AAS, 1958, pp. 913-21) in which he recalled the history of the ceremony and then considered the ceremony's significance as symbolized by the two objects resting on the altar: the book (the Missal) and the chalice. The book, he told his listeners, calls to mind the fact that all priests must share in the.pastoral mission of the Church to teach sacred doctrine, and to make it penetrate into the souls and the lives of the faithful. The chalice, he continued, is a sign of the Mass and the Eucharist, wherein is found the living substance of the Christian religion: God-with-us. He added that it is from the mountain of the altar that Christians must judge all earthly things; and it is there too that the graves~t problems of the human community should find the principles of an adequate solu-tion. 170 ROMAN DOCUMENTS During the month of December the Vicar of Christ held three consistories, the first of which was a secret one convened on the morning of December 15, 1958 (AAS, 1958, pp. 981-87). At this consistory the Pontiff delivered an allocution (AAS, 1958, pp. 981-89) to the assembled cardinals, telling them of the joy aroused in him by the number of messages sent to him on the occasion of his election and coronation. But with this joy, he said, there coexisted in his heart a great sorrow at the thought of the condition of the faithful in China. Their status, he added, grows steadily worse each day; and he begged the Chinese Catholics to keep in their hearts the strengthening words of Christ: "The servant is not greater than his master; if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you" tJn 15:20). The Holy Father then nominated and created twenty-three new cardinals; afterwards he appointed Cardinal Masella as Camerlengo of the Church; and then (AAS, 1958, pp. 989-94) announced the appointments of patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops made since the last consistory of cardinals. The co~nsistory closed (AAS, 1958, p. 994) with postulations of the pal.lium. In a public consistory held December 18, 1958 (AAS, 1958, p. 995), the Holy Father bestowed the red hat on the new cardinals; on the same day (AAS, 1958, pp. 996-97) he also presided at an-other secret consistory in which he announced the most recent appointments of archbishops and bishops" and assigned Churches to the new cardinals; the consistory closed with additional postulations of the pallium. The Christmas M~sage of 1958 On December 23, 1958 (AAS, 1959, pp. 5-12), John XXIII broadcast to the world his first Christmas message. The Pontiff begar~ his speech by expressing his profound gratitude for the respect and reverence which had been given him since his election and coronation, commenting especially on the enthusiasm of the citizens of Rome and remarking with satisfaction that the crowds who have thronged to see him included a large number of young persons who thus have shown themselves quick to honor ani4 defend their Christian heritage. These manifestations of respect, he continued, are due in large part to Pius XII who for almost twenty years dispensed the luminous treasures of his wisdom and his zeal for the flock of Christ. This work of Puis XII, he said, is manifested in his .Christmas messages; 171 R. F. SMITH for he transformed, the traditional Christmas message of the Pope from a simple expression of seasonal greetings to a timely discourse on the needs of mankind. The nineteen Christmas messages Plus XII delivered, he went on to say, can be summed up as a constant exhortation to unity and peace. The only condition, John .XXIII added, needed by man to achieve these two blessings is good will; and it is lack of this good will that constitutes the most terrible problem of human history and of human lives. For at its very beginnings human history is m~rked by an episode of blood: a brother killed by a brother; the law of love imprinted by the Creator in the hearts ot~ man was thus violated by bad will which thereupon led man downward on the path of injusiice and disorder. Unity was shattered and the intervention of the Son of God was necessary to reestablish the sacred relationships of the human family. .Since this restoration of unity and peace must always go on, Christ established a Church whose worldwide unity should lead to a recon-ciliation between the various races and nations and to a resolution to form a society.marked by the laws of justice and of fraternity. The theme of unity recalled, to the Pontiff's mind the need to work for the return to the Cl~urch of those separated brethren who also bear the name of Christian. Like the Popes ot: modern times from Leo XIII to Pius XII, John XXIII announced his avowed purpose to pursue humbly but fervently the task to which the words of Christ impel him: "Them also I must bring . . . and there shall be one fold and one shepherd" (Jn 10:16). It is impossible, the Pope went on, not to think at this time of those parts of the world which have become atheistic and materialistic and in which there exists as a result a slavery of the individual and the masses together with a slavery of both thought and action. The Bible tells us of a tower of Babel attempted in the beginnings of human history; as it ended in confusion, so too the new tower of Babel will end in the same way; meanwhile, however, it remains for many a great illusion, and only a strong apostolate of truth and Christian brotherhood can arrest the grave dangers that threaten from this source. In conclusion His Holiness pointed out that the time of Christ-mas is a time for good works and for an intense charity; it is in fact the exercise of such deeds that give substance to the civilization that bears the name of Christ. Christmas, then, he ended, should mark the maximum of our help towards the needy of every kind. 172 May, 1959 ROMAN DOCUMENTS Allocutions of pope John XXIII On November 15, 1958 (AAS, 1958, pp. 997-1006), John XXIII delivered analloci~tion to the third annual meeting of the Episcopal Council of Latin America, beginning his speech by stressing the importance of Latin America in the Church. One hundred million Catholics, almost one-third of the Catholic world, are to be found there; hence it is most important that the.faith be kept growing in the countries of that region. "The responsibility for ths growth, he added, lies on the bishops of the area~. Urging the bishops to look into the future, His Holiness suggested to them that their long-term 13rogram should have as its goal an organic reenforcement of ~he basic structures of ecclesiastical life in their regions; this program, he added, will entail an intensive study of the vocation problem of Latin America. While looking to the future., the Vicar of Christ continued, they should not neglect to meet the present spiritual necessities of their dioceses; hence they must study how to best us~ the activities of priests and religious who are presently available. The Pontiff urged them to explore the possibilities of radio for teaching catechism to the faithful who are removed from a parish center and .suggested a program of mission-giving in localities where parish organization is insufficient~ Finally he urged them to secure aid for their needs iCrom religious orders and congregations and from those parts oi: the Catholic world where the clergy is more numerous. On November 21, 1958 (AAS, 1958~ pp. 1019-22), John XXIII sent a radio message to the people of Venice on the occasion of the regional feast of our Lady, Health of the Sick, urging the members of his former diocese to practice a devotion to our Lady that would lead to the development of their spiritual lives. On November 27, 1958 (AAS, pp. 1006-10), the Pope delivered an allocution at the Lateran for the opening of the academic year. He told his audience that the principal program in ecclesiastical universities is" the study of that divine science which the Bible contains and resumes. This study, he added, includes the deduction of practical directives for the apostolate. He further remarked that the accord between en-ergetic pastoral activity and the constant cultivation of good studies is one of the purest consolations of the priestly life, concluding his remarks by exhorting his listeners to a frequent reading of the fathers and doctors of the Church. 173 R, f. SMITH Review for Religious On November 29, 1958 (AAS, 1958, pp. 1010-12), the Vicar of Christ delivered an allocution to Cardinal Wyszynski and the Polish Catholics living in Rome, warning themnot to be misled by fallacious and materialistic theories of life nor to be seduced by movements which call themselves Catholic, but in reality are far from being such. On Nov, ember 30, 1958 (AAS, 1958, pp. 1012-17), His Holiness celebrated Mass for the students of the. College of the Propaganda of the Faith, afterwards delivering an allocution in which he listed the principal qualities that a priest must have. The first of these is purity, for it is this that constitutes the glory of the Catholic priesthood; any weakness in this matter, or compromise, is always deception. "A life of purity," he remarked "is always poetry and freshness; always joy and enthusiasm; always a captivating winner of souls." Priests, he continued, must also possess meekness and humility; for these sum up the teaching of Christ, and success is given only to the humble of heart. Finally a priest must possess the knowledge which is necessary for the spread and defense of truth and must have within him the spirit of sacrifice and of the cross. On December 1, 1958 (AAS, 1958, pp. 1017-19), John XXIII gave an allocution to the Shah of Iran and his entourage, expressing his interest in Iran and noting with satisfaction the cordial relations that exist between the Catholics of Iran and their government. Allocutions of Pope Pius XII AAS for the two-month period being surveyed included the text of four allocutions of the late Pius XII. The first of these was given on September 21, 1958 (AAS, 1958, pp. 943-47), to the Twelfth International Congress of Philosophy: He pointed out to his listeners that the thinkers of the Middle Ages came to realize that it was through the sup.ernatural truth of ~he Christian faith that the human mind becomes fully aware of its own autonomy, of the absolute certitude of its first principles, and of the funda-mental liberty of its decisions and its acts. More than this, revelation shows the inquiring mind the concrete reality of its actual destiny and its call to a participation in the life of the triune God. Lament-ing the fact that the religious crisis of the Renaissance led thinkers first to replace the living God with an abstract Deity demonstrated by reason but a stranger to His own work and then to an ignorance 174 May, 1959 ROMAN DOCUMENTS of Him or even to opposition to Him as to a harmful myth, the late Pope recalled to his audience the words of St. Augustine: "If God is wisdom, then the true philosopher is he who loves God." On September 23, 1958 (AAS, 1958, pp. 947-52), Plus XII gave an allocution to sixty rectors of major seminaries in Latin America, telling them that the vocation problem of Latin America would be solved only if present-day seminarians were trained to be perfect apostles, actual personifications of the gift of oneself for the love of God and of souls, and men of prayer and sacrifice. He also noted that while priests of today must be deeply concerned with modern social probleins, this social preoccupation must not lead them to abandon the priestly work of teaching, of hearing confessions, "and of conducting divine worship; the priest must always remain a priest. Finally Plus XII urged his listeners to inculcate into their seminarians a filial obedience to their legitimate authorities. Citing St. Thomas, he pointed out that obedience is more praiseworthy than the other moral virtues, adding that obedi-ence is necessary in the Church as never before, since in the face of the Church's difficulties, the greatest unity is needed. On the Saturday before his death, October 4, 1958 (AAS, 1958, pp. 952-61), Plus XII spoke to the tenth national Italian Congress of Plastic Surgery. Christianity, the Pontiff pointed out, has never condemned as illicit the esteem and ordinary care 'hi~ physical beauty. Nevertheless, Christianity has never regarded this beauty as the supreme human value, for it is neither a spiritual value nor an essential one. Since physical beadty is a good and a gift of God, it should be appreciated and cared for; but it does not impose an obligation to use extraordinary means to preserve it. Suppose, the late Pontiff continued, that a person desires to undergo plastic surgery meri~ly from the wish to have a more beautiful face; in itself this desire is neither good nor bad, but-takes its moral cast from the circumstances that surround such a desire and its execution. Thus it would be illicit to undergo such an operation to increase one's power of seduction or to disguise oneself in order to escape justice; on the other hand there are motives that legitimize such surgery or even make it advisable. Such, for example, would be the desire to remove deformities or imperfections which provoke psychic difficulties or prevent the development of one's public or professiorlal activity. 175 R. F. SMITH Review for Religiol~s In the concluding section of his allocution, Pius XII took up some psychological considerations, noting that some grave psychic difficulties can be occasioned by the knowledge of physical defects. These difficulties, he remarked, may develop into profound anomalies of character and may lead even to crime and suicide. In such cases, he told the surgeons, to assist by means of plastic surgery is an act of the charity of Christ. AAS, 1958, pp. 961o71, gives the text of an allocution which Plus XII had planned to give on October 19, 1958, to the students of the seminary of Apulia. Priestly formation, wrote the Pontiff, must be founded on a profound conviction of the sublime dignity of the priesthood. Granted this conviction, the seminary must strive to form the seminarian to regard himself as one who will be a depository of divine power and as one whose life will not be his own but Christ's. The seminarian must be trained to a priestly vision of the world in which human beings are seen as tabernacles --actual or potential--of the indwelling God. Though as a priest he will live in the world, he will not be its prisoner, being satisfied with the honor of being a cooperator with God. In order to make himself a fit instrument for the hands of Christ, the seminarian will seek to make himself the perfect man of God. Hence he will cultivate his intellect, grow in the natural virtues without which he is liable to repel people, and above all he will build up a supernatural sanctity which is the primary factor in making a priest an instrument of Christ. At this point in the text Plus XII stressed the necessity of knowledge, especially of theology, for the efficacy of the apostolate; the Caiholic faithful, he declared, desire priests who are not only saintly, but also learned. Study then should be the seminarian's and the priest's ascesis. Finally the seminarian should train himself (o perseverance. The progress of the years with its multiplication of fatigue and .difficulties, its diminution of physical and psychical powers may cause in a priest the obscuring of his ideals. Moreover, the feverish rhythm of modern living and the disorientation so widespread among men will concur to create within the priest internal crises. The seminarian then must foresee all these diffi-culties and begin now to arm himself against them. Miscellaneous Matters By a decree dated May 29, 1958 (AAS, 1959, pp. 42-44), the Sacred Congregation of Rites approved the introduction of the cause 176 May, 1959 VIEWS, NEWS, PREVIEWS of the Servant of God. Pauline von Mallinckrodt (1817-1881), foundress of the Sisters of Christian Charity. On October 8, 1958 {AAS, 1958, p. 973), the Sacred Penit~_ntiary answered a question submitted to it by stating that the faithful may gain indulgences attached to the rosary even when the leader of the rosary is present only by means of radio; however, such in-dulgences can not be gained if the prayers transmitted by the radio are not actually being recited by a person, but are only repro-ductions by records, tapes, or some similar means. On November 22, 1958 (AAS, 1959, pp. 48-50), the Penitentiary published the list of apostolic indulgences; and on December 12, 1958 {AAS, 1959, p. 50), it noted that Pope .John XXIII had granted an indulgence of three hundred days whenever the faithful say with contrite heart the aspiration: "O Jesus, king of love, I trust in your merciful goodness"; moreover, under the usual conditions, they can gain a plenary indulgence provided they have said the aspiration daily for a month. Two matters of precedence were settled by decrees of the Sacred Ceremonial Congregation. On April 19, 1958 (AAS, 1959, pp. 45-4-6), the Congregation assigned the place of the Commissary of the Holy Office at Papal functions; and on May 15, 1958 (AAS, 1959, pp. 46-47}, it assigned the place of the Prefect of the Palatine 'Guard in the Pontifical courtroom. Views, News, Previews THE INSTITUTE FOR RELIGIOUS at College Misericordia, Dallas, Pennsylvania, (a three-year summer course of twelve days in canon law and ascetical theology for Sisters) will be held this year August 20-31. This is the third year in the triennial course. The course in canon law is given by the Reverend Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., that in ascetical theology by the Reverend Thomas E. Clarke, S.J., both of Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland. The registration is restricted to higher superiors, their councilors, general and provincial officials, mistresses of novices, and those in similar positions. Applications are to be addressed to the Reverend Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland. The Servant of God Pauline von Mallinckrodt, who figures in one of the documents considered in this issue's "Survey of Roman 177 VIEWS, NEWS, PREVIEWS Review for Religious Documents," was born at Minden, Westphalia, in Germany on June 3, 1817. She was the oldest of four children born to a marriage in which the husband was Protestant and the wife Catholic. After her mother's death, Pauline took charge of the household, interesting herself also in work for the poor and showing a special interest in thc care of blind children. After her father's death these interests absorbed more of her time and energy; out of this work grew the decision to found a new religious institute for women. The institute was founded in 1849; it was based on the Augustinian rule and was called the Sisters of Christian Charity. The new institute grew rapidly throughout Germany and emphasized the education of the young. With the coming of the Kulturh~tn/~[ Pauline, as guperior general, began sending her religious to the New World; in 1873 the first house of the institute was opened in the United States; and in 1874 in Chile. In 1877 Mother Pauline was forced by political conditions in Germany to remove her generalate to Belgium. She visited her foundations in the United States twice; before her death on April 30, 1881, she was able to see the beginning of the restoration of the work of her sisters in Germany. A life of the Servant of God has been written by Katherine Burton under the title, Whom Love Impels (New York: Kenedy, 1952). The annual Mariology Program at The Catholic University of America will be offered for the third time in the 1959 summer session. Registration dates are June 24-27; class dates are June 29-August 7. Courses are open to undergraduate as well as graduate students, and carry credit towards degrees in the field of religious education. A certificate is awarded to those who complete a full two-summer program in Marian theology. The courses are under the direction of the Reverend Eamon R. Carroll, O. Carm. Courses scheduled for 1959 are General Mariology (2 credits) and Mary in Scripture and in Tradition (2 credits). A folder with fuller in-formation is available from the Registrar, The Catholic University of America, Washington 17, D. C. \ The Lord's chaplet, which is mentioned in Pope John XXIII's grant of apostolic indulgences, is said to have been begun by a Cam£1dolese monk, Blessed Michael Pini. The chaplet consists of thirty-three small beads and five large ones attached to a small cross or medal. Recital of the chaplet consists in saying thirty-three 178 May, 1959 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Our Fathers in honor of the traditional thirty-three years of Christ's life on earth, adding five Hail Marys in honor of His five wounds, and ending with the recital of the Creed in honor of the Apostles. Pope Leo X was the first to grant indugences for the saying of the chaplet, and later Pontiffs followed his example by renewing and increasing the indulgences for this work of piety. During the week of June 8, St. Louis University will offer an Institute in Liturgical and School Music and an Institute in Pastoral Psychiatry, the latter for priests and qualified religious brothers only. From July 27 to August 28, the Department of Education, in cooperation with Mexico City College, will offer a Workshop in Human Relations and Group Guidance. Courses of special interest to religious during the regular six-week session from June !6 to July 24 arc: Sacramental Life; Sacred Scripture; Selected Topics in Moral Theology; Faith and Redemption; God, Creator, and His Supernatural Providence; Current Liturgical Trends and Their Prob-able Goals. For information and applications, contact the Office of Admissions, Saint Louis University, 221 North Grand Boulevard, Saint Louis 3, Missouri. Housing for religious can be arranged by writing to the Reverend Charles L. Sanderson, S.J., Dean of Men, Chouteau House, 3673 West Pine Boulevard, St. Louis 8, Missouri. REVIEW FOR. RELIGIOUS has been asked to inform its readers that instruments of penance may be secured from Monast~re du Carmel, 104 rue de Namur, Louvain, Belgium. Further information on the subject can be had. by contacting the above address. i ues ions and Answers [The following answers are given by Father Joseph F. Gallen, S.J., professor of canon law at Woodstock College, Woodstock, Maryland.] --17- What is meant by the statement that religious profession remits the temporal punishment due to sin? 1. Plenary indulgence. There are two reasons for asserting that a plenary indulgence is attached to any juridical religious profession whatsoever. (a) Since any novice who makes profession in danger of death has been granted a plenary indulgence, the same concession "extends, 179 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religion,s and even afortiori, to any juridical religious profession whatsoever. {Pejska, Ius Religiosorum, 110; Cervia. De Professione Religiosa, 143) (b) On May 23, 1606, Paul V granted a plenary indulgence to any novice who was repentant, had gone to confession, received Holy Communion, and had made religious profession after the completion of the canonical year of probation. At the time of this concession, there was only one religious profession; and that was solemfi. We may therefore argue that the indulgence was granted because of the religious profession as such, since there was only one, and consequently that it now applies to any juridical religious profession whatsoever. (Cervia, op. ~'it., 143-44; Schaefer, De Re-llgiosis, n. 959 and note 816; Regatillo, Institutiones Iuris Canonici, I, n. 714, 6°. Wernz-Vidal, Ius Canonicum, III, De Religiosis, 320 and note 156, hold this doctrine only for solemn profession. Raus, Institutiones Canonicae, 311, and Coronata, Institutiones Iuris Ca-nonici, I, 752, hold the same doctrine at least for solemn profession.) The remission of the temporal punishment under both of the preceding titles is by way of an indulgence, that is, the remission before God of the temporal punishment due for sins wh.gse guilt has already been forgiven, and granted by competent ecclesiastical authority from the treasury of the Church, that is, the infinite satisfaction of Christ and that of the Blessed Virgin and the saints (c. 911). The source of an indulgence therefore is this concession by competent authority from the treasury of the Church, not the value, dignity, nor excellence of the indulgenced act considered only in itself. 2. From the intrinsic perfection of religious profession. Fathers of the Church speak of religious profession as a second baptism. This is interpreted to mean that a remission of all the temporal punish-ment due to sin is effected by a profession made in the state of grace. Some theologians attribute this effect to divine generosity, that is, God remits all punishment of anyone who gives himself completely to God. The more common opinion is that the effect has its source in the intrinsic perfection of religious profession and especially in the charity that is so conspicuous in this profession. The purpose of the three essential vows of religion is perfect charity, that is, the affective abandonment of all created love for the perfect love of God. This effect, therefore, is not infallibly attached to religious profession, since it depends on the subjective perfection of the act of profession. The entire temporal punish- 180 May, 1959 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ment is remitted only when the act of profession constitutes a condign satisfaction, by means of an act of perfect charity, for all the punishment due to the sins of the one making profession. All temporal punishment is not remitted when the debt of such punish-ment is great and the act of profession is only of a low degree of charity. (Pruemmer, Ius Regularium Speciale, q. 65; Piatus Montensis, Praelectiones Juris Regularis, I, 164-65; Cotel-Jombart- Bouscaren, Principles of the Religious Life, 69) The effect is founded either on the fact that one gives himself completely to God or especially in the act of perfect charity that is distinctive of religious profession. Neither of these fact~ is proper to solemn or perpetual profession. Any juridic.al religious pro-fession is, in its object and purpose, a profession of complete Christian perfection and of perfect love of God. The only pc~ssible defect in a temporary profession, is the limitation of time; but this is offset by the intention of the one making profession, who intends to renew his vows unless an obstacle intervenes in the future 488, 1°). Furthermore, an institute that has only temporary vows is no less a religious institute and no less a state of complete Christian perfection than a congregation of simple perpetual vows or an order (c. 488, 1°). Therefore, this effect also is true of any juridical religious profession whatsoever. (Cervia, 0p. cir., 143-44; Cotel-Jombart-Bouscaren,. ibid.; Raus, ibid., Schaefer, ibid.: Fanfani, Catechismo sullo Stato Religioso, n. 248. Coronata, ibid., holds this doctrine at least for solemn profession; and Vermeersch- Creusen, Epitome Iuris Canonici, I, n. 735, hold the same doctrine for perpetual profession, whether solemn or simple.) 3. Public or private devotional renewal of vows. (a) The religious of any order or congregation who .privately renew their religious vows with at least a contrite heart, after celebrating Mass or receiving Holy Communion, may gain an indulgence of three years (Raccolta, n. 756). The indulgence extends also to a public devotional renewal, provided it is made after the celebration of Mass or the reception of Holy Communion. (b) The intrinsic effect described in number 2 above only probably applies to a devotional renewal of vows. The affirmative arguments are that a renewal is subjectively a new gift of oneself to God (and God especially regards the intention) and that a renewal is often made with greater love of God. There is consequently no obstacle to the merit and complete satisfaction of a renewal. Others reply that one cannot give again what he has 181 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Review for Religio~ts already given so irrevocably and that the possible greater subjective value is a mere concomitant rather than anything intrinsic to a renewal. Authors conclude this part of the question by quoting the opinion of Passerini, that is, a renewal is undeniably of great dignity, merit, and satisfactory value; that it is known to God alone how much of the temporal punishment is remitted by this act; and that such remission is proportionate to the individual debt of punishment and the individual fervor of the satisfaction of the renovation. (Piatus Montensis, 0/~. ~:it., 165-66; Pruemmer, 0p. cir., 72; Cotel-Jombart- Bouscaren, op. cir. 70, note 1) 18 Our congregation makes great sacrifices and manifests an equal trust in divine providence by bearing the expenses of our education and attendance at conventions, work shops, orientation and refresher " courses, and so forth. A primary purpose of such courses is to stimulate our interest in new books, new periodicals, new idea~, new techniques, and so forth. When announcements of such things are sent to our houses, most superiors drop them in the waste basket. The same thing is done to questionnaires sent to our houses, and religious are often accused of being uncooperative in filling out rea-sonable questionnaires. Most of our superiors distrust a, new idea either in the spiritual or religious life or in work. Publications con-taining such ideas are often withheld from us,. and this is true also of those that have. passed ecclesiastical censorship. Are we so poorly formed spiritually, so badly educated, so immature that we cannot distinguish a sound idea from one that is fallacious? Experience has proved to me that the complaints in such ques-tions are not always without foundation, nor are they confined to one institute. It is clear that such announcements should be made readily accessible to the religious who are apt to be and should be interested in the matter, for-example, a publisher's mailed an-nouncement of a book often long precedes any news of the book in catalogues or periodicals. It is equally evident that religio~us should cooperate in filling out reasonable questionnai.res and similar requests for information. The distrust of new ideas is a disease as old as it is distressing. Obscurantism, the opposition to the intro-duction of new and enlightened ideas and methods, should have no part in a faith that is secured by infir~ite knowledge and veracity. As we have stated before, the easiest way to make religious childish is to train and treat them as children. This is not the doctrine of 182 May, 1959 BOOK REVIEWS the Church. Pope Pius XII stated: "For this reason, those in charge of seminaries, . . . as the students under them grow older, should gradually ease up strict surveillance and restrictions of every kind, to the end that these young men may learn to govern themselves and realize that they are responsible for their own conduct. Besides, in certain things superiors should "not only allow their students some legitimate freedom but should also train them to think for themselves, so that they may the more easily ~ssimilate those truths which have to do either with doctrine or practice. Nor should the direc-tors be afraid to have their students abreast of current events. Even more, besides acquainting them with news from which' they may be enabled to form a mature judgment on events, they should encourage discussions on questions of this kind, in order to train the minds of the young seminarians to form well balanced judg-ments on events and doctrines." {Apostolic Exhortation, Menti nostrae, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 42-1950-686) Why are there several articles on the sacristan and the porter in the constitutions of lay institutes? The Normae of 1901 prescribed that there were to be two distinct chapters on these duties (n. 317); and even in recent years the Sacred Congregation of Religious has at times, but not always, inserted articles on these two duties when they were not included in the text proposed to the Sacred Congregation. Both duties have some importance, but it is difficult to see why they are included in the constitutions. These are supposed to contain only the more fundamental and important norms of the institute. The difficulty is intensified when the constitutions, as is occasionally true, include articles also on the cook, refectorian, wardrobe keeper, and store-keeper. A section of the custom book can be devoted to rules on the minor duties. It would be more in conformity with the nature, dignity, and importance of the constitutions to confine the rules for all such duties to the custom book. Book Reviews [Material for this department should be sent to Book Review Editor, REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, West Baden College, West Baden Springs, Indiana.] JOY OUT OF' SORROW. By Motker Marie des Douleurs. Translated by Barry Ulanov and Frank Tauritz. Westminster: Newman Press, 1958. Pp. xvii, 169. Paper $1.50. 188 BOOK REVIEWS Review for Religious If God can draw straight with crooked lines, it is also true that He can put great sanctity in souls enclosed by the crooked bodies of the sick and crippled. Joy Out of Sorrow (the title itself suggests a paradox) is an attempt to bring the sick and suffering closer to the Divine Physican that He may cure them. "It is sad to notice how often sick people, all people who are suffering in any way, retreat from the work~, refusing to accept their suffering." Thus wrote a woman in France in early 1930. Sickness and infirmities, she thought, should not be hurdles in the race for spiritual perfection, but definite helps to be used along the way. These cardinal points were to form the basis for her Congregation of Jesus Crucified, approved by the Cardinal- Archbishop of Paris in 1931. These same principles led to the up-building of this spiritual edifice to such an extent that in 1950 it was made a pontifical institute. This is a truly unique religious group, for each member is sick or handi-capped in some way. This book, Joy O~t of Sorrow, is a series of confer-ences given to the members of her order by Mother Marie des Douleurs, the foundress and prioress-general. The sixty-four talks are divided under the five headings of Daily Rofitine, Developing Personality, Ourselves and Others, Our Interior Life, and the Liturgical Year. The reader will be impressed by the personal, conversational style, the familiarity with the writings of the masters of the spiritual life, the example~ from the Gospels, and the ~minently practical (or should the word be spiritual?) sense. In line with the practical approach, the subjects of these conferences refer to the particular trials of the sick: the doctor's visits, fear, boredom, selfishness, courage, joy in the midst of trials, and topics relating to the liturgical year. These conferences are short, yet long enough to provide the spiritual medicine needed by those whom sickness has claimed as its victims. The Library of Congress classifies the subject matter of the book as affliction. It would be more correct to say that the only real affliction mentioned in this book is the failure to bring true joy out of sorrow by re-fusing to accept the cross of suffering. No infirmary of religious will want to be without this book.--LEE J. BENNISH, S.J. BENEDICTINISM THROUGH CHANGING CENTURIES. By Stephanus Hilpisch, O.S.B. Translated by Leonard J. Doyle. Collegeville: Liturg-ical Press, 1958. Pp. 172. $3.00. A HISTORY OF BENEDICTINE NUNS. By Stephanus Hilpisch, O.S.B. Translated by Sister M. Joanne Muggli, O.S.Bo Edited by Leonard J. Doyle. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1958. Pp. 122. $3.00. THE HOLY RULE: NOTES ON ST. BENEDICT'S LEGISLATION FOR MONKS. By Hubert Van Zeiler. O.S.B. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958. Pp. xii, 476. $7.50. Thr~e books on Benedictinism, two from Collegeville and one from New York, two on the history and one on the rule, have appeared recently. The one from New York, on the rule, is from the energetic pen of Dom Hubert; and the other two from Stephanus Hilpisch's second- and third-volume contributions to the German collection Benediktinisches Geistesleben. Just 184 May, 1959 BOOK REVIEWS a cursory glance at Benedictinism through Changing Centuries would lead one to suspect German scholarship had been at work, for 156 pages of text are followed by a small-print index running to nearly fourteen pages with about 1200 subject headings alone. How to squeeze 1200 subjects, many of them several times, into 156 pages without making the book suffer from the same kind of disunity most dictionaries show was indeed the author's problem most of the way through the work. This is a handbook, really, of Benedictine spirit and historical development from tiny begin-nings through the rise of prince abbeys down to modern foundations. It covers just about every point and gives even small foundations due though brief mention. The pity of it is that large ones get little more. Absolving thh famous monastery of Bec's history in a line or two is little short of a scandalous slight. Nor has the author added color or a third dimension in spite of the fact that for the materials of his history he has had the incredible riches of the history of the Benedictines to draw upon. Jejune is the adjective one must finally settle on to describe the work. However, the book is a reference manual which belongs on the library shelves of those orders and congregations who derive from the great Father of Western Monasticism. It has a useful fold-out chart and map showing lines of modern American Benedictine development, some tables, and even a tworpage treatment of Anglican Benedictines, who, after initial and de-pleting losses to Rome, again seem to be making progress in giving their foundations a firmer, if heterodox, stability. One who read~ the book will have a clearer idea of not only the scope of St. Benedict's original contribu-tion, and of his namesake's (Benedict of Aniane), but also of the sturdy value of that contribution as it has proved itself over and over again down the centuries. The list given in the book of current Benedictine periodicals is an indication that the contribution continues to be made. The jacket flap of a History of Benedictine Nuns informs us that "although various individual Benedictine congregations and houses have been fortunate to have their history written, the Benedictine Order of nuns and sisters as a whole has never been so honored." Rather than begin in medias res, the book starts with a twelve-page history of pre-Benedictine forms of Church-approved states of virginity for women. Once in its own proper matter, it too has its problem of avoiding the "dictionary effecl?'; but its complete index at the end will make it a valuable reference work, as will its extensive tables, charts, maps, and bibliography, which last is more extensive than the one in the first volume' of Father Hilpisch reviewed here. One who has delved a little into the history of medieval convents and nunneries will not be surprised at what he reads here, but he will probably find additional facts about the development and details of the life of these nuns and sisters to help him fill out the general picture. Among the more curious items are some relating to the powers, ordinary and extraordinary, of the abbesses. Among these latter, for instance, was the privilege of the Abbess of the Prince Abbey of St. George in Prague. She, along with the Archbishop of Prague, had the right to crown the queen. Other interest- I85 ]~OOK REVIEWS Review for Religious ing items pertain to offices performed by some of the sisters which would be ~of interest to their present-day counterparts. Often enough the music directress had to compose as well as teach. The sister infirmarian also played an important role: she not only took care of 'the sick, but was physician and pharmacist in the convent and in this latter capacity drew her materials from the convent's own herb garden, where the elements of her potions and poultices could be grown. She also seemingly had to be hostess to each of the sisters three or four times a year as they came in turn to the infirmary for their periodic bloodolettings. We come finally to deal with a book about the basisof all this history, the rule of St. Benedict. Dom Hubert Van Zeller's The Holy Rule is an informed study and commentary on that rule, so complete that he will even tell one what sarabaites and gyrovagues are. The study is informal, too, because it avoids much critical apparatus. One sometimes has the feeling here that Dom Hubert has edited lectures originally intended for novices or junior religious. Whatever its origin, the commentary is conservative, solid, and filled with much common sense. Those who hear it or read it will gain in the knowledge and appreciation of one of the most significant documents in the history of mankind as well as understand the views of Dora Hubert, highly qualified indeed to have them, about the nature of the monastic vocation. Perhaps even th~se who do not read or hear this book will have much of its matter relayed to them by retreatmasters who will be drawing on its copious wisdom for decades to come, and perhaps even longer. Whether all will find this particular expression of Dora Hubert's views as stimulating as he could have made it is an interesting question. It is not clear, for instance, that some of the illustrations from the ancient desert fathers (of the type familiar to Rodriguez readers) really advance the thought or prove to be valuable illustrations, though they may be entertaining. Granted there is an attractive quaintness to such narratives, along with a highly exaggerated moral, is it not possible that a long succes-sion of such stories will so color the mind of the sheltered religious reader that he may adopt an unreal, romantic attitude towards what he comes actually to consider his quaint vocation? Such an attitude disarms him in case there should develop in him a genuine crisis, or even a struggle to save his vocation. The fight is real, but his weapons--prin-ciples he has learned from such quaint narratives and which have never been effectively divorced from the fairy-tale atmosphere--his weapons, be it repeated, are toys. The foregoing criticism should not be construed as indicative of small worth in Dora Van Zeller's book. This is a valuable commentary and most religious libraries will want to have a copy on the shelves, since in the general mass of matter every religious will find many points to help him. Some significant items in the mind of one reader were the following: the Holy Rule is explicit on the point that obedience is the way a religious fights for the King (p. 3); "St. Benedict would have us live creative lives,, not merely ordered lives" (p. 5); "the grace of state is like any other grace; it guides and strengthens, but does not compel or ~uarantee 186 May, 1959 BOOK REVlEWS (except in the case of the Papal prerogative) supernatural intervention" (p. 43). What Dom Van Zeller says in favor of bodily mortification (p. 60), silence (p. 90), poverty (p. 2331, and care of the dying (p. 247) is remarkably pointed and helpful. So also what he says about singularity in the religious life: "The monk who wants the reputation for sanctity presumes to something he has no right to claim. He is identifying the name with the state, he is leaving out the factor of grace".(p. 318). His comments on these things show spiritual .insight and depth; and we are fortunate to have him share his light with us, just as he was fortunate to have the great St. Benedict share his light with him in the Holy Rule. --EARL A. WzlS, S.J. A STRAN(~ER AT YOUR DOOR. By John J. PoweIl, S.J. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1958. Pp. 120. $2.50. For the reader who is convinced that there neither is nor can be anything new in the field of apologetics, Father Powell's poetical prose will demand a change of opinion. The matter of apologetics, it is true, is the same; this book treats the traditional topics: Christ's claims upon us, the reason for them, His influence on our lives, His right to influence our lives. But gone are the technical language of theology and the bare bones of the textbook. In their place the modern reader meets examples taken from the year 1959, language that he hears on the street corner, an impact that is directed to him, individually, today. Our mind, ever seeking the rational basis for its belief, here finds that basis put forth in the idiom of today. The housewife at her cleaning, the diplomat at his desk, the soldier in Korea, the most popula.r girl on the campus--all these will find that this book is written for them in a l~nguage that they under-stand.~ Christ, of course, is the stranger at the door. He stands there--who knows how long?--until we recognize Him; then He asks us one question: "Who do you say that I am?" That timeless question comes echoing through the centuries into the life of every individual; his answer to it determines his peace of mind and eternal salvation. The question can be ignored or buried beneath worldly pleasures and desires, but some time or other it must be answered and the answer is of paramount, yes, eternal importance. Father Powell's meditati~;e and reflective presentation of the basis for Christ's claims on our allegiance will help the Catholic to reaffirm and strengthen his faith. It will also give him many a new insight. This is a book for the prospective convert also, for the sincere inquirer who wants to know just who this

Issue 31.3 of the Review for Religious, 1972. ; ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, S.J. QUESTIONS ANI) A N S\V E R S E 1) ITO R Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editor, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Build-ing; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, SJ.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by faculty members of the School of l)ivinity of St. Louis University, 01e editorial offices beihg located at 612 tlumboldt Building; 539 North (;rand Boulevard: St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Educalional In';titute. Published bimontbly and copyright © 1972 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Printed in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.25. SuBscription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year. $11.00 for two years; other countries: $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two years. Orders sbould indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and sbould be accompanied by check or money order payable to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U.S,A. cur-rency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former addre.~s. Renewals and new subscriptions should be sent to REVIEW I:OR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 60 Duluth. Minnesota 55802. Manuscripts, editori-al correspondence, and books for review should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS: 612 [lumboldt Building; 539 North (;rand Boule-yard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of tile Questions and Answers editor. MAY 1972 VOLUME 31 NUMBER 3 BENEDICT ASHLEY, O.P. ¯ Retirement or V gil? [ Benedict Ashley, O.P., is Profess6r of Theology at The Institute of Religion and Human " Development; Texas Medical Center; P.O. Box 20569; Houston, Texas 77025.] Retirement and the Work Ethic To provide for the retirement of senior members has bdcome an urgent task for many religious communities. D~clining vocations, risfng medical costs, changes in traditional apostolates and in sources of income demand that we develop new, organized ways to care for those who have reached that last, often lengthy phase of life which we Americans call "retirement." The action of Pope Paul VI in requesting even cardinals and bishops to retire acknowledges that in times of rapid change older persons, for all their expe~'ience and "tested virtue," often lack the energy and flexibility to carry on the apostolate. However reasonable this trend may seem to those long dist~int from the "cut-off point," it is prQducing great anxiety, discontent, . and bitterness in many aging religious. This intensifies the polarization against which many communities now struggle. Recently an elderly but very much alive sister said to me: "What a paradox that our community is how so concerned to give younger sisters free choice¯ of apostolates, while forcing older sisters to retire willy-nilly. I was told to retire last year without any consultation or discussion of my preferences. My only choice, which was no choice at all, was to come to this retirement house. The young are demanding small interpersonal communities. I must live with over a hundred sisters, most of them sick, some completely senile, although my health is good, my mind active, and I like to live with young people, 'where the action is.' " Of course, some communities take great pains to discuss the situation carefully with members who must retire from present apostolates, to give them choices and training for a "second career," or at least maximum opportunities for "semi-activity." They realize that the problem of these religious is, after all, only part of the larger geriatric problem in the United States which will probably increase still further as our national birthrate continues to decline, and the average age of Americans begins to rise. However, I wonder if the very term "retirement" does not reflect the dehumani-zation of our technological society. It is borrowed from the practice of American business and starkly reflects the "work ethic" dominating our culture, against which the counter-culture is rightly protesting. This ethic evaluates human 'worth only in terms of production, organizational efficiency, capacity for marketable innovation. It values "doing and making," but ignores the values of "being," unless they can be translated into commodities. Even without the protests of the .counter-culture, we should know from the gospel that "man does not live by bread alone" (Mt 4:4) and that we have been told "do not be anxious for what you are to eat or wear, because unbelievers are always. running after these things" (Mt 6:31-32). The values of the work ethic are real and ¯ 326 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 are not repudiated by the gospel, but they are .~ternly subordinated to a very different appreciation of what really counts in life. Let us retire the term "retirement," and even "semi-activity." The notion of "a second career" is better, yet it too has a work ethic flavor. Moreover to talk about "second careers" to religious for whom it seems nothing remains of life but suffering, prayer, and gradual decline is to coin another of those horrible euphemisms with which we today in our society of affluence indecently hide the unacknowledged' miseries of neglected poverty and death. We are Christians who ought to have the courage to face the facts of old age with a realism warmed by Christian hope. Trying to wrestle with this fact of life theologically, I have found in the gospel a theme which seems to me very relevant, the notion of vigil. Christian Vigil The current liturgical reform began with the renewal of the Paschal Vigil, called by St. Augustine "the mother of all vigils," because it sums up the expectation of all ages of Christ's victory over death. Its meaning is beautifully stated in the General Instruction bn the Liturgy of the Hours issued by the Holy See in 1971 (nos. 70-2): [St.Augustine writes] "by keeping vigil, we observe that night when the Lord,arose, and by his own flesh began in us that life which knows neither sleep nor death. ; then as we sing together to the risen Lord a little while longer by keeping vigil, he will grant us to reign with him by living forever." Asin the Easter Vigil, the custom soon arose in different churches t6 begin various solemn feasts by keeping vigil, notably in the Birth of the Lord and Pentecost. The Fathers and spiritual writers frequently urged the faithful, especially those who live a contemplative life, to nocturnal prayer, which expresses and fosters our waiting for the Lord?s return: "At midnight someone shouted, 'The groom is here! Come out and greet him!' " (Matthew 25:6); "Keep watch! You do not know when the master of the house is coming; whether at dusk, at midnight, when the cock crows, or at early dawn. Do not let him come suddenly and catch you asleep" (Mark 13:35-36). To implement this idea the Church in its new calendar has not only given the Paschal Vigil the central place in the liturgical year and retained the ~vigils of the Birth of the Lord and of Pentecost, but recommends the use of "Bible vigils" (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, no. 35), and in the instruction just quoted encourages the use and development of the Office of Readings as a time of vigil, thus preserving the nocturns or night Office of the traditional Breviary. This last recommendation is not only for priests and nuns, but for the laity as well (Instruction, nos. 20-2). These liturgical reforms are rooted deeply in the New Testament. Jesus Himself prepared for the great moments of His life by keeping vigil. For forty days and nights (Mt 4:2) He prayed in the desert before beginning His ministry. Before extending it beyond Capernaum, He went to a "Ion.ely place" (Mk 1: 35) to pray till dawn. Before announcing His inevitable passion, He kept vigil with Peter, James, and John on the mount of transfiguration (Mk 9:1-8). On the eve of the passion He agonized in Gethsemane (Mk 14:32). In their turn the disciples and Mary kept vigil before Pentecost (Acts 1 : 14; 2:2). The newborn Christian community prayed for its leader Peter when he was in prison (Acts 12:5, 12), and before ordaining presbyters (4:23). Paul continued this custom on his missions (16:25). The significance of such vigils was indicated by Jesus Himself in many of His discourses and parables in which He urged his followers to "Watch, for you know Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 327 not the day nor the hour!" (Mt 25:13). If we look at the well-known work of Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (rev. ed.; New York: Scribner's, 1963) we notice that he classifies the parables in ten groups: "1. Now is the Day of Salvation; 2. God's Mercy for Sinners; 3. The Great Assurance; 4. The Imminence of Catastrophe; 5. It May Be Too Late; 6. The Challenge of the Hour; 7. Realized Discipleship; 8. The Via Dolorosa and Exaltation of the Son of Man; 9. The Consummation; 10. Parabolic Actions." These very titles indicate how close all these themes are to the vigil concept, although groups 4, 5, and 6 are particularly pertinent. The parables constantly say: "Wake hp! Watch !" When we look at the Epistles we find that Peter and Paul and the others have the same pastoral advice. For example: Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in yo6r faith, realiz!ng that the brotherhood of believers is undergoing the same sufferings throughout the world. The God of all grace, who called you to his everlasting glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish those who have suffered a little while. Dominion be his throughout the ages. Amen (I Pt 5:8-10). Asregards specific times and moments, brothers, we do not need to write you; you know very well that the day of the Lord is coming like a thief in the night. Just when people are saying, "Peace and security," ruin will fall. You are not in the dark, brothers, that the day should catch you off guard, like a thief. No, all of you are children of light and of the day. We belong neither to darkness nor to night; therefore, let us not be asleep like the rest, but awake and sober! Sleepers sleep by night, and drunkards drink by night. We who live by day must be alert (1 Thes 5:1-8). The Theology of the Vigil To discover the the.ological meaning of these New Testament actions and teachings, we must begin with the obvious fact that a vigil is eschatological prayer. It is directed toward the future, toward Christ's victory over sin and death through Resurrection and Ascension, toward the coming of God's kingdom on earth through the mission of His Church, toward the universal transformation of the cosmos at Christ's Second Coming when all things will be summed up in Him in the glory of the Father (Phil 2:9-11 ; Col 1:15-20: Eph 1:18-23). A vigil is expectation in faith, hope, and yearning love directed to the future and eternal life. Its heart is joy, not the joy. of fulfillment, but the bitter-sweet joy of anticipation, a hunger and thirsting for the justice of God's reign. This is why a vigil humanly is a struggle to keep awake, to arouse ourselves from the oppression of drowsiness. The Apostles could not keep awake with Jesus in the Garden, because although "the spirit is willing, the .flesh is weak" (Mt 26:41). Luke says they slept because they were "exhausted with grief" (22:45). The weariness, discouragement, apathy, the numbing dread of waiting! Who has not waited in fear in a doctor's office? Waiting can be still more dreadful when we wait for some great joy, in growing doubt that it will ever come. During such painful times we all seek to escape the tension, to drug ourselves with some empty distraction or even sleep and forgetfulness. It is against this spiritual sleep that Jesus warns us. We must live in active hope, in wide-awake awareness, because in truth Jesus has already come. God is already present in our world if our eyes of faith are wide-open to sense His presence. The symbolism of "watching in the night" is simple and profound. This "night" is the world in the Johannine sense: "He was in the world, and through him the world was made, yet the world did not know who he was" (Jn 1 : 10). The world is humanity not in its earthliness or secularity, but in its hard-heartedness, self-centeredness, self-righteous pride and aggression which blind it to the present LOrd: 328 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 "Men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were wicked" (Jn 3:19). It is in this night where God is present but man is absent from Him, in this shadow of death, that the Christian lives by faith and hope. Another element of the symbolism of the vigil is the silence, when the rush of activities, the vanity of human plans and boasted accomplishments, the flood of sights and sounds advertising expensive but delusive pleasures, conceal from us the reality of the void, the desert of human despair. Existentialism has revived for us this aspect of vigil, the search for authenticity. The Christian enters the desert of silence not to escape, but driven by the Holy Spirit to confront the Evil Spirit as Jesus was (Mk 1:12-3). Night has its peace and cessation from exterior work, but it is also the time of spiritual combat with angels, both evil and good. Tobiah struggled with an evil spirit and came out whole (Tobit 8); and Jacob with a good one, but was crippled (Gen 32:23-33). Night is man's encounter with the hidden levels of his personality and with the subtle cosmic influences that profoundly affect his life, yet which are covered over by his day-time activities. Watching, therefore, is not a mere passive waiting, but an active preparation, struggle, reflection, purgation, integration, simplification of life, requiring the use of the deepest human energies, it is an activity not at the periphery of human life where most of our "doing and making" take place, but in the central abyss of our being. Again, because it is eschatological, a vigil is also a time of judgment. Many of the Psalms speak of this nocturnal examination of conscience: 1 am wearied by sighing: every night I flood my bed with weeping. I drench my couch with my tears; My eyes are dimmed with sorrow. They have aged because of all my foes (Ps 6:7-8). I bless the Lord who counsels me; even in the night my heart exhorts me (16:7). i will remember you upon my couch, and through the night-watches I will meditate on you (63:7). By night my hands are stretched out with flagging; my soul refuses comfort. When l remember God, I moan; when i ponder, my spirit grows faint. You keep my eyes watchful: I am troubled and i cannot speak. I consider the days of old; the years long past I remember. In the night I meditate in my heart; [ ponder, and my spirit broods. "Will the Lord reject forever and nevermore be favorable?" (77:4-8). In a vigil we face ourselves in truth, we accept the punishment of remorse, we are freed from the burden of illusions. Even when our conscience does not reproach us, we come to understand that we are children of Adam, part of the inhuman race of men. Yet as Christians we do not come to judgment so much in fear as in petitiqn to be healed. Purgatory begins for us, a merciful cleansing through hope and longing, because a vigil is penitential, expiatory, redemptive. This is not because God exacts a payment for sin (it is only the unjust steward who thought God a hard master), but because He requires us to share in the work of repairing the damage we have done to others and to ourselves. "God's glory is man fully alive," as St. Irenaeus said, and the restoration of God's glory by penance is nothing other than the healing of man and of the broken relations between men by forgiveness. How does a vigil repair the human world? It does so first by healing the watcher himself, since in this purgatory he learns to forgive others and to lay down .the burden of his own follies. But a vigil is also communal. It is a time when together, at least in spirit, we pray for one another and share one another's burden of guilt and sorrow. Today, some people think prayer is only an excuse not to help others Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 329 through action, but even after we act we may find that our neighbor is still alienated from us by hidden barriers that nothing but prayer can ever pierce. Furthermore, a vigil is communal because it is a witness. Who has not been strengthened to know that another watches in prayer for him with a love that is ever awake? A vigil also always implies the coming dawn, the Resurrection, the rising Sun of Justice. At the heart of the vigil is the well fueled lamp of love, as Jesus indicated in the Parable of the Ten Virgins. He also asked: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (Lk 18:8). Matthew speaks of "charity" (24-12). The greatest human prdblem is to persevere in faithful love, a love that increases until the kingdom of God kindles like a consuming fire (Lk 12:49). This silently burning light in the night vigil is a fire stronger than the waters of death: "For stern as death is love, relentless as the grave in its devotion; its flames are a blazing fire" (Song of Songs8:6). The Paschal fire is the liturgical symbol of this "living flame of love," which John of the Cross and all the mystics tell us begins to burn in the dark night of the spirit. The Psychology of Later Life Recent developments in developmental ego-psychology, exemplified in the work of Erik Erikson, show us that the phases of human life all have or can have a positive meaning, including old age. It will suffice here to quote a passage from Erikson's Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968, pp. 139-40): In the aging person who has taken care of things and people and has adapted himself to the triumphs and disappointments of being, by necessity, the originator of others and the generator of things and ideas - only in him the fruit of the seven stages gradually ripens. I know no better word for it than integrity. Lacking a clear definition, I shall point to a few attributes of this stage of mind. It is the ego's accrued assurance of its proclivity for order and meaning - an emotional integration faithful to the image-bearers of the past and ready to take, and eventually to renounce, leadership in the present. It is the acceptance of one's one and only life cycle and of the people who have become significant to it as something that had to be and that, by necessity; permitted of no substitutions. It thus means a new and different love of one's parents, free of the wish that they should have been different, and an acceptance of the fact that one's life is one's own responsibility. It is a sense of comradeship with men and women of distant times and of different pursuits who have created orders and objects and sayings conveying human dignity and love. A meaningfulold age, then, preceding a possible terminal senility, serves the need for that integrated heritage which gives indispensable perspective to the life cycle. Strength here takes the form of that detached yet active concern with life bounded by death, which we call ~wisdom in its many connotations from ripened "wits" to accumulated knowledge, mature judgment, and inclusive understanding. Not that each man can evolve wisdom for himself. For most, a living tradition provides the essence of it. But the end of the cycle also evokes "ultimate concerns" for what chance man may have to transcend the limitations of his identity and his often tragic or bitterly tragicomic engagement in his one and only life cycle within the sequence of generations. Yet great philosophical and religious systems dealing with ultimate individuation seem to have remained responsibly related to the cultures and civilizations of their times. Seeking trans-cendence by renunciation, they yet remain ethically concerned with the "maintenance of the ¯ world." By the same token, a civilization can be measured by the meaning which it gives to the full cycle of life, for such meaning, or the lack of it, cannot fail to reach into the beginning of the next generation, and thus into the chances of others to meet ultimate questions with some clarity and strength. Erikson points out that this achievement of integrity implies that the person has the courage to retain his own individuality and life style even in the face of changing times: Forheknowsthat an individual life is the coincidence of but one life cycle with but one 330 Review for Religious, Volume 3 I, 1972/3 segment of history, and that for him all human integrity stands and fails with the one style of integrity of which he partakes (p. 140). He also points out that when old age is not used positively, it will end negatively in disgust and despair: Such a despair, is often hidden behind a show of disgust, a misanthropy, or chronic contemptuous displeasure with particular institutions and particular people - a disgust and a displeasure which, where not allied with the vision of a superior life, only signify the individual's contempt of himself (ibid.) From a Christian point of view, therefore, the period of vigil for the Lord's Coming is a precious gift. It is not merely for the aged, but is a feature of every Christian life. All of us, young and old, must have some vigil in our life, some time of reflection, purification, integration. It should begin early, so that old age will only be its culmination and intensification. It is not something separated from active life but is rather a harvest time in which the fruit of experience ~is reaped, assimilated, and made part of our total personality. The Paschal mystery means for us that although this world and its life must pass, yet nothing experienced here in faith will ever be lost, no genuine tie in love will ever be severed. In Christ our life will be summed up, "recapitulated," and transformed in the eternal life of the Trinity. Death is not a closing in of the horizon, but an opening on an ever wider vista - a narrow door that opens on an expanding landscape. The end of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey is one way of saying it. Therefore, the vigil time of life is not just "waiting to die," but is a process of integration in which we "get it all together," discovering in all that we have done and suffered an inner core of meaning. Moreover, we have the obligation of letting others who are in the midst or the beginning of life know there is meaning to what seems to them a mad scramble, a rat-race. The generation gap can never be closed in time, because the wisdom of experience cannot be expressed in the language of inexperience. Yet something can be communicated and must be communicated to the young, and that is hope. Only those seniors who have achieved peace, and who prove it by letting the young live their own lives, are able to give a truly credible sign of hope. The Apostolate of Vigil In view of this psychological and theological meaning of vigil and of later life as a time of vigil, it seems to me that we can frame a better practical understanding of the so-called "retirement problem." (1) In order to obliterate the "retirement" idea, I think we should institute both in name and fact a new apostolate in our communities, the Apostolate of Vigil. It is a genuine apostolate in the wider sense in which traditionally the contemplative life was considered the supreme apostolate, because contemplatives perform a special service of intercessary prayer, reparation, and witness to the transcendent, eschato-logical goals of the Christian life. Lately, active communities are recognizing this need by establishing "houses of prayer." It seems to me that the notion of "vigil" adds to the concept of "prayer" that "thrust into the future" which is so necessary to our time that suffers from "future shock" and "existential despair:" The work of this apostolate consists in several related elements: (a) Reflection. Erikson's emphasis on old age as a time of integration indicates that those in the apostolate of vigil must give themselves seriously to reflection. In a recent movie Kotch, Walter Matthau brilliantly portrays a retired business man who annoys everyone by his constant, apparently disconnected garrulity. Yet as we Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 331 listen to him, we see that he is still a mentally very active man, more alert ~han his rather stupid son and daughter-in-law. He is reflecting over his reading, his life, his successes and failures, and is distilling real wisdom from them. He looks at life with a tolerant yet discerning eye. He contemplates its beauty with delight and tries to express it in language that has its real poetry. But no one listens. On tlie other hand, another movie, 1 Never Sang for My Father, shows the tragedy of another elderly "successful" business man who cannot find the clue to the real meaning of his life, but endlessly moves in the circle o~ the old, bitter thoughts of his rejected youth. Some of our attempts at community dialogue have left the old silent, because we are always talking about the future. Perhaps we should try to have some times of discussion devoted to the needs of the senior members to talk about their past. (b) Prayer. This should not only be intercessory and reparative, as I have already indicated, but also a prayer of praise and thanksgiving. If we need time to "make a thanksgiving" after Holy Communion, don't we also need time to give thanks for the banquet of life? Undoubtedly older religious will want to continue the forms of prayer which have formed the basis of their lives, and, as Erikson says in the quotation above, this is a part of their personal integrity. At the same time, they may welcome the opportunity to deepen these accustomed forms of prayer if they are given opportunities for better theological.and liturgical instruction on the values which they contain. A prayer group made up of older priests, with which I am acquainted, is finding the new "Liturgy of the Hours" a delight. It retains the basic elements of the older "Divine Office" but in a form which makes recitation more meditative and leisurely. (c) Counsel. This is a difficult point which requires a good deal of study and experimentation. In traditional societies the elders were the counselors, yet today it is argued by Margaret Mead and others that the young really have more experience than their seniors. Furthermore, it is said that elderly counselors incline to an authoritarian moralism that is contrary to the non-directive methods of modern counseling. On the other hand it is certainly true that some older people have real assets as counselors. They have time to listen, a broad sympathy based on their own self-knowledge and the experience of human struggle, and a calm, hopeful attitude, sceptical of facile solutions, yet free of pani~ about the crises of life. There is no reason that such persons cannot still learn to improve their technique as.counselors if given some additional training and supervision, Their tendency to moralize or over-direct is more a result of their desire to help, than an incapacity to learn a more psychological approach. I suggest that while not all older people will make good counse.lors, many will if.given some additional training. (d) Suffering. The physical and mental decline of later life tends to become the focus of many wasted days and years, unless this suffering is understood as an element of Christian experience not merely to be endured but to be used creatively. The Cross is a means of integration and fulfillment, as it was for Jesus who said: "It is completed" (Jn 19:.30). To make this suffering a spiritual resource, however, requires spiritual guidance and support. In Gethsemane Jesus was strengthened by an angel (Lk 22:43). The flagging energies of the sick and aged make it difficult for them to exert themselves to prayer. They can relapse into a routine of gradual decline and apathy. Consequently, it is important to help them use the energies they have to grow personally. (e) Small Services. Today religious orders rightly seek to free themselves from wasting their energies on "trivialities." Nevertheless, we need to realize that nothing 332 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 humanizes our lives so much as the small personal services that make us feel loved and that free us from details for more creative work. In any religious community its life and its apostolate can be immensely aided by persons who have the time, the tact, the humility to render some of these small services either within the community circle or as a feature of particular external apostolates. For example, how much a really good receptionist contributes to the work of any organization! Jesus spoke of the "cup of cold water only" given in His name (Mt 10:42) and of the "widow'smite"(Mk 12:41-4) to indicate the dignity and beauty of such small services given in love. They exemplify the first beatitude of poverty of spirit. (f) Hope. The culminating task of the Apostolate of Vigil is the witness of genuine hope, free of "future shock," of gloom, of cynicism, or panic. We need only to think of the example given the Church and the world by the aged John XXlII to realize what a rainbow sign (Gen 9:11-7) this witness of hope can be, giving life and renewal to the whole community. (2) A second step we need to take is to make clear that this Apostolate of Vigil is not exclusively for the old, but an option for all religious at any age, as a permanent or temporary apostolate. There are young and middle-aged religious who will find that their charism is more contemplative than active, or that at least for certain periods of their life they need to '~be" rather than to "do or make." We should ¯ make clear also that age does not automatically qualify a person for this apostolate, or make it his or her single choice. Some senior religious will still find themselves more inclined to a "second career" or to "semi-activity" and should be given this option if it is at all a realistic choice. Finally, we should avoid identifying this apostolate with the problem of residence. It is true that the "villa" may be one center of such an apostolate, but some religious will prefer to carry it on in houses of prayer or active communities. (3) Since this apostolate requires special qualifications other than mere age, it also requires proper training, facilities, and evaluation, exactly as any other apostolate. When a religious is considering choosing it, he or she should discuss the matter with a qualified counselor. The community itself should have definite plans for developing, evaluating~ and revising this apostolate in the formation of which theological, liturgical, psychological, and medical expertise should be used. (4) Finally, proper recognition should be given to those who sincerely engage in this apostolate, so that they know and feel that they truly contribute to the community's life and work. One form of recognition is, of course, a clear financial arrangement by which it is apparent to all that persons in this apostolate are not a "burden" to the community but an asset. This is no mere legal fiction because: (a) This apostolate is a fundamental service to the Church and the world which every religious community has the obligation to provide in some form or other. (b) In actual fact a great part of the free gifts made to any religious community come because the laity look to the assistance of that community's prayer and penance. (c) Religious by their contributed services in their years of "active apostolate" have certainly invested enough in the community to deserve in justice the opportunity to engage in the Apostolate of Vigil if they choose. Some communities solve this problem by paying each local community of which the religious is a member a regular monthly salary as her contribution to its financial upkeep. An Obvious Objection An honest doubt about the idea I have outlined naturally arises. How can we speak of an apostolate for a really senile person who has lost memory, emotional Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 333 control, clarity of mind and purpose? What of those who really are "just waiting to die," living only on a vegetative, custodial level? I can only suggest two points for reflection: (1) Today certain psychologists and some young thinkers of the counter culture are raising sharp questions about the way our work ethic culture tends to define "mental incapacity" or "mental illness." They point out that in many cultures persons we label as "crazy" or "mentally defective" are considered "wise," "prophetic," or "sacred." Jesus spoke of the wisdom of the child, and St. Paul of the wisdom of those whom the world calls fools. St. Luke pictures those two ancient prophets, Simeon and Anna, who alone recognized the Messiah. I certainly would not subscribe to overromantic ideas about the wisdom of the senile, but I do not think that we should identify the value of human personality with the well-being of the brain. The senile person can still be capable of faith, hope, and charity. The process of spiritual purgation and integration which goes on in later life no doubt can reach its completion even when life has reached its ebb tide. (2) In any case our real problem is not the extremely senile patient for whom nothing remains but custodial care. We will give that care gladly and it raises no great puzzles. The real geriatric problems are the much larger number of religious who are still very much alive, perhaps with many years ahead of them. We must help them live these years as a vigil of hope, of effective prayer for the Lord's Coming and for the establishment of His kingdom on our earth. DAVID A. FLEMING, S.M. Formation and the Discovery of Identity [David A. Fleming, S.M., is a faculty member of Marianist Seholastieate; 2700 Cincinnati Avenue; San Antonio, Texas 78284.1 People in formation today tend to feel uncomfortably like bridges. At one end they cling to the solid but sometimes arid rock of a tradition, while at the other they try to find some footing in the shifting sands of new styles of life and experience. Meanwhile they often feel that people are walking all over them from both directions and fighting their battles on top of them, while they themselves look down at the gaping abyss beneath. Luckily, though, many of us like being bridges, despite the discomforts involved, and we feel that the attempt to reach across the gap is more than worth the effort. Our problem, our sense of battles and abysses, is, 1 think, related to a major cultural shift in the understanding and expression of religious values. This shift became an experiential reality for me not too long ago one evening when I attended two parties in religious communities, one - frequented by older members - celebrating the jubilee 9f a much respected member of my province, and the other a community party in a house of formation celebrating the end of a semester. It struck me very forcibly that what I was doing was observing the ways in which two distinct cultures celebrate. To attempt to summarize cultural differences is a risky undertaking. No one is ever satisfied by someone from the outside attempting to sum up basic commit-ments and ways of seeing. And, of course, none of us is ever or should ever be completely "outside"; our summaries are inevitably colored by our own commit-ments and viewpoints. But if we are to talk meaningfully of the situation in which the person involved in formation finds himself today, it is necessary at least to draw up a schematized and admittedly unnuanced outline of the very real contrasts that govern our situation. By culture I mean simply the sum-total of the social values, ways of thinking, means of expressing human relationships, and habits of life shared by a whole group of people (whether tribes in Africa, villages in France, or social groupings in America). At the two parties I recognized two contrasting ways of celebrating, two approaches to festivity. The older party was characterized by a happy convention-ality. People told the old jokes and sang the old songs, reminisced about the way things used to be, shared common memories about the persons and mores of a true but somewhat idealized past. The younger one was colored by creative expression (new skits, new games and ideas) and fantasy (making up new stories and new songs). At both parties, there was much sharing of laughter at things normally taken very seriously. The cultural differences are not restricted, of course, to behavior at parties. The two groups' means of expressing values are notably different. Both are preoccupied with fidelity, but the older group stresses fidelity to an established role, believing Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 335 that a man's true fulfillment and the greatest service he can give lie in being as faithfully and totally and interiorly as possible what he is called to be by the work assigned to him: a good teacher, pastor, cook, or whatever. For the younger group fidelity means, above all, a continuous search to discover and live out what is one's own unique contribution. True fulfillment for this younger group means the discovery of self, which will then lead to a service to society which may or may not correspond to any pre-established role. The older group stresses perseverance in holding to the role that is given, while the younger group stresses honesty with oneself, even though that honesty may not lead very quickly to stability. The older group sees forgetfulness of self and modesty as prime virtues for relating with others, while the younger group stresses openness, the willingness to let oneself be influenced by the thought and action of the other. The older group stresses the necessity for each individual to stick to what he thinks is right, no matter what social pressures he may be subjected to. The younger one feels that communion with the group is a prime value; although he too knows how to withstand social pressures, they prompt him more quickly to re-examine his position, rather than stiffen his resistance to corruption. The older group speaks much about preserving and enriching a tradition that comes out of the past, while the younger one is more oriented towards building a future that may or may not spring very obviously from the past. The experienced seek a carefully limited, realistic, but wholehearted commitment to the goals they have accepted. This approach seems narrow to the young; fascinated by a multiplicity of goods, they tend rather to become overcommitted to too many things, while at the same time being only partially committed to any one of them. The patterns of thought of the two groups are also quite diverse. For the older, truth is to be achieved above all by method, by a disciplined and patterned application of long-tested paradigms; for the young it is to be sought in dialectic, in conversation and interchange, more by group experience than by individual reflection. The older person wants someone to give him answers to his questions; the younger one simply looks for a person to share the process of discovery. The older man has been educated more in a rhetorical tradition that takes a position asa given and then finds all the supporting reasons and arguments; the younger man's education has increasingly stressed a heuristics that is concerned above all with the search for the position that is (existentially) true. For the older man, knowledge tends more to be a possession (the kind of knowledge denoted by the French verb (savoir), something that is dominated, assimilated, and put to profitable use. For the younger man it tends to be a mode of being-related (conna~tre), a personal or quasi-personal communion. The older man looks in his thinking for stability and attempts to stick to the essence of things; the younger man is taken up with the process and is unimpressed by thinking that relies on stable effsences. Discursive thinking and logic tend to be the natural realm of'the older man; symbol thinking, poetry, and art, that of the younger. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the ways of relating to people and forming friendships differ between the two groups. The way to an older man's heart is to work together with him at a common project perceived as meaningful. The way to a younger man's heart is to listen to him creatively, to share one's own experiences - a process of much dialogue and many hours of deep conversation. Obviously this outline of the two approaches is quite schematized, and most of us - old or young - are somewhere in-between. The purpose of this rather cavalier summary and contrast has been to point up that the two approaches exist (although 336 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 hardly ever in a "pure" state), that they are, in fact, very different - a difference such as has not often been experienced between any two successive generations in human history - and to intimate, by expressing the values of each in a positive way, that both approaches are very open to living the message of the gospel. It is evident that we have two contrasting ways of being faithful, and we who work in the formation of young religious find ourselves very much in a mediatorial, reconciliational role between them. Our role in this cultural situation is, I believe, best conceptualized today as being of service to individuals and communities in the discovery of an identity. Our most obvious task is to aid the indivMual in developing a social identity with the concrete group which he or she is in the process of joining. Because of the cultural crossroads where we find ourselves at this point in history, however, it is unrealistic to reduce the whole of our role to "socialization" within a given congregation. Neither the individual nor the life of the group can remain static, and a true commitment to the group can happen only as the individual finds within the group a true aid to releasing his own creative potential and an increasingly rich field for expressing that potential. A person can develop an identity with a group only on the basis of a strong personal identity, and. strong personal identity can be developed, paradoxic-ally, only in an interplay with a social group. The person working in formation must therefore deal with both poles of identity - the group and the personal. Hence a second, by no means subordinate, part of our role is to be of service to the young person who comes to us in the absorbing work of his own personal search for identity. Formation people, though they tend. to be "generalists" rather than specialists, should, if anything, be specialists in "human development." Although we should only begin working with young people who have already developed a fairly advanced degree of security, self-identity, and clear-headedness, their entry into religious life, at whatever age, is always part of a search for personal identity and identity within society, and we must be prepared to be of service in that extremely personal search. Given the state of constant evolution in which we more and more consciously find ourselves, the first aspect mentioned above, that of identification with or true membership in the order or congregation can no longer be conceived at any level as identification with a status quo. Commitment to religious life today means rather a commitment to God working in a concrete group of people who are pledged to grow and evolve together, to share the consequences of their lives and decisions. Membership means the willingness to keep growing together, to keep sharing consequences, and to let others within the group continue to influence our lives. Joining religious life is less a flight into a specific desert (for deserts can become rather comfortable, as full of fleshpots as any Egyptian oasis) than a going on pilgrimage together, a common movement toward the God who speaks in our lives and calls us forward through history. Religious life, if it is to give its most telling witness to mankind today, must become (as Schillebeeckx has put it) a '~sacrament of dialogue," a living sign, open and visible to men, of the fact that people can live together and share the search for God's concrete will for them in the present, and that this common search can become a fascinating, absorbing, and fulfilling life project. If we view religious life in this dynamic, search-centered way, it becomes increasingly evident that formation must involve a great deal of contact between the candidates and the experienced members. A decision to throw in one's lot with a given order or congregation can be made only on the basis of knowing and Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 337 experiencing the sacrament of dialogue as it really is. Isolated formation houses no longer fill the need, at least not for the totality of the period of basic formation. They were viable in a day when the problem of formation was simply that of taking on an accepted and rather standardized culture. They are good at providing the deeply spiritual motivation that is alone adequate to sustain a person in the challenges which the communal search for God demands. But they do not give an experience of the communal search to which the community as a whole is pledging itself. They rather give another experience - that of a group of peers struggling with commitment together - an experience which will happen anyway, with or without an isolated house of formation, and one that can too easily create a kind of sub-culture, spiritually and emotionally alienated from the group as a whole. They accentuate cultural differences, rather than helping all - young and old -go beyond them to a deeper unity. Identification with the group is complicated today by the problem that many of us are in fact probably better at being of service to personal growth than at helping develop social roles. We tend to have some competence in psychology, none at all in sociology. Yet as each individual grows personally, he becomes more conscious of his unique contributions and personal richness, and he usually discovers the fact that there are no ready-made social roles into which he can easily fit. Because of the rapid change in our society, many of the traditional service roles which religious have filled (teaching, nursing, pastoral work) are themselves in search of an identity, and many religious want to alter these service roles in significant ways. In this crucial area of both personal and community growth, it is above all important that as much of the whole community as possible be involved in developing and living with social roles. Our own personal identity, that of our younger members, and that of the order or congregation as a whole are inextricably entangled. They can either enrich or discourage one another. Rather than a pledge to adopt unquestioningly a given service'role, a commitment today means a pledge to share in mutual growth as we reexamine our traditional service roles. In turning to the question of our service in the area of each one's personal quest for identity, we will find it helpful first to consider the psychological characteristics of the typical young person with whom we have to deal today, his problems and prospects. The most striking strength of the typical candidate we meet today is his sensitivity. Impressionable, responsive to friendship, and anxious to give a service that is personally perceived, he is capable of developing a pers6nality that will be richly responsive to people. The weakness of our candidate is the typical weakness of a sensitive person. He is quite unsure of himself, uncertain of the best way to respond to the heavy pressures of the experience in which he becomes so deeply involved. He does not take all kinds of values, ways of acting and thinking, for granted. He has grown up in a scattered, fragmented world, and he has not yet had the time and the experience to build up a very firm personal stance - a coherent and well-articulated system of values, beliefs, and ways of acting. Because of his own insecurity and his sensitivity to influences, he tends to waver from position to position with what (for us) seems like astonishing rapidity. Growing up in a period when informational input has been reaching and surpassing overload capacity, our candidate has become aware of far more than we knew at his age, but he has simply not had the stabilizing and strengthening influence that we now enjoy nor even the stabilizing influence that we had at the same stage of our own growth. Hence he is very cautious about taking stands. He wants to continue to be "open" to experience, and he does not want to close too many doors too fast. He has come to 338 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 religious life because he is struggling for an identity that is out of the normal; he will not be satisfied with the ready-made roles which society presents so per-suasively to him. Hence he is, in his own peculiar way, cautious about making commitments, and he wavers through many possibilities before finally determining upon one. Our candidate's experience of the past twenty years has taught him that institutions and ideologies fall with great regularity, and that those who build their lives upon them do not survive. What he can perhaps trust is people. He is person-oriented, deeply conscious of his need for friends. He may find trust difficult; but once he has achieved it, he easily becomes dependent, and he is unashamed of finding strength in the support of his friends. He .is less concerned with building an institution, or an ideology than a friendship. He frequently seems to us to have an "affective" problem. His needs are enormous (or so it seems for those of us who have not lived through his cultural experience) in the area of personal friendship and support. He tends to think that the satisfaction of these needs will solve all his problems in life. He can easily be moved, even manipulated (and here we must be careful to respect his person), by motives of personal friendship, less easily by other motivations. In helping our candidate in his search for identity, we are often tempted to solve his problem for him, to shower on him the rich fruits of our own experience and expect him to respond with profound gratitude. Actually though, the nature of his problems (perhaps the nature of all human problems) is such that only he can solve them. Only he can discover and create an identity for himself. Our genuine help can be in sharing the process of discovery with him; in asking sensitive, helpful, but challenging questions; in sharing, but in a non-coercive way, something of our own search and some of its outcomes. In her fascinating little book Culture and Commitment, Margaret Mead has pointed out that the days of the "postfigurative culture" (the one in which the adults are supposed to have answered all questions and to provide a reproducible pattern for the young to imitate with exactitude) are gone. She believes that we are in a "cofigurative culture," one in which everyone, both young and old, determine the solutions to their problems and the answers to their questions by learning from their peers, with the danger of never being able to open up to an experience that is foreign to them. Our future lies, she believes, in a "prefigurative culture," one in which different age-groups and people with quite different experience can work together in the process of discovering new answers. Youth can contribute the special wisdom of its sensitivity, lack of complacency, and pertinent questioning; experience can enrich the dialogue by sharing, in a genuine search, some of the answers and guideposts it has met on its pilgrimage. Even though many of us still like to think we are quite young, we are on the side of "experience" when it comes to formation. The best that we can do for our candidate is engage in an intelligent, open, ongoing dialogue with him. One of the major problem arias that this dialogue will have to confront is that of authority, freedom, and independence. Because of our typical candidate's lack of security and wavering personal identity, he can become very dependent. He can mistakenly think that he has solved his identity problem by patterning his life after a respected elder. Thus he may be, in the judgment of many, a "model religious" for a time, until he discovers that what he was trying to be was not really himself. When the dependence has been considerable, especially when it has begun at an early stage of maturity and resulted in a rather far-reaching superego acceptance of Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 339 norms that are not internalized (an inauthentic identity plastered on from the outside), the young person, if he is healthy, will sooner or later rebel against the artificiality. More or less intensely and for a longer or shorter time, he will rej6ct much of his past experience, what he might call the "system" of religious life, the structures which characterize it, and possibly even some of the people, especially those with whom he has most closely identified. This rejection will be all the stronger if it is the first significa.nt one, if it has not already taken place in regard to home and parents, for it seems to be an almost inevitable part of growing up in the tensions of present-day society. In this area we need, therefore, to be especially careful. Most of us tend, like the generality of human beings, to be over-protective. We enjoy having someone a bit dependent on us. It is, in fact, a beautiful experience of spiritual fatherhood or motherhood, but it is not something which we, as celibate persons, can cling to. At this point a caution against "overcounseling" deserves special attention. Even though the ongoing dialogue is, I am convinced, of the essence of our task, it is sometimes possible to use counseling as a means of manipulating the young person's emotions, of forcing a growth for which he is not yet ready, of protecting him from learning by experience, and of re-enforcing the tendency toward dependence rather than helping him achieve freedom and self-actualization. Recognizing and accepting the psychodynamics of rejection enables us to maintain enough distance to be helpful rather than compound the problem. But this recognition should not lead us to discount the criticisms of the young person. The period of rejection may be a very special occasion for surfacing some real and deep-going problems, and it may point out some genuine weaknesses of our structures, our demands, and our means of formation. Creative listening and discernment of spirits at this critical juncture may be painful, but it may also help us see the )/bung person far more clearly and truly than ever before, and it may in turn reveal to us some of the deepest-penetrating dynamics of our own interaction. In working through this critical state, many young people come to the conviction that religious life is not what they want, that it does not correspond to the authentic identity which they. finally see themselves developing. They may often seem wrong, and we may sometimes realize better than they that their decision is simply part of the rejection process. At best we can keep it from becoming a particularly bitter or scarring part. Nevertheless, some of the most painful decisions we have to face come at this critical period. It is the strains and stresses of this period that especially urge the wisdom of taking candidates at an older, more mature period, since the strength of the rejection is more or less directly in proportion to the levels of inauthenticity and false docility that have to be uncovered and the depth with which the false super-ego identity has penetrated the person. But° we must ask ourselves whether our tendency to defer entrance is in each case a matter of prudence or pusillanimity. The dynamics of identity growth happen in late adolescence in a never-to-be-repeated fashion. The period can be so painful precisely because it is a time of so much growth. Many can develop a true personal i~lentity as religious if we can work sympathetically and understandingly with them through this difficult period. Once the person has passed this crisis, he usually begins to experience the need for building again, for discovery of means to live his religious commitment that correspond to his new found, more authentic self. For example, he will often reject prayer structures at one point only to find himself later, but more genuinely, seeking again to find true means to express his prayerful attachment to God, in 340 Review fog Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 concert with the community. The end result can be very creative - but oniy, of course, if we know how to keep concerns and realities alive without stifling the individual's periods of docility, rejection, and new growth. Our best role, throughout the whole process, I am convinced, is to engage in an ongoing dialogue with the person, to serve as one who can sympathetically share the process, avoiding as much as possible the danger of becoming an object of too great dependence and thus the eventual target of rebellion. Our most useful help will be to aid the young person to handle his dependence, his rebellion, and his new, more authentic independence, to help him find his true place within life and especially within our congregation. We can facilitate the search; we cannot do the discovering for him. The lines between dependence, independence, helpful ques-tioning, and coercive probing are so delicate at this period and so different for each individual that we must face the fact that we will sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. That is part of the joy and suffering of our mission. Another major problem area that we must face in our ongoing dialogue with our candidates is that of psychosexual identity. Here I am of course thinking more than ever in a male context, and those who work with women must make whatever applications they find appropriate. The problem seems to be somewhat different for them. At any rate, our typical male candidate today is not very' sure of his masculinity or even of what masculinity means. Popular society gives him some images of the male hero which he is rather quick intellectually to reject, but which he cannot easily replace: the strong man, excelling in sports, never expressing powerful emotions, capable of handling his drink and his women. The young man today is caught between this image, which it is hard for him to avoid, and his value system, which calls into question most of this image and lays a heavy stress on the goodness of emotion and sensitivity, which makes him very conscious of his own needs and his own very active life in these areas. He is part of the so-called "generation without a father," for his relations with his father have probably been rather occasional and distant. He feels very much the lack of a strong masculine image, and he even doubts at times his own true virility. If this young man is to undertake a life project involving celibacy, he must be able to reassure himself that he can find friends to fill his affective needs. He is horrified by the prospect - one which he is quick to detect, accurately or not, about him - of the middle-aged religious who has no real friends. He can be willing to undertake celibacy only if he is able to experience it as a unique way of loving others. He feels that it is as great a sin to be celibate without love as it is to have sexual relations without love. Very conscious of the eros within himself, he has to grapple with ways of discovering, releasing, and expressing that eros that corres-pond to the identity which he is seeking as a religious. In simpler terms, he wants to learn how to love (as all young inert do), but if he i,s to be a religious, he must learn to love in such a way that his focus is sharing the Spirit - in such a way that the peace and joy and goodness of God is the focus of his interchange with people. He can be attracted by the ideal of a love that is selfless, but not by one that is isolated or theoretical; the selflessness he seeks, if he is capable of celibate love, is the self-emptying of moving together with other human beings beyond the self and towards the God who calls us on. Too often we older religious have biocked the unique experience of celibate love in our hearts. We may have been celibate, but we have perhaps not always been fully loving. Sometimes the experience of wanting to be possessive, protective, jealous, and competitive, to dominate another person instead of freeing him, may Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 341 be an almost inevitable part of learning to love and to find self in relation to God. The aim of the genuine celibate is to share the Spirit and not bind the persqn to ourselves. The usual challenge for the young person is learning to share the SPIRIT, rather than himself; the challenge for many of us is learning to SHARE that Spirit whom we find within ourselves but often tend to stifle. Only by finding his identity as a celibate person in the midst of genuine love and friendship can a young religious man today achieve a secure psychosexual identity. Much of our work consists of helping him through that painful process - not, again, by expecting him to repeat our own experience, but rather by sharing with him in as understanding a way as possible the progress of his search, Many other areas would have to be touched if our aim were to exhaust the questions that confront the young person in formation: discovery of a meaningful relationship with God in prayer and in service, growth in self-awareness and self-confidence, discovery of identity as a worker and a professional person, and so forth. But what has been said suffices to show how the person who works in formation today is in a very delicate situation, one that can be riddled with anxiety - the anxiety of not knowing exactly where we are going, having a sense of the fragility of human life and commitment, recognizing the precarious religious identity of many of our candidates and longing to protect it, but still having to deal creatively with each one's personal quest and realizing that only he, under the guidance of the Spirit, can fashion his own life. If I may conclude, in Pauline fashion, with a catalogue of the virtues to which we are called, I believe they include a buoyant, persevering zest for life; a willingness to live with some anxiety, to let things and people be as they are; and a creative acceptance that affirms all the good in each person and helps him but does not coerce him to channel it towards the growth of mature religious identity. Abov.e all we need to develop a capacity for creative listening - listening to people as they are, without passing judgment, yet giving them our honest insights and letting the call to growth in the kingdom sound through us. All of this demands what Paul characterizes again and again as "patience" and "magnanimity" - hypomone, the gift of persevering zest, of withstanding pr.essures with love and graciousness; and makrothymia, the "great big heart" that is able to let God and men touch it and fill it and call on it no matter what. There is probably no role in religious life today that calls more than ours for deeper prayer, more hope, and more faith in God's loving strength - for more "waiting on the Lord." Perhaps our motto should be taken from Isaiah: "Those who wait for the Lord renew their strength, run and do not grow weary, walk and never tire" (Is 40:30). THOMAS N. McCARTHY Entry Age for Church Vocations [Thomas N. McCarthy is Vice President for Student Affairs at La Salle College; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19141.] Optimum age for entry into Church vocations continues to be a controversial subject. During the 1960's many seminaries and religious institutes, yielding to both internal and external pressures, raised entrance age requirements from early to late adolescence, and during that decade many permitted the demise of high school juniorates. Pressures for further change persist. The thrust of the early 1970's appears to be toward a further delay of entry from ageseventeen or eighteen to twenty, twenty-one, or beyond and with this a growing trend to phase out college level minor seminaries and scholasticates. At the same time that delayed entry for younger candidates is being encouraged, the admission of older candidates, that is, those over thirty years of age, is being actively encouraged. The purpose of this paper is to provide some empirical information on the relationship of applicant age to entry/non-entry rates among those who present themselves as candidates to Church vocations during post high school years and to persistence/attrition rates among those who enter then. The figures reported here are taken from a larger study currently being completed in which 750 candidates to two institutes of teaching brothers, 360 candidates to an institute of religious priests, and 1100 candidates to four institutes of teaching sisters were followed up for periods ranging from three to thirteen years to find out who entered and who did not, who had persisted and who had withdrawn. The relationship of these outcomes to characteristics of the people at the time they became applicants was then analyzed. Some of the applicant characteristics studied were age, education', ability, personality, and interests. The results of this study provide some empirical grounds on which to base policies about when people should be admitted to Church vocations - information which is currently not available in the literature. There are, of course, many relevant factors, of which empirical evidence is one, in a policy decision of this sort. Some Influences on Postponing Entry Among reasons for the demise of early adolescent entry to Church vocations in the United States are support from Rome for the delay, changes in family life, psychological and sociological theory, evidence of very high drop-out rates among high school age entrants, and feelings of interpersonal deficiencies among the current generation of religious leaders. While Rome has declined to officially condemn early entry - indeed it continues to encourage 12-13-year-old entry in some countries - in 1969 the Sacred Congregation for Religious and for Secular Institutes issued a document,Instruction on the Renewal of Religious Formation, recommending the practice of postponing Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 343 entrance for a year or two after high school graduation. The document moved beyond the recommendation that seminaries and religious orders get out of high school age formation - the cause c61~bre of the sixties - to getting out of some college age formation work as well. The recommendation rests on the assumption that older entrants would be more mature and consequently better able to profit from spiritual training. It also rests on the related assumption that, being more mature, older entrants should be more stable vocationally. These assumptions have not been put to an empirical test for religious candidates. It is not known if being older would in fact be related to greater maturity nor is it known if being older would be associated with higher persistence. The purpose of this paper is to provide information for testing the latter assumption among post high school age candi-dates. On theoretical grounds "one would expect that post high school entry, that is, entering when about seventeen or eighteen years old, should be associated with more stable career choices than entering prior to that time. That expectation is based on changes in family life, typical career choice patterns in the United States, Erikson's theory of ego identity, and Super's career development theory. The question of achieving greater vocational stability by delaying entry to even later ages, however, remains an open one. The American family, often mother dominated during the thirties when fathers suffered crushing economic humiliation and during the first half of the forties when men were off to war, has come more under the influence of father in the past twenty-five years, Undoubtedly this is one of the reasons for the decline in vocations which began to occur in the mid to late sixties. There is ample evidence that mother is most frequently the primary inspiration and support of religious vocations. Fichter is quoted by Rooney (1970) as reporting evidence for the greater influence of priests than of mothers in priestly vocations. Later research, especially that of Potvin and Suziedelis (1969), however, clearly supports the primary role of mother. In all likelihood there is no essential disagreement between these findings. I suspect that maternal influence is probably the major predisposing factor in the development of priestly or religious interests and that the influence of a given priest or'religious is generally the precipitating factor associated with a specific choice of institute. Mothers generally are more religious in orientation than fathers are, and with declining maternal influence and a corresponding increase in paternal influence, I think it can be safely assumed that today's teenagers are not as subject to family p.ressures to enter church vocations as was formerly true. It can be assumed further that pressures of this sort are felt most greatly in early teen years, that is, before an independent sense of self is well developed, than in the late teen years when eg.o identity normally is firmer. Thus a strong maternal influence on Church vocation choices most likely would be associated with both early entry and high rates of entry, while waning maternal influence would be associated with later and declining entry rates. Furthermore, if the dynamics of husband-wife, parent-child relation-ships have indeed changed with father re-assuming greater ascendancy since the"mid " 1940's, one could also infer support for a psychoanalytical interpretation that children in their early teens today should feel less heavy maternal emotional demands than was true of youngsters in the past. Consequently today's youth should feel less need to escape the home and these demands. Also instrumental in supporting delay of entry until after high school is the general tendency in America today to put off professional career choices until 344 Review for Religious~ Volume 31, 1972/3 college. Typical career development patterns now c~ll for a tentative choice of broad field and entrance into training for it around age eighteen. This generally is foll6wed by a period of narrowing course and career selection from around age 20 which eventually culminates for those who successfully complete career training in actual job entry around age 22-25. The near universality of this pattern for professional careers appears to be having a persuasive influence on Church pers.onnel practices. Both advocates and adversaries of delayed entry accept the premise that there must be substantial differences between preparation for Church vocations and preparation for secular careers. Education for the Church requires both an academic and a personal formation side, whereas preparation for secular careers is almost always restricted to the former. Paradoxically, agreement about this has fed the controversy about optimum entry age, both sides using it to make their case. Advocates of early entry have argued that the seed of a vocation is typically implanted early, will not be properly cultivated and is unlikely to grow outside a religious house of formation, and that vocations will be reduced unless early admission is permitted. Adversaries have argued that a person in his early teens does not know his own mind and that he needs the broader experiences - especially heterosocial ones - of ordina~'y family and social life before he is mature enough to profit from the spiritual formation side of Church vocation preparation. The immense popularity of Erikson's theory of adolescent identity crisis has had a remarkable effect on the attitudes of Church authorities toward proper entry age. Erikson's views about the development of a sense of self-identity, more than the views of any other theoretician, have provided the rationalization for delaying entry until an individual has achieved sufficient psychological independence from the primary adults in his life to have an ego identity of his own. That independence is thought to occur generally around age eighteen rather than at the beginning of the teens when so many youngsters formerly were funneled into religious or clerical life. Two recent religious writers, Mitchell (1970) and Gerlach (1971), have argued the viewpoint that the nature of a Church vocation requires entrants to have resolved not only the teenage identity crisis but also to have achieved a successful resolution of the problem of how to be intimate with another, the next level in Erikson's developmental theory. This viewpoint is offered as a basis for a further delay of entry age to twenty or so. Other than the theory behind the position, I find little else to support it. To my knowledge there is no published empirical information comparing the eventual social adjustment and persistence of entrants at one age to entrants at another age. Nor am 1 aware of any evidence that learning how to be intimate outside of religious life generalizes to the special circumstances within the life. On the contrary, this strikes me like a girl telling an interested boy to go learn how to make love and then come back when he knows how. He'll probably go elsewhere and learn all right, but it is not likely that he'll return to her. Super's career development theory, thanks to the promulgation of it among Church leaders by people like Kinnane (1970), also has influenced the move toward post high school entry. Super has proposed that the specification of a career choice, that is, electing a given career and taking concrete steps to prepare for it, normally occurs between ages eighteen and twenty-one and follows a period of roughly four years (ages 14-18) during which a career preference is crystalized out of an individual's growing awareness of his own interests, values, abilities, and opportuni-ties. Following Super's reasoning, entering the preparatory stage of a career before Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 345 age eighteen would have, for most people, the effect of foreclosing other options before the individual knows himself and the world of careers well enough to make a sound choice. For Super the choice of career involves a way of implementing one's concept of oneself, and a person is not ready to do that until the self-concept is relatively clear. Drop-out rates have never been well publicized even in professional literature and as a result are hard to document, especially over long periods of time. An occasional master's dissertation (see Verstynen, 1948) and studies dealing with some other aspect of seminary life sometimes report this information. People involved in Church personnel administration also generate a reservoir of information, often more anecdotal than systematic, about attrition rates. By the middle 1960's these varied sources, admittedly not rigorously scientific, had provided some foundation for the belief that drop-out rates are inversely related to age at entry. Patterson (1942), for example, reported a drop-out rate of over 80% for those who entered one seminary after grade eight declining to just over 75% for those who entered after having had some high school. So far as I know, to date there has been no systematic attempt to establish relationships between age of candidature and entry/nonentry, persistence/attrition rates across different types of church voca-tions. Is age of candidacy related to entry/nonentry or persistence/attrition in the same way for brothers, priests, and sisters? Dissatisfaction with interpersonal aspects of their lives is evident among a large number of the current generation of priests and professed religious. This is one of the most common complaints to come out of several studies over the past five years (see Schneider and Hall, 1970; Louis, Bowles, and Grace, 1967). Many in Church vocations feel that interpersonal deficiencies could have been corrected had candidates been required to remain outside the walls for a longer period of time. While there is no direct evidence that this in fact would happen, the desire to have better interpersonal relationships has been strong enough to persuade many to this viewpoint. All of these factors appear to have contributed to the demise of entry before high school graduation and to support of the current trend to delay entry for another year or two after that. It is a curious comment on the times that during all the controversy over this matter of optimum age for entry very little research was carried out to assess the actual psychological impact of formation on individuals at different ages. Keefe's study (1965) is the only one I know of which compared individuals of the same age in seminary and non-seminary high schools to see if there was a differential effect on maturity associated with one type of school as opposed to the other. He concluded that neither group was more mature than the other. Other doctoral dissertations done at Fordham (Mastej, Sandra, Vaughan) have shown increasing signs of maladjustment during college years of formation, but the cross-section methodology used in those studies leaves open the question of whether the subjects themselves actually changed or whether the group average changed as a result of better adjusted people having dropped out. 1 think the weight of the evidence on theoretical grounds, social changes, and on what empirical information exists clearly justifies delay of entry until the comple-tion of high school. As to justifying delay beyond this, it seems to me that empirical evidence is currently lacking and that the implications of theoretical positions such as Erikson's developmental views are open to conjecture. At the same time, however, there does appear to be a growing trend among college 346 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 students to put off career decisions longer than was true in the recent past. Some Empirical Evidence In 1970 I did a follow-up study of approximately 2200 candidates I had examined for seven Church institutes during the years 1957-1967. Information about age at the time they applied for entry was available for 742 candidates to two provinces of the same institute of teaching brothers, 354 candidates to an order of religious priests, and 1089 candidates to four institutes of teaching sisters. Their age when they were examined for admission was then studied in relationship to their having entered or not and to their having persisted or not for those who entered. The examinations were conducted on the average 3-9 months before actual entry. On the average when they sought entry the candidates to the brothers were 17 years, 11 months, to the priesthood 19 years, 2 months, and to the sisters 18 years, 5 months (see Table 1). The half-year difference between candidates to the brothers and sisters, the eight month difference between candidates to the sisters and the priesthood, and the fourteen month difference between candidates to the brothers and priesthood were all statistically significant and could not be accounted for by chance. Thus each type of institute attracted candidates of somewhat different ages. Table 1. Mean ages in months of candidates, nonentrants, entrants, persisters, and withdrawers for seven institutes of brothers, priests, and sisters.* Brothers Standard (2 Provinces) N Mean Deviation t p Candidates 742 215.3 19.7 Non-Entrants 389 216.8 24.9 Entrants 353 212.9 15.9 2.56 .05 Persisters 151 214.0 18.1 With'drawers 202 212.2 14.0 1.01 ns. Priests Standard (1 Institute) N Mean Deviation t p Candidates 354 229.6 34.4 Non-Entrants 60 239.8 45.2 Entrants 294 227.5 31.3 2.00 .05 Persisters 98 227.8 29.1 Withdrawers 196 227.3 32.3 ,13 ns. Sisters Standard (4 Institutes) N Mean Deviation t p Candidates " 1089 221.2 24.4 Non-Entrants 222 228.8 32.5 Entrants 867 220.5 21.5 3.60 .01 Persisters 469 219.7 18.2 Withdrawers 398 221.4 24.8 1.13 ns. *Age refers to how old the person was when he was examined as a part of the application process. Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 347 Older candidates to all three types of institutes were less likely to enter than were younger candidates. As shown in Table 1 the differences between the average ages of entrants and nonentrants were statistically significant beyond chance expectancy in all three cases. For the brothers nonentrants were on the average four months older than entrants, for the seminary a full year older, and for the sisters eight months older. Clearly promise, at least from the viewpoint of entrance, was not associated with being older for these seven institutes during the eleven years from 1957 through 1967. It would not be correct to conclude from this that superiors had a tendency to deny admission to older candidates on the basis of age alone. The more usual situation was that being older tended to be associated with some other factors considered signs of poor promise: indecisiveness, family problems, psycho-sexual problems, and questionable motivation being common. Only eleven of the 2185 candidates were over thirty years old. The brothers had two such candidates and neither entered; the priests had five, of whom three entered; the sisters had four, of whom two entered. All of the other candidates were in their late teens or twenties. At the lower end of the continuum 78 of the brothers' candidates were sixteen in comparison to 6 seminary candidates and 27 candidates to the convents in that age group. The brothers had 2 candidates who were fifteen and the seminary 1. The sisters had none that young. All of these younger candidates have been lumped in the 17 and under category in Table 2. Table 2. Proportions of entrants, non-entrants, persisters, and withdrawers by age of candidates to seven institutes of brothers, priests, and sisters. Total Candi- Non- Institute Age dates Entrants Entrants Persisters Withdtawers N N % N % N %* %** N %* P 5 2 40 3 60 1 33 20 2 67 40 S Base Ratet (17%) (83%) (34%) (28%) (66%) (54%) S 4 R S Base Rater * Proportion of entrants (All figures ~e for age at 115 19 506 81 274 54 44 232 46 37 60 19 256 81 142 55 44 114 45 36 37 28 93 72 49 53 37 44 47 33 8 44 10 56 4 40 22 6 60 33 2 50 2 50 0 0 0 2 100 50 (20%) (80%) (54%) (43%). (46%) (36%) ** Proportion of candidates ~- Proportions without regard to age time the person was examined during the application process). B 2 2 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 E R Base Rate~ (52%) (48%) (42%) (20%) (58%) (27%) S 348 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 The largest single age group applying to all three types of institutes were seventeen years old: 94% of the brother candidates, 46% of the seminary candidates, and 55% of the sister candidates. This was followed by those in the eighteen and nineteen-year-old bracket who comprised 19%, 30%, and 29% of the candidates to the brothers, seminary, and sisters respectively. Five percent of the candidates to the brothers were between twenty and twenty-four, 19% of those applying to the seminary, and 12% to the convents. Very few candidates to any of the institutes were between twenty-five and twenty-nine (see Table 2 for all of these figures). The base rate figures in Table 2 indicate the overall proportions of nonentrants, entrants, persisters, and withdrawers without regard to age. If being a given age was a "good sign" for entry, the proportion of those entering from that age group should be above that of the base rate. For the brothers and priests the 17-year-olds had the best entry rates and for the sisters those in the 17-19 age brackets had the best entry rates. For the brothers all ages over 17 had entry rates lower than the base rate; for the priests those in the 20-24 and over 30 age groups had lower entry o rates; and for the sisters all those 20 and over had lower entry rates. Do these same patterns hold with regard to persistence and attrition for the seven institutes? The data are not nearly so clear on this point. The figures in Table 1 show no appreciable age differences between those remaining in and those who left. It is important to bear in mind that all figures are for the ages of persisters and withdrawers at the time they applied for entry, not at the time of the follow-up. Two base rate figures are given for persisters and withdrawers in Table 2. The first refers to the proportion of those who entered who eventually remained or left; the second refers to the proportion of total candidates wt~o remained or left. Brothers For the brothers 42% of the 353 entrants were still in when the follow-up was done. The best persistence record was for those few entrants (1 I) who were between 20-24 when they applied for entry. On the other hand, the best persistence record for all candidates was for those who were either 17 years old or between 25-29 when they sought entry. Only two persisters were in the latter age group, however, versus 122 in the l~-year-old group. Clearly, delaying entry for candidates to these institutes w~uld have resulted in a very heavy loss of people who are still persisting. This, of course, assumes that the interest of the 17-year-olds would not have been sustained while waiting for a later entry - an outcome which I think is highly likely, though not amenable to proof from these data, even with lots of tender loving care in extramural aspirancies. The normal training period for these brothers extends for six years. In general, though this was not true for everyone at the time of the follow-up in 1970, it can be assumed that those still persisting from among candidates who had applied during the years from 1957 through 1962 were finally professed. These men would have been in their respective institutes anywhere from eight to thirteen years. In absolute numbers far and away the greatest number of final professed came from among candidates who had applied at age 17. There were 63 professed from that age bracket versus 5 from those who had applied at age 16, 13 from the 18-19- year-old applicants, and 3 from the 20-24-year-olds. On the basis of the proportions of candidates within each age group who remained to be finally professed, again the highest proportion was found among the 17-year-olds, though the differences from one age group to another were Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 349 relatively small: 17% of the 16-yea.r-old candidates eventually were finally pro-fessed, 23% of the 17-year-olds, 15% of the 18-19-year-olds, and 20%of the 20-24- year-olds. The entrants in each age group who had taken final vows were distributed as follows: 45% of the 16-year-olds, 48% of the 17-year-olds, 37% of the 18-19-year-olds, and 60% of the 20-24-year-olds. With only 3 people in the latter category, one could hardly justify delaying entrance to that age unless one could also demonstrate their superiority over the 81 professed who had entered at the younger age. The differences between the persistence rates of candidates and the persistence rates of entrants suggest that pre-ad.mission screening improves persistence rates rather substantially at every age. Priests In the case of the priests the overall persistence rate for the 294 entrants was 34% in comparison to 28% for the 354 candidates. The best persistence record for entrants was achieved by those who had applied when they were between 20-24 followed by the 17-year-old applicants. The best persistence record for candidates was achieved by 17-year-olds followed by those 20-24. There were fairly sizeable numbers of persisters in all the age brackets from 17 through 24 but substantially greater numbers who withdrew. Thus it would be very difficult to generalize about an optimum age for entering this seminary aside from being under age 25. At the time of the follow-up 19 of 118 candidates who had applied during the years 1961 and 1962 had been in the seminary eight or nine years. On the average they had been 19 years, 9 months when they sought entry. Of the 19 a total of 10 were ordained. The youngest candidate among the ordained had been 18 when he applied. The majority (6 of the 10) had been between 20-24; 1 was 27; 2 were 19. There is a strong suggestion from these few figures that for this seminary being in one's early twenties was a better sign of promise for eventual ordination than being younger. It needs to be pointed out, however, that older candidates had less education to complete when they entered and were thus more likely to have been ordained within the eight-to nine-year span covered by this study than were younger entrants. When the follow-up was done 9 non-ordained of the 19 persisters over this time span had been 18 or younger on becoming candidates: 1 was 16; 5 were 17; and 3 were 18. Accordingly, one might still be reluctant to deny admission to 17-year-olds. Looked at another way and assuming the 6 remaining 16 and 17-year-old persisters all accept ordination, that would result in an expected ordination rate of 13% for the 46 candidates in that age bracket during the years 1961-62 versus an actual ordination rate of 26% for the 23 candidates who were between 20-24. The comparable ordination rates for entrants in these age brackets would be 15% versus 37%, respectively. For candidates 18-19 years old, 3 already were ordained and assuming ordination of the remaining 3, their ordination rate against the total candidates in that age bracket would be. 14% versus 18% for entrants in that age group. Though the numbers involved are very small to draw firm generalizations, the ordination rates, both actual and assumed, give rather clear support to the view that candidates in their early twenties show greater promise than do those in their late teens. Sisters Fifty-four percent of the 867 who entered the four convents were still in as of 1970 in comparison to 43% of the total 1089 candidates. The persistence rates of 350 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 all entrants under 25 years old differed very little from one another: 54% of the 17-year-old entrants were still in, 55%of the 18-19-year-olds, and 53%of the 20~24- year-olds. Entrants over age 25, a very small number (10), were less likely to persist (40%) than the others. Using the total pool of candidates as a reference point the best persistence risks came from those who were between 17 and 19 (44%) when they applied. The poorest risks were those over 30 (0%), followed by those between 25 and 29 (22%), and 20-24 (37%). A separate analysis was done of the 209 candidates who had applied to three of the convents sometime between 1958 and 1962 and who were still in as of 1970. The fourth convent did not begin psychological evaluations until 1963 and was excluded for that reason. Thus for the other three institutes those persisting had been in their respective convent for eight to twelve years and normally would have been finally professed by that time. For these people essentially the same persistence rates were found for all ages between 17 and 24. Of the 17-year-old entrants 53% were professed compared to 54% of the 18-19-year-olds, and 56% of the 20-24-year-olds. Using candidates as the base for comparisons, 47% of the 17-year-olds were professed, 47% of the 18-19-year-olds, and 42% of the 20-24-year olds. In absolute numbers far and away the greatest number of professed (I 13) applied when they were 17 followed by 67 18-19-year-olds, 23 20-24-year~olds, 3 25-29-year-olds, and 3 16-year-olds. No candidate over thirty remained in.Sixteen-year- old candidates were a rarity. There were only four and all applied to one convent. Three of the four were eventually professed. What can one make of the figures for the convents? With about one-half of the 17- year-old candidates having remained in the convent at least eight to twelve years, it would be hard to support the contentii3n that they are a less stable group than older candidates and thus should be delayed from entering for another year, two years, or more. Profession rates for 18-19-year-old entrants are no better than theirs and after that age the persistence rates drop off. Unless one could assume holding the interest of 17-19-year-olds during a period of delay, a large drop in absolute numbers of those who eventually take final vows can be predicted and probably without much change in overall persistence rates given the same amount of screening done in the past. Summary Observations An increase in the number of nonentrants among candidates to Church vocations is one likely consequence of postponing entry beyond high school graduation. Age in itself would not be the reason for this increase. However, age-related factors such as career indecisiveness, social and sexual adjustment, and similar factors probably would be. A second consequence very likely would be a sharp decline in the number of candidates making application. This already is evident for institutes which have adopted a policy of postponed entrance for a year or more after high school graduation. The brothers, in particular, would be affected by this. The two brothers institutes in this study do not conduct colleges whereas the institute of priests and the four institutes of sisters each conduct at least one college and in some cases :two or more. 1 do not know if this was a contributing factor to brothers attracting the youngest candidates of all three types of institutes and having had relatively small numbers of candidates in their early twenties, but 1 suspect that was the case. In addition, for the brothers almost three times the proportion of candidates in their early twenties failed to enter than was true for the seminary and convents. I take Review for Refigious, Volume 31, 1972/3 351 this to mean that applicant proximity to the age group with which the Church institute works may be a significant factor both in becoming a candidate and in entering. Persistence was related to ag~ differently for the three types of institutes. Considering only those who had remained in for periods ranging from eight to thirteen years, for the brothers 17-year-old entrants had the best persistence records and in absolute numbers constituted by far the largest group of persisters compared to other ages; for entrants to the priesthood being in the early twenties was associated with a persistence rate twice that for 17-year-olds and approximately twice that for 18-19-year-olds as well; for the sisters essentially the same persistence rates were found for all ages between 17 and 24. The absolute number of persisters was much higher for 17-year-olds, however, than for any other age group. These figures indicate that it is unwise to generalize about optimum' age for entry without taking into consideration the type of institute. Given the same set of circumstances for the future that prevailed in these institutes through 1970 - an admittedly questionable assumption - one would have to predict that postponing entry to age 20 for the brothers could shortly put those institutes out of business. For the seminary reported on here to do that could result in a reduction of up to 50% of those who remain in to be eventually ordained, though I would estimate~ the more likely reduction would be on the order of 20-25%. For the convents to postpone entry to age 20 one would predict a very sharp drop in total number of entrants but without appreciably improving persistence rates of those eventually admitted. The net effect would be a substantial drop in new professed. All of this obviously assumes a simpler relationship between age and persistence than fits the facts, but the estimates have some empirical foundation. I think the more important question than simple persistence is whether one can identify among post high school candidates those who are mature enough to hold promise for an effective ministry. On the side of negative characteristics, there is firm evidence that candidates with poor motivation and poor prognosis due to family problems can be identified with a high degree of success (Weisgerber, 1969). The very sharp differences for the brothers in persistence rates for entrants from the different age groups in comparison to candidates from the different age groups probably reflects the results of effective screening. The brothers admitted only about 50% of their candidates. Similar differences in persistence rates were not found between entrants and candidates to the seminary which had not screened nearly so rigorously. Some institutes prefer to admit candidates without putting strong emphasis on the psychological evaluation. This typically results in higher entry rates and lower persistence rates, an outcome which indirectly suggests that signs of promise among candidates can be identified with some accuracy by pre-admission evaluation. So, too, does the much higher long-term persistence rate for the brothers than for the seminary, the former institutes having been more selective than the latter. The research project of which this report is a part is also concerned with specifying psychological attributes which distinguish successful 17-year-old candi-dates from nonsuccessful ones, success defined in terms of interpersonal relation-ships and job competence after final profession. Preliminary results suggest this can be done to some extent for a given institute but that the findings are not generalizable even between two similar institutes, for example, between two institutes of brothers engaged in the same work. This, too, would argue against 352 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 making specific entry age recommendations for all Church vocations and would argue instead for institutes establishing entry age policies based on studies of their own candidates. REFERENCES Gerlach, J. Form. ation: Some Reflections and Convictions. Review for Religious, Vol. 30, No. 5, September, 1971. Keefe, J. Maturity io the High School Seminary: An Empirical Approach. The Catholic Psychological Record, 1969, 6, 1, ,I 5-29. Kinnane, J. F., Career Development for Priests and Religious. Washington, D.C.: C.A.R.A. 1970. Lewis, A., Bowles, W. and Grace, R. Attitude Study Among Priests and Religious in New Orleans Archdiocese. Project ~560, May, 1967 Unpublished paper. Mitchell, K. R. Priestly Celibacy from a Psychological Perspective. The Journal of Pastoral Care, Vol. 24, No. 4, December, 1970. Patterson, H. A Study of Student Mortality at St. Anthony's Seminary and Suggestions for Improving the Situation. Master's Dissertation, Catholic University of America, | 942. Potvin, R. H. and Suziedelis, A. Seminarians of the Sixties. Washington! C.A.R.A. 1969. Rooney, J. J. Psychological Research on the American Priesthood: A Review of the~ Literature in E. C. Kennedy and V. J. Hecker, The Loyola Psychological Study of the Ministry and Life of the American Priests (Washington: National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1971). Sacred Congregation of Religious and for Secular Institutes. Instruction on the Renewal of Religious Formation. Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1969. Schneider, B. and Hall, D. T. The Role of Assignment Characteristics in the Career Experiences of Diocesan Priests. in W. E. Bartlett (ed.) Evolving Religious Careers, Washington, D.C.: C.A.R.A. 1970. Verstynen, R. J. A Study of Perseverance in Relation to Vocations to the Priesthood. Master's Dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1948. Weisgerber, C. A. Psychological Assessment of Candidates for a Religious Order. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1969. JOHN R. SHEETS, S.J. Soundings on the Present State of Religious Life [John R. Sheets, S.J., is professor of theology at Marquette University; 1131 West Wisconsin Avenue; Milwaukee, Wisconsir~ 53233.] Anyone who attempts to assess the present state of religious life in America today is in a position similar to that of a weatherman who might try to give a neat presentation of the weather across the country. It defies any neat categories. In one part it is calm, in another stormy. In one, it is warm; in another, below zero. High in the atmosphere there are currents of air which no one picks up without the proper instruments, while close to the earth there are other currents which everyone can feel. Changing the comparison, we would like to present some "soundings" concerning the present condition of religious life in America. "Soundings" is a safe word for what we would like to do. Taking soundings of the ocean floor, for example, is always a combination of accurate analysis plus some educated guesswork. At the same time, the nature of sounding what lies beneath the surface respects the fact that the picture can change very suddenly because of the constant movement of the currents. There are two assumptions underlying all that is said below. They are quite obvious, but it is necessary to mention them in order to put the rest of" the remarks in their proper context. The first assumption is this: There are certain fundamental components involved in all change which must interact harmoniously if there is to be growth and development. These components of change are mainly concerned with permanence and variability, sameness and newness, unity and diversity, continuity and discon-tinuity, conservation and innovation. When these components are mutally suppor-tive, there is progressive growth. When they fail to mesh and are at odds, the result is frustration, stagnation, fragmentation, and disintegration. The second assumption concerns the vital synthesis of these components. They are held together only through vision and values which are shared. The components are only mutually supportive if they are held together from above through faith enriched by love. Where faith is lost, these components lose their synthesizing center. They tend to break off and live a life of their own when the center is gone. On the other hand, where they are rooted in a common faith, then, while there may be stress and strain, there will inevitably be growth. We would like to make our soundings of religious life on the basis of these two assumptions. It seems that our soundings pick up an antagonism between these components of change as well as approaches to synthesis. We would like to hazard the opinion that this antagonism comes largely from an overreaction to what we 354 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 can vaguely call a "classical" view of religious life. This is the first point we would like to make. In the second place, we would like to comment on the fact that in many instances the synthesis is lost because the vision and values that were shared are no longer shared. In the third place, we want to call attention to the phenomenon of fresh synthesis that is taking place in many religious personally as well as in their congregations. Overreaction to the "Classical" Mentality We said above that growth depends on the harmonious interaction of the various components of change and that frustration occurs where these begin to be antagonistic to each other instead of supportive. One of the main sources of this antagonism today comes from an overreaction to the past. Today one often hears our own age of rapid change contrasted with a "classical" world view. This term is a hard one to nail down adequately. Among other things it connotes a mentality which is static, uniform, traditional, symmetrical. No period and no person in history ever verified this description perfectly. It is for the most part a mental construct. Nevertheless, in comparison with our present age, it does serve as a useful category. Our own age takes its orientation not only from the various forces that are at work, but also from the fact that these forces are fed by undertows of reaction toward the past. This is not an unusual phenomenon. Other periods of history have been marked largely by the way in which they reacted .to the past. The period of Romanticism, for example,took its shape and force largely as a reaction to the Enlightenment. The same process takes place in individuals as well as in groups. A person who has been brought up in a home that is overrestrictive can turn his initial taste of freedom into a spree of irresponsibility. It seems that many problems in religious life today come not simply from a legitimate reaction but from an overreaction to what can be vaguely called a "classical" form of religious life. Reaction in itself is not necessarily harmful. It can in fact provide impetus to move a person or a group forward. When it becomes an overreaction, however, it moves a person or a group into a position of imbalance. Overreaction can act like a blind force pushing a person or a group into a position beyond the point where they would normally go if they had full control of the situation. Where there is overreaction, reason does not lead. It is only called upon to legitimate the position a person has been forced into by overreaction. Similarly, overreaction is not the product of freedom and choice but of a passion generated by antagonism against a previous state of things. Reaction, as was said, can be an incentive to move beyond the point where one finds himself. Reaction can be the realm of the Spirit. Overreaction, on the other hand, is the realm of the demonic. Reaction can be the activity of the prophet. Overreaction is characteristic of the fanatic. Reaction is power under control. Overreaction is power without control. We can ascribe three main characteristics to the "classical" mentality. They are (1) anonymity, (2) structure, (3) subordination of the individual to the community. In lining up these characteristics we repeat the caution that they are largely a mental construct we put on the past. While they are verified, they are never found in an unmixed form. At the same time we want to avoid the idea that we are condemning the "classical" mentality. It is like pointing out a particular style of architecture that characterized a certain period in history. It is no reflection on the Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 355 genuinity of religious dedication in the past. Our contemporary "architecture" will become "classical" to the generations that follow us. The Reaction against Anonymity One of the reactions to what we called the classical mentality is the reaction against "being a nobody." It is a reaction against a certain kind of anonymity that was part of religious life. Perhaps anonymity is not the right word. In any case, the religious was not to call attention to himself as an individual. He was in a sense to " be a symbolic presence, where what he stood for shone through the individual characteristics. For this reason, particularly with religious women, the religious garb itself served an important function, not only in its positive value as sign, but also in what could be called a negative sense. Individual characteristics were "blacked out," very often to the point where only the face was visible. Whenever religious women today reminisce about the kind of clothes they used to wear, they usually do so with a mixture of humor, wonder, and relief, somewhat in the same way that children react to the old pictures in an album. However, when one realizes the thinking behind that manner of dress, it is not all that ridiculous. The dress was in some way to reduce what was purely individual in order to manifest the personal. Individual characteristics were suppressed to make room for what was beyond the individual. We are not calling for a return to those particular modes of dress. It is important, however, to understand the rationale behind them. The same thinking was behind the custom of changing one's name. When a religious gave up his family name and assumed a new name, this change was symbolic of a new mode of existence. This anonymity was a kind of a general condition in which religious, especially religious women, worked and lived. It monitored one's whole life. One's home, background, family, were kept hidden like a precious secret. We can all remember (except the ~,ery youngest of us) when one of the greatest childhood thrills was to discover the color of sister's hair, or to find out her real name. The cloister itself was a graphic symbol of this hiddenness. Today there is a strong reaction against any factor which is associated with anonymity. As HammarskjiSld observes in his diary, "Our final wish is to have scribbled off the wall our 'Kilroy was here.' " We all want to be recognized, not to be a nobody, but to be a somebody, and to have what we do acknowledged by others as our own work. Though we boast about our being able to go it alone, wo are very dependent on the recognition given us by others. No one can deny the value in such a reaction where it makes someone a more genuine person. Often, however, it results in making someone more of an individual, but less of a person. The difference between the individual and the personal is the difference in the color of one's eyes and the light in his eyes, or the shape of one's body and the genuineness of one's love. What is individual in us is (to use St. Paul's expression) the earthenware vessel in which we carry the personal. Where the individual is cultivated at the expense of the personal, we find something like those tiny Japanese trees which are very beautiful but unfruitful. While each of us has the temptation to sacrifice the person on the altar of the individual in us, the overreaction to the anonymity of the past has in many cases brought about a cult of individualism rather than a deepening of the personal. There is a difference between the liberation of the person and the liberation of what is individual in us. Often what passes for liberation of the personal.:in us is simply a disguised form of individualism. 356 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 Another aspect of this reaction against the anonymity of the past is evident in the strong movement to have a say in what is happening. In the past, religious, especially religious women, were to be seen, not heard. They never had a share in the decision-making in the parish, diocese, or Church. They were always obediently "there." Decisions from Rome, the Sacred Congregation of Religious, or the chancery office were accepted with unquestioning obedience, at least as far as execution was concerned. There was a certain mystique to the whole idea of authority in the Church. An interesting reaction has taken place, which in many instances has assumed the proportions of an overreaction. If in the past there was a mystique about authority, today there is a de-mystification of authority to the point where the very ¯ foundations of ecclesial authority are denied. Ecclesiastical authority, especially if it is of the unAmerican type, is relegated to something like baroque architecture, which is a relic of the past. In a very brief span of ten years, many religious, as individuals and as groups, have come of age, and issued their declaration of independence, often in the words dictated to them by some other authority. Chesterton's remark, though written decades ago, is apropos. He said: "Thousands of women rose up and said, 'We shall not be dictated to!' Then they sat down to be stenographers." It is unfortunate that an overreaction to a "classical" mode of exercising authority has led many to reject or to question the authority of the Church itself in matters touching their religious life. When this happens, another authority comes in to take the place of the one rejected. Nature abhors a vacuum. An authority vacuum is soon filled with another authority. Often the situation is like that described in the gospel, where seven devils enter who are worst than the first. In something of a similar vein, religious are feeling their "political oats." There is also a reaction to anonymity here. They are beginning to realize that they can and should have a voice in the affairs of the Church and society. Much of this is on the positive side of the ledger. There is a danger, however, that some may lose sight of the fact that a religious group does not exist primarily to exercise political pressures through the use of political tactics. Their political influence in fact is mainly exercised through witness to the gospel values in a manner which ve.ry often is incompatible with the strategies involved in politics. The Reaction against Structure We have commented on the imbalance that comes from an overreaction against a kind of "classical" arlonymity which we associate with religious life of the past. This same kind of a phenonmenon occurs in reaction to "structure." It is hard to pin down exactly what is contained in the word "structure?' Many use it in different ways. In any case, it seems to be loaded with many of the connotations we described as being part of the "classical" mentality. It conjures up spectres of impersonalism, inflexibility, regulation, and stereotype. In the past, at least in the case of many religious, practically every detail of their lives was regulated, the way they dressed, the order of the day, their manner of dealing with externs, their correspondence, and so forth. It is understandable that there should be a reaction to this type of regulation. But, as in the case with the reaction against anonymity, which has become the cult of the individual, here also the overreaction against structure has often turned into adolescent immaturity. There is almost an allergy to any type of regulation at all. Even language itself has to be purged of words that suggest anything like regulation. The word "rule" has Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 357 gone into the limbo of forbidden words and has been replace.d with safe words like "guidelines," "directives." As an overreaction to the regulation of everything, many are spastic about the regulation of anything. In many cases even the revised constitutions, the product of much work, prayer, study, discussion, are very careful to be "safe" in their terminology. Words that have any connotation of structure are carefully avoided. Very often these constitutions are written on the tide of overreaction and are careful to play down any idea of subordination of self to anything like structure. Yet it is a matter of common sense that structure is one of the components of growth that we spoke of earlier. It is like the branches of a tree through which the life flows to produce the fruit. Of course, structure without life is dead, and life without structure is aimless. Along with this reaction to overregulation, there is also the reaction to oversupervision. Some religious consider their duty is done if they "check in" occasionally to let superiors know what is happening. In many cases, superiors themselves have abdicated any real role of authority. They see their role only as serving as a kind of check point to keep the traffic running smoothly. These remarks should not be construed as hankering after the days of yore, where every detail in a person's life was regulated, and being an authority was identified with giving orders. They serve to point out a fact, however. Overreaction to that kind of a life has often resulted in a caricature not simply of religious life, but of any kind of life, which needs a certain structure and regulation if there is to be concerted work for a goal. The Reaction to Institution Along with the reaction against anonymity and structure, there is the reaction against institution. While this word is related to structure, when we use it here we are thinking of the corporate nature of the religious group. It takes into consideration the relationship of the part to the whole, and the whole to the part. We see the same phenomenon here that we have commented on above. There is a profound malaise with everything connoted" by the word "institutional." Once again, as a reaction against certain features of our institutional life, this movement can be very healthy. However, when it becomes an overreaction, the components of change begin to clash instead of supporting each other. One aspect of the reaction to "institution" is the movement to small commu-nities. It is an attempt to "de-institutionalize" one's life. It is too early to assess the results of this. In some cases, it has resulted in a more genuine community life, both within the small community, and in the relationship of the small community to all of the other communities. In other instances, the s~ into individuals who share the same rooms without sh~ As part of this reaction against institution, there i., vision of one's apostolate to one's personal career. apostolate of many religious communities has lost tl~ has been reduced for all practical purposes to a group own flight plans. The apostolates that have suffered areas, where hospitals and schools have closed and r facing an uncertain future, because they have no !~ whether religious will still be interested in such work. Now I feel I must tread where even angels fear religious garb. A few years ago (though it seems like a concerned with modifying the religious garb. Now it nail communities degenerate ing anything else. the tendency to narrow the is a great tragedy that the community dimension and individuals turning in their the most are those in rural aany others find themselves uarantee from year to year walk. It is the matter of ',entury) the discussions were a matter in many cases of 358 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 adoption of a mode of dress which in no way disti.nguishes a person as a religious. This is a very touchy subject. Though the question of clothing is trivial in itself when compared with values like faith and charity, it assumes in practice an importance out of all proportion to the fact that it is something extrinsic, while the other values are intrinsic. This phenomenon should already give us a hint concerning the nature of clothing. Clothes are never merely extrinsic. They are like the face. They mirror forth the person behind the face. We have been speaking of the reaction against anonymity, structure, and institution, where an overreaction results in individualism instead of personalism, fragmentation instead of integration, careerism instead of group apostolate. It seems that the question of clothing is of particular importance because it becomes as it were the symbol of the reaction against all of these classical features, not just against one of them. On the other hand, is it not possible that it has become an anti-symbol, where it symbolizes individualism, fragmentation, and careerism? We hope that, even though this is such a sensitive subject, most of us are beyond the stage where rational discussion is swallowed up in emotional reactions. We seem to have forgotten that the social sciences have given us much insight into the matter of clothes. All studies of human clothing point out the basic fact that clothes are not just things. They are part of the body-person, t Leaning on the research of the social sciences, we would like to comment on two aspects of clothing: what we wear gives visible shape to our inner attitude, and in turn what we wear shapes the attitudes. In both cases, this comes from the fact that clothes have a symbolic nature. Our inner attitudes are expressed in the way we speak, act, and dress. This is the law of our being. Human clothing is not just a protection against the elements. It forms an important link in that interlocking network of symbols in which we communicate with one another. Clothes are a function of meaning even more than words. They do in fact provide the light in which people interpret our words. We all recall the story of the Turkish astronomer in The Little Prince. No learned society accepted the report of his discovery of the new asteroid until he changed from Turkish clothes into European costume. Clothing, therefore, is never neutral. While this is true for every human being, it seems that it is especially true. for women. Clothes are not blank cartridges. When Judith prepared to meet Holofernes, she knew what every woman knows. Clothes are a manifestation of inner intentionality. The medium is the message. There are three levels of our existence, each of which is manifested by the way we dress. On the first level, clothes manifest our inner attitudes. On the second level, they manifest something more superficial, a job that we have, as we see in the uniform of a policeman, a soldier, a nurse. On the third and most profound level, they symbolize our meaning. A wedding dress, for example, is more than a symbol of an inner attitude, more than a uniform someone wears to get married. It symbolizes the meaning of a person's life, which from this point on is to be a life-with-another. The same is true of the vestments worn by the priest when he is celebrating. They symbolize more than a mentality. They are not a uniform used for worship. They serve to draw the worshippers into a new mode of existence. The symbolic aspect of clothing is obvious. There is another aspect of clothing, I see for example in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences the entries under "Dress," "Fashion," and so forth; see also: J. C. Flugel, The Psychblogy of Clothes (New York, 1950), and Mary Shaw Ryan, Clothing: A Study in Human Behavior (New York, 1966). Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/3 however, which we do not think about as often. Clotl as the saying goes, "clothes make the man." In a ge man more really than man makes the clothes. All psychologists, and for that matter anyone w aware that the most sure way to change a person's v the symbols which surround his life. A person's changing his ideas alone. The change comes fr( meaningful sense symbols which gradually change sudden a person finds himself thinking in a different way a person dresses affects the way he thinks. self-image; they create it. Clothes are like reflectors. are, but they also act as reflectors in which we see of what we see. It is of great importance for religious to avail the~ matter of clothing provided by the social scientists. 0 that clothes are a way of speaking. The question to be To what extent should what I wear speak to others' inner character, or my job, or my meaning? Similarb psychological effect that clothes have on our thinking" Let us sum up our remarks for this first part. We r~ growth depend on the harmonious interworking of t many cases we saw th, at these components, insteac ended up in antagonistic positions. This can be trace overreaction to what is called a classical mentality. Ma from reaction, but where reaction gets out of bound: frustrate progress. We pointed out three areas in whi have been particularly strong: against anonymity, : nature of religious life which we globally describ~ commented on the fact that attitudes toward, religi influenced by the same type of reaction. The Loss of Shared Values and Shared Vision We mentioned above that the components of c! synthesis through shared faith and shared values. Whe works and lives at cross purposes. They are like rowe trying to row in his own direction. There is no doubt that the atmosphere of seculari~ and hearts of many religious. This is a process of h that are distinctively Christian are leveled to a vague, h betterment. Those values of the gospel which are rationalistic mind and sinful nature are de-scandaliz~ categories of relevance. Those gospel values which res Such are the scandal of the cross, the virtues of h~ renuntiation, repentance, and penance. In some cases secularization has not only de-Christ: even infected the ideas that some religious have about To all appearances some religious seem to have lost the Sometimes the gospel values crystalized in the tra chastity, poverty, and obedience, are lost in the perf~ vows is "updated" into some more meaningful an~ 359 es not only manifest the man; luine sense, clothes make the no knows human nature, are ,hole personality is to change character is not changed by ,m the pressure exerted by the concepts, until all of a way than he did before. The They not only express his ['hey not only reflect what we urselves and assume the shape tselves of the insights into the ne cannot avoid the basic fact answered by everyone is this: ' Should clothes manifest my ,, we have to be aware of the entioned that all progress and ~e components of growth. In of supporting one another, at least in great part, to an ny positive features can come ~ it delivers ultimatums which .~h this overreaction see.ms to ;tructure, and the corporate d ds institution. Finally we ~us garb are to "some extent ~ange are kept in a healthy a these are lost, a community rs in a boat, each of whom is ation has infected the mind~ arizontalization where values umanistic concern for human a perennial scandal to the d and adapted to the bland st adaptation are abandoned. ~nility, docility, abnegation, anized the gospel, but it has God, Christ, and the Church.

Issue 36.6 of the Review for Religious, 1977. ; REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS IS edited by faculty members of St Louis UmversLty, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building, 539 North Grand Boule-vard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copyright © 1977 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $2.00. Subscription U.S.A. and Canada: $7.00 a year; $13.00 for two years; other dountries, $8.00 a year, $15.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Dattiel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Robert Williams, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor November 1977 Volume 36 Number 6 Renewals, new subscriptions, and changes of address should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Correspondence with the editor and the associate editor together with manuscripts and books for review should be sent to REWZW FOa REL~CIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boule-yard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. (;allen, S.J.; St. Joseph's College; City Avenue at 54th Street; Philadelphia, Pennsyl-vania 19131. My Son's "Hour" by Virginia Ann Gardner, S.S.J.1 who shares via dramatic mono!ogue memories ---of others' contemplations and her own-- in an interview with Mary about 1Sister Virginia Ann resides at 517 East 26th Sty; Erie, PA 16504. I. The Marriage Feast at Cana Now that I think about it, my Son's hour had a special kind of beginning at Cana. Chesterton once said, "There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied--it was his mirth." That is so true it makes me smile. You would have to admit the gospels show little if any of the Alleluia that Augustine said a Christian should be from head to foot. But the evangelists had so much to tell--and, besides, when they were writing, trying to catch the memory of Jesus in words, they knew little mirth themselves. They knew only urgency as they watched Christians pay the price of Love. Little won-der they record no mirth, no laughter, no sign of human joy. Yet, from the beginning, marriage feasts have been symbols of celebra-tion. One finds few somber wedding guests--ever. And so it was at Cana! We had gone to Cana together--Jesus and his new friends, strong, simple men full of the love of life. Cana was filled with mirth and laughter and the warmness of love shared. 817 I~11~ / Revie,w for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 Then, strange that I should have noticed, I read the concern on servant faces: all jugs of wine were empty. It struck a sympathetic chord and I turned to Jesus: "They have no wine," I said. It was just a simple remark--nothing more; the observation of some-thing that would bring embarrassment. It was the way anyone would say, "What a pity!"; or, "Isn't that a shame!"---and wish that you could help. You know, if I were to orchestrate a symphony, I'd compose the Marriage Feast of Cana in a major key of sheer joy--until we knew "there was no wine." But when my son responded, "Woman, what is that to you and to me, my hour is not yet come?"--then, I'd have tympanums clap and cymbals clang; I'd deafen ears with the roar of drums. It would be a haunt-ing interlude--repeated often during the symphony to record in sound the history of an hour that began at Cana. Jesus called me Woman. Strange. Did he mean it as a call to sacrifice --a call to live what women through the years have lived? "She is such a woman," we say--and mean there is nothing small about her; she does not stoop to smallness; she endures. Still, it startled me, much as Gabriel had some thirty years before, with--"Rejoice, O highly favored daughter!" Then Jesus spoke again, "What is that to you and to me?" Was he calling me to translate and respond? Translation revealed everything: He meant: were he to act, the act would be but a first on the way to his hour. "My hour has not yet come," he had said. Someone has called its dis-cernment~ etermining the will of God. At Nazareth I had "wondered and was troubled," I even questioned Gabriel. I did not unders.tand. At Cana there was no wonder, no question. I knew! And I said to the servants: "Do whatever he tells you." Yes, I answered~knowing full well "what it meant to Jesus and to me." We would be parted. I would be alone --and where Jesus was, what he would be doing, I would not know. You see, at Cana we shared discernment: His Father willed that his hour should begin. A mother, someone has said, is a lover--a lover who gives of herself and then pushes the loved .one away, both the child and herself enriched. I loved my son; I had given him myself; I had taught him human ways of talking, walking, laughing. At Cana I pushed that loved one away so that he could tell others what to do. The pushing hurt. But long ago I had vowed: "Be it done unto me according to Thy will." Corita says, "To celebrate is to tell who we are and to say yea cere-moniously." That is what my son and I did together at Cana. I spoke my last recorded words: "Do whatever he tells you." My last recorded words! They began my son's hour. John tells it in his Gospel. You'll read it all in John, and only there. Yes, we had looked forward to Cana. We had not known what the Father would ask. He asked me to be woman; He asked for an hour to be-gin; and on that day my son and I, together, shared a fiat. My Son's "Hour" / 8"19 II. Good Friday Evening Now I knew. Now I understood. Scripture had unfolded. It was like hearing that symphony played--one I had studied the score for but had never heard. "Oh, so that's how it goes! It's lovely and aweful." John had come for me--telling me Jesus' hour had come. I knew it of course. I'd known it since that day in Cana. Lovers aren't aware of time. Days, months, years telescoped. I had said my fiat to this hour thirty-three years ago, but thenwI did not understand. It's like writing something or clinging to an idea you don't understand until later. The unknown is diffi-cult, but it's good for you too. How hard it would have been to live those thirty-three years with what I know now! But at Cana the hour moved both Jesus and me at once. We knew. I did not need to speak for him to hear me, because we were both hearing with our hearts then; and we had both said yes. With Jesus it was always yes. I guess it was with me too---because the Father helped me, the Spirit moved within me--and I said yes ceremoniously to the God of my life. I think the Father saw "that it was good." Since then, since Cana, time has dragged and sped. I've heard so many things about my son. Sometimes what I've heard pierced--and I'd remem-ber Simeon. Sometimes, though, my heart quickened. People would tell me of his life, his compassion--and I'd go back to our Nazareth days, days shared with Joseph. But John came--a humbled "son of thunder." I understood. I loved him for it, and.I went with him. Jesus came stumbling up the road---carry-ing that cross. My heart broke; it broke. But even then I understood. You don't live trusting all those years without the courage to be strong. Then Jesus saw me. I extended no veil. I did not weep. I gave him all I could. His Father, my Father, erased from my eyes all pain. Once again, I did not have to speak for him to hear me: "It's all right, Jesus; no, don't worry about me. Your hour has come. I understand." His glance meeting mine spoke too. It was almost as though he tried to smile, and console me, saying, "It's not bad, not bad at all. Don't worry, Mother." Role pl~ying? You call that role playing? Putting on a masque? No, not at all. Me? I call it gift--my last gift to him. My son, who had emptied himself to take on the masque of humanity, would understand. Emptied him-self. I'm told that is the way Paul wrote it. I like the way another has put it: "Poured himself out." That is how I see his hour that started at Cana and became a free accepted death-act on Calvary. Hearing iron strike iron was such a familiar sound to me! My husband was a carpenter and he'd taught my Son. Part of the price of that hour was the giving up of sounds, sounds that brought back "homey" memories. Strength was God's gift to me; but because he is all knowing, and because he is everything my Son had revealed, I knew he'd understand that ever since that hour, I've been very sensitive to iron striking iron. ~i20 Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 Three hours is not so long a time. It took us longer to get to Bethlehem --and much longer to Egypt---but no time was longer in all my life than those three Friday-hours. His hour was never so long in coming. My heart still shares that pain as I watch loved ones die--loved ones am(~ng my chil-dren now on earth. My children? Yes, my children. During my son's hour he gave me as Mother to all children of all time and all places. Strange! I had given birth to Jesus for one reason: so that he might be shared with all people of all time and all places. In the greatest hour of that sharing, he too shared me-- with John, and in John, you. At Cana, I spoke my last recorded words, "Do whatever he tells you." In one of my Son's last words, he tells you to take me as your Mother. His hour had come and he gave up~no---he didn't give up, he poured out his Spirit. It was that Spirit that had filled me years ago--and once again--this time eternally, I prayed my fiat and you became my Spirit-child. Now share your Brother's hour caught eternally in time. His hour is here! With him, pour yoursel[ out. III. Holy Saturday "Great will be his dignity." I had pondered those words in my heart for thirty-three years: while arranging the straw in the stable-manager; while fleeing in fear to Egypt; as I stood before the prophet Simeon. They came back with new poignancy during the donkey-pageantry in Jerusalem--and five days later when I saw Jesus' bloodied eyes neath his thorned-crown. Then, as I prepared his bruised body for burial, as I washed his wounds, and Joseph (how good his name was Joseph!) helped me with the linen shroud, I thought of them again. It would have been easy to be cynical but I had watched my son die; and I heard him forgive his crucifiers. Yes, I had heard him cry, "Father, forgive." And I heard him call me Woman. Could the dignity he called me to in that name ever match the dignity of his forgiving love? My sagging shoulders had straightened and John had helped me back to the Upper Room. On our way, John and I said the first Stations--back-wards. I made John show me the Praetorium and take me to Gethesmane. John cried, remembering his sleep. And he told me all my Son had said and done in the upper chamber. It was not the time to speak to him of symphony, but I tried to comfort John; he was young and the day had been agony for him, I knew. Then I withdrew. I cried my tears alone. The Father watched and con-soled me. Jesus had wept at Lazarus' tomb; and Jesus had said just a few hours earlier: "Who sees me, sees the Father." Tears, I knew, were some-thing the Father understood. I let them come. What had happened to my mother-hope? "Great would be his dignity. He will be called Son of the Most High. He will rule forever in a reign My Son's "Hour" / 821 without end." Gabriel had told me that. It was a message from the Father. Let me tell you--that night there was within me a whisper of despair, Was it, I wondered, a whisper my son knew too when I heard him call: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Faith is not faith, we're told, until it has been tested. That night, my faith knew its greatest test. And yet something still stirred within me--and I endured. I waited through that long, long vigil--clinging hard to mother-hope and to the patience I had learned from waiting for his hour. I knew--no, I did not know; I hoped that his hour had not ended. I fell asleep saying, "Lord, I believe; help . . . help thou my unbelief." IV. Resurrection If "appearing" means "closeness," there was no need for my Risen Son to come to me. Together or apart-~I live in him and know his closeness. The time after Cana had taught me that. Then, I had thought Jesus' mission would ask for separation--a typical human fear, I know---but the Father was good. Just as the Incarnation had never separated Son from Father, so Jesus' leaving home kept us still united. With him, I was doing the Father's will, and the Father asked that I share him with the world. I shared, and lost nothing. Jesus had said the one who best does the will of his Father--is his mother and father and sister and brother. People pitied me when he said that. They needn't. He was really saying I was more than mother to Jesus. His Father willed it so and I accepted that will. Thomas Merton, in writing about me, once explained how I felt, "I was glad because He was glad and for no other reason." I say all this so you'll understand: it was not necessary for my Risen Son to appear to me. All that mattered was that I believed and he knew I did. Ignatius Loyola had loved me, so he insisted that Jesus appeared to me first. I never admitted that--even to Ignatius; nor shall I admit it to you. Yes, you like the poem that tells I had gathered herbs and had them ready for Jesus' Easter breakfast. You like to think that, while apostles hud-dled in fear, while women wondered "who will roll back the stone," and Magdalen searched the garden--I was calmly fixing those herbs. I'm sorry. That is like a little jewel---a pretty thought. I cannot say it's more. John, whom Jesus had given me as son, was exhausted when he'd finished his memories of Jesus. '"There are still many other things that Jesus did," he wrote, admitting the world would not have books enough to record them. Some things must wait 'til heaven-~else why have faith? I say, then, to you--perhaps I saw my risen son on Easter; perhaps, as it will be for you, that vision came only ~at death. It matters not. The important thing is Christ had died; Christ is risen. I believed and, so, my child, must you. I promise though, that sometime when we meet in heaven, we'll talk about this if you want. But then I doubt if it will matter. You'll Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 understand when your believing is no longer necessary, for Christ will come again. Wo Dialogue with Mary at 55-~ I was not so old the day Christ died So young I was the night I gave him birth. But when they pulled that spear from out his side No one was quite so old on all this earth. You remember that poem, do you? It's true--I was older at 55. Mothers share the lives of their children and my Child had become sin. I think I can say he had become the sin of all my children; he had taken on himself your sin--with that of all the others. Sin ages one. Faith on Good Friday didn't save me from feeling the weight of all those sins. And with Jesus, I forgave all those engaged in sin's tragedy until the end of time. I forgave y6u--and loved you in my Son. But all this took its toll. Yes, I was older at 55. The death-resurrection act was almost ten years old then. John and I shared a home and much more besides. He had begun his Gospel and he'd leave parts with me when he. went on his journeys. I would read them in the quiet evenings pondering each word in my heart; it would take me weeks to read my son's "last discourse." All the apostles would come to see me--come home, tired, from their journeys. Luke came too--our cousin, constantly asking questions about the early life of Jesus. I loved to share my memories. They had become very precious to me---forming a tapestry now--and even Golgotha brought peace. I had lived my own "healing of memories." Things were different after Pentecost. The Holy Spirit that had come upon me long years ago came to all the apostles--filling them with the Love that had given me the courage of my years. All minutes were precious to me but when one of the apostles would return, and I'd send word to the neighbors, and we'd break bread together, keeping my son's new Covenant --then, I find it hard to tell you what I knew. I don't mean that I didn't feel his Spirit with me always. It was just that I'd experience my pre-Bethlehem days again. Jesus was within me--no longer an unborn infant, but my mature son--and we'd share together all we once did not understand. That knowledge and that wisdom were caught in heartbeats of Love. Then I'd be ready to go to the well again and listen to the gossip of the women. Christians, they would say, "are changing the face of the earth." 2The author herselt' is 55. My Son's'",Hour" / 823 Some were not eager for that change. It exacted a heavy toll, I know. But filled with the Spirit the Father sent me one spring evening--and my risen son sent to the whole world--I could look at each woman with such love that she too could respond with openness to that Spirit. You would have liked my life at 55. Did I long for heaven? I longed, my child, only to do God's will. If ever the Father had been very fond of anyone, he'd been fond of me. I wanted to return that fondness--without anxiety. The Trinity lived within me. I was content to do the Father's will. I don't mean that I didn't feel the cross of separation. I was human-- very human, and I longed for reunion with my parents, with Elizabeth, with Joseph. But it was comforting to know they were all with God. We'd be together again--all of us in his good time and that would mean for eternity. And I said once more to the Father; Behold the handmaid of the Lord Be it done unto me according to your will. Amen! .O Till I Begin I did not understand till I had begun to know. I did not find You, You found me; a small and melancholy st6ne to be carried in Your pocket, till I begin to wear, to shine, till I am brushed to a smooth and faultless final core. Stephanie E. WeIler 1030 East Washington St. Iowa City, lowa 52240 Dread (the Dark Night) and Christian Transformation Leslie Lund Miss Lund is presently working on her thesis to complete her work towards an M.A. degree in Religious Studies at Gonzaga University in Washington; her interest is in spirituality. She resides at E. 945 Nora, 4~4; Spokane, WA 99207. It is difficult to be living an authentic, deep Christian life without shortly running up against the cross, the "dark night" (St. John of the Cross), the "cloud of unknowing" (14th-century anonymous Christian mystic), or "diminishment" (Teilhard de Chardin). I will lump all such terms, and the experience they attempt to express, under the catch-all word, dread. These elements of suffering and diminishment (dread, as we may now call it) are not peculiar to Christianity, and neither is mystical experience itself. Such experiences are not in themselves a good. Dread is not to be sought for its own sake. We are not stoics or modern existentialists or Buddhists --but Christians--and this article cannot be read outside the total Christian perspective. Christians may not affirm or emphasize the negative aspects of spiritual growth to the exclusion of ultimate Christian hope, fulfillment, the restoration of all things in Christ. It is my hope, lest distortion arise, that this focus will be kept clearly in mind throughout the article until its final elaboration in the concluding pages. The Paschal Mystery is diminishment, yes, but it is transfiguration. It is the cloud, but it is truth and light. It is the dark night of the soul, but it is union. It is the cross, but it is, ultimately, the resurrection. Though there may be a number of different levels or nuances to dread, in this paper I will be dealing with a very specific understanding of it. The focus will be on religious dread, though to accentuate its particular qualities 824 Dread and Christian Transformation I Will at first show religious dread in counterdistinction to an existentialist conception of dread. There are a variety of states of dread, even within the religious context, so to further narrow the topic, this article will concern itself with the religious dread experienced in serious prayer (desert prayer or contemplative prayer-~-the "dark night of the soul" in John of the Cross). For a representative understanding of this state of dread I will use the l~anguage and thought of a "classical" contemplative, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and also of a modern contemplative, Thomas Merton (from his book, Contemplative Prayer, in which the topic of dread is dis-cussed in some depth). Dread Dread is a basic, and common, human experience, and as such, it is a theme that recurs in literature, psychology, philosophy and theology. For the philosopher Kierkegaard, dread could also be set within a religious context. But even so, generically it can be described as a condition or state of being that comes before and precipitates a choice (leap) from one period of life to another. Dread, then, involves the awful possibility of freedom, for it forces the choice for or against new realities or potentialities. This state of freedom and new choices is recognized as very painful by existentialist philosophers, but Kierkegaard believed one could be delivered from it by making a leap, a commitment to the "objective uncertainty." The leap is the leap of faith.1 The choice is painful because it is made in regard to the unknown and undeterminable, and hence to what is both attractive and fascinating, but revolting and frightening. It is a very uncomfortable sit-uation, marking the end of self-complacency and the beginning of some-thing new. Let us further define dread. Christians, along with existentialists, can describe it as a state of anguish, alienation, and insecurity. It also includes a recognition of the limits of reason (the experience of "absurdity" for the existentialist), though for the Christian this does not therefore imply that what is is meaningless, but rather, that the meaning escapes the power of haman reason, and lies beyond the self in the.transcendent mystery of God. However, religious dread includes attributes or nuances beyond "sec-ular" dread. It includes for the Christian also the awareness of sinfulness, wandering, exile, Iostness (Exodus themes). This state Merton describes as ". death--a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance.''~ The person can experience an acute, sense of his own uselessness and worthlessness. This experience and awareness of the self is particularly painful, though for tThe similarity of this secular view of dread with our religious dread, and what it means in a Christian context will come Clear, hopefully, a little later. 2Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969), p. 34. ~196 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 the Christian this pain does not drive him to self-sufficiency in setting up the self as the center of its universe, but on the contrary, pushes him towards God as the center and meaning of his being. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing makes this statement about the experience of nothingness, self and sinfulness: Then will come a time when he recognizes in that nothingness no particular s'in but only the lump of sin itself which, though but a formless mass, is none other than himself; he sees that in himself it is the root and pain of original sin.a ; Rephrased for 6ur own time we might call this an understanding of the experience of self-worship, with the accompanying experience of this false self as the root of sin, darkness, emptiness and alienation. Our anonymous author also wrote that to feel one's own existence, which is'the content of our modern word "dread," is the greatest suffering possible. ". he alone understands the deep universal reason for sorrow who ex.periences that he is."4 It is more terrible than any other type or level Of experienced isolation and separation. Within the experience itself often comes the realization that this must be what hell is like. And with it also comes the temptation to despair at ever being healed or delivered from it and froha the burden of self. That we are as we are (separated existence) is the source of our deep anguish. The illusion that brings the agony is the failure to experience God in one's own being. Instead, one experiences his .being apart from God. For as often as he would have a true knowing and feeling of God in purity of spirit ¯. and then feels that he cannot--for he constantly finds his knowing and feeling as it were occupied and filled with h foul, stinking lump of himself., he almost despairs for the sorrow that he feels, weeping, lamenting, writhing, and blaming himself. In a word, he feels the burden of himself so tragically that he no longer cares about himself if only he can love God? This is the fundamental cause of this type of dread, though there are other corollaries and ramifications. The alienation that causes the anguish is more than a sense of being a useless, unnecessary, ephemeral being, and includes a profound experience of being separated from God, all men, and even from the self. This gives rise to acute feelings of insecurity, for not only can we not control God, we are even powerless to control or to be reconciled to ourselves. We discover we have nothing and are nothing by ourselves. This period of dread is a time when faith is seriously challenged (as is everything that has ultimate value and meaning in the Christian's life). The fear is great that faith will be lost or abandoned, and that the see,rningly absurd and meaningless, or even despair, will be embraced instead. The aThe Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counseling, ed. by William Johnston (Garden City: Doubleday, 1973), p. 137. 41bid., p. 103. 5lbid., p. 104. Dread and Christian Transformation entire process of dread is a crucible of honesty, where truth is almost experienced as the enemy because of the pain it causes. One sees too clearly his own unfaithfulness and dishonesty in regard to Truth, especially as it involves the truth of his own life. The existentialists coined the phrase "bad faith" which is descriptive of the awareness that one is capable of, or has been living his life untruthfully, that one has not been true to God, to his fellow man or even to himself. One perceives that he may have been living contrary to the truth of his own call or condition. Indeed, truth itself is questioned. Old ideals and values lose their certainty. There is the suspicion that one may have set himself up as the standard of truth, or there is the temptation to do so if truth is not so certain for him. Deep down, far back in the mind there are demands or calls or possi-bilities that are only dimly and faintly recognized. Failure to respond to, or even examine them, haunts and produces a sense of failure and guilt. Somewhere there is a stubborn, defiant refusal to be all one can be. Every-thing feels illusory and slippery, and out of control, and this gives rise to panic. We "want out," we want to escape the condition, but we do not know what we want instead or where to go. The experience of rebellion and anger are overwhelming at times. We experience, too, a deep hatred for God and for ourselves. God is like a "monkey on our back"--an ever constant and annoying affliction that we cannot get rid of, Like Jeremiah we feel angry at being tricked and duped (20:7). This kind of relatedness to God is not at all what we expected. The spiritual understandings and com-forts of the past have vanished. We are comfortless. To pray is nearly impossible, if not impossible. Gone will be your new fervor, but gone, too, your ability to meditate as you had long done before. What then? You will feel as if you had fallen somewhere between the two ways having neither, yet grappling'for both.6 Not prayer, or mass, or confession, or any fulfillment of the "law" can take the dread away, or bridge the gap between God and the false self. The schism between this self and all that is seems infinite. The self is seen as bankrupt and barren, and the ha~-dness of heart, selfishness, and self-cen-teredness make us recoil in disgust and near despair. "I am gall, I am heartburn, God's most deep decree. Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me.''7 But still there is the clinging to the illusory false self for fear that if we let go of even that miserable possession we will have nothing and be nothing. God could not be so audacious as to demand that from us! Even though it is seen that this clinging to the false self causes our spiritual 6lbid., p. 143. 7Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 62. 1~21~ / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 "sickness" and estrangement between God and self, still the all important, confused "I" remains th~ center of worship, and without the grace of God it can never be otherwise. The alienation is truly terrible, for it is not estrangement from the abstract, transcendent God of the philosophers, but is estrangement with the All and the ground of our own being. This point being re~iched in the ¯ dread of contemplative prayer, nothing is more terrible than the suffering of emptiness at the prospect of living without God, though the ambivalence of attraction and fear is again experienced--the proverbial "I can't live with him, and I can't live without him." At this point comes the temptation to believe that not even God can be what is needed, that not even he can fill the void, indeed, that he could not be the revelation of love of Jesus, but is instead, uncaring and disfant. "Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, how wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost?.-8 But there is a worse temptation. Maybe He does not exist at all;. and everything is meaningless. Though at first the struggle may be fierce and intense, strug-gling to fight back the chaos, finally one ". loses even the power to struggle._ _He feels himself ready to sink and drown in doubt and despair."9 Transformation While a description of dread needed to be set fo~-th, let us be reminded that this diminishment and apparently disintegrative condition is not the total picture, Much more is happening simultaneously. Does this most horrible of human experiences have a positive value for Christians? What is th,.e. "much more" that is happening? At bottom, it is all the mystery of the transforming cross, and since Christians are used to paradox, it should not be surprising that those who have come through dread speak of it as a "blessed gift." "God in his mercy protects the contemplative in this way, though some foolish neophytes will think he has turned enemy to them.''1° There are several approaches that can be taken in response to the process of dread. One can insulate himself from it by retreating into illu-sions of the world,, getting involved in society's concerns and structures, or in general, by just keeping busy and blocking out any interiority. Or, as many are saying today, one can escape it by "going through it." Thomas Merton wrote that the "chief service of the monk was not only silence, listening, and questioning, but was also b~ing open and exposed to dread."~ Those who are serious about their prayer and faith life, and gradual transformation into Christ, face, and even embrace, the crucible of dread, Slbid., p. 67. 9Merton, op. cit., p. 99. ~°The Cloud of Unknowing, p. 145. ~Merton, op. cit., p. 25. Dread and Christian Transformation / 829 and allow themselves to experience it totally. This is not done stoically. It is not done lightly. There is resistance, for Christians are not masochists; they always struggle against evil. It is the "If it is possible let this cup pass--not my will, but Yours" prayer of Jesus. Even the decision to go through this process is a mystery, and is often not even articulated at the conscious level. There is the sense of continually "letting go" and sub-mitring to the process and moving in the darkness and uncertainty, but if the question were put, "Why are you doing this?" probably no satisfactory answer could be given. This should not be a worry, and can be taken as a sign that it is an authentic transforming process, for it is not something we do to ourselves, rather it is something done to us with which we cooperate. It is the desert experience of the young Israel. Nothing is certain. Help, if it comes at all, comes only at the eleventh hour, barely in the nick of time. It is a period of trials and collapses. But it is the fruitful time of formation (as it was for Israel) and, it was, as it still is, the movement towards the Promised Land. There does not seem to be much of a choice once the process has started. It appears that God has forced us into a radical decision. (In The Book of Revelation he spits out the lukewarm.) We must make a choice. We are forced (as our existentialist writer, Kierkegaard, observed we would be). This makes us angry. We want to sit in the middle, but must choose the dread with its seemingly horrible emptiness and darkness (though we somehow s.uspect: accompanying growth and maturity) or withdraw and drop out of the process, letting ourselves become trapped in our own illusions and immaturity. Our Catholic tradition has always placed a value on suffering (more often than not a distorted value) and somewhere along the way we have all heard that this diminishment is a necessary factor in spiritual growth. If it is the authentic process, and not a pseudo one that we bring or put on ourselves, this can be so, and our faith can be deepened. Merton must be read in context, but he also puts it this way, ". full maturity of the spiritual life cannot be reached unless we first pass through the dread, anguish, trouble, and fear that accompany the inner crisis of spiritual death, where we abandon attachment to our exterior self and surrender completely to Christ.''12 Attributes of Transformation It is time to take up a description of the attributes that the transformation process of dread can accomplish. It brings about many spiritual benefits and new dispositions. Since it threatens faith, it also changes it and deepens it. The doubt and despair serve to purify faith and destroy some of the more human elements of it (i.e., the need for certainty, and a correspondence to t2lbid., p.110. Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 one's way of looking at reality, etc.). It is not what it was before. It takes on new dimensions and powers. We can finally experience the very "dearest freshness deep down" of things that Hopkins wrote of in his poem "God's Grandeur." Some time during the process of dread we become more comfortable with it, i.e., with the uncertainty, darkness and emptiness. The dread has moved us mysteriously beyond the need for consolations or gratification of immediate desires, or need to control what is. The process has the power to radically alter attitudes, and once the person has been emptied and humbled through this process that is beyond his control, he can be filled with Christ-like attitudes. His stance before God can include such attributes as opennes, s, pliableness, purity of heart, dependence, defenselessness, emptiness, hopefulness, truthfulness and gratitude. One becomes receptive to the fullness of God through the process. As was mentioned earlier, it is definitely not a time to be trying to regain self-possession, nor is it a time to be making new resolutions. However, it is a time of surrender and a time of letting go of the control and direction of one's life, and of giving it trustingly into the hands of the Lord who has been in charge of the process all ~along. It is the moment to depend only on him and his grace. Again, the experience of dread forces honesty.'It makes us evaluate our commitments and motives and beliefs at a much deeper level. It surfaces questions to ask ourselves that we could not have asked before. It is a blessed time when we come to encounter our real selves, to get to know that person we truly are. It also destroys false conceptions of God, and reveals him as he is in himself. The authentic process reveals sham and posturing. It gets us down to rock bottom. It does not allow hypocrisy, and false religiosity. It makes clear our illusions, idolatries and addictions. It is the experience of being the broken clay pot, for it takes awhy our sense of self-possession or assurance. And though we can often be worried that the dread takes us only more deeply into ourselves, or gets us caught up in the trap of constantly taking our own emotional and spiritual pulses, in the end, the process takes us out of ourselves. The experience, in dread, of alienation becomes trans-formed into a great recognition, need and desire for reconciliation and union with God and our fellow man. It is said that God tests those he loves. This is scarcely of any comfort in the darkest hours of dread, and it is in no way adequate for describing the mystery of the process, but there is some truth to it. The process is a gift of God's enigmatic mercy, and it is God's work, not ours. (In the more traditional vocabulary it is known as passive purification.) Only the false self is destroyed and emptied, but to make room for the Christ-self. Re-men~ ber, we are not masochists or stoics or manicheans--but Christians, for whom each individual, including the self, is precious, not evil. But the true Christ-self cannot be happy or full apart from God, and it is the process Dread and Christian Transformation of dread that intensifies and deepens this realization. The Paschal Mystery is the dialectic that accomplishes this. Thomas Merton writes, This alternation of darkness and light can constitute a kind of dialogue between the Christian and God, a dialectic that brings us deeper and deeper to the conviction that God is our all. By such alternations we grow in detachment and in hope.~3 Our anonymous writer of The Cloud of Unknowing teaches that this is God's way of preparing, educating, and forming us through the alternation of hiS presence and absence. "As often as he goes, he will come back. And if you will suffer itall with gentle love, ea+h coming will be more marvelous and more joyful than the last.''14 In the process, doubt becomes faith. Despair becomes hope. The chaos and confusion become liberating and freeing. Hatred and anger mellow to gratitude and love. Rebellion becomes surrender. Peace comes in the com-mitment of the self to the loving will of God, and in the death of the false self comes the resurrection of the new Christ-self. The language and purpose of contemplative ~lread has a Pauline cast to it. The dread becomes the process in which the incomplete, false self dies so that the true self can come to be. It is "terrible" as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing calls it, but it is the work of love, nonetheless. The false old self dies, but this can be a joyous death for the Christian, for it is really the fulness of being. Therefusal to participate in this "work of love" results in a self that remains separated and isolated from the ground of its be!ng, God. To choose the destruction of the false self is necessary for the life of the true, resurrected self. It is to reject the illusions of the idolatry of the self. It is to truly believe at last that one is only himself when he is in union with God. "This simple awareness of my being is all I desire, even though it must bring with it the painful burden of self and make my heart break with weeping because I experience only self and not God. I prefer it with its pain., for this suffering will set me on fire with the loving desire to experience God as he really is.''15 Thus the author of The Cloud of Unknowing realizes that the suffering he.endures is really not hell at all "but his purgatory,.''16 He instructs the reader to not be troubled if his emotions or imagination tempt him to give up, for the prize is near. He asks simpl3i that a gift of the self be made as it is, to God as he is. Further, he counseis that there is no need, no matter ho.w it seems, for fear or panic or discoiaragement. His understanding is that it is a time to suffer humbly, waiting patiently in trust. For we do not know what is best for ourselves, but God, in his love and mercy, uses dread to bring us to his fuiness. God is audacious for us, and the process is nothing less than a total metamorphosis. "Now you are on what I might call a sort ~albid., p. 35. t4The Cloud of Unknowing, p. 184. 151bid., p. 174. ~lbid., p. 137. ~132 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 of spiritual ocean, in voyage from the rife of the flesh to the life in the spirit."~7 Though the author of The Cloud of Unknowing refers to this dread as a "hell of purgatory," a twelfth-century Cistercian monk, Isaac of Stella, refers .to it as a "hell of mercy." This is an even more powerful and rich notion. Here I quote the passage surrounding the idea of the "hell of mercy," for it very much embodies the reason and purpose of dread, that is, to destroy the false self, so that the Christ-self can be resurrected, and receive God himself. It also makes clear the concept of purification, not as punishment, but as a gift and work of Love. This passage must be read in the context of the total Christian dimension of diminishment and restora-tion, of cross but resurrection. It is too powerful and beautiful to para-phrase, so I leave it as it was written: "So let us be cruel and harsh for ourselves. I mean for the exterior man, so that we not offend the judge of both the interior and exterior man. If we accuse ourselves in all truth; if we judge ourselves with severity; if we condemn ourselves in harshness, we will not have to fear another accuser; nor will we have to be afraid to meet or confront another judge, or to have to endure or submit ourselves to another chastiser. What do we look for--pleasure or rest? We are on the cross. Or rather, we were in the world; we are in hell-- but a hell of mercy, not of wrath; we shall be in heaven. In the world, we sinned; here, we make atonement; there, we shall rest. There, we were in pleasures; here, in pain and tribulation; there, we will be in glory. There, we were in the dirt; here, we are in purification; there, we shall be in peace. "So let the Father be the Father of our souls and the chastiser of our bodies. Be he the Father of the Son of God in us. Be he the one who feeds and nourishes, the pedagogue and teacher, as long as childhood lasts, for him who i~ the future heir, and who as son, will dwell in his house forever. Be he for the son of man (man) theone who bruises and who humiliates, the one who betrays and seduces, the one who takes everything away, the one who crucifies and buries. If he neglects to act this way towards us, let us be ourselves the murderers of the son of man (man), but feeders and nurturers of the Son of God within us, so that he grow and become un-surpassed, or, as the apostle says, until Christ is formed in us, and we attain the perfect man in the fullness of Christ, who with the Father and Spirit reigns forever.''~8 In this same vein, though.from a different age and manner of expression, Thomas Merton also sums up the real value of dread, "The purpose of the dark night., is not simply to punish and afflict the heart of man, but to liberate, to purify and to eialighten in perfect love. The way that leads through dread goes not to despair but to perfect joy, not to hell but to heaven."19 171bid., p. 184. 181saac de L'Etoile, Sermons (Paris, 1974). pp. 148, 150, 152. ~aMerton, op. cit., p. 110. Celibate Friendship: Illusion and Reality Thomas Dubay, S.M. Father Dubay, well known to our readers, presently devotes his time to lectures, retreats and chapter consultations for religious and priests. He resides at the Marist Administration Center; 4408 8th St., N.E.; Washington, DC 20017. No finite reality is adequately understood except in terms of its context. Even the God of revelation presents himself in Scripture in the context of a created world. The individual person is understood against the back-ground of his family, and social problems are evaluated in terms of the milieu in which they occur. A sentence is grasped only within its paragraph and the paragraph within the entire article. The classical example of this truth is the biblical statement, "there is no God." This is understood only with the words that precede it: "the fool says in his heart that . " Celibate friendship can be understood only in terms of a complete pic-ture of the raison d'6tre of celibate dedication. To discuss this way of life without a previous consideration of its primary orientation (which can be known only from Revelation) is to present a truncated account, almost necessarily an illusory account. The Usual Explanation The popular explanation of friendship in religious life is likely to begin with our modern and improved understanding of human sexuality. It goes on to say that while there was in bygone days an undue repression both of the reality and its open discussion, we now see a positive worth beyond that of procreation and we freely share our views about the matter. This may be followed by the basically favorable view of sex that we find in the Bi-ble-- even though anything approaching an adequate discussion of virginity 1~34 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 in the New Testament is omitted. At this point we arb likely to meet a disapproving look into the patristic and medieval literatures. Next the writer or speaker may direct attention to contemporary theories of sexuality as they may be applied to the celibate condition. Little or no attention is given to the revealed context of consecrated virginity. Instead we may find a mixture of undoubted truths ("the two sexes are complementary") with less secure statements (physical signs of affection [no limits mentioned] are normal between celibates) and even clearly .false ones ("there is no vocation to celibacy, only that to Christian life"). The legitimacy of celibate friendship is then supported and illustrated by the classical examples of Jordan and Diana, Catherine and Raymond, Jane and Francis. In this usual explanation there will be words of caution, for not anything at all is acceptable behavior. Yet the limits are not clear and some people carry away from the discussion the impression that occasional serious sin ought not to disturb the two friendsunduly, that such is the price of an enriching relationship. Celibate men and women need to mature in their relationships so that they can "handle" their emotional reactions. Religious and priests differ, of course, intheir evaluations of this typical discussion of celibate friendships. Some are highly critical, others are favorably impressed. My own reactions are mixed. Ican identify with some of the ideas in these presentations, but I also find serious shortcomings. There is often a lack of theological accuracy and of a realistic assessment of the human situation. There may be insufficient contact with the biblical word and, especially, there is no adequate context. Celibate friendships are seen as though celibacy itself were chiefly a matter of interhuman rela-tionships and apostolic freedom. Here, as elsewhere in human life, faulty premises yield faulty conclusions. The Celibate Context As a dedicated ~vay of life, a permanent ideal embraced for the King-dom, consecrated virginity/celibacy~ appears for the first time.on the face of the earth in the persons of Mary and her Son. It is a 'theological ~eality in the etymological sense of that word: its meaning is found only in God and it can be known only from his lips. Although they may be helpful in an ancillary way, psychology and sociology of themselves know nothing of consecrated celibacy. The celibate is grasped by the Lord God in a manner so radically new that his whole life undergoes a basic reorientation. All men and women are to be oriented toward God as their raison d'etre, but most reach him q shall use the two terms interchangeably even though strictly speaking they do differ. In every case the adjective, consecrated or dedicated, is supposed. Virginity is the preferred biblical term, while celibacy enjoys common modern usage. Celibate Friendship: Illusion and Reality through the intimate and human sharing called marriage. The celibate on the other hand omits this sharing in order to respond to another more deeply intimate and divine sharing. Even one who may not be able to see the ¯ significance of these profoundly mysterious words can readily perceive their fundamental radicality. It is this fundamental radicality that must be grasped before we can understand what friendship should and should not be between celibate persons of the same or diverse sexes. Until we know how these persons relate to God we do not grasp how they relate to one another. Without this context, discussions of friendship are not likely to be on a much more elevated level than those of the syndicated advice columns found in the daily newspaper. Virginity, a Privileged Sphere of the Sacred Virginity is a vocation, a new vocation, a privileged vocation. To ap-preciate this fact we must refresh out understanding of the biblical concept ofqadosh, the holy, the sacred. We moderns tend to equate the word, holy, with virtuous. For us the holy person is the morally good person: patient, chaste, gentle, honest. For the ancient Hebrew, ttie "holy" is the set-apart person or thing. One was consecrated, holy, not primarily because he was virtuous (though that would be supposed), but because he was reserved for the service of the Lord God. All holiness derives from the utterly holy One. God is totally trans-cendent, totally other, even though entirely immanent in his creation. One becomes holy in this sense when he approaches the burning otherness of the Lord, when he is therefore set apart from the ordinary, the everyday, the merely finite. God's people, for example, are a holy people because they are selected from all the nations of the earth and set apart for him. This is the sense of 1 P 2:9: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light." Continence was practiced in the old dispensation before a priest par-ticipated in the temple liturgy or soldiers went off to the holy war (which shared something of a liturgical enterprise), not because sexual relations in marriage were bad, but because they were of the humdrum, ordinary life. Sexual intercourse was avoided at these times because it was of t, his world, whereas the priest or soldier was to enter the sacred sphere of Yahweh. He was to engage in something qadosh, holy,set apart, and thus he prepared himself by removing himself from the everyday occupations of marriage and daily life. When ther(fore, St. Paul speaks of the virgin as being holy in body and spirit he is not talking first of all of her moral goodness, though that is not excluded. He is saying that she, unlike the married woman or man, is set apart for the sacred sphere of the Lord God. As a virgin she need not be concerned with the dozens of duties that are the normal round for a wife 836 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 who cares for husband, children, household. She can give "undivided attention to the Lord" insofar as she is not burdened with the concern for this world that is necessarily entailed in familial duties and sexual relations. By calling the virgin holy, qadosh, St. Paul is not saying that she is virtuous while the married woman is not. Both are to be morally good. The dif-ference is that, as married, the one lives in the sphere of this world, while the other lives in the sphere of the Lord. This language and thought pattern are expressed by Jesus himself in his priestly prayer at the Last Supper. He says that neither he nor his select disciples are of this world (Jn 17:14, 16). He "consecrates" himself, makes himself holy, set apart, so that they too may be set apart in the truth (Jn 17:19). Jesus belongs to the privileged sphere of the Father in a preeminent way. He is reserved for the Father alone and so he declined an earthly marriage. His food was to do the will of the Father and nothing else (Jn 4:34). He could not have given the attention to this world that marriage requires. The celibate is celibate precisely as Jesus was and for the same reasons. The celibate, the virgin is a man or woman who, while living on planet earth and involved with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and burdens, is none-theless a person set apart. He belongs to the sphere of the transcendent, which is the sphere of the infinite, the other, the Lord God. This is one reason magisterial documents indicate that the primary orientation of re-ligious life is not engagement in an external apostolate but rather prayer, penance, gospel example.2 The religious vows afford a freedom for uni-versal love and apostolic involvement, yes, but that freedom is second to a prior freedom for a direct love-prayer relationship to God himself. The first commandment remains first, and the second remains second. Celibacy, an Excluding Fullness3 Celibacy for the kingdom (the only type we envision here) is not first of all non-marriage. It is a fullness in its own right. In a similar manner the earthly marriage of Susan to Philip is not first of all a non-marriage to Robert or William. A religious or priest does not see his consecration at all ade-quately until it appears as a positive fullness in its own right. The person with the celibate charism has been grasped by the Lord for a special, direct relationship. God takes the initiative and so orientates this person that he (she) "cannot" give a marital attention to another human being. The authentically married person experiences a similar "cannot" in relation to others than his spouse. The married man could physically attempt marriage to another woman than his wife but it would do violence to his being. The ~See Christus Dominus #33 and Renovationis causam, 4~2. aA more complete treatment of this section may be found in my article, "Celibacy As Full-ness," REWEW VOR REL~C~Ot~S, January, 1975, pp. 88-100. Celibate Friendship: Illusion and Reality / 83? celibate could likewise attempt marriage but it would do violence to his person. God so captures the genuine virgin that she cannot but focus her being on the Lord's affairs and give him her undivided attention. In spiritual direction of religious one sees instances where this cannot is completely obvious. Virginity/celibacy is an exclusive God-orientation, a focusing on "the one thing," a fullness in its own right. From this positive reality flows the negative, the non-marriage. The healthy celibate appreciates and values the beauty, attractiveness, goodnesses of the opposite sex, but he appreciates and values even more the immeasurably greater beauty, attractiveness and goodness of God himself. The virginal heart is a large heart, a heart so large that earthly marriage cannot fill it. Erroneous Premises Many, perhaps most, significant differences among religious in recent years are fundamentally due to widely different presuppositions. An ob-vious example is one's ecclesiology. If one person wholly embraces the ecclesiology of Vatican Council II and another that of liberal Protestantism, ¯ it can hardly be surprising that they entertain basically different notions of what religious life is. Whatever one thinks about celibate friendships, it is quite certain that his thoughts stem from underlying premises. We may be aware or unaware of the explicit forms of those premises, but there is no doubt that we have them. A good tree produces good fruit and a bad tree produces bad fruit (Mt 7:17). Sound premises, roots, produce sound conclusions (provided the rest of the reasoning process is correct) and faulty premises produce faulty conclusions. Some of our problems in the area of celibate friendships are the presuppositions. It is no doubt worthy of note that not a few of these presuppositions are departures from Catholic teaching. I shall mention here several of these erroneous premises. This is not the place to develop my observations at length. Anyone moderately versed in theology will recognize that with some of them we are dealing with re-jections of the teachings of the Church. After we have cleared the air we shall sketch positively what a beautiful celibate friendship is like. First, the faulty premises. 1 .) "Close celibate relationships have no significant connection with the quality of prayer life." If a connection is supposed, little is made of it. The writer or speaker seems quite unaware of the primary orientation of vir-ginity to prayer, and he makes little of the tie-up between depth of prayer and the reality of friendship. The latter he seems to think ¯is simply a psychological matter which is quite accessible to human reason. 2.) "Genuine love between the sexes is common and easy to come by." We may note about this premise that psychologists themselves point out on purely natural grounds that a capacity for genuine love between the sexes is rare. Even more to our purposes is the teaching of the New Testament 1~31~ / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 that the new Christic love is naturally impossible, not simply rare. Only if we have been emptied of our maze of selfishnesses and converted by the eternal Word of God and born into his new life can we love others sincerely (1 P 1:22-23). Popular discussions of celibate sexuality seem not to know this. This is a fatal error. 3.) "The religious vocation may be temporary, and hence dating may rightly lead to marriage." I have not seen one sound psychological or theological argument among the many produced in recent years to support the theory of temporary vocation. This is not the place to trace out the solid case for permanent vocation. It may suffice for our purposes simply to state that the Catholic Church all through her history has held that the vocation to the counsels is permanent. 4.) "Genital sexual activity in celibate life is not nece.ssarily repre-hensible." Hence, those who hold this premise feel masturbation, intimate touches between friends, perhaps even sexual intercourse are not always wrong. It may be sufficient to note about this position that most people find it shocking, and that it entails a rejection of a large portion of Catholic sexual morality. One wonders what founders and foundresses would have said about these thoughts of their spiritual children. 5.) "Marriage and celibacy are of equal effectiveness in freeing for the kingdom." This premise is a rejection of Jesus' and Paul's teaching (Lk 18:29-30; 1 Co 7:32-38), as exegetes who have no axe to grind readily point out. The premise is of course also a rejection of the teaching of the Council of Trent and that of Vatican Council II. 6.) "The religious woman should display her femininity, or, as one writer put it, she should look 'sexy' " (in some sense he did not define). Only one who is innocent of real life (what, for example, many men are likely to think and say of this type of "virgin"), would make this sort of statement. One may wonder here, too, what our best examples of deepest feminine beauty would think of this idea: Agnes, Agatha~ Catherine of Siena. Teresa of Avila, Maria Goretti and a host of others. 7.) ,"Almost any friendship between a celibate man and woman is to be viewed as similar to those between saints." Merely to advert to the sen-tence is to see how untrue it is. No comment is needed. Signs of Genuine Friendship Even the most uncommitted scholar, well informed in the area of saints and canonization processes, will agree that the Church does not place her seal of approval on any celibate friendship. This undebatable fact suggests that there are significant differences between the holy and the unholy re-lationship. One may, if he wishes, introduce a third category, the "spiri-tually neutral" friendship, i.e., one in which there is no obviously sinful activity and yet in it no one would be inclined to consider either party especially saintly. It may be doubted in at least many cases whether such a "neutral friendship" would long remain merely neutral. It is likely that it Celibate Friendship: Illusion and Reality will either slowly dissolve or become more or less unholy. We humans are like that. I shall consider here the signs of the genuine friendship. If some readers are inclined to question these signs, I ask only one favor: read the lives of the saints and then judge whose position reflects their attitudes and prac-tice. All of us ordinary people are subject to error. In matters like this we are inclined either to exaggerate the gospel or to dilute it. And being sinners, ,most of us are far, more likely to dilute than to exaggerate. I trust that no one of us is so arrogant as to suppose that he knows better than the saints how the gospel is to be lived in concrete life. Their lives have the authentic seal of the Church upon them and ours do not. This is no slight difference. We may take it as a general norm that a genuine friendship is immersed in God, honestly immersed in him. It is a living of the universal Pauline principle that whatever we do, eating, drinking or anything else, we do to the glory of God (1 Co 10:31). This is easy to say in the morning offering but it is"not easy to live. Nevertheless I am supposing here that celibate friend-ship is a love of the Holy Spirit and as such is immersed in Jesus' love for all men and women. In a sense it is a participation in that love: "Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus" (Jn 11:5). Every celibate is to love as he loved. In that way and in no other. Honesty here is not easy. The first sign of this honest authenticity is that God not only was, but remains the first concern of each party to the friendship. It is not siinply that God was once upon a time their prime concern when they engaged in spiritual direction ora common apostolic enterprise. Right now he is their chief love. They would do nothing, absolutely nothing to displease him or to divide their hearts. This implies that each person is a man or woman of deep prayer. They take contemplative prayer seriously and are at least growing in it. They are not content with vocal prayer alone, even the excellent vocal prayer of the Liturgy, of the Hours. We can see why this sign is crucial when we recall the context of celibacy we considered above. Religious and priests who do not really understand their vocation and love it deeply are hardly capable of celibate friendship. This may be a funda-mental reason why some of the writing and speaking on this subject is so defective: it lacks roots and orientation. The second sign is a growing commitment to the celibate gift. God is a God of fidelity and he expects fidelity in us. The celibate charism is given permanently, not for a few years. Both the charism and a genuine friendship are gifts of the one Holy Spirit. He does not contradict himself. He who gives the permanent gift of celibacy does not then turn around0and chip away at it in a relationship between possessors of the gift. Hence if a priest and/or religious begin seriously to consider a dispensation from vows and possible marriage, the love is no longer a love of the Holy Spirit. The spiritual life is one integrated whole. It hangs together. A beautiful friend-ship strengthens chastity, perfect chastity. It prompts each party to want the celibate dedication more strongly and to be entirely faithful to it. 840 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 The third sign is non-exclusiveness, non-possessiveness. It is true that the universal love of the virgin does not mean that she (he) does not love individual persons. No one is to love others only as a kind of global mass. Like all others the celibate is to love unique individuals, but unlike the married he loves without exclusiveness. Marital love is possessive, but celibate love is not. Marital love as marital centers on one person and one alone, even though the married are to love others with a general love. Celibate love as celibate is universal, and a deep friendship with one in-dividual does not erase celibate universality. This is why a Teresa of Avila would be happy to know that Jerome Gratian has another deep, close friend. She does not love him possessively, exclusively. A religious or priest who resents another close friend lacks something of the love of the Holy Spirit. Our next sign is closely allied to the previous one. Genuine friendship promotes universal warmth. Not only is there no exclusivity or posses-siveness, but each party finds that he goes out more warmly to all people. Cordiality, warmth, helpfulness is not reserved to one's friend. This person lives the Pauline admonition to the Romans, "treat everyone with equal kindness" (Rm 12:16). Friends ought not to assume easily that they are living this admonition. It takes a great deal of detachment, self-emptying, to go out as warmly to others as to a special friend. We may recall that 1 P 1:22-23 taught that authentic love in community requires a conversion. And we ought not too easily suppose we have been thoroughly converted. Afinal sign is that in authentic celibate friendship the frequency and length of visits are limited. I shall not cite quantitative limits, but I may say that a man or woman of prayer knows instinctively what is too much in the area of time spent together and what is too much in the area of signs of affection. Again one need only think of the saints. Normal men and women who spend too much time together or are too demonstrative in their af-fection soon have a chastity problem. The Need-Relationship Experience indicates that when many young religious find themselves close to another person they quite automatically consider the closeness to be love. This is especially true of young women. When before too many months or years pass the closeness slowly vanishes, they are not only surprised, but sometimes crushed. Many of these relationships are nothing more than need relationships. One individual finds another to be attractive, interested, concerned. And perhaps the other finds the first to be such also. Then one or both find that the other answers real needs for attention, security, warmth, sharing of problems, pains, aspirations. They are close ¯ because needs are being met. This need-relationship is not necessarily bad. But it is not yet love. Love does not dissipate in time. A mere need-friendship does dissipate when the need disappears or is met by another person. Celibate Friendship: Illusion and Reality / We annot emphasize too strongly what we noted above as the opinion of psychologists, namely, that a capacity for genuine love between the sexes is rare. Need-closeness is not rare. Love is. Real love demands I. conversion, being born of the word of the everlasting God. This is why ¯ genmne celibate friendship happens only when deepening prayer happens. This islanother reason, too, why some recent writings on celibate sexuality are so superficial and consequently misleading. / Implications //We are now prepared to suggest implications that flow from our dis-cUssion. of context, premises and signs. Some religious may well be sur- Jprised that I feel it necessary to indicate these implications so plainly. While others who are well aware of our situation may be saddened, they will not be surprised. Our first consequence is that there is no such thing as a valid "third way," namely some sort of combination of celibacy and marriage, that is, physical closeness and intimacy without marital commitment. It should be said, of course, that what has been meant by the third way is itself a fuzzy spectrum of relationships all the way from dubious friendships to uncom-mitted sexual intercourse. And, it may be noted, this spectrum of rela-tionships has itg defenders from one end of it to the other. Why do I say that there is no such thing as a third way? There are two clear vocations on this score, marriage and celibacy/virginity. A third, marital-virginity, is an illusion. The whole twenty-century history of Christian virginity has seen deep friendships and profound love, but the Church has never set her stamp of approval on a third way. A least acquaintance with the saints makes this clear. Further, one need only review all that has been said thus far in this article. None of it remotely suggests a third way. Our second implication concerns dating. I have found that a religious and a priest who go out to dinner socially together (or share some other recreation) are likely to object to calling the engagement a date. I am not at this point overly concerned about the semantics of the matter, but I may note that these people for some odd reason resist terminology commonly accepted in our day. Almost everyone calls this kind of outing between two unmarried people a date. Whatever the name, this practice has its ardent defenders. It is not simply something done through mistaken judgment and then regretted, That it often ends up in marriage is not surprising. (And that this is a normal, good consequence is also defended.) What is wrong about all this? A number of things. First, the celibate charism is a permanent gift. One who has accepted the gift through vow is to honor his commitment. Vows are to be k~pt. The celibate may not marry, and he ought not to put himself in circumstanc'es that normally lead to marriage. If one responds by thinking or saying, "I have no intention to marry and there is no danger in our dating," I would answer that if the two ~142 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 persons are normal and persist in their relationship they are going to have a chastity problem. If they are not normal, they already have a problem. Then there is the question of scandal. One writer, admitting that many people in our society are scandalized in seeing religious and priests dating, expiessed the hope that one day our fellow citizens would come to see that a man and a woman can go out together with some other purpose than an eventual genital relationship. To be more clear, I think he should have said that he hopes the ordinary man and woman of our day will come to see that a platonic friendship is a likely explanation~ of why a priest and sister may date. This hope is naive. Anyone familiar with our sex-saturated world recognizes that this "likely explanation" is becoming more and more re-mote. I have met aremarkable woolliness of thought on this score of scandal. A sister will maintain that if people see anything wrong in her going out to dinner with a man, that is their problem, not hers. They must, she thinks, have unchaste minds to think of anything else of a platonic or merely business relationship. This view is innocent of reality in two. ways. The first innocence regards the types of scandal~. There is such a thing as pharisaical scandal, namely, that which people take when there is no least reasonable basis for it. This kind we may disregard. The other is what we usually mean, namely, when our action is such that in the normal understanding of.people there is basis for seeing something amiss in it. This kind we may not disregard. And this leads us to the second innocence in this woolly view. The person who holds it seems unaware that in our contemporary society a man and woman who.go out together are ordinarily viewed as either a) married, b) thinking of possible marriage remotely or proximately with this person or some other or c) doing something together but only as a part of a genital sexual relationship. It is. true that many people would admit that the two may have only a platonic interest in each other, but that is not the likely understanding of why they date. Now if th, ese people are scandalized when they see two consecrated celibates dating, their scandal is not pharisaical, that is, without solid basis in normal society. They ought not to judge that the two have sinned or plan to, but they are not wrong in think!ng what I have expressed in the above (a), (b), (c) sentence. It is important to notice about this scandal matter that people need not be sure that there is sexual sin between dating religious. Scandal is given if suspicions are aroused through a normal understanding that there may indeed be something amiss. The work of priests and religious for the king-dom is seriously undermined if people begin to think they are leading double lives, posing public!y as celibates and privately living as married or some-thing approaching this. The Church is severely damaged by suspicions like these. Priests and religious have no right to furnish a basis for them. We may be reminded of the splendid example of St. Paul. He refused :to scandalize "the weak" (i.e., those with erroneous consciences about eating Celibate Friendship." llluMon and Reality food offered to idols) even though what he was doing was perfectly per-missible[ He does not callously say "that is their problem." Rather he remarkslthat Christ died'for this weak brother and Paul will never cause his ruin. "That is why," says the apostle, "since food can be the occasion of t my brother's downfall, I shall never eat meat again in case I am the cause of my br~other s downfall (1 Co 9:7-13)¯ Dedicated religious have this same sensitivity. In no way will they sow the seeds of suspicion in the minds of their bro~thers and sisters, whether the latter be weak or strong. Our ~inal implication bears on maturity, chronological and spiritual, in ~ts bearl.ng on the question of deep cehbate friendship. If one reviews what we havelsaid about the context and signs of a beautiful relationshihpe, will easily see" a problem: are young religious, priests, seminarians really de-veloped/ enough, psychologically and spiritually, to be capable of what we are talking' about? It goes without saying that no one can cite a mathematical norm oriage at which people are mature enough to enter upon more than a mere ne, ed-relationship. In any event young people should remember that ¯ a capacity for genuine love among all age groups is not common and they . ought not to be easily persuaded that they themselves are already so capa- . ble. Young people especially are prone to mere need-relationships which they m~stakenly interpret as love. I am not saying that the young cannot love genmnely. But I am saying that no one, young or old, can love w~thout hawng Been converted¯ And no one loves deeply w~thout deep conversion. Thislis why prayer is absolutely crucial to the whole question of celibate friendsliip.' Those who write and speak about this matter and pay scant ¯ I . attention to the prayer-context are s~mply bypassing the core ~ssue. Vt r-ginity f~r Christ has' depths of which psychology has not dreamed. That man or woman alone is capable of a deep friendship who is already deeply (or at least is growing in depth) in communion with the source of all love, the God who is love. Preparation for New Ministries: A Futuristic View Mary Vincentia Joseph, M.~.B.T. and Carla Przybilla, O.S.F. Sister Mary Vincentia is Assistant Professor at the National Catholic School of Social Service; the Catholic University of America; Washington, DC 20064. Sister Carla is Executive Director of the National Religious Formation Conference; 1330 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.; Washington, DC 20005. The authors wish to acknowledge and thank Rev. Ladislas Orsy, S.J., for reviewing this article and for his helpful comments. The whole future of the Earth, as of religion, seems to me to depend on the awakening of our faith in the future. Teilhard de Chardin Today, with the growing consciousness of the personhood of woman and with the re-structuring of her roles in both society and in the Church, women religious are providing leadership in spearheading and developing new and exciting ministries designed to meet rapidly changing social needs. There appears to be a new perspective, based on a model of collaboration and interdependence, which captures both identity and purpose, while at the same time engaging in a dialogical process with the world. This vibrant movement, in response to the needs of people, and within the context of the charismatic beginnings of religious communities, is not only transforming the forms of ministry of women religious in the United States, but is also impacting on the orientation and style of preparation required for ministries of the future. The future however, is in the present. A futuristic view of ministry requires preparation for today's demands. We are living in a time of such 844 Preparation for New Ministries: A Futuristic View / !i45 accelerat ~d change that it is estimated that people will undergo retraining ~ . for occup, at~onal needs many times during a lifetime. Not only will many religious have to re-tool for today's work but a totally new orientation will be necess,ary to respond appropriately to ever-changing needs. Professional schools, i,n their socialization processes, are emphasizing education geared to the self-directed learner, preparing the adult learner for a major constant in our culture--social change. In the helping professions this means creat-ing a readiness to handle continuous and rapid change as well as skill in generating new models of helping. Incorporated within this orienting frame is the closely related concept of monitoring and assessing service effect¯ iveness. Has this trend fully impacted on religious communities, in their socialization processes and in preparation for second careers? Cer-tainly, it has influenced a number in their approaches to ministry. More still have to ~ confront this major dynamic influencing the mission of the Church in moder~n society. It vitally touches every area of "personpower": re-cru~ tment policies, qualifications needed for the various service modalities, the capacity to ~ntegrate the spiritual and rehg~ous dimensions m service, and the tra~mng modaht~es for new m~mstnes. What are the personal re-quiremedts necessary to meet new and changing situations? A look at the emergln.g~ forms of mlmstnes may provide some answers. As Rahner states, ttiese new models of service, similar to the secular professions, are concretelexpressions of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.~ The p~urpose' of this article is to examine the developing forms of min-istry of women religious and to consider their implications for the so-c~ ahzat~on processes, e.g. the formation programs of religious congrega-tions as ~well as for re-tooling for new and re-focused careers. An attempt also wiillbe made to provide an organizing schema, a conceptual frame-work, to,~ analyze the major components of these socialization processes within a [context of future needs. The data presented here were collected during the preliminary phase of ¯ a larger study which is underway on the new careers of women religious, related areas of role conflict, and coping styles utilized in conflict resolu-tion. 2 Thlis first phase, a survey of 367 religious congregations of women in the United States, sought to locate the population of religious in new works, that is, ~n works which were new to their congregations.3 Communities ~Karl Rahner. "'Practical Theology and Social Work in the Church," Theological Inves-tigations, ~/ol. 10, translated by David Bourke (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973), pp. 267-68. I , 2This study is being conducted by Sister Mary Vincentia Joseph, M.S.B.T. with the Nationa~ Religious Formation Conference, Washington, D.C. Sister Mary Vincentia developed the research design and Stster Carla processed the data for this preliminary phase. The article was written by the former and the final version was completed jointly. 3The istin~ of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which included major supe-riors of 367icongregations, was used for the mailing. The time-frame of the survey was summer to fall, 1976. 1~46 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 were asked, in an open-ended format, to indicate the new ministry of each sister. There was a 94.60% rate of response which would seem to indicate, along with the many supportive statements, a high level of interest among religious communities in this area. A total of 5,892 religious was reported by their communities to be engaged in new works. ¯ Although this survey was not intended to be an exhaustive study, it was rich in information on developing works among sisters. The data, therefore, were analyzed and classified into broad categories of ministry. These findings would seem to have value in that they provide an empirical base, suggesting future directions and rough indicators for some future projec-tions. New ministries, as used here,, refer to forms which were new to religious communities. In considering the findings, it is important to note that a number of communities indicated that they have no new works, that their congregations have always been involved in what many consider new directions. The non-r~spondent group may also be composed of those who have consistently been involved in what is considered new by religious today. For example, in a recent study on sister social workers profession-ally educated in the United States during the period 1962 to 1972, forty-six sisters or the largest, number trained in any religious community were members of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity.4 None of these, however, are reflected.in the findings discussed here since social work is traditional apostolate of this community. Similarly, the large num-ber of sisters in this community, and in a few others, in parish work is not represented in the data since, historically, these communities have been engaged in this type of work. New Forms of Ministry The proportion of women religious in the broad categories of ministry are shown in Table 1. This typology follows the familiar classification of works according to the fields of health, education, and welfare (here termed social ministry). Other emerging forms of ministry did not fit neatly into these general categories and, therefore, were presented separately. Parish work, for .example, which involves a plurality of ministries, crosses the categorical boundaries of health, education, and social ministry. A special category was constructed for the spiritual ministries which have been in-creasing over the past few years. They clearly represent a cluster of spiritual and religious functions (such as directed retreats and prayer movements) generally performed in Church-related structures rather than in exclusively non-ecclesial settings. Similarly, supportive Church-related 4Sister Mary Vincentia Joseph, A Study ~of Self-Role Congruence and Role-Role Congruence on the Integration of the Religious Role and the Social Work Role of the Sister Social Worker. Unpublished DSW dissertation, the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. 1974, p. 247. Preparation for New Ministries: A Futuristic View / 1t47 ministries are surfacing more explicitly and distinctly associated with some level of Church structure or Church work. An example would be the role of the diocesan consultant. These categories, particularly, give striking evidence of the shifting roles of women in the Church. Table 1 Proportion of Women Religious in New Forms of Ministries According to the Type of Ministry* Religious Type of Ministry No. % Health Ministry I 112 18.87 Education Ministry 1334 22.64 Social Ministry 1912 32.45 Parish Ministry ' 797 13.53 Supportive Church-related Ministries 384 6.52 Spiritual Ministry 266 4.5 I Other 87 1.48 5892 100.00 *Refers to forms of ministries which were new to religious congregations of women at the time of the survey. As can be seen, the social ministries represent the largest group of services provided by women religious among these new forms. Almost one-third of the survey population were engaged in a form of social ministry, 10% more than those in education and close to 15% more than those involved in the health field. An interesting piece 6f data was the small number of sisters actually engaged in such works as business, clerical work, and sales in strictly non-ecclesial setti.ngs. Although a large number of others worked in non-sectarian structures, such as hospitals, they were most frequently ehgaged in pastoral work in the human service fields. The dominant theme which ran through the findings was se~r, vice, often with a highly skilled and profes-sional orientation, within a framework of ministry or mission. From the comments of some communities, form of service and perspective of min-istry were clearly within the context of their charismatic beginnings. The categories in Table 1 will be elaborated more fully in the discussion that follows. New Forms of Health Ministry The largest single category in the health field was pastoral care in Cath-olic institutions--hospitals, .nursing homes, or other group facilities. As Table 2 illustrates, a forceful trend is noted when pastoral care in Catholic settings is combined with pastoral care in non-Church related settings: almost one-half of the new forms of health ministries are in the field of pastoral care. Interestingly, too, more than one-fourth of the sisters in new health ministries are providing nursing or allied medical services in public 1~41~ / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 or private institutions not sponsored by the Church. Thus, almost 45% of the sisters included in the survey in the health field offer services in other than Catholic institutions. This proportion is even higher when combined with non-Church related community services. Table 2 Women Religious Engaged in Forms of Health Ministries New to Their Congregations Religious Ministries No. % Community-based Health Care (nursing and related allied 202 18.17 services) Health Care in Non-Church-related Institutions* 289 25.99 Pastoral Ministry in Catholic Institutions* 363 32.64 Pastoral Ministry in Non-Church-related Institutions 192 17.27 Other (Physicians, dentists, other specialists/consultants) 66 5.93 Total 1112 100.00 *Refers to hospitals, nursing homes, and the larger group facilities. As would be expected;.a large proportion, or almost 20% are in in-novative community and neighborhood-based health programs (such as public health, visiting nurses, and outreach clinics, both in Catholic and non-Church related settings). This group consists largely of nurses and allied professionals. Interestingly, this trend somewhat parallels that in social work although there was a sharper reversal from institutional to community settings in that field. Close to two-thirds of the sister social workers were in institutional work prior to Vatican II in contrast to over two-thirds in community-based programs after Vatican II: No doubt this trend in the hea!th field would be greater if more Church-related commu-nity- based programs were available within Catholic structures as they are in social work, e.g. Catholic Charities agencies and other neighborhood and parish-based social service and social action programs. Also, it was inter-esting that close to 85% of the population studied provided services within Church structures and only 6% saw services in the public sector as an important future role of the sister social worker. Leadership within the framework of the Church, as long as these structures were available and viable for effective and relevant service, was viewed as a dominant future role. Close to sixteen were physicians or dentists; when combined with psy-chiatrists (see Table 4), we can see a more visible trend in the medical ministries. A small number were speech and music therapists. 5Joseph, op. cit. pp. 102, 174. Preparation for New Ministries: A Futuristic View 1149 New Forms of Education Ministries More than one-fifth of the religious in the survey population continued in new and specialized forms of the education ministry. This is not sur-prising since the majority of religious have professional training in this field and many communities hold education as integral to their mission. Most interestingly, however, were the innovative and creative forms taking shape. As reflected in Table 3, close to 40% are specializing in religious education, which would seem to be an important role for the religious of the future. Almost one-third teach in schools in the inner city and urban areas, reflecting the traditional concern of communities for the poor and culturally deprived. Close to one-fifth were in a variety of specialized forms of education to the physically and emotionally handicapped, school drop-outs, minority and bilingual groups, and a range of adult education pro-grams. Table 3 Women Religioas Engaged in Forms of Edncation Ministries New to Their Congregations Religious Ministries No. % Campus Ministry 86 6.45 Communications 67 5.02 Library Work 56 4.20 Religious Education 530 39.73 Teaching in Seminaries and Theologates 25 1.87 Specialized Forms of Instruction 252 18.89 Inner City Teaching 318 23.84 Total 1334 100.00 A developing trend in communications was discernible, revealing some interesting works. Thirteen sisters were involved in very technical work with the media, TV and radio, while fifty-four sisters worked with Catholic and secular newspapers/periodicals in writing, illustrating, and publishing. ¯ New Forms of Social Ministry It has been made forcefully clear in recent years, by both the magis-terium and the Council, that the social ministries are essential aspects of the Mission of the Church.~ Perhaps the most significant trends in new min-istries are, in this area, not unrelated to the directions in society and de-velopments in the Church. This field, which reflected the largest number of new forms, has been defined variously in the literature. Very broadly, it ~Eugene A. Mainelli. "'The Parish Community Becoming: Theological Reflections," Social Thought, i (Fall. 1975). p. 15. Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 is viewed as comprising health, education, and welfare. Most specifically, as used here, it includes those activities which focus primarily on the social dimension of human services: the response to socio-personal needs as well as social justice and advocacy efforts directed toward humanizing and transforming societal structures,r As Table "4 shows, the largest proportion of sisters engaged in social ministries, over one-third, were in social work. These data are consistent with Joseph's findings: as many sisters were professionally trained, in social work from 1970 to 1972, inclusive, as were in the previous decade,s It is not surprising that religious would select this field as it call for skills in working with both' personal and social needs. With the two-fold emphasis today on the person and impacting social systems, it provides opportunity for both service and social action. The sisters in this survey were social workers in school and hospital settings as well as in community-neighborhood pro-grams which reflected reaching out to others in a variety of ways. More than one-half were in Catholic Charities agencies, in both traditional family and child care services, e.g. family counseling, foster care and adoption ser-vices, and in community organization work, crisis intervention, and other forms of outreach. More than 30% of the religious in social ministries worked with minority groups and rural poverty programs, evidencing out-reach as well as justice efforts. Table 4 Women Religious Engaged in Forms of Social Ministries New to Their Congregations Religious Ministries No. % Prison, Probation, Police Work 99 5.18 Social Justice Work 168 8.79 Social Work 651 34.05 Psychiatric, Psychological. Therapeutic Work 82 4.29 Work with Minority Groups 376 19.67 Rural Poverty Work 204 10.67 Alcoholism and Drug Addiction 116 6.07 Youth Work 114 5.96 Day Care Programs 28 1.46 Group Homes and Specialized Care Facilities 32 1.67 Other 42 2.19 Total i912 100.00 Although many in the above categories were actively engaged in social justice, advocacy, and social action--as related to the groups served-- 7Cedric W. Tilberg. "'The Social Ministry of the Congregation," Lutheran Social Welfare Quarterly, Vi (December, 1966), p. 8. 8Joseph, op. cit., p. 90. Preparation for New Ministries: A Futuristic View almost 10% of the sisters ,wer~ involved exclusively in these activities. Most of these sisters worked in social justice centers or on special commissions directed to justice and peace. Eighteen, however, were in political min-istries or appointed to government positions at state or local levels, while twenty-three were lawyers, aids, or legal advisors to the poor. A number organized legislative networks to promote grassroots leadership and create political power. Sixty-six worked in halfway houses for alcoholics or parolees or in group homes for pre-delinquent or delinquent youth. Another thirty-two served in homes for the mentally or physically handicapped or the emotionally disturbed. Slightly over 5% of the sisters worked with prisoners/parolees and their families, did probation work, or were on the police force, a relatively new area of ministry and one rich in service potential. The "'other" category consisted of those engaged in natural family planning, Birthright, housing projects, and shop~ for the poor. The liberation of the oppressed, as a pivotal and actigie concern of the Social Mission of the contemporary Church, is vividly clear in these data. Neff Forms of Church-Related Ministry Table 5 shows that almost one-half of the religious working in supportive Church-related works were specialists in the various fields of ministry, e.g. education and health, who acted as consultants to diocesan programs. More than one-third held offices in Church organizations at national and inter-national levels, utilizing the competencies of religious in important lead-ership roles. Three sisters were canon lawyers, twenty-three were identified as vicars for religious, and twelve were in tribunal work, no doubt a significant future indicator for the role of the ecclesial woman, These data represent a growing trend for women to assume leadership positions at all levels in the Church. Table 5 Women Religious Engaged in Forms of Church-Related Ministries New to Their Congregations Ministries National and International Offices in Church Organizations Vicars for Religious and Canon Lawyers Marriage Tribunal Work Diocesan Consultants/Specialists Ecumenical Consultants Total Religious No. % 126 32.8 I 36 9.38 12 3.12 189 49.22 21 5.47 384 100.00 Parish Ministry There is a:remarkable movement in the Church toward parish ministry, 1~52 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 especially among women religious, markedly illustrated in these data.~ The parish may be viewed as the Church in mission; it is here that the Church's mission is concretized. Rahner, in discussing the parish, states: ¯ . . the Church will make its impact as a present reality there where the presence of Christ is made real . Here the Christian of tomorrow will come to realize the true nature of the Church. Of course such a community, which feels itself to be the concrete realization of the Church as achieved through word and sacrament, will be conscious of being united to all other communities which likewise are the same Church . "~ It is in the parish-community that the Christian of the future will experience the Church in word and sacrament. The parish was the largest single category of ministry; 797 sisters were reported as involved in some aspect of parish work. The Parish was actually the only single category in the broad classification of ministries (see Table /), since the data did not lend itself to clearly differentiate among the various forms of parish work. A number, however, did indicate that they were parish associates, assistant pastors, parish workers, home visitors, social ministers, pastoral assistants, eucharistic ministers, parish spiritual directors, and parish team ministers, evidencing the plurality of forms at this level and supporting the need for the team approach. It may also be an index to the role ambiguity often experienced by parish workers and, fur-thermore, may indicate the need for clearer role definitions. Presnail dis-cussed this, detailing the range of roles identified with the parish worker and urging specialization within a framework of the plurality of ministries and personal charisms, competencies, and training. He points to the role am-biguity experienced by the religious educator until the role became more specialized and the boundaries more circumscribed.1~ In recent years, a number of Catholic Charities agencies across the country have reached out to parishes to facilitate social ministries at this level. According to a study that is underway, 206 religious are involved in some way in these parish social ministries, either directly as parish staff affiliated with the agency or as parish workers, not administratively related to the agency but receiving consultation from agency staff.t2 This upsurge in parish ministry is consistent with the findings of Jo-seph. 13 Comparative data, pre- and post-Vatican 1I, on the major apos- ~Sister Mary Vincentia Joseph, M.S.B.T., "'Christian Social Action," Careers in the Christian Ministry (Washington. D.C.: Consortium Press. 1976), p, 118. ~UKarl Rabner, -The New Image of the Church." Theological Investigations, Vol. X (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973). p. 11. ~Gregory Presnail, "Guidelines for a Parish Worker," Sisters Today (November, 1971), pp. 416-21. ~zSister Mary Vincentia Joseph, M.S.B.T. and Sister Ann Patrick Conrad, M.S.B.T., National Trends in Parish Social Ministry: A Study of Parish Programs Affiliated With Catholic Char-ities Agencies, in process. ~ZJoseph, A Study of Self-Role Congruence and Role-Role Congruence on the Integration of the Religious Role and the Social Work Role of the Sister Social Worker, p. 241. Preparation for New Ministries: A Futuristic View / 853 tolates of 108 religious communities, were obtained. The most dramatic change was in parish work. The number ~f religious congregations engaged in parish work at this time increased from 17.35% to 44.90%, close to a 30% oost-Vatican increase. Thus, we can expect---on the basis of these data, a continued upswing in parish work with a greater differentiation among ministry roles and a continued use and refinement of the team approach. The challenge remains to identify and elaborate the emerging patterns of parish ministry. The Spiritual Ministries Spiritual ministries, close to 5% of the new ministries, represented an emerging field in which the religio-spiritual dimension is the primary focus. These are closely related to pastoral ministry, but differ in that generally thry' are performed within church structures rather than in a setting in which one of the helping professions is the host-profession such as the hospital or the social agency. These ministries consisted largely of houses of prayer, retreat work---especially directed retreats, and prayer move-ments. Summary A two-pronged trend is reflected vividly in these data: concern with religious/spiritual aspects of the person (as evidenced in pastoral care, religious education and the directly spiritual ministries) and with the social dimension of human need (noted in the large number of religious engaged in the social ministries). Parish work may be viewed as reflecting both trends as the parish is concerned with socio-religious needs of persons through its developing approaches or team ministries. Deepening insight into the Pauline concept of the plurality of ministries is illustrated remark-ably in the growth in ministries at this level, particularly among women religious. The emphasis on social need was not only reflected in the increase in social ministries but also in the service modalities and organizational patterns in the health and education fields. The upswing in parish work, social work, pastoral care in health settings, and religious educationhin that order--would seem to forecast that these will be important future roles of women religious. A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Formation Programs The literature on adult socialization~4 is rich in its implications for for- ~4Socialization is the process by which one learns the ways of a given group. Often, it is defined as role learning. In adulthood, it refers to training for life or occupational roles. Studies have been done on socialization processes in such professions as nursing and medicine. No published research has been located by the authors on preparation for the role of the woman religious. I]54 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 mation programs in religious communities and provides tools for critical examination and assessment. The work of Brim and Wheeler is particularly useful as it identifies core variables which influence socialization out-comes.~ 5 It suggests a broad conceptual model to study the essential com-ponents of formation and aids in raising questions about current structural patterns, Central concepts are: the recruit or socializee: the candidate; the socializing agency: the religious community; the socializing agent: .for-mation personnel; and, the socialization process: the process of formation. The importance of taking another look at formation programs becomes obvious not only in considering the trends in ministry but in recent work-shop experiences of the National Religious Formation Conference. During workshop meetings, both men and women religious were asked to define the qualities needed for the future religious. Most frequently projected characteristics were: (1)self-direction; (2) the willingness to search, risk, and deal with uncertainty; (3) a deepening spiritual life; (4) a sense of rootedness in the charism of the institute;and, (5) a global mission concern. These characteristics and the new ministries suggest the need for an orienting philosophy of learning geared to the adult learner. Cartwell, in an excellent article on current educational models in formation programs, clearly identifies the need for an integrated cognitive-experiential-devel-opmental approach appropriate to today's social and cultural needs.~6 The proposed approach to learning is the adult learning model, androgogy, which prepares the person for self-direction and on-gbing learning. This approach is grounded in active participation, mutual sharing, and a readiness to learn. It recognizes not only the potential of the recruit but also the learned skills and past experiences which are brought to the new learn-ing situation.~r ~ With the trend awayJfrom institutional forms of ministry to community and parish-based work, many religious are moving from highly structured settings to natural ecological settings which are often ambiguous and lack-ing in role clarity. Such settings require that structures not only be created but implemented effectively and that roles be defined and continuously reclarified. Services at these levels demand creative action and continued innovation. Collaborative team approaches are required, calling for a high degree of skill in interpersonal communication as well as in coping with conflictuai role demands. Competency and evaluation (a trend in our so- 15Orville G. Brim and Stanton Wheeler, Socialization After Childhood (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1966). ~6Peter W. Cartwell, O.F.M., "Formation--Whither or Whether," REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, XXXll (September, 1973), p. 1050. ~rMalcolm Knowles, The Adult Learner: Neglected Species (Houston: Gulf Publishing Com-pany, 1973). Preparation ,for New Ministries: A Futuristic View ciety where resources and commodities are scarce) will be essential to assess program effectiveness. Increasingly, then, ministry will require self-directed persons, ready to generate new service modalities, negotiate role demands, and collaborate with others in attempting to find solutions to complex problems. The Recruit-Candidate Very often young people today have broad experiences. Frequently, they are well traveled and view such experiences as important to their on-going development. Generally, those who enter the helping professions have a high degree of commitment to serve the needs of others. Those who would enter a religious community seek to deepen their value-orientation and share similar values with others in community. Many have been ex- :posed to an adult learning style, basically experiential, moving from the realm of the empirical and from skill in doing to the level of abstraction and conceptualization. They freely challenge ideas and existing structures, ex-pecting an openness of response and, themselves, inviting feedback. Where opeaness is absent, confrontation is often heightened. They seek an ex-panding personal development and view some contemporary religious structures as constricting growth potential. The questionmust be raised: Can present structures of many formation programs attract, support, and enhance the goals of these young women? In view of the socialization outcomes required fo~ the new ministries, what personal qualifications are needed in the recruit at entrance?~Selection and socialization processes obviously interact. Etzione states that where both are high, socialization should be effective.18 Space does not permit further discussion of the prospective candidate. It seems sufficient here to raise these basic questions. The Structure Granting the developmental-experiential nature of adult learning, one must consider the environmental or structural conditions which foster it. Organizational arrangements of formation programs will require on-going examination in the light of trends in ministries and related learning needs. A basic assumption of the androgogical model implies change in the self-concept moving from one of dependence, to increasing self-direction.19 When operationalized in structures, this assumption is reflected in mutual trust and collaboration, flexibility, freedom to express differences, and active participation in learning. These structures should be geared to fa- ~SAmitai Etzione, Complex Organizations (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1961). ~Knowles, op. cit., p. 45. Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 cilitate growth and provide experiential as well as didactic learning oppor-tunities, a direction underway in many communities. Self-concept theory and research have demonstrated the impact of ref-erence groups on the self-concept of the person. Where a person constantly receives negative images, a negative concept of self may develop. In the past religious structures emphasized negative feedback, often forming negative self-concepts in religious. Current structures must be realistic, emphasizing positive as well as constructive negative feedback. Such an orientation contributes to a realistic self-concept and confidence in both self-direction and leadership skills. The Socializing Agent Fundamentally, formation personnel must be comfortable with the self-directed contemporary religious. Question must be raised as to appropriate preparation for formation team members. The predominant emphasis has been largely theological while also drawing from the humanistic psychol-ogies. Since the new ministries require an on-going diaiogical process with the world, it would seem that a broadened training would be required drawing from the social sciences and the secular professions. This would highlight the environment, the interaction between the person and the so-cial context--in this situation, the community. The environmental aspects and their influences on the person need to be emphasized. The self is in constant interaction with social structures, both within and outside the community. Formation personnel need to be more aware of the impact of structures on the person in community and how the person can impact on structure, as a basis for mutual and on-going growth and change. The Process The process of socialization, which seeks to identify how a specific role is internalized, has been studied in a number of professions,z° Greater attention needs to be given to this process in formation programs. The work of Kinnane and Preister suggests that the ultimate direction of socialization should be characterized by a movement from dependence and indepen-dence to interdependence; the development from self-centered behavior to social behavior; growth in maturity; and, the increasing integration of re-ligio- spiritual values in ministry.2t Z°Howard Becker, et ~il., eds., Institutions and the Person (Chicago: Aldine Publishers, 1968). ZlJohn F. Kinnane, Career Development for Priests and Religious (Washington, D.C.: CARA, 1970); Steven Preister, "The Professional Socialization of the Seminarian into the Career of Priesthood." Unpublished paper, Catholic University of America, 1976. PreParation for New Ministries: A Futuristic View The formation process involves both formal and informal components. Basically, the formal process occurs in sequential phases, clearly marked by rites of passage or movement from affiliate or candidacy status to the position of novice or of commitment. Informal processes, however, operate and may be identified. It has been observed in one community that religious often proceed from the initial stage with some role ambiguities, to a positive identification with community (often at the beginning of the novitiate) to a negative identification, followed by a more realistic conceptma stage of interdependence in community and the beginning of internalized commit-ment (generally toward the end of the novitiate),z2 Although this was found to be th~ usual process, individual variations in development and regression may occur throughout the process. It does suggest, however, a process of integration and internalization which continues in all adult life. Young religious need to be continuously confronted throughout this process to recognize both positive and negative aspects of the religious community and consider within this context where they are, personally, at a given time as they develop a realistic view of the community and seek to serve within its framework of ministry, they have already begun to internalize their religious commitment. To be fixated in either a positive or a negative phase may well reflect a question of personal commitment within this particular life style. With the complexities of living in society today and the greater demands in ministry, it seems that more attention must be given to the processes of initial and on-going formation. Conclusion In conclusion, religious of the future are now, in fact defining them-selves. This paper has presented indicators for the future role of women religious based on ministries which were identified as new to their con-gregations. An orienting conceptual model was formulated to examine ex-isting struciures and processes of formation programs as well as to raise questions as to how these programs are preparing religious for future roles in ministry. A further question, however, needs to be asked. Although religious communities are intellectually endorsing new ministries, are affective sup-port structures being provided for these newly developing works? These survey findings therefore, compel communities not only to address their newly developing forms of ministry but also to consider the support sys-tems provided for these new directions. 22Sister Mary Vincentia Joseph, M.S.B.T., "S~cialization in a Religious Community." Un-published paper, Catholic University of America, 1974. This paper was prepared in con-junction with research on the socialization process of one community. Reflections of a "Temporary Monk" Anne Marie Harnett, S.N.J.M. Sister Anne Marie received permission for a "contemplative sabbatical" last year, during which time she resided with, and lived the life of several contemplative communities. Presently she is doing graduate studies in theology and resides at 519 Varnum St., N.W.; Washington, DC 20011. The poet's labor is to struggle with the meaninglessness and silence of the world until he can force it to mean, until he can make the silence answer and the non-being be. It is a labor which undertakes to "know" the world not by exegesis or demonstration or proofs but directly, as a man knows apple in the mouth.1 When I read this paragraph recently, I was excited. It seemed to express what I have been trying to do this year during a "contemplative sabbat-ical." Aboht a y.ear ago, I asked for the opportunity for an extended ex-perience oUsolitude because of a somewhat hazy intuition 'that such an orientation was at the source of any ministry for justice (a large interest of mine) and it was itself a powerful witness to the consumer ~ociety in which we live. ~' I address these reflections particularly to those men and women who" might also feel called to an experience of solitude--to encourage them. I speak to contemplative communities--to thank them for their hospitality to me when I needed to be a "temporary monk." I hope that these few thoughts will encourage contemplative groups of women especially to con-sider this kind of hospitality as a service to the Church. Since September I have been struggling with the meaninglessness and silence--sometimes catching glimpses of the answer and the being--in a seemingly endless game of hide and seek. I have let the various elements of the experience speak to me, wondering at times what all this has to do 1Archibald MacLeish, Poetry and Experience (Boston, 1961), pp. 8-9, in The Courage to Create by Rollo May (New York: Bantam Books, 1976), p. 89. 858 Reflections of a "Temporary Monk" / 859 with ordinary living, let alone with problems of violence, poverty, injustice, the needs and :,:~oblems of people today. Sometimes I have felt anxious and frustrated: c:,.cu joy-filled, occasionally guilty, generally at peace, "r,. year has been. a tapestry. It has provided me with a variety of experiences resulting in changed attitudes and new and keener aware-nesses. Many of the designs iffthis tapestry have not yet been woven, and like the underside of a tapestry, the pattern is not readily visible to me. Because I am always wary of instant experts, of people who spend a few weeks in a foreign country and then lecture or write about the people and culture of that country, I hesitate to say a great deal even about the early part of my adventure in the "desert"; certainly I cannot yet write about my current "Carmelite phase." I would like however to share my reflections on the short experience I had in a Trappist monastery in Mistassini, Quebec. The monks'there have opened their choir to both men and women, and so I had the privilege of sharing fully in their prayer from Vigil at 3:30 A.M. until Compline at 7:30 P.M. Their Office is beautiful inits simplicity. I found that it not only satisfied 'my need.for beauty in worship but that it completed my own prayer; whatever the mood or message of my prayer might have been. The Hours became~for me a stream into which I could jump at various times of the day, a stream which carried: along with it all my hopes, as-pirations and activities. Because chanting Office at 3:30 A.M. is so foreign to most of us, I would like to say a little abotlt Vigil. It was never easy; seldom .was it bright With praise or, comforting in sorrow or pain. It was to me what its name suggests: watching and waiting. I often thought all of this would be absurd if God did not exist, if he were not God with us and for usl Often too I would think of and so pray for other people who-were up for other reasons: those on night shifts, parents with sick children, street people, those with no bed to go to. At other times I would think of people close to me, some of them watching and waiting in a way only they could know; other~ now fully enjoying him for whom we in that church were keeping vigil. Often too I would just manage to be there. Always I knew that all the stars were laughing at our wonder. I became more keenly aware of the apostolic dimension of prayer, both liturgical and personal, knowing that my prayer and that of the monks and other guests extended far beyond the confines of that church. This is so because of the nature of liturgical prayer, because of the eucharist and our faith in its cosmic dimensions~, but also because of what happens in prayer. The experience of a deep need of liberation and healing, the experience of both the presence and the apparent absence of God, and of his absolute fidelity, the relationship of this prayer to daily life with its demands, calls, and responses--all this is a microcosm of the world today with its own great need for liberation and healing, and its search for God whom so many have dismissed or do not know. ~160 / Review for Religious, Volume 36, 1977/6 This experience in prayer brought me new attitudes toward solitude. For some time I had found periods apart renewing and increasingly nec-essary to my well-being. So when I went to Mistassini I considered it under this primarily physical or geographical aspect. Now, while I realize the necessity and appreciate the value of periods of physical solitude, I have come to think of it more as "an enclosure" I carry around with me. It is an inner attitude in line with the thought of Thomas Merton expressed in Contemplation in a Worm of Action. As I understand it, he sees solitude as a probing for truth, first of all in oneself; it is the acceptance of one's identity and of one's lot as given by God. While probing for truth and forming convictions, one seeks the courage to live, to witness in accordance with these convictions. It involves making decisions, consonant with one's inner reality and in the light of God's truth and love.2 I became more aware of the fact that my search and probing is a pil-grimage. Like Abraham I have set forth in the desert hearing the call, "Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you" (Gn 12:1). While my predominant mood as I set out on this pilgrimage was one of joy in God's presence, yet solitude sometimes brought me fear of the future, an angst fear. This reality I found also described by Thomas Merton: "The man who wants to deepen his existential awareness has to make a break with ordinary existence, and this break is costly. It cannot be made without anguish and suffering. It implies loneliness, and the disorientation of one who has to recognize that the old signposts don't show him his way, and that in fact he has to find the way by himself without a map.''3 Perhaps I will always have to live with this anguish because the old signposts are in fact gone, and the new ones are very hazy. Certainly they will never be as clear-cut and sharply defined as they were in the past. Very likely the way will never be clearly mapped out. Yet I have become more at home with my anxiety and at times even welcome it as an experience of my powerlessness, as a call to total de-pendence on God. Recently I found a passage in The Courage to Create by Rollo May which describes in psychological terms this aspect of solitude. The ex-perience of encounter, encounte¢ implying a deep commitment, always brings anxiety because of the shaking of the self-world relationship which occurs in the encounter. "Our sense of identity is threatened: the world is not as we experienced it before; and since self and world are always cor-related, we no longer are what we were before . The anxiety we feel is temporary rootlessness, disorientation; it is the anxiety of nothingness.''4 In mature creativity anxiety must be confronted if we are to experience joy. 2Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action (New York: Image Books, 1973), Chapter III, "The Identity Crisis," pp. 75-100. aIbid., p. 126. ~Ibid., p. 107. Reflections of a "Temporary Monk" / 861 I can live with anxiety and anguish, confront them and experience joy because of my faith and trust in God, and because of the love relationship I experience with him. The anxiety is then transformed into resting in him. It' is living in that marvelous gap between what my faith sees and feels and what God knows and is actually accomplishing in me; between my desire to live as he wants me to live, to be the person he wants me to be, and the fulfillment of this desire. It is a living of the words of Isaiah, "See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers" (Is 43:9). During the summer just before my sabbatical year I was a journalist at our general chapter which was one of reflection and discernment on our charism and our response to it in the world today. During the c.hapter our foundress was very much alive and present to us; she continued to be present to me during these weeks of solitude. As I reflected on my life as a woman religious and on hers, I saw that she had creative imagination'~ which she used in service to the Church. She consulted the signs of the times and, with eyes wide and in perfect freedom, said yes. This yes meant leaving a respectable and secure position, setting herself and her two com-panions up in an attic, opening a small school with no financial means, embarking on unknown seas in an as yet unfounded community. She said thisyes daily depending totally on God in faith and love. It seems to me that this is the kind of response to which God calls us today: the witness of a life--creative, integrated, with a willingness to risk, dedicated to the gospel. As I write these reflections in my room in the Bronx Carmel, I am looking at a little collection of prints tacked on my wall: La Misereuse accroupie (a woman crouching, possibly in prayer) by Picasso, Christ Mocked by Soldiers by Rouault, The Burghers of Calais and La Pensde by Rodin, the South Rose Window and Lancets from the Cathedral of Chartres. Beside them is the quote, "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves." The collection symbolizes the strands of life that have brought me here and the threads continually being woven into my solitude, my experience of God. The Christ who is mocked is the crouching woman, the attraction of La Pens~e, the glorious center of the rose window. He is the reason for loving the questions and for being patient with the incompleteness of the answers. He is somewhere in the agony, the stolid acceptance, the chains and the resistance symbolized by the Burghers of Calais. At the same time he is in the beauty and achievement of ihe ensemble. My encounter with this reality brings me back to labor and struggle with the meaningless, the contradictions and the paradoxes. Again I am knock-ing on silence, waiting for being; above all, I am living in hope. ~Leonardo Boff, author of Jesus-Christ Liberateur, says that imagination is the creativity to see humankind become better and richer than the present cultural environment. The Call of Retirement: A Ministry of Elders Jeanne Schweickert, O.S.F. Sister Jeanne is Vice President of Ministry for the School Sisters of St. Francis. Her office is located at 1501 South Layton Blvd.; Milwaukee, Wl 53215. Over the past several years many old people have entered my life in new and powerful ways, the young old, the middle old, and the old old--and as they touched me I experienced the paradoxes of their lives: the hopeful expectations of some, the disillusionment of others; the longing for (he great past and the eager awaiting of death; the joyous celebration of life and the loneliness, fear and despair of day-after-day. It became more and more obvious that as the people I met approached old age, as they moved into retirement, they experienced traumatic mo-ments in their lives, moments that challenged their very personhood. Some time ago I decided to take council with some of the elderly sisters of my community. I invited them to get in touch with their own experience of retirement and share with me what they recalled happening inside them at that time. The following are a few of their comments: "Sometimes it feels like your personhood is diminished ." "I want to be seen first as a person, and then as a patient . " "Institutions make it difficult to be personal ." "You can't make decisions for yourself ." "I felt dethroned, becoming an observer rather than a participant . " "I was frightened of being a captive of the rocking chair and treated as a child kept busy with games and crafts . " "The real pain of not being active is that your opinion is never sought . " These are but a few of their comments; they are the more painful ones. 862 The Call of Retirement: A Ministry of Eiders / 1~63 However all of these perspectives reinforced for me again the perception of retirement as a time of moving away from something that had meaning rather than moving toward something significant in life. In his "Preface to a Practical Theology of Aging" Don S. Browning emphasizes that we must challenge both the idea that a person is only of worth or contributing when he is gainfully employed and the idea that the last stages of life should be a time of irrelevant comfort and preadolescent indulgence. Al

Issue 3.5 of the Review for Religious, 1944. ; Review :for Religious SEPTEMBI~R 15, 1944 Forestalling Pains of Purgatory . Clarence McAu]|ffe. A#ostolate of the Cross . Robert S. Bten ¯ Sanity and Sa ,nctity . G. Augu, sfine Ellard ~Bur~s~r General of Religious Institute . Adam C. Ellis. ~ Are You Sbrry for Your Sins? . Gerald Kelly~ I~ooks Receiged Communlca÷ions Questions Answered~ D~ci~ions of the Hbly See NUMBER-5 " REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS ~ VOI£.UME III ;EPTEMBER 15, 1944 NUMBER CONTENTS FORESTALLING THE PAINS OF PURGATORY-- Clarence McAulit~e, S. 3 .-. ~. 289 BOOKS RECEIVED ',. " 296 THE APOSTOLATE OF THE CROSS Robert B. Eiten, S.J. 297 DECISIONS OF THE HOLY S~E OF INTEREST TO RELIGIDUS366 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . 306 SANITY AND SANCTITY--G. Augustine Ellard, S.J . 307 BOOKLETS ON VOCATIONS . 325 COMMUNICATIONS (On Retreats) . , . 326- THE'. BURSAR GENERAL OF A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTEm Ndam C. Ellis, S.J . 329 , ARE YOU SORRY FOR,,YOUR SINS? Gerald Kelly, S.3 ~.3.3.5. BOOKLETS . 348 BOOK REVIEWS (Edited by Clement DeMuth, S.J.)-- St. Dominic and His Work: Father Tim; The General Who Rebuilt the Jesuits; My Father's Will; A Key to Happiness; The Eternal Priesthood; An ~Introduction to Philosophy; JummariUm Theologiae Moralis ~. 349 QUESTIONS AND ANSW'ERSm 30. Entrance into Novitiate after lapse from Faith .". 357 31. Meaning of "Patrimony" . . 357 32. Excommunicated Persons and Sunday Mass . 35~ 33. Asking Pardon after an Offense . 359' *" 34. Quality of Benediction Candles . 360 35. Position of Candles and Flowers on Altar . 360~ REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, September, 1944. Vol. III, No. 5. Published bi-monthly: January, March, May, July, September, and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter January 15, 1942, at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3, 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.3., G. Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald Kel!y, S.3. Copy?ight~ 1944, by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby granted for quotation.s of reas, onable length,: provided due credit be given this review and the author. Subscription price: 2 dollars a year. Printed in U.S.A. Before writing ,to us, please consult notice on inside back cover. '-~i'~Y GIVING the rock a double strike in order to'prodh(e, v;'ater for the Israelites._'(Numbers 20:11, !2), Moses '~ ~oPAINS OF PURG.~TORY "~" :~. .~, "~Granted these cioOnn d.i.t S, .how~ can e levee ,lm " un- -t~.in21of ~emporaLlSunishment thai: ~asts ,its shado.w upon.,, our lives? First of all, by indulgences. These favors granted ~-" by~.~he-Church aim directly at'the deletion of temporMpuia ishment. A ~in~le ple.nary in.d, ulgence, gained by one who . has,had all his venial sins forgiven, annihilates ,at once eirery ~.-, l~it'of this punishment, r~gar~lless of the ~iumber or grav{ty "of his past offenses. As ~as-pointed out by, Father-Thomas A."~O'.Connbi; ~S.J:, in this RI~VIEW (November, 1942,. ":PP" 3-82~389)~dvery religious ~and priest may: easily gain five such plenary in~dulgen~es every day, ~6qcever, even ~if we n~eglect these opportunities, we. 'very likely ~gain~,~ucfi ~pl~nary indu~.gences perio~dically during the year, for in-~ stance, a~ yhe. c0nclusion.0f our annual retreat and, during .the, Forty Hours. If some past venial sin still lingers on o~r soul so ~;that the. plenary indulgence cannot produce its full eit'ect~, it nevertheless remits a part o,f our t~mporal punish-ment. . Besides plenary indulgences, all of us gain many paifial one~; especi~alfy by~ use. of aspiratiofis. These. accord.i.ng to ;their-designated value may i~emove hs mu~h temporal p.u~n-i~ shrrient as was taken away by fifty dr a hundred or five "hundred days of rigorous canonical pen.ance in the early ChurcH'.° When we reflect h6w, severethese penances:w~ere,. ' W~ must admitthat an indulgence, even of fifty days, must :' make,deVastating inroads on our sinful debt. But indulgences are not the. only-means~at our disposal. t~v~ry _fime.~ tha~t'we approach "the Sacrament'of Pen ask .God., fo~? many other ~pirittial bles,~ings: in i]Sra.y~ers. In the same+ way we may ask this fiivor+and it ;will be'granted. -- ~Finally, we should remember that ~ome other living d> person may be offering satisfaction for us'and so b~ reducing ~" our t~emporal punishment. I~ is impossible, of course; for_. Other p~ople t6 apply their indulgences for us. It is also impossible, for them to transfer to Us the au~om~tic.r~emoval .of tempora! punishment proceeding from their assistance at ~Ma~ss; their;reception of the Sacraments of Penanc.e, and Of Extreme Unction.~ But they may give us the satisfactory ~ 'valge _of their unsough'~ suffe_ring~, of" their "prayers, fasting; almsde~ds and Other Works of piety,", and of all theit other good a~tions,of each day~ We on our part can ~\i-'~e~r~Srm.an act of charity by surrendering the Value ~f so.me of Our own satisfactory works for the °benefit of others.~" " Faced by such an array Of evidence,_, we must co~ncludi~- Ythat.it is quite possible for any ~onsdcrated' .person to die ¯ with all .temporal punish~ment for past' forgiven sins removed. ' In fadt~, it is highlyprobable that many religious' ~do ~o die. It is even likely, that many religious contribute generously-to the~ spiritual treasury of the Church by ~ acquiring much 'more expiatory wealth thin they them: o selves need. These thoughts should non-induce;any remiss-ne~ ss on ou~r-part in ou'r efforts, to gain such wealth, since we do nbt know precisely the size of our sinful.debt. In addi-~ ~. tion, every one of the satisfactory works mentioried also has a-nieritorious aspect, s~o that their perfo~rmance necks_-." sar~ily results-in a greater degree of glory in heaven. Ma,y we then say that rn'ost~ consecrated .persons nearer dday in purgatory at all? Not necessarily. The ~videhce~. ,adduced in this article sirhp!y indicates that Such persons; ;~can escape purgatory.as far as their temp.oral debt for past -~ _ 295 CLARENCE MC ULIFFE °~ ~ forgiven iins is conc~rned~ -But.pu'rgatory. may;open.its doors on ariother score. We may. have on our souls a~ i:leath;~ .many venial sins. ~hat have never been-forgivdn. Sii~cetheir ~uilt yet remain's, tiaeir temporabtSuni'shment will havei6 be,undergone in purgatory,, because temporal punishment may.never be, ex.piated previous to the remission of guilt. N~vertheless, solid evidence could be adduced to prove that ~religious can die° with every t~ace, of sinffil guilt rembved so. that they would enter with6ut any delay into the of heaven. ¯Book~ Received (From dune ZO to August~ 20) B. HERDER BOOK CO. St. LoUis. T~d Philosopht, l of-St. Thomas Aquinas. By Hans Meyer. T~anslated ~b th~ Reverend Frederic Eckhoff. $5.00. The Ascetical Life. ~By the R~,erefid ~ Pascal P. Parents, S.T.D., Ph. D., J.C.B. $2.50. The ,8ouls. By the Reverend Wendelin Meyer. O.F.M. ~nd Others. Translated~by ~he Reverend Andrew Green. O.S.B. $3.00. =Deaconship: Conferences~. on ihe, Rite o~ Ordination. By the Reverend Aloysius Biskupek, S.V.D. $°2.50. Molders of the Medieval Mind: The Influence of the Fathers of the Church ~on the Medieval Schoolmen. By the Reverend Frank P. Cassidy, Ph.D. $2.00., THE- BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, Milwaukee. ¯ A ~,Vorld to Reconstruct:-Plus XII on Peace and Reconstruction. By Guido Gbnella. Translated-by the Reverend T. 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" . , 296 " " heApos :o!h e of Cross Robert B. Eiten, S.J. C~UFFERIN~'andthe cross are bard for all of us. ~ pine u~nder their weight. ~vre are constantly forced to seek ne~w and striking motives for bearing them. ~t : one ,time perhaps the motive of self-preservation or , " "keeping spiritually-fit" made a ~trong appeal t0~us. Agair~ ~we might have turned our eyes to the p?~st and" seen -° ~p.~rso.nal.siffs.~ Right order demanded that these sins. be ~-~ expiated; hence the motive of expiation for our person.ai mental,health is a matter 0f~'developi.ng rational habit~. o- Given~sani_ty and grace, spiritual perfection depe.nds upon '- ~-buiiding up supernatural habits. ,° -. ¯ Analgsi~ of the Irrational Of both'health of mind and ascetical perfection the dbadly enemy is unreason, or better, irrational emotion. .What St. Augustine writes of sin is true ,also of every ,unsound habit. "It is not wrong to say thaLevery sin i's a falsehood. For eve.ry sin is commited only.with the inten- ~ fion that it sh6uld-be well'with us, or that it Should not be evil with ~s. Therefore there is the falsehood that, although . so.methingfis" done that it may b~e well -g-ith us, it is ~hence , really rather evil with us, or that, although something is done that it m~iy be better with us, it is thence ~eally rather worse with u.s" (De CiuitateDe/. xIV, 4).ludas's experi-ence, partkularly his disappointment with the thirty p.iedei -6f silver;, is a good illustration. Accordingly, in "every unwholesome habit, as well as in every sin, there is a cer-" taih sel~-contradiction', ~elf-deception, and self-frustra'tio~. One seeks satisfaction and gets d~ssatisfaction, or at least if /he doesget a certain satisfaction, he also. suffers a greater ~ dissatisfaction. He looks for the truth and finds an. untruth : he'inten~ls good and brings evil upon himself: 'What :is fals~ can be accepted only under the guise bf truth, andevil . .-can-be willed 0nly under the fallacious appearance .of g_oo.d. Bgth in unhe~ilthy and in sinful habits two esi~ntial ,,.elements are discernible: a false judgment,, giving diiec.tibn, and an emotional force, fundamentally go_od., but mis-directed, an_d" moving to action: If there were no erroneous judgment, one would b~ acting ~in accordance ~with trfith ~nd goodness, and hei~ce rightly. If there were no emotion, there would not be any action at all. It is as if a business::" 309 man invested money to make a profit and sustained aloss~_ or astir a sick man meant to t~ke a medicine and ~drank a~ poison. .Thus the scrupulous man seeks to please God anff by his irrational behavior does what is objdctively dis-: pleasing to Him,~ of~he strives.to make his salutation mdfe' secure and~ at the, same time by-his wrongheadedness really' renders it less certain, or he tries to fulfill the tiniest jot and -~tittle, of tl~e.l"aw and violates the fundamenfal principle~o~f la~ that one should 15e sane and rational. Mor~eover, in both~ the psychical and ethi~a,1, spheres it is mogtly t~he same-emotional forces that ~ause'the trouble: namely, the ego-instinct orpride, the sexual urge, fear, and sadness.° "- ~ _. Fivg Wags of~ Meeting Problems Functional psychic- disorders commonly originate conflict with 0some.~u._nplea~sant reality Which frustrates' br .threatens tO frustrate_~one in s6me way. There are eraL possibilities. "Some m~ke the right and in ouk,case; it would b~e the ~religious Yeaction: they face the ,facts -squarely, . see what is to be doneabout them, and then d0it promptly and courageously. Other are not so happy. Some "take to flight. A soldier who is afraid to. fight and also to °admit it, conveniently becomes blind or paralyzed, and is excused; thus he saves both himself and the respett in which. he is held by himself and others. Another man withdrav~s into a dream-w0rld of his own creation. A third over-" ~whelms himself with external distractions: A third group ~ of people [ightltheir dit~iculty, but not in the normal way. ¯ , A man who is overtimid before other men, intimidates a~d browbeats his family, and~thus compensates. An indication . of this t~endency in human nature is observable in the fact that oftentimes the ,less one's authority, the greater.~.the show. that one makes of it. ~A'ma;a who is fearful of his ° ability to rCsist the attractions of women, may. carefully 310 ~ September)' 1944 ~ ~" , ,~ .9 ,SANITY AND SANCTITY -cultivate a dislil~e and ~ontempt for ~ll the fairer h~lf"of the "~hUman r~c~e, and never miss a chance to disparage them. A ~po~ential drunkard may become a rabid teetotalist.'- wh~o tAri efso utor tshe rcvlea stsw oof m paesrtseorns,s c, olrinkper othmeis em wain.~ ihnt htehier ~G doisffpie:l .~ulty. -An ambitious young priest sets out t~make. tinguished career for himself;~dne~that is rather high for limitations. ° Gradually he yields before great flifficulfies. But he doe.s.not give up hi'aim nor,the ~atisfaction that the - thbught of it brings. He concentrates attention ~on all the \~obst~iCii~s in his way, exaggerates them, perhaps adds a few. ~'of his own niaking; and finally reaches the c6mf6rting~ on-clusion that, alth6ugh now he cannot.reach that goal arid thus show his worth, still, if it were not for all those unfor-ti~ nate circumstances, he could have distinguishdd himself. His s~If-'safisfaction~, is saved. The fifth group simply ~ive up in defeat. Then they may fret ii~way t~heir lives in worry 6r anxiety or sink into the dark depths 'of melan- _~choly and despair.- ' The Influence of Habits With organic psychoses and neuroses, that~is, major and minor mental diseases due, foi instance, to an injured '~.o~'dition of the brain, we are 'not at all concerned in. this ilrticle. Functional psychoses and neuroses have rio demonstrable organic basis. It seems to,~be ciuite" true--all .preventive measures and hopes rest largely upon-this pr, em- ~i~e.--A-~tha~ many persons who have c_ontracted these f.unc-tion~ al disorders could have avoided them if they had intelli . gentler and earnestly disciplined their habits.of thinkihg ~ and f~dling, or, in other words, if they had striven to see and e~valuate'things as they_ are and to modem.te their emotiofis accordingly. But they did not; ;ind the cumulative~effect of .lon~-continued carelessness and drifting leaves~ them m_ore "~ -~3. AUGUSTIN~ ELLARD* -or Iess d~ranged. Reoieu) for~Reli~iqus.; There is nobody .who_ is pe)fectly :n6r- , mal, th~ abnormals being like the rest of us, only mor~ So. ¯ Every_one ha~ some habit or. 6ther which he wou~Id, do wel, I to coriect, both for the health of "' his soul. "No excellent soulis exempt from some admix-f~ lure of madness" (Aristotle). It is with these habits that ~-tBis article is ~oncerned, not with those of persons who are. ~ _ al_ready neurotics or woi~se. Extroversisn anal Introversion Before we discuss'particular l~abits,it may be well:oto °notice two general tendencies of attenti0.n and interest, which, if carried too" far, can become very harmful both to personality and to-the spiritual life, namely, extroversion :and introversion. Extroversion, an inclination:to occup~,, "~neself with what is outside of oneself, may lead to ignor ance of self, thoughtlessness, shallowness of character,: and ~a n~glect of all the greate'r and better things. It is naturally apt to end in that excessive giving of oneself to externals which is a'special failing of ma.ny m6dern religious priests and-is so 6ften #ep~)ecated now by ascetical writers. It is contrary i_n tendency to all-that the interior fire'implies. .RecolleCtion would be reduced to a .point approaching zero. Turning to external things is a favorite means of esc.ape frbm the unRleasantn~ss of living with ~3ne's own imperfedt self and from the goadings of grace when on~ is not on the~ best of speaking terms with God. A~y"religious who is so Vehemently and incessantly busy talking o~ working exter-~- nally°tbat he can hardly think of anything else, would "illustrate v(rhat is meant by the extroverted pers6nality. Extreme extroversion as seen in certain demented persons is often termeffa "flight into reality.-" Introversion, a propensity to keep the ~nind turned - inwa'rd upon itself,-involves the dangers c;f-morbid intro 3 12 ~ ~sp~cfion and0f ge~fing to0 far away from-~rhe "real wo~ld.1 ::Th~ Jn~rover~ may be¢6me ~bsorbed or even lost Jn ~labyrJn~h 0f ~is ow~ ~hou~h~s, fe~1~ngs,. ~nd fa~cJ~s. ~He ~s more apt ~o be brooding, m~dy, and anx~0us: Morally, " be ~S ~n grea~er danger ~f being too self-centered, a~d of'all. ~e.evts ~ha~ go wi~h ~ha~ m~d~fion. He ~ends ~o become unfi~ m l~ve ahd, work w~h o~hers. ~he worst form Jn~r6v~rsJon Js exemplified by ~ose pafiems Jn asylums ;~o~ completely w~dr~w Jn mind from all external reM~ Jry. The Jn~e~rare~ person, ~nd ~be good relJ~Jou~ will Cs~ve r~ S~rJke a ha~py balance ~b~ween extroversion and Unwholesome Intellectual Habits '. ~Am~ng particular bad habits that-call for. discipline, as the psychologi~ would say, or for m0rt~cation, to u£i ~. the ascetical term, the ~oll0wing may. be instanLedf Those . ]in_which self-deception seems more prominent ,will be con 3jdered first, and then those in which the emotional element " has a certain predominance, Of the many ways described ]-by psychoJogist~ in wIich'people deceive, themselves, these'-- ~-~ five seem to be the most significant for our pu~ose. , ~ ~ -: Since sanity consists in contact with reality, it is evident" , thht:~vasion of unpleasant tr~ths is, no part of it.- A certain .amofint of evasion is Vffy.-comm0n'and ~ithin th£.timits of . "the normal. But it.tends to grow from bad to worse,.?nd hence it is excellent material ~or disciplih~ or mortifica[ion. ._. ThoSe who evade disagreeable truths are the persons whgm - ~e hear likened to ostriches hidin~ their heads in the sand~ . .:Simply ~urnin~ away may bring relief for a time;, but :may also ha~ten disaster, ._ . " One may dissimulate or suppress the truth of a dis-tressing fact inone's situation or condition. Fo~ instahee, a man is told by his.physiLian.that his blood-~r£ssure is -=313 Gi AU.~3USTINE ELLAR~. ~ . . o Reaiew t:or Reiigi6us" gettifig. too',high. In.stead'~of a~ep'ting th~ diagnosis an~ r~gulating his life according!y:, ~he thi'nks as little-as pbssi-ble .of the matterYand acts all the more strenuously as if in an efforl~ td prove to hi'self ahd to others that there is nothin°g~ ,wrong with him, and. least of all; high blood-pressure. Similarly, a devout .man is wa~ned by his confessor, pos-sibly by a succession of confessors, that he is s~rupulous." ~.Not only does he not ac,quiesce, but he goes on to do all thSt he can to convince himself and his confessor that he is noi~ scrupulous. If he fail~with one, he pro.ceeds to anoth4r. And meanwhile he is.getici~g farther and fa~the} awffy from reason and religion. . - -~ , . Sometimes people dissemble to themselves the fhct that~ great obstaclds stand in their way. Before they meet them, - they dc~ r~ot lose their courage, but neither do ~they take~ the necessary steps to cope; with them. Thi~y seem to think-that ~ by shfftting their eyes to tlSem, minimizing them~ or, as .it were. laughing them .off, they will-somehow overcome= them.Lady Luck may take care of them. A pious rnan~- -might. say "Providence!' will do it.Sr. X's difficulty is a -qUick and Sharp tongue. Instead.of considerin, g her prob-lem., understanding it, arid seeing what is to be "done about it~ she givesherself up to a va~ue hope that somehow'God's "grace ~vill solve, it, and thinks: no more about it. There~a-re others who manage, to blind l~hemsel¢c~s ~to their Failures-or at least to acknowledge them to thee least-p6ssible extent. "D6n't worry abgut spilt milk." ~ommon and idjurious mode of evading the.truih about. ¯ ,one s deficiencies is to blame .other persons or unfavorable circumstances for them. They are like the football fans-who gladly take all the credit for victory when t~ir team wins, arid who, whenever~& loses, have a multitude- of~ excuses and explanations, ";without, - however, ever gi~ing credit to the other'side forsimply being superior. A teacher 314 Septer~Ber, 1944° ~- "- .SANITY. AND SANCTITY "whose w0'rk is n.bt,tip the-the mark m~y explain~i~- all by refe~rring to the poor qUali(y of the class,~interferences fro~ the principal, un.satisfactory textbooks, a noisydassroom, and so 6n--anything; in fact, except personal deficiencies. - Akin to evading unpleasant truths is-the d~d~lin~.l ?esponsibilitie~. When a man frankly, that is, without_ ielf-deception, refuses to do whavhe knows he ought, to do~ t.he fault is moral. When the mind is so deranged, that therb is no lor~'ger an.y moral imputability and one,shirks~a the fault is merely psychic. .In between these two extremes there ar~ infinite gradations-and combinations of both moraband psychi~ failures, 6f illusions arid bad will. of the corrimonest means of escaping a disagreeable dUSty ._ .and of avoiding embarrassment at the same tinie is to develop, more or less-unconsciously, Or to ~magnify~ a-~'- physicid disability of somekind. No doubt every-ieligious superior"who ,has had much.experience, knows of subjects ~who shirked disagreeable obligations or assignments on the ,plea.of illness or incapacitati_on'that was psychic ratherthan physical. Recourse t6 prayersometimes appears to,be an. example Of dodging, a practical i~sue. Sr. Y comes t6 rea~lize tha~. fhere is a considerable degree of disobedience in-her life. She recalls tl~e magnificent promises of results to those-who pray. Then, instead of clearly formulating to her~ self-what is wrong, what She should do abou~ it, why. she ~boul.d do it, and _by what means, she plans a novena, to :St: 3oseph, so m~any Memorare~s to ~he Blessed Virgin, ~ _such and such prayers to,the Little Flower, and so on. Thus she distracts herself from what she ought- to do. hdrself~ P~ously and comfortab_ly she goes on; so.does the disobedi-ence, !ess piously, but comfortably.- , Rationalization is the proce.ss of making action_that :is unreasonable seem reasonable. PrObably it is thecommon-est- of all the mental distortions pointed out in these pages.- 3.15 G. A~2.G'USTINE ELI~ARD -~Retyiew,[or Religious There is hardly a humah being who d~es not resort to it at times aiad in some measure. Vdry.powerful and ~ersistenk urges impel, us todo thirigs that are r~ot quite right, and at the same time twist our thinking just sufficiently~toenabl~ u~ to feel more or l~ss justified in doing them. On the one hand, those impulses are extremely:strohg, and on the oth.er, we ekperience a certain necessity of being,,or at least -of, appearing to be, rational/both in our own eyes and~.~ .espec.ially in the.estimation of Others. Rationalization su~-~ plies the way out of the difficulty. '~The"rationalizer dab- 6rates- convenient and reassuring, deceigtions,° for himseli~, and Often. alsd deludes-himself into believing that other~' do not see throtigh his fiction. Extreme forms of rationaliza~- -tion are found in. the insane.Rationalization is probably exemplified every day in ev~ery religi6us house. It is the favorite meahs of-taking the edge off the exacting principles of asceticism and the int~rnvenient obligations' 6f the rules,. -and~of making life under them more agreeable. ). One of the worst forms of flight from reality-is day-~ . drearning.~ - It octurs in all degree~ from that which is nor-mal. to that of the utterly insane. It is especially liable to develop "in persons who are inclined 'to remain shut:in within them.sel, ves, whose surrou;adings are dist~ressin_g, and .who have lively-imaginations. If. things are painful "~Well, at least," one may say, "I. can create a world 6f my own where there will be some sort of satisfaction for me. In" fa~t, there, in fancy, ! can have any pleasure that.I Wish." As daydreaming grows.,-it takes one further and furthe~ from real life : hence, its evil aridHanger. Idle reverie in a r~ligious is at best just so miach energy, a;ad, time diverted from his own sanctification and tlse accompffshment of the task ~ assigned to him by God~- M6rtifying the" propensity° to,it would contribute to integration of personality, .to greater holiness, and to haore, efficient usefulness to others. 316 "Septembir~,',1944 - " ~ - - SAIqlTY AND sANcTIT-Y ' A, marked tendency.to, suspiciodsness is- not,a'good stgn. df rob~st~and depe_ndablehealth of mind~ .it'involves~:fte,°o q{aerit~ deceptions of self, engenders e'ver'y sort of dhrk.affd blister fe£1ing, and lessens ol{e's fitfiess to live and work w.i~th -~others. In a religious,, suspiciousness 0fsuperiots can gb so far a~ to become positively pathological. There are religious who easily ,develop a martyr- omp'lex. Brother X, a man of v~ry good ~will but poor 'judgment, has often had to be corrected bj~ his shpefio~s. He is fully conscious of his good faith. After~a tim~, he notices that although behas beentrying very earnestly.to°~ d9 the right thing, he has-ndt met with approbation and "_erfcouragement, but rather, as i~ seemed, j~st the contrary. He ~recalls. that God often allows His l~est servants to b~. persecuted. Finally,. he concludes that be'must be-in that class. ,From then on every unpleasantness met in his rela- - tions~with, others and particularly every admonition given~ by superiors is'interpreted'.as one m6re indication that he is beingperse~uted and thathe_ must.be a ,great°favorite-wi~h 'Heaven.~ . Wha'tever i~ done ~o make him see~the light ts taken to be so much more molesfation. ' Another bad habit of mind is found in many people ~. ~ who, are b0tl~ered, with irisistent,, umvelyome, .thoughts. Some of the best igeople are distressed in this way with the~ ~orst thoughts: - Ideas of the most repuls~v.e:nature force-fully~ obtrude themselves into'.the mind, even at the most-sacredo- mom(nts or places. They are utterly out 'of keeping~ ~Twith the character of the person whom they aftlict, and are felt, as if by some external force, to be imposed upon one "-._ They are not ordinary temptations, hnd should" not ~be ~resis~ed as ifthey were n~tural movements of resentment:o'r. o~ncupis~enc.e: Fear and autosuggestion may be factors in b.ringing;them ~ibout. .Recognizing them for what they~ are, avoiding fear of the~, ignoring~them, andan effort tO 3i7 .~- ~. o ~-" --. ~ ~. ~ L~",,~- ~.~ '~ o ~t ~AUGUSTINE ELLARD~ ~ , "~ ~, R~ie~ for'R~ligious remain indiff~)rent ~toward them ¯while preserving ~;ne's, self- 'possession, a~e more effective, o_ -~_~ Unwholesome Emotional Habits The se'cond, and perhaps the more'important,-eleme~t in every,irrational, and also every irreligioud, reactign,., is ~affective or emotional. It is this that adds power, some-times compell'ing pdwer, to them, and leads to action. Cer- ¯rain cases, out- of many, will be indicated in the f611owing ' paragraphs ~ Nowadays we.are always hearing about int:eriori't~t [eelings.,and their injurious consequences. Obviously, sense o]~ inferiorityis humil!ating and.embarrass!ng: B~- sides, when not-well borne, it begets depression, fearful-ness, discouragement, and a disinclination to exert orieself. --So may fal~e humility, tn these dispirited states of soul. some people~ m.ay stick: But others undertake io do some-" o rising about it, though they are not in the.best condition-t0 judge what should be done,, and then dissatisfaction with ~ "- one's !nferiority and the desire to.be rid of i~ or even to-secure a certain, elevatidn over othe_rs, may lead to a great ~. garie.ty ofpersonality.fa9lts. ~These efforts may be of two general kinds: disguise or compensation. ~ Attempts. to con-ceal ohe's inadequacy .involve; falsity ~and duplicity, not 0co, nducive to the unity thatcharacterizes an integratedper-son. If they be kept up for long,.they may ,bring about~ stra!n and unnataumrOacl~ a.h.t.y. Moreo~'er, the cha_nces.are' that-they~ v~ill be °unsuccessful, and ~leave the~hypoc.rit~2 feeling more inferior than ever. Unsound.forms of comp~fi sation that occur are, for example, exaggerated aggressive- -.ness, fan~aticism, blustering, excessive reforming ze.al: unrea~0n~ble c.ritic~ism Sf others, extremes of conduct, d~: ~" matism, rigorism, tyrannical domination, and a hos~ - 31'8 September, 194'~I~ ~" ~ " " " SANITY,ANI~ SANCTITY A~sense of .l~ssene~d worth neednot,.bemJ.U. rzoys" ' . ~' to one's pers0n~lity. Of all p~ople?the Saints felt thifir worthless- -. ness~'most keenl~ and acknowledged it most Openly. CerZ tainly some of them r~garded themselves as-the wo]:st of all fiu~an beings. But their ge~nuine, not false, humility, t.oge.th'er :with other virtues which balanced and Suppl"e- ~mented it, was an antidote that prevented them fr0m~ °requiring a psych, iatrist~s attention; in fact,~it-became one of[the foremost reasons for their superior exci~llence.- The "healtlSy-minded and sensible man will take himself as he is,. , acknowledge 14is,,limitations, and,,intelliger{tly and courdge- 0usly make the mo~t of his potentialitie,s. He will not 6v~errate himself and thus. deceive himself, nor b~y. futile at~empt~ to rise higher, render himself_, still more inferior than he. really is. True Christian humility, accompanied l~.y~ confidence in-God and magnanimity, is the sovereign remedy fgr a depressing sense of inferiority, Sex is. also a most fertile hotbed of psychic and moral troubles.° Here especially the right ideas and the right attiv ifudes of will are of supreme importance for those Who would advance in sanity.and sanctity. If one's views are too broad, the'moral life ~it least will suffer, and the mental "may. If they are too narrow, too puritanical, the tumul-tuous currenl~'of"sexual, impulse may demolish the :dikes unnafurally restraining it and wreck everything~ As Horace remarked long,ago, you may.chasenature out with a fork, , ut it v~ill alwa.ys return. This is true in a special way of/ sexu~il~nature. If it is unnecessarily repiessed, sooner or -,later it ~ill emerge again, perhaps in a ,disguised,,and mor-bid form. and with.increased .~violence. Too mueh repres- 1. s~on:would involve the danger of making one a neurotic,. and then What about his chastity?~. Temptations would be multiplied and at the same time one would have less than the normal ability to cope with them. - 31~9 G: AUGUSTINE-EI~LARD - " ° ? R'e~ieW ~o~ Religious The right ~iew of se~ di+ine view of it. It would not .regard ~ everything aboat se~ as bad and ugly. Nor would it ,be-too negative. the contrary,, it would-look upon sex as an integral element in human nature and a divine+creation, and as such, g~od:'. . In the practice of cha+~ity, whether conjugal or celibate, a person would seek, by the e~pression.oP all that is noblest . in him rather than by repression,-to achieve the pbsitive +purpoSes of the law, to develop and perfect one'elf, to beg~t offspring, whether ih the literal, or .the m~taphoric~ ~ense, and to increase o e s love for Him who~ is qnfinite -loveliness and beauty. The.-sexUal instinct, whichr as?a matter of fact, is so destructive to divine love[ can-and~3 ~hould' be integrated with it, ~nd become a most .~o~n~ ~promoter of it. Lack of su~cient instruction can haye tragical" ~onse~ quences. These days there seems to be need of much information in such matters than in the good old Victo~ian~- d£ys, especiall7 from books or the spoken word, The amount that one -should.have will depend upon individual needs find the hature of one's work. Suppression of the desire todearn wfiat one ought to know[-or legitimately might well know would seem to be a good example of the kind of.ihe sup--~ " ~ression that is injurious; beside~;,it .would be a persistent source bf. unnecessary temptations, .anxiety, and strain. Instruction shoul~ extend b6th to the facts and.to one',s obligations. The minor mental disease of scrupulo~F~,~ often thrives on sex-ual ground: .-,_ .An exaggerated conception or ideal tity may mislead .some. Properly-speakifig, the highe~ .chaptiF~ that-is possible for us is-human,, such as, for example, is exemplified in ChriSt or the Blessed ~irgi~ Even they, since they did not experience temptations, can- 320+ ~not be~prox~ma~e mo~ls ~n thi~ ~espect. But'marly of t~e ~rg~n and confesso~ saints went through furious and pro- ~ 1onge~ sie~es ef temptation w~th an inviolate lustre of purity. -~here is mhch in the ~h~story of religion ~and mys- .[~cism to confirm the saying of.~ascal t~at one who unin-telligently seeks to become an angel becomes~a beast. After self-assertiveness and sexuality, f~ar seems to be the most deleterious emotion. ~ople whose personality is ~ore or less maladjusted b~ reason of~fear or anxiety are very numerous. One manifestatio~ ~f it t~at we can con~ s~der briefly is Scrupuios~ty. ~A full treatmenL~how~Ver, of this Specifically religious ~ental malady is quite impossible~ here. Profane analogues of scrupulosity are seen in per-sons who can hardly assure themselves su~ciently that they have, ~or instance, turned off_the gas, or locked the door; or written an address cor[ectly. In a scruple, that is, an irra- ~tiofial fear of sin, the emotional' factor, anxiety, seems to ,be'mu~h more important than the error of judgment. ~hiS~ can be ~emoved efisily by-instruction,~but the anxiety is stili ~here, and not so easily expelled. The first and most e~ca-cious rule for the scrupulous is, according to all huthorities~ to seek competent direction and tO follow it most exactly, ~' li.ke a docile patieht obeying the doctor's prescriptions. - If ~ this is done, the fear will Vanish, or at least gradually a~fophy. Additional means of dispelling it are: not to yield to it by actin~:tq obtain greater security, heartily t~ 59cept the assurances gixen by one's director, .to consider his-judgment safer than ofie's ~wn .disordered fancy, to duiti-vate insight~ into the groundless~es~ of one's apprehen-~ sions, to proceed ~irectl# to do what is feared, to notice that it does not hurt other people, to be careful, not to n~glec~ one's .real obligations, like the Pharisees who strained gnats and swallowed camels, and. finally to ~develop that filial trust and confidence in God which He desires. Cultiva,tinig . ~3,21 G. ~AUGUSTINE,ELL.~.RD, ~ ° ~ " ,~ Revietoffor; Religi6u~ ~ a sense~of-humor nd.the abit of seeing the ridiculdusness- Of one's'sc.rupulous fear is also.an effectiVe remedy. - - A neurbsis that is not Unknown in religious communi-tiesis h.qpgchondriasis, tha( is, a morbid anxiey about~ one'S h(alth. The patient, is perpetually thinking hboul~ it, -noticing.and magnifying in imagination all possible~symp-toms, anticipating_the worst, seeking and using remedies ~alLsorts, watching for their effects, ~comparing his condition today with yesterday, and so on. Meanwhile he is really-making himself.sick, or :aggrav.ating any reaFailments that he. ma~y have. He could cure himse.lf, of his unhealtl~y~ worry if he would follow a course like that recommended o for the scrupulous: or if he would concentrate'on the major, things in life, espe.cially in the spiritual' life. Distracting work-would bep~irficularly good for him.' If he Were more.~ solicitousabout his mental and spiritual well-beiiig, his "health of b~dy would take care of Jtself. " ¯Depression ¯ --Another emot~bn that iblays havoc with the minds an~ :.~ :souls qf-many i~ "sadness. It~ran~es all the way frog"slight ¯ and ~ransi~nt low. . spirits in nbrmal person.so to a leffdi~ag "symptom in some of,~the psychoses. When. due to physi~a!: -conditions that cannot-be remedied, it-should be bo/ne. patiently, like the re~t of'one's cross. Insight into i~ho~e °causes will help to relieve it, and'for the rest, of all people_ the good religious has the least reason for being depressed.~ ¯He should kriow a~d realize tha(God's wh91e plan.for him, ~hough it does'contain 'suffering, is from beginning ~to end_ - ,~ d.esign for'peace and ineffable beatitude. ""W~ know that -o-forthem that love God he worke~h a.ll things toge}her unto, : g0b,d" (Romans 8:28). .find it enlightening and -322 Some depressed religious might encouraging to: read a ~chapter September, 1944 SANITY AND SANCTITY "_"eXplaining St. Teresa~;s ,psychiatry of. melancholy i~ l~er- Foundations (chapter VII). Ps~lchotherap~l o " -- To cure an unwholesome habit (people who have developed neuroses are referred tb the psychiatrists), three .general methods are available: psychagogy, analysis and synthesis, and a combination of both. Ps~tch.agog~ First, one can simply go to a competent counselor,. explain one's case. and carry out the pres~riptions~ as ,a patient does with his~physician. Besides efllight~ening,, per-suading, and using suggestion, a'~counselor can give a~ .troubled p~e~son a, good 6pportunity to talk. It is a fact that in some cases a man caff talk himself out bf a neurosis. No doubt the explanation is that thus the patient sufficiently= clarifies his own mind, gets insight, and reaches emotional" equilibrium. A, nal~/sis arid Sgntbesis Secondly, one may, preferably with the.help of a court-s~ lor, take the~ following procedures. - , . I. Inoestigation. What are;the origin and" nature of the trouble? When and where did the faulty habit begin? ¯ ~What elements in one's external situation or in one's inter; -nal condition could have given rise to it? What factors in one's experience (for example, shocks or frights) or in one's training, help to explain it? What ideas have been guidi_~l~ one?- What emotional forces have been at work? What has one been seeking orshirking? Wil~h.what results? II. Insight. If the investigation has been-successful, insight should follow,.but it may need to be deepened, broadened, and heightened bY much reflection. A maia has " '-'.insight" y~hen, say, he has an irrational notion or impulse~ 323 for ReHpiou_ s ~ _.and recognizes~it as such. W~iters on the discernment spirits would say that he i~moved by an. evil sp!rit, ,hUman of diabol, ical, and realizes that fact. If he can understhnd~ how it came about and its nature,~ so much.the better." If the insight gained be dear and f~Ull, he will then be prepared to treat the notion or impulse as if'it were a sffggestion~ from a ocrazym~in or'a swindler. Insight can ,be suflicientfy--clehr and strong to effec't a complete cure at once: It does awa.5; with the false ideas or °illusions at least. "III. Release of Em'otional Tension. Next one must see ~and feel by all' possible considerations, and work aL it till one really does see and feel, the fol, ly, futility, and:frus-trations of what he has" been doing, and this in,contra~st to the val~uds, positive and negative, of thecontrary rati6nal ~-~,~abits. He must bring himself to realize, .for example, that he hasbeen fearing ,where. in finality there was riothing, tp fear, or desiring what really was-not desirable. Thus the perverse inclination will dissolve like ice before the hot,sun. The secorid element of the irrational, namely, misd~rectedl emotion,, i~s thus remedied. Other means of. reducing unsalutary hffectivet~nsions are i avoiding the.objecys-that~ stimulate them: eschewing thoughts of those objects; ~ expelling~a lesser fear or love by agreater fear d'r love, fear of,h!an, for instance, by- fear of God; arousing in oneself the" contrary emotiori, fbr instance, hbpe against despair; throwing oneself .int~o some absorbing.~external, action; pro-ceeding tO do what. One fears, or to-do the opposite of what, one. feelsimpelled tO.; quiet and rest. Even if a man c~n- ¯ not discover b~r analysis why he has this or that inclination, he is ~ti11 free, if his mental integrity has not been damaged too-much, not to adt on that impulse.~ The a~m is always, not to darri up'the forces of human nature, but to give ttiem wise direci:ion and .wholesome outlets. Here ratib'nal com- 'pensati~n-and:sublimation, that is,:guiding one's instinctive 324 ~ Sep~ember~'lg~ ~ ~ ~" ~, ~ . SANI~ AND SANCTITY "urges toward somethifig equally good of better, ~are emi-nently in~place. 0necould, for-example, seek" eventual ex~ftation throughhumility, ot the grat~cations of love in ~divine charity. IV. Re-educa?ion, Rd~te~ra~ion. 1. Specific }emedial habits are to be ascertained, their adavantages adequately" apprefiated, and then put into practice. A scrupulous per- :son for instance, should avail himself of what. are called ".th~ privilege~ of the ssrupulous." 2. The basic defects in the.personality-which are at the root 6f the diNculty sEould be uncdvered if possible and treated in ~ore or le~s thesame_ wag, with a ~iew to building hp that unity and fullness,; and balance which constitute intdgration of personality. In a scrupMofis)erson.the defect ~ay be a deep-seated timid- ~ To conclude, insight into one's unbalanced emotional p$opengities and control of tbem will give one sanity; a high degree 6f such insight .and~self-control will add sagac- -itE; and, if supernaturalized by graqe, it will bring sanc-" ~tity~ and thus ultimately a rich participation ~n the beat~c .~ision and love arid ~njoym~nt of God. ¯BOOKLETS ON VOCATIONS Halt! Hearken to.the C~{/ of the Children. A PamPhlet of 28 pages, by Fathers Rumble and Catty. The pamphlet was written originally by an Australian nun for Australian girls." Its purpose is ~to give an appreciation of the. work of the tegching Sisterhoods. Price: 10 cents. Write to: Radio Replies Press. St. Paul 1, Minn. "What Would You Like to Be? Aft interesting brochure explaining the-life the Marianist Pries-t, Teaching Brother, and Working Brother. Contains well-chose~ pictures and clear explanations. Write to: Rev. Father Superior, Mount -St. John. R. D. 2, Dayton 10, Ohio. ¯ The Making7 oF, a Man: A pocket-size pamphlet, explaining in general'the ~ ,-vocation'of the Mhrianist, and in,particular t_he life of the "postulate" at Maryhurst, ~ Kirkwodd, '/v~issouri. The "postulate" in this instance is not merely th~ postu~ lan.,cy which immediately precedes entrance to the novitiate, but an entire high school course for~prospecave candidates fo~ the Society of Mary. Write to: Maryhurst~ Kirkwood, Missouri. Reverend Fathers: , When I give a retreat in a hospital-convent, I decidedly do not wish to replace the chaplain H~ may need a vacation: but thai is. no reason why his work ~hould be-added ~to.the burden of the retreat~ master, who must give pe_rhaps four conferences a day, hear confes-sions, keep himself available for private con.sultation, and perform his own spiritual exercises, besides. If.the chaplain must go away just at that time, why not engage another"priest to take his place, so thht the. retreat master can restrict his attention to his own exacting work? I am w~illing to have, and even insist on having, the cgmmunity Mass in the morning and the Benediction in the evening for the retreatants. But I,wa~t nothing more of the chaplain's regular wgrk. Imagine distributing Communion to who l~no~s" how many. patients befor~ M~iss; then, :whewhardly back in the chapel with the Blessed Sacrament, being called to administ_er the last rites to'-a dying persoff~ while the community waits: then after Mass, while ~akiiag the thanksgiving, being called out in a hurry to give Extreme Unction to one who has" suddenly died in a ward; then, after a hasty breakfast, going to say the ritual prayers for the ~lying over a patient; and then rushing to the chapel to give the retreatants theif morning con~er-- ence!' Or imagine.a Sister rushing up to the table in the sanctuars; whil~ you are. giving-a~ consideration ~nd asking you to "Come. quickly; somebody is dying!" But it isn't as bad as alFthat, some may objest. , Oh, but it often is. I. ha.ve experienc~ed it. And. if it isn't, you know that it can be at any moment. A Priest , Reverend Fathers: After each of the three annual retreatS, we discuss the various, points that have been, noticed by different novices. Here are a few. We don't like to have the retrea.t master tall~ right past us to the .few.older. religious who are also on retreat. They've heard mostof it, anyway. The retreat master ought to talk so that we Who have. not passed twenty can get something out of it. .326 ¢ " " CO~UNICATIONS ._- "Let'-tl~e~,~etreat master leari~'something, about our community. "before talking on the "Holy Rule': in general arid making com~ments -on prescriptions_that aren't even in our rule. " We are poorly impressed when tile retreat master comes up the aisle.with a strong scent of perfUrfie trailing after him. He ought t~ let us see ~hat hi~ actions and bearing correspond with 'what he is telling us to do. Let him forget the affectations of speech. Even thofigh he talks ~oorly, a re-all~" good religious priest (you can see the hdliness of his life) is far better liked than an easy-going but powerful speaker. The former is a sermonin himsel£the latter is, too, but in a different way.~ We have a copy of the text of St. Ignatius' Spiritual_Exercises; too. If we want to read it, we can do so; and we do not" like to have a retreat-master me~ely read th~ text and a.dd_ practically nothing of his:own. We0never like to be read at; even .when the retreat mas-ter begins almost every conference or meditation with the words:_ "St. Ignatius next says . A little story once in a while helps .to keep things alive and nbt all fire and brirristone tales, but something practical and forceftil. ~ We're young; and we enjoy a joke .wrapped up in the conferences o now and then, But not one that is completely irrelevant. Brother Novices Reverend Fathers: The foll~wing remarks on tiae retrea~ question ~epresent th~ result ¯ o~ a question~naire.given a n.ur~ber of Sisters two years~ago: Desirable length ~of retreat: 6 full days. ~ Desirable length of conferences and medi~ations: 40-45 .minute_s. ~'uggestions for Retreat program: 1) Have four or five conferences daily. 2) Allow sufficient ti~e after dinner for a rest,-so thfit retfeat-aiats will be better able for mental exertion. ~ 3) Allow time at 11:45 for exame~. 4)'Have commun!ty prayers (espedally the Office) said p~i- ~ately, so that the retrea~ants will have more time for private reflec, tion. : 5) Begin confessions" no'later than the third day. S[zggestions concerning sequence of subject-matter: 1) Have a definite sequence, so that one conference is.a prdpa_r.a-tion for~ the next. ~ "COMMUNICATIONS " " ~ ' 2) But- do not" follow th~ Ignatiansequence so'closely tha~ one " will know exa~tly~what meditation is'to follow. ~u~gestions concerning subject-matter: -1) Give practical examples illustrating 'the ideals of re.ligious life, rather than a vague generalization. 2) Make examples positive rather than negative. 3) Center the entire retreat around a certain virtfie, such as conformity to the Wi[l of God or lo~;e of God. - 4)"A~zo[d relating personal experiences and stories of scandals in other communities. ' 5) Arrange the subject matter so that, if some I~roups are men-tioned, all will be mentioned; for example, superiors and inf.eriors, or nurses, teachers, and house-sisters. .6) Repeat a definite theme again and again d~uring the retreat. 7) Give conferences on the methods of. mental prayer and have. the meditation on prayer early in the retreat. 8) Give practic.al meditations on the love of God, emptying ~of ~lf-love, etc. 9) Stress" the Indwelling and" the Mystical Body, as means of living in uniofi with God. 10) Discuss the three ways in the Spiritual' Lif~, putting special emphasis on the unitive way. 1 1) Develop the life of Christ according to the mysteries of the rosary. ~ , Other .points: 1) Be straightforward and s'~ecific in the treadnent of the reli-' gious life. 2) Conduct the retreat in the presen'~e of the Blessed.Sacrament. 3.) Use simple and cleat, ratlSer than flowery, diction. ~) Ask of each penitent in the confessional the subject-matter:. of her particular examen, or question her on prayer. 5) "Talk" the conferences instead of~ reading them. 6) Avoid throwiffg jibes~ at women. Z) Use tile word "Sister" frequently for emphasis. 8) Put the Sister at ease in the donfessional by givilag l~er time, showing an interest in her spiritual advancement, by encouraging her in her good resolutions, etc. A Sister .~ ~ - -~ _ . _ ~ ~ ~ " ~ T~-~ ~ a Religious Insfi u e _ Adam C: Ellis, S~J.- .]:o~r al! p~ovinc~s, houses; and m~mb~rs of th~ insti-~i. . ~ tut~ (canon 502).- H~nc~ it is obvious that h~ has. authority owr th~ t~mporal affairs 0f tfi~ institut~ as wall as o#~r'spiritual and disciplinary matters. But sinc~ it imp~ssibl~ for on~ p~rson to car,-for all th~ d~tai~s of"go~-~ ¯ ernment by himself, the law-of=the Church pr~yides for 'helpers 6f various kinds-who are to assist the superior in ¯ ~hi) government of the institute. Thus canon 516 6f the Code of Canon Law provides for couficillors and bursars for~ all~)eligious superiors. The pu~ose of the present grticle is"to definet~e duties o(th~.bursar g~neral of'a r~li- ~gious institute. .- Appointmen~ "1~ ~h~.¢~nsfi~u~s nre ~ilen~ ~n ~he mnHer ~ deefin9 ~. The Code alloGs the constitutions to determine hdw the ~-.~ursar general is to be chosen. Usually the~:pro~ide forhis =election in the general chapt~. ~ It~i~ oMg whe~ the constitu-tions are.silent in the matter t~at the=superior g~neraI ~s gwen the power to appoint the bursar general with the consent.of his council. No definite term of office is laid down in_the Cod~ for. bursars~ They may" b.e reappointed-or elected again indef!-i nit~ly. Nor is'the office of bursar general incomp_atible.with. that of a general councillor as far as tile common law of the C]aurch is concerned, but to unite~ the~e offices in 6ne pe.rso11.i~ usually considered inexp_e°dien, t and is not infrequently for: - bidden by the.constitutions. .o 32.9 ADAM C. ELLIS :, ~ ': -- " Ret~iqto for Religious -_ r - Limitations of Power~ ~: ~° "They are t~ exercise .their office under fhe°d~recfion of their respec-tive superiors" (canon S 16,§ 2) but "the superior himself may net ,d!schargb. tl;e office of bu~'sar 9eneral or provincial 'bursar" (canon SI6, § 3). By forbidding the s~perlor genera) to act as bursar and by ~subjec~ ting the bursa'r general to the direction ~f.~the SUl~e- -rior, the law providhs a safeguard against maladminis~tra-tipn. " The superior must exact an. account of'hisadministra-tion froth the bursar, who cannot dispose of tempor.al-goods withoutthe permission o~ i0is superior. Nor may the sup.e: rior grant him unlimited permission. Us.ually the details of these matters ar~ determined by theconstitutions. " Constitutions sometimes provide forthe appointment oi: sev.eral administratorS: one for the general care bf the; teinpor.alities of-the ~nstitute or" province, others for . t.icular kinds of work, such as the administratiQn of pub-, lications, printing presses, and various offices. ., Whateqer the relations may be, the funds of each indi-- vidual mo'ral personality--institute, province, house "mFst be keptseparate; and are not to be heaped into 6he common% fund. Extent of Powers "Besides the superiors, those officials also who are so empowered b~ the constitb'tions can, within the limits of their office, validly incu'r expenses. "and perform juridical acts of ordinary administration" (canon 532, § 2). Normally, then, the bursar has the power to incur' expense~ and perform theoju~idical .acts of o;dinarg "admini~- ~tri~tion: ~ By ordinary administration is meant everyth'ing which p'ert.a~ns to the everyday needs of the i.nstitut_~;e~. or community. Such Would be the purchase of food, clothing,- - and fuel, the repla.cement of things worn out. or brdkeh. ordinfiry repairs on-buildings, and"the like. To.sell the~ ~superfluous products of the farm, dairy, and poultry yard,, 330 ~@ September, 1944 ; THE BURSAR GENERAL~OF,A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTE w~ould~iikewise come und~:-the head of.o'rd~fiary adminis-~[ tration. ' It,is" customary to entrust this ordinar.y administratioq~. ~ entirely~ to ,the bursar and' his )issist~nts. Hovgeve~r,~ sup~-~ -.riors retain their own powerl of juridica!,administratiOn; ~ : hffd°if they ~place any acts of such administration, these acts~ ~ ; are valid.~ ¯ , Qualities.of Good Administration '-'~'~" Canon 1523~ lays down rules for all administrators, including religious. It .Begins by telling them" that th@,° ~, should fulfill their '.office With the diligenc9 of a good, -'"paterfamilias" or head of a household, which implies two qualities: care and. prudepce. ~ It then descends ~o the ¯ ~ ~ following details: ~ -- - 1. Vigilancelest any temporal, goods spoil" or per.ish. The superior may prescribe certain defini~te ways of,pro2- ~ ~ture, andmay forbid others:, : " " " Z :'~ 2.-Observance ,o~ th.eprescriptions of bo~h ~anon and~ ' civil law: It is evident that the p.resc'r, ipt~ions of Canon Law ¯ : must,, be observed/ especially those of canon-~534," which govern the alienati6n of goods belongi.ng to religibus com-munitie~ s as .well as the incurring of debts. Th~ prescrip-hans of the civil law Sh6uld also ,be observed, lestthere be ~ darigerof losing 3uch gob_ds thro~igh neglect of, the requiie- " men.is of the civil la~. This applies especially to all kinds '"~'Of contracts'and the i.ncurring.of debts, because th~ Code tias "canonized" the civil law in ~his matter:, "Thb presc~';pfions of the civ.il law of the place r~garding contracts b~th ~n cjen~ral and°in particular, whether'nomlnate o~ ;nhominate as well as recjardin9 payments,'shall be obse~rve'd by the same right in. eccles;astl-cal matters, unless they. are contrary to the natural law'~or special pre-. scr;pt~ons are found in canon law" (ganon 1529). ., ,3. Incc~me of goods ghoutd be accurately demar~ded "at ° [egular intervals:. Income thus collected should ,be care- fu, lly,. guarded and (i-n:~s~ ~,~bf foor~lations)o sh~ould, be .expended according .to th,e mind ~f the donor. 4. Income sho~tld-, be invested for the benefit of.' the, Church." The',,term "church" in the gener~il canons ,,on temporalities-means the individual moral personality of who~se, temporalities there is question (canon !,498). For~ us it means the religious institute. " -_- All income acquired~from temporal goods is considered - as.free-capital until it is invested. Hence it may for ordindry _expenses and for the payriaen.t ,of debts. °'But ifit is not needed for these purpose's, it should be inves(ed. Once i~avested, it becomes "capi_tal" or eccelesiastical goodsTM and is subject to, the" norms of canon law regarding aliena-, I~ion. 5.~ Books of mon&s received and expended should~be-cqrefully kept. This is sound business sense. It is*also, -iequired-in" order that the administrator may give that _ periodic account to l~i~ superiors required b~r the canon law. 6. Documents and business papers, should be kept in order and karefully gtiarded. This includes all kinds of- ~documents and p.apers, such as deeds to property, founda-. _ tions, donatibns,, contracl~s, and so forth. Canon -375',/ § 2 obliges bishops-to see to it that an inyentory or cata-logue- Of all documents in the'diocesan arcl-iivesbe mad.e. This inventory' includes a brief synopsis of the-content-~f,, each documen[. : Such a catalogue.- makes it e~sy to._find documents and-lessens,the danger of the.ir being lost. Reli-gious i~dministrators will do well to observe thi~ canon. °-. Such, in gener~il, are the ordinary powers and duties of. an administrator of ecclesiastical goods; in ourcase, of the-bursar general with-regard to the goods of his instltute. . Superiors should not interfere in the ordinary" administra-tion of the bursar, but should receive reports from him-and o examine~his accounts from time to time. The ~ao-rmal func-" 332 ~pternber, 1944 ~ ~ THE BUI~$AR~(3ENERAL OF,A RELIGIOIJS INSTITUTE ti6n;of the si~perior inthisregard is ttiat of~direction. The iminediat~ and" actuM ordin~ar~r administration is generally ~tenied to superiors by, the Code, and should be left to the bursar and his assistants subject to~ the direction 'of the superior. Thee coristitutions usually,, pr~scribe in detail 'the rela- ~ tions between superiors ahd bursars in regard to. temporal-administration, and should be' faithfully observed. " - " Extraordinary.! Administration -~y .acts of extraordina.ry admin.istration a~e m~,ant ~hings which are more rare and.of a more important- nature,¯ Such as the inv_estment of-money, excha~nge of securities, buying and selling of real estate, exti)aordinary repairs of 15uildings and equiPment, and the building of a °new stru~-. ture~, Fo~ all such actions the bursar must obtain the vari- "ous pe~rmissions required by the common lawa~s well as by the constitutions of his instittite. According to the general law of the Church, '~not only every .institute, but e~very p~ovince, and every house is capable of acquiring and possessing property w, ith fixed ~r fotinded revenues, unless the capacity to do so be excluded or restricted by its rules and constitutions" (canon 531). Some constitutions provide for" but one subject of. owner- ,ship, in the entire institute, so that there is only one.a~lmin-istration of temporalities. In this case it is usual for the constitutions to prescribe that the bursar general ~keep ~eparate accounts at least of the income and.expenses of the ,iridiiridual ho(~ses. This will show whether or not the ~individual houses are self-supporting. .: When each house has itsown~ local'administ_ration, it is 9sually prescribed that a certain portion of,the net in, come remaini_ng at the. end of the year after all bills liave" b~en paid,should" b~sent to the'motherhpuse foXthe su~pp0rt of .333 o~. ADAM C, ELLIS th.~:novices, Sisters in studies, and the like.~ The' N~cmae of 1~901 pres(ribed that well-to-do houses should-con, tribute one third of the .net~.cash on hand year, after all bills had been paid presen.t, practice of the Sacred Congregation ~f Religiou.s is t6 allow th~ .constitutions to prescribe that the genei~al c~hapter wiil decide the amount that should be ~contribut~d annually to the motherhouse .for the needs of the institute a whole.' The amount may thus be increased or lowered in each general chapter, according to the needs ~f the times. It "is" the dhty of the bursar general to collect t.hese contribu-tions at the pr0i3er time, as Well as~o examine the-financial statements of t/fie individual l~6uses which are sent to him periodically, according to the consti~utions. If these accounts are-not satisfactory, he ~should report the °det~- ciencies to ~the superior, whose duty it is to rePrehend those responsible. , To vindicate and defend o-rie's ~:ights in court is an act oFnormal adm~nistration: but religious superiors may not go to courtin the' name of their community excep.t in con-~,~ fo.rmi.ty'with theconstitutions (d~anon 1653, § 6). - " 'Conclusion ._ Administrators,of church 15roperty, b9th~superiors and other officials, should., remember° that they-are not the owners of the property which they administeL hence_they. ma.y riOt dispose of the temporal goods of the institute'as they please; but only in accordance with the prescriptions of canon and civil law. All administrators are obliged to give-an account of their stewardshiE~th~ .bursar general to-the superior general, the superior general[to the Holy See in the quinquennial repb~t in the case of mstttutes approv.ed by-the Holy See, to the local Ordinary in .the case of a~ diocesan congregation. . # 33'4. ' ~re:~ou Sor~yfoi YOur-Sihi? Gerald Kelly, S.J~ ~HE.Council of Trefit oNciall~-declardd: that true con- ~.~ ~rigion consists in a detestation o~ one's sins, .with grief ~'of soul, and a purpgse~0f sinning n0 more. According to~ the same Council; contrition is so-necessary that God never 'forgives any persona~ sin, even in the Sacraments of~ ~ Baptism and Penance, unless the sinner genuinely repents. ~ Perhaps it is this doctrine of the necessity'of contrition that makes the subject ingeresti~g. ¯ At any rate, it is inter, .~sting. Anyone who has taught th~ Subject, whether in ff ~theology elass or .in an advanced religion class, knows that. ~And we all know it from personal experience, too.; We want to b~ rid of our s~ns; therefore we want to be sorry for ~t~em~.and we wan~ to be sure we are sorry for them. Perfect Contrition ~' Per[ect,contrition is a. subject of .special intereit because .it sometimes happens that perfect contrition affords the~ "only possible means of saving o~e's soul. The baptized person who is i~ the state of,mortal sin and is dying with~ 6ut the oppor~unity.of~going to cdnfes~ion or ~f receiving E~tre~e Unction is faced ~ith the grim alternative of making an act of perfect contrition or of going to hell. The unbaptized sinner who is dying w~thout th~ opportunity -of receiving, actual baptism faces a similar alternative. No one can sa~ that ~eff~ct.contrition will neve~ be a matte'r of ~trict necessity for him, becau~ ~ortal sin is ~ ';possibility for.everyone, and death ~ithout a pfiestqs ~Is~ a possibility: Yet, even if it were never of Strict necessity, ~the,act of perfect Contrition is a beautiful prayer and should be £afd often. It i~ certainly.the best kind of contrition?for".-" ~ .~. ~ ~ GEI~LD KELLY - Revievd/or veni~l sins;-and,, withr~eg~rd to m~rtaI~in~, it hdst~e spe.~ ~ .cial p~wer.of restoring sanctifying grac~ to the sodl imme: diately,-thus makin~ it unnecesary to wait. ~or the oppor-tunity of gging~,to~cgnfession .in order~to 'regain God's friendship, to be able to ~erit eternal life, and to.be pre; pared for suddeh ~eath, ' InstrUcted CatholiCs usually know the ~adt that ~er: fect contrition immediately ~lots out mortaI sin, but not ikfrequently t~ey misunderstand "the reason for this special power of p~rfect c6ntrition. In fact, only recentlE,' ih'a bbok otherwisd sound and excellent, thd statement was madd.that in the case of a baptized person who has com-mitted a mortal sin, perfect contritionrestores grac~becausg. it"contains a desire for the Sacrament of Penance. Thii' is-,. not.the correct explanation. It is true, 0f cogrse, that, in~ the case ~eferred to, perfect-Contrition must cbntaih at ldast an.~ implicit intention of, going tO ~onfession; otherwise it would be a means 0f salvation entirely independen~ o['the sacrament and would excuse us entirely from God's pre-. cept. of confessing ,the mortal sins committed after baptism. But this intention to receive the sacrament is not th~'dispp-sition that gives perfect contrition its'special ~cacy. Even i~pe.rfect contrition must contain such an intention. ~ The real reason~ ~hy perfect contritign instantly re-~ stores gr~ce to the soul, even before we go to confession;- is to Be found,in its motioe. Perfect contrition is motivated gy charity. The sinner turns to God with peifect~ove; and God repays lord with love. As ou~ Ldrd ~old us, God takes up His abode with those who love Him. " ~e are often asked if it i~ di~chlt for one who h~s~ s~nned mobtally to make an act o~ perfect contrition. .In -an~werifig the questio~ We must h~ve regard for.several points. !n the'first place, ndith~ p~rfect nor imperfect trition ca.lls for a definite degre~ of intensity or r~quiies-any~ Septerr~ber, 1944 " ARE YOU SORRY FOR YOUR SIN~? certaln amount of time. ~n t~e o[her han~, bo[h kinds~of. con[rifion mus[ con[ain an app~eciaffon or~ p~eferenc~ of God which entirely excludes the w~ll to commi~ mortal sin: In" 0[h~ words, ~he con[rile sinner mus~ prefer God [o ady~ p~rsgnal_safisfac[ion [ha[ would con~ic[ ~ith God'd ~riend-s~. This disposifion~is required in all contrition for:mor- [al ~in; and i~is enough, even for perfec[ contrition. emphasize the fact that it is enoUgh, because I believe th~ ~'the.~mpress~6n is.'somet~m~s g~ven that .perfect contrition must exclude all attachment to sin. This impression is not a~curate. Perfect contrition admits of degrees. lowest-~degree contains the ~ preference for God "over any~- .th~ng that conflicts .with h~s friendship; and th~s does not necessarily exclud~ a~t~chm~nt to venial sin.- In assisting-- d~ing sifiners, it seems advisable to begin w~th the lowest degree. After g~v~ng them ~h~ motive for perfect co~tr~- t~on~of which we shall speak in a moment~get tBem to repent of their mortal s~ns and to,resolve never again to s~n mortal'ly. If they have this disposition, ~h~y have what ~s strictly necessary for "loving God above all things," for lov~ng God "with their whole heart, their Whole soul, and .~their whole mind." Having, helped them to th~s essential d~spos~t~on, one can then try to "go higher,"~that ~s,~ to. ~instill sor~ow.fo~ venial s~n and even to incite a desire~ fo~ ~erfect.conform~ty to the will of God in all thin~s. Under manyaspects, therefore, an act of perfect con-tntlon is notmore di~cult than imperfect contrition. The di~cul.ty, in so far as there, is a di~culty, lies ih the one ele~ ment that distinguishes perfect contrition from imperfect: namely, in the motioe. Perfect contrition springs ~from ~eharity ;" ond charity is the love of God "for His own sake" ~an unselfish, disinterested love, To 10ve God for His bwn sake should not be~ di~cult for anyone who reall,y ~know? God: that is, for one ~ho has cbme t6 appreciate 33~ ~ER/~I~D KELLY" - .Re'uie~ £or ~eh'g'ious ~h~ough prayer that°God is go~d and !ovabie; but "~or those_ Who have given little'thought to God, the case is proba.~l~ different:-They need to make some consideration" thal~ will sh~w ~themthat God is really worth loving for His own sake. A ra.ther simple.;ccay of l~elping a sinner to arrive at the -motive necessary for perfect contrition is to g.et him to ,reflect on Christ Crucified. In the opiStufe of our Lord on the Cross we have a very .graphic portrayal of God'os love for us. AppreciatiOn of this fact-begets gral~itude soul;, and it is an easy step from gratitude to perfe~:t love, that is, to the love of charity.St. John, the great apos.tle of charitji,, told us to foll6w this path. from gratitude to charity when he said.:. "Let us therefore love God, .because~ God first hath loved us" (I ,John '~: 19)~. St. Paul's.gr~eat --personal love ol~ our. Lord sprang., from an appre.ciation of the tremendous fact expressed in his Words: "He loved rile and deli~rered himself up for me.'.' St. Francis Xavier's° great prayer of love (0 Deus, Ego Arno Te) is a poeti~. expressio.n of the words of St. John and of St:Paul.~ S(. Ignatius, in his. "Contempla'tion for Obtaining Love," uses. the same psychology: he takes us 'from gratitude perfect, unselfish, disinterested love. First we count the_ ~ gifts of G6d to us, and, seeing their iaumberarid.their val~e, we are deeply grateful;,then, thriju.gh the gifts, which are so good, we rise t6 the consideration of.the infinite goodness. _ of the Giver. -When we say that perfect contrition is motivated by charity, and,that ctiarity.is the love of God forHis'~swn-sake, we do not mean. that perfect- contrition exclude~ all other mot.ives. It is_quite Eroper:for us to be grateful fO God for his benefits, to ~desire to enjoy the happiness of" heaven, tO fear the punishments of hell, and so forth. iuch truths furnish motivation for sorrow for sin; and the} _ 338 -- September, 1944 _ " " ~ " ~ "ARE YOU SORRY FOR YOUR SZNS o~", ~an exist'in the soul together .with the motive for perf&t ¯ : ~ " Imp'effect Contritidn Perfect dbntriti6n "isindeed e.xcellent; but we should -. not overlook the value of imperfect contrition. Imperfect -x6.n.trition is not enough of itself to do away witl~' mortal sin; yet eveh for those in the state of mortal, ~in it is very~ - . profitable. It disposes them togo ,an act Of perfect contrition, and in confessionit is a suffb cient disposition for absolution. ; As for. venial sins,~ theologians commonly, teach that ii~perfet~ contrition is enough for their remission outside ~ ~. of confessibh.~ Hence, those who. have only venial sihs-on their s0ul nee'd not be particularly solicitous about their motives-when, they make an act of contrition;any one of the many possible supernatural motives for detesting their sins will be a suffi'cient basis for a fruitful act of contrition. Elements of All Contrition "It is:of little' ~vai[ to consider the necessity and kinds of ~ontrition, if one's notion of contrition itself is not clear; hence it will be worth our wb~le to return to the first sen-tence of this article. I indicated there that, according to ¯ the Council of Trent, all contrition contains three ifi~red.i- 'ents: detestation, grief, and purpose of amendment. And, of course, as a prerequisite to any act of contrition, there-must be tbe~realization that one has done wrong. -Hence, ev,ery act of contrition.includes in some way, four psycho-logicalsteps: owe realize t~at w~ have sinned; we detest w.hat'we did; we grieve ove~ it; and _we.resolve to amei~d. I should not want to encourageanyone to be technical . in l~is prayers; yet I think that we can all profit by occa- . .sipnal.ly taking apart an 'act of~c~ntrition by thinking over" the me,aning of each of-these psychological steps, and by 339 1. ~GER/(LD KELLY' ,_ ~, Review for Reli~l~ous oactu~i!ly mfikirtgthe'steps-slowlyand prayerfully. In the -subsequent paragraphs, my purpose'is to offer some explg~ _nations and sugg.e, st!ons that might be an aid to one who wants to m~ke ~n act of contrition meditatively. Perhaps I ought to preface .mY ~ema~ks with a brief statement con~cer.ning their doctrinal val~e. Tl'ie Church_ -has mad_e it quite clear that an hct of contrition must t~in-c~rtain elements; but she has let~t the detailed explana-tion of these elements to her theologians. I have drawn rny~ _explanations f.rp_m the works of eminent theologians; yet I realize that on some points the theological_literature is, somewhat obscu.re and that differences of opinion~are pe'~- missible. In all cases of obscurity or uncertainty, I have aimed to limit my sugges.tions, to what is safe and prac-ticable. R~alization When v~e make an act of contrition we have .to be c~a- "scious of the fac~ that we ourse.lves have done evil. This ° ~upposes, of course, a speculative appreciation of the evil ., of sin; but.it does~not stop with mere speculation. The ~ purpose of the realization which precede~s and motivates the act of contrition is to get the sinner to turn away from his~ ow_n sins, with grief and a purpose of amendment. There-fore, it is well to begin a meditative act of contrition with .a conscx0u.sness of one s own sins. This d~es not ne.cess_arily" mean a detailed examination of conscience; but it does imply at least ~i general recalling of one's sins. -- In our catechism books' we say that an ~ct of contrition~ must~ be suoerna.tu~al: th_at is, it must be made wi~b God's grace and. it must be based bn a motive drawfi from~ ~-evelatiori. We may takefor granted that God gives",the grac.e, but we ourselves, have to,s,upply the supernatural motive by considering our sins in the light of some revealed 340 ,State'bet, 1944 , ~ AR~ YOU SORRY FOR YOURSINS~ [ruth. Am6ng,t~e many [~uths t~a~ h~Ip to show,us the e~i!;0f~our sins,, I might suggest the following. Tbe jogs of beaoen, or tbe oai~s~of bell: These are directly applicable to mortal sin, because mortal sin depr~ves us of' our righ~ to heaven and makes us deserving of hell. But the thoughf of heaven can als0 be abplied venial sin because, after all, the/e are degrees of ~lory~in heaven, an~d venial sin kdeps us from attai~ng a higher ~ degree'of glory. EVen the thought of hell can be used as a motive for repenting of venial sin,' because by. commitdn~ ~ vernal sins we might form habits that would lead to mortal ~ sin or_ we might lose certain special g?aces that would at _,times be. necessary in order ~o overcome serious temptfi--~ ,tibns. And, of course, a consideratibn of purgatory,, especially as a painfu~ delay in reaching~ur heavenly h6me, ' "is directly appl:icable to venial sire Tbe Olories o~ sa~ati~i~g ~tace: Grace makes our Souls ,,.beautiful in the ~yes of God; it makes us His adopted chil, .~dren, tharers in His nature, heirs to His happiness. Mortal sin loses this priceless possession for us; venial sin, though - it does not. affect the grace in our. s6uls, represents a~ lost opportunity to grow in grace. Tbe Passio~ o~ 6at Eord: This furnishes fine motiva- ~i0n ~or sorrow for either mortal or venial ,sin. And the same ma? be said-f6r any aspect of our Lord's life, because . everything we know about Him is~ calculated to. increase our admiration andlove of Him and thusshow us by contrast ~. the mefinness of our failure to live according to ~the pattern "'He has given Us. Tbe~doctrine of tbd Redemotion and of our Oa~f i~ itS" God has united us in such a way that_we can help one another ~n the w~y of sai~ation and sanctification. ~n ap~reciafion of this~'truth and of its tremendou~ imp)ica-tion~ gives us a new light on sin:- it.is n0f onlE harmful to ,V ourselves; it is a:refusal.to cooperate ~n~a glOrious-cause.-:,. ~, The ~divine wis~bm hbd2~ood~:~ Prdp~rly~under-stood, ~ this is the most all-embracing and fundafien:tal ~afid, ~I-might ~d, the simplest of motives for ~ detesting sim~ It ~ takes us back to the ohe reason why we and thiswhole world exist at all: namely, to share in the divine goodness"~ according to the ;nfihitely wise plan of God Himself. - By Sin~ we do what we can to thwart His plan; we voluntarily prevent Him from ~iving Hi~self to us as He wishes to ~do~" Ddtestation The whole purpose of meditating on~ ohe of the~ fore-going ~t?uths, or on some similar revdaled truth, is to pre-pare the soul for a~ act of contrition. In~the actor con, trifion itself, tb~ first step is detestation. ~. ~ ~ ~ ; ~ Theologians generally agree, I.believ~, that, as a distinct element-in~ the act of contrition, ~detestation refers.~to the~ p~st. The sinner goes back, so ~o speak, on the a~t that h~> peLformedtand deliberately, chooses to do just the opp~sit~ from what he did when he sinne~. In sinning,,he chose.hi~ o~n will to God's Will; now Ee turns away from his for-mer choide and unites his will to God's will. - " E~idently we cannot undo an act that i~ dong. ~ We;an ,make reparation fdr it; we can.pay damages; we can some-. times ~top it~ effects;, but the fact that" act was performed cghnot be changed. The best that we~can do ~ith~regard to the past act-is to wish we had not done it. "And'that seems~to be-the most apt way khat'we can deScrib~ detesta- 5ion of sinf it is a deliberate wish:that the act'had not been p~rformed. ,- ~ _". " It'is probabl~ not advisable, in making ~ meditative act of contrition, to spend a great deal of time on tgis point. There~ is no direct way of testing an ifiterio~ disposi;tidn such as'detestation, and we are likely to be disturbed, e~e~ _ ~ ~, . - _ T~ ~,S~p,~ember0 1944 ~. _ '-~'ARE YOU ~0RR~ FOR YOUR SINS? . ' ~:ofrightened',~ ,by our, sen~-tove and'- self=love. ~For-'th'ese o " Causes of sin are just asstrong a.s the were. wiaen the'sin ~ "was performsd and they keep. telling us that they liked the sin and.that,they are glad it happened. Hence, if we'dwel[. ~,= long oh this point, we areapt to think that we have no con- ~trition, at all. It is better to make a simple act'of the will: ';~ " ,,"BeCause I n6w see the evil that I did, I wish I had not --~ committed it"; and then. go on to the ndxt point. In prac-tice, we can~ take for granted that we have the )equired " - --~ ,--~d~testation if we have the realization, grief, and purpose ¯ "of amendment. . Grief of Soul ¯ ~" ~ Tile blessed, in heaven can detest their sins but they can-not griev~ o~er them. "i~he reason for this is that grief .Supposes the presence of an evil, and the sins of the blessed-are merely past acts, ttie evil effects o~ which have all been ~emoved ~= With us, th~ case is different." For instance, when a man co .mmits.a mortal sin, his ~oul immediately becomes an, . ~'~ Object of re, proach before God. .This is an evil effect of sin "~ ~over which he can certainly grieve. After the man makes a o""~ood confession, he can have a reasonable assurance that he~ has regained God's friendship, but h~ is not sure that'a11 effects of his sin are removed. There may be some tern, ¯ poral ptinishn~ent~ to ,undi~rgo; there mas} be some weak~: : "hess in the sofil, Some special liability to sin, thaf results ~ro~ his former sin.Because of the possibility that such ,._e~il effects may continue, we~,can griev~ over our sin~all t_hr0ugh our lives, because this possibility keeps the sins ~)'present to us at least in some sense. . ~. Perhaps the best way to describe the grief of soul which constitutes the second element of contrition is to"say that. -o jt'il a desire to get.rid of, tO shake off, the effects of our sins; ~ERALD KELLY " ' + ¯ " -Rem'e t+o °/: "o +r Religious. b&ause-- we- realize that m these effects our detestable +sins sti+il:cling to us. , We have~ to remind good people again and again that grief over sin-is not fiecessarily a matter of feeling. To~ u~e - an illustration, let us suppose that two men get, their hands:.,+ and arms cgyered with.m, qd. The firs~ man likes mtid ahd lqeenjoys being covered with it; the secon'd man does .like it. Then suppose that +while.they are covered" wi+~h~the+ ' mud they find oul~ tha(.this particular mud is very harmful to ttie skin." Both of them immediately try. to wash it bff, _ The example illustrates the difference betw+en acci~ dental grief and essentialgri+ef. On!y one of. the.men had a ~ +feelin9 of' repugnance for tlhe mud, yet both of+ them" tried to bedrid of it when they fbund it wa~s harmful. Sb Jr'is with+ Sorrow for sin. To feet-grief over the effects of sin is good, and may even be called an accidental perfection of dontri~" tion'; but theessential thing "is.to want" to be ¯rid of the.e~,i]. ¯ The besl~ exl~ression of grief, therefor)e, is'n61~ tears, but the sincere will to go to confession, to make.an act ~of per-fect contrition, to gain.indulgences, to repair an. injury dorfe' ~, .~to one's neighbor, to accept some hardship willingly in+ re16aration for one's sins, to¯ do some voluntary penahce' for the same purp?se, and so forth. ' These ale the means of: ~dbing away with the effects of our sins; hence, the will to ~do ~uch things is a tangible, way of showing ourselves that we are sorry, no matter how _we feel. Purpose of Amendment ._ ++. Purpose of'arr;endment, though by no mean~ the whole - of contrition, is 'a very important part of it, and probably~ tile best practical proof of it. No_one can have real contri-~ tion unless he intends to "amend" his lifd, but as" ~hi~ "amen "ament~ can have diffeient meanings for~ differefit ~cases; it may be well for us to consider some examplesdr ",8el~(ember, i944 . k ~ ~ ARE YOU SORRy_ FOR YOUR SINS-t these var"ia t"ions. Suppose .that a man who ha~ committed mort.ai gins sinc~ his last confessibn now wants to regain the state of "grace. W~hether he goes to confession, or makes an act-of perfect contrition with the intention of'goirig to confession, he must' certainly be besolved to "amend", his life. And ~ince ¯ his~c0ntr~tion concerns mortal sinsl hispurpose of amend-ment must be really absolute: tha.t is, he~ must intend to - avoid all mortal sin in the future. He would have tohave the same uncompromising r~solutidn, even if he had. com-imitted~ only one mortal sin. The "purpose of_sinni.ng no .more" applies quite literally tO the'case,of mortal sin. On the other hand, suppose the case of a man who has committed only venial sins since hi~ last confession, but . W.ho now- wishes to make an act of contrition for all h~s venial sins because he wants to'gaifi a plenary indulgence. .What kind of purpose.of amendment'must this man have? "The question is not easy to answer with perfect satisfac- ' tionf but it seems safe to say that it is sufficient for him if fie~.retains no attachment'toany venial sins (in the sense . that he intends to continue to commit t/'2ose Sins) and that he has at least a general intention to improve, for example, o' "~ by reducing the number of his venial sins. We mighi add that it is generally recommended that °such a man should -center his purpose of amendment, on the correction of some-~. thing definite. This recommendation is given ~becausel .experience teaches us that a general purpose o~ amendrfient ~,~is likely to prove ineffective "and that the act .of iontrition ih such' a case is ap.t to degenerate into a mere fobr~ula,~,a bit of wishful thinking, and.nothing more. ~, ~ ' ~ ~'A third case: A man has committed only ve'nial.sins since his last confession,, and he knows that be really" is not contrite for some of these sins: yet be'does wish to make a fiind~re act'of contrition" for 6ne kind of sin: for exa.mplq, 345 ~ ¯ GERALI~ KELLY ~ - ~i~iew ~br Religious iying.~ What must be this man's p~rpqse of amendment? ~.- Again, the case is not~asy fo s01~e with perfect satisfactions: but it seems Safe to give this practical~ rule: Ifthe man's lies -are of the ~ull~ ~libecate kind, he ought to'be resolved avoid them entirely; bfit if-the lies are rather.qn the~semi~ deliberate side~. ~he ought at least to have the good will try to reduce their number. In ~he'foregoing cases,-"amendment, of life'~ was used in. its ordiflary, everyday sense: tfiat is~. ~s an impfove~en¢ over one's recent Conduct. 'There is a fourth case, in which the expression,.e~idently has a different, meaning.: sj[der, for example, the holy K~ng David. _He offended God~ seriop~ly; then_he repented of that sin, was_forgiven, as far as we know, lived many years in the friendship, of God. Yet he continued to recite his Miserere for his past ' lapse fr6m grace. I.t would be absurd to think that this Miserere was-not a good act of cpntrition; but if it was " an-act ofcontrition, in what- did the amendment cod~ist? It ~eems obvious that "amendment"-. in such circumsta~e~ .has a wide meaning:~ that.is, it refers to the renewed pur-pOSe of continuing the reform that had begun Years ag6> The case of David is repeated week after-week iK our confessionals throughout the world. People sin~ mortally in their youth; they confess the~e sins, and then live.for-mony~ years without'furthe} serious lapses. Yet these peo- , p1~, can certainly make acts. of contrition for the "bld": mortal., sins;' in fact, they are e~n advised to i.nclude t~ese -sins in their.confessions io that they may benefit more and more by theabsolution. In their case, as ih David s,.the ~ purpose of amendment-for their mort~l sins d0~sno~ redan. :~ an_ intention to correct their present .lives, but" rather- the. renewed purpose to persevere in the amendment.th#t has, 10rig ~ince beefi brought about. The examples illustrate the various aspects ~of and 346 " ,'~':. September, 1944" - - ARE YOU SORRY FOR Y~)UR SINSt ~ requisit~ for ~u~pose of amendmefit. In our own case, ~when we m'ake an act-of contrition, we shall-, generally find a combination of these examples. We have sins of the past, "for .which it is sufficient to.renew our purpose of amend-r~ en~, and°retent sifts which" call" for real amendmen, t o and '~"~ defiriite resolutions. ~" " _ ~We sa~ that the, f.eelings sometimes present a p~ycho-.- °logicaldifficul~y in estimating detestation and grief.- Some- ~"°~hing ,~imilar can happen .wi.th regard.to purpSse of amend- "-~ ment, parti[ul~rly when ha,bitual sins of frailty are in.- '~yol~red. The sinner realizeshis w~akn~ss and, e~ien-.when he makes~ his act of contrition or goes to con'fession,, he "'~feels,sure" that he is going to sin again. Because of thi~, ,.he wonders if he really has a purpose of amendment. . ~"fh~ ,solution to the difficulty lies in a.proper under- ~- standing 6f~a purpose of amendment. I~ is not an act' of ~' the ~ind, but_of the will. It is a sincere.intention to try to dmend; and to take the means necessary.for doin~ that. .::'" ,The"'f.e~ling ~hat one will sin again" may result, not from any" ill~ will, but from the consciousness-that one is weak -~ and that this weakness has expressed itself again and again. Nevertheless, there is no weakness that cannot be Overcome by.serious effort and the grace'of God: Even the most habitual sinner can,,,resolve to make the effort, and he may 'il~ei iure that GSd will give ttie grace. And ,he should not "be ~li~scou.raged if he ~does fall again; ,this may simply be a -~ sign that he h~s not 'yet discovered the proper means for, correcting his particular bad habit. Sometimes people think, that all .they need to do to°~ oirercome bad habits is to go to the sacraments frequently. This'is only one. aspect of the solu[ion. It will ne~ver work unle.ss the sinner ~akes the more obvious means of avoiding "-occasions of sin, of exercising himself in self-control, and~ ~ sd forth 347 K~:LLY~,. ¯ ~ .,. ~ GERALD . . :- ~ " My afialysis of the act of contrition has been lofig.-Yet I.hop-e it ~cbntgins some helpfUl.suggestions. "~In pa~?ticular2 I think that many would find it fruitful to make a medi-tative act of contrition o~casionall) for example, ,during the morning'meditation on confession day. ~The Cl~urch evidently wants us to draw gre~t profit from frequent fe~ssion; and for.this there.is no m~ans more. effective tha~n~. an increase in contrition. ~" o BOOKLE-rs H~cmn and Psalm~ to Our Lad~l is the title of a: handy little, pamphlet containing "an, English translktioa of the Te" Matcem De/ Laadamus and the "5 Psalms" honor Of Ou~ Lady. Readers who are interested tanget the booklet fr,6mothe erend d,ude Senieur, O.F.M.Cap.0 Capuchin College, Brookland, Washington D.C. The pamplet is sold for the cost "of printing and mailing: individual copies 5 cents each; lots of 25 or more at greatly reduced rates. MV Particialar Ex~men Book is a tiny pamphlet containing many~helpful sug-.,.~ gestions concerning the pa,rticular,examen.and a.numbeE of ruled pages.for marking th~ examen. It is published by- the Franciscan Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration.~ ~t. Rose Convent, La Crosse, ,Wisconsin'. The, booklet began ~s a prtvate com-munity project, but the Sis[ers are now offering it to-other groups of religiotis prac2 tically at cost ($3.00 a hundred) in order to stimulate the use of the particular~ -'xamen as an important nieans of spiritu,al advancement. "Anal~lsis of the. New Testament, by. Cyril Gaul. O.S.B. An excellenL booklet. the fruit of m~ny years of teaching Scripture at St.~, Meinrad's Seminary. In accbrd with Pius X's Qaoniarn i~ re Biblica, the author has provided seminarians with an analysis of the various New'Testament books which all priests and ~he laity will welcome. 77 pages. Price: ~40 cents a copy, postpaid; 4 fol $1.00. Address: SL Meinrad Historical Essays, St. Meinrad. Indiana. ' 348 ~XINT DOMINIC,.AND HI~ WORK. By fhe Reverend Pierre Mandon-net, O.P~ Translated by Sister Mary Benedic÷a Larkln,.O.P.~ Pp.~xvlll ~- 487. B. Herder Book Co., Sf~ Louis, 1944. $S.00. -~ : According to a contemporary account, "the Blessed" Dominic w~as of medium height and of slight build. His Countenance was;hand-some:, of fair complexion, with light auburn hair and beard and. lt~minous eyes. A~kind of radiance shone from his br6~. inspiring love and reveren.ce in,all. Full of joy, he seemed e~rer ready to smile, unlesS, moved to ~pity by the affliction of his neighbor. His hands were long and shapely; his voice itrong,, noble and sonorous. He n~ever was bald, and his corona was complete, sprinkled with:~a few white hairs." Along withthis ratherpleasing exterior; he possessed al,so ver, y exceptional interior gifts of'mind, heart, and Will. And if to this~be added,his life-long faithful correspondence with "so many extr~ordina~ry graces, even.mystical ones, we have tl~e man of action Of whom Pierre Mandonnet, O.P.,-a historian df repute, could say: ]'You may quote'me whenever you wish. I consider Saint Dominic as a religibus founder the greatest o~ganizer that ever trod this earth after~the Lord Jesus Christ." To decide whether, or not that jUdg-ment is true requires a careful re~ding of this volume. It is a little~ Summa of Dominican brigins. ~" . P~re Mandonnet once jotted down on a slip of paper: "T0.re~d." :jo.y; to think, delight; .to write, torture." The last three" wor, d.s may be a par~tial explanation why the present work was far from com-i~' le}ed" when he'died in 1936.- But'he had done ~he reading and'the thi_nking, indeed, a. great deal of both: and he had outlined the chap-ters unit had written,some of them. Fortunately, he had competent ¯ disciples and co-workers. Orie of these, Marie-Humbert Vicair~e, O.P., ~ orghnized the .copious material gathered over many.years, and' sup-plement'ed it with critical notes and studies of his own. Anotpey,. Reginald Ladn~r, O.P., contributed a.do~umentedt.background chap-teron the plight of preaching in the twelfth c~ntury. The result is a book, pi~blished in 1939,somewhat lacking in unity and coherence, but substant~ally P~re Mandonnet s, both as to content and arran~e-~ ment. The contributions~.of Vicaire and Ladner are signed by-them, gut this is not noted in the'table of contents, as it should be. , 349 BOOk KEVIEWS _ . ~ Review.for Reli~.lio!is - ¯ Tile~bobl~-is d.ivided into tWO parts. The first part'presents the bis.~orical .setting, sketches tl~e iife of Saint Dominic, and develops at "length .his arduous l~bors in~fgunding and organizing the Order of. ¯ Preachers. Ciearly seen is thehand of Divine Providence, raising up a new Orderto meet the p~culiar religious needs of the times. In the early'thirteenth century,, the gradual coll~p~ of the old feudal s~rstem an~l the growing prominence of the towns a~ad communes brought about a changed order of things. The lower clergy, for the ~ost p_art ignorant and untrained, was too slow adapting itself to the altered situation. T, he bishops were more occupied w~th temporaht~es than" with tlSeir apostolic duty of preaching the .word of God: 5As-a ~ cdns~quence, the faithful, especially in the towns, began to drift away "frOm the Churchqnto heresies and schisms of various kinds. There,. ~was pressing need for an instructed clergy and for preachers of the Gospel. Saint Dominic, the zealous and learned sub-prior~ of the ¯catl~edrai'chapter of O~ma in Spain; was the man of Providence. was chosen~by Innocent the Third to found an Order qf poor priests~' -whose task would 15~ to preach to the people and to teach theology to ~ti~e clerics; in~brief,~"to contemplate and to give to others the fruits of contemplation." It was Dominic's Order that v/as to play such an important and successful. ~ole in carrying out the objectives ~of the- -Fourth Lateran Council~"the reform of the Church, the refor.rn of morals, the extirpation of heresy, and the strengthening "of the" Faith." Ma.y we not say that the Friars Preachers have never ceased ~_ doing, just that? ,The" second part of the book is" concerned with the Rule of Saint Augustine and its relation to the Rule of Saint Dominic. P~re.Mari~ donnet se.edas to have proved .his point: namely, that the Dominican riales and. constitutions,are, an organic development of the second. the,three 'rules of:Sainv Augustine, and. not, as-wfis though_Ufor,~a ~ ¯ lpng time, of the tliird, the famous Epistle.to certain religious women. The .second Rule is that primitive.Rule followed by a com~mentary" .which gaint,)~ugustiiae drew up in 391 for his first community~ of men. This study reveals, the'hand of a master,historian aiad is the most valuable section of the whole work. COncluding the~book-by way of appendices are five important "h'iDstoomriicnai lc astnueds,i"e s",w .aotnceh doof gwsh oicf hth dei sLcoursds.e's.' t Fheiv oer sigimini loafr tshteu deixeps~re~s sbiuotn~- of'a.more restricted and technical nature, l~ave been omitted from the., Efigl~ish e~liti0n. There_is

Issue 3.2 of the Review for Religious, 1944. ; :Review,fo¯ r R e h g o u s" MARCH 15, 1944 ,; ~' ~"The Worst of Sinners" . Ar, nold J. Benedeff~' ~ 7 B~beuf on Missionary Vocations . Augustine Klaas - Your PredominantXendency ~ "Pafrlck M. Regan . ~-Su, cjge.~hon from the Fec÷Ory . . . John E~ CQogan~ ':The 'Badder,' the Better" . . ." . . . G_. Aucjusfin~e Ellard Concern|ng, Vocat|ons . The Editors Book Reviews Ouestlons 'Answered Decisions 5f the Holy See. krOLUME III NUMBER :~.VOLUbIE III MARCH 15, 1.94.4 NUMBER 2' Im CONTENTS ON BF.ING "THE WORST OF SINNERS"--Arnold J. Benedetto, S.J. 73 BRI~BEUF ON" MISSIONARY VOCA,TIONSmAugustine Klaas, S.~1. 80 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . , . 93 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT. TENDENCY?m Patrick M. Regan,,S.d . 94 A SUGGESTION FROM THE FACTORYmJohn E. Coogan, S.3. 103 D~CISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE OF INT,EREST TO RELIGIOUS111 "THE 'SADDER,' THE BETTER" G. Augustine Ellard. S.d. 112 BOOKLET NOTICES . ~24 CONCERNING VOCATIONS The Editors . 125 WANTED: LETTERS ON RETREATS! . 128 TRY' ITH S IN YOUR EXAMEN!~RIchard L. Rooney, S.J .:. .,,1,29 WH0'IS SAINT JOS.EPH?Wililam Stritch, S.J .1.3.0 BOOK REVIEWS (Edited by Clement DeMuth, S.J.)-- Aids to Will Training in Christian Education: Instructions~ on Chris-tian Doctrine: St. Theodore of C~nterbury; Thirty Years with Christ:' White Fire: The Spiritual Conferences of St. Francis de Sales; From a - Morning Prayer; The Path of Love; Latin Gra~nrnar; Know Yourself; .The Text ,of the Spiritual Exercises: History of the Third Order of St. Francis of Penance and Charity; Mother Immaculata of Jesus BOOKS RECEIVED . 131 139o QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS~ 10. Jurisdiction of Ordinary Confessor . 140 11., Mass Stipends and Poverty .° . 140 12. 'Permission to Give Away an Inheritance .: ¯ ¯ 141 13. Appointing an Administrator, and Making a Will 141 14. Blood Relatives in Same Community . 141~ 15. Lace V'eil for Tabernacle ." . ~. ¯ 142 16. Number and Quality of Candles for Benediction . 142 1~7. 'Place f¯or the Christmas Crib . 143 , . 18. Duration of Office for Local Superior .143 19. Sacristan Should Wash Chalice and Ciborium -. . 20~. Frequency o~ Cofi~ession o~ Devotion . 144 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. March, 1944 Vo[. lII. No. 2. Published bi-monthly: January, March, May, July, September. and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter. January 15, 1942. at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3. 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.3., G. Augustine Ellard. S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Copyright, 1944, by .Adam C. Ellis: Permission is hereby granted for quotations of/reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author.,. Subsc.ription price: 2 dollars a year. Printed in U. S. A. Before writing to us, please consult notice on inside back cover, ¯On Being "The ~X/Orst ot: Sinners" Arnold J. Benedetto, S.J. N ANYONE;S list of "Perplexing Sayings of the Saints'" there is likely to be found a host of statements in which the greatest of saints profess themselves to be the "worst bf sinners." Now, since self-knowledge is a presupposi-tion for progress in the spiritual life, how can such self-deception .exist in. those who supposedly are far advanced? Or, since humility is based on truth--some saints consider the wo~ds synonymous~--how can we,. without doing violence to our intelligence, consider as examples of humil-ity those whose statements wandered, as it seems, so far from the realms of rigid fact? After all, there is no separate code of morality for the saints. Untruth is untruth. There can be only one "worst" among sinners, and no saint with .regard for truth can claim that he is that one. Of course, we can make allowances for the exaggera-tions of the 01d-style biggraphers of saints. Thei~ love of rhetoric and of paradox, their eagerness to cull from their heroes some "quotable quote", no matter how eccentric it appears when taken out of context--all this, rather than care and attention in making clear the saints' mentality and spirit, may account for some of the less attractive features one comes across in reading the lives of saints. But when all due allowance has been made, there still remains a goodly residue of strict biographical fact leading one to the unescapable ~onclusion that. many saints really did feel themselves to be the least among men, the worst of all man-kind. Further, the Church--which canonizes neither untruths nor errors--seems to extol the humility of the saints precisely in these pa.radoxicaI statements of theirs. 73 ARNOLD J. BENEDETTO Review for Religious The prbblem becomes excruciatingly acute when we read certain books of spiritual guidance and discover to our horror that toe, we o.urselves, are expected to believe, in all humility arid truth, that we, too, are inferior to all other men and more ~inful than all others. We all feel more or ~less willing to accept hi~mbly our place in the universe, but with all the goodwill in the world we fail to see how the proper place for every man is below his neighbor and how each and every person can be a greater sinner than every other person. One" should avoid making even "pious" errors of judgment. Perhaps No Comparison Is Meant One. possible solution of how a saint could ihave said, "I am the worst of sinners," is that the saint was not really making.a rigid comparison with others, bu~ was thinking simply and solely about himself. Thus, the sentenqe prac-tically means, "I am a very great sinner." If theoriginal statement can be reduced to these terms ~:hen we are to c~n-sider the sain~ as completely ignoring the sins of others and as concentrating only upon his own faults. The saints know God much better than others do, they realize more deeply the tremendous value of His gifts, they are more aware of His helping graces. As a result, they are in a bet-ter position to. see the wickedr~ess, the ingratitude, of sin. They contrast th~ boundless sanctity of God with the insufferable wilifulness of the puny man who refuses to admit his dependence on God. Even the least sin is an abomination in the sight of the Lord. Overwhelmed at the thougl~t of~having chosen any finite good rather than the v.ery great, nay, the infinite Good, the saint cries out that he is a very great sinner. A Shift in the Terms of Comparison A very common interpretation given to this difficult 74 March, 1944 ON BEING ~'THE WORST OF SINNERS" saying is that when the saint claims to be the worst of sin-ners he is comparing what he has of himself with what his neighbor has from God. This means either that the saint is comparing his own natural gifts with others' super-natural gifts, or else is comparing his own sins with his neighbors' good acts. In either case, certainly, such a com-parison justifies the conclusion, "I am worse than all oth- .ers." With this interpretation it isquite easy to see how anyone can claim that he is the worst of sinners, for the things that are being compared are no longer on the same plane. Obviously the supernatural is better than the natural, obviously sin is worse than virtue. Such a Simptiste explanation, with its shift in the terms compared, may appear irrational. What it really amounts to is just a clever--some may think, ineptMway of sa)~ing that sin itself is irrational.~ It implies that a certain minimum degree of humility is required if we 'are to avoid sin. At any rate, such an explanation is given by many iearned theologians. It is mentioned by St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica (2-2, q. 161, a.3). Four-Fold Ignorance Some of thesaints, however, when they assert that they are worse than their neighbor, very plainly do not mean that this is so only when comparison is made between what is of God in their neighbor with what is of man in them-selves. .They mean that their own character, apart from the gifts which God has given them, is much more vile than is their neighbor's character considered, likewise, apart from his supernatural gifts. St. Francis of Assisi (one of the most ardent devotees of the policy of. self-depreciation) explains himself thus: "I feel that I am the worst of sin-. nets, for if God had shown such mercy to a criminal hs He has shown to me, that criminal would be ten tim~s holier 75 ~RNOLD d. BENEDETTO Review for Religious than I am.-" St. Francis dearly suggests that the natural dispositions of the criminal are superior to his own. The explanatioh, however, is not.altogether satisfac-tory. Only God knows with certainty the natural dispo-sitions ofeach man. Because of our ignorance of these dispositions of others, arid because we do not know what hidden gifts God may have given others, we cannot claim to .be better than our neighbor. But neither are we strictly justified in asserting that we are worse than he. We may conjecture that we are worse, we may say that possibly we are worse. We cannot claim absolutely to be worse. Similar to our two-fold ignorande regarding the state of our neighbor is our. ignorance regarding our own present and, especially, our own future state. "Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of love or hatred" (Eccles. 9: 1):. .Quite possibly many~ persons who at present are leading holy lives will not.persevere in such a state. God sees the final disposition of their souls and in His sight they very . definitely are great sinners. Experiential Knowledge The solution that we offer as the final one really includes the other solutions," namely, the comparisons and ¯ the four-fold ignorance. But, presupposing those solu-tions, this final solution brings us more deeply into the .psychology of' the sai.nts. It tries to show not 0nly that, ~with certain limitations and qualifications, there is some .objective.truth in .the statement of the saints, "I am wo. r.se than everybody else," but also to give an account of bow the saints actually, within themselves, could feet Sincerely and intensely that they were the most wretched of sinners. The saints did, indeed, have some knowledge of the limitations of others (though they generally ignored that) ; but of their own unworthiness they had an intense:inner 76 ¯ March, 19 4 4 ON BEING ""~HE WORST OF SINNERS" experiential knowledge. The sins and deficiencies of others they knew by observation, :inference, or. hearsay. But knowledge by actual personal experience is more impres-sive and compelling than any other. Whatever might be said of others, they felt, and felt most keenly, that their themselves were guilty. Whatever arguments pro and con one might bring forward juridically regarding the malice .of others, the saints had actual and direct consciousness of their own wickedness. Seeing their own sins and imper-fections in the sigh.t of God, the horror that rose up in their consciousnbss was just as vivid an experience as an attack of acute indigestion. They may have had painful encoun-ters in.the pas.t, when brought face to face with the malice of their sins; this present experiencing, this tremendous illumination laying bare their utter nothingness and worse-than- nothingness, together with the consequent revulsion of a pure, ardent, and sincere soul, this present experience impresses them mdre vividly than any recollection of:past experiences. "Let others claim that they have had o? are having painful experiences when they recounf their sins within themselves--but really they could hardly be suf-fering as I am. My sins must be the worst p6ssible sins. Never could anyone offend the good God as I have." With reference to their very real, present experiential knowledge they are truly the worst of sinners. These "hard sayings", of the saints thus-contain not absolute truth but relative truth--relative, that is, to the source of knowledge. Having this intense experiential knowledge of their own sins, and l~nowing the sins of their neighbor only by observation or conjecture, the saints based their practical conclusion on the evidence of the inner experience and affirmed that they were worse than their neighbor. With reference to the particular type of evidence which alonethey ar.e considering, they are worse than their 77 ARNOLD ~, BENEDETTO neighbor. Another situation in which,~ similarly, the prac-tical,, working truth is different from the theoretical, abstract truth is the case in which a judge knows, as a pri-vate citizen, that the defendant is guilty but, with refer-ence only to the legal evidence at hand, he must, in his o~.- cial capacity, pronounce the judgment that the defendant is not guilty. One may prefer the following example: If a very brigh~ light is focused upon some particular object and one fixes his gaze for a'long while on the object, then that object ~ill be very. cons~picuous, While objects on either side of it will scarcely be noticed; they will be in. the dark, or, at most, in the penumbra surrounding the illuminated object. Ohio's judgment based on what one sees in the light will be much more accurate and detailed than any judgment made coficerning the unilluminated objects. By their inner experiential knowle~lge the saints become acutely aware of their own littleness and of the infinite contrast between even their leastmoral defect and the wondrous sanctity of God. In the light of this knowledge the saints focus their attention on their own defects and at the same time lose sightof, or but dimly notice, their own good qual'ities and thi~defects and gross sins of their neighbor: According to this light they are worse than their neighbor. The Dominican beatus, Venturino da Bergamo, explains that. the intense feeling and percep.tion of one's own defects may be compared to. the suffering of a tooth-ache. The stifferer feels that he is enduring more pain than anyone else; not that he sees in the light of reason that his pain is greater, but that his.own pain is closez tohim than is that of another. And even if he should know intellec-tually that somebody else has an equally bad or a worse toothache, it is still very true that he experiences and his own, not that of the other person. ,Judging on this 78 o ! March, 1944 ON BEING "'THE WORST OF SINNERS" basis, and relatively to this limited criterion, ~ae could say, "My toothache is the worst," "My toothache feels worse." " Conclusion To account for the unusually'intense pain which the saints feel at the consciousness of their, sins and for the' apparent ease with which they become thoroughly con-vinced that they are the greatest sinners in the world, Father de Guibert1 suggests that these great saints receive a very special divine illumination regarding their own sins, that this illumination is of the same order as the higliest degrees.of infused contemplation. We believe, however, that it is also within the power, of each human being to arrive--with less facility and with a less degree of conviction, it is true, than that of the specially enlightened saints--at the. conclusion, that he is the &orst sinner in th~ world. And many saints and spir-itual writers exhort us to judge in this fashion of ourselves. Pride is one of our worst enemies. It is very deep-rooted. J(ny consideration having in itself some real degree, of truth and helping to make us more humble should be wel-comed. It is humbling to consider oneself the worst of sinners. Possibly We shall be aided in forming this judg-ment by making use of the explanations given in the course of this article, namely, by contrasting our natural endow-ments with our neighbor's supernatural ones, by main-._~ "taining the prudent, doubts and suspense caused by our ignorance regarding our neighbor and ourself, and,. espe-cially, by basing our judgment on the evidence or objective truth furnished us by our experiential knowledge of our own faults as opposed to our unfelt knowledge of the sins of others. 1J.de Guibert, S.J. : l~tudes de Th~ologie Mgstique. Toulouse: l~ditions de la Revue ¯ d'Asc~tiqu~ et de Mystique;, 1930. pp. 283-298. :Br beut: on ¯ Missionary Vocal:ions Augustine K!aas, S.J. ON JULY 16, 1636, Father dean de Br~beuf wrote a lengthy " report to his religious superior, Father Paul Le deune, on the. state of .his mission among .the Huron savages, to the east of what is nov,; Lake Huron. The document contains' some fascinating chapters, illustrating what might be called the iomance of the mis-sions. In chh~ter three, however, by way of interlude, the heroic missionary decides to give a timely Word of advice to those in Fiance, .presumably his younger religious brethren, who are ardently longing tpou ngc6h oens' t.'h.e .w floireenig hne m teilslssi oonfs t hoef Nhaerwd sFhriapnsc, et.r iHmes d, oaensd n soutf "feprui.lnl ghsi so(f missionary life, but neither does he omit the ompensatio.ns and con-solations of that aposl~olate. In these lines Br~beuf seems to be giving us the proper technique in dealing with a vocation to the mis-sions. It is' this:~ don't overemphasize the romance, but tell the truth, the whole truth, the bitter along with the sweet, of. the call to the foreign missions. Incidentally, the cbapte~ also reveals the saint's.own virile spir-ituality-- his love of God, his life of prayer, suffering, and apostolic" zeal. Nor is 1-iis human side left out~ He was forty-three when he wrote it. Thirteen years later, tow~irds four o'clock on the after-noon of Tuesday, March 16, 1649, amid dreadful torments, dean de Br~beuf would die manfully the martyr's death for which his whole missionary life was a conscious preparation. BRI~BEUF'S ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE MISSIONARIES1 We have learned that the salvation of so many innocent ,souls, washed and made white in the Blood of the Son of God is stirring very deeply the hearts of many, and is excit-ingin themnew desires to leave Old France in order to come 1The original French of this chapter appears in The Jesuit Relations, edited by R. G. Thwaites, V, ol. 10, pp. 86-115. I have added ~hereferences to the ~Scripture texts, which in the, original are quoted freely and.in Latin. Except for the added captiofis and a few changes in paragraphing, the document is presented intact. ¯ BRI~BEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS. to the New. God be forever blessed, who thus shows us that He has finally ope.ned to these tribes the bowels of His infinite mercy. I do not wish to chill the ardor of~-this gen-erous resolve. Alas! it is these very hearts according ,to God's own Heart whom we are expecting. I wish only to give them a word of advice. It is true that "love is strong as death" (Canticles 8:(5). The love of God has power to do what death does, that is, to detach us entirely, from creatures and from ourselves. Nevertheless, these desires that we feel .of working for the salvation of infidels are not always sure signs of that pure love. Sometimes there may be present a little self-love and Self-seeking, if we look only at the blessing and s~atisfaction there is in putting souls in heaven, without duly conlcider-ing the sufferings, labors~ and di~culties, inseparable from these evangelical works. Dit~cult Journe~t " Wherefore, that no one may be deceived on this point, "I will show him how much he musi suffer here for the name of Jesus" (cf. Acts 9: 16). True, the t.wo who came last, Fathers Mercier and Pijart, did not have as much hard-ship on their journey as we who came up the year before. They did not paddle; their men were not sick, as ours were; the.y did not have to carry heavy loads. Still, no matter how easy the trip with the savages may be, there is always enough to greatlydiscourage a heart not.well mortified. The readiness of the savages does not shorten the road, nor smooth bver the rocks, nor remove dangers. No matter with whom you may be, you must expect to be at the very least three or four weeks on the way, to have as compan-ions persons you have never seen before, and to be cramped rather Uncomfortably in a bark canoe, with no freedom to turn this way or that, in peril fifty times a day of being 81 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Revieu~ [oc Religious upset or dashed upon the rocks. During the day the sun scorches you; at night you are likely to be a prey to mos-quitoes. You sometimes ascend five or six rapids a day, and in the evening you have for refreshment only a little corn crushed between two stones and cooked with ycery clear water. Your bed is the ground and often rough, uneven rocks. There is no shelter but the stars. And with all this--perpetual silence. If you are accidentally hurt, or if you fall sick, do not expect any help from these barbar-ians; for .whence could they get it? And if the sickness is dangerous and you are far from the villages, which are very scattered, I should not guarantee that they would not abandon y6u, if you could not follow them unassisted. When you reach the Hurons you will indeed find hearts full of charity: We will receive you with open arms as an angel from paradise; we will have all the good will in the world to do you good, but we are almost powerless to do it. We will receive you "in a hut so miserabIe that I do not think there is in France any by comparison so wretched that I might say: "That is how you will be lodged." ~Harassed and .tired as you will .be, we can give you only a poor mat, or at most a skin for your bed. And besides, you will arrive at a season ' when miserable little insects, which We call taoul~ac here, but "fleas" in straight French, will keep you for almost entire nights from dosing your eyes, for in these parts they are incomparably more bothersome than in France. The dust of the cabin breeds them; the sa3~ages bring them to us; w.e get them in their dwellings. And this petty martyrdom, not to speak of.mosquitoes, sandflies, ahd other like. vermin, continues usually through the three or four summer months. Instead of being the great professor and learned .tl~eo-logian y6u were in France, you must reckon on being here a humble little school-boy, and, good God! .with. what 82 March, 1944 BRI~BEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS teachers!--women, small children, 'and all the savages-- and exposed to their laughter! The Huron language will be your .Saint Thomas and your Aristotle.; and clever man that you are, and glib speaker among learned and talented persons, you must make up your mind to be for a long time mute among these barbarians. You will have achieved much if, after a considerable time, you begin to stammer a little. Trials and Dangers oI Mission Life And then, how do you think you are going to spend the ¯ winter here? Having h~ard of all that is endured in winter-ing among the Montagnets savages, I can say that it is almost the li~e we lead here among the Hurons. I say it without exaggeration: the five or six months of winter are spent amid almost.continual discomforts~xtreme co!d, . smoke, and the importunity of the savages. We have a cabin built of simple bark, but so well jointed that we have to go outside to learn what the weather is. Th~ smoke is very often so thick, so acrid, and so persistent that, for five or six days at a time, if you are not entirely used to it, about all you can do is to make out a few lines in your breviary. Besides, from morning until night, our fireplace is almost always beset with savages---~:ertainly, they sel-dom fail to be there at mealtimes. If yOu happen to have anything more than usual, no matter how little it may be, youmust reckon on most.of these gentlemen as your guests; if you do not share it with them, you will be considered mean.As regards tl4e food, it is not so bad, though we usually content ourselves with a little corn, a piece of dried smoked fish, and some'fruits, about which I shall speak further on. Up to now we have considered only the roses. As we have Christians in almost all the villages, we must count 83 AUGUSTINE KLAAS on making the rounds of them at all seasons of the year and of remaining there, according to necessity, for two or three whole weeks, amid indescribable hardships. -Add to. all this, our lives~depend upon a. single thread. If, wherever we are in the world, we are to expect death every hour and to be always prepared for it, this is particularly the case here. For, not to mention that your cabin is like straw and, despite all your care to prevent accidents, may catch fire at any moment, the malice of the savages gives, you cause for constant fear on this point. A malcontent may burn you down or split your head open in some lonely spot. Then, too, you are responsible with your life .for the sterility or fecundity of the earth, You are the cause of droughts. If y6u cannot make it rain,, they talk of nothing less than doing away with you. Moreover, I need only mention the danger there is from our enemies. Suffice it to say that, on the thirteenth of this last month of 3une, they killed twe!vi~ of our Hurons near the village ofContarrea, only a day's journey from us. A short time before, at four leagues from our village, some Iroquois were discovered in the fields in ambush, onl~r .waiting to strike a death-blow at some passer-by. This nation is very timid; they take no precautions; they are not careful to prepare arms or to inclose their villages .with pali-sades. Their usual recourse, e.specially when the en.emy is strong, is flight. Amid these alarms, which affect the whole country, I leave you to imagine if we have any grounds for security. However, if wehad here the exterior, attractions of piety, as in France, all this might still be put up with: In France the large number and the good example-of Chris-tians, the solemnity of the feasts, and the majesty of the ~churches so exquisitely adorned, all preach piety to you. And in our houses, the fervor of our brethren, their mod- 8~ March, 1944 BRgZBEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS esty, and the noble virtues that shine forth in all their actions--the~e are so many powerful voices which cease-lessly cry out to .you: "Look, and do thou also in like man-ner" (cf. Luke 10:37). You have the consolation of saying Holy Mass every day. In a word, you are almost beyond the danger of falling--at, least the falls are insig-nificant and you have help immediately at hand. Here we have nothing., it seems, which invites to good; ¯ we are among peoples who are astonished when you speak to them of God and who often have only horrible blas-phe~ nies in their mouths. Frequently you will be com-pelled to deprive yourself of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: and, when you have the chance to say Mass, a little corner in your cabin will be your chapel, and even if you had the means, the smoke, the snow, and the rain would hinder you from decorating and embellishing.it. I pass o_.v.er the little opportunity for privacy there is among barbarians, who almost never leave you alone and who hardly know what it is to speak quietly. Above all, i do not dare to speak of the danger there is of ruining oneself among their impurities, in th~ case of any one whose heart is not suffi-ciently full of God to firmly repel this poison. But enough of this; the rest can be known only by experience. "But is that all?" some one will say. "Do you think that by your arguments you haVe thrown water on the fire which consumes me, and hhve lessened ever so little the zeal I have for the conversion of these nations? I say that these things have served Only to confirm me the more in my vocation. I feel more affection than ever for New Frange. I bear a holy jealousy towards those Who are alr, eady 'enduring all these sufferings. All ~hese labors seem to me nothing, in comparison with what I should like to endure for God. If I knew a place under heaven where one could suffer yet more,:I would go there." ~ 85 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Reo~eu2 for "Reli#ious The Briofit Side Ah! whoever you are,.to whom God gives these senti- :ments and this light, come, come, my dear brother, it is workers such as you that we ask for here; it is to souls like yours that God has decreed the conquest of. so many others whom the devil holds even now in his power. Fear no hardships; there will be none for you, since your whole consolation is to see yourself crucified with the Son of God. Silence will be sweet to you, since you have learned to corn- ¯ mune with God and to converse in heaven with the saints and angels: The victuals would be insipid indeed, if the gall tasted by our Lord ,did not make them sweeter and more savory to you than the most delicious viands in thd world. What a satisfaction to ascend these rapids and to climb these rocks for him who has before his eyes that loving Savior, wracked with torments and ascending Cal-vary laden with His cross. The discomfort .of the canoe is very easy to endure for him who thinks of the Crucified. What a consolation--for I must use such language to please youmwhat a consolation, then, to see oneself even abandoned on the road by the savages, languishing with sickness, or .dying of hunger in the woods, and still being able" to say to God: "My God, it is to do Your holy will that I am-reduced to the condition in which You see me," and to consider above all. the God-man" dying on the cross and crying out to his Father: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?." (Matthew 27.:46). If God preserves you in health amid all these hardships, without a do.ubt you will arrive pleasantly in the Huron c~ountry with these holy. thoughts. "He sails pleasantly, whom the grace of God carries along." Now, as regards shelter, food, and bed--shall I dare to say to a hea'rt so generous and disdainful of all that I have. already said on this point, that, although we are hardly in '86 ,Marcia, 1944 BRI~BEUb ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS a~better position than the kavages, still, in some unknown way, the Divine Goodness makes every difficult thing easy, and each and all of us find everything filmost the same as in France. The sleep we.get lying on our mats seems to us as" sweet as if we were in a goo~l bed; the native food does not disgust us, although there is scarcely any other seasoning than that which God has put into it. No~withstanding t-h~ cold of a six months' winter "spent in the shelter of a bark cabin, open to the daylight, we have.yet to' experience its evil effects; no one~ complains of his head or stomach; we do not know what diarrhea, colds, and catarrh mean. This ¯ leads me to say that delicate persons in France do not know bow to protect themselves from the cold. Those rooms so well carpeted, those doors so well fitted, and those windows closed so care.full);, serve only. to make its effects more keenly felt. It is an enemy from whom one wins almost more by proffering him one's hand than by waging a cruel" ~var against him. As for our food, I ~hall say this, that God has shown us clearly a very special providence: we have secured within a .week our pro.vision of corn for the whole year, without taking a ~ingle step beyond our cabin. Dried fish has been brought to us in such quantities that we are compelled to refuse some of it and to say that we have sufficient. You might say that God, seeing that we are here for His service, wishes~Himself to act as our provider, in order that we may labo.ronly for Him. This same Goodness takes care to give. us from time to time a change of provisions in the form of fresh fish. We areon the shore of a large lake, which affords as good fish as .I have ever seen or eaten in Frfince. It is true, however, aS I have mentioned, that we do not ordi-narily procure them, and still less do we get meat, which is even more rarely seen here. , Even fruits, in season, are not lacking to us, provided 87 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Reoiew [or Religious the year be somewhat factorable. Stra~cberries, raspberries, and blackberries are to be found in almost incredible quan-tities. We gather plentyof grapes, which are .fairly good; the squashes last sometimes four or five months, and they are so abundant that they are to be had almost for nothing, and .so good that, on being cooked in the ashes, they are eaten, as apples are in France. C0nsequently, totell the truth, as regards provisions, the change from France isnot very great. The only grain of the country is a sufficient nourishment, when one is somewhat accustomed to it. The savages prepare .it in more. than twenty ways and ye, t employ only fire and water; it is true that its best ~auce is - that contained in it. Spiritual Advant.ages As for the dangers Of the soul, .to speak frankly,-there are none'for him who brings to the Huron country the-fear and love of Godl On the contrary, I find here unequalled opportunities for acquiring perfection. Is it, no( a great deal to have in your food, clothing, and bed, no other. attraction than simple necessity? Is it not a glorious oppor-tunity to unite yourself with God, when there is at hand no creature whatever to which you can possibly become attached, and when the spiritual exercises you perform con-strain you without effort to inward meditation? Besides your spiritual exercises, you have no other task than the_ study of the language and conversation with the savages. Ab! h6w much pleasure there is for a heart devoted to God " to become the pupil of a savage and of a little child, in order to win them afterwards for God and make them disciples of our Lord! How willingly and liberally God commuiai- -rates Himself to a soul which practises out of love for Him these heroic acts of humility! The words he learns are so many treasures he amasses, so many spoils he carries off 88 March, 19 4 4 BRI~BEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIO,NS from the common enemy of the human race; so that he has /eason to say a hundred times'a day: "I will rejoice at thy ~vord.s, as one that hath found great spoil" (Psalms 118: 162). ,Viewed in this light, the visits of the s.avages,, h.owever frequent, cannot annoy him. God teaches him the beau-tiful lesson he once taught Saint Catherine of Sienna, to make of his heart a chamber and a temple for Him, where he will never fail t~o find Him, as often as he withdraws.to it. And if h~ encounters savages there, . they do not inter-fere with his prayers; they serve only to make them more. fervent, and from. this he takes occasion to present these poor wretches to His sovereign Goodness, and to beseech Him earnestly for their conversion. Certainly we have not. here that exterior solemnity which awakens and sustains devotion. We see only the sub-stance of our religion, the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, to Whose marvels faith must open our eyes, aided by no sensible mark of Its grandeur, just as in the case .of the Magi in the stable. Nevertheless, it seems that God, supplying for what we lack. and recompensing us for the favor bestowed on us of carrying It, so to speak, beyond ~o many seas, and of finding a.place for It in these wretched cabins, wishes to confer the same blessings on us. which He is wont to confer on persecuted CatholiCs in heretical countries, These good people.scarcely ever see either a church or an alfar, but the little.they see is worth double what, they would see, were they entirely free. You can imagine what consolation there is in prostrating ourselves at times before a cross in the midst of this barbarism, and, engaged in our petty domestic tasks, in turning our eyes towards and entering into the place which the Son of God has been pleased to take in our little dwe!ling. Not to be separated from this Well-.Beloved of the nations, except by a little 89 AUGUSTINE KL'AAS Re(~iew for Reli~lious bark or tree branch, is it not to be in paradise day and night? "Behold he standeth behind our wall" (Canticles 2:9). "I sat down under his shadow, whom I desired': (Canticles 2:3). SQ much fo~. the interior. If we go outside our cabin, heaven is open to us, and those great buildings which lift their heads to the clouds in large cities, do not conceal it from our view; so that we can say our prayers with com-plete abandon in that grand oratory, which Saint Francis Xavier loved more than any other. With regard to ,the fundamental virtues,~ I will glory, no~ in myself, but in the lot which has fallen to me. Or if I must humbly acknowledge it at the foot of the cross, which our Lord in His grace gives us to carry after Him, certainly this country, or ~ourwork here, is much more suited to feed a soul with the fruits of heaven than with those of earth. I may be mistaken, but Ithink that there is here a spli~ndid means for advancing in faith, hope, and charity. Are we t0sow the seeds of the Faith here, and not ourselves profit by it? Could we put our trust in anyone but God in a region where,, on th~ human side, everything is lacking? Cbuld we want a fine~ opportunity to exercise charity than there is amid the roughness and discomfort of a new world, where no human aft'or industry has y~t pro- Vided any conveniences? is there a. better occasion for prac-tising charity .t'han by living here in order to bring back to God men who are so unlike men that we must live in daily expectation of dying by their hands, should the fancy take them, should a dream suggest it to them,.or should we fail to open or close the heavens at will, giving them rain or fine weather a~ command. Do they not make us responsible for the state of the weather? And if God does not inspire us. or if we cannot work miracles of faith, are we not con-tinua~ ly in danger of seeing them, as they have threatened 9O March, ~1944 BR~BEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS to do, fall upon us who have done no harm? Indeed, if He who is Truth itself had ~not declared that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life really and once for all for one's friends, I should deem it a thing equally nobl.e, or even more so, to do what the Apostle said to the Corinthians (I, 15:31): "I die dai.ly, I protest by. your glory, brethren, wh'ich I have in Christ, Jesus our Lord"-~-that is,-to d[ag out a miserable life amid the fre-quent and daily perils of an unforeseen death, which those whom you are trying to sa;ce will procure for you. I some-times call to mind what Saint Francis Xavier once wrote to Father Simon, and wish tl:iat it mhy please God so to act that at least the same may be said or written one day even of us, although we may not be worthy of it. Here are his words: "'Excellent news comes from the Motucbas, namely, dohn Beira and his companions are laboring amid the [Treat-est l~ardships and continual danger of death, to the great increase of the Christian religion.'" . About Chastity, in Particular There seems to be one thing here which might cause ¯ apprehension in a son of the Society, that is, to see himself in the midst of a brutal and sensual people, whose example, unless special precaution is taken, might tarnish the luster of the most and the least delicate of all the virtues--I mean chastity. Inorder to obviate this difficulty, I make bold to say that, if there is any place in the world where this virtue so precious is safe, for a man who wills tO be on his guard, it is here. "Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it" .(Psalms 126: 1). "I knew that I could not otherwise be continent, except God gave it, and this also was a point of wisdom, to .know whose gift it was" (Wisdom 8:21 ). They say that the victories won by~ this .91 AUGUSTINE KLAAS ¯ Review I:O? ~Reli~tious daughter of heaven over her enemies are .won by flight. But I believe it is God and no one else.,who, in the most severe encounters, puts to flight this same enemy before those, who, fearing nothing so much as his approaches, go where His g!ory calls them, humbly and with hearts full of confidence in His goodness. And where are we to seek this glory of His? I should say, rather, where find it more purified and freed from our own interests than in a place where there is nothing to hope for other than the reward of ¯ having left all for the love of Him of whom Saint Paul said: "I know whom I have believed" (2 Timothy 1:12). You remember that plant called "the fear of God," with which it is said our Fathers at the beginning of our Society charmed away the spirit of impurity. ¯ It does not grow.in the land of the Hurons, but it falls her~ abundantly from Heax~en, if one is only a little careful to foster what he brings here Barbarism, ignorance, poverty, and misery, which ren-der the life of these savages more deplorable than death, are a constant reminder to us to mourn Adam's fall,, and to submit ourselves entirely to Him who, after so many cen, turies, still cbastizes disobedience in His children in so remarkable a way. Saint Theresa said once that she never made better meditations thi~n in those mysteries where she found our Lord apart and alone--as though she had been present in the Garden of. Olives--and she called this a sample of her simplicity. You may reckon this among my follies, if you like, but it seems to me that we have here go much the more leisure to caress, so to speak, and to enter-tain our Lord with open heart in the midst of these unin-habited lands, because there are so few people who trouble themselves about Him. -And on account of this favor we can say boldly "I will f~ar noevils, for thou art with me" (Psalms 22:4). 92 March, 1944 BR~BEUF ON MISSIONAR'/ VOCATIONS In short, I i.magine that all the guardian angels of these uncivilized and abandoned nations are continually endeav-oring and striving to save us from these dangers. They know well that if there is anything in the world that ought to give us ~¢ings to fly back whence we came both by obedi-ence and by our own inclination, it would be this misfor-tune, were we not shielded from it by the protection of 'heaven. This is what urges them to prqcure for us the means to guard, against it, that they may not lose the brightest hope they have ever had through the grace Of God, of the conversion of these peoples. I close this discourse and this chapter with the fol-lowing words. If at sight of the difficulties and crosses that are here prepared for us, some one feels himself so strengthened from above that he can say it is too little, or like Saint Francis Xavier "amplius, amplius" ("more, more"), I hope that our Lord, in the midst of the consola-tions which He will give him, will also. draw from his lips another admission, namely, that the consolation is too much for him and that he cannot endure more. "It is enough, Lord, it is enough." OUR CONTRIBUTORS ARNOLD J. BENEDETTO is a student of Theology at"St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. AUGUSTINE KLA^S, Professor of Sacramental Theology at St. Mary's. made special studi~s in Ascetical Theology. PATRICK M. REGAN, Pro-fessor of Apologetics at St. M~ry's, is the author of a previous article on Se_lf-knowledge. JOHN E. COOC~N, a professor at the University of Detroit, has written much on social questions, and will be remembered by our readers for his~ articles on Spiritual Direction. G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD will be remembered particularly for his very "original" article on Hygienic Mortification that appeared in the first number of this review. 93 What: Is Your Predominant:.Tendency? Patrick M. Regan, S.J.~ 441"='EW things better reveal a man than zealous and *"=| persistent efforts to decrease his handicap. That profound and ancient maxim 'know thyself' might be inscribed on the portal of every GoTf Club. He who would attain self-knowledge should frequent the links. If one seriously attempts the task, one will find oneself in golf." Thus writes Arnold Haultain in :his book, The M~jster~t of Golf. '~Know thyself; frequent the links: attempt the task seriously"--these might be styled the ascetical principles of golf. Religious will be quick to see that, routatis mutandis, these principles also express the asceticism of the spiritual life. "Know thyself" would not be out of place on the portal of the religious house. "Frequent the chapel" is excellent advice at all times. "Attempt )our task seriously" is always necessary for the follower of Christ. Such thoughts are a fitting prelude to the study of the predomi-nant tendency, which, in the language of the author cited, is our "handicap" in the spiritual life. In a former article ("Self-knowledge" in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, II, 223), we stated: "Many spiritual writers maintain there is one evil tendency that predominates, bne at the root of most of our .defects and imperfections; that, if we work diligently at controlling this one, we need scarcely expe~id any time.or energy on the rest." The present article will furnish meth-ods and suggestions for determining this predominant tendency. According to many .spiritual writers, everyone is apt 94 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT TENDENCY?" to discover his predominant tendency among the seven prin- . cipal tendencies to evil, the capital sins, as they are called. Hence it will be helpful at the very outset to make a study of these tendencies, together with opposite virtuds. The following definitions and explanations will greatly clarify our ideas. Pride is ihe exaggerated esteem of self. The evils that spring from pride are: stubbornness, rebellion and independence manifested towards those over us: contempt, harshness and abuse towards tl~ose subject to us: conceit, touchiness, vanity, arrogance, impudence, boasting, striving to magnify one's own importance. Laudable pride is the esteem of one's dignil~y as being Wholly. due to God's free gift. "My soul magnifies the Lord and .my spirit rejoices in God my Savior" (Luke 1:46). Such pride is. ordinate, for joy at success is permissible provided it be so controlled that' it preserves the correct evaluation of self. Humility is a true estimate of s~lf, of talents possessed, together with acknowledgement of lack of talents. Through humility we recognize that we are creatures of God and hence subjec~ to Him; that our bad qualities counterbalance the good that is in us:. that many others surpass us in various accomplishments; that our .talert~s are G~d's free gift~ rather than our own achievement. Avar;ee (Covetousness).is the indulgence of d~slre forthings we may not possess in present circumstances, at least not Without sin or imperfection. Avaiice leads to: violations of .the vow o~ poverty, discontent, unhappiness, dullness of soul towards spiritual things. In a religious it often involves hankering for trifles to give to friends or to retain fo~: ond's own comfort. Conte.ntment is satisfaction with wl~at, we have or with being poor with Christ. Liberality is readiness to share with others, especially with Christ's poor. En~--bitterness towards those we judge superior to us in talents and advantages. It brings such evils as: dislike, hatred, malice; desire 't.o'deprive those we envy of their advantage or to, injure them. Like pride this tendency springs from the intellectual side of our nature. But whereas pride inflates self, giving a.sort of satisfaction, envy emphasizes shortcomings and lack of talent, making us miserable 95 PATRICK M. REGAN Ret~ieto for Religious with consuming bate. Religious are especially exposed to this tend-ency because they.observe a whole array of excellent, even brilliant, accompl!shments and achievements in their brethren. Beneuolence is good will towards othdrs by which we rejoi.ce over their success, or at least resist bitter feelings aroused by e.nvy. Anger is a hot, strong feeling against somebody or something that displeases us, driving us to destroy or injure them. Anger leads to quarreling, fighting, violence; also to hatred, revenge, and bitter talk against people aiad things; to ill-temper and disagreeableness. Gentleness (Meekness or Patience) controls angry feelings, deters from harshness, calmly endures what.displeases, thus conditioning the soul to restrain the burst of anger. Controlling an irascible nature had" much to do with sanctifying St. Andrew Bobola and has sanctified many another to a lesser degree. The same is necessary to sdme extent for ivory religious. Lusf is the desire for sexual pleasure, urging to indulgence not per.- mitred Us. Evils consequent on lust are: immodest thoughts, imagina- ¯ tions, and actions by oneself or with. others; also the tempting of others to the s~ime sin. Lust closes the mind to higher things, destroy-ing the attraction of spiritual realities. A word of warning is here in place. This tendency is so obtrusive, even when not extraordinarily stro.ng~ that one might easily be led to mistake it for the predominant tendency. Hence mature d~liberation is needed before anysuch con-clusion is re.ached. Chastity is control of the desire for sexual pleasure, avoiding every indulgence of it in thought, word, or deed contrary to God's plan in matters of sex. Religious by their vow of chastity have relinquished all right to marriage and its privileges. Hence absolute control of this appetite is obligatory on them in allcircumstances. "GluH'ony is excessive indulgence, of the pleasure of eating and drinking. Iri religious it usually assumes a milder form, ~uch as inor-dinate interest in food, over-anxiety about quantity/ and quality, crlticism of the meals and the cook, an ill-controlled appetite for cer-tain foods.' Excessive indulgence in food results in ill health, laziness, andsensuality. Excessive drinking is apt to lead to a strong.inclina-tion to lust, anger and quarreling. Both forms of gluttony are debasing and cause distaste for everything' worthy of man. Sobriety (Moderation, Temperance, Abstemiousness) consists in retricting one's food and drink to. the needs of health. For religious. 96 "March, "I 944 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT TENDENCY? some self-abnegation in food and drink is a matter of daily practice. $lo÷h (Laziness) is a slow, heavy habit of. body or mind, shrinking from effort and cultivating idle ease and comfort. Its'consequent evils are: neglect of duty, shirking the unpleasant and troublesome, listless-ness. Idleness leaves the mind open to evil thoughts and desires, and excites temptations to gluttony and lust.: Diligence (Industry) is an instant and constant"fidelity to duty, an eagerness for work. Religious, lacking ihe stern sanction, "work or starve,".can easily fail in dilig.ence, especially in spiritual exercises. Hence" for them. diligence involves zeal for God's glory and the salva-tion of souls. ~ Elimination - Though we may understand perfectly the nature 6f these various tendencies described above, the problem still remains; which one predominates in our souls? A check of the list just giv.en will show us immediately which tend-encies do not hold sway in our soul~. By this simple pro-cedure some individuals have succeeded in eliminating all but the ohe ruling tendency, ' though it must be confessed that this is rather the extraordinary occurrence. As a mat-ter of fact. though, almost invariably five Of the seven can be eliminated even With this cursory examination. There remains then the task of determining which of the remain-ing two predominates. For. approaching this latter ta.sk, let it be noted here, readines~ to face the issue honestly.is the necessary disposi-tion of soul. For that matter, the same disposition is also needed at every point along the way. Hard as it is to admit deordination in our souls, it is still harder to admita ruling ¯ evil inclination. To be good-naturedly indolent is not half as bad as being under the complete .dictatorship Of sloth~ So we incline to deceive ourselves that it is not as bad as painted, .or that it is something else not, quit.e so humiliating. -We even surrender to Satan, allowing him to take over andblind us with his deceits. Courage, there- 97 PATRICK M. REGAN Reoieto for Rel~giotts fore, and honesty, together with a strong resolve to see the task through to ~ finish, are necessary in this quest that leads to self-knowledge. So~trces We begin our quest right in the depths of .our' own souls. Our search is for an outstanding inordinate motive behind our actions. For example, the desire to impress others may ever and relentlessly drive us forward to the various objectives we pursue. On the other hand, the same motive-may sometimes retard us or stop us completely as threatened-frustration drives us to seek an avenue of i~scape. Thus. the deflation of our self-esteem may turn us aside altogether from a praise'~'orthy undertaking.~ It is quite possible for such a relentless drive to exercise considerable dofiaiffation over us without our adverting to the fact. The reason is that We ordinarily observe only our surface acts without ever examining the underlying motive. If upon investigation our findings happen to coincide wi(h the examples just cited, then pride would be indicated as the driving force in our scheme of life and would be set down tentatively as the predominant tendency. We would then proceed to further examination to confi'rm our findings. ,Our next step would be to investigate whether it will explain, at least to a great extent, the deformities we find in our pattern of life. ¯ Hence we question ourselves whether~it explains the difficulties we have in dealing with our superiors, and with others witl~ whom we live or associate, whether it clarifies the reasons for the difficulties which others experience in dealing with us.; whether i~ sheds light on ~he problem of our failure to make progress in the spiritual life. 'If the answers to these various questions point back to the same predominant tendency, we can be quite certain our tenta- 98 March, 1944 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT TENDENCY? tive judgmentwa~ correct. As the work of self-examination goes forward, mbre and more evidence accumulates to increase this certitude. Aversions are excellent indicators of the virtues most needed~ A long-continued aversion for work tells us ever so plain.ly that we need frequent large doses of exhausting labor to build up the virtue of industry in our souls. Hence we ought to examine o~rselves in this matter of aversions. A simple and brief process it will be, since it is intended rather to confirm our previous findings. "Another help in this effort to unravel the mystery of self is to be more observant ofour thoughts and reactions,. even in unrestrained moments. On these occasions it is well to note what is uppermost in our minds. How often, for instance, all unconsciously, we are busy offering i~,zense to self as we give ourselves credit for being better religious than others, of having more brains, of working harder and accomplishing more. The thought that comes first to mind Oh awakening is significant, as is also the thought l~hat recurs most frequen,tly during the day. These are ungfarded moments in which nature is disarmed, stripped of self-deceit; henc~ like a candid child itcan be very ~elf-revealing. But put it on its good behavior in time of meditation, as it gazes on the meek and humble Christ, and the wolf will don sheep's clothing. How exemplary itwill make itself out to be, in its sweet humility and shining obedience. The final check of this search within our souls will be of our daily examens and our confessions. Getting back to that first motive that prompts our sins and faults will fur-nish new confirmatory light. We shall ~ind, for example, that.what on the surface was a flashof anger, at bottom was a manifestation of pride. Incidentally, with this new lightshed on our habitual faults and sins .we shall be able ~o take effective measures to guard against routine confes- 99 PATRICK M. REGAN Reuieto for Religious sions and to reap more abundant fruit from our reception" of this sacrament. Searching Abroad Besides examining within our souls, we must also ven-ture abroad seeking information concerning outselves. The judgments of others on our characters frequently offer revealing sidelights. For one thing there is less danger of their being prejudiced in our favor; hence, if they but will, they can tell with fair accuracy whether we are proud, or whatever it may be. Since accidental circumstances of time and place or of individual prejudice may falsify the judgment, the more trustworthy-opinion, is the one deduced from many testimonials extending over a long period of time. We gather thes~ by recalling what others said of our failings as children. Parents, family, teachers. companions, friends, playmates instinctively recognized outstanding traits, and in their dealings with us adapted themselves accordingly. Our present daily companions are also discerning of our main character weakness; nor do they always hesitate to tell us about it. Their manner of acting towards ui announces it; their joking remarks are often occasions for their pronouncing judgment on us. Nor- .must the advice of. our spiritual director be overlooked, since, if he knows and understands us, he can afford us .very superior help in our search abroad. Critics Disagree It sometimes happens that those we consult in our se,ar~ch abroad disagree in their opinions of us. A certain author gathered the criticisms of his book and found that it was good and bad, dull and entertaining, slow and swift; clumsy and graceful, strong and weak, a romance and a ser-mon, a drama and a tract. He concluded that, though 100 March, 1944 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT TENDENCY? critics always claim to be right, it was irfipossible for his book to be all these things. Shouldwe encounter the same rather exceptional experience, .we can console ourselves that nothing" of serious consequence is .lost; we have all the other means of self-knowledge still at our disposal. Ashing God rThe last and greatest help is prayer to the Holy Spirit ¯ for light. A strong conviction that we need divine help above all in this search is a powerful aid in this as in every spiritual undertaking. A short aspiration from the longer prayer of St. Augustine is quite appropriate: "Lord Jesus, may I come to know Thee, may I come to know myself." God "will gladly communic,ate, that knowledge, flooding otir souls with light as a reward of all our soul-searching. Humility, let it be n~ted again, is necessary, lest we be deaf to.every admonition, blind to every light, hardened against the love that corrects. God will be giving directions and inspirations about our predominant tendency, but without humility we shall ignore them. Confessors, retreat mas-ters, and others will be telling us ever so plainly of our besetting weakness, but we shall never heed unless, as we seek self-knowledge, we simultaneously grow~in humi~ity. Finally, salutary lessons in self-knowledge, to be gleaned from meditating on the example of Christ and the. saints, will never be learned unless the heart is hungering to know - self no matter what the~cost to that same. self. Godward Self-kn0wledge should lead us to God; otherwise it is not 0nly useless but even a great hindrance to our spiritual advancement. Well did St. Augustine pray: "Lord Jesus, may I dome to know Thee; may I come to know myself," In the foregoing explanations the demands of the subject 101 PATRICK M. REGAN made it necessary to focus attention on self-knowledge to ~he apparent exclusion of other phases of the spiritual life. This fact should .not betray us into putting too much emphasis on the need of.self-knowledge. We should also understand what true knowledge of self really is. A cita-- tidn from a former article on the subject (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1942) will make this clear. "Many are prejudiced against self-knowledge, even fear to undertake the task of acquiring it.; they misunderstand it. It is not to be .confused with morbid, introspection--that avid, uncontrolled interest in self which excludes all else and can be so harmful. No, the acquiring of self-knowledge pos-tulates not only looking inward, but also considerable looking outward to God, to our neighbor, and to our mod-els. the saints. Nor does the study of ~elf mean constant cold analysis of self, for the very reason that it can also be accomplished by noting the ~rirtues of others that impress us and reveal how much we fall short of perfect .design in our own lives. Self-analysis can be a considerable aid to self-knowledge but it does not lead to it infallibly. Some are expert at analyzing themselves, but their self-knowledge is mediocre; while'others have a deep knowledg~ of self, with very little power of self-analysis." As is evident, then, from the method suggested, the predominant tendency itself can be determined~ in a com-paratively~ short space of time, and with not too great diffi.- culty./ But the fruit of our examination we may re, ap all through life, developing for ourselves an intelligent, well-ordered, unified plan of lifeto meet our personal spiritual need and Weakness. This plan will be distinctive of our asceticism; it will assure us spedial'advantages in mounting GOdward. I02 A Suggest:ion ~rom !:he Fact:ory John E. Coogan, S.J. THE factory system, as is now. generally recognized, tended t6 dehumanize labor, making man almost a part of the machine. Little need was left him for intelligence; instead intelligence was "built into the machine." One great manufacturer .remarked, "Any one can work for me who has brains enough to hang up his hat." Even those workmen who had intelligence were often given no adequate opportunity to use it:" the .employer commonly thought of a workman as a "hand," at a time when even cattle were counted by the "head." "i~o stop this debasing of labor, Pius XI, in his encycli-ca!, "Reconstructing the Social Order," reminded employers that man is placed here on earth to develop and evolve all his faculties to the full, to the praise and glory of his Cre-ator. Hence, the Holy" Fathei: declared, "We deem it advis-able that the wage-contract shoul~d, when possible, be modified somewhat by a contract of partnership." Com-menting on these words, Father R. A. McGowan says the workman, in order to develop as ahuman being, should be given some voice in planning the general production policy of his industry, for thus "the soul of man, his will and mind, and his body can breathe more freely, and grow and develop in such work, whereas under any form of regimen-tion., his soul is .starved." If some such participation of subordinates in the planning of the operation of a business enterprise is so, necessary for their full development, it might well be asked whether we are as yet taking full. advantage of such par- 103 ,JOHN E, COOGAN Review for Religious ticipation in our rdigious communities. Among us the practice is of course used widely by a few, less widely by many. But are we even close to exhausting ~ts possibili- " ties? It is true that among us the need in general is not so extreme. Few of our religious are employed at tasks involving continuous mechanical repetition; hence their tasks usually give more opportunity for self-exp~ession and mental development than do the tasks of the ordinary industrial employe. But on the other 1-Jand our religious, because of their frequently superior abilities and education, are capable of a more notable self-exp~ession; hence they languish more if they lack the appropriate opportunities. Every man, the Pope said, is meant by God to develop alI " his faculties to the full. The whole man gives himself to God through the vows; and the whole man, with all his talents, be they one or five, should be used and brought to flower. Since those words of Plus XI urging employers to give their workmen a chance to .use their minds, many employ-ers have seen fit to give such men some share in the formu-lation of the production policies of management. The reason for this more generous policy need not have been that urged by Plus, for even from the standpoint of their own interests employers have cbme to see the wisdom of using more fully the talents of their workmen. It has occurred to them that "the average intelligence ,of the working force is higher .in the United States than in any other country, and native ingenuity, combined with intimate familiarity with processes, can not fail to produce ideas that may advantageously be adopted by the man-agement." This movement,looking to the increase of employe participation in solving the problems of industry has been developing for some years, but early in 1942 it w~is tre- 104 ¯ March, 1944 A SUGGESTION FROM THE FACTORY mendously accelerated when War Production Chief Don-ald Nelson asked that throughout the munitions industry labor-management committees be formed in the interest of increased production. He felt that the laborer's brain-power wa~ largely going, unused where, no positive and .systematic encouragementwas given him to place his sug-gestions before the management with an assurance that he ~vbuld get a respectful hearing, and for fruitful, suggestions a;suitable keward. Within fifteen months after Mr. Nel-son'sp~ 0posal at least 2,000 committees looking to such cooperative efforts Were formed. The result has been a gusher of employe ideas that has contributed heavily to the success of our war effort. In one .automobile plant alone a total of more than 116,000 ideas have been submitted, of which almost 20,000 have been accepted. "War bonds, ranging as high as $1,000 .in value, are awarded for the ideas and $660,895 has been paid out. during the 15-month period. Cash payments--currently are running better than ~ $90,000 monthly:' in that one auto plant. Many of the awards are going to young women still llttle more than novices at machine methods. One such "hand," working on a rifle barrel, promptly suggested an ingeniou~ change in boring thatbrought her a $1,000 award. Another devised a pencil-like tool for picking up small rivet washers, thu~ eliminating the tedious task of picking them up by hand and thus increasing her output. Another hit upon a clever arrangemeiat for telescoping a three-step job into one. '~ In One plant manufacturing cannon, a single machine was devised to take the place ~of ten. machihes, thus "reducing the time on a gun barrel operation from seventy-five'minutes to four.In another plant a worker's sugges-tion reduced the rifling of the barrel of an automatic cannon from three hours and twer;ty-five minutes to thirty minutes. 105 JOHN E. COOGAN Review for Religious ¯ In East Pittsburgh alone, in a single year, the' Westing-house Electric gave awards for more than 2,000 sugges-tions, the largest of these to a grandfather of sixty-two years. And thus the story goes. One device, designed in spare time from scrap mate'rials, has raised the output of certain army tank fire extin, guisher parts from 100 to 400 per eight-hour working shift. Another machine fhat bites off 400,000 rivets a day from spoo.ls of wire is .likewise the happy idea of afactory "hand." Among the first 500 sug-gestions submitted at Douglas Aircraft were enough good ideas tO producea saving of 2,000 man-hours per day. General Electric received more than 40,000: suggestions in ;i single year, 12,000 of these proving worthy of accept-ance. Such suggestions pouring in across the country.have iffsingle instancesmeant savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars, one as much as five hundred thousand dollars in a single year: and this in addition to the many lives saved through speedingup our ~winning of the war. NO wonder, then, that the War Production Board has insti-tuted a system of merit awards, corresponding,to military decorations, for employes who devise means, of increasing or improving war production; these awards" to be in addi- ¯ tion to cash prizes and medals bestowed by employers themselves. The success of this encouragement of employe sugges-tions has been such as to guarantee the continued use of the scheme by intelligent industiialists "after the war., Thor-oughly discredited is the notion that. the workman is only a "hand." One great manufacturer has .predicted .that the .next .fifty years will see "the exploring of the unlimited possibilities of human beings workilag together for a corn- .mort cause ' through mutual understanding, respect, and teamwork." 106 ~- The success of this democri, tizing of industry is but an echo of the success that analogous efforts have long since met with at times in religion. It was in the interest of free-dom for the subordinate that St. Ignatius refu~ed to attempt to prescribe in detail for meeting contingencies that could be only dimly foreseen. "Cut your coat according to the cloth," was the extent of his direction in commissioning a subordinate. Ironclad~directions canonly make for inflexible, blind driving. Wise religious supe-riors have felt themsel~res fortunate at being able to borrow from the pruden.ce and variedexperience of their communi-ties. It is proverbial that those best fitted to govern are the most willing to be governed. In consequence of their -reluctance to rise above their fellows, they minimize their difference of status as much as is compatible.with discipline. Consequently they lend a ready ear to the well-meant sug-gestions of their subjects. Admirers of a more militarized religious discipline have demurred at such deference, feeling it somehow beneath the digni~y of superiors; it is for such that our~ remarks are mbst especially intended. They resemble a friend of New-man's, who felt the latter was being talked down to by an ,intellectual inferior. But the humble author of "Lead, Kindly Light," quietly replied: "'Ar~/or~e can lecture me, and I'll be grateful for it." Thus the large-minded, kindly superior sees no loss of dignity in tt~rning an interested ear to the last and least of the community. .Such ~ superior reflects that only the Holy Father is infallible, and even he only within limits. He knows too that many of the ablest minds in the Church have spent long lives in complete subjection; fortunate the superiors who were able to profit by their wisdom. Many, too, who were once in positions of authority, return with matured minds to the ranks; how valuable may the suggestions of 107 JOHN I~. I~OOGAN" Review for Religious these.be to even the most competent superior~ governing in the, awesome .place of Christ'and only. too. aware of his limitations~ . ~ ~ . ~ ." A Writer of conferences for priests tells t.he: story--v~e hope it is only :that,--of a pastorwho expressed his opinion of his. assistant and house-keeper in the. words, ~'I'm the only One around here-who has brains enough to commit a mortal sin.': That frame of mind will seem inconceivable to the true superior. It~means, for one thing, drawing the blinds against the light; it means poisoning the wells. ¯ In matters coficerned with the salvation and perfection Of immortal souls, there can never be too much light; the .wills dannot flow too clear and pure. If, as has been beau-tifully. said, "One soul' is 'enough for a diocese,"' then the gove.rnment of a religious community can use all the light and wisdom.that might be found in an entire ecumenical council. But readiness to listen to and encourage the suggestions of subjects insures much more than increased .light .in gov-ernment; it makes for more docile, loyal, cdntented, sub-jects: Knowing that their views have been treated with. respect, subjects obey. more promptly-and interiorly. Treated like adults, like adults they now obey. The per-s~ n of the superior is loved and deferred to; and, as St. Ig-natius reminds us, "It is easy to' obey where we-love'that which is.commanded." Gracious superiors thus make for gracious subjects; these subjects in turn are gracious to.their own cbarggs. The example.is fertile and its fruits increase. Another very worth-while result of such respect shown bysuperiors for the judgment of their subjects has been the latter's increased s,elf,respect. An eminent, holy English priest exclaimed some years ago, "Oh, the timidity of the virtuous.". Sometimes.one may wonder whether we do not inculcate in young religious diffidence in:place of humil- 108 March, 1944 A SUGGESTION FROM.THE FACTORY ity.Diffidenceisparalyzing, humility is clarifying. Diffi-dence salts, ~"I can-.do nothing"; humility says, ~"I can:diS all things in Him Who strengthens me.'.'. Sometimes young ¯ people .come to. religion who have. had. responsible pos.i~ tions in the world, and .yet by Vow-time they have hardly enough self-confidence left to pay.their wayon a street-tar. At an age when their companions in the world are managing, large .businesses, these religious tremble at making, the. simplest public appearance or at meeting a, stranger. ¯ Timidity is' not. an apostolic virtue; self-respect emphatically is. Self-respect is prope.r surely to an "Alter Cbristus" or to a "Sponsa Christi," and the deference of _ superiors to. subjects; even to the youngest, by which .that self~respect is built tip must be pleasing to.Christ. It is not enough, as the wise superior knows, that this deference .be shown only to a few.The last and least are most exposed to crippling diffidence and self-contempt~ and they espe.- cially should be encouraged. Even those inclined to be.less-than- loyal~ can be won through this deference; this of course is an essential part of the Boys Town method of Father Flanagan. It is a truism to say tha~ the superiors of tomorrow are the subjects of today. They are now presumably being trained for their high destiny. In.a democratic Order sub-jects can hardly be ~predestined for superiorships and .be given formal and specific training as such. A future Latin teacher may be prepared by courses in Latin, and so of the other branches of instruction. Obviously, future Superiors cannot be set apart and trained in this manner; something of the present system, of relying on Providence for their development must always remain true. But wise"supe~. riots will continue to lend Providence a hand by keeping close to their future successors, letting them see and feel andmwith due proportion--participate in government-in- 109 JOHN -action. ¯ The modern pedagogy is, "Learn.by doing"; and even in the matter of superiorship there is no other way. The experienced superiorfeels, as did the Baptist, "You ¯ must increase; I must decrease," in order that, when another generation must take the helm, it will, be prepared. A final advantage found resulting from the superior's respect for the judgment of the ~ubjects is.a great love of ¯ their vocation: "All good thin, gs have come to me together ¯ with her." Religious are enthusiastic inspirers of new .-recruits when they find supreme contentment in their, reli-gious home. On the.other hand, the attitude of the dis~ satisfied religious to prospective enlistments is, "Enter at your peril." And how could they promise a newcomer the joy they themselves have not found? How important, . then, is this encouragement of joy-in-vocation, as a means of gaining the vocations needed now especially in view of . their recent sharp decline. If religious subjects are encouraged to.a greater initia-' rive, they will quite naturally manifest a greater enthusiasm for the common cause. And here, perhaps, lies a danger. Enthusiasm tends to become insistent. Hence it might be well to remark inclosing that, even with the humblest superior, subjects must always be deferential. After all, it is the superior Who holds the place of God. And while suggestions from a subject may well be in order, not so his insistent demand. Nothing would so discredit a sug-gestion as its giver's failure in religious spirit; for "the wisdom of this world is folly before God." Intelligence is not enough; Satan has that in abundance. But the wise superior will know how to moderate the naturally impe,tu-ous without at the same time discouraging the timid; he will not "quench the smo.king flax." 110 Decisions orr Ho}y January II, 1~44: The Sacred Congregation of Rites, in the pres-ence of Pope Pius XII, approved the decree tuto in the cause for the canonization of Blessed Frances Xavier. Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. hll the prerequisites to h~r formal canonization are now completed. B~sides the cause of Blessed Mother Cabrini mentioned above, there are four other causes completed for canonization. They are those of Blessed Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort, founder of the Daughters of Wisdom and of the Company of Mary, who died in ¯ 1716; Blessed Joan-Elizabeth ,Bichier des Ages, cofounder of the Daughters of the Cross, who died in 1838; Blessed Bernardino Rea-lini, Jesuit orator who died in 1616; and,~ Blessed John Peter de Britto, Jesuit missionary ~vho was martyred in India. in 169,3. Five causes .for beatification have also been compl~ted: those of Ven. Contardo. Ferrini, professor of RomanLaw in various Italian universities, who died in .1903; Ven. Mother Joanna Delanoue, foundress of the Sisters 6f St. Anne of Providence, who died in' 1.736~; Ven. Mother Gioachima de Vedruna de Mas, foundress Of ~he Carmel-ites of Charity,. who died in 1854; Ven, Vicenta Maria Lopez Vicuna, fouhdress of the Spanish Institute. of the Daughters of Mary !mm]lculate, who died in 1'890: and Ven. Alice LeClerc, foundress of the Institute of Our Lady,. who died in 1622. August 18, 1943: The Sacred Penitentiary published a decree an-nouncing that Pope Plus XII granted the following indulgences for saying the prayer, "Lord, save us: we perish": (I) A partial indulgence of 500 days to all who say, the prayer 'with contrite heart. (2) A plenary indulgence, under, the Usual conditions, to all who say the aspiration daily for a full month. .° SOME year's ago, before the Legion of Decency made its influence felt, it was said that the rule in Hollyw.ood was, "The 'badder,' the better!"--that is, the-worse the moral tefidency Of. a. cinema, the more Profitable it was. Whether that statement was true or not, the expression lends itselfto another more wholesome interpretatio~i. In.many cases it is.very dear ~hat.,the worse a thing0is in one respect, the better it is in others. Thus, the harder the examination, the:greater' the satisfaction of the student .-after be'has passed, it. Thelonge~ the workingman's toil, the.higher his pay, especially if it be at the rate of time and a half. The more serious the peri!.that a soldier or sailor .faces successfully, the more honorable the medal or cross . "that he will receive. What is true in life generally is true. particularly in the moral and spirituallife. ¯ The greater a man's trials, the holier and happier he can become. Two classes of people especially could profit by filling their souls with the conviction and persuasion that the :: "badd'er".a thing is from.certain points of.view, thebetter :.,it is from others. Evidently it would be a Source of solace. .and strength to all who are suffering to Se~ that the v~iSrse ¯ "! their plight may seem, to b.e., the'.better 'it :really is,. when considered from the divihe point o.f ,view and in the light of eternity. Again, there are always some strong and vigorous persons who are looking for the shortest and straightest, though it be also the steepest and hardest, path up the mountain of sanctity. Both those who are over- .112 "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" taken with misfortune and those who are.seeking thebest short cut to high holiness should find it advantageous to consider the truths implied in the words "the 'badder,' the better!" And any sensible person who finds that he has to put up with something that is not to his tastemay well be pleased to discover a means of making the best of a bad situation. Pain in the Christian Economy In God's original and preferred plan for man there was no place for pain. Everything was to be p!easant. But since Adam and Eve and all sinners after them have wrongly and perversely sought pleasure, though in itself it is no evil, it is central in the.whole order of providence sub- - sequent to the fall that there should be pain and suffering, and that the happiness of man should be looked for and achieved very largely through them. Man's guilt in tasting forbiddefl pleasure and the unbalanced tendency of his-nature toward pleasiare were to be remedied through pain. Disorder, once introduced into human life, naturally works itself out in difficulty and distress, if not disaster. But it is the merciful and marvelous plan of God that we should convert the consequences of disorder into means to a higher order, the effects of stupidity into helps to a more excellent wisdom, the results of malice into aids to a nobler goodness and sanctitiy. 0 felix culpa! Hence in the entire scheme of the Incarnation and redemption suffering gets a more prominent ~mphasis. It is a leading characteristic of Christ Himself, of His sorrowful Mother, of the Apostles, of all who have done much for the Church, of all who h~ve reached an outstanding degree of sanctity, and in fact of the whole Mystical Body of Christ. In view of the function and purpose of suffering in the whole of the present Chris-tian economy, it is not surprising that, certain necessary 113 (3. AUGUSTINE ELLARD' ¯ conditions being presupposed, the greater the pain, the greater the supernatural results that may be expected. However, pain of itself is not a good, but an evil (physical) ; not a value, but the very opposite, Hospitals, concentration camps, and the world in general are full of people in torment, and unfortunately many of them'do not become better by reason of their suffering; rather, they deteriorate. But pain, borne well, put to morally good ends, can and does occasion an immense amount of good. .The.infinitely wise and loving prbvidence of God sends or permits all.the evils that afflict us for definite good pur-poses, and indeed proportionate good purposes. His ¯ immediate aims are often obscure andindiscernible, but His ultimate and supreme ends we know very well, and the time wil! come when His whole plan will be clearly revealed ¯ to us. Whether or not we see His proximate intentions, we can realize them by prudently, applying His precepts and counsels to the facts of our situation. The wise and good man considers the evils that befall him as parts of the grand divine plan for the universe, reacts as God wishes that he should,.and thus wills and achieves the divine purposes, in this way he pleases God and satisfies himself, and 'also, since our destinies are all bound together, he helps others toward less discomfort and more comfort. Limitations The dictum "The 'bad&r,' the better!" is proposed as true generally, not absolutely and without limitations. If, for example, a man is losing his faculties and sinking into .the moral impotency .of dementia, coma, or death, then it would not be true in the sense in which it is taken here. Sufferirig--and how much there is of it!-~--that is the con-sequence of. one's own folly or fault is not of much use .until at least the error be corrected and good will re-estab- "114 March, 1944. "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" lished. But then al! that is affirmed of the value of suffer-ing is verified. Difficulty may diminish, as well as increase," the moral worth of a good action; it may even completely prevent it from coming into being. Henceit is not corn: mended for its own sake: But if, other factors remaining equal, difficulty calls forth greater goodwill, then it will have the advantages that we are about to indicate. Nothing in these considerations would justify one in imprudently or presumptuously or morbidly seeking to make more trouble for oneself. suffering is like that Pain is an evil, and The rational, attitude to take toward of God Himself in His providence. therefore, except in view of propor-tionate good; to be avoided whenever possible. But,~ in the present state of things, it is also a necessary evil, and, what is more to the point for us, an evil from which intel-ligence and goodwill and effort can extract good. Hence the prudent man will take the ills of life, and, when inspired by the Holy. Ghost, even voluntarily inflict others upon himself--such as, for instance, fasting--in the spirit in which God Himself chastens and corrects His children and puts them upon their mettle. " These limitations being undeistood, we may consider in a simple and practical manner some of the salutary~ truths implied in the prindiple "The 'badder,' the better!" General Values ' In general, therefore; the greater the difficulty or dis-tress or dishonor, the greater.one's opportunity, by reacting ¯ appropriately, to exercise and perfect one's love for the Infinite Goodness of the Blessed -Trinity, to increase the divine glory, to. compensate for past deficiencies; to aug-ment one's own eternal beatitude, and to assist souls in the way of salvation and sanctification. In this sense, the worse a thing is in time, the betterit may be in its results in eter- 1:5 G~ AUGUSTINE ELLARD Review ~:or Religious .,nity. The more Unpleasant it is, humanly sigeaking, the more valuable it may be according to the divine standards of judgment. The Worse it is physically, the better it m'ay be morally and spiritually. The ~harper the pain, the greater the hope of enjoying keener pleasure in the future. The more narrowly pinching one's poverty, the greater the likelihood of amassing better and enduring riches in the h~reafter. The more heartbreaking the mental anguish, thet more exquisite the joys bf the reward that may b~ expected for bearing it well. The deeper a humiliation well borne, the more highly exalted the honor a man can look forward to before God and eventually before the wh~le human race. The harder the .temptation to struggle against, the more glorious the crown of justice that awaits the vic-tor. As creatures become less and less satisfactory, it Is easier to find satisfaction in the CreatOr. In prop6rtion as lovely persons or things of the world allure and beguile us less, the more apt we are to retain the right pe~spectixre and sense of proportion with r~ference to ~reatures and the Cre-ator. To sum up, the worse the evil that afflicts a person, 6f whatsoever nature it may be, thegreater and better the ~pfirposes of God in allowing it, for H~mself, for the suf-ferer, and for others. It is precisely toward the accomplish-ment of these aims, neither more nor less, that these reflec-tions are directed. Means to this Attitude. There are two great means Of truly making the ¯ ".badder" thing turn out to be the better thing. The first is to develop a deep, calm, whole-s0uled, pratical, conviction of these two facts: first, that God in His superior wisdom, benevolence, and power really is directing everything that touches us, including the sins and injustices of others toward us, to our own true and best good; and, secondly, 116 March, 1944 "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" that the best possible thing that we can do for ourselves is to show our good sense and good w{11 by fully co-oper-ating with the operations of divine providence. When God's immediate aims are obscure, then ggeate~r faith and confidence are in order. God could of course give us better opportunities, but wd can never do better for ourselves than to make the most of the opportunties that He does give us. The Other great means is earnestly to cultivate, by serious reflection.and prayer, a true and just appreciation or evaluation of the excellence of the persons whose interests are concerned, and of the magnitude and multiplicity of those interests, in time and in eternity. Among the values suggested by the rule "The 'badder,' the better," the following may be noted. Special Values in the Present Difficulty or dist'ress is a present challerige to one's intelligence and goodwill. It is there to be overcome and vanquished: at least that is the magnanimous attitude toward it. ¯ It tends to provoke and evoke all that is best in a man, to put it to the test, to improve ~nd perfect it. The humble soul will not be presumptuous and overconfident in its own strength, but neither should it be diffident with regard to God. " 'For strength is made perfect in infir-mity.' Most gladly, then, will I rather boast of mine infir-mities, that so there may rest upon me the si:rength of Christ. Wherefore I am well content in infirmities, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in straitsnfor Christ's sake. For when I am Weak, then I am strong!" (II Corinthians 12:9, "10).1 It has always been considered one of the most remark-able manifestations of God's excellence" that He is wise and good and strong enough to.draw good out of every evil that aNew Testament texts in this article are cited from the Westminster Version. 117 AUGUSTINE ELI]ARD Reoieto ~o~ Religious occurs in His universe, and no doubt the w0~se the evil,:the greater the good must be. "We know that for them~that love God.He worketh all things together unto good,~ for them that are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). It is understood that those who love God are intel-ligent and virtuous enough to co-operate with Him. The Christian life was long ago defined as an imitation of God; and to be able to extract good out of evil, and greater goods out of greater evils, would be a mark of an excellent Chris-tian life. In increasing one's efforts to meet the challenge, one's own wisdom and goodness and power are perfected and made more and more like God's. Thus difficulty over-come or pain well borne gives one something of 'which to be supremely proud. "We. exult in the hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we exult.in our tribulations also, knowing ,that tribulation worketh endurance, and endurance experience, and experience hope: And hope doth not prove.false" (Romans 5:2-5). An aviator: who is trying to run up a high record of victories against enemy planes would seek out, rather than shun, dangerous encounters; so. the good man who would like to distinguish himself in the service of the Divine King would look upon-any hardship or surfeiting as so much opportunity to win glory for his Sdvereign and for him-self. The very best physici)ins and surgeons prefer the more difficult, the "more interesting," cases, because thus they have a chance to use and to improve their superior ~kill. They feelthe challenge and are glad to accept it. Many good people have moments when they regret that they do not, have more occasion to showthe magnanimity and heroism that are in them. To be consistent, they ought to acknowledge practically, when the time comes to put up with the unpleasant, that the worse it is, the greater the opportunity for which they have been looking. Since the 1'18 Marc& 1944 "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" time of Aristotle, the difficult has been-considered to be in a peculiar way the province of art and virtue. St. Paul knew and welcomed the.challenge we speak of: "But as for me, Heaven forbid that I should make boast of aught save the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified to me, and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14). With. Respect to Past Our principle contains most 'valuable lessons with respect to the past. Perhaps nothing discourages people more in their moral and spiritu.al lives than a past record which brings shame rather than pride. Even here these people have their chance. The worse they have been, the greater their need to make up for what they havelost, and hence the more welcome the opportunity to. effect that compensation. When one.has sinned, the sensible attitude to take Would seem to be: "Willy hilly, now I must suffer for it! The sooner it is Over, the more patient I am, the better!" The deeper one is in the red in his accounts with God, the more solicitous one should be about getting into the black again. A person who attacks his past in the spirit of "the 'badder,' the better!" Would have the optimism, ~lan, and force that go with taking the offensive. A little punishmer~t here may save one from much torment in, pur-gatory, and besides it has a positive value (merit), whereas that after death does not. The souls already undergoing the penalties of ptirgatory must have an overwhelming conviction that they would have done well to bethink themselves seriously and see the advantages of their disad-vantages, the comforts of theirdiscomforts~ ~nd the abili-ties of their disabilities. When a man sins or even omits the better alternative in a choice between two goods, God's antecedent plan for His own glory is to that extent frustrated. God would like 119 G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD Review for Reliqious ~o see the loss made good, unless, 6f course,, it betoo late. In sending or permitting difficulty or tribulation, He intendsand hopes that it Will be used for that end: Thus again, the worse one's affliction, the better the chance it gives to satisfy God for past failures. ,Many devout people nowadays talk much about making reparation fo~ t.he injuries and insults that have been heaped upon the patient and-!ong-suffering FIe~art of 3esus. D0 they realize always that the better their patience in. all that is disagreeab!e, the fuller the measure in which they make that reparation? Other fervent, souls: would imitate St~ Paul and would make up in their "flesh :what is lacking to the sufferings of Christ, on behalf of his.b6dy, which fs the Church'~ (Colossians 1:24). The more and better they suffer, the less they will leave lacking to that Mystical Bgdy. For ~he Future ." But it is with reference to future values that :the rule :"'T.he 'bad&r,' the better!" is best verified. ,The most obvious advantage here is the merit of suffering well. The tiniest and most minuscule bit of discomfort, or dishonor borne meritoriously means an increase of grace: of.sancti-fying~ grace,".that, is, of higher participation in the nature and life of. the.Divinity; of the infused virtues and the,gifts ¯ of the Holy Spirit, that.is, of proximate principles of dei- ¯ form thought, volition, .and activity; of actual graces, that is;.o.f-salutary ideas,., impulses, and aids helping one to live .On:a~ higher plane of the rational and the diyine life; and finally; of a richer share in the . ineffable, beatitude of the most blessed Trinity in. heaveia .throughout the unending aeons of eternity. One's ability to behold: and contemplate .the,Infinite Truth, to love.th4 Infinite Goodness, to enjo.y ¯ .the.Infinite. Beauty, and to.rejoice in the company of: the Divine Persons and : of: .the .whole . celestial society, is pro- .t!20 March, l 9 4 4 ¯ " "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER'.' portionately augmented. God is glorified more," the quondam sufferer himself thrills with a more exquisite sense of the divine beatitude, and everybody else in that. blissful region is better pleased and more happy. And Goal repays sincere human effort£, not according to results, but according to a generous~cost-plus system. Meanwhile his own moral stature will be rising at an accelerated speed. Faith will be clarified,, hope fortified., ahdcharity intensified; prudence will become more sharply discerning, religion more devout, humility deeper, fortitude stronger, patience more enduring, and magnanimity greater. Really and consistently to face suffering with ,the disposi-tion "the worse, the better!" is no child's play, and if it be kept up in severe trials and over a protracted period' 6f time, the man who does it shows himself to be something of a hero. If personal sanctity is raised to higher,levels, then, other things being equal, one's efficiency and ability to.d0 God's work and to save souls will be increased also. General resolutions and offerings of self to God cast in some such form as this: "All that Thou Willest, O. God, and the harder, the better!" should prove to be more ¯ effectual. If in the crisis of temptation a person can exclaim ,"The harder, the better!" or, "The worse I have been, the better I am determined to be!" his chances Of coming of( ~he victor will be enhanced. . A JoyousAttitude Taking this view of the unpleasant makes it less unpleasant and more bearable. Evidently this attitude ig less pessimistic and more cheerful. Moreover, such a posi-tive and aggressive reaction,, besides conferring the advan-tages .of offensive strategy over the merely defensive, lessens pain, partly because of the consciousness" of .doing the nobler thing, and partly because a man suffers less when 121' G. AOGUSTINE ELLARD Review ~'or Rdigiotts ¯ he is active and not simply passive. Every football player and every soldier knows that while he" is in actual combat . minor hurts are not felt so keenly. The saying of the old Roman poet that it is sweet as.well as honorable to die for the fatherland, has received universal approbation. For a much stronger reason it ought to be sweet and consoling to suffer for God's sake, or for souls' ~sake, and that swee(ness should bear a proportion both to the loveliness of the Great Beloved and to the amount of evil endured. Everybody who has been in love knows well from experience that there is a certain satisfaction in demonstrating love by sacrifice. As a matter of fact, it can only be suggested, not at all adequately expressed, that in suffering in union witch ,Jesus crucified holy men and women have been thrilled with the most exquisite and indescribable delights. Not that they ceased to feel their agony; but with it, or after it, and by reason of it, they also felt the most rapturous and ecstatic joys. "For according as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so through Christ doth our comfort also abound" (II Corinthians 1:5); they who "for a while. h~i.ve beeia grieved somewhat by divers teHptations . . .~ exult with an unspeakable and glorified joy" (I Peter 1: 6-9). ¯ Moreover, heavier crosses have always been consid-ered a sign of divine predilection. To acquire the heroic attitude.toward suffering,.cert~iin. ardent souls will find themselves helped most by .such reflections as the following. Who is desus who suffered for me.? .What His dignity, goodness, lovableness? How worthy of being pleased even if He had never felt incon-venience because of me? How much didHe suffer for my sake? With what love, mercy, patience, and l'ong-suffering? Why did He suffer? What does He desire of me? With what right? How much-pleased would He be ifI.~hould suffer with Him? To.what extent could I.thus 122 March, 1944 "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" help Him "accomplish His aims in enduring so much pain and humiliation and. such a death?' How much could I aid His Church and His cause with souls? .Would it gratify Christ to see me pr.efer.ring poverty, pain, and opprobrium, not of course for their own sake--that would be perverse-- but for His sake and to further His designs? Pertinent Prayers John of the Crossl-who taught, and in his own person illustrated the fact, that one who is destinedfor a very high degree of divine union, "of total transformation into God,:' must first undergo very severe and thoroughgoing purifications, was v~.ont to pray: "O God, to suffer and to be despised forThee!.". Before Teresa of Avila reached the summit of her myst.ical ascensions, she, Whose latter years ~vere one great battle with difficulty and distress of every sort, would exclaim: "O Lord, either to suffer or to die!" The Italian Carmelite, Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi, outdid her: "O Lord let me suffer or let me die---or rather--let me live on that I may suffer mote!" But before the end Of Teresa's life, .when a furious st6rm of troubles was begin-ning to break over her head, she wrote to a less stouthearted confidant and collaborator:. "Let use make the :attempt, ¯ . . for the more we suffer, the better it Will be" (Walsh, Saint TereSa o[ Avila, 567). It would seem that anybody with faith and reason could pray: "O God, enable me through Thy grace to see ~11 that befalls mein the light.and setting of Tby wise and benevolent and pcwerfu[ providence, to realize practically that Thou makest all things, good and bad, to work together for the best interests of those who love Thee and react rightly, and. thus really and truly to achieve Tl~y beneficent, purposes; all this, out of love for the infinite, .eternal, and ineffable goodness of Thy most blessed Trin- 123 G.' AUGUSTINE ELLARD ity; out of zeal to co-operate with Thee in communicating that same goodness and Thy knowledge and Thy love of it; out-of eagerness to participate in the redemptive sufferings and work of. the God-man crucified; out of fear lest, being too. shortsighted and cowardly, I incur more grievous woes; and finally from a longing to share, and to bring others to share, in Thy own inexpressible and everlasting beatitude." All things considered, whatever is to be said of the theory of evil, the best practical philosophy of evil seems tO be found in the alliterative and ungrammatical oxy-moron: "The 'badder,' the better!" It provides a rational ¯ and Christian means of transforming negative, into posi-tive values, disorder into order, discomfort into comfort, and dishonor into honor. BOOKLET NOTICES Sp;rifual ChecI(-up for Religious, by Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D. A good booklet t:or occasional examination of conscience and for monthly" recollection. 32 pages. Single copies, 10 cents: 9 cents each in lots of 25; 8 c~nts each in lots of' 100. Published by: The Catechetlcal Gdild, St. Paul, Minnesota. Heart of Jesus. Our Consolatlon---Special devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the Sick and Afflicted. written and compiled bs' Clara M. Tiry. Contains a veritable treasury of devotions in honor of the Sacred Heart. 72 pages. Single copies, 15 cents: 4 copies for 50 cents: 8 copies for $1.00; cloth bound copies, "50 cents each. Published by: The Apostolate of Suffering, 1551 North 34th ~t., Milwaukee 8, Wisconsin. Good Samaritan Almanacman almanac forthe sick. 64 pages Single copies, 25 cents; 5 copies for $1.00. Published by: The Apostolate of Suffering. What Tho Mass Means, an explanatio~ of the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass, .by the Rev. Victor J. Hintgen. For study clubs. 92 pages. Single copies, 30 cents: redhction in pri~e for 6 or. more. Published by: Our Sunday Visitor Press, Hunt-ington, Indiana. Listens-It's God's Word, an introduction to the New Testament, by the Rev. '"Victor 3. Hintgen: For study clubs. 144 pages. Single cop!es, 30 cents; re~tuc-tion in price for 6 or.more. Published by~ Our Sunday Visitor Press. Modern Youth and Chastity, by Gerald Kelly, S.J. in collaboration with B, R. Fulkerson, S.3., and C. F. Whitford, $,J. Formerly published for restricted cir-i: ulation under the.title Chastity and Catholic Youth. 105 pages. Single copies, 25 cents; 12 copies, $2.70; 25 copies, $5.00;. 50 copies, $8.75: 100 copies, $17.50. Published by: The Queen's Work, 3742 West Pine Blvd. St. Louis 8, Missouri. 124 Concerning Voca!:ions The Editors ~a~JlTH this number of the REVIEW we. close our correspondence W on Vocations. Since we asked for communications on this subject (July, 1943) we have received a number of letters, suggestions~ leaflets, programs; and so forth. We give .he.re a brief account of the material sent us that has not yet been mentioned in the REVIEW. Booklet : Follbw Him, by Godfrey Poage, C.P., is a vocational booklet on the Sisterhoods. It is the companion .booklet to the boys' Follow Me (see REVIEWFOR RELIGIOUS; II, p. 385). It is an dxcellent piece 6f workmin explanation, pictures, and in its universal appeal.J~ll possible .communities are listed and briefly described. No favoritism is shown. This-. booklet is distributed.exclusively by the Thomas .More Book Shop, 22 West Moriroe St., Chicago 3, Illinois. Prices: single copies, .postpaid, 15 cents; 2 or more copies, 10 cents each; per hundred, $8.00. Programs. Father Poage sent us the Program for the Promotion of Voca-tions for use in the Archdiocese of Chicago during Vocation month. The essential points in the program.are of value, not merely during Vocation month, but all through the year. . . To deepen the spiritual life of the students ik the first objectiv~ of the Chicago program. This is to be done by prayer, more frequent Mass and Communion, and the cultivation of a spirit of sacrifice and ~enerosity. The program points out that we should ~train our youth more in the use of ejaculatory prayer, as there is a common misunder-standing that by "prayer" we mean long prayers such as the Rosary or the Stations. With regard to frequent Mass and Communion the suggestion is made that all too often boys and girls have the.f_alse notion that they must go to confession every time they, go to Com-munion; hence we should impress them with th~ truth that ,confes-sion is "necessary only after mortal sin. Thi,s, of course, does-not mean that we are not to teach our students ihe manifold advantages 125 THE EDITORS Review for Religious. of fre~quent c0nfessio~. It seems to us that the last point in the program--the cultivation of a spirit of generosity and sacrifice-- cannot bestressed too much. Today, in particular, all vocations-- not merely religious--require such a spirit; and only too often fail-ures in marriage, as well as in religion and the priesthood, must be attr~ibuted to sheer selfishness. To impart adequate instruction is the second.objective of ~he Chicago program. This. is to be done by allowing questions, by suggesting reading (especially of Follow Him and Follow Me), and by simple talks on such subjects as: The Signs of a Vocation; How to Overcome Ditticult.ies; The Apostolate' that Lies Open; and The Need of Generosity in Following the Promptings of Grace. The. Mission Helpers of the" Sacred Heart (West Joppa Road, Towson, Maryland). sent in this sample program for a Dag of Retreat made by the Our Lady of Good Counsel Club: i0:30: Assembly in Chapel, H~'mn, Prayer. ' 10:45: Is It for Me?--conference by a Sister. I 1 : 15 : Interviews, Visits to Chapel, Stations. 12:00: Lunch. 1:00: Rosary (on the grounds). 1:30: What Would It Mean?-:-cbnference by a Sister. 2:00: Interviews, Visits to Chapel, Stations. 3:30: Address--by a priest. ¯ 4: 15: Benediction. The re£reatants were urged to keep strict silence. Bdoks and pamphlets about various religious communities were placed at their 'disp6sal. An~l they were asked to make known iheir requests for any specifil literature beforethe opening of the retreat. Leaflets l~ather Thomas Bowdern, S.J., (The Creighton University, Omaha 2, Nebraska), once made a. nation-wide survey of those who followed vocations to the priesthood and the religious life during the y6ars i919-1929. He :has written several articles about his survey. and be now prints a 4opage leaflet giving some of the principal findings and a definite program for fo~teriiag vocations~ The leaflet is entitled A Study of Vocations. It may be obtained from Father Bowdern--~2 copies for 5 cents. Marcl~f 1944 . CONCERNING VOCATIONS The Sisters of the Good Shepherd i931 Blair Avenue, St. Paul 4, Minr~esota) sent us a very attractive leaflet, also a postcard folder containing 22 pictures, used to inform lik.ely candidates of the tre-mendous apostolate carried on by the Sisters. Communications Reverend Fathers : For many years while.traveling about the country as a missioner I have been absorbed in the problem of the dearth of vocations. Here are a few brief observations that may throw some additional light on the subject. ~ There is no foundation for the complaint that our Catholic . youth lack the spirit of sacrifice. The communities that have been overwhelmed with vocations are those which offer the greatest hard-ships. The newer communities attract in proportion many more voca-tions than the older established communities. Some of the former had more subjects than missions, while many of the latter had to refuse new missions for lack of subjects¯ Some may attribute this to-, their American foundation, while too many of the older communb ties were of "foreign" origin. Another factor that is Overlooked is pu'blicity.° Many of~- the older communities are forbidden by rule to u~e persuasion in seeking subjects. This has.been interpreted rigorously as forbidding adver-tising of any kind. .If the community in question is not established in the large Catholic centers, it can hardly expect to attract vocations' there. One cannot join a community unless one first knows of its existence. It is unreasonable to expect God to work. miracles to com-pensa. t.e for our neglect o~ human means readil~ ;ivailable. )~ simple attractive pampble't stating the origin arid purpose of the.community would merely make God's work known. More popular pamph!ets on the saints of the Order would also attract vocations. The new communities advertise. Too many of the older-communities are still unknown. Virtue will attract,.vocations. Let.me qu'ote from a letter of a young novice: "My thoughts and .~tesires were of One Whom I wished to serve, so naturally I observed those who were already serving Him, and seeing the goodness and happiness they seemed to display I was quite convinced . . . that the convent was my life'~ home.'~ On the other hand I could quote examples of otfiers who ¯ 127 THEI EDITORS Review for Religious had practically made up their minds to join ii certain community but were absolutely repelled from doing so because of the obvious lack of ~ustice and charity in someone wearing the garb bf that order. Care in selecting subjects means more vocations eventually. Abil-ity to judge character on ~the part of the Novice Master or Novice Mistress will help to exclude those who do not belong. Weakness in admitting one poor subject may mean the subsequent loss of ten worthy vocations. A Priest Reverend Fathers: PerhaPs my experience is no( a common one, but I have found that one thing that sometimes creates'dissatisfacti0n with a reiigious Vocation is the fact that many of us older religious refuse to allow our former pupils to "grow up." Even after these former 'pupils have beeri in religion for several years, we continue to look upon them and treat them as our "boys .and girls." Many of them feel this intensely. E~ienwhen they do not actually give up their vocations, the sense of frustration hampers their work and their natural, growth to a whole-some independence. As a means to p~eserving voc~itions, and to the full fructifying of vocat,ions, I suggest that we "old teachers" examine 0ur~elves periodically on our "maternal" and "paternal" attitudes. A Priest WANTED: LETTERS ON RETREATS! Whim you make a retreat, are there some things that you find particularll, h~lpful--things that yo~. expect and that you'd like the retreat director to be sure to give? And when you give [1 retreat, do you look for a certain disposition on the ~art of the retreatants, yearn for a response that som~,times does not come? :- If you have good ideas, why not air them in our Communications? We w~nt to start some communications on this very practical subject in our next number ¯ (May 15). If you have Somethingtb say and~you want to say it in that num~ber, send it to us immediately. Keep the following points in mind: (1) Make communications as brief, ai possible--withdut, 6f course, sa~rific- ~ing thought for brevity. . (2) Save us editorial wor~ by writing neatly and clearly. Typewritten letters are:~preferred. .(3) Your name will not be printed unless you. explicitly request this." (4) Address communications to: The Editors of P~eview for Religious. St. Mary's'College, St. Marys, Kansas. 'i28 Try This in Your Examen! Richard L. Rooney, S.~. THE Archangel of Religious sat at his celestia! equivalent of a desk in the Mansion of the Guardians and ruefully read the recent reports. For the most part the vows were intact and the spirit of'work was tremendous. But by and large, the particular examens just weren't being kept! His friend~. Ignatius of Loyola, who dropped in now and then for a chat, wouldn't like that, for he had put great. stress on the examen as a means of sanctification. And even the mod-ern psychologists (some of whom had arrived in heaven!) considered it a good device for. self, improvement. But these modern religious-- priests, Brothers, and Sistersmseemed to think quite" differently, if .one might judge from results. The Archangel leaned back and pondered the situation. Perhaps these poor human ¯beings found the thing tedious, had let routine creep in and rob them of zest. Perhaps they had asked the same'old-questions in the same old way and, seeing no advancement, had given up in disgust. Or perhaps they had forgotten th_attheir firs~t job is to be g.o'od human beings; hence they had been pitching their examen= too high ! The Archangel scribbled a set of questions on a piece of skyey paper. He would have the Angel Guardians suggest these to their charges, and then see if the examens wouldfi't improve.~ Here is what he wrote: -1) Do you get along with practically everyone in the com-munity? " 2)~ If not; is it because you practise one or more of the following easy ways of getting yourself disiiked: a) Do you'do your best to let the "other fellow" know he doesn't amount to much?¯ make it clear that his ideas are. awrY, that¯he expr.esses them poorly? that what he does is°really not im-portant? b) ~ Do you try to arrange other people's lives, for them? . c) Have you let your disposition become morose, mood_y, touchy, and sarcastic? " d) Do you find fault on every possible occasion with the R~¢HARD.L. ROONY , food, the weather, the work, superiors, the whole life--always, of course, for the glory of God? e) Do you pick.out and air" abroad tO certain chosen souls the small defects of others? f) Do you pass over no chance to argue--to turn-every recreation into a debate? g) D6 you gossip? (Absolutely the best way in the world of wasting time--God's time--~as well-as showing your own inferiority.) b) Are ygu suspicious, sure that no one is up to any good or has a good motive? i) Are you always center-stage, in the spot-light, talking about that most interesting of topics, yourself? j) Or are you just the opposite--a silent, uninterested bore at recreation? k) Do you always take orders in bad grace--make things as hard for superiors as you can? 1) Are you one of those omniscient people whom no one can tell anything? WHO IS SAINT JOSEPH? Saint Joseph is: ¯ . ¯ the guardian of chastity and of the honor of virginity,---St. Augustine ¯ . .~ the faithful coadjutor of the Incarnation.---St. Bernard . . the perfect example of humility and obedience to God's inspirations. -~t. Francis Borgia . . the man mbre beloved by Jesus and Mary than ail other creatures.---St, lsidore . . the master of prayer and the interior life.-~St. Teresa ¯ . . the model of priests and superiors.---St. Albertus Magnus ¯ . ¯ the mysterious veil which covered the virginity'of Mary.mBossuet ¯ . . the third person of the earthly trinity.--Gerson The foregoing are but a few of the brief panegyrics of St. ,loseph that can be culled from such books as Cardinal Vaughan's Who is St. Joseph? and Pete Binet's Divine Favors granted to St. Joseph. They might be apt subjects for brief medi-tations, during the month of March. w'qC'ILLIAM STRITCH, ¯130 ook Reviews AIDS TO'WILL TRAINING IN C~HRISTIAN EDUC:ATION. By TWO Sis-fers of Nofre Dame. Pp. xvl ~ 237. Frederick Pusfef C~o. (Inc.), New York and C~inclnnaff, 1943. ¯ $2.S0. This work is mostly a development and adaptation of Lind-worsky's doctrine on training the will.The will is formed prin-cipally by suitable motivation suitably inculcated, rather than, for instance, by a sort of will-gymnastics: The three great instincts in human nature, namely, those to superiority, s6ciality, and to self-preservation, are, since the fall, perverted and lead todisorders of every kind. With the help of divine grace; a clear conception and an adequate evaluation of the true destiny of man, and constant co-operation of the will, these three fundamental tendencies can be redirected to what is wholesome, and re-educated, and thus help, rather than hinder, man in reaching that destiny. Character ~s to be judged by these three c~iteria: what a man wills, wh~/, and how. A person is good or bad like his motives. Right motivation depends~ very largely upon keeping attention and thought turned to what is true and good and bea.utiful, and upon appreciating its values. Right emotions follow naturally, and then right attitudes, and these tend to bring about righ~ volition. If all these be maintained and strength: ened with appropriate habits, the result will be the desired good will ¯ and go.od character. The procedure recommended for correcting--n0t for breaking-- the will may be adduced as representative of the book. Suppose a student has an excessive fondness for freedom. It is likely that he really .does not well understand the differences between trueliberty and license. These must be clearly pointed out to him. Then he is to be brought to see and appreciate the advantages of liberty and the disadvantages of license. The corresponding emotions are aroused and fostered~ Then opportunity is given for practice and for finding satisfaction in it. Th~ will must always be cultivated from within, that is, by exciting a.genuine desire for what is good; external rneans~ like setting up sanctions; should be secondary. What has been said will give an idea of the main .psychological principles entering into the structure, of the book. Over and above these there is a multitude of minor pedagogical aids, tables of values, 131. BOOK REVIEWS .- Review for Religious natural and supernatural, lists of attil~udes, of virtues and faults, questions and topics for discussion, etc. The religious and Catholic note is most prominent throughout. As far as~I know, there is no work which would seem to promise more help. for the generality of religious teachers who are eager to direct and perfect the wills of their students. " G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD, S.J. INSTRUCTIONS ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE: VOLUME IV. By the Rev- " erend Nicholas O'Rafferfy. Pp. viii -f- 300. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1943. $3.25. The first three volumes of this series treated of the Creed, the Sacraments, and' the Commandments of God. The present volume includes instructions on Prayer (the Our Father, Hail Mary, and prayer in general), the Precepts of the Church, Sin (mortal, venial, and the capital sins), and the Virtues (the theological virtues and those contrary to the capital sins). It is difficult to estimate the value of a book like this. Judging the matter as objectively as I can, I should say that priests and Reli-' gion teachers who have the time to consult several books in preparing sermons, instructions, or classes, would find in this book an added help, especially because it contains a wealth of Scripture ,texts. But it is hardly ideal for those who must confine themselves to one or two books. In general it makes .rather hard reading. Except for the fact that the divisions are indicated in introductory paragraphs, con-cluding surveys, and numerals'sepagating the various sections, no ¯ effort has been made to use the 'abundant mechanical .helps that im-press matter on the mind and memory. There are some minor ihac-curacies in the text " inacc~aracies that might escape the notice of those who are not well-grounded in theology. One inaccuracy in particular should be called to the attention of our readers. The authorstates that the Church demands physical intdgrity in those who enter the cloister (p. 226). This'must be a slip of the pen. Perhaps some orders require this; but it certainly is .not demanded by canon law.--G. KELLY, S. d. ST. THEODORE OF CANTERBURY. By the Very Reverehd William Reany, D.D. Pp. ix ~ 227. B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, 1944. $2.00, The scholarly Doctor Reany has added to his former publica-tions, the biography of a great seventh-century Churchman. This St. Theodore is usually known, from the Nace of.his.birth, as St. 132 ~ March. 1944 . BOOK REVlE~WS Theodore of.Tarsus, but is here more properly call~d .from' the place of his See. Divine Providence had very .leisurely prepared the simple.--. monk, Theodore, by studies at Athens and monastic life in both EaSt and West.for the appointment as Archbishop of Cantdrbury in his sixty-sixth year. Tonsured, ordained, and consecrated, h~ came ~to England in 668. He was the first prelate to rule over all of Eng-land, and to weld its differing Christian missions, of Celtic, Roman, and Gallic origins~ into one unified national Church. His hand held the l~elm until his eighty-eighth year, securely guiding the youtig Churc,h into orderly and scholarly currents so truly beneficent for generations to come. The late Cardinal Lepi'cier, O.S.M., Who writes-the preface of this volume, states that it is the firs~ completew0rk bfi Theodore. The painstaking assembling of fragmentary data on Theodore's activities, in chronicles, bishops' installations; ~onciliar acts and the like, is se~ out in such seemingly artless fashion that the writer has had the pain that we may have ttie pleasure. It is easy to see why Engli~hmen of today, who do not share Theodore's Catholid faith, can still see in him one who "laid the foundation of English national unit~;." --- GERALD ELLARD, S.J. THIRTY YEARS WITH CHRIST. By Rosalie Marie Levy. Pp. 2,46. Pub-" llshed by the Author, P.O. Box 158, Station. O, New York I I,.N.Y., 1943. $2.00. . This autobiogiaphy discloses how Miss Levy in her thirty years as a Catholic ~onvert from Judaism has sought to bring the truth to her own race and to whomsover else she can. It tells of her leanings toward Catholicism from youth; of her attempt at religious life in a convent, frustrated by ill health: of a visit to Europe and a pilgrim-age to the Holy Land. The narrative reveals a zeal for Christ that shames the matter-" of-fact attitude of.many a "cradle" Catholic toward the faith. In ¯ 1936 Miss Levy organized the Catholic Lay Apostle Guild whose members circulate Catholic literature and spread Catholic truth bY answerin, g questions regarding Catholic. truths and practices at opeii-air. meetings. Since 1922 she has been active in the Guild of our Lady of Sion~an.organization aimed at the conversion of Jews. Her books include The Heavenl~l Road, designed to bring Jews to the true faith. Other devotional and apologetic titles total six books and~two pamphlets." " : The present work concludes with short biographical sketches of 133 BOOK REVIEWS Ret~iet~ for Religious four notable 3ewish converts; a valuable chapter entitled "The Proper Approach to the 3ewish Mirid"; a short presentation of apologetic q~est[ons and answers; and a ~ollection of correspondence odcasioned during the years of Miss Levy's apostolic work. It is an inspiring autobiography, a valuable handbook for the apologist, and an indispensable aid to those working toward the cofiversion of Jews.--R. SOUTHARD, S.J. WHITE FIRE. By the Reverend E. J. Edward, s. S.V.D. Pp. 219. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1943." $2.7S. Effective contrast points to artistic pla.nning and execution. To take such seemingly diverse physical phenomena as a convent garden, brilliantly beautiful with tropical flowers, under a Pacific summer sun, and the malformed, rotting, shocking face of "a half-dead leper in a leprosarium ward; such antagon.istic characters as a young American nun, filled with the love of God and enthusiasm for her work among the lepers for whbm she has willingly given up every-thing, and a despondent, despairing victim of the disease, whose love of God and man and self has turned to fierce hatred; the hdart-wa. r.ming hu.mor of a 'F~ther Doro, and the d~pth,touching pathos of a self-sac.rificing little leper girl, Dolores; nigh-breathless action of plot, and periods ~)f quiet, pr6found contemplation; to take all these--and more and blend and shade and work them into a pleasing comP0.sitel devoid of hash impressionism, calls for an artist's gift arid touch. Father Edwards has done this. Some. may feel that the story--the action--lags occasionally because of the "introspections" of Sister. Agnes Marie. However, the~e are integral parts of the whole an'd give the motivating force of ardent love of God and neighbor which makes Sister Agnes the heroine she certainly is. There-are scenes in White Fire which will beo long remembered: .old Lion Face, the realistic picture of the scourge of. leprosy; the simple, sincere,, and heroic offering of self niade by Dolores to the Santo Nino: and the finale on Christmas Eve which leaves dne thriliing.~M. F. HASTING, S.J. THE SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. Pp. Ixxl ¯ -f- 406. The Newman Bookshop, Wesfm;nsfer, Md., 1943. Repr;nf. $2.75. Two or three times a week, when the weather was fine, Bishop Francis de Sales Would go over to the convene orchard of the Visita- 134 March, 1944 BOOK REVIEWS tion motherhouse at Annecy, in southern France, and sit down on. a rustic bench¯ When the nuns, among' them St. Jane-Frances de Chantal, had grouped themselves on the ground around him, he would talk informally on spiritual topics and answer questions; In bad. weather; for he came "even in bad. Weather," they would assemble in the convent p~rlo~. After the conference,a nun, appointed .because of her good memory, jotted down what the bishop had said and supplied, omissions from the memories of her companions. These conferences continued with lessening frequency from 1610 until the l~ishop~s death in 1622, the audience numbering three in the beginning, ten in the second.ye~ar, and increasing steadily thereafter, As other convents of the Visitation were established, the conferences were copied, sometimes not too carefully, and read with great avid-ity and profit¯ in them also. When some Un.scrupulous editor got hold of a copy surreptitio.usly

The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master's Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ; This is an oral history interview with Dr. Clyde Winslow Fields. Dr. Winslow discusses the difficulties of setting up a dental practice during the Depression, including working in the Eccles (First Security Bank) building, caring for some of the Eccles family, and the closure of the Ogden State Bank. He recalls dealing with bootleggers and sexual harassment, and professional jealousy within the medical, dental, and law professions. He also talks about vice on 25th Street including prostitution. ; 27p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 sound disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program Dr. Clyde Winslow Fields Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dr. Clyde Winslow Fields Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Copyright © 2016 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master's Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The forty-five interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Fields, Dr. Clyde Winslow, an oral history by Mack S. Taft, circa 1960s, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Dr. Clyde Winslow Fields. Dr. Winslow discusses the difficulties of setting up a dental practice during the Depression, including working in the Eccles (First Security Bank) building, caring for some of the Eccles family, and the closure of the Ogden State Bank. He recalls dealing with bootleggers and sexual harassment, and professional jealousy within the medical, dental, and law professions. He also talks about vice on 25th Street including prostitution. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: What were you doing during the Depression years? Were you a dentist then? CF: I started in August 1929. I opened my office on the 14th of August, and the crash hit in October. I was here in Ogden in the First Security Bank building. I hadn't got started, and I had a wife and twin babies. We'd come from Portland, where I had been going to school. When we got here, we knew that she was going to have twins and were completely financially broke. We had no money, and we had borrowed money from my sister to open an office and take the state board, for that matter. I took the state board at that time, then I had three days at the Capitol Building and one day at the University of Utah and at the penitentiary, where I worked. That was in Sugar House at that time. I have often said that every young man ought to have the opportunity of being in the penitentiary for one day to teach him a lesson to stay out of trouble because it was one of the hardest tests I ever went through in my life. The strain I went through because I had a wife and twin babies that were born in July. Even though in that summer it was a boom time, I started in the middle of August and had all expenses and no income. I think that I collected 2 $550 gross between August and January. But of course my expenses were much more. It looked pretty good starting out in Ogden and then, of course, the crash came, and they kept saying, "It won't last, it won't last." But it went on and on and on. I didn't get any start before the crash came. I was in the First Security Bank building, and I was there eleven months. Then I moved over in the Eccles Building and joined offices with my father-in-law, Dr. Dwight Hardy, and we were. But I was in debt, and it was really a struggle because money was very hard to get after the crash came, and people were having a heck of a time trying to get any money. Of course they couldn't pay us at all, and it was a struggle for me. I had to keep going down to the bank renewing the notes that I had there because they were having a hard time, and the bank made me renew my notes every three months instead of every six months, as we started out. Of course people themselves were having a hard time. They finally came out with script. I think that was partially paid for by the federal government, and they'd buy vegetables with the script. Well, it was supposed to be really illegal to spend the script for dental or medical work, but then they needed help and they couldn't get it through the script, as they called it. So we traded them dental work for the script, and we would go buy vegetables with the script. This was common among the dentists and the physicians and all. Of course if got to be kind of a struggle for survival, and lots of things were done that maybe shouldn't have been done. Maybe I shouldn't mention this, though, but the county physicians were taking pay. They were being paid by the county, and they were also being paid by the patients. They found it out and caused a lot 3 of ruckus in the medical society, and almost split the society wide open because they were all having a hard time. When they tried to do it this way, it caused a lot of feelings. Of course the county commissioners felt bad because it was a bad mark on their record; and Mr. Stratford, who was a senior member of the county commission, asked my father-in-law if we couldn't squelch this thing in the medical society so that it wouldn't get out to the public too much because it looked so bad for him politically. MT: What kind of care did people take of their teeth during the Depression years? CF: Well, that was one of the hardest things that we had to put up with because there weren't very many that felt they were very essential. In fact, they let them go until they ached, and oft times there was a loss of teeth that ordinarily would not have been if they had the sense to get at them. But they didn't have the money, and we didn't have the money, and it was a very difficult situation. Of course some things were very bad situations because of the lack of care. It was the days of Prohibition, too, and this added another facet that most people don't stop to realize because we had a number of people who were doing bootlegging work who were out to get money. It later had a reflection that was very bad. Now among both the medical and dental and legal professions, if we found he was a bootlegger, we would charge him a more excessive price. We had two or three reasons for that. In the first place, we figured he made his money illegally. The second reason was that we never knew if we were going to have him the next day or not because he might be in jail. And the third reason was that they had the money when nobody else did. And this was a common 4 practice when we realized they were bootleggers and were in the business. Those were the ones we tried to make our money on because lots of times we had a hard time making it on the others. They did neglect their work – bridge work, anything that way, just the bare essentials. Sometimes not even that. Back in the phase of bootlegging, just to give you an example of what would happen, I had a man come into my office who was on what was known as the WPA at that time. He brought his wife in with a terrible toothache, and I didn't know them. They were strangers to me, but they had been referred to me. She was about seventh months pregnant, and she had a terrific toothache and they wanted something done. He was sort of a gruff fellow and said, "I can't afford to pay you, but," he said, "you can take the tooth out, and you don't have to deaden it. I know that's a cost to you and you've got to pay it, but," he said, "I can't afford to pay you, and I don't know when I can. She's got to go to the hospital and have a baby." I couldn't take the woman's tooth out without deadening it, so I deadened it. I said, "Well, if you get to where you can pay me, let me know." Because I was having a hard time buying milk for my twin babies. I couldn't tell hardly which tooth it was because they were all so bad, and I didn't know which tooth was aching. I couldn't afford to go very far myself, so I took the tooth out that she said was aching, and looking at the rest of those, I thought that she would soon be back for more. I didn't know, and within another month, she was back again with another toothache and the same story: "Oh, I can't afford to pay you." I couldn't see the woman suffer that way, so I went ahead and took it out. The next month 5 he came in, and he had a toothache. She was in the hospital. He couldn't stand a toothache, so he had gone down and bought him a fifth of whiskey from the bootleggers. Well, that made me furious. He could buy the whiskey, but he couldn't pay for his wife's teeth to be pulled. So I made him pay then. I made him pay it all, and I told him I wouldn't do his teeth unless he did. But these were the sad parts of it because she was a good woman, and he was just a weakling. We saw a lot of this in the Depression because people would often fake some of their injuries in order to get care, both medical and dental. Those were the people that I might say were more of a dishonest type that made it hard for us because if we tried to be honest, we never knew, as in a case like this one, it made it very difficult to get it. We used to do all kinds of things. We used to trade dental care for services, for groceries, and things this way. This was often very unsatisfactory because either on the dentist's side or on the patient's side, oft times one or the other would take advantage of the other. It did its service all right. It had a service, but it still was not satisfactory because one felt the other was taking advantage of them, and in some cases it may have been the dentist taking advantage of the patient. I know one dentist whose patient had apples to sell and couldn't sell them. He made him give him an exorbitant number of apples just to have his tooth pulled. The patient felt that it was very unfair, but they were desperate and needed help. Now, as far as the patient was concerned, they would take advantage of the dentist, declare hardship when they didn't have it. I had a case where welfare was supposed to be being done, and they were 6 dividing up some of these cases that were so bad, and some of the service clubs were having some done, and they wanted to know if the dentists would help out, and we did – we wanted to help out. But one day, one patient had so much work that they divided up among several of the dentists. I got part and Dr. Clark got the other part. Dr. Clark was a Mason, and belonged to the Masonic Lodge. One day he called me up and he said, "Hey, sucker, what are you doing?" He said, "This patient that we're doing work for, you and I, has no reason to be on charity." He said, "I found that out through the Masonic Lodge. His father is a railroad engineer, and they would be able to pay." He said, "They've gone on charity, and they're not supposed to be." Well, I said this was not fair to us because we were having a hard time, too. So we had all these kinds of problems to put up with because people were taking advantage. It got progressively worse as time went on because they figured, "Everybody else is getting it done, why shouldn't I?" So it was really not a satisfactory thing of trading services for dental. It was far more satisfactory where the cash was handled. Even though we may trade with the individual, grocers would come to us and want work done, and we would do it in trade for groceries. Well, sometimes I found that in some of the cases, not all, there were exceptions, but when the groceries were delivered, they were mediocre, poor fresh vegetables, fresh groceries, and they'd come that way to the home. I'd ask my wife to call them up and trade the bill off, and they'd bring that stuff that was really unsatisfactory, not fit to use sometimes. This was a common thing. Of course, it made the dentist want to slough his work. Yet we were held 7 by a law if we did slough it that would come at us in a lawsuit. This was a tough proposition. However, there were those who were perfectly straight and honest in all their dealings. But we were still always suspicious, and they were too. I know that I had patients come in. One patient came in and wanted to trade that way, and I did some work for him the first sitting. He said, "When are you going o finish the job?" I said, "You are finished." He said, "But when are you going to put the permanent fillings in?" I said, "They are in." He said, "But they can't be." He said, "The dentist I've been going to would just cut them open a little bit and put in a temporary filling, and have me come back, and keep charging me each time." I said, "I can't do that." Well, the dentist was protecting himself from the same proposition – the lack of honesty and fairness in trade. This was a continual problem with us. Now, in my own cases, I went up and picked peaches in payment for dental work I did. He let me have the peaches, but he charged me twice what I could pay for the peaches elsewhere. And I didn't know the price of peaches at the time, and my father-in-law found it out. It was one of his patients, and he sent me there to do that, to trade it. He was pretty angry about it, and called the man and called him down about it. People who were working for the WPA would do the same thing. I know they brought a man into me for a physical examination. He was supposed to have hurt his back while working for the WPA. The doctors couldn't find anything specific that was causing the pain in his back, and he was continually complaining. They had to pay him his wages. He was supposed to have been on the road grader when he was injured, and they had to pay him his 8 wages. I'd tried to examine him for his teeth, and the WPA was giving him the money, and he was supposed to pay his bills with the WPA check. But they gave him double money for the medical condition. I did get some money, but they asked us to keep the price down because they couldn't afford to carry too much. I walked out of the office one day and saw a man walking in front of me. I thought he looked familiar and, all of a sudden, I realized that it was this patient who was supposed to be injured and couldn't walk. But he was walking as normal as anyone I ever saw. I followed him for about two blocks. Then he turned around and saw me and recognized me, and started in with the best limp you ever saw. He went limping from then on. So these were the common things that we had to put up with, and yet we were having a struggle making our payments and paying our rent. Our rent was not held down, and so we had a meeting with the owners of the building and told them that we just couldn't afford to keep going on this way, and they couldn't afford to lower the rent. They were running the building in debt, and now they had a heavy debt to pay off, and they couldn't afford to cut the rent. So then the Eccles, the owners, said they would try to divide their medical and dental work up amongst the tenants of the building. Well, that created problems because Royal Eccles was one of the tenants, and he had been going to Dr. Tribe for his dental work. He was a good dentist, but then suddenly he brought part of his family to me and part of them to Lee Tribe. To try to be fair to Lee Tribe, I went in to him, and I said, "How do you charge because some of the family is coming to me?" Well, then Lee got mad, 9 and there was professional jealousy, which crept in because of these conditions. I know this was typical among dental, medical, and legal people because I saw it. A lot of them would not admit it but finally I said to Lee, "Now look, I'm trying to be fair with you and not undercut you. I just don't know how to handle this situation with him because he's hard to handle." And Lee said, "Well, he can afford to make a trip around the world, so he can afford to pay his dental bills. You have to charge him not by the job, but by the hour because he'll take more hours of your time than any of your other patients." I said, "Well, that's all I wanted to know." This was a problem. Now, in due time, Royal left me and went to another dentist in the building. He didn't come to me and ask how to handle him, and in due time he was complaining because he couldn't make any money on him because he took too much of his time. So I said, "Well, I went and asked Lee. He came from Lee to me, and Lee told me what was happening." I said, "You come to me and you could have found out, too." He said, "Yes, but I didn't want you to know that I had him." This was professional jealousy, you see. Patients were needed, wanted, and where there was any possibility of getting money, naturally you struggled to get it. Well, it's human nature. You just have to recognize that it's human nature. Some dentists would even make passes at the elevator girls to send them patients. People would come in and want a dentist, and they would want the elevator girl to send them to him, and they would give the elevator girls service and not charge them, or do it for a very cut rate. So then we had to go to the building manager, and the elevator girls had to receive strict instructions that they 10 would refer nobody to no one anywhere. Another thing that often happened, the patients wanted their work, especially young ladies, especially with young dentists, made some passes, and it made it very difficult. We had some moral problems came from that. This also happened in the medical and legal offices, and this I know because I know some of the girls that were involved, and I know the dentists that were involved. I know what happened to them, and how things went along. Sometimes it created a condition that was not very satisfactory. For instance, I had a girl come into me and wanted a tooth extracted, and I had reason to believe that she was from a bootlegging family. So I ordinarily charged $2 for an extraction, I believe, and my father-in-law came in, and I thought he recognized her from the bootlegging family. When he walked out, he put up his hand – $4 like that – so I charged $4. Well, she said that she didn't have the money with her, so there was nothing I could do but put it on the books. About two weeks later, she came in paid me 50 cents. Well, we were glad to have the 50 cents. Well, about two weeks later, she came in with another 50 cents. She said, "I could pay you all at once, but I kind of like you. It's too bad we only have dental appointments, isn't it?" So they were constantly. Now other girls did the same thing. I was a young dentist, new because I started out in August of 1929, and this was common amongst many of them. They were willing practically to sell themselves for dental services, and in some cases successfully so. But of course others of us had a little different standards. We didn't go for it, but this was a frequent problem. MT: What do you remember about the Ogden State Bank? 11 CF: Well, I remember quite a bit about the Ogden State Bank because they had certain involvements with me in an indirect way. It was a bank which everyone liked, and the friendship and the friendliness in there was very good. But then suddenly it crashed. It was a severe blow because many people had what little they had in there. This was true of both farmers and professional men, and it really hit them hard. The laws were not strict like they are now, and the legal professions went in there and helped straighten it out, and they really took advantage. They took a lot of money, and the depositors got it in the ear, and they didn't have a strict law as to what could be taken and what couldn't be taken. So the lawyers that were in there, it was common knowledge that they really took a great advantage of the people. It caused a lot of feelings. There was a lot said among the other professions about those lawyers really taking advantage of it and hurting the people alike. Now one of the Barkers was a cashier, and a lot of his friends had money in there. They were kind of teed off because he didn't inform them that the bank was going to close so they could get their money out. But he really didn't know himself, and the result was that he cracked up, and they had to take him to Provo for treatment for a while. It was said there was insanity in the family, but there was not. It was just the stress and strain on him from his friends accusing him that he didn't inform them that the bank was going to close. MT: Now, was that located on 24th Street? CF: Right where the Ben Lomond Hotel is now, that building right on the corner there. It was really a hard blow because sheep were running wild up here, and the bank 12 had money on them. The law was trying to foreclose on them, and the sheep owners couldn't pay it. So they had to send men out to try and take care of them, and some of them just running rampant because there was nobody to take care of the sheep. It finally began to resolve itself, but people lost heavily and it caused a lot of feelings. Of course it caused repercussions in my wife's family because this Barker that had the breakdown had a brother that was going with my wife's cousin, and this caused fear. They said that she couldn't marry him because of the insanity in the family. I believe that there wasn't because I knew the boy that she was going with. They said it was insanity, and they broke her relationship with him. Of course I lost my wife, Beth, and they didn't like the new fellow she was going with, so they tried to get me to go with her. When I first came here, I was like everyone else, and I liked to go hunting, and I couldn't afford to go. I had to stay here for every dime I could get. But during the second year, I went up with this cousin's father into Cache Valley to hunt, and so it was really hard to leave the office. So I was only able to spend one day up there. At that time, there was no minimum wage paid girls. I had girls come in my office and work for me – the first one came in and offered to work just for the experience so that she could get a job. They didn't ask any pay, and finally because of the stress and, I think, moral conditions was such that they took advantage of it. We found out that problems occurred more in the business than in the medical and dental profession. They took advantage of some of these girls because they needed help, and they needed work, and they had to almost sell themselves in order to get a job. It was not so prevalent here as it 13 was in some other areas. We got the reports all right, but there was some here. There were too many here with a higher moral standard, but we still had plenty that were not. Now, I had some here that I would get the money from, and I said to one of them, "How come you can afford to buy gas stations for your boys and give them jobs?" I had an idea that he was connected with the bootlegging, but when I started asking him questions he frankly told me where he got it. I realized that bootlegging was just a side issue. There was more money in the prostitution, and this was where he got a lot of money, and he frankly told me so. MT: What's your opinion of the repeal of the 18th Amendment? Was it a good move, or what do you feel about that? CF: I would say it was a good move under the conditions because it was being violated so much. If it had been enforced, I could see it. But it was not being enforced, and it was causing so much law violation and so much trouble, they were making money at it. But as far as paying taxes, they were not, and it was causing such a moral burden. I personally would be for the Prohibition, but the way it was handled, and the way it was turning out, the administration of it was a failure. MT: What was your opinion of Hoover and Roosevelt at that time? CF: Well, Hoover was a strait-laced Quaker, and my feeling was that he was handicapped because he didn't have the freedom to operate that was later given to Roosevelt. When the crash came, you could see that he tried to get the Federal Reserve Bank to give more credits to get business back on its feet. When he lost the election because of it, they blamed him for it. I don't think he 14 was any more to blame than anyone else. And he tried to get Roosevelt to send someone else to the White House – they didn't want to close the banks. He didn't want to, and he could see what was going to happen. He asked Roosevelt to send a representative to help him, and see if they couldn't get the Federal Reserve to cooperate. Roosevelt refused to cooperate. So by the time Roosevelt got in, things had deteriorated so bad that he had to close the banks. I personally think that it would never have had to be done if he had sent someone there in the first place to carry it on. But Hoover was a strict disciplinarian, and he wanted to carry it on to live the law. He wanted to do what was right. Roosevelt got in and immediately they gave him a blank check, and the whole phase of it changed. The Republicans were swept out, and the Democrats went in. Of course they'd been out for quite a while and they were glad to promise the people anything. The people were so desperate that they grabbed on to any promises that came up. He was a shrewd and clever politician, and he tried to soothe the people with the fireside chats. But basically, I think if he had gone in there as he had been asked by Hoover, he could have stopped the closing of the banks and forestalled a lot of the problems that came later – of killing little pigs and trying to curtail production because there was a limited market. But he had done this. The Federal Reserve Bank tried later, but it had gone so far by that time that it really caused still further deterioration until the war started in Europe, which started the upturn in business on war basis, not on an internal reconstruction. They were having too 15 many problems with pouring money in too many directions, and people were taking advantage of it. MT: The war, then, was actually the thing which ended the Depression? CF: It was, definitely. When the war came, then we started selling. When it began in Europe, a trend because they were buying, and then we got more and more and more on to a war basis. Of course, we became more involved in it ourselves. It became a war of prosperity. It was not prosperity itself. This was very evident to me and many others. We had expected and expected because the government had been priming the pump. But it didn't prime. Then the war came along, and from then on things started picking up. Of course then they started putting boys into the service and heretofore fellows trying to get into the dental profession were trying to get into the service because they were guaranteed an income according to their commission. They had their medical services taken care of – their dental services, hospital services, all that. A lot of the fellows in Ogden were trying to get in there. They joined the reserves trying to get into regular full-time employment in the service. There their business was assured, and their pay was assured. But as these fellows went into the service, that was when our business began to pick up. More industry was picking up because of it, and they started these installations out here. Then, of course, it started to rush. But I got out of the reserves because after my wife died, I'd been two years in succession, and I went down to Fort Douglas and spent two weeks as a dentist. I was glad to do it. The pay was good, and it wasn't the hard work of 16 private practice. But I went two years in succession, and that gave me promotion to a major. But as we got up to where we had a higher rank and higher pay, the government cut us off. I was one who got cut off. Then as the war started in earnest, they started drafting some of the dentists who hadn't been in at all, and then the business started picking up for all of us. MT: What about 25th Street there? Did it boom more during the Depression time than at other times, or what was the condition? CF: I would say yes because I know a number of the people. Some of them lived up in this area that worked down there. They were among the prosperous people, and bootlegging was doing a lot. Some of the people who owned buildings down there were getting good rental off the buildings. They claimed they didn't know what was going on down there, and this was brought out in investigations later on when they finally tried to close up a lot of this stuff on 25th Street. It was brought out because the Rose Rooms down there, she said that she didn't know what was going on down there. She didn't realize it, but she did all the time because she was really prospering. They were doing good down there, and a lot of that. One of the auto courts in Ogden that is now operating was built entirely on bootleg money. They did well enough and got enough money that he quit the bootlegging and was able to hire Native Americans here to do all the dirty work. They would get arrested, and he'd bail them out. When the war came on, they had jail records and couldn't get in it. His family could. But he was one of the instigators. I did his dental work when money was hard to get, and he was sent to me 17 by another doctor. He had been going to another dentist, and he had a good-looking girl, but her teeth were very crooked. Another dentist had tried to fool with them, and I knew nothing about that particular work at that particular time. They weren't very successful. They only had one orthodontist in Salt Lake, and he brought her in to me. He was very rough, very crude, and crudely wanted to know what I was going to do about the girl. I said personally that I wasn't going to do anything. I said, "Just calm down, and I'll send you to a person who can." He said, "I don't care about the money. I don't care about the money. Whatever it costs, I'll pay it." And I knew he was a bootlegger. So I called up the dentist in Salt Lake, and I told him what I had. I said, "He can afford to pay for it, and you see that he does pay plenty for it." He was standing right by my side when I told him. This other fellow that I did work for, another farmer, they came from Rock Springs. While he was sitting in my chair, he said, "I have all the money I need. I don't need to work." And he didn't need to work. He had plenty of money, and he bought gas stations to get his boys jobs. I had a man come in, and he had gotten in a fight there and had broken his front teeth. The more I talked to him, I assumed he was a bootlegger. I didn't want to soak him if he wasn't, if he was an honest man. I knew they were having their problems. But if he was a bootlegger, I wanted my money. So I kind of fished around but I couldn't get out of him what he really did. He was manager of one of the clubs down on 25th Street. Well, that gave me a clue. I told him what a new bridge would cost him. It was about three times what I would have normally charged. He said, "Well, you just as well get started on it." 18 I told him that it was a cash job because we had learned that if we didn't get cash from them at the time you did the job, they would be in jail, and you couldn't get it. So I went to work on him, and I got my money all right, and I finished the job. Two days later, he was picked up for owning a house of prostitution and was banished from the state. He went down to Las Vegas and practiced down there. One night, he came back here and got into another scrap and broke a tooth. He came into Ogden, and it was a hot summer evening. I was ready to quit, and he wanted me to fix his teeth. He said, "You'll get your money." He wouldn't leave the office until I got done. In between sessions, while I was working in the lab, he was calling his friends. I had to work until midnight. He said, "Doc, you're a fool working this way." He said, "I'm a welder by trade, but," he said, "I made $100,000 this year down in Las Vegas running the business I run." He said, "What do you want to work like this for?" But these were the temptations these fellows put before us. But of course my standards would not go along with this kind of thing. I did his work, and he paid me cash, and I charged him plenty. MT: What do you think it was more difficult for yourself or the average person to secure, food or clothing? CF: Well, I would say clothing may have been harder, but I don't think they put so much stress on clothing. After all, people will try to take care of the pangs of hunger first and clothing second. People liked to dress neatly, perhaps more respectably, maybe, than they do now. But nevertheless, they would make the 19 most of little, more so, I would say, than they do now. Because their attitude was, there was still a semblance of pride among the people, more so than there has been during the last few years. MT: Were there people in your acquaintance who did their own shoe repair and things along this line? CF: Yes, a lot of people did. They would do anything and try to fix anything up that they could. You could go into Woolworth's and stores like that, and you could buy rubber patches that you could glue on your shoes, and people did it. It was hard for them to do it, and they didn't do as good a job. But they did a service. People wore cheaper clothing, bit by bit. Sometimes they would look quite nice and try hard to keep it nice. It wouldn't last long because they were buying everything cheaper. Of course anybody that came out with anything cheaper, people tried it. Lots of times they got bit on it because they got things that were too cheap for the money they put into it. This was caused by these fellows who travel through the country selling clothing and things that way, and they would write and say they were coming through with clothes from Hong Kong, and they would sell it for half what it would cost in the store. The people would order, and when they got it, well, they really got taken. I got taken once that way, but not like a lot of them. I was on the seventh floor of the Eccles Building, and there were a whole bunch on the floor that got taken on some suits because they were no good. I'd paid $5 down. Well, the other guys, when they came, they paid the balance. Then when they saw what they got, they saw they were really taken. Well, I lost my $5, but I didn't get them, 20 and I was still money ahead. And this was a problem. Deception was a common problem. Fellows came through selling gowns, and they would take your measurements and your order and give you a receipt. They had stolen the order books, and the company didn't have any connection with it, and they took the deposits. MT: What about patent medicine during that time? Was there much of that? CF: Yes, there was quite a lot of patent medicine sold. One of the most common things at that time was Crazy Crystals, but that was pushed from down in Texas. There were a lot of things just like that. I can't remember the names of a lot of them. They sent samples to you, and they tried to get you to prescribe them and push them. Crazy Crystals were really the rage, and people would come in to me and tell me how much better they felt from Crazy Crystals. It cut out their constipation and they felt better. I quizzed them, and I told them, "You can do the same by drinking water." I said, "They've given you enough to give you a mild laxative, but, "I said, "Then they prescribe for you to drink so much water a day with it." I said, "If you'd just drink the water, you'd get the same result." Some of them didn't believe it, and to this day, I have patients come in and say, "How do I take care of this situation." I tell them, "You don't drink enough water." MT: What were some of the good things that came out of the Depression? CF: I would say at that time that people learned a little more self reliance. They learned to work. They learned to be more dependable in the things they did, and they tried to do more for themselves. I think also they learned to be more cooperative and helpful toward one another. There was more of a spirit of 21 cooperation. We were all in this boat together. People were more willing to cooperate because they couldn't do it otherwise. There was more of a spirit of friendliness. Of course, as I say, there were exceptions of those who tried to be greedy, but there was more of a spirit of friendliness and cooperation. MT: What did the wards do for entertainment then? Did they do a better job than they do now? CF: Yes, I would say they did because there had to be more of that kind of cooperation, and the wards tried every way they could to bring the people together because otherwise it was very depressing. It was a Depression both in spirit and in finance because people were hurt. People did more, and got together, and tried to help them out. It was a period of trying to organize. I think that the wards in the [LDS] church soon found out what they had to do because, heretofore, they had been depending upon commercialism, business to do these things. But now the people couldn't afford the commercial, and they had to cooperate or they'd die. There was more of it done. You'd find people more willing to do things. Of course, they stumbled along and struggled along trying to do some of these things. Of course when the church welfare program first came out, it was a blundering program. I criticized it a lot because when they started it out, they wanted the people in the wards who had fruit and those things to give every so many bottles to the ward to give to the needy. Well, my criticism came this way – the needy, all right. But let the needy help put it up. But if they want to come into the ward, let's get together and we'll furnish the fruit, not us do all the labor for 22 them. So that's a few criticisms that way started to bring the spirit of cooperation out of it, and they began to do things. But my wife was busy with three little children, and I didn't feel like loading her down with work to give to the others without them working in payment for it. So I said I would be glad to furnish the fruit and help with the bottles and a few things that way, but let them help to put it up. Finally it did begin to change, and soon it got to be a kind of cooperative thing within the ward. But it was a development process. MT: Did you have any innovative method of developing your clientele? CF: Yes, it was a matter of trying to work through clubs and others to try to develop educational programs through the PTA to show people that if they would regularly take care of their dental work that it would be much cheaper than if they had to get a lot done at once. We did a lot of educational work that way through clubs and PTA, and lecturing at the schools and organizations.

Issue 41.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1982. ; REVIEW FOR REI.IGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X), published every two months, is edited in collaboration with the faculty members of the Department of Theological Studies of St. Louis University. The editorial offices are located at Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.: St. Louis, MO 63108. REVIEW FOR REI.IGIOUS is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, MO. © 1982 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Composed, printed and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, MO. Single copies: $2.50. Subscription U.S.A.: $9.00 a year; $17.00 ~'or two years. Other countries: $10.00 a year; $19.00 for two years. For subscription orders or change of address, write: REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Daniel F. X. Meenan, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Daniel T. Costello, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Jean Read Editor Associate Editor Book Editor Questions and Answers Editor Assistant Editor May/June, 1982 Volume 41 Number 3 Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph ~. Gallen, S.J.; Jesuit Community; St. Joseph's University; City Avenue at 54th St.; Philadelphia, PA 19131. Back issues and reprints should be ordered from RE~:IEW FOR RELIGIOUS; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Laborem Exercens: Themes and Theses Robert F. Morneau Bishop Morneau has commented in this s~me format on two earlier encyclicals: Redemptor Hominis (March, 1980) and Dives in Misericordia (September, 1981). Together with his service as Auxiliary Bishop of Green Bay, Bishop Morneau also serves through the Ministry to Priests Program where he may be addressed: 1016 N. Broadway: De Pere, Wl 54115. Several years ago Studs Terkel published a series of masterfully conducted interviews under the title of Working. People from various fields of life reflected candidly on the meaning or lack of meaning that work had in their lives. What fascinates the reader is the blatant honesty of'those interviewed; they told it the way they experienced it. With deep feeling and perceptive observation, the work-ing people revealed the movement~ of their mind and heart. On September 14, 1981, Pope John Paul II shared his third encyclical letter, Laborem Exercens, with the world. This papal document focuses on the topic of work, that human activity at once so universally experienced and yet so frequently devoid of meaning. What Terkel did on the experiential level, the Holy Father does on the reflective level. We do not find personal interviews with the rank and file but, from a scriptural and faith point of view, a description of the theological underpinning of our obligation to work. Within this perspective he discusses many questions: the nature and meaning of work; the relationship of work to the person, family and society; how work is influenced by various ideologies; the duty and rights of the worker; a spirituality of work. Rather than delineate detailed and specific policies, the encyclical is concerned with articulating certain principles and guidelines to govern the formation of policy for specific situations. When these principles are adequately and properly applied, work helps to build up the world community and becomes a means of safeguarding the humanity of all. These reflections of the Holy Father are extremely relevant. In an age when technology can so easily control the course of history we must hear over and over 322/ Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 again the principle that people have primacy ox)er things. In a period of history that takes for granted exploitation and manipulation as acceptable life-styles, we must have confirmation that persons are ends and not means. In our rapidly moving century that gives low priority to quiet and reflective times, it is healthy to have our attention drawn to an awareness of the importance of rest within the spirituality of work. Written on the ninetieth anniversary of Leo XlIl's Rerum Novarum, this present encyclical continues to remind us of the importance of these social questions and the function that the Church plays in their solution in public life. Theme 1: The Meaning and Dignity of Work Thesis: Work is an active process by which creative and productive persons gain dominion over the earth and achieve fullness as human beings. Understood as a process whereby man and the human race subdue the earth, work corres-ponds to this basic biblical concept only when throughout the process man manifests himself and confirms himself as the one who "dominates" (6). Work is a good thing for man--a good thing for his humanity--because throughout work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes ~more a human being" (9). Man must work, both because th~ Creator has commanded it and because of his humanity. which requires work in order to be maintained and developed. Man must work out of regard for others, especially his own family, but also for the society he belongs to. the country of which he is a member, since he is the heir to the work of generations and at the same time a sharer in building the future of those who will come after him in the succession of history (16). The farmer gazes out on newly acquired property and perceives the rocks, tree stumps and weeds; a year later that same farmer, after much labor, rejoices in an autumn harvest of grain. The artist sits before a small mound of clay: many hours later a finely crafted vessel receives the accolades of admiring friends. The steel worker feeds the furnace kno.wing that when the final product is completed, beams of steel will be available for buildings and bridges. The human person, taking the many resources of the world, fashions them into useful and beautiful objects in the meeting of human needs. This process, both creative and productive, brings order out of chaos. The newly won unity fills the human spirit with a sense of meaning, peace and joy. A radical call to all of us is the call to become human persons. Within that universal vocation work plays a necessary and significant part. Only when we thoughtfully expend the energy given to us do we develop our potential and actualize our gifts. Work and growth demand that we participate in this venture of becoming human. Gifts unemployed atrophy. Needs unmet cause suffering. Lack of human development means boredom and despair. Emerson knew the value of work and its effect on human growth: I hear, therefore, with joy whatever'is beginning to be said of dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade; for learned as well as for the Laborem Exercens: Themes and Theses / 323 unlearned hands.* This labor must be balanced and rational, respecting individuals and allowing for personal fulfillment. History provides evidence that when certain forms of work do not have these qualities human beings are dehumanized and even destroyed. In his perceptive' and challenging philosophical treatise, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, the neo-Thomist Josef Pieper describes "workism" as an attitude and ideology that disregards the essential natureof work. Pieper's argument is that work is meaningful only when the human person's dignity is fully appreciated and when the activity of work is complemented by a certain receptivity towards life which is called contemplation. The present encyclical also protects this balance and perspective. Theme 2: The Subjective and Objective Dimensions of Work Thesis: The subjective dimension of work (the dignity of the human person)always has priority over the objective dimension (productivity). The very process of "subduing the earth," that is to say work. is marked in the course of history, and especially in recent centuries; by an immense development of technological means. This is an advantageous and positive phenomenon, on condition that the objective dimension of work does not gain the upper hand over the subjective dimension, depriving man of his dignity and inalienable rights or reducing them (10). ¯. man's dominion over the earth is achieved in and by means of work. There thus emerges the meaning of work in an objective sense, which finds expression in the various epochs of culture and civilization. Man dominates the earth by the very fact of domesticating animals, rearing them and obtaining from them food and clothing he needs, arid by the fact of being able to extract various natural resources from the earth and the seas (5). As a person, man is therefore the subject of work. As a person he works, he performs various actions belonging to the work process: independently of their objective content, these actions must all serve to realize his humanity, to fulfill the calling to be a person that ig'his by reason of his very humanity (6). Work always involves a person, a process and a product. The language of the encyclical refers to the person as the subject of Work (the subjective dimension) while the product is the object of work (the objective dimension). This distinction is important: a product does not have interiority, nor is it a center of thought and love. On the other hand, the human person is spiritual, immortal and called to fullness of life in God. The process of work can take such a direction so as to make a person play the role of a mere tool (cog in the machine). The focus is on productivity. Such a procedure, used in the work world dehumanizes the person and negates the Christian meaning of work. Unfortunately, hi~tory records too many years of such abuse. The Holy Father's analysis of work contains an implicit anthropology, one ~'The American Scholar," in The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: The Modern Library, 1940), p. 55. ~124 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 that has the highest regard for the fullness of human life. Every person has both an inner and outer agenda. Meister Eckhart describes it this way: There are people who squander the strength of their souls in the ouiward man. These are the people, all of whose desires and thoughts turn on transient goods, since they are unaware of the inner person. Sometimes a good man robs his outward person of all the soul's agents, in o'rder to dispatch them on some higher enterprise; so. conversely animal people rob the inner person of the soul's agents and assign them to the outward man. A man may be ever so active outwardly and still leave the inner man unmoved and passive.-~ Both the outer and inner dimensions of work need protection and a sensitive balance. Each has its own unique value. If they are not integrated, a person either "sells his soul to the company store" or falls into a type of narcissism which destroys communal responsibility. Persons have dignity which must not be denied; the work process must be respected as part of God's plan; human life is impossible without those products which meet essential needs. Proper priority and balance in reference to the subjective and objective dimen-sions of work are maintained when reverence is present amongpeople. Only when we stand in awe of every person, only when we hold sacred the gifts of air, water and land, only when we carefully consider the inner dynamism and value of the creative process will we truly appreciate work. Goethe reminds us: "The shudder of ,awe is humanity's highest faculty." This papal docume.nt contains that "shudder of awe.'" Whenever we encounter the handiwork of God, human or otherwise, we bow before the Creator's reflection. The person, the imago Dei, the creative pro-cess and end product of our work demand appropriate respect. Theme 3: The Value Scale of Work Thesis: Work involves three spheres of values: 1)a personal value bringing dignity to the individual; 2) a family value forming the foundation of communal life; and 3) a societal value enriching the common good. It (workJ is not only good in the sense that it is useful or something to enjoy; it is also good as being someth!ng worthy, that is to say, something that corresponds to man's dignity, that expresses this dignity and increases it. If one wishes to define more clearly the ethical meaning of work. it is this truth that one must particularly keep in mind Work constitutes a foundation for the formation of family life. which is a natural right and something that man is called to . In a way, work is a condition for making it possible to found a family, since the family requires the means of subsistence which man normally gains through work. Work and industriousness also influence the whole process of education in the family, for the very reason that everyone "becomes a human being" through, among other things, work. and becoming a human being is precisely the main purpose of the whole process of education (10). ¯. it (society) is also a great historical and social incarnation of the work of all generations. All of this brings it about that man combines his deepest human identity with membership of a nation, and intends his work also to increase the common good developed together with his '-Meister Eckhart, trans. Raymond B. Blakncy (Ne~' York: Harper Torchbooks). p. 87. Laborem Exercens: Themes and Theses compatriots, thus realizing that in this way work serves to add to the heritage of the whole human family, of all the people living in the world (10). The valuing process determines life. Values lead to an internal judgment which in turn dictates actions. The degree of worth we assign to individuals and things has far-reaching consequences. Within the complex va.luing system, work plays a major role since it touches personal lives, family life, and even national and international communities. The value assigned to work in these three areas will affect, for good or ill, the course of history. Family life remains a pivotal force in society, That life is threatened by an increasing number of divorces, the current mobility and the impact of the mass media. Unemployment is another threat which can lead to "social disaster" (18). Further, inadequate wages deprive the family of essential goods; lack of proper benefits increase anxiety; dissatisfaction with one's job has an impact on spouse and children. Work has a wider circle than just family life--it influences all of society. When people are given proper.job opportunities the common good is served and society is healthy. When work fosters a sense of cooperation among employees and employers, a new spirit of solidarity is felt in the wide? society. When work is done so that future generations will be served and helped by conserving our resources and protecting our, environment, society ,is being given responsible models. We have reached a point where this type of social consciousness can no longer remain merely a hope; if it does not become a fact, our society may well be doomed. Few people can grow interiorly without a sense of achievement. When work is done well, confidence and a sense of self-worth increase. Further, in fulfilling the commandment of God that we do work, we contribute to God's plan. The brick we add has eternal significance; no one else can do the work assigned to us. A prayer attributed to Cardinal Newman conveys the importance and the enigma of each person's work: ~ God has created me to do him some definite service: he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission--I may never know it in this life. but I shall be told it in the next. 1 am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do his work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it--if I do but keep his commandments. Therefore 1 will trust him. Whatever. wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve him: in perplexity, my perplexity may serve him: if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what he is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may hide my future from me--still he knows what he is about. Theme 4: Work and the Mystery of Creation Thesis: Work is inextricably bound up with the mystery of God's creative activity: each person shares in the wonder of creation through work. The knowledge that by means of work man shares in the work of creation constitutes the 326 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 most profound motive for undertaking it in various sectors 125). In every phase of the development of his work man comes up against the leading role of the gift made by '*nature." that is. in the final analysis, by the Creator. At the beginning of man's work is the mystery of creation. This affirmation, already indicated as my starling point, is the guiding thread of this document (12). The word of God's revelation is profoundly marked by the fundamen~'al truth that man, created in the image of God, shares by his work in the activity of the Creator and that, within the limits of his own human capabilities, man in a sense continues to develop that activity, and perfects it as he advances further and further in the discovery of the resources and values contained in the whole of creation (25). Two qualities identify our humanness: depende~nce and creativity. All is gift and we have an absolut~ dependence on our Creator. Humble acceptance of these faith facts sets us free. Through the creative process order is extracted from chaos, unity is chiseled out of diversity, beauty is captured in stone, word or canvass. As Ge,rald Vann remarks: The so-called industrial revolution ran its course: and ende.d by depriving the mass of men of a fundamental right, of that without which the personality is doomed to sterility and despair: the, creativity which is the counterpart of creatureliness.3 Within these two qualities of our humanness are the duty and right of work. Cooperation can be a most thrilling human experience. God longs for us to work with him in the fulfillment of the plan of salvation. Our very activity is an essential ingredient in the building of the earth and of the kingdom! The dignity of such a mission is immeasurabli~. Yet that is precisely what our scriptural and theological understanding of work indicates: the people of God continue to share in the work of creation.i The Vatican I1 document Gaudium et Spes drives home the reality that we are a Church in the modern world, an "in" that means involve-ment. Any mentality that either despises history or refuses to invest time and energy in improvement of the world goes contrary to the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church. Participation in the mystery of creation is threatened in our time. The buildup of armaments, sufficient now to many times over destroy our planet, leads many to an attitude of pessimism if not despair. Such a consciousness causes paralysis and the mission of work goes unaccomplished. The land is not tilled, book,,are not written, songs are not sung, families are not raised, conflicts are not resolved, resources are exploited. Why not? Annihilation is not only possible but likely! Suspicion is abroad: our times are less creative because of an annihilation attitude. Perhaps we can learn a lesson from Anne Frank. With bombs dropping near her hideout and with death a constant threat, she continued to study her history lesson. Life goes on! Christian faith calls us to our creative work regardless of the dark clouds that surround us. And, of course, one of the most urgent creative 3Gerald Vann, St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Benziger Bros., 1947), p. 27. Laborem Exercens: Themes and Theses works is peace. Our work must bring about a world in which war becomes impossible. Theme 5: A Spirituality of Work Thesis." Work is a means by which persons grow in union with God and participate in the paschal m.vster.v. She (the Church) sees it as her particular duty to form a spirit.uality of work which will help all people to come closer, through work. to God. the Creator and Redeemer, to participate in his salvific plan for man and the world and to deepen their friendship with Christ in their lives by accepting, through faith, a living participation in his threefold mission as Priest. Prophet and King. as the Second Vatican Council so eloquently teaches (24). This Christian spirituality should be a heritage shared by all. Especially in the modern age. the spirituality of work should show the maturity called for by the tensions and restlessness of mind and heart (25). Since work in its subjective aspect is always a personal action, an actus personae, it follows that the whole person, body and spirit, participates in it, whether it is manual or intellectual work. It is also to the whole person that the word of the living God is directed, the evangelical message of salvation, in which we find many points which concern human work and which throw particular light on it. These points need to be properly assimilated: an inner effort on the part of the human spirit, guided by faith, hope and charity, is needed in order that through these points, the work of the individual human tSeing may be given the meaning which it has in the eyes of God and by means of which work enters into the salvation process on a par with the other ordinary yet particularly important components of its texture (24). The farmer brings the seeds of the field to Eucharist for a special blessing on rural life day, thereby exercising an act of faith in God as creator of the seed and provider for its growth. The newspaper editor cries out against the injustices toward the elderly, thereby fulfilling his prophetic role of denouncing all that infringes upon human dignity and freedom. The president of a country, through policies that properly distribute funds, insures that the poor and needy have their due. The people of God are scattered throughout every profession and work situation and it is precisely in that context that they exercise their spirituality. Union with God is achieved not only through liturgical worship and the celebra-tion of the sacrament. Holiness is gained as well by finding Christ in our brothers and sisters, in the working of the land, in the artistic and intellectual achievements. All of life, permeated by God's presence and love, becomes a grace opportunity and can further the process of salvation. A spirituality of work demands three things: vision, grace and commitment. An abiding vision of the divine presence is a gift of faith. Work is not restricted to the narrow sensate culture (limiting work to the confines of time/space) nor to a humanistic betterment of the world, important as that is. Rather, faith vision situates our work as an integral part of God's salvific will. Grace, the free gift of God's self-giving which transforms our minds and hearts, is the heartbeat of a spirituality for work. Empowered by the Spirit, our work has a certain quality and tonality that makes everything different. There is a freshness, newness and sense of possibility in what is done. Eventually the work will incarnate that grace as 321~ / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 another sign of God's favor. Further, commitment to the person of Christ by sharing in his life, death and resurrection undergirds all Christian spirituality. The paschal mystery draws us into the dying/rising process of Christian existence. Work constantly involves dying and rising; done in union wiih Christ it allows us to become the person God calls us to be. In Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis has one of the characters describe his experience, "I at last realized that eating was a spiritual function and that meat, bread and wine were the raw materials from which the mind is made.TM No longer is there a harsh dichotomy between the secular and the sacred, the flesh and the spirit, heaven and earth. A false dualism is rejected and the unity of existence maintained. Work and worship are not mutually exclusive; they are meant to complement and enrich one another. For some workers their highest moments of prayerful praise and thanksgiving are in the midst of their work experience. A mother caring for her child, the artist sharing the masterpiece, the nurse weeping with the terminally ill, the scientist discovering a new atomic particle, the scholar articulating an insight: nurturing, creating, caring, wondering, discovering, sharing --moments of work, grounded in sacrifice, discipline and great effort, and moments of grace. All of this contributes.to a spirituality of work because to live in God's presence with sensitivity, awareness and love is to live a spiritual life. Theme 6: Work and Questions of Justice Thesis: Work plays a significant function in the justice question: there can be no justice unless work~ is available to people in such a way that basic rights and duties are protected and promoted. In order to achieve social justice in the various parts of the world, in the various countries, and in the relationships betwyen them, there is need for ever new movements of solidarity of the workers and with the workers. This solidarity must be present whenever it is called for by the social degrading of the subject of work, by exploitation of the workers, and by the growing areas of poverty and hunger (8). It must be stressed that the constitutive element in this progress and also the most adequate way to verify it in a spirit of justice and peace, which the Church proclaims and for which she does not cease to pray to the Father of all individuals' and of all peoples, is the continual reappraisal of man's work, both in the aspect of its objective finality and in the aspect of the dignity of the subject of all work, that is to say, man. The progress in question must be made through man and for man and it must produce its fruit in man. A test of this progress will be the increasingly mature recognition of the purpose of wbrk and increasingly universal respect for the rights inherent in work in conformity with the dignity of man, the subject of work (18). While work, in all its ~any senses, is an obligation, that is to say a duty, it is also a source of rights on the part of the worker. These rights must be examined in the broad context of human rights as a whole, which are connatural with man, and many of which are proclaimed by various international organizations and increasingly guaranteed by the individual States for their citizens. Respect for this broad range of human rights constitutes the fundamental condition for peace in the modern world (16). 4Nikos Ka~,antzakis, Zorba the Greek (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), p. 79. Laborem Exercens: Themes and Theses Whenever relationships are established, certain issues of justice automatically arise. By its very definition the work relationship between employer and employee presents a mutuality of duties and rights. The encyclical addresses itself primarily to threatened rights of the employee, giving little attention to the dutie.s of the employee toward the employer. Employees' rights are numerous: the right to a just wage, the right to social benefits that ensure life and health, the right to rest, the right to pension and insurance, the right to suitable working environments, the right to strike under certain circumstances, the right to form voluntary associa-tions, the right of the disabled to productive activity suited to them, the right to emigrate in search of work. The correlative list would include the duties that come to the employer or society because of these rights. This area of justice is specific and measurable; much honesty, dialogue and planning are necessary if the ideals is to be achieved. The linkage between justice and peace is dearly articulated: Commitment to justice must be closely linked with commitment to peace in the modern world (2). Respect for this broad range of human rights constitutes the fundamental condition for peace in the modern world (16). Whenever rights are denied or duties neglected,,a profound disturbance shakes the life of individuals and society at large. Theologically we call this sin, ethically we call it injustice, sociologically we call it alienation. Regardless of the language system, the experience and its consequences are clear: the order of God's plan is broken and until reconciliation comes about, until justice is done, the fragmenta-tion continues and peace is not found in the land. Mere absence of war or conflict is not peace; rather, it is an ontological state of being, experienced when relation-ships~ are properly ordered. If charity begins at home, all the more so justice. Thus the Church as an institution must constantly strive for justice and peace within her own immediate membership. The fact that the above rights reside in her own personnel imposes an obligation on the Church as employer. This "beginning at home" is significant since authenticity of teaching and preaching constantly seeks verification in prac-tice. When the Church both teaches justice and lives it, the world has a model which affirms that the realities of justice and peace are truly possible. Theme 7: Work and Various ideologies Thesis: Work demands a meaning and various interpretations are offered by Liberalism, Marxism and Christian theology. The Marxist program, based on the philosophy of Marx and Engels, sees in class struggle the only way to eliminate class injustices in society and to eliminate the classes themselves. Putting this program into practice presupposes the collectivization of the means of production so that, through the transfer of these means from private hands to the collectivity, human labor will be preserved from exploitation (11). This consistent image, in which the principle of the primacy of person over things is strictly preserved, was broken up in human thought, sometimes after a long period of incubation in practical living. The break occurred in such a way that labor was separated from capital and 33{~ Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 set m opposition to it, and capital was set in oppositioh to labor, as though they were two impersonal forces, two production factors juxtaposed in the same "economistic" perspective. This way of stating the issue contained a fundamental error, what we call the error of economism, that of considering human labor solely according to its economic purpose. This fundamental error of thought must be called an error Of materialism, in that economism directly or indirectly ~ncludes a conviction of the primary and superiority of the material, and directly or indirectly places the spiritual and the personal (man's activity, moral values and such matters) in a position of subordination to material reality (13). The only chance there seems to be for radically overcoming this error (primitive capitalism and liberalism) is through adequate changes both in theory and in practice, changes in line with the definite conviction of the primacy of the person over things, and of human labor over capital as a whole collection of means of production (13). Absolutizing is that radical instinct in thought and behavior that makes one idea or value the only idea or value. The label we attach to such a tendency is "isms": e.g., secularism holds that all reality is limited to this world--there is no transcendence; humanism measures all of life in the light of the human person-- God finds no home here; rationalism restricts valid knowledge to that gained by reason--faith vision is excluded; workism so prizes achievement and productivity that leisure (receptivity-contemplation) is meaningless if not downright evil. The encyclical deals with this proclivity to absolutize and firmly rejects certain specific "isms" that surround work. Anathema sit: Marxism that seeks a collectivism of means of production so as to infringe upon the right to private property; liberalism that fails to take into account the common good in its worship of primitive capitalism; economism that views human labor solely in terms of its economic purposes; materialism that subordinates the spiritual/personal aspects of life to material reality. Christian theology consistently seeks a balanced position that protects moral and personal and spiritual values. Thus private property is a basic' right, though the common good will severely limit this right or even exclude it under very restricted circumstances. Economic profit is necessary and justifiable but never at the expense of human dignity. Matter is part of God's creation but is subordinated to the value of the human person. The insights of Scripture and tradition are brought to bear upon the complex reality of the work world. Basic principles are articulated through careful theological reflection which provides a theory that will hopefully inform our action. The Church is not reluctant to speak out with a strong prophetic voice whenever there is encroachment upon the rights of people, be that encroachment by employer or employee. Jacob Bronowski states that "without astronomy it is really not possible to find your way over great distances, or even to have a theory about the shape of the earth and the land and sea oh it."~ Part of the Church's mission is to provide a theologicalastronomy by which the complex components of life can be assessed and prudently judged. The present papal document serves a timely purpose: it ~Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), p. 190. Laborem Exercens: Themes and Theses articulates a theology and a spirituality from which to observe and practice the command of God that we work, thereby building up a more human community and furthering the growth of the kingdom. Such an astronomy is no luxury, it is an absolute necessity. Theme 8: Work and its Abuse Thesis: Work, which is meant to humanize and develop persons, can become destructive when means become ends. ¯. it {the anlinomy between labor and capital) originated in the whole of the economic and social practice of that time, the time of the birth and rapid development of industrialiTation, in which what was mainly seen was the possibility of vastly increasing material wealth, means while the end, that is to say, man, who should be served by the means, was ignored (13). The primary basis of the value of work is man himself, who is its subject. This leads imme-diately to a very important conclusion of an ethical nature: however true it may be that man is destined for work and called to it, in the first place work is "for man"and not man "for work" (6}. The very process of "subduing the earth." that is to say work. is marked in the course of history and especially in recent centuries, by an immense development of technological means. This is an advantageous and positive phenomenon, on condition that the objective dimension of work does not gain the upper hand over the subjective dimension, depriving man of his dignity and inalienable rights or reducing them (i0). A gospel question focuses our attention: is man made for the Sabbath or the Sabbath for man? Jesus had to deal with the means/end question and there is nothing unclear about his answer: the Sabbath is .made for man. Ambiguity characterizes some contemporary questions arising from the world of work: What is the relationship between technology and the human person? What status does the individual have in large multinational corporations? When transfers are made, what "considerations are given to the worker's family? If profits will be less but the work situation is more humanizing, what kinds of decisions are made? Is man made for work or work for man? Historically the document states that certain means have usurped the prerogatives of the end; technology (means) has become the master and the human person (end), the slave. At this juncture, justice and peace are no more. The whole order is overturned, human freedom is lost. Simone Weil, a strong prophetic voice for the ~,alue of work in the first half of this century, worked in factories so as to experientially learn the workers' situation. Her experience was not a happy one: workers were dehumanized because they were treated simply as cogs in a large, productive m~chine. Upon reading Homer's Iliad, she extracts a universal truth about evil that applies to our present discussion: Thus in this ancient and wonderful poem there already appeared the essential evil besetting humanity, the substitution of means for ends.6 ~The Simone Weil Reader. ed, George A. Panichas (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1977), p. 138. 3~12 / Review for Religious, Ma.v-June, 1982 What is so horrendous is that often this process of evil is unconscious and unin-tended. The means we use for produiztivity are happily introduced. Suddenly we wake up one morning and come to realize, that we are controlled by the very process we devised. The underlying question is one of freedom, a freedom that protects our humanity and a freedom to use tools of production wisely. Such a freedom comes only from hard-won knowledge: we cannot make prudent choices when ignorant of facts and circumstances. Education is of greatest importance here. All people involved in the working community must maintain a high level of attentiveness to attitudes, means of production, societal tendencies, subtle shifts in values. The means/end dilemma must not be blurred. Melville, in his classic Moby Dick, comments that "ignorance is the parent of fear."7 Societal fears often arise because we are ignorant of the proper relationship between means and end. With increased knowledge we are hopeful that fear will be dissipated and our freedom regained. Theme 9: Work and the Common Good Thesis: Work, through the use of natural and personal resources, is an essential force to achieve the common good. ¯. society--even when it has not yet taken on the mature form of a nation--is not only the great ~educator" of every man, even though an indirect one (because each individual absorbs within the family the contents and values that go to make up the culture of a given nation): it is also a great historical and social incarnation of the work of all generations. All of this brings it about that man combines his deepest human identity with membership of a nation, and intends his work also to increase the cor~mon good developed together with his compatriots, thus realizing that in this way work serves to add to the heritage of the whole human family, of all the people living in the world (16). Rational planning and the proper organization of human labor in keeping with individual societies and States should also facilitate the discovery of the right proportions between the different kinds of employment: work on the land. in industry, in the various services, white-collar work and scientific or artistic work, in accordance with the capacities of individuals: and for the common good of each society and of the whole of mankind (18). Here we must return once more to the first principle of the whole ethical and social order. namely, the principle of the common use of goods. In every system, regardless of the funda-mental relationships within it between capital and labor, wages, that is to say remuneration for work, are still a practical means whereby the vast majority of people have access to those goods which are intended for common use: both the good of nature and manufactured goods (19). In the document Gaudium et Spes, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council described the common good in these terms: Now. the common good embraces the sum of those conditions of social life by which individuals, families and groups can achieve their own fulfillment in a relatively thorough and ready way (74). 7Herman Melville, Moby Dick (New York: The Literary Guild of America, Inc., 1949), p. 17. Laborem Exercens: Themes and Theses / 333 Although somewhat nebulous in the abstract, the common good is extremely concrete and pragmatic in experience. Yet certain cultural attitudes towards pri-vate goods and vested self-interest make it difficult for the relationship between work and the common good to be properly understood. One such attitude regards comm~on good items (parks, public buildings, and so forth) as areas of exploita-tion, with no sense of personal responsibility for their upkeep or cleanliness. A mentality of privatized ownership threatens the realization of the common good. Through work 1 will take as much as 1 can without any thought of.making my contribution to the commonweal. Various writers8 are beginning to articulate a public theology and notions of a church which help to provide a vision for the protection of the common good through responsible work and concern. Several years ago there was a global experience that had the potentiality to develop social consciousness for the common good. For the first time in history, through the technology of cameras, we saw ourselves, the planet earth, from the moon. Hurling through space, like people on a small raft, brought us a realization that we are all in this together. The activity of one affects the activity of all. Responsible Work and sharing enriches the human family; failure to do so dimin-ishes and deprives people of quality life. Perhaps the moon photograph has been blurred already and the strong sense of interdependence to which we are called has been obscured by innate avariciousness. Is work done primarily for profit and personal gain? Have we forgotten the common good or disregarded it as some utopian dream? Two types of people have been known throughout history as truly human and noble: people of compassion and people of hospitality. The former have a heart that is moved deeply by the joys and sufferings of others. A'basic affinity with human experience resides deep within the being of compassionate people. Hospi-tality, that gracious welcoming of the stranger-into personal space and time, creates an environment in which the common good is realized. Regardless of.one's employment, the work~ of compassion and hospitality are universal vocations and only when they are exercised, thus producing the common good, do individual goods have any value whatever. The paradox of the gospel grain of wheat is lived again. Theme I0: Work and Communily Thesis: Work builds community by uniting people into a powerful solidarity. In fact. the family is simultaneously a community made possible by work and the first school of work, within the home, for every person (10). The call to solidarity and common action addressed to the worker--especially to those engaged in narrowly specialized, monotonous and depersonalized work in industrial plants, when the machine tends to dominate man--was important and eloquent from the point of sSee Martin E. Marty's The Public Church (New York: Crossroad, 1981)and Parker J. Palmer's The Company o.f Strangers (New York: Crossroad. 198 I). 334 / Review for Religious, Ma.v-June, 1982 view of social ethics. It was the reaction against the degradation of man as the subject of work, and against the unheard-of accompanying exploitation in the fields of wages, working condi-tions and social security for the worker. This reaction united the working world in a commu-nity marked by great solidarity (8). It is characteristic of work that it first and foremost unites people. In this consists its social power: the power to build a community. In the final analysis, both those who work and those who manage the means of production or who own them must in some way be united in this community 120). Communities are formed when there is a common sense of identity, when there is a commitment to a specific value system, when lives are shared by mutual experience. Many work situations have these three qualities. A good schobl faculty know who they are, are committed to truth and its various expressions, and share lives professionally and, to some degree, socially. A professional sports team working together for several years establishes a strong communal bond. Work has the potential to unite people and form community, i.e., a style of work that is balanced and. person centered. What is intriguing is that often the bond of com-munity happens without conscious planning; it is a side effect of deep c6operation. Human life is complex. Like a spider's web, there are many intersecting lines in our relationships and in our multiple communities, e.g., The community to which I belong is, of course, not a static one. Sometimes it is the commu-nity of my wife and myself and my family: at other times that of my relations, of my friends, of my work colleagues, of my city or nation or international grouping. My task in each different community varies according to the particular community I am being consciously part of at any time. In some communities, I am a key figure: in others, of lesser or minimal importance. But in all of them I have a function, a duty and a responsibility and I believe I will be judged on my performance of these at the end of my time. Often I do not know exactly what that function is--but I know that basically it is to be a harmonizing influence, a peacemaker, a go-between, a catalyst, a bringer-out of good qualities in others for the sake of a group.'~ This vision of community and work depicts the range of groupings in one's life and the specific functions that we are to play. The notion of facilitator may accurately describe "the work" (the process of life itself) that will build any community. We facilitate relationships by bringing love and concern which, in turn, bring about peace and oneness. The Gospel of John states that God is always working. Jesus presents himself as the waiter, serving at table those who come for life-giving food. The thrust behind this work is community, to build and complete the Fi~ther's kingdom. Thus the dignity of the vocation of work becomes clear: as co-worker with the Lord we participate in the process of reconciliation, bringing all creation back to the Father. Whatever our task in life, however sublime or humble, we lovingly accept the charge given us and contribute to the realization of the Father's plan. Adveniat regnum ! ~On the Run: Spirituality for the Seventies, ed. by Michael F. McCauley (Chicago: The Thomas More Association. 1974). p. 138. Reflections on Leadership in the Spirit of Jesus Cecilia Murphy, R.S.M. Sister Cecilia Murphy is the President of the Sisters of Mercy of Pittsburgh. In the issue of January, 1976, Sister shared her reflections on the chapter experience of her community. In the present article, a talk given at their congregational meeting of March, 1982, she reflects on her experience of leadership in her community. Sister Cecilia resides at 3333 Fifth AveA Pittsburgh, PA 15213. Living leadership in the spirit of Jesus is a challenge to every Christian. Each follower of Jesus is called to "come after Jesus" and to show others the way. Those called to leadership in a religious congregation of Mercy bear a special responsibil-ity in this matter. How can anyone fulfill this task? My reflections on this topic are a result of trying to "bone it'--trying to dig into the essential and offer some thoughts on what is necessary for leadership in Jesus' spirit. We know Jesus through faith--faith in God's word and sacraments; faith in our personal experiences of Jesus. We know from Scripture that Jesus poured himself out for our sakes and that he taught us how to live. The commitment of our lives and our personal prayer have helped us know experientially who Jesus is, how he loves, what he asks of us: Faith, then, is the first essential for leadership. Things are not always clear and efisy, and the felt presence of the Lord is a special and temporary gift. So, the leader needs to pray for a strong faith-life, to make acts of faith, and to live in faith, believing in God's love and fidelity. Sorting out and probing the purpose of life, religious life, and its values are essential to leaders. These exercises focus leaders on "the one thing necessary." They help to keep clear the purpose of religious community and enable leaders to be conscious of the motives, fears, and choices that are operative in life. Jesus probed the meaning of life by withdrawing from others and praying to his Father in secret. Exposure to solitude and openness to God's ways are integral parts of searching. These opportunities enable leaders to be like the violinist who carefully 335 ~136 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 tunes the instrument before a symphony. Reflection enables the leader to "be in tune" with the divine pitch. Without confidence in God, religious leadership is impossible. The counsel that Catherine McAuley took to heart, to pray as if everything depended on God and act as if everything depended on us, was not only common sense, it was an inspired statement. As Jesus was ever conscious of his Father's power, so must a leader be! All works concerned with the human spirit are beyond human control. Leaders cannot change another pers6n; God reserves that to himself. Yet a leader is called to use all her human potential to create the best environment, and also to pray in confidence, knowing that God's work is ultimately carried out by God-- sometimes through her. Belief in the value of suffering is an essential for a religious leader. Jesus suffered and died. Our congregation was founded on Calvary; there are no easy roads to Mount Tabor. In each human life suffering is present, but Christians are challenged to "take up the cross." Leaders must attempt to follow the Master to Calvary. The particular kinds of suffering which best make an individual an image of Jesus are known only to the Lord. For the leader, however, many of these have something to do with various kinds of poverty. One form 6f poverty is that of spirit, "Why me, Lord?" the leader asks. "There are others holier, more insightful, more loving, more intelligent, more capable, Why me?" And'the Lord replies, "It was not because you are great but because I am great and want to use your nothingness. Don't question my choice--just cooperate." There is the poverty of unfulfilled expectations--those of the leader and those of other members. Unconsciously, leaders sometimes set expectations for them-selves which could not be fulfilled by five people, let alone one. Consider, then, the 335 members of our congregation, multiply by five, and you will have a sense of the number of expectations placed on a leader. The sense of poverty in facing all these unfulfilled expectations is a cause of great suffering. Dealing in realms beyond one's experience and capabilities creates a sense of poverty. Learning about finances, management, interacting with corporate leaders can cause a sense of being entirely out of one's element. Like Ruth, the leader must try to adapt to alien lands, to grow in new knowledge and allow the pinch of human limitations to be felt. There is the poverty of being in an "iceberg ministry." When 1 ask myself what 1 do, it is very hard to define. So much of a leader's ministry is confidential or invisible to others and sometimes to herself. Members of the congregation may wonder why all the paper communications keep filtering into a small community and exclaim, "Another paper from the Mount!" However, some leader may have worked hours trying to simplify and clarify ideas so that they could be shared with (he membership. Dialogue and interaction with members are an important part of leadership but they, too, are invisible parts of the iceberg. Leaders need. to laugh. Although the gospels do not record Jesus as laughing, we can be sure, since we are made in his image, that Jesus did enjoy life. He had Reflections on Leadership special friends, the disciples. He went off with them, shared special meals with them. Without doubt he must have often suppressed a laugh as he experienced their human condition. Leaders, too, need to relax, to have friends, to take time to unwind and be "at home" with family. Rest is a requirement for all human persons and so must leaders be renewed and refreshed. Refreshment help~ one maintain balance--an essential for leadership. Our "Government Synthesis Statement" makes explicit a tension that is inherent in leadership, the tension between internal and external concerns. How does one balance the call to broader church and civic leadership with the need to provide for the growth and development of the membership? There is no answer to that question, only the ongoing struggle to live authentically in that tension. As Jesus lived the tension of the Agony in the Garden, he prayed for the accomplishment of the Father's will. He prayed for courage to fulfill his mission. Leaders need courage, a courage which is strengthened by conviction; made more difficult by uncertainty. In relating to individuals and the total congregation, the leader needs courage to risk--risk to be wrong even when acting in good faith. Leaders can make mistakes and they need courage to face mistakes honestly. Tomorrow's leaders will also need courage to fulfill our "Government Synthe-sis Statement" which calls them to use our corporate power on behalf of the poor. This challenge will take courage and wisdom on the part of the leaders and generosity and willingness for conversion on the part of the membership. As Jesus listened to Nicodemus, so a leader must listen to God, the members, the Church, the world. Jesus was a sensitive listener when he attempted to deal with the needs of others. In Jesus the leader has the perfect model of attentive listening and response to others. Leadership in religious congregations requires a deep realization of the divine help that comes from the prayers of the sisters. Likewise it calls forth a daily prayer: "Glory to him whose power working in me can do infinitely more than 1 can ask or imagine!" Tedium and Burnout in Religious Life Mary Elizabeth Kenel Dr. K(nel, as well as maintaining a private practice in Washington, is a field supervisor in the pastoral counseling program of Loyola College in Baltimore. She may be addressed at 901 Perry Place, N.E.: Washington; DC 20017. In recent years mu~ch of the research in the area of social psychology has focused on the phenomena of tedium and burnout, primarily as these apply to the workers in the human services fields. These phenomena are by no means limited to members of these groups, however, and researchers are investigating burnout at various phases of the life cycle: the tedium experienced by college students, burn-out in marriage and parenting, and that demonstrated in the mid-life and mid-career crises. Everyone at some time or another is vulnerable to the stresses of tedium and burnout and religious are no exception. Indeed, the very qualities that are com-mon to those aspiring to religious life and a ministry of service tend to render religious as a group vulnerable to the burnout syndrome. The term "burnout" was first introduced by Herbert J. Freudenberger~ in his articles on staff burnout in the help-giving inst.itutions. Since that time a number of other authors have made use of the term and have given it various definitions. Edelwich2 defines burnout as a progressive loss of idealism, energy, and purpose experienced by people in the helping professions as a result of the conditions of their work. Pines and Aronson3 define tedium as the experience of physical, ~ Freudenberger, H. J. "Staff Burn-out," Journal of Social Issues, 1974, 30(I) pp. 159-165. 2Edelwich, J., Burn-Out, Stages of Disillusionment in the Helping Professions. Human Sciences Press, New York, 1980. p. 14. ~Pines, A. M. and Aronson, E., Burnout, From Tedium to Personal Growth, The Free Press, New York. 1981. p. 15. 338 Tedium and Burnout in Religious Life emotional and mental exhaustion characterized by emotional and physical deple-tion and by the negation of one's self, one's environment, one's work, and even one's life. They consider burnout to be identical to tedium in definition and symptoms but apply the term particularly to those who work with people in situations that are emotionally demanding. While both tedium and burnout are accompanied by a constellation of symp-toms that include fatigue, lack of enthusiasm, and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, burnout may be thought of as a state of mind that afflicts those individuals whose work requires that they pour in much more than they get in return, be that return from clients, patients, students, superiors or peers. The dedicatory nature of the vows can set the stage for burnout. Take, for example, a motto instilled during a novitiate instruction: "Chastity loves without seeking a return." A literal interpretation and acceptance of such an ideal can readily lead to burnout as the religious' energies are depleted over time. One of the biggest difficulties with the concept of burnout, however, is that it has become fashionable, a new item in the evergrowing dictionary of psychobab-ble. Burnout as such has no formal psychiatric status and, indeed, many would see it as depression. The literature, however, tends more and more to distinguish between the two concepts and relates burnout to the environmental stresses under which a person works rather than to intrapsychic forces. The onset of tedium/burnout is rarely the result of a single traumatic or disillusioning event. More typically it is the result of a gradual erosion of strength and spirit. Edelwich,4 for example, recognizes a series.of stages that range from idealistic enthusiasm to apathy. The victims of burnout tend to be those who had once been amoiag the most idealistic and ardent, those who at one time were most enthusiastic and joyful. This is hardly surprising, for nearly every author in the field has noted that in order to burn out one must have been on fire at some point. It is the intent of the remainder of this article to examine the antecedents to burnout and tedium as well as to examine the stages of development that lead fr9m enthusiasm to apathy. To the extent that individual religious and communi-ties can recognize and anticipate burnout they will be better able to avoid the ineffectual, wishful remedies that are often practiced and seek more realistic coping mechanisms. A positive ~pproach to the problems of tedium and burnout, then, will not be based on the hope of total prevention which is almost impossible to achieve, but on the realization that it will happen, even repeatedly, and must be dealt with on an ongbing basis. As with any other life crisis, burnout can be turned to advantage in that it can energize a person to break out of a rut. Creative use of frustration can become a stimulus to the kind of enthusiasm it generally erodes. Antecedents to Burnout Research5 on the phenomenon of burnout as it applies to human service 4Edelwich, J. op. cir. pp. 28-29. 5Pines, A. M., and Aronson, E. op cir., pp. 48-54. 3tll~ / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 workers has identified three common antecedents that would apply equally well to religious. 1. Work That Is Emotionally Demanding In the human serVice professions people work with others in situations that are emotionally draining over long periods of time, during which they are exposed to their clients' physical, social, and psychological problems and are expected to be both skillful and concerned. A similar expectation is placed on priests, brothers and sisters in virtue of their religious profession, in addition, members of religious groups are frequently actively engaged in human service occupations such as teaching, nursing, and counseling. Think, for example then, of the emotional toll of working with the terminally ill, with the mentally ill, with those who have lost loved ones--especially when one's religious profession means one is also expected to explain "God's Will" in these situations. 2. Characteristics of the Professionals Themselves Pines and Aronson6 note that in the human services the occupational task acts as a screening device that attracts people with particular types of personal attrib-utes. The same is true of religious life. Think of the adjectives used to describe priests and religious in terms of the concept of mirfistry. Words such as dedicated, service, and other-oriented are frequently mentioned. 3. Client-Centered Orientation As is the case for members of human services teams, religious focus on people receiving their service. The role of provider of help, understanding, and support is defined by the client's needs with relatively little attention paid to the needs of the professional or the religious. A strictly client-centered orientation does not permit a symmetrical relationship of mutual give and take. Instead a complementary relationship is set up in which the religious or human service worker is expected to give while the client receives. Common to both situations is a dedicatory ethic that elevates service motives and presents work not merely as a "job" but as a "voca-tion" or "calling" in which the reward is supposed to be inherent in the giving. The Prayer of Saint Francis captures this thought: "It is in giving that we receive . 4. Other Antecedents to Burnout In addition to those areas delineated by Pines and Aronson there are a number of other antecedents to burnout that need to be considered. One is that of a lack of criteria for measuring one's accomplishment. There is sufficient difficulty in attempting to define accomplishments in the therapeutic field. How much more so in th6 religious life. How does one define one's success as nPines, A. M. and Aronson. E. ibid., pp. 51-52. Tedium and Burnout in Religious Ltfe 311"1 a "religious"? Does one play the "numbers game"---how many converts, baptisms, hours of donated service? And if there are no hard-and-fast criteria for success, how then does one set standards for reviewing one's life and work? Another source of difficulty lies in the area of career advancement. Far too often the religious who has entered upon a particular form of active ministry because of a desire to work with people is "promoted" to an administrative posi-tion that. while enlarging his or her sphere of influence, many times results in loss of client contact and ultimately in loss of job satisfaction. Antecedents to Tedium While religious life itself is a form of other-oriented profession in which many members actually do work in the human services area, it also has a bureaucratic and hierarchical structure and as such shares many of the antecedents of tedium found in business or government organizations. The literature describes organizational structure as a major determinant of job performance, satisfaction, and tedium.7 Pines and Aronson8 identified three major antecedents of tedium. 1. Overload Overload is a key concept in studies of job stress and its effect on health and can be viewed as having objective/,su.bjective and quantitative/quali!ative dimen-sions. Objective overload refers to the actual volume of work to be processed per unit of time while subjective overload refers to the person's feeling that there is too much work to be done or that it is too hard. Quantitative overload implies that one actually has more real work than can be handled per unit time. Qualitative overload, on the other hand, indicates that the work load demands skills, knowl-edge or training exceeding that of the person assigned a given task. That objective, quantitative overlo.ad is part and parcel of the daily life of most religious hardly needs mentioning. Schedules tend to be full to overflowing and many a prayer has been offered for a few extra hours in the day as well as another pair of hands. Qualitative overload, however, may be even more stressful in the long run and more likely to induce tedium. In a situation of qualitative overload unrealistic ex, pectations are placed on an individual or group who must then deal not merely with the realities of the workload but with a sense of inadequacy and personal failure when it becomes impossible to live up to those "great expecta-. tions." Fortunately, in more recent years superiors and formation personnel have attempted to see to it that people are trained prior to placement in a specific position. With personnel shortages, however, it is tempting to appeal to the per- 7Armstrong. K. 1. "'How Can We Avoid Burnout. Child Abuse and Neglect: Issues in Innovation and Implementation." DHEW Publication #(OHDS) 78-30148. 2(1978). pp. 230-238. ~Pines. A. M. and Aronson. E. op cir. pp. 67-72. 3t12 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 son's "generosity and sense of mission" and propel him or her into a position for which he or she is unprepared and in which he or she expends tremendous energy simply to "stay afloat." 2: I~ek of Autonomy In any area of life, lack of control over one's environment is a highly stressful experience and frequently enough leads to the learned helplessness phenomenon observed by Seligman.9 In this depressed state the person tends !o attribute success to "luck" or "chance" or other forces outside his or her control while accepting full responsibility for failures. A perceived lack of autonomy and the frustration resulting from such a lack is a common cause of tedium in organizations of all types, .for job satisfaction declines as the individual is more burdened by unnecessary rules and red tape and lacks voice in decisions that affect the job and his or her life. Lack of autonomy can also be aggravated by a communication gap between superiors and those further down the organizational hierarchy. This gap may be due to the inherent inefficiencies of communication in large organizations or to differing perspectives among superiors and those actively engaged in a given work. It is necessary then to attempt to build organizational structures that will avoid, to some extent, these pitfalls. The problem of autonomy is a thorny one for religious. Balance must be achieved between a legitimate need for autonomy that is part and parcel of healthy adult functioning and the demand of religious obedience that is, perhaps, the very heart of the religious commitment. To some extent community structures have always made some provision for autonomy, for example, those having perpetual vows might vo~e for the superior, serve as councilors, or in other ways voice an ~pinion on community matters. The proverbial "planting cabbages upside down" type of blind obedience is also a.thing of the past. More recent changes in community life have attempted to address this need for autonomy. For example, the matter of annual assignments is now often handled on ~ consultative basis with the individual religiot~s I~a~'ing more input into the decision than was previously the case. Community meetings 6n the local, regional, and national/international levels also serve to keep the lines of communi-cation open and flowing upward, not merely downward. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the religious, by virtue of the vow of obedience, does surrender much personal autonomy. This surrender is often felt most keenly n.ot'in the early years but later as one must deal with one's own growth and developmeht as a ]'esponsi-ble adult. Much of the "mid-life crisis" seen in religious life centers around the issue of autonomy, the need for personal space and the integration of such concepts as 9Seligman. M. E. Helplessness: On De.pression Development and Death, San Francisco: Freeman Press. 1979. Tedium and Burnout in Religious Ltfe / 343 ob¢dience, choice, power, accountability, and responsibility. Perhaps one of the ways to resolve this conflict is to keep some progressive vision of what the com-munity (small group or larger organization) might accomplish and nurture the scope and consciousness of discretionary behavior. In most life situations things usually are more flexible than they might initially appear. Evaluating the possibili-ties for positive change and focusing one's energies in the realm of the possible enhance one's sense of legitimate power and control. The religious who can be attentive to authority, who can blend personal goals with community goals, and who recognizes both the extent and limit of his or her discretionary power is not as likely to suffer the lack of autonomy that leads to tedium. 3. Lack of Rewards It is indeed unfortunate that most organizations are inefficient in the distribution of rewards, appreciation and recognition, as this contributes to dis-couragement and demoralization among the members and can eventually lead to tedium. It is surprising that better use is not made of the power of positive reinforcement, for common sense would suggest, and research has confirmed, that people are far more able to tolerate considerable stress in situations in which they feel appreciated and their efforts recognized than in those in which they feel the rewards are not commensurate with their efforts. Religious are definitely not exempt from the need for rewards and recognition. Indeed, the absence of high levels of financial remuneration make it imperative that social rewards be given. It is all well and good to appeal to altruistic and spiritual motives, but positive feedback has tremendous reinforcement value that is far too often ignored. As a result, the religious who is.often enough already unpaid or underpaid is deprived of the satisfaction derived from well-earned recognition. Another aspect that frequently causes pain is the fact that the religious may be appreciated by those with whom he or she serves yet get little or no recognition from within the community. It remains true today "there is no respect for a ¯ prophet in his own country" Jn 4:44. While it is true that one should not rely solely on one's superiors for praise there is a need for ~ecognition by one's peers that is often lacking. It is frequently the presence or lack of support at the local level that can make the difference between a vital, contributing team member and a "burnt-out case." Stages of Disillusionment Edelwicht0 defines five stages in the process of disillusionment. Stage one, that of initial enthusiasm, is that period of high hopes, high energy and unrealistic expectaiions when one does not know what the job is all about. In religious life this would typically correspond to the novitiate and formation period as well as the early years of active ministry. 1 recall hearing a novice describe with great anima- I°Edelwich. J., op. cit. pp. 28-29. 344 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 tion the ceremony of initial profession of another sister. The formula of vows, written by the sister, concluded with the words "Surprise me, Jesus!" An older priest seated next to me turned to me, smiled ruefully, and said sotto voce "He will." The second stage is that of stagnation. It is at this point that one's ministry is no longer so satisfying as to substitute for everything else in life. "Is that all there is?" seems to sum up the feelings of this stage. There is a shift in emphasis at this point from meeting the needs of others to meeting one's own needs. For the religious formed in an other-oriented tradition this shift in emphasis can often be accompanied by feelings of guilt and loss of self-esteem as he or she senses that the fervor which marked the early days of religious life has diminished, Edelwich~ calls his third stage that of frustration. It is at this point that one tends to question not merely one's own effectiveness in the ministry but the value of religious life and ministry itself. Frequently emotional, physical and behavioral problems emerge at this stage. The fourth stage, that of apathy, sets in when a person is chronically frustrated. Apathy as such is a typical defense mechanism that occurs after repeated frustra-tion and is analogous to the learned-helplessness phenomenon mentioned earlier. At this point no new challenges are undertaken and one seems to "go through the motions," doing the minimum required to avoid censure. The stage of intervention is defined as whatever is done in response to or in anticipation of the four preceding stages. Intervention attempts to break the cyc!e. It may involve a restructuring of relationships to clients, family, friends and com-munity. It may mean seeking advanced training and new areas of apostolic work. It may, in some instances, mean leaving the ministry and religious life altogether. The Special Problems of Women Religious The antecedents of burnout and tedium mentioned here apply equally well to both male and female religious. The literature has noted, however, that profes-sional women bear a special burden not shared by men. For example, the conflict between career and home demands is more sharply delineated for a woman who, in the effort to balance both, may seek to become a "Superwoman." This sort of role conflict would also appear to be more keenly felt by women religious than by men. Communities of women seem to place more stress on creating a homelike atmosphere in which there is a fairly high level of mutual interaction and group activity. While such a structure has the potential for providing a great deal of warmth and support, the time needed to foster and maintain these community relationships may cause tension if community activities are seen as competing with the demands of one's ministry. Another major contribution to the burnout of women is sexism. As Edelwich~-' ~qbid. p. 29. Tedium and Burnout in Religious 13fe / ~4~3 notes, in the business and professional world large numbers of women are employed in positions of structured inferiority. Sexual stereotyping influences job assignments, allocation of responsibilities and standards of conduct. Sexual polar-ization commonly reinforces polarization by rank and status. This same pattern of sexual discrimination is found within the Church. The hierarchical structure is male dominated and its influence pervades the entire area of religious life and ministry. There is no need even to enter upon a discussion of ordination of women. Think at a more everyday level of the small put-downs, the questions regarding competence, the paternalism that is found all too frequently. How often does "the pastor" win his point by sheer weight of authority rather than by the merits of the case? How many male religious are comfortable dealing with attractive, educated women as peers? How often has a sister's name been reduced to a diminutive form ¯. in jest, of course? How does the treatment afforded male and female faculty members compare--or differ? Needless to say, the additional burden of dealing with one's femaleness takes its toll, for if a woman is sensitive, the professional struggles can be more frustrating. If she is empathic, the suffering she encounters is felt more sharply. If she knew herself as a caring person and a dedicated religious, recognition that she is no longer moved by the needs of others is more crushing. Coping Strategies Once aware of the potential for the development 6f tedium and burnout, what coping strategies can be introduced? This selection will attempt to present coping mechanisms at three levels:, the organizational, the interpersonal, and the intrapersonal. At the organizational level one can seek to reduce tedium and burnout by reducing the overload, making alternative forms of service available to the reli-gious, and by limiting the hours of stressful work. Community-based pre-retirement programs have already begun to make use of these concepts. By extending them to a broader range of personnel, severe forms of burnout may be prevented or at least reduced. Training, of course, is essential, not merely the initial formal education that would prepare the religious for his or her chosen field but continuing education where the !~eligious is given an opportunity to examine the pressures of the ministry, clarify goals and priorities, consider coping mechanisms and develop new skills. In the initial phases of formation training, the interventions appropriate to the stage of idealistic enthusiasm~3 should be taught. Novices or professed in temporary vows should be made aware of the discrepancy between expectations and reality and learn to moderate their enthusiasms before they become bogged down in the stage of stagnation. During this phase of formation the young religious should be taught to examine their motives for entering on ~21bid. p. 18. ~-~lbid. pp. 212-220. 3116/ Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 certain modes of ministry. The need to be needed is a powerful one as is the need to exert control, a motive that one tends to find if one scratches the surface of altruism. With awareness of their own motives religious can use their emotional investment in the ministry as the basis for insight rather than an acting out of their own needs at the expense of those they set out to serve. In an effort to avoid or at least reduce tedium and burnout, thought should also be given to providing positive work conditions that are suited to the needs of the individual and to assisting the religious to gain a sense of work significance. To achieve this end, as far as possible set clear organizationa| objectives, provide feedback and give the individual appreciation for his or her efforts and accomplishments. On the interpersonal level the development of social support systems is essen-tial. Although the conflicting or ambiguous demands of various systems can lead to burnout, on the whole the efficient and creative use of a social support system is one of ttie most effective ways of coping with the burnout syndrome. Social support systems may be defined as lasting interpersonal ties to groups of people who can be counted on to provide emotional sustenance, assistance, and resources in periods of need and stress, who provide feedback, both positive and negative, and who share standards and values. Ideally, one would belong to several supportive groups: community, family, work, recreational, and avocational. William Glasser~4 in his book, Reality Ther-apy, speaks of the dangers of the "small world." In such a situation, one group, for example, the community or work group, becomes the center of one's entire life and the source of all one's emotional and psychological support. Pines and Aronson~5 list six functions of a social support system, namely: listening, technical support, technical challenge, emotional support, emotional challenge, and the providing of social reality. Rather than expect that'one person or one set of people meet each of these needs, it is helpful to the religious to differentiate the support functions one can get from a given source and seek fulfillment of other needs from other groups. Not to do so places a tremendous burdbn on the sole source of support and leads to disappointment and anger when one's needs are not met. A number of coping strategies that would serve to reduce the likelihood of burnout are open to the individual religious. Among the variables that reduce the severity of burnout are learning, meaning and significance, success and achieve-ment, and variety.~6 Learning and understanding and a healthy curiosity are basic motivators. In the stage of stagnation new learning can open the door to new aspects of one's work and prevent the sort of burnout that accompanies one's perception of being at a dead end. Learning need not involve formal instruction; an attitude of open- V~Glasser, W., Reality Therapy. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1975, p. 30. ~SPines. A. M., and Aronson, E., op. cir., p. 124." ~Pines, A. M., and Aronson. E., ibid., pp. 143-144. Tedium and Burnout in l~eligious Ltfe/ 347 n~ss to new experience can serve to keep one interested and alert. ~, Finding or creating meaning and significance in one's work and life is essential. Without these ingredients one becomes apathetic, alienated from oneself and others. Viktor Franklt7 recognized this and incorporated the struggle of the mature person to find, meaning in life into his work Man's Search For Meaning. "Nothing succeeds like success" goes the old maxim and nothing can eliminate burnout more effectively than the acknowledgment of one's achievements. Reli-gious, perhaps more than others, need to learn to acknowledge and enjoy their own successes before pushing on to new challenges. Certainly the drive for success can be self-destructive if one becomes obsessed with competing and pushes for "success" in the absence of other rewards. Nevertheless the religious needs to learn to define areas of accomplishment in which he/she can take justifiable pride. Monotonous activities lead to tedium whether they be found in a work or a non-work situation. A sense of variety and interest, on the other hand, originating largely with the person can susiain one in the ministerial field. Variety need not be a matter of outside stimulation, although that is certainly useful, but can be achieved by an openness to the uniqueness of the people with whom one works or whom one serves. Other ways of seeking variety include job changes within one's field or more total changes that involve seeking a new path. The career changes taking place more and more often at mid-life reflect this desire for variety. One coping mechanism mentioned by Pines and Aronson~8 was the develop-ment of an attitude of detached concern, which they defined as a stance in which the empathic professional (or religious) is sufficiently detached or objective in his attitudes toward the client to exercise sound judgment and keep his/her equanim-ity, yet also have enough concern for the client to give sensitive, understanding service. To attempt such a stance requires a delicate sense of balance. It is a process phenomenon, not a static entity that once achieved is dever lost. The religious needs to discern the level of emotional involvement proper for each person/situa-tion he or she encounters, avoiding a draining, ineffectual overinvolvement on the one hand and a clinical coldness that dehumanizes on the other. Compartmentalization~ is another way suggested by Pines and Aronson~9 to keep a balance between energy invested in the work sphere and the energy invested in life outside of work. This is one area that may prove problematic as there are still many community situations in 'which the religious both work and live together. Situations such as these tend to foster the creation of the "small world" mentioned earlier, and negative feelings generated in one sphere tend to carry over into the other. Newer community structures have attempted to alleviate these difficulties by establishing residences that are not identified with one particular ~TFrankl, V. Man's Search.for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press. 1963. ~Pines. A. M. and Aronson, E., op. cir., pp. 54-55. ¯ ~91bid., p. 164. ~1411 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 form of ministry. The residents work at a variety of jobs and in'several differe~at locations and "come home" when their workday is ended. While no single living arrangement is perfect, one such as this does provide the individual religious with an opportunity to separate work demands from other aspects of his/her life. Perhaps the most important of the coping mechanisms open to the individual religious is that of "being good to oneself" or "doing to oneself as you have done to your client." Committed religious tend to burn out because they take on too much for too long and with too much intensity. To reduce the likelihood of burnout one needs an awareness of work stresses and a recognition of the danger signs. One also needs to acknowledge areas of vulnerability and put reasonable limits on one's work for there will always be more that could be done. in addition, one needs to set realistic goals, both long-term and short-term, and be willing to provide for one's own needs, treating oneself as a person with legitimate needs, taking time for prayer and pleasure and nourishing oneself so that there will be strength available to continue the service to which one is called, that with St. Paul one can state: ". my life is already being poured away as a libation . 1 have fought the good fight, 1 have run the race to the finish, I have kept the faith" (2 Tm 4:6-7). Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning Ps 30:5. Morning Cometh A Quotella Weeping that weeps me far away May bring the night and end the day. Endure: For the human heart is a finite flask, A bottle whose meager store of tears Night and pain may cause to flow. But even as the last tear falls Joy, as the light, lifts my heart and so, Cometh the dawn. In balance must all things lie. The source of nighttime tears allow Morning to come at last somehow. C. Dell Turney 4108 Little Fairfield Eureka, CA 95501 Prayer As an Act of Justice Mary Lou Theisen, 1. H. M. Since September, Sister Mary Lou has been involved in the Active Spirituality program, located in Seton Hall of Mount St. Joseph College, Mount St. Joseph, OH 45051. This is what Yahweh asks of you: only this, to act justly. to love tenderly. to walk humbly with your God (Mi 6:8). In this simple statement uttered through the mouth of the prophet Micah, God reveals to us for all times the essence of religion. Religion, in the purity of its meaning, is not an ethic nor a multiplication of actions, but a way of life--an integral act lived out in the intggrity of one's being. In this single act there is no dichotomy between acting justly, loving tenderly or walking humbly before God: one element flows from and feeds into the others, finding its true mehning only in conjunction with them. The purpose of this article is to show how true prayer (walking humbly with God), entered into in the integrity of our being, not only leads to actions of justice, but is in itself an act of justice. In his Dictionary of the Bible,~ John McKenzie points out that the Hebrew word sedek, which we translate as justice, is a very complex term embracing the concepts of judgment and righteousness. It is sometimes translated as integrity and implies a right balance born of fidelity to the truth of what something or someone is supposed to be. To be just or to act justly in the biblical sense, therefore, is first of all to be judged righteous or to be justified by God. To seek justice is to seek salvation or justification in truth. To seek justice is to seek God. To act justly is to tMcKenzie, John L., Dictionary of the Btble (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing CO. 1965). 349 351~ / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 act out of the truth of who we and others are in the authenticity of our being. This truth is discovered ~nd entered into in times of solitude, in times of walking humbly with God, when we are unable to hide behind our actions, our words, or any of the multiple walls we so often build around our true self. It is in solitude that we are forced to come face to face with our sinfulness and inability to save ourself. In solitude we also experience God's willingness to forgive, his power and desire to save (justify) us and all people. Let us reflect for a while on Jesus, to see this reality present in his prayer/life. In Hebrews 5:7-9 we read: During his life on earth, he offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears to the one who alone had the power to save him from death, and he submitted so humbly that his prayer was heard. Although he ~vas son. he learned obedience through suffering: but having been made perfect, he became for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation and was acclaimed by God with the title of high priest of the order of Melchizedek. St. Paul is here indicating that it was du.ring his time spent in intimate com-munion with his Father, in the solitude of the desert or on the hilltop, that Jesus came to realize and to accept who he was, to realize and to accept his call as the Messiah, the "Beloved Son," with all that this call meant for himself and for others. During these times of reflecting on what was happening in his own life in the light of the words of the prophets and psalms, Jesus came to the truth of his human condition as one destined for misunderstanding, betrayal, suffering, and a death from which he was unable to save himself: This is what I meant when I said, while 1 was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses. in the prophets and in the Psalms has to be fulfilled. He then opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and he said to them: So you see hoffit was written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead (Lk 24:44-47). More importantly, however, through his own reflections on Scripture, Jesus came to know and to trust in the truth of God's faithfulness which alone could and would justify him, and through him, all people: But now. thus says Yahweh: Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you: 1 have called you by your name. you are mine. Should you pass through the sea. 1 will be with you, or through rivers, they will not swallow you up. Should you walk through fire, you will not be scorched and the flames will not burn you. For 1 am Yahweh. your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior (Is 43: I-3). He said to me, You are my servant in whom I shall be glorified: while I was thinking, I have toiled in vain, I have exhausted myself for nothing: and all the while my cause was with Yahweh. my God was my strength. And now Yahweh has spoken, he who formed me to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him. to gather Israel to him (Is 49:3-5). This inner realization of who he was in truth and of the power of God's faithfulness working in and through him formed Jesus as an authentic person of justice, both in the biblical sense of one who receives his justification from God, and in practice. Being convinced in the core of his being that it was his Father's love and faithfulness which saved and justified him, Jesus could only act justly Prayer as an Act of Justice / 35"1 toward others for he knew that this gift of God's saving love was not meant for him alone: It is not enough for you to be my servant. 1 will make you the light of nations so my salvation may reach the ends of the earth (Is 50:6). I. Yahweh. have called you to serve the cause of right: I have taken you by the hand and formed you: I have appointed you as covenant of the people and light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison and those who walk in darkness from the dungeon (Is 42:6-7). As Donald Senior states so well in his insightful book Jesus--a Gospel Por-trait2 (p. 138): "From his intimate life of prayer with his Father and from a powerful searching of Scriptures, Jesus had forged the basic convictions that animated his life and ministry. Basic convictions about God as loving Father and about love as fundamental bond of human relationships were joined to an unshakable integrity that translated principle into action.~ The gospels tell us that this action at times took the form of speaking out against the social injustices of his day. He especially denounced the so-called religious leaders, not as much for their smugness and legalistic interpretation of religion as for their inability to recognize God as a God of love and their own lack of love and compassion: "But alas for you pharisees! You who pay your tithe of mint and rue and all sorts of garden herbs and overlook justice and the love of God" (Lk i 1:42). Jesus' conviction, born of his own reflection on Scripture and his own expe-rience, that God was a God of love whose love and salvation was gratuitously given to all--the just and the unjust, the clean and the unclean, the poor and the rich, the sinners and the outcasts as well as the good and self-righteous--led him not only to denounce the systemic injustices of his time, but more especially to live out of his conviction in his own daily encounters with others. He associated with the sinners, the outcasts, the sick, the poor, as well as with the rich and the righteous, showing by his very presence to them his acceptance and respect of them as individuals. By his gentleness, love and compassion for each one he offered them the experience of God's liberating and compassionate love for them, while always respecting their own integrity as persons and never forcing his vision on them (e.g., the rich you'ng man). It was precisely this attitude of Jesus toward others, his acceptance of sinner and righteous alike, which was the greatest affront to the religious leaders of his day for it contradicted their notion of religion: that one was saved by his own actions, by his minute observance of the law. Consequently, opposition toward Jesus and his teachings grew among the leaders. Jesus, well aware of this increas-ing hostility, was compelled to rely more and more on his Father's faithfulness to save him: Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say: Father. save me from this hour? But it was for this :Senior. Donald, C.P. Jesus, a Gospel Portrait (Dayton: Pflaum. 1975). 359 / Review for Religious, May-June 1982 very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name (Jn 12:27-28)! Jesus' human struggle to accept his salvation from God and not from his own actions reached its peak in the garden when he pi'ayed in agony, "Father, if it is possible let this chalice pass. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine." This total surrender of his person to God's saving plan for him brought Jesus then to his ultimate moment of prayer--his death on the cross. At the moment of death, when, we are told, one's entire life passes before one's eyes and the dying person often speaks a.word which expresses not only what is being experienced at that moment, but which somehow summarizes an entire lifetime, it was not surprising that Jesus spoke from his heart the opening words of Psalm 22. This psalm, which must have been one on which Jesus meditated often during his life and especially at the end when he knew his death was imminent, truly summarizes his life and death experiences. Although spoken in a moment of extreme agony and intense feeling of being abandoned by God, the psalm is not one of despair, but one of ultimate trust in God's power and willingness to save him as his ancestors who had trusted in God had been saved: Yet. Holy One. you who make your home in the praises of Israel. in you our fathers put their trust. they trusted and you rescued them: they called to you for help and they were saved. they never trusted you in vaifi (3-5). It is a psalm of praise to the God who is already saving him in spite of all the evidence to the contrary: Do not stand aside, Yahweh. O my strength, come quickly to my help . Then I will proclaim your name to my brothers, praise you in the full assembly: you who fear Yahweh. praise him! Entire race of Jacob, glorify him! Entire race of Israel, revere him! For he has not despised or disdained the poor man in his poverty, has not hidden his face from him, but has answered him when he called ( 19, 22-24). In this moment of abandonment to the mercy of God who is already saving him in his faithfulness, Jesus is very aware that the meaning of his life and death is not only for his own justification but for that of all peoples: You are the theme of my praise in the Great Assembly. I perform my vows in the presence of those Who ~ar him. The poor will receive as much as they want to eat. Those who seek Yahweh will praise him. Long life to their hearts. The whole earth from end to end. will remember Prayer as an Act of Justice / 353 and come back to Yahweh: All the families of the nations will bow down before him. For Yahweh reigns, the ruler of nations! Before him all the prosperous of the earth will bow down, And my soul will live for him. my children will serve him: Men will proclaim the Lord to generations still to come, His righteousness (justice, salvation) to a people yet unborn. All this he has done (25-31)! Thus Jesus' greatest act of justice in the biblical, as well as the practical, sense occurred at the moment of his death. In that very act of surrender of all that he was to God's saving plan for him, he became justified himself and by that same act won justification for all peoples: Altho.ugh he was son, he learnt to obey through suffering, but having been made perfect, he became for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation (Heb 5:8-9). ¯. in whom, through his blood, we gain our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins (Ep 1:7). What does this reflection on the prayer/life of Jesus have to say to us today as we strive to live an integrated life of prayer and justice? It means, first of all, that like Jesus we must learn to seek our own justification and that of others from God and not from our own actions, and to trust in his faithfulness to save us. Like Jesus, we must take time apart to reflect on our !ife in the light of Scripture and learn who we truly are and to what we have been called. In these times of quiet aloneness with God we will come to know ourselves in all of our weakness, sinfulness, and inability to save ourselves or anyone else. But, more importantly, we will also come to know who God is and in this light to know our true self as one already loved, forgiven, called and empowered by God through the blood of Jesus. As with Jesus, this inner conviction of who we are in truth and of the power of God's faithfulness working in and through us will form us as authentic persons of justici~ in the core of our being. Convinced of God's love and faithfulness which has already justified us by gratuitously forgiving our sinfulness in the blood of Jesus, we will be moved to act justly toward others. As with Jesus, this conviction will at times take the form of speaking out against the injustices of our day, of working to bring about a more just social order, and of supporting others who do this. In our daily life, it will affect ourattitude toward others, moving us to accept and affirm the integrity of each individual we encounter, for each has already been loved, forgiven and called to salvation by God. What greater act. of justice can we extend to another than to allow that person the space to discover and act out of his/her own authenticity as Jesus did with those he encountered', instead of forcing our vision on that person? Animated with the Spirit of Jesus we will, then, become."doers" of justice, of liberation in our world, each according to the call experienced in his/her honest encounter with God in prayer. However, like Jesus, in this very act of prayer itself, we will have .already entered into an act of justice. In coming before God in prayer we are acknowledg-ing our own inability~to save burselves and our need to be justified by God. In the 354 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 act of surrendering ourselves in openness to God's power to save us, we enter into the death of Jesus, crying out as he did from our own emptiness for God's saving opresence in our life, while at the same time gratefully accepting the justification we have already received through God's faithftilness to Jesus on the cross. Since through our baptism, as St. Paul tells us, we have been baptized into this death of Jesus, our prayers of surrender, of praise, of trust and gratitude, our prayers for mercy--entered into in the integrity of who we are and of who God is--are an integral part of the prayer of Jesus on the cross. Our prayers are the prayers of the Just One who came to bring justice and truth to all people, and who continues to do so in and through each person who accepts salvation from God. The greatest articulation of this prayer is, of course, the Eucharist. Here we actually participate, with gratitude (Eucharist--thanksgiving), in the eternal act of justification won by Jesus on the cross and reenacted each day "for the glory of God's name, for our own good and for the good of all the world." Moreover, because this death of Jesus into which we have been baptized was for the justification of all people for all time, every prayer of a baptized person affects the whole world for it can never be said in isolation. "A final thing that needs to be said about prayer is that it is always corporate. We often distinguish between private and public prayer, and to an extent this distinction is valid. But whether private or public, Christian prayer is always common, communal, corpo-rate. All Christian prayer is to our Father. in prayer we are united with our brothers and sisters, whether we are alone in our closet or together in our com-munity: we are united to the whole church. The prayer of the community is not a collection of individual prayers: it is common prayer out of our common plight to our common Lord in our common hope. We pray as part of the communion of saints, joining the whole people of God in all history and around the globe."3 Thus, as a person baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, and who has experienced in one's own life the love and saving power of God, the Christian is able to come before God in Jesus' name to offer to God in his/her own person all of the love and gratitude, the care, concern and work toward the establishment ¯ of the kingdom which is being experienced and lived out, knowingly or unknow-ingly, by every person in the world. As a person who experiences in one's own being sinfulness, selfishness, anger, frustration, fear and oppression of others, the baptized person can come before God as Jesus did on the cross, in behalf of the sinfulness of the world and cry out for mercy and forgiveness of sin for all people. As a person who experiences, even in times of prayer itself, emptiness, a search for meaning, boredom, ignorance, a feeling of rejection, a lack of faith and trust, the Christian can unite his/her own emptiness and need with the sufferings, the hunger and search for love and meaning, which exist among all people and, with them, accept his/her human condition and beg for salvation from God as Jesus did on 3Jen"nings. Theodore W., Jr., "Prayer, The Call for God." The Christian CentuG'. April 15, 1981, pp. 410-414. Prayer as an Act of Justice / 355 the cross. A baptized person can pray in this way, for in Jesus' Spirit we are all one before God. A call to pray in this posture is a call to be truly present in solidarity with all of humanity and all of creation which "still retains the hope of being freed, like us, from its slavery to decadence, to enjoy the same freedom and glory as the children of God" (Rm 8:21). It is a call to become one with the joys, sorrows, struggles and sufferings of all people and to accept in faith the saving love of God, "our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins" (Ep 1:7), so as to constantly offer to God the thanksgiv-ing and praise due him in justice. A call to stand before God in this manner of prayer in the authenticity of one's being is then, in a very real sense, an act of justice on behalf of the whole world, for it is a sharing in the surrendering love of Jesus. who throughout his life and especially in his death accepted his justification and that of all people from God who alone can save us from death and bring us into the kingdom of truth and justice. An Apostolic Spirituality for the Ministry of Social Justice by Max Oliva, S.J. Price: $.50 per copy, plu~ postage. Address: Review for Religious Rm 428 3601 Lindell Blvd. St. Louis, Missouri 63108 St. Ambrose's Theology of the Consecrated Virgin George E. Saint-Laurent Doctor Saint-Laurent, of the Department ~f Religious Studies at California State University (Fuller-ton). presented the content of this article as a paper to the American Academy of Religion. He may be addressed at the university. Fullerton. CA 92634. Occasionally we may observe that an individual was ahead of his or her time. More often we are scandalized that an earlier generation could have been so deaf to its prophets and so blind to its evils. The history of Christian thought discloses at least two persistent phenomena which have accompanied its dialectical development. First, when we human beings confront a dipolar aspect of the Christian mys-tery, we are almost irresistibly tempted to assume an either/or stance and opt for one extreme to the neglect of the other. We find it difficult to bear a truth which cannot be pressed into our neat categories but finds itself in a creative tension between two poles. And yet it is invariably in that delicate both/and position that Christian "catholicism" or "orthodoxy" has discovered its authentic home: both the divine and the human in both Christ and the Church, with full attention both to grace and to nature, both to faith and to reason, both to spirit and to matter. Second, since our very existence is historical, contextual, and societal, we human beings are predictably limited and conditioned by the foreshortened hori-zons of our own cultural world. As we attempt to interpret our experience in terms of Christ and make it intelligible, we find our perceptions to be prejudicial in their foci and linguistically determined in their expression. And yet the Christian believes that Christ, the subject of his or her faith, is uniquely and eternally one. We who come later can only sympathize with the giants of Christian antiquity, who, being human~ were incapable.of seeing every facet of the total Christian commitment in undistorted vision. Every Cho~stian (hinke,r risks the occupational St. Ambrose's Theology of the Virgin / 357 hazards of his enterprise: the unconscious bias, the unintentional obscurantism, the unnoticed dislocation of values, the quite innocent use of outrageously sexist, racist, or bigoted language, the accidental imbalance which is far more indebted to his or her concrete situation in this place at this time in the face of this crisis than it is to the actual data of Revelation. The purpose of this essay, is to investigate St. Ambrose's~ theglogy of the consecrated virgin, insofar as it emerges from his liturgical hymns and sermons. It is a view remarkably balanced and far less a victim of negative historical condition-ing than the portraits of his contemporaries 'in the Western Church. His was an era when Platonism, with its flight of the soul from the body, and Manichaeism, with its rejection of the human body and its sexuality as evil, were still significant intellectual currents, predisposing Christians to opt for spirit over (rather than with) matter. No less than a Jerome2 could exceed all bounds of good taste and propriety in his zealous promotion of virginity at the expense of female sexuality, marriage, and motherhood: No less than an Augustine3 could be so haunted by his own sexual confusion that he could grudgingly accept sex within marriage only if procreation were both physically possible and explicitly intended. Yet Ambrose, bishop of Mila'n, was able to nurture the highest esteem for consecrated virginity without denigrating the human body, disparaging females, or detracting from the goodness of Christian marriage.4 Unlike the vitriolic Jerome, torn as he was between a melancholic misogynism and an irrepressible delight in feminine companionship, Ambrose was able to insert into the Christian tradition a more humanistic appreciation of woman and her role. Unlike the self-alienated Augustine, torn as he was between an admira-tion for his mother Monica and a theological pessimism compounded by personal tragedy in his own sexual history, Ambrose was able to pass on a more integral and positive perspective. G. Tavard 'writes: "Ambrose was not only an enthusiastic promoter of the virginal life; he had also put forward what may well constitute the only profound theology of womanhood in the Latin world.~ ~For a life of St. Ambrose, see F. H. Dudden, The Ltfe and Times of St. Ambrose. 2 Vols. (Oxford: 1935): and A. Paredi, St. Ambrose: His L~fe and 7~mes. Tr. M. Costelloe (Notre Dame: 1964). 2On St. Jerome, see F: Murphy, Ed., A Monument to Saint Jerome (New York: 1952); and D. Wiesen, St. Jerome as a Satyrist (Ithaca: 1964). 3The literature on St. Augustine is vast. See, for instance, P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: 1967); and G. Bonner, St. Augustine of Hippo: L~fe and Controversies (New York: 1963). 4This subject has been much studied in recent years. See, for example, R. Ruether, "Mothers of the Church: Ascetic Women in the Late Patristic Age," Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. Ed. R. Ruether and E. McLaughlin (New York: 1979) 72-98: and eadem, "Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church." Religion and Sexism, Ed. R. Ruether (New York: 1974) pp. 150-183: M, Maxey, "Beyond Eve and Mary," Religion for a New Generation. 2d Ed., Ed. J. Needleman, et al. (New York: 1977) 264-277: D. Carmody, Women and Worm Religions (Nashville: 1979) 113-123: E. Clark and H. Richardson, Ed., Women and Religion: A Feminist Sourcebook of Christian Thought (New York: 1977), pp. 53-77. 5Tavard, Women in the Christian Tradition (Notre Dame: 1973), p. I00. 358 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 It is important to realize just how critical the fourth century was in Church history. It was a period of transition from the. status of a despised and proscribed minority to that of a state religion professed and promoted by the Emperor himself and by most of his s.ubjects. During the era of persecution, only persons of heroic courage, high moral aspirations, and deep faith had been willing to embrace Christianity with its concomitant risk to life and property. Now, however, it had become a distinct advantage socially, economically, and politically to convert, and masses of "average" human beings sought admission. The inevitable consequence was a cooling of fervor, with a compromised commitment to the full implications of the Gospel. ~ in order to forestall unworthy "conversions," the Church instituted a lengthy catechumenate for testing and training candidates before their baptism at the Easter Vigil. In order to preserve her credibility as "The Holy Church," the author-ities created an even more exhaustive and lengthy system of "canonical penance" for the rehabilitation of public sinners who repented. But there was also a more private and individual response in the extraordinary development of asceticism. Previously it had been the martyrs who had constituted the ideal of Christian perfection. Because of their bloody sacrifice, they had been idealized as the perfect disciples who had mystically died in the Lord and could therd'ore anticipate a glorious resurrection in the same Lord. Now it had become the ascetics who achieved a "white" or spiritual martyrdom by their lives of seclusion, self-discipline, and consecrated celibacy. Women as well as men pursued the new ideal. One could retreat into the wilderness (either literally or figu.ratively), and, far from the scandalous vanity and corruption of urban life, die to oneself daily through prayer, fasts, vigils, and the consecration of one's personhood in celibacy. There were the eremitical and semi-eremiticai structures of Anthony as well as the fully cenobitical communities of Pachomius, Eustathios, and Basil the Great.6 There was the growing pressure upon priests to live celibately.7 And there were the convents for women associated with the names of Paula, Eustochium, the Melanias, and Macrina.8 On the other hand, some cohsecrated virgins simply lived privately with their parents or in their own homes or even in the homes of clergymen, although the latter practice was continuously deplored and condemned by ecclesiastical authori-ties. 9 The celebrated sister of Ambrose, Marcellina, for instance, lived with her 6See D. Chitty, The Desert a Ot)' (Oxford: 1960): C. Frazee, "Anatolian Asceticism in the Fourth Century: Eustathios of Sebastea and Basil of Caesarea," The Catholic Historical Review66(1980), pp. 16-33; G. Saint-Laurent, "St. Basil of Caesarea and the Rule of St. Benedict," Diakonia 16 (1981), pp. 71-79. 7See C. Frazee, "The Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church. Church Histor.v 41 (1972). pp. 149-167. 8See, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, Life of St. Macrina, Ed. V. Callahan. Vol, 8 in W. Jaeger (Ed.), Works (Leiden: 1952). 9See D. Bailey, The Man-Woman Relation in Christian Thought (London: 1959), p. 33. St. Ambrose's Theology of the Virgin / 359 mother and a companion in Rome. Since no convents appear to have been available at Milan, the virgins in Ambrose's care must have resided with their parents. Ambrose himself implies that the native Milanese virgins were relatively few in number, whereas young women came to Milan from Piacenza, Bologna, i~nd Mauritania to celebrate the-rite of consecration. A maiden would solemnly vow her chastity as a bride of Christ in the church before a bishop, with a ritual closely paralleling that of earthly marriage. Accord-ing to Roman custom, a bride was to wear the stola (a long outer garment), receive a fiery-coloredflammeum (her bridal veil) from the priest, and vow her fidelity to h~r bridegroom in the presence of witnesses. A virgin enteri.ng into mystical espousal with Christ also wore a stola and received the flammeum Christi to betoken her new state of life, but both were of somber color. She also pronounced her vow before witnesses, who in her case were the whole community publicly assembled to voice their approving "Amen." We do not know the actual formula of consecration invoked within the Mila-nese liturgy, but we may suppose that it would closely resemble the long preface of consecration to be found in the Gelasian Sacramentary, whose provenance is from Rome about a century later.~° Drawing upon several incidental references in the writings of Ambrose and others, F. H. Dudden reconstructs the general shape of the ceremony thus:' The congregation, at which the bishop himself was the officiating minister, was solemnized with much pomp on one of the great festivals--in the case of Marcellina on the Feast of Epiphany: more usually, however, at Easter, when it was attended by the newly baptized wearing their white robes and carrying lighted tapers. The bishop delivered an address to the' virgin, and offered a solemn prayer. The girl then publicly pledged herself to a life of chastity. Next the bishop took the veil, which had been lying on the altar, and placed it over her head, with the words, q wish to present you as a chastg virgin to Christ.' A benediction was then recited, to which the congregation responded 'Amen." At some point in the service Psalm xlv was chan!ed, and possibly some hymns in praise of virginity were sung." By virtue of her consecration, the "bride of Christ" became a special responsi-bility of her bishop, who was required to visit her regularly, open the Scriptures to her, and impart instructions to her about her duties of state. Although she was separated from the other women in the asseinbly by a screen, she was still believed to,possess a place of honor. Women would sometimes draw near to the enclosure in order to request the kiss of peace from consecrated virgins. As bishop of Milan, Ambrose fulfilled many roles which proved decisive for the later history of the Western Church. Defender of Nicene orthodoxy, champion of the Church's freedom from imperial control, channel of eastern theology to the ~0See I. Mohlberg. Ed. Liber Sacramentorum Romanae Aeclesiae Ordinis Anni Circufi (Sacramenta-rium Gelasianum). Rerum Ecclesiasticarum Documenta Series Major. Fontes IV (Rome: 1960). pp. 124-128. On the consecration of virgins, see P. Camelot. "Virginity." New Catholic Encyclopedia 14 (1967). pp. 702-703. ~tDudden. op. cir. p. 151. ~0 / Review for Religious, May-June, 1982 Latin world,!2 creator and reformer of public worship,Is spiritual father of the great Augustine: Ambrose was all of these and much more as one of the Four Great Latin Fathers.14 But the special object of Ambrose's pastoral concern throughout his years of episcopal service was the consecrated life. Ambrose has been called "The Father of Latin Hymnody.''1S Of the nineteen liturgical hymns which may be ascribed to him with greater or less certitude, five are directly pertinent to our subject, while a sixth holds.indirect interest. Since it is primarily through the sacred liturgy that Catholic and Orthodox Christians have always appropriated their beliefs and values, we may very well be confronting here effectual channels of Ambrosian thought far more significant on the popular level than any discourse could ever have been. Our first three hymns extol Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as the perpetually virginal woman who was nonetheless made marvelously fruitful by the interven-tion of God. A fourth hymn glorifies a popular virgin martyr. A fifth hymn praises Christ, the Spouse of virgins. Finally, our sixth hymn expresses the fundamental spirituality of the consecrated women. Ambrose is remembered as an enthusiastic admirer of the Blessed' Virgin, and he holds a preeminent place in the development of Mariolggy. In lain surgit hora tertia,16 a hymn composed for the liturgical hour of Terce, our poet recalls how Christ entrusted his mother to the Apostle John. The strophes pertinent to our investigation, together with this writer's English translation, are as follows: celso triumphi uertice matri Ioquebatur suae: en f!lius, mater, tuus, apostole, en mater tua. praetenta nuptae foedera alto docens mysterio, ne uirginis partus sacer matris pudorem laederet. From lofty pillar of triumph ¯ He was speaking to his mother: Mother, behold thy son, Apostle. behold thy. mother. Covenants of marriage pretended Taught he with deep mystery, Lest the sacred bearing of a virgin Cast hurt upon a mother's honor. The hymn Intende, qui regis Israel17 was intended "for the Christmas liturgy, and it was an ideal opportunity for Ambrose to blend two of his favorite themes: the glories of the Word Incarnate and the wonders of Christ's virginal conception and birth through Mary. Jesus and Mary are praised together from the second stanza through the fifth. The text, together with this writer's translation, follows: ~2See Saint-Laurent, "St. Ambrose and the Eastern Fathers," Diakonia 15 (1980), pp. 23-31. t3See idem. "St. Ambrose as Channel of Eastern Liturgical Customs to the West," Diakonia 13 (1978), pp. 101-110. t4Together with Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. tSFor example, see M. McGuire, "Ambrose. St.," New Catholic Encyclopedia I (1967). p. 375; R. Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry (London: 1874), pp. 87-88: F. Raby, A Histoo, of Christian Latin Poetry 2d. Ed. (Oxford: 1953). pp. 32-36. ~rFor a critical text, see W. Bulst, Ed., Hymni latiniantiquissimi." LXXV Psalmi II (Heidelberg: 1956), p. 41. ~TFor a ~ritical text, see ibid., p. 43. St. Ambrose's Theology of the Virgin / 361 uenL redemptor gentium. ostende partum uirginis, miretur omne saeculum, tails decet partus deo. non ex uirili semine, sed mystico spiramine uerbum dei faetum est earo fructusque uentris floruit. aluus tumescit uirginis, claustrum pudoris permanet, uexilla uirtutum micam, uersatur in templo deus, proeedat e thalamo suoo pudoris aula regia, geminae gigans substantiae, ¯ alacris oecurrat uiam. Come, redeemer of the nations, Demonstrate a virgin's bearing, Let all the world be moved with wonder, So great a bearing befits our God. Not from human instigation, But from mystic inspiration Word of God did flesh become And fruit of womb did flower. Swollen grows a virgin's womb, Door of chastity remains, Virtues' beacons glitter forth, Engaged is God within his temple. ¯ Springs forth he from nuptial chamber, Royal palace of chaste modesty Giant of twofold nature he, Speedily runs he his course. The claustrum pudoris permanet of the fourth strophe is strikingly similar to phrases in Ambrose's De institutione virginis,~8 and expresses a doctrinal concern important to him: the virginity of Mary before, during, and after the birth of Jesus. Ambrose refers to the womb of Mary as aula regali uteri virginalis in that same work,!9 and g~es on to state: "Aula regialis is the virgin, who is subject not to man but to God alone." The hymn Inluminans altissimus2° is a hymn written for the observance of Epiphany, with its threefold orientation towards Jesus' baptism in the Jordan, his manifestation to the Magi, and his first miracle at Cana. Our immediate interest is focused upon the third stanza, the text of which follows, together with the present writer's translation: seu stella partum uirginis caelo micans signauerit et hoc adoratum die praesepe magos duxerit, A star shining from heaven Will have shown a virgin's giving birth And on this day will have led The Magi to adore the crib. Christ, "the most high Enlightener," has beenborn of a virgin, and so a radiant star in turn becomes a sign, bathing the crib in its light for the Magi to see. From the preceding three passages it is evident that Ambrose d~lights in dwelling upon Mary's perpetual, yet fruitful, virginity. Mary is the womanly model of the consecrated virgin par excellence, and her miraculous conception of Jesus by the power of. the Holy Spirit constitutes a quasi-paradigmatic event. The consecrated virgin, may approach the regal dignity of Mary through her own state of life, and so become spiritually in her own body a royal palace for God. The divine maternity is a privilege unique to Mary, of course, yet her self-donation to ~Ambrose. De institutione virginis 8.52 (PL 16.320). ~91bid. 12.79 (PL 16.324). 20For a critical text. see Bulst. op. cit. p. 45. 362 / Review for Religious, May-June 1982 God is imitable. Ambrose suggests that the Word can mystically enter into union with the consecrated Virgin for spiritual fruitfulness in the service of others. Our fourth hymn, Agnes beatae uirginis,2t was composed especially for a litur-gical celebration of the Feast of St. Agnes (January 21). It is effectively a poetic paraphrase of a sermon of Ambrose wherein he recounts the martyrdom, of this famous young maiden, a homily which he actually preached for that feast and which is found in his De virginibus.2~ The bishop's basic theme is praise for the valor of a maiden who willingly died as a witness to her faith in Christ. In the first stanza, Ambrose announces that it is the feastday of Agnes, who consecrated her virginity through martyrdom. In the second stanza, our author marvels'that such a child, too young for marriage, should nonetheless be suffi-ciently mature to give her life in testimony--and that at a time when even adults were wavering in the" face of persecution. In succeeding stanzas, Ambrose narrates the story which his audience knew so well. Agnes deliberately sought out martyr-dom, and presented herself as a bride about to meet her Heavenly Bridegroom, her mystic dowry being her very blood. When commanded to offer idolatrous wor-ship, she condemned the altar-fire and promise, d to exiinguish it with her blood. In concluding stanzas, our poet dwells upon Agnes' dignity upon the deathblow, as she drew her garments about herself in chaste modesty. The entire hymn is significant for our purpose, and so all eight'strophes, together with this writer's translation, are here reproduced: Agnes beatae uirginis natalis est, quo spiritum caelo refudit deb#um pio sacrata sanguine. matura maro,rio fuit matura nondum nuptiis, nutabat in uiris fides, cedebat e.ffessus senes. metu parentes territi claustrum pudoris auxeram soluit fores custodiae .tides teneri nescia. prodire quis nuptum putet, sic laeta uultu ducitur, nouas uiro.ferens opes dotata censu sanguinis. aras ~fandi numinis adolere taedis cogitur, respond#: baud tales faces sumpsere Christi uirgines. hic ignis extinguit fidem, Of the blessed virgin Agnes It is the bi~'thday, on which she Poured back her spirit owed to heaven ' Consecrated b~ her faithful blood. Mature was she for martyrdom ' Though for marriage not yet mature, Faith was faltering among men, Conceding old men to be weak. Terrified by fear her parents Had provided a prison of shame Faith dissolved the gates of custody Not knowing how to be,restrained. One might think her advancing to wed So~,joyful in countenance is she led Bringing new wealth to her bridegroom With dowry of her blood endowed. Altars of a devilish god by Tortures she is pressed to worship, Answers she: Not such fires Have Christ's virgins chosen. This flame blots out the faith, For a critical text, see ibid., p. 46. -'~Ambrose, De virginibus 1.25-29 (PI. 16.-189-190). ~ St. Ambrose's Theology of the Virgin / 363 haec flamma lumen eripit. hic hic ferite, ut profluo eruore restinguam focos. percussa quam pompam tulit ham ueste se Iolam lege?ls curare pudoris praestitit, ne quis retectam cerneret. in morte uiuebat pudor uultumque texerat manu, terram genu flexo petit lapsu uerecundo cadens. This fire extinguishes the light. Here destroy me, here, that with Spilt blood I may quench the flames. Struck down what splendor she showed For covering her total person She displayed her care for modesty Lest anyone should see her unclothed. In her death, chastity was living As with hand she veiled her face, With bent knee she besought the earth Falling forward with modest movement. Ambrose was resolutely incarnational, not only in his doctrinal convictions, but also in his pastoral instincts. For him, the cult of the martyrs--like the cult of the virgin--was but an obvious implicate of any sound and balanced Christology. Grace could transfigure the material, the earthy, and the human into a sacramental epiphany of the spiritual, the. heavenly, and the divine. It was inevitable that Ambrose shot~ld exploit the

Issue 66.4 of the Review for Religious, 2007. ; 66.4 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 V! 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 .]csuits of the A~issoori Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulcvard ¯ St. Louis, A'lissouri 63108-3393 "li~lephone: 314-633-4610 ° Fax: 314-633-4611 E-Marl: rcvicw@slu.cdn ¯ \.\;eh site: www.revicwforrcligious.org Manuscripts, books fi~r review, and correspondence with the editor: Revicw for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Bonlcvard ¯ St. Louis, A'IO 63108-3393 Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth A'lcl)onoogh OP ° Pontifical Collcge Josephinum 7625 North High Street ¯ Colnmhus, Ohio43235 POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ 1:O. Bo× 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, ~\~issouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2007 Review fi~r Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contaiued in this issue of Review for Religions for pcrsoual or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sectious 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must hear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permissiou is NOT extended to copying for commercial distrihution, 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. view for religious Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Adviso~7 Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonoiagh OP Eugene Hensell OSB M~ry Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jud~" Sharp Martin Erspamer OSB Kathleen Hughes RSCJ LoOis and Angela Menard Bishop .Ter~ Ste!b.SVD Miriam D. Ukeriti~. CSJ QUARTERLY 66.4 2007 contents prisms 340 Prisms 342 living faith Credible Witnesses Regina Siegfried ASC revisits the martyrdom of five sisters of her congregation fifteen years after the event to invite us all to reflect on what it means to be credible witnesses. 350 358 Priesthood 101: Lessons from a Barrio Antonio (T.J.) Martinez SJ draws upon conversations and experiences with parishioners to propose six pragmatic guidelines on how a new priest ministers to a Latino Catholic congregation. Personal and Group Reflection Questions Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety Mark E Plaushin OSFS proposes Salesian spirituality as offering a paradigm for Catholic pastoral praxis on the battlefield which can mitigat.e anxiety and restore spiritual resilience. Reflective Questions for Personal and Group Use Review for Religious 377 prayer in our life Contemplative Gifts Carolyn Humphreys OCDS reflects upon the richness of the gift of a contemplative orientation to life and our need to guard and nourish what we receive by a manner of living that is rooted in humility. Prayer Suggestion 386 Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life Elissa Rinere CP traces some of the struggles of the last forty years regarding Eucharist as celebration, Eucharist as sacrament received, and Eucharist as object of adoration. 401 Jesus and Mary ~, The Christ Child, the Father of the Man A. Paul Dominic SJ raises the question: How can adult Christians celebrate and enjoy Christmas for what it is in our faith lives? Prayer 412 The Mother of the Lord in Byzantine Spirituality John M. Samaha SM introduces us to the rich, but different, ways that the veneration of Mary permeates the entire life of Byzantine Christianity. departments ~ 424 Scripture Scope: A Preface to Reading Matthew 429 Canonical Counsel: Conscience and Confidentiality from the Members' Perspective 434 Book Reviews 443 2007 Indexes 66.4 2007 prisms 340 St. Paul identified us Christians as "ambassadors of reconciliation." As Paul says, God has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Co 5:18). In the large-scale picture of history, we often have not lived up to that role, either as individuals or as a church community. The fact that we can identify wars as reli-gious wars does not fit well with people who are meant to be known as reconcilers. Probably even worse are the examples from history of the fight-ing between Christian nations and even between Christians in the same nation. One does not have to be an avowed pacifist to acknowledge that something is terribly amiss when the faith that holds us to be brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ has. so little effect in our behavior. There is an evident gap between the faith statements that we might intellectualize about and the faith reality thatis meant to reside in our hearts. We might even take our example of divi-sion into the lived experience of our parish and church life today and our religious community life as well. It makes little difference the iden-tifying labels we use, whether pre-Vatican I~ vs. post-Vatican II, liberal vs. conservative, tradi-tional vs. contemporary. The reality is that there is often present a "warring" mentality that con-siders one side the enemy or the "bad guys." Review for Religious Too often Catholics of whatever stripe are more intent on "defeating" or "dismissing" the opposition or those of a different opinion or practice. Quoting man-made laws, as Jesus tried to point out to the scribes and Pharisees, is not the way to be a negotiator or a reconciler. What does an ambassador of reconciliation need first of all? An ambassador needs to be at the heart of the Christian message, following the one commandment--to love God with all one's heart, with all one's soul, with all one's strength, and with all one's mind, and to love one's neighbor as oneself. And an ambassador needs to pray. To pray means dialoguing with God, and dialogue means both to talk and to listen. Learning to talk and to listen to God carries over into being able to listen and to talk to others, my neighbors. We may not need to learn how to talk, but we certainly need to learn how to listen, and maybe to pray, and even to really love our neighbor. Loving, praying, and dialoguing are necessary activities for an ambassador, necessary activities to learn how to do for one who identifies as a Christian. As we see in the Gospels, Jesus is the first "ambas-sador of reconciliation," the One sent by the Father who loved the world so much. But to be a person who dia-logues, to be one who negotiates, to be a reconciler seems so hard for us to do. It is only in our devotion to Jesus that we find ourselves empowered to live in such a way. The church and our world have never had a greater need of such ambassadors. Like the Christmas gift of Christ, we pray that we may be ambassadors of reconcilation, "a gift that keeps on giving." David L. Fleming SJ 341 ES. The editorial staff wishes all our subscribers and readers a blessed Advent time of hope and expectation and a Christmastime celebration of peace andreconciliation. 66.4 2007 REGINA SIEGFRIED Credible Witnesses living faith 20 October 1992--Rebel soldiers shoot Mary Joel Kolmer ASC and Barbara Ann Muttra ASC, their guard Peter, and two ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Cease Fire Monitoring Group) soldiers, on a stretch of road to Barnersville, Liberia, West Africa. 23 October 1992--Five armed NPFL (National Patriotic Front of Liberia) men arrive at the sisters' home in Gardnersville and kill Kathleen McGuire ASC, Agnes Mueller ASC, and Shirley Kolmer ASC. 31 October 1992--Early-morning phone calls and radio announcements break the hearts of fam-ily, friends, and sisters as they learn that the five Adorers of the Blood of Christ died days ago. Regina Siegfried ASC has written often for this journal. She may be addressed at 4042A Botanical; St. Louis, Missouri 63110. Her e-mail: ReginaSiegfried@sbcglobal.net Review for Religious October 2007--Fifteen years hold enough days to dull the pain most of the time, to create narratives that may or may not match the deep stories of community myth, and to reflect on the meaning of lives poured out. Martyrs and prophets--the words, are appropriate for these honored dead, but we would rather have our five sisters still living and laughing in our midst. Words can be too easy, unless they call us today to be courageous in a world still violent, broken, war-ravaged, and suffering. How do we respond, not only to their valiant lives, but also to our own deepest longings to be credible witnesses? In the early days of Christianity, the word martyrs meant witnesses, disciples of Jesus, those who proclaimed his life, death, and resurrection and who preached the good news of the household of God in their society and culture. Luke 24:48 says clearly: "You are witnesses of these things." Acts 1:8 indicates the same: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." In Acts 10:40-4.1 we read: "This man God .raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." By the 2nd century, execution for faith became associated with martyrdom. But martyrs are first and foremost witnesses to the gospel and messengers of a new way to live. The Constitution of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ uses the phrase credible witness in section 18 on gospel pov-erty: "To give credible witness to the liberating poverty of Christ in the world today and to grow toward poverty of spirit, we live in evangelical simplicity, personally and as community." To be credible witnesses can often mean losing much of what society holds precious. Status, material goods, 66.4 2007 Siegfried ¯ Credible Witnesses Credible witnesses are prophets who speak truth to authority, who advocate for the powerless, and who become voices for the silent, comfortable lifestyle, and easily expendable income can voluntarily or involuntarily fall away. Credible witnesses see beyond and beneath the obvious, the material, and the sufficient to live in solidarity with those who hold enough invisible wealth and power and grace to convert even witnesses to a new way of living. Credible witnesses are prophets who speak truth to authority, who advo-cate for the powerless, and who become voices for the silent. They bear witness to the pain, suf-fering, and anguish in the lives of others simply by being there with them, sharing in the blatant unfair-ness and violence of lives that deserve much better. The Adorers killed in Liberia were credible witnesses long before bullets claimed their lives, long before their blood soaked the soil of a war-torn country whose peo-ple were precious and dear to them. The details of their lives and deaths are now familiar and recorded elsewhere. Those who knew them recall quite vividly lives dedicated to the poor, to women, to children, to the.sick, and to students years before they went to Liberia to witness to the gospel there and to discover a different face of God, a countenance that would draw them to insist on return-ing to share again in the passion of a people suffering in a relentless and seemingly endless civil war. Even as the conflict slowly escalated, Barbara Ann was more concerned about getting a grant to purchase five Hondas "so some of our physician assistants can go to these villages for supervision. Some villages are over ten Review for Religious miles interior over rough dusty roads" (21 March 1987 letter from Klay, Liberia, to her friend Meg Wittenbrink). After a year in Liberia, Agnes wrote on 24 May 1989 to Angelita Myerscough ASC: "I'm sure I am not the same person who came a little over a year ago now. I feel my life is much richer for having spent time with these people. They have given me every bit as much as I have shared With them." On 21 April 1990, writing to Marisa Nardoni ASC in Tanzania, Mary Joel reflected on the readings after Easter: All the readings are from the Acts of the Apostles and it is so reassuring to read how strong they were now that his Spirit has taken over in them. And how we should be because the Spirit is with us and is here, guiding us, leading us on. It must have been something like the saints experienced when they were put on the line for Jesus, how they knew that he, the Lord, was their Savior and that life had meaning for them and that they could stand up for him, even though it meant being killed. It is such a powerful message. And he can do so much in us and through us, if we're only open to him. Barbara Ann, Agnes, and Mary Joel were in Liberia for the people, not to get killed. Years of service in the United States were background for more service to people in Liberia. Not naive, they knew the risks of being with people who were suffering more than they themselves were. Kathleen and Shirley had reputations in the United States as bold and fearless advocates in the face of injustice. When Shirley was provincial of the then Ruma province, she sent Mailgrams to Tom Enders, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, to the Guatemalan Embassy, to Senator Charles Percy, Senator Alan Dixon, and Representative Paul Simon to express "deep con-cern regarding four workers missing in Guatemala and 66.4 2007 Siegfried ¯ Credible Witnesses the disappearance of two Dominican nuns of Grand Rapids, Michigan, I urge you to support HR 101, stop-ping U.S. aid to Guatemala." In 1987 Shirley wrote a lengthy essay, "Human Suffering and Its Consequences for World Peace," maintaining that "it is the very lives of many of our brothers and sisters who live a life of suf-fering, an existence that borders on the intolerable every day." Even before Kathleen became the peace-and-justice coordinator for the then Ruma province, she drafted a "Possible Diocesan Pastoral Letter Regarding Peace and the War in the Persian Gulf" when she ministered in the Jefferson City, Missouri, diocese. She called for "the whole Catholic community to pray for a peace which is life-sustaining for all our sisters and brothers. We have to acknowledge that we are citizens of a nation which readily uses military force to secure its national interests and to attain its political objectives all around the world." These are simply small examples from the lives of women who lived as credible witnesses years before they were killed in Liberia. If we consider them martyrs, we can just as readily regard them as prophets. Prophets speak truth to author-ity; prophets proclaim the coming of the household and reign of God in season and out of season. Like roses in December, prophets are .unexpected messengers, wit-nesses, and signs of God's presence among us. Prophets are the most credible of witnesses, for their lives are their words and their words are their lives. Standing and stay-ing in solidarity with the suffering, the neglected, and the forgotten, prophets choose life in the face of death and pour out compassion for people bent down by injustice and oppression. Prophets might flinch in the face of vio-lence and injustice, but they do not run away. Fifteen years removed from the days of raw grief, dis-belief, and pain offer us a cautionary tale. Life and the Review for Religious mission and our ministries have indeed moved on, devel-oped, and deepened, something the five absent from our midst would want. The caution comes with the tendency to settle for the mediocre, to choose complacency and comfort, to opt for the safe, for the familiar and easy, because we might - fear the new, the unexpected, and a different vision for our congregation. Our charism is wild, fierce, fiery, ten-der, and urgent. It impels us to live our ordinary lives with extraordinary passion, grace, and commitment. Violence seems to circle our globe like pollen caught in the air currents. Although Liberia and Croatia, where ASC sisters also work, seem to have reached some modicum of nor-mal existence, violence erupts in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq. Children and women are trafficked; slavery is not as over as we once thought. Today, in postwar Croatia, our sisters are witnesses and prophets, living the gospel message even with "many sisters left with serious repercussions and traumas which they feel to this day," Sister Ancilla Vukoja ASC reports. When their Serb Orthodox neighbors expected to be turned away from the drug rehab center the sisters had opened in Aleksandrovac (in the vicinity of Banja Luca) because of the violence they had committed against the sisters and other Croatians, the sisters told them, "We read the Scriptures and in these words we find the forgive-ness and strength to be persons of love toward all." Their martyrdom is in giving witness to forgiveness and recon-ciliation. Some of them remember the trauma of being Prophets are the most credible of witnesses, for their lives are their words' and their words are their lives. 66.4 20O7 Siegfm'ed ¯ Credible Witnesses forced to cross a mine-laced bridge over the Sava River following in the exact steps of the sister leading them through as they sang the Magnificat. When a journalist asked Sister Maristella how she felt and what she thought about, knowing that she was facing death, she replied: "All I could think about was the many other people who were dealt the same fate. I felt that my life was no more important than theirs. I thought that it was even harder for them because, unlike us, they had children who would be orphans." The Adorers who walked that path traveled in spirit with the sisters who fled the Sino-Japanese war in China in 1937, with the ASCs who were held hostage several times and narrowly escaped death in the Congo between 1959 and 1964, with the sisters who stayed and suffered with the people in Guinea Bissau during the civil war there, and with the ASCs who trudged on a road out of Liberia in 1990. As credible witnesses, the congrega-tion has a history of walking difficult routes because the charism impels us to stay beyond the expected time and to remain with people who are precious to us. Sister Ancilla writes: Times like those, however, sometimes uncover unknown heroic potential, readiness to suffer and offer one's life for others, for goodness and love toward others. I can-not but think of our sisters who voluntarily remained in Bosnia during the fiercest conflicts and danger, sharing the fate of the Catholics in that country. They could have retreated to safety but did not out of solidarity with those who could not leave because they did not have the necessary documentation. They realized then more than ever that they were needed by their people. They were a sign to which a suffering people were able to turn and where they could find a trace of hope and protection. Our charism, our slain sisters, and our own hearts call us to live in deep compassion with all the pain and suffer- Review for Religious ing of the least among us. That stance and life make us the best we are meant to be because our charism pulses with the life of all the people of the world. Our charism is wild, fierce, fiery, tender, and urgent. We need to be where the need is greatest. Are we? Background Resources Boehmer, Clare, ASC. Echoes in Our Hearts. Ruma, Illinois: Adorers of the Blood of Christ, 1994. Konieczny, Stanley. Acting in the Most Noble Tradition: The Life and Ministry of the Adorers' Five Martyrs of Charity. ASC Profiles 14. Rome: International Center of Spirituality, Adorers of the Blood of Christ, 1999. Kolmer, Elizabeth, ASC. "The Death of Five Adorers of the Blood of Christ and the Changing Meaning of Martyrdom." U.S. Catholic Historian 24:3 (Summer 2006): 149-164. Okure, Teresa, Jon Sobrino, and Felix Wilfred, eds. Rethinking Martyrdom. SCM-Canterbury Press, 2003. Schubeck, Thomas L., SJ. "Salvadoran Martyrs: A Love That Does Justice." Horizons 28:1 (Spring 2001): 7-29. Siegfried, Regina, ASC. "Choose Life: Reflections Ten Years after Five Deaths," Review for Religious 61:5 (September-October 2002): 472- 480. Vukoja, Ancilla, ASC. "How the Sisters in the Zagreb Region Lived Their Charism during the War and the Postwar Period (particularly in the vicinity of Banja Luka)." May 2007. 16 profili di testimoni della Cbiesa in ltalia. Comitato preparatorio del IV Convengo ecclesiale nazionale (a cura di) Speranza del mondo. 349 66.4 2007 ANTONIO MARTINEZ Priesthood 101: Lessons from a Barrio d s I rushed into the sacristy for my first Mass in Spanish only a week after being ordained, my heart was beating fast. I had not spoken Spa.nish for eight years. I had just been assigned to our Jesuit parish, Sagrado Corazdn, in the segundo barrio in E1 Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border. The parish serves a poor, immigrant, Latino Catholic congregation. My fears about celebrat-ing this Mass increased when a young Mexican woman holding a blanketed newbbrn asked me to bless her baby at Mass. Recognizing that I was new to the parish, she offered instructions on how I should proceed. She would approach me at the presider's chair before the concluding blessing, cradle her baby in my arms, and then kneel as I went and raised it over th~ altar, in front of the congrega-tion, as an offering to God. "What in the world?" I thought to myself. I wondered if I had heard her correctly. But, having just graduated from one of the finest schools of theology in the country, Antonio Martinez SJ, newly ordained but back in more studies, lives at John LaFarge House; 6 Sumner Road; Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Review ~or Religious I saw in this request an instance of everything I was not to do--do not make too many distinctions between the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of the people, do not over-ritualize any of the liturgical celebrations, and do not present yourself as so distinct a mediator of God's grace that the people minimize their own close relation-ship with Christ. Behind each of these admonitions was a "theol-ogy from below," teaching that God, through the Holy Spirit, speaks directly to his people and that the church's ministers can learn from them as well as teach them. Mentally brandishing my line of graduate degrees and sensing an opportunity to instruct the faithful, I politely yet briefly explained to her the idea of a "theology from below" which advocated a more lim-ited function of the office of the priest. Dismissing her until later, I told her I would bless her baby after Mass, on the outside steps of the church, before she and her family headed back home. Two days later I recognized the same lady I had met in the sacristy on Sunday as she humbly made her way to the priedieu before the altar dedicated to La Virgen de Guadalupe. As she finished her rosary, I purposely went near so that she migh~ thank me for both enlightening and empowering her. She came towards me with a shy smile. Graciously thanking me for the quick blessing over In ,their spirituality Latino Catholics 'understand that there, is a sacred distance between God and ~his people that is mediated by the sacred functions of a priest. 66.4 2007 Martinez * Priesthood 101: Lessons from a Barrio her baby, she also said she had been thinking and praying more about this "theology from below." Then, without showing any resentment or anger, but also without any hesitation, she simply said in her hushed Spanish, "You know, Father, I'm also that theology from below." She left as unobtrusively and reverently as she came. Her simple and direct comment left me frozen in my tracks, and then I felt a wave of shame and embarrass-ment. Everything I thought I knew about being a priest paled in comparison with what this one Latina woman had now taught me. Unassuming and unpretentious, she had just shattered my theological and presbyteral pre-sumptions, employing the very method that made them so convincing and dominant in the first place. With one sentence she had sent me to figure out what this barrio congregation wanted and expected from their priest--and could teach me. And there was little time to do this before I had to leave for my next assignment. From the numerous experiences and conversations I had with the parishioners, six axioms arose on how to be an effective Catholic priest to them. I think many Latino populations would agree with them, whether parishes or schools. I offer them, not as theologies or spiritualities, but as practical helps toward seeing and appreciating the Catholic priesthood from a Latino point of view. 1. Eres un sacerdote, dirige tu pueblo. / Maintain the distinction between the ministerial priesthood and the priest-hood of the people. Many Latinos draw a clear distinction between the priesthood of the people and their priest. While there exists a connection, the "special character" about which the ordination rite speaks in its introduction not only results from centuries of theological exploration, but more immediately is sensed in the faith of the people I was sent to serve. The ministerial priesthood, through the bestowal of sacred orders in a line from the first apostles, Review for Religious puts the ordained man in a position of special responsibil-ity, with the expectation that he fulfill the important task of following in the image of Christ by liturgically gath-ering, proclaiming, and consecrating. Latino Catholics continue to insist that this belongs to the ordained priest-hood, for in their spirituality they understand that there is a sacred distance between God and his people that is mediated by the sacred functions of a priest. This distance gives meaning to their worship and praise of God, who is among them yet distinct from them. And, while the parishioners with whom I spoke note that this does not make the ministerial priesthood better than the priest-hood of the people, it does maintain a difference, both in character and in function, which positively and directly affects their relationship with God. 2. Dales tu bendicidn. / A blessing from a priest means something. While canon law clearly outlines the importance of a blessing from a priest, it is the parishioners at Sagrado Corazdn who have emphasized this fact. Before and after every Sunday Mass, I was approached by large numbers of Latino Catholics, young and old, asking for blessings over themselves, their families, and their various religious items and' sacramentals. For them, the priest speaks not only on behalf of the people, but, with great humility and unworthiness, also speaks on behalf of Christ and his church. In so doing, priests function in persona Christi when they give a blessing, making Christ a more immedi-ate reality wherein they, their children, and all the things blessed represent both an offering up to God and God's return of that offering to them in their lives. Ritualized gestures in accordance with the church's instructions only accentuate this reality for a culture where actions speak louder than words. 3. Saluda al pueblo. / Kiss their babies, hug their grand-mothers, and shake everyonek hands. At some parishes, on 66.4 2007 Martinez * Priesthood I O1: Lessons from a Barrio a few occasions (both weekdays and Sundays), I have noticed priests entering and leaving the sacristy or church without saying hello to people nearby. The laypersons gathered for Mass have, of course, enough to do greeting one another, and I do not wish to focus overly on the pre-sider. But I have found that, for Latino congregants, the absence of greeting from their priests strikes them as not only odd but rude. They come to church to praise God, be with each other, and be with their priest. Far from giv-ing the priest a measure of prestige, his failure to interact with his parishioners at the end of Mass alienates them from himself and the church. The congregants from this culture feel most included when they get some "face time" with Father, which in turn reminds them of their impor-tance as the Body of Christ. Moreover, in an age where any "touch" from a priest raises suspicion in some people, Latino Catholics, at least in this barrio, expect and appre-ciate a warm, tangible greeting from their priest, whether it is a kind embrace, a firm handshake, or a kiss on their baby's forehead (this last one especially, according to a Jesuit priest serving in another barrio). 4. Presentate como un padre. / Wear your clerics. Clerical clothing has sometimes raised problems, espe-cially during and shortly after the height of the horrific sexual-abuse scandal in the church. Latino Catholics in the barrios, however, want their priests to look like priests when working as priests. Our parish sits along the Mexican border, and the sight of our church and of priests in clerics gives people hope and a sense of home after a long, dangerous, and even abusive journey. Furthermore, far from looking for their priests to blend in and be their buddies .and far from looking down on clerical garb as old-fashioned, the Latino culture likes clothing to reflect well-defined roles, for it helps people avoid any ambigu-ous conduct in their relationship with priests. Then, too, Review for Religious clerical garb, when not abused, stands as a symbol of ser-vice and of respect for God, the church, and the congre-gation; it is a witness to the Catholic faith they are proud of. This symbol of their faith is something Latinos cling to most especially as they migrate to foreign places and cultures where they may suffer abuse simply because of who they are. 5. Portate como un angel /ddbere to and model a higher standard of behavior. Latino Catholics have always looked for a higher standard of behavior in their priests, even if they have not always found it. For them, once you stand as an official of the church, the sacred oils and your public vows remind every-one of their quest as God's people not only to be good but to become holy. How priests act, then, either fosters the destiny of every human being to be with God, or under-mines it. Not only should a priest behave well, but he should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. He should not only practice the evangelical counsels of pov-erty, chastity, and obedience, but also be careful to witness to them. The Latino culture in the barrio, as a culture that invests greatly in role models, looks to its priests as models of a higher standard of ethical action, noble aspi-ration, and devotion to God, giving themselves and others the hope that their quest for holiness is not illusory. 6. Respeta al papa. / Speak respecqCully of your brother priests and the magisterial church. The high value the Latino culture puts on family life spills over into the way they see the church, their "other family"--many barrio parishio- Latino Catholics have always looked for a higher standard of behavior in their priests, even if they have not always found it. 66.4 2007 Martinez * Priesthood 101: Lessons from a Barrio ners attest to this and live it every day. And, just as with family loyalties, priests owe. fidelity to their brother priests and to the authority of the episcopacy, especially the Holy Father. Personally and socially identifying with the struc-tures of the church, they expect their priests to uphold those structures in a world where their other cultural structures are confusing, embattled, problematic, mocked, absent, or in disarray. While certainly open to dialogue, the Latino people are never open to disrespect. These axioms may need to be further nuanced, and others may be desirable. But, from my experiences and conversations with the people I served in a barrio, these are the lessons I have learned so far. My experience in other parishes across the United States has shown that these expectations are not limited to barrio Latinos or even Latinos in general. They cross cultural and genera-tional lines. I have read that Latino immigrant experience seems quite similar to that of Irish immigrants in earlier years. If Latin Americans will make up the majority of the Catholic Church in the United States by 2020, then I, for one, had better pay more attention to what they expect of their priests. I should pay more attention to.just what these "practical theologians from below" really are saying, so as to serve them and the church more faithfully. On a certain Sunday a while ago, I invited all those who had unbaptized newborns up to the altar for a special blessing. I would offer.the babies up to God by holding them over the altar. The first one was the child of the mother who had approached me and given me my first lesson in Priesthood 101, a course many other teachers added to later. As I held the baby up, the congregation erupted in a thunderous applause. To my mind, they were recognizing that, while I was young and foolish, with their help I just might make a decent priest after all. Review for Religious Personal and Group Reflection Questions 1. What "axioms" might I list as helps that I have learned from the people to whom I minister? 2. What experience have I had in dealing with people from other ethnic or cultural traditions? 3. How do I choose to grow in my ability ~o minister in Christ's name? the muted trumpet these dead will not rise to life but to an eternal dying and though they hear the trumpet blow its promise, its ringing joy, its piercing clarity, all muted distant, distorted like words heard undemoater deafness, dullness from the grave stumbling, not leaping, not smiling, shining but bitter, weeping how far away it sounds the ~nuted trmnpet Sean Kinsella 66.4 2007 MARK F. PLAUSHIN Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety Caatholic pastoral praxis during combat operations kes into account that soldiers confront situations that demand resourcefulness and optimum integration of their physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual selves. The soldiers' tour of duty ranges from boredom to adrenaline-pumping combat. The brutal geography saps energy and offers minimal aesthetic inspiration. In growing numbers Arabs regard Americans as occupiers, not liberators. Regardless of national goals or personal attitudes, occupiers bear the burden of proving that they are there "in the interests of the occupied. Amid all this, soldiers face the task of spiritually adapting to the experi-ence of war. Our soldiers are spiritual; many are Catholic; they will face a cycle of deployments in the years ahead. It is appropriate, then, that Catholic chaplains foster a spiri-tuality that mitigates the anxieties which stem from war Mark E Plaushin OSFS has served in the Army for twenty-two years as an infantry officer and a cultural affairs officer and as a chaplain with two tours in the Middle East. He is now Senior Catholic Chaplain at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. His address is 721 Lawrence Street, N.E.; Washington, D.C. 20017. Review for Religious so that an authentic and devout life can flourish. Salesian spirituality can help maintain and/or restore spiritual resilience, a sense of self that serves survival and can serve transitions out of combat situations. I am convinced that soldiers can put the experience of war into their own faith story without yielding to two dangerous extremes: despair as articulated in Anthony Swoford's Jarhead and hubris as trumpeted in Stephen Mansfield's The Faith of the American Soldier. Catholic praxis demands balance and perspective. War is evil and unequivocally antithetical to authentic living. On the other hand, despair is not a worthy response to it, for God's grace overcomes evil and restores human flourishing. Anthony Swoford paints a despairing picture of war's impact on the human person. A veteran of the First Gulf War, he grieves over his shared responsibility in the death of several Iraqi soldiers. The story of their anonymous deaths is told in the context of his dark experience as a Marine and is saturated with unrelenting cynicism and unyielding hopelessness. It is indicative of a malnour-ished spiritual life, but is nonetheless an important spiri-tual manifesto. He offers savvy warning about those who come home from war and tell "what they call good news, the good news about war and warriors." The truth is that war is not good news. Swoford writes: I am entitled to despair over the likelihood of further atrocities . In crowded rooms and walking the streets of our cities, I am alone and full of despair, and while sitting and writing, I am alone and full of despair--the same despair that impelled me to write this book, a quiet scream from a buried coffin. Dead, dead, my scream. What did I hope to gain? More bombs are coming. Dig your holes with the hands God gave you. (Anthony Swoford, Jarhead [New York: Scribner, 2003], p. 254) Inspired, Swoford's message is strapped for evidence of a God who loves and heals. Many have been exposed to 66.4 2007 Plausbin ¯ Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety Many military Catholics, no different than their civilian friends, lack a substantive spirituality combat and have experienced spiritual restoration. They celebrate successfully God's love for them and put war in the larger and rich picture of how God is at work in the world even as we grieve over war's sorrows. Though I mourn Swoford's despair, Stephen Mansfield's thesis is more of a problem. Recounting an experience of young Marines praying before a mission in Iraq, he writes: "They know there is a spiritual-ity to war, that warriors should trust in something beyond themselves to be of any use. So in the bar-rens of Iraq they build an altar of faith and ask their God to make them the war-riors he has called them to be.''~ Mansfield argues for a "faith-based warrior code.''2 Warriors must trust in some-thing greater than themselves, but Mansfield claims that soldiers "have been given no code, no moral or spiritual framing for the profession they now find themselves in or the war they now face death to win.''3 It is unfortunate that many soldiers do not own their faith and make it their own, even though the "code" already exists in the gospel and its message is right there in our traditions. Many military Catholics, no different than their civilian friends, lack a substantive spirituality. Though Mansfield offers insight into the shortcomings of religious support on the battlefield, he seems to celebrate war as a spiritual act. While he captures the elegant dilemma of millen-nial Christians serving in the armed forces, he deifies the American Christian soldier as righteous by virtue of his or her identity as such. Like all gospels of prosperity, this theory suffers from Gnostic influence, Review for Religious Swoford experiencing spiritual anemia and Mansfield a spiritual hubris are inadequate responses to soldiers whose anxieties undermine their spiritual health. Warriors are spiritual, not because they embrace a cult, but when they focus on their essential vocation of self-gift. The Catholic chaplain can offer a spirituality that neither embraces despair nor trumpets war. We are authentic neither in despairing nor in dancing, but in an acceptance of God's love and in our sequent resolution to embrace him and those he sends into our lives. The Gospel amid War's Anxiety The tactical dynamic--compounded by numbing rep-etition, interaction with an ambivalent and unpredictable indigenous population, and an uncertain sense of contrib-uting to a limited national victory--tends toward exhaus-tion of soldier resilience. Numbers of troops leave the desert emotionally, physically, and/or spiritually depleted. Many pursue the task of recovery, conscious and appre-ciative of personal and professional resources available to them. Others struggle on their own to regain their poise or their passion for life, only to feel personal defeat and exhibit an unhealthy sense of self. Even those who recover often suffer personal and professional setbacks. Given these circumstances, those who command troops and those who give troops pastoral care face a multiform threat to their well-being. Military decision making is incomplete if it does not mitigate risk in its varied forms. Yet commanders and troops know that risk attends even routine operations. We also know that, when soldiers are led by capable and honest leaders, receive challenging and realistic training, and have strong morale in units with a tested esprit de corps, they will face any threat and level of risk. Further, these warriors are more likely to survive war and help 361 66.4 2007 Plausbin * Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety 362] others do so. This includes setting positive conditions for recovery from the rigors of war after redeploying to the United States. All commanders want to bring their soldiers home alive and intact, and chaplains share responsibility for safe homecoming. Pastoral praxis, however, envisions more than biological survival and physical integrity. Pastoral care in the war zone, as in any apostolic setting, seeks to sustain and enhance the life of the soul. We refer to spiri-tual resilience when we reflect .on this sense of self that marks authentic lif~ in Christ. This resilience is essential to healthy personal relationships, whether one continues in a military career or returns to civilian life. Helping sol-diers keep or recover resilience means nothing less than helping them integrate their experience of war into their life's story so well that they can still or again celebrate God's love for them. This is the central task of the gospel in the war zone. The primary threat to a fighting man or woman's spiri-tual center of gravity is anxiety. Francis de Sales (1567- 1622) says, "With the single exception of sin, anxiety is the greatest evil that can happen to the soul.''4 Because anxiety saps people's strength, they have a diminished capacity for resisting temptation arid practicing acquired virtues.5 The practice of virtue is the life of charity, the organization of people's lives toward God. Devotion is superabundant charity. Charity is the archetype virtue and accommodates all other virtues to a person's state in life.6 Francis cor-relates the disabling of virtue with greater susceptibility to temptation. This "disabling" is the organization of self toward someone or something other than God. This has an effect on .the soldier, his unit, and military operations. Contrasting abuse of prisoners with a pro-fessional way of handling them can demonstrate this. A sergeant who captured a few insurgents after they had Review for Religious ambushed and killed three of his fellow soldiers told me, "Sir, I just wanted to kill them all, but I knew it was the w.rong thing to do." Such conduct is an example of the resilience soldiers need to navigate difficult moral deci-sion points correctly, with integrity. Each armed service promotes virtue through core values.7 The cultivation of these values, from basic entry training through retirement, is essential to the spiritual fitness that characterizes - good soldiering and a ful-filling career. The battle-field minister, proffering Salesian spirituality as a practical illumination of the gospel, understands that the life of charity demanded by the gospel is prerequisite to, and fruit of, a healthy spiritual life. Anxiety, on - the other hand, is a spiritual pathology: it degrades spiri-tual health. It is a disordered desire to be free of an evil or to acquire some good.8 This contributes to disorgani-zation of the individual's personal resources--not least of which is a positive sense of self. Let us see how anxiety enters the soul. When .our soul perceives it has suffered an evil, it is dislSleased. This displeasure, which we call sadness, is naturally something we want to be relieved of as soon as possible. But why do we seek relief?. De Sales suggests two answers that determine our spiritual deportment. One, the soul seeks relief out of love for God and for a better .relationship with God. Remembering all the good things God has given, the soul is patient if relief from sadness does not ,come quicldy.9 It depends on God's providence rather than its own effort,l° The primary threat to a fighting man or woman's spiritual center of gravity is anxiety. 66.4 2007 Plausbin ¯ Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety Alternatively, the soul seeks relief out of self-love.~t In this spiritual estrangement, the soul relies on its own effort. It has an inadequate awareness or no awareness of God seeking a loving relationship. In this case, all other goods, whether people or things, are either grasped or discarded without reference to God or his purpose. This is a poor use of personal freedom. It is not uncommon for such a distressed person to make inappropriate choices regarding sexual behavior, substance abuse, and even vio-lence. The soul feels overwhelmed, inadequate, or inau-thentic, and a God who has a personal interest in them seems unimaginable. 36-4 Spiritual Resilience Spiritual resilience is diminished when there is no sense of God's providence--ttiat is, how God is "orga-nized" toward our completion.12 De Sales notes that anxi-ety breeds impatience and agitation. The soul "will excite and wear itself out in a search for escape," producing a cycle of sadness--anxiety--sadness--anxiety, which is "extremely dangerous.".~3 The soul's desire to be free of evil or to acquire some good is not misplaced. God is good and has imbued in us the instinct for good. But anxiety dis--orders our rela-tionship with God and others. It distorts the individual's understanding of the good and the way to achieve it. An anxious soldier may stop eating, become sleepless, and act angrily. Although none of these behaviors are good, the soldier adopts them as if they are good. His disordered view of the good leads to harmful action or neglect. A soldier thus weakened may fail when lives are at risk. If injury or death results, this leads to a crash of self-esteem, a spiritual and emotional crisis. Every mission in the combat zone, without excep-tion, calls for a wearying intensity that creates a taut- Rev&w for Religious bow effect. Archers with arrows always notched hold their bow under constant tension. Such tension is not eased until one is within the perimeter of a friendly camp. Even then mortar and rocket attacks, or bombs borne by per-sons or vehicles, may cause a constant wariness.14 Keep a bow too taut for too long and you may be too numb to act quickly; not keep it taut and you may be too late. The tension is compounded by months in hostile terri-tory where attacks are inevitable somewhere. The soldier's risk of casualty is an anxiety that is not shared in our civilian community. Let me suggest four themes based on my experience. Interestingly, it is not death that soldiers always fear most. (1) When we left an operati[ag base to make sense of the stirred-up population, superheated weather, and the mystery that is Iraq, I made an act of contrition. Because I do nbt carry a weapon and my bodyguard and teammates did, I often did the driving so their hands were free to fire their weapons. I prayed that if attacked I would react as rehearsed--facilitating our escape or the enemy's destruc-tion. I reviewed our plan, our first-aid procedures, and the radio procedures for calling in a medical-evacuation heli-copter (MEDEVAC). I thought through situations that might require these skills while simultaneously comforting the dying, administering the sacrament of the sick, or honoring the dead. In short, I asked God to strengthen me so that I would not let my buddies down. This concern motivated us to know our jobs, rehearse our mission, and stay in shape. Despite the self-confidence that comes from good planning, tough training, and solid leadership, an error in judgment or even a brief moment of cowardice could jeopardize others. (2) My fear of letting others down was an anxiety miti-gated by experience, training, practiced communication, and common-sense leadership. On the other hand, the fear of being maimed offered few practical remedies. The 66.4 2007 Plaushin ¯ Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety Another ground for anxiety is the fear leaders share in ordering others into combat. odd thought crossed my mind that losing one eye would not be too bad, but losing both would be worse than death. If it were a choice between losing an arm, a leg, my genitals, or some horrendous combination of these, I prayed for a quick death and one that would precede incineration in the burning fuel and exploding ordinance of my vehicle. Some risks seemed remote and conjured little anxiety. For instance, death itself or capture by a sword-wielding fanatic seemed unlikely to me; for others, such thoughts provoked concern. (3) Another ground for anxiety is the fear leaders share in ordering others into combat. Leaders up and down the chain of command balance concern for their troops with mission accomplishment. Senior officers must trust their juniors to lead, knowing mistakes and losses are inevitable; this is necessary to their maturing. (4) Anxiety also stems from separations within families. No matter how solid a relationship may be, it will be chal-lenged by fear of loss. Although digitalization has enhanced rapid and continuing communication, distance and absence increase fears by not enabling family members to embrace. Numerous counseling sessions confirm that e-mail and the telephone are two-edged swords. They allow an exchange, of information but do not permit the quality communication essential to intimacy. In fact, too much information can be transmitted, causing dis-traction and stirring up anxiety until reunion is achieved. But reunion itself also causes tension. Only by managing expectations and integrating the experience of the military deployment into the family's story will the family flourish. Review for Religious The issues above cause soldiers both appropriate concern and grist for anxiety. By "appropriate concern" I mean a savvy appreciation of the risks along with con-fidence in God's providence. Where concern has been displaced by anxiety, however, there is need for healing. A Salesian method can be summarized in three stages. (1) Challenge the soldiers to identify and describe the sorrow that burdens them. (2) Aid them in consciously turning their sorrow over to God's providential care. (3) Encourage them to experience the devout life as compat-ible with soldiering. War as the Source of Sorrow Recall that anxiety is a disordered attempt to free the soul of sorrow. Many soldiers identify the root sorrow in their soul incorrectly. They report as source what is actu-ally a presenting issue. The marriage may be in trouble, the children may be acting out, a friend may have been wounded, she may have been attacked, together they may have killed a combatant or noncombatant, or some other combination of things common to soldiering may have been experienced. Yet, as tragic as all of these may be, they veil the source. Our original misuse of free will has left us flawed and in search of authenticity. When we experience anxiety fed by fear of letting buddies down, physical trauma, leading others into harm's way, suffering a ruined relationship, or anything else, we experience sorrow that stems from our incompleteness. We grieve oversuffering a loss or anticipating one. War stirs up a profound awareness of this inadequacy--our inability to control the events, cir-cumstances, and conditions that can destroy us or those we love and the things we value. While war can be legiti-mized and even benefit the community, it is inherently destructive of the human person. Even winning does not 66.4 2007 Plaushin * Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety make us more complete, more fulfilled, or more human since war's brutality exhausts our intellect, emotions, physical being, and spiritual life. God responds to this suffering by providing the grace which completes us. This redemptive work helps us weave the experience of war into the cloth of our personal story and celebrate God's reconciliation. The role of Salesian spirituality is to promote indefatigable optimism in this process and in the human person. Many soldiers who receive God's grace do respond to his presence. They are resilient, and they integrate their experience into their life's story. This being said, an authentic response to war begins with experiencing it as miserably depleting. This either turns us inward or toward God and those wonderful others he sends to us. This brings us back to De Sales's observation that sorrow arises from either a love of God or a disordered love of self. If we see only our own selves as necessary and sufficient to make us complete, we set the stage for anxiety and the consequent disordering of our lives. If, however, we acknowledge our incompleteness and see God as the one who can make us complete, we live well.~5 We cooperate with the Father who makes good our deficiencies through the grace of Jesus Christ. Yet all disciples stand in a gap between possessing Christ and possessing fullness in Christ. This is our root sorrow. Because we do not yet possess this fullness, we hold on to the good things God gives us: Though they cannot complete us, we understandably hold on to them as evidence of his love and we fear losing them. And our fear of losing them is aggravated in the brutality and uncertainty of the war zone. Diminishment of spiritual integrity and peace sterriS from this, from an event that is disordered, dehumanizing, and destructive in its nature. The resilience to address this lack of fullness is fos-tered by grace, which in turn is characterized by a life Review for R~eligious organized for union with God. It begins with encourage-ment to consciously recognize and describe the sorrow war places on the soldier's heart--this lack of fullness, adequacy, or completeness. This is validated in confession, counseling, and group process.16 Thus a person learns to engage the dilemma of discipleship in the "valley of the shadow of death.''17 Turning War's Sorrow Over to the Father's Care Once the soldier is conscious of the sorrow stemming from the experience of war, has enumerated her palpable concerns, and has been validated, it is appropriate to chal-lenge her to turn her sorrow over to God's providential care. If she is aware that only union with God brings com-pleteness, how will she organize her personal resources to turn toward God? Salesian spirituality, like all spiritualities, explicates the gospel so disciples can adapt it to their circumstances. It provides a way of responding in a particular way to the gift of Jesus' life for us. Let us highlight ways Salesian spirituality contributes to a healthy sense of self and a proper ordering of self toward God. In his Introduction Francis de Sales treats this search for authenticity, reflecting on the disciple's "devout life," defined as a careful, frequent, and prompt response to God's love.18 This love or grace is God's relentless pres-ence wherein he offers redemption in eucharistic life. Here Jesus feeds, teaches, heals, and forgives. Soldiers who receive this grace and explore the force of war on the soul are ready to turn their sorrow over to the Father at this time and place. De Sales's guidance helps here with humility and gen-tleness. His own humble and meek lifestyle resulted in these virtues becoming synonymous with his spiritual leg-acy. Optimism, too, is present in the "gentleman saint's" 66.4 2007 Plaushin ¯ Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety spiritual patrimony. Under the master virtue of devotion, humility, gentleness, and optimism are the virtues essen-tial to a balanced, authentic response to war. The humble, gentle, and optimistic soldier is oriented toward the God who is ready to heal her in a life-sustaining embrace. This is God's gift of reconciliation, which is Jesus Christ. Jesus' continuous gift of self promotes spiritual resilience and our vocation of self-gift. Practicing these and other virtues is incarnafional and eucharistic. Jesus, real God and real man, who really died on the cross and really rose from the dead, really walks among his people now in our eucharistic life, evidenced in a consistent, evolving, sagacious communion with God in personal prayer. This communion is essential to our disposition because it is the place for turning the sor-rows of war over to the Father. The warrior is encouraged to pursue a way of discipleship that includes a lifetime encounter with word and sacrament in communion fel-lowship. Healing comes by placing oneself in the presence of God's grace in these ways. The devout life is a viable response to war and the means for placing its burden into God's providential care. The Soldier's Devout Life De Sales published the Introduction in 1609, in a Europe that was conflicted. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations spawned persecution, acrimony, and armed conflict. Intertwined with the evolving Reformation, competing visions for political, religious, and economic society contributed to wars between sovereignties then turning into modern nation-states. Interregional conflict shaped a complex and volatile international system, com-pounded by Islam's advance in the East through conquest, coercion, and cultural assimilation.~9 Francis was well respected, and many sought his coun- Review for Religious sel. Though not an army chaplain, he was known to polit-ical and military figures, and he faced rigorous service during the Catholic Reformation. During his 1594 mis-sion into Calvinist Chablais near Lake Geneva, he "lived in a fortress garrisoned by the Duke of Savoy's soldiers [and] worked to some extent under their protection in conditions of intolerable hardship and poverty, ridiculed, persecuted, attacked even physically, saying Mass day by day in icy, half-ruined churches, preaching to empty pews.''2° His pastoral paradigm serves us well. De Sales's approach was to consistendy and construc-tively engage those whose anxiety affected their self-worth or preempted their awareness of God. The Introduction guides readers from their initial desire to live the devout life through a full resolution to continue it no matter what. He offers insights into how this resolve is nour-ished by prayer and sacraments, by the practice of virtue, by turning from temptation, and by renewing their com-mitment. His concept of devotion is robust--even athletic. He uses phrases such as "spiritual agility and vivacity" and discusses devotion as a spiritual fire that "bursts into flames.''2~ Its appeal rests in the celebration of the voca-tion of charity which we all share, soldiers included. It is a vocation that places suffering in the context of our story. This is clear in his "purgative,' meditations. One that is meaningful to the soldier is "The Fifth Meditation--On Death." He writes: Consider the uncertainty of the day of your death. O my soul, thou must one day quit this body. When will it be? In a town or in the country? In the day or in the night? Will it be without warning or with warning? Will it be the result of disease or of some accident? Wilt thou have time to confess or not? Wilt thou be assisted by thy confessor and spiritual Father? Alas! We know nothing at all about these things. We only know 66.4 2007 Plausbin ¯ Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety The soldier's vocation is one of preparation, readiness, and especially action, even in the midst of uncertainty. 372 that we shall die, and always sooner than we expect.22 The warrior is near death, and it is unrealistic to imagine the situation on the battlefield otherwise, but anxiety is displaced by reflection on our vulnerability in the context of final fulfillment in the Father. The soldier's vocation is one of preparation, readiness, and especially action, even in the midst of uncertainty. Action is emphasized because superabundant char-ity is the action of God's incarnate love. Thr.ough the Holy Spirit, in the Body of Christ, we are Jesus' heal-ing presence. The vocation of charity is our response to God's incarnate gift of reconciliation and encompasses our state in life. It is a way of being in the world modeling Jesus' own vocation of self-gift. This pro-vides a healthy con-text for suffering. For the soldier, suffering while courageously doing one's duty is an indicator of spiritual resilience. Francis writes: "Among these devout people those who suffer afflictions are not overconcerned about their sufferings and never lose courage. To con-clude, look upon the eyes of the Savior who comforts them, and see how all of them together aspire to him.''2~ De Sales sees prayer and sacramental encounter as the center of the devout life. God pours upon us the grace to live the vocation of charity whereby we order ourselves toward him and others. This ordering occurs in prayer and sacrament, which are places for our spiritual transi-tion. In these places we move from our incompleteness to being filled by God's goodness. Francis emphasizes this Review for Religious when he writes, "We must pause here, Philothea [which means "soul that loves God], and I assure you that we can-not go to God the Father except through this gate.''24 When using phrases like God's grace, I mean God's presence. He is the gift that "orders" us through his teach-ing, feeding, forgiving, and healing. Thus De Sales intro-duces one of the most powerful exercises in the Salesian repertoire--calling to mind God's presence. While we may intellectually acknowledge that presence, we may not take it to heart and thus be more anxious than attentive to what is required of us in any particular time or place.2s The importance of this is found in a special vision soldiers cultivate and which we call "situational aware-ness." It signifies contextual vision because fear narrows vision and we lose our sense of the peripheral. Salesian disciples seek God as manifest in the world--even on the battlefield. Soldiers recount how, despite loss and suffer-ing, "some little thing" restored their vision of God as present and rekindled their efforts to feed, teach, heal, and forgive. This grace does not originate in a God who sits outside of our reality and to whom we nod in defer-ence from afar, but a real someone who chooses to walk with us in the dust and blast, and to break the bread with us. The devout life improves this eucharistic vision. Our response to this presence is a virtuous life, and De Sales teaches: "All men should possess all the virtues, yet all are not bound to exercise them in equal measure. Each person must practice in a special manner the virtues needed by the kind of life he is called to.''26 For example, patience and chastity are virtues pertinent to a warrior. This promotes union with God and turning away from things that distract us from him. One of the most practical sections of the Introduction is Francis's treatment of temptation. In a world where risk and consequence attend choice, the optimum opera- 66.4 2007 Plausbin * Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety tion of free will is anxiety free. Our choices are grounded in a self-concept that models Jesus' own integration of his physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual compo-nents. This appeals to soldiers because Francis's anthro-pology respects our potential for giving God glory in the day-to-day effort to "be all that we can be." The devout life is appropriate for the soldier and sets conditions for lessening or getting rid of anxieties that may afflict those who serve in combat. In this freedom, soldiers can recover spiritual resilience and refresh the imprint of the gospel in their hearts. Humility, Hope, and Providence Stephen Mansfield and Anthony Swoford's books are deficient in humility and hope, respectively. Catholic war-riors need a spirituality which helps them adapt the gospel to their lives' circumstances, not a Christocentric warrior's code. More, they must become free of anxiety, which is spiritually toxic and replaces eucharistic relationships with narcissism. If unchecked, it diminishes the capacity to deal in a healthy way with war and postconflict transitions, because these events are not put in the context of one's faith journey. The ability to celebrate Godat work in the world is disabled, as evident in Swoford's biography. Salesian spirituality builds and sustains a spiritual resilience which mitigates anxiety. It supports conscious articulation of the sorrow that war imposes on the heart and consistent turning of this sorrow over to God's providence. It reinforces commitment to the vocation of devotion that is practical and useful for Catholics on the battlefield and throughout the war zone. This spirituality celebrates the optimism, humility, gentleness, and super-abundant charity that characterize God's incarnate healing presence--Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace. Review for Religious Notes * Stephen Mansfield, The Faith of the American Solider (London: Penguin Books), p. 175. 2 Mansfield, The Faith, p. 157. 3 Mansfield, The Faith, p. 142. 4 De Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, trans, and ed. John K. Ryan (New York: Image Books, 1972), p. 251. See Col 3:14, wherein love's relationship to other virtues is stressed. 5 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 251-252. 6 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 121-122. 7 The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines virtue as the "habitual and firm disposition to do good" (§1803). The use of the word "value" in the armed services corresponds to this--Army: loy-alty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal cour-age; Navy and Marine Corps: honor, courage, and commitment; Coast Guard: honor, respect, and devotion to duty; Air Force: integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do. 8 De Sales, Introduction, p. 252. 9 De Sales, Introduction, p. 251. ,0 De Sales, Introduction, p. 251. ~* De Sales, Introduction, p. 251. ,2 1 have in mind the "the economy of salvation." Providence is this effort on our behalf culminating in the incarnation. "The promise made to Abraham inaugurates the economy of salvation, at the culmination of which the Son himself will assume that 'image' and restore it in the Father's 'likeness' by giving it again its Glory, the Spirit who is 'the giver of life.'" Catechism of the Catholic Church, §705. ,3 De Sales, Introduction, p. 251. '4 Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), albeit poorly aimed, into an area of our forward-operating base (FOB) through which we had mapped a favorite running route. Our intelligence officer rec-ommended we increase our pace in that sector. Everyone chuckled-- "sort off" ~s A theme in Augustine's Confessions: "You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 3. See also Psalm 62:2. 16 After Iraq's "capitulation" in 2003, I heard confessions of troops transitioning home. Penitents and I were in tears, moved by the events these good men endured. 375 66.4 2007 Plaushin * Salesian Spirituality and Stemming Combat Anxiety 17 Psalm 23:4 (King James Bible). ,8 De Sales, Introduction, p. 40. ,9 The Battle of Lepanto stemmed the Ottoman advance in 1571. Francis was four. ~0 Elisabeth Stopp, A Man to Heal Differences: Essays and Talks on St. Francis de Sales (Philadelphia: St. Joseph's University Press, 1998), p. 4. This is similar to the experience of Catholic chaplains operating today out of FOBs. 2'De Sales, Introduction, pp. 40-41. 22 De Sales, Introduction, p. 60. 23 De Sales, Introduction, p. 70. 24 De Sales, Introduction, p. 81. 2s De Sales, Introduction, p. 84. 26 De Sales, Introduction, p. 122. Reflective Questions for Personal and Group Use How would I share my spirituality as a help to someone in military service? Does my lived spirituality have an effect on how I deal with anxiety? How would I see Plaushin's approach to a spirituality responding to military combat affec~:ing the way I live my spiritual life in my given circumstances? 376 Review for Religious CAROLYN HUMPHREYS Contemplative Gifts We need not live in the desert or dwell in a monastery in order to live contemplatively. Not so surprisingly, there are people in deserts and in monasteries who are not contemplatives, and people in the inner city and in prisons who are very contemplative. Living contemplatively is a way of being alive that resembles a continuous quiet flame in a world darkened by sin. The light does not shine by our doing something or making something happen. We cannot do contemplation or make it happen. Rather, we let it happen in us by graces from God. A contemplative orientation to life is an exquisite gift to us from God. This gift comes in many forms and ways. We guard and nour-ish what we receive by a manner of living that is rooted in humility. When we open contem-plative gifts with care and treasure their con- Carolyn Humphreys OCDS, a registered occupational therapist, last wrote for us in early 2004. She produces a four-page quarterly, Mary's Garden, from 7101 E. Rosecrans Avenue, #159; Paramount, California 90723; U.S.A. prayer in our life 1377 66.4 2007 Humpbreys ¯ Contemplative Gifts 378 tents, we find we are no better or holier than anyone else. Rather, we are one with all wounded and sinful humanity. When we perceive all humanity as equal, there is no incli-nation to feel greater or lesser than those of another race, nationality, religion, or ability. This manner of living is a great gift indeed. This self-knowledge is a dear teacher. It is present in all contemplative awareness. This inner knowledge tells us that we are the ones responsible for our feelings, behavior, and actions. To avoid blaming or projecting our negativity on others is a sound step forward on the contemplative path. Cooperation with .God's still small voice within gives us wisdom greater than our own, and thereby keeps inap-propriate comments about others in check. Self-knowl-edge does not occur without common sense. Common sense tells us many things. People who are levelheaded are more apt to keep confidences than those who engage in frivolous or malicious gossip. Individuals who know their true selves are humble and are serious about stay-ing away from negative influences. We ask God that we may be receptive when he reveals us to ourselves. This is a courageous prayer, because such self-knowledge is hard to take. We grow spiritually, however, by learning more about ourselves through being receptive to grace in whatever form it takes. When self-knowledge increases, we are able to live in God's presence more fully. We live in the presence of God when we have the ability to discern his presence within us and around us. Our lives are quite ordinary, but we notice the extraordi-nary in our days. God is at the kitchen stove, office desk, and bathroom sink. We recognize his presence, and so we are fully attentive to What is in the present moment. We recognize the level of our ability to love when we seem empty of love, when we seem full of love, and at all levels in between. ,Together with our level of ability to love, we Reviezv for Religious acknowledge our ever present need for God's grace, and acknowledge that our thirst for God is never quenched. Living in God's presence helps us let go of concerns during our daily prayer so we can simply be present to his life and love. No matter how much we have to do, it is not what we do, - but who we are, that defines us as unique persons. If all we do is "do," we can eas-ily destroy the reality of who we are in the sight of God. Doing things well is not a substitute for well --- being. Finding our identity in the many things we do can detract from who we really are as humble persons in the light of God's love. If we keep our eyes open and focus on gospel teach-ing when we pray, we gradually learn to see the world with the eyes of Christ. No longer do we walk around in a befuddled state, or tend to our duties in a preoccupied way. Our heads are neither in the clouds nor in the sand. We concentrate on, and respond to, that which goes on within and around us at the moment, in the light of God's love. This orientatioh enables us to go beyond the obvi-ous and look for what cannot be seen, such as inner hurts, hopes, unspoken needs and dreams. A contemplative way of being is evident in an out-look on life that influences our behavior with the positive, affirming, loving transcendence of God. This transcen-dence bonds the infinite goodness of God with the finite people and things of earth. In our day it is a continual challenge to maintain such an outlook. We are limited beings, and the temptation to deny, regress, or avoid con- If alt we do :is "do," we can easily destroy the reality of who we are in the sight of God. 379 66.4 2007 Humphreys ¯ Contemplative Gifts 380 flictive or derogatory thoughts always seems to be with us. In a contemplative way of being, however, we face the reality of these thoughts with honesty and courage. This helps us become more loving. It takes work, though, and a resistance to self-indulgence. If we look as objectively as we can at the opposing aspects of our daily choices, we step away from whatever causes negativism or self-absorp-tion. We move forward to what gives us a clearer perspec-tive on the possible results of our choices. To find beauty in the broken places and troubled areas of our lives is a constant component of our contemplative gifts. In doing this, we look at what is in our hands and hearts and find peace instead of turbulence. The more we are sustained by our trust in God, the easier we find him in all that passes in and out of our hands and our lives. We see Jesus more clearly as our minds become free of rejections and afflictions. We sit down, sit still, and really listen to the still small voice of God. Only with the passing of time, and the help from grace, do we become more alert to the world within us. We must be watchful because this world is easily obscured by the world outside us. Through the energy of grace, the effects of contem-plative gifts flow from the inside out. The degree of our awareness of these gifts develops in concurrence with many factors. We are fascinated by how God works in ourselves and in others. Seeing God thusly liberates us from interrupting people with trivial incidents concern-ing ourselves. We listen to others with an open heart and mind by focusing on them. We are aware of what they are saying, how they are saying it, and what their behav-ior reveals. Learning when to talk and when to be quiet refines our humility. The more we seek God, the more our self-absorption diminishes. A marker of our seeking is the sparing use of sentences containing the words 1, me, or my. There is no burning need to prove our point, Review for Religious manifest our intelligence, proclaim our opinion, or prate about our experiences. When we are seeking God, we respectfully listen to what people tell us and refrain from forming our responses or nourishing our prejudices while they are talking. We listen as a friend or confidant rather than as an adversary or advisor. Silence Is Golden Love for silence is a contemplative gift. Silence becomes a gem that is sought, treasured, and reverenced. To be comfortable with the silence of God, of others, and of ourselves is rare and beautiful. Silence nurtures us far more than we will ever understand. It becomes the primary way in which we grow in love. In the early stages we discover the many ways in which love can be posses-sive or self-centered. When we observe quietly, we may see people using others as objects of pleasure or using them to complete their character by filling their needs and inadequacies. We realize that no one should be used as an object or extension of someone else. Our silence enables us to be signs for others of God's presence and peace, even when life's storms come our way. During disturbing times we use silence to think things through before taking action. We are not overwhelmed by all that we have to do. We break down large, intimidating, time-consuming tasks into manageable segments. We han-dle them one hour at a time. These periods then resemble stepping stones across a river. We give our attention to one stone at a time. In doing so, we are on the other side of the river before we know it. If we do not keep our con-centration on the stone at hand, we may slip and fall in. Or, if we do not even attempt the first stone, we will end up finding a longer, harder way to get across. Taking life one step at a time gives us time to visit our inner sanctuary, our place of. rest. After we finish 381 66.4 2007 Humpbreys ¯ Contemplative Gifts Taking life one step at a time gives us time to visit our inner sanctuary, our place of rest. 382 one thing and before we start another, we can rest in our sanctuary and think deep, serious, playful, or lightsome thoughts. A better option is just to gaze quietly upon the heart of Christ. Like crossing the river, we move toward God small step by small step. We move onward inch by inch rather than waste time on hurry, or worry about the pile of work ahead of us. When God becomes our primary reality, many positive things happen to us. All that seemed important before God entered our lives takes on an insig-nificance that truly surprises us. To be faithful to the contemplative way when the going gets rough takes patience and fortitude. The con-templative way is manifest in the tranquillity of order. The more our lives are centered on Jesus, the more these traits will develop: we pray consistently, eat moderately, dress modestly, exercise appropriately, use money wisely, speak quietly, and treat others with dignity. We spend our leisure time in carefree activities, and read and use the media in ways that instruct or uplift. Our homes are simple and cozy. We conduct ourselves well and deal with our family and others with respect and grace. Rather than grumble, we do something about what causes a com-plaint. We work with concentration and good humor. Our motives are clear and direct. The quality of each day is more important than the quantity of things we do or the places we go. In dark times we may not understand what is happening, but somehow we know God is there. We trust in God and hope for the best. Indeed, there are Review for Religious many times when we lose a treasure only to find a greater treasure or lose our way only to find God's way. The contemplative way is mostly a way of silence and darkness. We want to speak about God, but we realize that images,' analogies, and words fall short. Nothing we can say seems adequate. Words are a hindrance because, although we ardently seek God, we can never really find him. If we think we have found God in our words and definitions, it is not really God, but only our own fal-tering concept about God, who is all mystery. We never fully grasp who God is. We move toward God with open hearts in the silent night. We move ahead wordless in the unknown but holy darkness. Even though God is beyond all mere human thoughts or definitions, we persevere in communing with him through prayer. It is our lifeline. To a contemplative, prayer is as important and as natural as a heart beating. Prayer is the energy that makes our spiritual lives go, and the rock that never lets us give up hope. In the inner atmosphere of prayer, we are one with God and all cre-ation. Awareness of this unity with all is at a deeper level of consciousness than that of normal life. A contempla-tive outlook is one of continual spiritual wonder. There is an awe at the sacredness of all life, which reflects the love that flows from the S6urce of life. A contemplative outlook sees without seeing, in a profound depth of faith, and knows without knowing, in knowledge too deep to understand. We know God to the extent that we are invis-ibly touched by him who has no hands. To know this is to awaken to him who is the most real. We realize God's tre-mendous love and respond to it from our deepest depths. To become all that God meant us to be is to find our true selves in Christ. To be so in touch with what is truly real lets the authenticity of our lives reach out and touch that which is most authentic in others. 66.4 2007 Humpbreys ¯ Contemplative Gifts Contemplation is a journey of love through realistic care for others. We, who are connected with all people by the strong bonds of prayer, give to them by prayer, and through the appropriate use of our talents. Yes, a con-templative way of life grows from roots in quiet prayer. Quiet prayer results in quiet listening, fine-tuned obser-vation, a giving of ourselves and a daily openness to God's mysteries and wonder. Seasoned contemplatives are well mellowed by years of quiet prayer content with mystery and wonder. They use their talents well, and are at home with themselves. The self is forgotten. Their focus on others makes their presence a transparent gift: there are no strings. The gift shows itself in people's ability to see that the givers discover, appreciate, and make wise use of the treasures hidden in everyone and everything that comes along. Being a contemplative is a never-ending liberation. We are alone but not lonely, because we are in communion with Jesus, who resides in our hearts. He is our anchor and our compass. We are one with others because we wrap them with our prayer. Other people rarely intimi-date us, because we forgive them easily and know our own unique gifts. We become more receptive, more grateful, more filled with grace. Faith is far from abstract theory; rather, it is an everyday reality sometimes shrouded in mystery. Wonder is always with us, for we look beyond appearances, set aside prejudices, and change what keeps us closed in on ourselves. As long as we move ahead, we see God in everything and thereby sense a greater unity with God who is all. As we travel on the path of love, we give away the fruits of our contemplative gifts. We also sing songs of God's love and praise, which, as Newman suggests, seem to always echo in our hearts: Review for Religious Praise to the Holiest in the height And in the depth be praise; In all his words most wonderful, Most sure in all his ways! Some Contemplative Scripture Points 1. "If you, with all your sins, know how to give your children good things, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him." Luke 11:13 2. "No one knows the Son except the Father and no one knows the Father except the Son -- and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him." Luke 10:22 3. "There are different gifts but the same Spirit; there are different ministries but the same Lord; there are different works but the same God who accomplishes all of them in everyone. To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good." 1 Co 12:4-7 66.4 2007 ELISSA RINERE Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life T time spent in preparing this article was, quite nesdy, a personal spiritual journey. One difficulty has been that every aspect of Christian life is a reflection of the Eucharist. The Eucharist "speaks" everything. It is all-encompassing. A dilemma arises, whether to begin with some reflections on the Eucharist and then find reli-gious life within them, or begin with some reflections on religious life and then come to a focus on the Eucharist. One author I read stated the situation very well. Eucharist implies coherence: it brings all the disparate elements of the church into unity, tending to one end, one goal, one truth.~ Religious life finds its coherence here. In canon law the Eucharist has different aspects: the celebration of the Mass, the sacrament to be received, and the sacrament reserved in a tabernacle for adoration. We can consider what these three aspects might mean in relation to our way of life in the church. Elissa Rinere CP, a canon lawyer, is Coordinator of Pastoral Planning and Director of the Office of Worship of the diocese of Norwich, Connecticut. Her address is 7E Westchester Hills; Colchester, Connecticut 06415. Review for Religious We begin by making two observations. First, the Eucharist is larger than religious life. The goal of being a eucharistic community is the goal of everyone who shares in the sacrament-of baptism. It is the mandate given to us in the Gospels. Second, the vision of what would be if we could give a pure response to this awesome mystery is different from the practice that we human beings come up with at various times in history. The vision is celestial and the practice is terrestrial. Our challenge is to bring these two things into harmony. The Eucharist as Celebration Yesterday. When I was in grade school (a public school), my friends and I went to Sunday Mass "religiously." We would, however, sit behind the stairs in the back of the church and have contests about who could find the old-est saint in the pages of our St. Andrew's Missals. We paid attention to Mass only at the consecration, when the bell rang. From behind the stairs we could not see the altar, but we did stop talking. No matter how poor our behavior, we were sure that we were fulfilling our Sunday obligation just by being there. The prayer belonged to the priest, and the people watched. Today. We say today that theology emphasized the "confection" of the Eucharist and now emphasizes "cel-ebration.'' 2 The most august sacrament is the Most Holy Eucharist in which Christ the Lord himself is contained, off-ered, and received and by which the church continu-ally lives and grows. The eucharistic sacrifice . . . is the summit and source of all worship; it signifies and effects the unity of the people of God and brings about the building up of the body of Christ. Indeed, the other sacraments and all the ecclesiastical works of the apostolate are closely connected with the Most Holy Eucharist and ordered to it. (Canon 897)3 66.4 2007 Rinere ¯ Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life 388 In speaking of the Eucharist today, we would probably use the terminology of this canon, since it comes directly from the documents of Vatican Council II. The Eucharist is Christ himself. In the celebration we have the source and summit of all the church's life. That is, everything we do comes from and is brought back to the Eucharist. Every celebration is an action of the whole church. Every celebration is a sign of, and brings about, the unity of the people of God. The liturgy is the exercise, not only of the ordained priesthood, but also of the baptismal priest-hood. There was quite a journey from the focus on the confection of the Eucharist to the current focus on cel-ebration. Journey. Celebration of the Eucharist was, according to reputable authors, one of the most hotly debated top-ics of Vatican II. The manner of celebrating Eucharist is important in itself, but also because it brings a specific image of the church into existence. That is, the Eucharist is not merely a ritual; it is a creative force within the community. It is the way we express and create what we believe to be the true nature of the church. Singing our hearts out and saying the rosary fervently give different images of the church. The work of the Vatican Council to revise the cel-ebration of the Eucharist Was looked on by many as the work of the devil, an error bordering on heresy, which would destroy the church and turn us all into heretics. When the new rite of the Mass was implemented on 30 November 1969, some protesters poured red dye into fountains around Rome as a sign of mourning. "The waters of Rome run red, just as the waters of Egypt were transformed into blood" at the death of the firstborn.4 The celebration of the Eucharist became a rallying point for those opposed to the reform of the church because liturgical changes were the most obvious evi- Review for Religious dence of the reform. The council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium, SC) is a marvel of compromise, especially in the areas of language, music, and lay participation . Concerning language, the use of vernacular was encouraged, but Latin was to remain in use (SC §36). Forms of music other than Gregorian chant were encouraged, but Gregorian chant was to be retained (SC §116). Even the musical instruments native to a given country were to be employed, but the pipe organ was to retain "pride of place" among them (SC §120). Regarding lay participation, there was to be some dis-tribution of ministries within the liturgy. In the theology of confection, the priest functioned virtually alone. In the theology of celebration, there were to be authentic litur-gical ministries for the laity in virtue of their baptismal priesthood. This was objected to by those who feared an inappropriate equalizing of the two priesthoods, with lay ministries obscuring the "subordinate" nature of the bap-tismal priesthood. The revised liturgy was seen by many as an abuse of authority that removed from the church's faithful any obligation of obedience. The changes were described as "the tearing of the seamless robe of Christ, which is the church's unity.''s The best-known opponent of the liturgical renewal was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who established the Society of St. Pius x in the 1970s. He wrote in 1974: "We close our ears to the destructive novelties now found in the church.''6 Through the pontificate of Paul VI, the liturgical renewal continued to move forward despite objections. The Eucharist is not merely a ritual; it is a creative force within the community. 66.4 2007 Rinere ¯ Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life Later on, there were several instances of a slowing of the renewal. Some would say there has been a "pulling back" from some of the foundational principles of the reform movement. In early April 2007, an item on the Catholic News Service website announced that a policy was in the works to restore some use of the Tridentine Mass in the whole church. (It was being used only by permission of diocesan bishops.) The article said that the restoration was aimed at "ending a liturgical dispute which has simmered in the church for more than twenty years" and thus bringing greater unity. [Benedict xvI issued the document on July 7, 2007. (ed.)] Why have I brought up all this history? I did it to point out that the celebration of Eucharist--the source and summit of the church's life--has been a hotbed of controversy, not just for decades but for centuries, and that we manage to go forward only through dialogue, discus-sion, and compromise. Little by little, despite difficulties, the celebration is becoming more diverse, more incultur-ated, allowing for more and more differences of opinion. From all reports, liturgical changes will continue to be announced. Pope Benedict, in the apostolic exhortation recently published, mentions the possibility of the Sign of Peace being moved to some other spot. And, of course, there remain difficulties concerning the new translation of the Roman Missal, which is a topic for another day. Connection to Religious Life The theological vision of the Eucharist as celebration is the unity of the church. The church, of course, is all the people of God, all the baptized. For religious life, then, within this great vision is the goal of unity toward which we progress through our human practices. In contrast to the vision, ways of celebrating the Eucharist keep disturb-ing some. Forty years ago it was a tug-of-war between Review for Religious traditionals and progressives. Today a new element has been added: those who find the Eucharist unacceptably clerical, exclusionary, hierarchical, or rigid. For these peo-ple, Eucharist is often a painful experience of oppression rather than a time of prayer and unity. Hopefully they find better experiences elsewhere. All these points of view on the celebration of the Eucharist are found in some religious communities. Can Eucharist be a point of unity in them? It depends, I think, on whether people are willing to compromise for the sake of one another. This becomes, then, a question of ecclesiology. Religious life is called to be prophetic in the church. What visions of the church are present in our communi-ties? We constantly seek practices of celebration that will bring us closer to the theological vision of unity. °- Inasmuch as the practice of the Eucharist as cel-ebration has continually moved forward, has never stagnated, and has always sought better balance between conflicting prin-ciples by becoming appro-priately inclusive and diverse, it is, in my opinion, mirrored in religious life. We can see ourselves reflected in the evolu-tion, the tensions, the struggles to do the right thing. If the Eucharist is not at the heart of our unity, but rather a point of strife and division, we should discuss not the Eucharist, but rather what it means to be church, prophet, and peacemaker. Where we do not dialogue and do not discuss, compromise, forgive, and accept what we might not prefer for the sake of the common good, the Eucharist itself may not help much. Eucharist is often a painful experience of oppression :rather than a time of prayer and unity. ,391 66.4 2007 Rinere * Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life Eucharist as Sacrament to Be Received Why discuss receiving the received Eucharist sepa-rately from celebration? Besides having some distinct characteristics, reception has undergone some signifi-cant developments. In today's theological vision, it can be described as multilevel communion: inner communion with Jesus and intercommunion with all others who share the Body and Blood of Christ. Yesterday. Those who recall the early years of the 20th century before Vatican II may have observed some people receiving Communion rather rarely. Only priests distributed Communion, and only the consecrated hosts were distributed, not the chalice with the precious Blood. Returning silently to their places in the pews, communi-cants knelt reverendy and, bowing their heads, communed adoringly with the Lord they had just received. Receiving Communion was an act of public and private devotion. Today the changes are clear. Receiving Communion is frequent. Few people stay in their places and refrain from receiving. "Extraordinary" Eucharistic ministers are com-mon. Communicants may receive in the hand or not, and Communion under both species is common. Receiving Communion is a natural consequence, of being present at the celebration. The 2002 General Instruction of the Roman Missal describes the distribution of the Eucharist as a procession in which part.icipants come forward as a community, sing, and receive Communion. Sharing in Communion is to actualize the Eucharistic community and also to foster a personal relationship with Christ. Not long afterwards the Eucharistic community is dismissed with the commission to be Eucharist to those they encoun-ter. St. Augustine is often quoted as writing "Receive who you are, and be the One you have received." The "energy" surrounding the reception of the Eucharist has changed from being personal and inward Review for Religious to being outward, communal, ministerial, and unifying. Receiving the Eucharist commissions us to inner prayer, but also to the service of others--to be bread broken. Our service of others comes from our unity in Christ. Journey. The history of the liturgical renewal focuses on practices and attitudes. In the history of the Eucharist as sacrament, the two most universally accepted innova-tions were the reception of Communion in the hand and the distribution of Communion by the laity. These were never really wanted by the church authorities who were regulating the reform. In 1968 the bishops of Belgium and Germany asked permission to experiment with Communion in the hand because it was a faster method of distribution. When the experiment ended three years later, the people refused to give up the option. Finally, in 1974, all efforts to eliminate the practice were stopped. With some similarities, extraordinary ministers have been reluctantly permitted to function since 1969. As late as 2006, official documents have reminded the whole church of how "inappropriate" this ministry is for the noncleric. Catholics still feel more comfortable with receiving the Eucharist as an act of personal devotion. Witness the difficulties of implementing the liturgical principles connected with the Communion procession: People do not sing, many still rush the line, many leave the church early. I suggest also that people are not enthusiastic about "Eucharist received" as a commission to ministry. Nor are people quick to realize the unity fostered by their sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ. Religious Life. From my experience of religious com-munities, I have the impression that many religious pre-fer the personal and devotional aspects of receiving the Eucharist to the ministerial aspects--the outward ser-vice- and only afterward the unifying aspects of being 66.4 2007 Rinere ¯ Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life "Eucharist received:'; is certainly re qected in the service every Christian renders to others. part of the Eucharistic community. There is a tendency, after personal devotion, to be more invested in service to others than in service to one another in our religious communities--even though service to community mem-bers comes, of course, from our being united by our shar-ing in the Eucharist. "Eucharist received" is certainly reflected in the service every Christian renders to others. However, Eucharist received also should be reflected in those rela-tionships which are closest. For instance, within families the Eucharistic bond is intended to be effective-- real--between spouses and parents and children. This Eucharistic bond forms the "domestic church" that is at the heart of mar-riage. For religious, the Eucharistic bond must be at the heart of commu-nity relationships--a true force holding the community together. Most women religious no longer live in large institutional settings where they would form the daily Eucharistic community at Mass. Nowadays the unify-ing force of the Eucharist, wherever members share in it, should find its .first and most clear reflection at home, where we live with each other. Discussion, or any way of reflecting in community life the Eucharist as sacrament received, would best not focus on the Eucharist as such, but on the quality of our com-munity life, the Eucharistic character of our relationships with one another. What are the Eucharistic characteristics of relation-ships? What are the Eucharistic characteristics of com-munity relationships? How do we call one another to Review for Religious be Christ for each other in community? W-here is the Eucharist we receive effective in our communities? Groups that grapple with questions like these do not seek clear and definitive answers. Rather, they seek bonding, shar-ing one another's weaknesses, failures, successes, foibles. Perhaps being Eucharistic means forgiving and accepting rather than getting things right. If we can struggle with these kinds of questions, with this level of honesty, we will experience our religious life as mirroring our "Eucharist received." Our reception of the Eucharist will inspire an expanding vision; our act of private devotion will seek fulfillment in service to others and unity with those closest to us. Eucharist as Object of Adoration Let us now consider the Eucharist as an object of adoration. This aspect of the Eucharist has a significant history in the church, although such devotional practices as benediction and exposition did not develop until the 12th century or later. Historically, Eucharistic devotions originated as ways to safeguard and emphasize the doc-trine of the Real Presence. Benediction, exposition, and processions were theologically inspired rites intended to confirm the faith of the faithful on this point. The Real Presence, of course, suggests adoration. And theological vision sees adoration as finding a ritual completeness in celebration and other worthy activity. Nourishment from the Eucharist gives strength for carrying out apostolic action. Yesterday. Again, older people will recall the not uncommon practices of concluding Mass with benedic-tion or having exposition during Mass. Every parish had its time for Forty Hours Devotion. The architecture of churches called attention to the tabernacle and the Real Presence. Today we are seeing some resurgence of tradi- 66.4 2007 Rinere ¯ Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life 396 tional devotions, even a return to traditional architecture. But is it merely a return of what was, or has there been some degree of transformation? Today. In his recent apostolic exhortation Sacramenturn caritatis, Pope Benedict speaks of the intrinsic relationship between Eucharistic adoration and Eucharistic celebra-tion. He says the relationship is much more clearly seen since the liturgical renewal brought about by Vatican II. He refers, of course, to the years it has taken to find a bal-ance between the Eucharist seen in celebration and recep-tion, and the interior and personal aspects of Eucharistic devotions and adoration. Journey. Vatican II set out the basic principle that devotional practices are to "harmonize with the liturgi-cal seasons, accord with sacred liturgy, [be] in some way derived from it, and lead the people to it, since in fact the liturgy by its very nature is far superior to any of them" (SC §13). Echoing this principle, Pope Benedict calls ado-ration of the Blessed Sacrament a "natural consequence" of the celebration, which "intensifies all that takes place during the celebration itself" (§66). Devotions that do not relate to the celebration of the Eucharist, that do not call to mission and community and lead back to the celebra-tion of the Mass, are incomplete. That is, adoration is completed by outward relationships. Consider for a minute that a part of the renewal sur-rounding eucharistic devotions concerned the placement of tabernacles in churches. An instruction published in 1967 stated the principle of why tabernacles should not be on the altar: In the celebration of the Mass the principal modes of Christ's presence to his church emerge clearly, one after the other: first he is seen to be present in the assembly of the faithful gathered in his name; then in his word, with the reading and explanation of Scripture; also in Review for Religious the person of the minister; finally, in a singular way, under the eucharistic elements. Consequently, on the grounds of the sign value, it is more in keeping with the nature of the celebration that, through reserva-tion of the sacrament in the tabernacle, Christ not be present eucharistically from the beginning on the altar where Mass is celebrated. (Instruction E~¢charisticum mysterium, 25 May 1967, §55) From that one principle came the years of wrangling over the placement of tabernacles in churches. The argu-ments went from on or off the altar to in or out of the sanctuary, from the body of the church to a side chapel. No clear consensus ever emerged, so now all disputes are settled by the diocesan bishop. The questions on tabernacles are relate~l to how peo-ple understand the Eucharistic presence of Christ in the Mass and the various other modes of his presence in the celebration of the Mass. Before Vatican II, Eucharistic devotions acknowledged the Real Presence in the taber-nacle and tended to ignore the other modes of Christ's presence. It seems these devotions had to disappear while the community became more familiar with the presence of Christ in the assembly, the word, and the priest; and the tabernacle had to move so we would find Christ in one another. Now we see a resurgence of Eucharistic devotions in many parishes and religious houses. This resurgence could be a regression to what was, inner adoration for its own sake, or it could be a reworking or a reweav-ing of the inward and outward aspects of the presence of Christ. Pope Benedict said in the apostolic exhortation: "If suitably updated, traditional Eucharistic devotions are worthy of being practiced today" (§68). In other words, insofar as the traditional Eucharistic devotions are united to and balanced with the celebration of the Mass, both are enriching. If either branch of Eucharistic expression loses 397 66.4 2007 398 Rinere * Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life touch with the other, the mutual enrichment is frustrated. If the inner life of adoration does not enrich the outward impulse to service, the fullness of the Eucharistic reality is lost. If the outward impulse to service is not personal-ized by an inner adoration, the fullness of the Eucharistic reality is lost. This balance between inner devotion to the Real Presence in the Eucharist and outward service to the Real Presence in others is the goal for all Christians. We undertake action for justice when Christ is really present for us in one another. Religious Life. At the time of the council, the Eucharistic life of the church had not changed in a long time. The council presented the challenge of renewing and updating our Eucharistic worship and devotions so they reflected a balance between inner tradition and outward action. Now hear that again, with some words changed: At the time of the council, religious life had not changed in a long time. The council presented the challenge of renewing and updating our way of life so that it reflected a balance between inner tradition and outward action. Those who entered our communities in the 1960s happily and gloriously threw off old trappings of reli-gious life as we moved into the 20th century from the 17th, 18th, or 19th. In my own community we jettisoned what kept us inward, cloistered, separated from the world around us. Just as Eucharistic life of the church seeks the balance between tradition and progress, religious communities need the same cautious pursuit. Thus, discussions about Eucharistic adoration .might really be about whether our way of life is or is not balanced between tradition and progress. In the past forty years, have we progressed well in all things? What did we remove from our lives and why? Did we eliminate anything that we need now to hold us Review for Religious together? Did we erase anything that spoke clearly of who we are and what we are about? How can we more. effectively weave past, present, and future together? I do not know the answers to these questions, but wouldn't they make for some interesting conversation at community gatherings? There is much talk these days about women religious being "invisible" in the church. There is much mutter-ing about traditional communities having many vocations while progressive communities do not. Can the struggle to find a balance between inward Eucharistic adoration and outward service be instruc-tive here? Religious life, too, seeks a path of fidelity. We have looked at three aspects of the all-encompassing topic of the Eucharist. Regarding Eucharist as celebration, Eucharist as sacrament received, and Eucharist as object of adoration, we traced some struggles of the last forty years. Can we see ourselves reflected in the mystery which is the "source and summit" of all Christian life? Are we celebratory despite our differences? Can we compromise for the common good? Are we Eucharistic in our deal-ings with one another within community? Are our lives a good balance between tradition and progress, between adoration and action, between yesterday and tomorrow? Looking into such questions would bring Eucharist to the center of the room. It would become more clear to us that the source and summit of the church's life is the source and summit of our lives as well, for "the other sac-raments and all the ecclesiastical works of the apostolate are closely connected with the Most Holy Eucharist and ordered to it" (canon 897). Notes ' Paul Quenon ocso, "The Eucharist: Symbol of Coherence," in The Sacraments: Readings in Contemporary Sacramental Theology, ed. Michael Taylor SJ (New York: Alba House, 1981), p. 145. 399 66.4 2007 Rinere ¯ Eucharist Mirrored in Religious Life 2 Joseph Powers SJ, "Eucharist, Mystery of Faith and Love," in Taylor, Sacraments, p. 119. 3 Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition (Washington, D.C.: CLSA, 1999). 4 Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948-1975 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1990), p. 289. 5 Bugnini, p. 280. 6 Bugnini, p. 294. 7 See Bugnini, pp. 640-661. 400 Fool's Gold Golden moon of year's end, fiat in the sky, sliding, shrouded, out again, high. No denomination marks its face-- not harvest or prairie, blue moon or silver: no song or moan just moon, alone. But I, contented, lie under this wintry sky chewing on pieces of winter moon tasting of June. Eilee~ Haugh OSF Review for Reli~ous A. PAUL DOMINIC The Christ Child, the Father of the Man For all the humbleness of Christ's birth as Luke portrays it, there is no denying the glamour of Christmas, however people perceive it and adapt theinselves into it. It was so at the first Christmas. The shepherds, the Magi, and Herod all behaved differently. The yearly Christmas in our days smacks of different traditions in differ-ent places. Also, the glamour in church is differ-ent from that of the market; people are attracted or repulsed. But surely there is room for some new traditions, if only they are sensitively cre-aged and sensibly introduced. To start with, however, it is worth discerning what is definitely good and downright bad in the usual responses to Christmas. One may contrast here the experience of Christian children with that of the secular publicJ Christian children celebrating Christmas have an innocence and A. Paul Dominic SJ wrote for us earlier this year, in our 66.2 issue. His new address is Human Development Centre; Port Mourant; Corentyne; Guyana, South America. Jesus and Mary 401 66.4 2007 Dominic ¯ The Christ Child, the Father of the Man 402 insight worthy of the true splendor of Christmas, reveal-ing it particularly in their mirth, as G.K. Chesterton has noted. The same thing cannot be said of the merely sec-ular Christmas, an expensive seasonal festival in winter attracting all and sundry. If the commercial Christmas catering to compulsive spending mars the innocent glam-our of Christmas, recent campaigns for the abolition of even the word Christmas would achieve a mere mimicry of Christmas devoid of mirth and glamour. Common among Catholics (at least in India) is another scenario, one they are fond of. Although they are not ignorant of the basic truth of Christmas, they are not well enough informed to appreciate, much less appropriate, the genuine glamour of what they celebrate. They have remained more or less with the same glimpse of Christmas as they had in their childhood. Their enjoy-ment of Christmas has remained stuck in the categories of the child-mind, that has however lost its intuitive spiritual ~ision. So they almost make an idol of the Christ Child, or at least diminish him in their own eyes. Such a rou-tine and even stunted devotion readily becomes a cult of the Infant Jesus carried on throughout the year, even during Lent and the Easter season. Such a popular cult with its unholy accretions--not the least of which is the mushrooming of miracles reminiscent of those reported in the apocryphal gospels--has prospered in India and caused Infant Jesus shrines to be built that attract not only Christians but also Hindus and Muslims. In such vagaries or caricatures of piety, one cannot but suspect something unwholesome and un-Christian. An illustra-tion of this would be a simple Hindu asking a Catholic if the Infant Jesus is a God different from the Christ on the cross. One may compare this to what a biblical scholar says about the Christmas crib. He does .not deny Francis of Assisi's contribution to Christmas when he made the Review for Religious first creche to illustrate the infancy gospels, but he says: "One can appreciate that enormous contribution and still be obliged to wonder whether, through fostering maud-lin sentimentality, the crib/creche might in certain circum-stances become false to the main theological purposes of those narratives." 1 Surely, then, the devotion to the Infant Jesus can-not follow the ancient apocryphal fervor or the modern materialistic route, but must derive, as always, from divine inspiration. The litur-gical inspiration based on Scripture has a pri-mary place. As the old saying goes, lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). The populaF Infant Jesus devotion has got it wrong,, pro-moting the supposed -- saying of the Infant Jesus in an apparition: "The more you honor me the more I will bless you." This reflects the gosPel tradition regarding Jesus' infancy only minimally. On the other hand, the liturgy, with its true springs of devotion, spreads out the mystery of Christ during the year, including the annunciation to Mary and the birth of her Son, his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Such thinking is in line with what the pristine church came to discover before the close of the first century. After pondering the Lordship of Christ revealed in his death and resurrection, it came to realize his Lordship at his very birth. The early Christians intuited, as shown in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, that Christ was the Lord at his birth, indeed, at his very coriception. John The devotion to the Infant Jesus canno't follow the ancient apocryphal fervor or the modern materialistic route. 66.4 2007 Dominic ¯ The Christ Child, the Father of the Man 404 made bold to say that the only-begotten Son of God became flesh, to be identified as Christ. Inheriting the full intuition of the evangelists faithfully enough, every gen-eration of Christians must learn to embrace the whole of the mystery of Christ. The only way open to us is that we reverse the way the first generation traversed, beginning where they ended and ending where they began. What they could understand only backwards, from the end, we start from the beginning. So we may frame a question as follows. Knowing that Christmas is not a self-contained mystery suitable for children and guarded by conservators, how can adult Christians celebrate and enjoy it for what it is, namely, an incipient open-ended mystery? A simple answer, already hinted at, is that we ought to be forward looking, developing an eschatological sensitivity. An initial clue may be found in Luke's telling of Christ's birth as following upon John's. At his birth John was very special to his parents and even their neighbor-hood. For all that, however, their focus was on the future; they wondered, "What will this child be?" That was the way they were interested in him as a unique individual of exceptional worth and grace. "For the hand of the Lord was with him" (Lk 1:66). However glorious he was at his birth, reminiscent of Isaac, Samson, and Samuel, it was no more than a measure of his future. Rightly, then, his father Zechariah gave voice to the unanimous expecta-tion of his neighbors, uttering a prophecy about his long-awaited son: And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Lk 1:76-79) Review for Religious In the story of Jesus, too, the same pattern of inter-est is noticeable. When Jesus was born and the news was made known to others, the focus was on what was to follow. If the shepherds told the details of the newborn child, it was not to glorify him in his swaddling clothes and perpetuate him in the manger; rather, the minutiae surrounding him were signs of what he was destined to be. Born a savior, he would prove himself a born savior, though one of an unexpected sort: he would save his peo-ple from their sins. The infant Savior was then and there no perfect Savior, if one may dare put it that way, for he was to become perfect in time's due course. Explicitly averring so in an early passage (5:8-9), the Letter to the Hebrews expatiates upon it later: When Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'See, I have come to do your will, O God.'" . . . When he said above "You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings," then he added, "See, I have come to do your will." He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God's will that we have been sanc-tified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb 10:5-10) Besides Savior, another title of the infant Jesus was King, both in Luke and Matthew. The glory of any infant king lies in his future. So when the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary God's plan for her, he did not con-fine himself to remarks about the pleasant or miracu-lous details of Jesus' birth or status; rather, he went on to describe intently his purposeful destiny. Born in the line of King David, he would himself be a king in his own right, but, unlike David, would exercise his king-ship without end. Something of that future both King 405 66.4 2007 Dominic ¯ The Christ Child, the Father of the Man Perhaps no mature mother could be absorbed totally in the present affairs of her child without being future oriented. 406 Herod's fear and the faith of the Magi foresaw, and they acted accordingly only to prove in different ways the last-ing kingship of him who, however, could exercise it only when he came of age. For all her motherly adoration of the Christ Child, Mary was not wholly occupied with his existence as a bun-dle of wonder. Right from her conception of this child, she was forward looking even as she became involved with him and treasured her immediate experience of him. Even in the first flush of her motherhood, she was left wondering what her child was going to be, especially after hearing what the visiting shepherds had to tell her about him. As she gazed at him in her arms, she also kept peering into whatever was emerging about him indicative of his future. A highly significant occasion was her meeting with Simeon. Hearing .his utterance, glorious and yet strange, about the destiny of her child for the rising and falling of many in Israel, she could not rest content clinging to Jesus only as to the son of her womb. Going beyond her motherhood, she had to set her eyes on the prophetic figure that he was to grow into, fulfilling the expectations of her own people. Perhaps no mature mother .could be absorbed totally in the present affairs of.her child without being future oriented, especially as the child grows out of childhood. Mary was led to visualize her Son's future right from the start by the divine intervention she recognized in her-self and the shepherds and the Magi and Simeon and, Review for Religious of course, her own Son, especially on his first visit to the temple. One may well say that almost every event in her life had a way of transporting her from her present involvement with her Son to the oncoming scenario of his life. Her life with her Son consisted, then, in detecting and discerning God's designs for him. It was an experi-ence of not merely seeing her Son with her wondering eyes and cherishing him as her own flesh and blood in homely surroundings. More than that, it was a matter of her perceiving him beyond space and time and so seek-ing an understanding of him as the grown man he was becoming. If ever the child is the father of the man, it was uniquely so in the case of her Son, Jesus. Such an ¯ understanding could not be given or received by flesh and blood. In her own way but also in the light of her Son's ever revealing Abba, who was and is and will be, Mary pondered the mystery of her child, whether suckling or growing and maturing. If there was a time when people knew Jesus only in the flesh, it could not continue that way; it had to cease sooner or later (see 2 Co 5:16).2 And Mary, his mother, would have learned this early, though it seems she never learned it enough. That is why, at certain junctures, she did not understand her Son's words and deeds. Her Son was deepening her understanding and her consolation. It is a credit to her that she continued to ponder what was occurring.3 The babyhood, childhood, and youth of Jesus were passing stages in more ways than one. He grew--continued to grow--in age, wisdom, and grace. If Mary was not unaware of her Son's growth, she could be stunned at times by what seemed a sudden growth and awareness. This.concerned his unique relationship with his Abba, even to the point of letting his earthly parents become deeply worried about him when we was twelve, at the dawn of his Jewish adulthood. All the rest of his life 407 66.4 2007 Dominic ¯ The Christ Child, the Father of the Man 4O8 stoW told in the Gospels, including his passion, death, and resurrection, was an unfolding of that initial appreciation of his Abba's delight. It is in this light that at Christmas we can hear the whisper of the Father to his Son: "You are my Son; today I have begotten you" (Ps 2:7). Later, of course, we hear "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased" (Lk 3:22). Anyone who does not cherish such a perspective of Jesus even while being engaged in contemplating his childhood misses in no small measure the mystery that he is. The great mystery of our religion is indeed pre-cisely he, the kind of person he was and is. It is multipolar mystery touching many stages of his life, one leading to the other not only step by step but by leaps and bounds. An ancient hymn sang it thus: He was revealed in flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, preached among Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory. (1 Tm 3:16) Revelation of him in the flesh is indeed Christmas and Christmas gloW. To appreciate it fully, all three elements in the description--the person revealed, the fact of rev-elation, and the mode of revelation--must be weighed and valued. Perhaps John does this best and so he can say, "The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glow, the gloW as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth" On 1:14). This glow, of course, is the gloW of his entire life. St. Ignatius, till sometime after his conversion, was not an enlightened believer. He came to be blessed with enlightenment, however, as he matured in the faith. He shared his experience in his practical notes that became the classic Spiritual Exercises. There he proposes a con- Review for Religious templation on Jesus' birth in which he helps retreatants not to miss the fullness of the Christmas mystery. He points out that, if the Lord is born in great poverty, it is so that, after many hardships such as hunger, thirst, heat, cold, injuries, insults, and so forth, he may die on the cross.4 The church discovered such a spirit and introduced it in its way of praying. It nurtured it in a simple way through the Angelus. Reciting it three times a day, any-one-- child or adult, peasant or professional, artist or scientist--can learn to be at home with the full mystery of Christ. The three antiphons and three Hail Marys recall the mystery of joy at Christmas and associate us with Mary, who knew that joy as no one else. The conclud-ing prayer begins again with the annunciation/incarna-tion only to lead to the mystery of the passion, cross, and resurrection. There is no better way of doing homage to Jesus at any time, even Christmas. The Story of the Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke teaches all this in another way. With the proverbial three wise men, a fourth one, named Artaban, plans to visit the newborn Jewish king. He sets out with three gifts for him: a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl. But, on the way to the agreed place of meeting, he finds a sick traveler lying alone on his desert path. He stays with him to nurse him to health. That prevents him from reaching his friends in time. Left alone, he sells his sapphire to provide him-self with the necessary caravan for the journey. When he reaches his destination, he finds sadly that the family of the baby king has fled from Bethlehem to escape Herod's murderous plans. To the house where he is staying, sol-diers come to slaughter a child, and he gives his ruby to them and saves the terrified mother and child. Setting out again, he travels far and wid

Issue 64.2 of the Review for Religious, 2005. ; Faith Perspectives Taking Account Religious Life Holy People QUARTERLY 64.2 2005 Review for Religious fosters dialogue with, God, dialogue witt~ ourselves, and dialogue with one . another about the l~olin~ess~w~e try tolive' ~ ~ according to charisms of Catholic religious life,,; As Pope Paul VI 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: 314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: review@slu.edu ¯ Web site: www.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 ° St. Joseph's Provincial House 333 South Seton Avenue ° Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 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. ©2005 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. view for religious Editor Associate Editor Canonical Counsel Scripture Scope Editorial Staff Webmaster Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Eugene Hensell OSB M~ry Ann Foppe 7Fracy Gramm Jiady Sharp ' Clare Boehmer ASC Steve Erspamer SM .Kathleen'Hughes RSCJ Ernest E. Larkin OCarm Lot~is and Angela Menard Bisl~op Terry.Steib SVD Miriam -D. Ukeritis CSJ :'. QUARTERLY 64.2 2O05 contents 116 prisms Prisms faith perspectives Reaching the Alienated Heart: An Interpretation of the Descent into Hell Dennis J. Billy CSSR examines our creedal profession that Jesus "descended into hell" and finds an understanding for our contemporary human experience. 129 Feet First into Resurrection Bonaventure Stefun OFMCap delves into the significance of the Christian action of the washing of the feet in its sacra-mental way of relating us to the risen Christ. Reflection and Discussion 11,4] 135 152 taking account Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests James F. Keenan SJ writes as a moral theologian to propose four ethical rights that would seem to need recognition for the healthy communio of the church. Faith and Solidarity in Action Anne Munley IHM presents a summary overview of the May 2004 plenary session of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) dealing with the ministry of reconciliation. Review for Religious 159 Women Religious in Treatment for Addictions Millie Cargas describes art therapy and its effectiveness in therapy programs. 168 Asceticism and Chaste Celibate Love 177 184 194 Vilma Seelaus OCD unites chaste celibate love with an asceticism that enlarges the heart to receive a greater outpouring of God's love, which then flows more freely through us into the lives of others. Prayer hoOy people Snapshots of Three Lesser-Known "Saints" Robert F. Maloney CM sketches in brief detail the lives and deaths of three Catholics who continue to call us to witness to our faith. Learning to Live Serenely: The Wisdom of FFancis de Sales Juliana Devoy RGS reintroduces us to the sage advice of Francis de Sales in the ordinary daily living of our Christian lives. Reflection and Questions Good and Bad Zeal, Good and Bad Spirits Joseph I. Cisetti notes that, while distinct, the teaching of St. Benedict on good and bad zeal and the instructions of St. Ignatius on good and bad spirits bear similarities useful for both personal discernment and pastoral ministry. Reflection Questions ~ 201 206 ]epartrn r s Scripture Scope: Reading the Acts of the Apostles Canonical Counsel: No More, No Less, and No Other . 212 Book Reviews 64.2 200Y prisms Te title of the apostolic letter "Stay with Us, Lord," published on the occasion of the October 2004-October 2005 Year of the Eucharist, repeats the request that the two disciples gave to the stranger as they made their way to Emmaus on that first Easter Sunday. Each year we seem to enter anew into the full challenge of our asking the Lord "to stay with us" as we move into the Easter and Pentecost seasons .and the Ordinary time of our Christian living that follows. Every Eucharist we celebrate brings home to us our relating to the Risen Lord in his sacra-mental presence. As we know from our scripture readings in the Easter season, Jesus seemed to move in and out of the disciples' lives. His alter-hating presence and absence prompted Peter and some of the other apostles to go back to their trade of fishing, which provided the occasion for a picnic breakfast at the seashore. Perhaps over and over again we may have heard the apostles and disciples begging "Stay with us, Lord." The Risen Lord does "stay" with his eucharistic stance of offering himself totally in love to God his Father and of giving himself R~ie'w for Religio~s totally in love over into our human hands. The once-event of crucifixion is removed from the boundaries of time by the very person of Jesus now risen and "stay-ing" with us day after day. Each celebration of the Eucharist calls forth our recognition of this nearness of Jesus, inviting us to be with him in this love-offering. Eucharistic adoration outside of Mass continues to chal-lenge us to recognize Jesus' presence not so much as merely "staying" with us but rather as continuously offer-ing himself in love totally to the Father and to us and always inviting us to fully integrate ourselves into his sacrificial (that is, "making holy") action. "Stay with us, Lord"--heartfelt as the plea is--needs more humbly to be prayed as "Let us be where you are, Lord." Our greatest desire is always to be where God is; we do not smugly ask God to take the trouble to come to where we prefer to be. By God's grace and calling, some women and men, often hermits or consecrated religious, have dedicated their lives to Eucharistic worship. They have given their lives to "stay" with the Lord. But for the most part we ordinary Catholics find that life is spent in many activities, working for a living, being helpful and hospitable, planning, coping with setbacks, involved with family or community, with limited time for church celebrations and Eucharistic devotions. Are we slow to expect Christ to "stay with us"? .If we are, why not prayerfully seek to "stay with Jesus" as he continues to be active everywhere in this busy world of ours? Then we realize the 'truth of the Eucharistic action: Jesus is the One inviting us to be With him in his love offering to God and to others. Our. prayer is: "Let me stay where you are." David L. Fleming SJ 117 64.2 2005 faith perspectives DENNIS J. BILLY Reaching the Alienated Heart: An Interpretation of the Descent into Hell The doctrine of Christ's descent into hell after his suffering and death on Good Friday conveys some important truths about the meaning and scope of the paschal mystery. To understand this doctrine, we must distinguish its theological for-mulation from the underlying truth it seeks to express. Also we must put aside any prejudices that would prevent us from probing this doc-trine for its full worth and must open our hearts to its deep spiritual wisdom. My purpose in this essay is to explore what the Apostles' Creed means when it says that Jesus "descended into hell" and to see this teaching's impact on our lives today. Christ's Redemptive Self-Emptying As we begin, note that the descent into hell makes sense only if we examine it in the con-text of the creed's other affirmations about Dennis J. Billy CSSR, a frequent contributor to our pages, writes from Accademia Alfonsiana; C.P. 2458; 00100 Roma, Italy. Review for Religious Christ, especially those related to his plan of redemp-tion. The Apostles' Creed, we are told, "is rightly con-sidered a faithful summary of the Apostles' faith" and constitutes "the oldest Roman catechism." 1 Since all of the church's teachings about Christ are closely related, just where this particular doctrine appears in the creed can tell us much about its overall function in the faith of the early church. When looking at the surrounding words, we see that Jesus' descent is placed between affirmations about his suffering and death ("he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried") and the proclama-tion of his resurrection ("on the third day he rose again"). If the early Christians considered entering the realm of the dead a natural outcome of Jesus' passion and death, then rising from the dead preceded his ascent into heaven. This immediate context tells us that Jesus' descent into hell occupies an important place in the over-all narrative of Jesus' redemptive journey. If it did not, it would never have been placed at the very heart of the creed's Christological affirmations. The preceding and subsequent Christological affir-mations in the Apostles' Creed make this even more apparent. Earlier we affirm that Jesus is the only Son of the Father, that he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Later we affirm that Jesus ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. The creed's entire Christological narrative, then, looks something like this: incarnation, birth, suffering, death, descent into hell, resurrection, ascent to the Father's right hand, return in glory, final judgment. Along with the resurrection, Jesus' descent into hell lies at the center of the narrative of human redemption. It is the last action of Jesus' redemptive self- 119 64.2 200~ Billy ¯ Reacbing the Alienated Heart emptying and the point from which his transformation and glorious ascent begins. rOse,ore the dead, ' ascended into heave " allows for somb latit de: about how these forrnulation " " should be ftnderstOod. ,:, Formulation and Truth At this point some pivotal questions arise. What is the correspondence between the statements in the Apostles' Creed and the truths they express? Is this brief narrative of Jesus' redemptive mission meant to be taken lit-erally? Does it reveal certain truths about Christ's redemptive action that can be removed from their present theological formulations in the hope of uncovering deeper, even more penetrating insights into the mystery of the Christ event? Is it possible to uncover the underlying truths of the creed without doing damage to the tradition by which those truths have been passed down? There are no simple answers, to these important and enigmatic questions. Some statements in the creed are affirmations of historical fact and require a close con-nection between the formulations themselves and the truths they .state. To say that Jesus suffered, died, and was buried, for example, leaves little room for discus-sion. Either these affirmations happened or they did not. The historical events to which they refer must be either accepted or denied. Other statements in the creed, however, are affirma-tions of faith that cannot be historically verified and thus Review for Religious offer more leeway in distinguishing between their for-mulations and the truths they disclose. To say that Jesus rose from the dead or ascended into heaven allows for some latitude about how these formulations should be understood. What do we mean when we say someone has risen from the dead? What is our understanding of ascension? What is our understanding of heaven? Unlike the notions of suffering, death, and burial, these con-cepts have no historical precedents with which to com-pare them. Given these possibilities, theologians need to discern with care the nature of the particular creedal statement before them and then determine to the best of their abil-ity the relationship between the formulation itself and the truth it uncovers. While a certain logical gap will probably always exist between the formulation and the truth to which it points, the gap will likely vary from one doctrinal formulation to the next. Understanding Jesus' Descent Like the doctrines of Jesus' resurrection and ascen-sion into heaven, the creedal affirmation of Jesus' "descent into hell" allows for a certain amount of dis-tance between its theological formulation and the truth it expresses. After all, there must be more to this doctrine than the image it conjures.in our minds of a literal, spa-tial descent by Christ into the dark and gloomy under-world of the now outdated Hebrew worldview. What about the astonishing message of God's undying love for the world? Most would agree that hell is not so much a place as a state of being, one completely alienated from God. In our reinterpretation of hell, the focus should be on the spiritual and mental, not the physical. When speaking about Jesus' "descent into hell" today, perhaps we should interpret it as revealing something about 121 64.2 2005" Billy ¯ Reaching the Alienated Heart humanity's alienation from God and about Jesus' role in bringing that alienation to an end. Alienation makes us feel isolated from ourselves, one another, and God. It hinders us on our journey through life and prevents us from becoming the persons we are called to be. Ronald Rolheiser puts it this way: "We are social beings, meant to live in love and intimacy with others. Our nature demands this. When, for whatever reasons, we cannot achieve this and communicate love as we should, then something is missing inside of us--and we feel it! We feel estranged and alienated.''2 To be in hell is to be in a state of complete and utter alienation from God. In such a state, we have lost touch with our-selves and so have become incapable of reaching out in love to anyone. If we are honest, all of us will admit experiencing sometime in our lives this sense of being estranged from and "out of sync" with ourselves, the world around us, and the God who created us. We feel at war with our-selves, divided and incapable of healing the division. Although we are conscious of it in various ways and degrees, this sense of alienation is not a matter of per-sonal choice (although choice can contribute to it), but a part of our existential condition as human beings. What makes matters worse is that we somehow sense that it was not meant to be this way, that something has gone terribly wrong with our human condition and that some-how humanity as a whole bears at least some (if not all) responsibility for it. Making All Things New Christianity is all about how God chose to make things right again by sharing our human condition and overcoming this alienation lurking deep in our hearts. Down through the ages, the church has developed the Review for Religious doctrines of original sin and redemption to explain this universal alienation and reveal the way God has chosen to rectify it. Jesus' descent into hell is intimately tied to these fun-damental Christian doctrines, each of which, like two sides of a coin, cannot exist without the other. Here, too, a distinction must ., - - -- be made between the formulations of these doctrines and the truths they disclose. Like Jesus' descent into hell, these doc-trines allow room for interpretation. The doctrine of original sin affirms that all of humanity has somehow become alienated from God in its collec-tive soul. The doctrine of redemption, in turn, affirms that, for any healing to take place, Jesus entered that realm of alienation and preached the Good News of God's love for each and every human being. When seen in this light, Jesus' descent into hell is the final stage of his redemptive self-emptying. H~ has entered our world, given himself to us completely, to the point of dying for us, and even to the point of telling those who live in complete alienation from the divine that God still loves them. Through the cross Jesus reveals his message of divine compassion, breaks down the resistance of our primal alienation, and offers newness of life to all who would have it. Byzantine iconography illustrates this point very well. When depicting the descent into hell, the artist normally has Jesus standing on the toppled gates of hell with a scroll in one hand and pulling Adam out of a bottom- The word preached by Jesus to those in hell boldly proclaims a new creation made possible by hi! rising from the dead. 64.2 2005 Billy * Reaching the Alienated Heart less pit with the other. Below Adam, angels can be seen locking Satan and his minions in chains that will hold them captive for all eternity. According to the principles of iconography, a scroll typically represents the preach-ing of the word. Since "Adam" in Hebrew means "man," in the universal sense of the term that today many would refer to as "humanity," Jesus' lifting of Adam, the first man, indicates the healing of humanity's primal wounds and its elevation to even great heights through Christ's redeeming grace) The word preached by Jesus to those in hell boldly proclaims a new creation made possible by his rising from the dead. Through his resurrection Jesus, the first fruits of the new humanity, takes fallen humanity by the hand, lifts it out of its primal alienation, and lets it par-ticipate in a union with the divine more intimate than everbefore thought possible. Jesus' descent into hell cannot be properly understood apart from his rising from the dead. It relates to the resurrection as the doctrine of original sin relates to the redemption. They are like two sides of a coin: they cannot exist without each other. Observations The above presentation offers a rethinking of the church's traditional teaching of Jesus' descent into hell. What follows are a number of remarks designed to fill out this interpretation in practical and relevant ways. 1. To begin with, this presentation challenges us to examine our minds and hearts in order to affirm what we truly believe about our faith. The doctrines of Christianity developed over time out of the experience of God's people and must always try to speak to their ongo-ing experience. If they fail to do so, they risk becoming brittle assertions from the past that fail to inspire and give life. The challenge for today's believers is to engage Review for Religious these doctrines in such a way that they continue to speak to their experience while remaining faithful to the insights of our Christian forebears. This presentation of Jesus' descent into hell uses different interpretive lenses to affirm the underlying truths of the traditional teach-ing so that they can be understood among the shifting contours of today's spiritual landscape. 2. A fundamental presupposition of this presentation is that it is possible to draw a distinction between a par-ticular formulation of the Christian faith and the truths it seeks to express. Since the complex relationship between language and meaning are not easy to unravel (if at all), we have urged here that, when seeking a refor-mulation of a doctrine that would be more palatable to contemporary tastes, we proceed strictly on a case-by-case basis. The approach used here for reinterpreting Jesus' descent into hell, for example, would not neces-sarily work in discussions of other creedal statements, especially those with more historically verifiable claims. 3. The distinction between a theological formula and the truth it discloses can be upheld on the basis of the analogy of human language. As with language, the Aposdes' Creed is a complex system of symbols that seeks to convey an intricate web of meaning. While all trans-lations of that meaning from one language to others are themselves interpretations (some better than others), we maintain that translations are not only possible but some-times absolutely required. This claim is all the more true for the church's proclamation of the Gospel, which at one and the same time must remain faithful to the apos-tolic tradition and relevant to the spiritual needs of each generation. 4. The choice of the phrase "alienation from the divine" as the existential equivalent to the Christian doctrine of hell has much in its favor. The term "alienation" is used 64.2 2005 Billy * Reaching the Alienated Heart by many spiritual writers today and, when taken to an extreme, conveys a sense of the intense pain and isolation experienced in a life marked by a total absence of God. The knowledge, moreover, that there are different degrees of alienation (from simple noninclusion to total estrange-ment) brings new insights in the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. If hell is the state of being in which individuals have become so alienated from God that they can no longer open their hearts to God's compassionate love, then pur-gatory represents that state of being where alienated hearts still can be moved to conversion. Seen in this light, the final judgment is not an external ruling exercised by Christ at the end of time, but the simple recognition that per-sons' choices in life have a cumulative effect on their hearts. 5. Finally, Jesus' death on the cross, his descent into hell, and his resurrection from the dead do not bring an end to humanity's existential condition of alienation from the divine, but begin its healing. Jesus' descent into hell was not a single, one-time event, but a continuous engag-ing with humanity's alienation from the divine. Because Jesus' redemptive action occurs both in and out of time, he continues to empty himself for us to this very day by descending into the throes of our alienation from God in order to make of it a new creation. V~at has changed for us as a result of his redemptive action is that, in the midst of this alienation, we can hear a still small voice from deep within our hearts calling us by name and affirming God's compassionate and abounding love for us. That voice is the Spirit, the bond of love between the Father and the Son, who wishes not only to speak but also to dwell within our hearts. Jesus' redemptive action makes it possible for us to live a life in the Spirit. This descent into hell is a stark reminder of what our lives would be like without him. While these observations do not exhaust the insights Review for Religious that this interpretation of Jesus' descent into hell has to offer, they demonstrate that doctrine can be both con-tinuous with the past and relevant to the spiritual sensi-tivities of today's believers. We have seen that this descent can be understood as Jesus' proclamation of the truth of his resurrection even to those who have com-pletely alienated themselves from the divine love. Although God's love for humanity is deep and plen-tiful, Jesus was well aware that not everyone would be ready to accept his message of forgiveness and intimate friendship with the divine. He experienced rejection dur-ing his public ministry and fully expected the same (if not worse) when he journeyed to hell by way of his grue-some and bloody death by crucifixion. This knowledge, however, did not prevent him from proclaiming his trans-forming message of God's love in the realm of the dead. On the contrary, it emboldened him. The point of this essay is that this shadowy realm lies not in some dark, murky Sheol beneath the pillars of the earth, but deep in the human heart. Even today Jesus goes there to proclaim his message and bring an end to humanity's primal alienation from God. Although the message he preaches is a source of vexation to many (hence the well-known phrase "harrowing of hell"), many whose hearts have not been completely hardened will listen to it and be moved to repentance. In the final analysis, Jesus' descent into hell affirms that the Good News is destined to be proclaimed not just to the ends of the earth, but to the heights and depths of reality itself, especially the heights and depths of the human heart. "God is everywhere," as we learned from our penny catechism--even in hell. He is present not only by virtue of keeping things in existence, but also by virtue of his word, the healing message of hope he carries to our fallen and alienated humanity. 127 64.2 2005 Billy ¯ Reaching the Alienated Heart Notes *Catechism of the Catholic Church (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994), p. 53, §§194 and 196. 2 Ronald Rolheiser, The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness (New York: Doubleday, 2004), p. 43. 3 For more on iconography and Jesus' descent into hell, see M. Helen Weier, Festal Icons of the Lord (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1977), pp. 41-44. 128 Mother and Son She sits in the half lit room, eyes half closed in prayer. Outside, it is still dark, and all in the house but her are asleep. She looks up as the room fills with light, a new day breaking, the light like none she or anyone else has ever seen. Although it is not whiter than snow, the light of the angel at the tomb, to see it would frighten most. But she, with a light of her own, greater than that of angels, knows she has nothing to fear from this light of purest love. Kevin Bezner Re~ie~ for Religious BONAVENTURE STEFUN Feet First into Resurrection ~ nly with the beginnings of scholasticism in the 1 lth or 12th century was there a careful and sys-tematic distinguishing of sacraments from sacramentals. In 1274 the Council of Lyons (DS 860) listed the church's seven sacraments. In earlier centuries, preach-ers would include various actions in Christian life as grace-giving sacraments/sacramentals, without con-trasting them. One action of Christ commonly followed was his washing of his disciples' feet at the Last Supper. In an age when most travel was by foot, one would think that people would take feet for granted--take them in stride and ignore them. Once people's feet developed calluses, it would seem that they could go on forever with a minimum of care. Paul blithely considered feet to be less majestic parts of the body, even though essen-tial for carrying the faith beyond the mountains. As insignificant as feet would have seemed, people could not forget what the Master had done. One can imagine Peter welcoming visitors to his place of abode with a basin and a towel. Feet took on such an importance that 129 Bonaventure Stefun OFMCap writes this reflective article from St. Augustine Friary; 221-36th Street; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15201. 64.2 2005 Stefun ¯ Feet First into Resurrection washing guests' feet was seen as a kind of sacrament in the church for hundreds of years. Imagine how the concept of a body's importance may have developed in the early church. First came the gru-eling crucifixion and then the gradual realization of res-urrection, both actions involving the Lord's body. What Jesus did in washing the apostles' feet became a way of understanding his res-urrection, for it was a complete and natural demonstration of his incarnation, his embod-ied life on earth. His concern for a lowly part of the human anatomy reminds us that his own mortality came from his human makeup. Disciples could simply follow footsteps into the theology of a Lord who could die and then be raised from the dead. The story began on Easter Sunday. Once the Sabbath restrictions were ended, disconsolate women set out for the tomb where their Master had been quickly buried. These were the women from Galilee who used to accom-pany Jesus and his Twelve. They liked to prepare the lit-tle that he ate and to minister to his various needs, tiny as those needs usually were. This time, with desolate hearts, they wanted to per-form their final service with all their deepest love. They wanted to provide for Jesus' body the anointing that had to be cut short when the Sabbath followed so closely on his dying. Their hearts were filled with love and with an overflowing sorrow, the ambivalent feelings the living experience in taking care of the dead. All those feelings were suddenly turned to alarm as Review for Religious they drew close to the tomb. It was gapingly open, and they could see that it was empty. Immediately they feared desecration or vandalism or strong intimidation on the part of the soldiers or the city's leaders. In their bewil-derment the women turned back to their homes, stum-bling along in stunned silence.lust a short way along their return road, the)~ were jolted to a stop. There was .Jesus, just standing there, not a desecrated corpse but alert and fully alive. He lifted his hand in silent bless-ing and greeting. He had come on purpose, knowing the familiar road they would use. Without hesitation the women knelt in a cluster and embraced his feet. Their prostration was typical enough for their day, more than just a simple bow when paying respect to a beloved teacher. Disciples would kneel to acknowledge how superior the person was who taught them and made sense of life's daily struggles. This time, embracing their Master's feet implied something even greater than deep respect. Jesus himself had embraced his disciples' feet with his hands, washing their feet and drying them with the padded caress of a towel. The women marveled when they heard the Apostles tell the story. Once that ritual of washing feet was completed on the solemn occasion of his last meal with them, Jesus told his disciples to do what he had done, and they told others. This would be a sign that they were.Jesus' disci-ples. The whirlwind events of the next days prevented any development of the new rite of service, but all would have been thinking of his command to wash one another's feet, serve one another, love one another just as Jesus loved each of them. Even the children would have to be part of this new and loving ritual of washing feet. Jesus said plainly that all such service, even to the very least, was really done for him. 131 t~4.2 200~ Stefun * Feet First into Resurrection The Gospel of John On 12:3-7) subtly connects this foot-washing by Jesus with the tearful washing and costly anointing of Jesus' feet by a woman of tarnished reputa-tion in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Lk 7:37-38, Mk 14:3-8, Mt 26:7-12). Judas called the flood of oil a dread-ful extravagance. We all are inclined to thoughts like that, John seems to imply, and perfumed oil belongs on the head, not the feet! It certainly seemed wasteful until Jesus said it was part of the preparation for his burial. Now, on the road returning home, the women real-ized that the pre-burial anointing by one or two women was more important to Jesus than what they were attempting to do by going to his tomb early in the morn-ing. He seemed to accept that anointing of his feet at a Pharisee's interrupted dinner as a special sign, a sign which indicated an intense love and an immense faith. John suggests in his Gospel that the woman, named Mary, was showing the kind of reverence a body deserves that brings God's presence into salvation history. Jesus kept saying that he knew he was about to be executed. He would die and bring about forgiveness of sin, and he would do it through his body. He would put his body into total submission to God, and in dying he would trust the Father to take care of him, including his body, and even his feet. The woman herself seemed to be saying the same thing with her aromatic anointing. The body she anointed would not carry the stench of corruption but rather the fragrance of God's presence. In accepting this service for his burial, Jesus was indicating that he had no fear of physical corruption after death. Psalm 16 had long before assured him of his Father's intervention to keep his body from decay. He needed just to trust his Father, to live by faith as completely as he asked his dis-ciples to do. Review for Religious As the women of Easter Sunday embraced their Lord's feet along a familiar road, they understood the fuller meaning of washing and anointing feet. They con-eluded that every washing was also an anointing, a prepa-ration for his burial. All the daily care for little children and other needy persons was part of his burial, as were all the care and respect shown for the bodies of persons who had died. The very care became the perfume of love and the promise that the Father would be present even when bod-ies succumbed in death. What this woman did in anointing his feet, Jesus said, would be recalled wher-ever he would be remembered and his gospel proclaimed. When he made this remark, it seemed like simple grati-tude on his part, but he was really saying that every dis-ciple of his could help prepare his body for burial. Their daily acts of service to their brothers and sisters would be an anointing with perfumed oil, a symbol of God's presence and a pledge of resurrection, his own first, and then that of all his disciples. It was natural for people in the early church to con-clude that the washing of feet was a kind of sacrament, a sign of the Lord's presence and a channel of grace. Gradually, in the course of centuries, feet became pam-pered by socks and sturdy shoes and comfortable trans-portation and no longer looked forward, upon arriving, to the soothing removal of mud and dust. Not just tramping feet but all parts of a Christian's body took on the role of signifying the body of Christ. Can we, like Jesus, in dying, trust the Father ~to take care of us, including our body, and even our feet ? 133 64.2 2005 Stefun ¯ Feet First into Resurrection Instead of a washing only, at baptismal rites the body would be anointed, as it would also at confirmation and the sacrament of orders. Often a healing anointing would be given to the sick, and the sacrament of healing addressed the greater healing of sin's wounds and the grand hope of sharing in our Lord's risen life. In these latter-day circumstances, the washing of feet has taken on the appearance of an act of penance and humility, a virtuous act, but no longer a sort of sacra-ment like the seven described by the Councils of Lyons, Florence, and Trent. Not just the washing of feet, but all thoughtful care of others used to be understood as a path toward understanding and being involved in Christ's dying and rising. If feet no longer need gentle washing as a matter of kind hospitality, some other service in Jesus' name for a poor child or a travel-worn person on life's journey would keep Jesus' disciples aware day by day of him dying and rising among us, or us dying and rising in him. Questions for Reflection and Discussion Questions for personal reflection and group discussion: 1. How do we understand our Catholic distinction between sacraments and sacramentals? Perhaps we may need to review "Sacramental, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Two, Chapter Four. 2. We experience the washing of the feet during the Holy Thursday Eucharistic celebration. Have we experienced other sacramental moments during the Eucharist or other Catholic prayer service? Why was this action sacramental for us? Review for Religious JAMES F. KEENAN Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests Lately priests have been writing and signing a variety of statements. For-instance, on 9 December 2002 fifty-eight Boston priests signed a letter calling for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law. In a letter of 1 October 2003, priests of Rockville Centre called for a meeting with Bishop William Murphy over "widespread dissatisfaction" with his leadership. The priests of Chicago wrote an open letter to the hierarchy about the tone and content of church leaders' remarks about gay and lesbian persons, a letter subsequently adopted by priests of Rochester (New York) and Boston. Then there Was the let-ter of last August signed by more than 160 priests in Milwaukee calling for a married clergy. Amazing actions inasmuch as many cannot remember during the 1980s or 1990s any other James F. Keenan SJ has written for us twice before, in 1992 and 1996. His address is Theology Department; Boston College; Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467. taking account 135 64.2 2005 Keenan ¯ Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests such letters written by priests. Thus, it seems relevant for a Catholic moral theologian to ask: Do priests have a right to do this? A~dmittedly, in each instance the letters are admoni-tory at most, yet they are concerned with influencing the bishop and/or the bishops' conference. As the priests in Rockville Centre noted in their letter, as "your brother priests., we believe that [we] may have a special role." Do they? Before answering that question, I need to ask three prior questions. First, how much have moral theologians assisted priests? Second, how interested would priests be in the assistance of moral theologians? Third, how appropriate is rights language for speaking about the priesthood? After answering these questions I will pro-pose four specific ethical rights for priests. Question 1: How much have moral theologians assisted priests? The answer to the first question is simple: Not much. Strange as it may seem, priests and bishops rarely receive any professional training from moral theologians. Those who study at seminaries, divinity schools, or schools of theology do not have the type of ethical training that those at other professional schools receive. Students at business, medical, or law schools take ethics courses that address the ethical issues relevant to their particular pro-fession. They are taught the responsibilities and rights specific to their profession: matters of representation, confidentiality, whistle-blowing, client expectations, priv-ileges, promotions, evaluations, conflicts of interest, pro-fessional boundaries, and so forth. This type of ethical training is not found at most seminaries, divinity schools, or schools of theology, even though many students take two, three, or four courses of Review for Religious Christian ethics. Divinity students and seminarians gen-erally do not study the ethical demands, responsibilities, rights, obligations, and privileges specific to their voca-tion. Rather, they study the ethical norms and relevant circumstances regarding the laity's sexual relations and the attendant reproductive issues, the social ethics of governments and businesses, and the medical ethics of physicians and nurses. That is, those in ministry are taught how to govern and make ethically accountable the members of their congregations. But, generally speaking, they are not taught by what ethical reasoning, insights, or norms they should govern themselves ethi-cally. A priest, therefore, knows much, much more about birth control and in-vitro fertilization than he knows about the demands of confidentiality, the principle of subsidiarity, or the right treatment of employees. This same alienation is found in canon-law courses. When seminarians study canon law, they learn more about whether a married couple can get an annulment than the rights and responsibilities incumbent on their own state in life. Ask a priest what he should do if his vicar says to him, "An accusation has been filed against you; I deem it credible; you have two-hours to leave the rectory." Few would know what rights belong to him. But tell him that you want to marry a person who while belonging to another Christian denomination married a person in a non-Christian wedding but subsequently entered that denomination and then they both sought the blessing of a minister (of yet another denomination) and he will be able to explain to you whether and why your intended needs to file for an annulment. Priests learn a lot about how to direct others, but not about what pertains to themselves. That being said, there have been a few recent signs of change. As early as 1996 the moral theologian Richard 64.2 2005 Keenan ¯ Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests Gula wrote his Ethics in Pastoral Ministry (Paulist Press). Gula has spoken around the country about the need to develop such training. The Protestant ethicist Karen Lebacqz has likewise written and spoken extensively on the topic. More recendy, facing the crisis here in Boston, Edward Vacek, Stephen Pope, and Lisa Sowle Cahill have written and spoken in a variety of places about the need for professional ethics in the church. With the Mennonite theologian Joseph Kotva, I edited Practice What You Preach: Virtues, Ethics, and Power in the Lives of Pastoral Ministers and Their Congregations, which con-tained twenty-six essays by Christian ethicists from a dozen denominations reflecting on the need to develop more ethically accountable lives of service and leader-ship. Interestingly, though all the contributors were well-known, most of them had never written on ethical issues internal to church life. In order to help readers get an idea of the scope of issues facing people in ministry, the writers in our col-lection offered ethical guidance for individual church leaders and their communities and dealt with issues such as disillusionment and deference in clerical life, semi-nary admissions policies, candidacy programs, pastoral assignments, staff salaries, liturgical celebrations, and the practices of collegiality and subsidiarity. These initial exercises by moral theologians illustrate, then, just how much work we need to do to assist the clergy in their professional service to the church. But that leads to the second question. Question 2: How interested would the clergy be in moral theologians' assistance? That answer is simple: It all depends on the priest, for there is no consensus among priests about the need of professional ethics. The reason for this is, in part, the Review for Religious differences among them regarding their own under-standing of themselves and of episcopal decision making. The first difference is how they privilege one dimen-sion of their ministerial identity over another. Admittedly, all understand themselves as having the status of ordina-tion and yet being called to service. But they look at that double identity with specific preferences. In a wonderful new book, Evolving Visions of the Priesthood (Liturgical Press, 2003), Dean Hoge and Jacqueline Wenger asked the clergy whether there is a new status or permanent character conferred by ordina- Because status privileges the clergy as liping in a"distinct world, establishing a professional ethics for them Can be especially challenging. tion. When they first asked that question in 1970, only 52 percent of those aged 26-35 said yes, while 88 percent of those aged 56-65 said yes. But now, more than thirty years later, 68 percent of those once young priests now between 56-65 answered yes, while an enormous 95 per-cent of those 26-35 said yes. That is, thirty years ago the younger the priests were, the less inclined they were to be concerned~with the status question; today the younger they are, the more they are so inclined. Because status privileges the clergy as living in a distinct world, establishing a professional ethics for them can be espe-cially challenging. The second difference correlates with the first. Those priests more inclined to understand themselves as ordained and set apart are more comfortable with earlier forms of episcopal decision making, while those more inclined to identifying themselves with their ministerial service are looking for more professional standards. The 139 64.2 2005 Keenan ¯ Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests former tend to look at ecclesial bureaucracy with esteem and are satisfied with their fraternal and paternal expres-sions. Similarly they are comfortable with the way the Roman curia proceeds. Those who prefer service look to the world of the professional where the norms of con-duct are posted and expectations regarding promotions, decision making, and power sharing are public and clear. Thus the way a priest identifies himself also tends to develop into where he looks for standards of authority. We might be surprised by the way these differing tendencies look at canon law. Those who see themselves as having a set status are comfortable with exercises of local episcopal authority and prefer the bishop's admin-istrative or executive judgment to the actual application of the law. The men who want clarity and norms are more likely to want reform of clerical culture, and toward that end they often turn to their professional identity as expressed in canon law. These tendencies play out similarly in the contem-porary problematic of removing priests. Priests who understand themselves as ordained and set apart prefer episcopal exercise of administrative power to resolve matters. Priests who understand themselves primarily as servants favor canonical procedures. These dividing lines are applicable not only to the clergy but to the laity's relationship with the clergy. It ought not to be surprising, then, that the champions of the right of accused priests to receive due process and juridical appeal are more often those who tend to orga-nizations like Voice of the Faithful. One layperson, Catherine Henningsen, frequently addresses VOTF chap-ters and calls the removal of priests without due process "the most underreported aspect of the pedophilic crisis" and labels it "the second wave of abuse on the part of many bishops." She follows step by step the normative Review for Religious procedures that bishops should follow, that the clergy should expect, and that the laity ought to oversee. Her work highlights the natural affinity between VOTF and freestanding priests' organizations like the Boston Priests Forum and New York's Voice of the Ordained, which look to guarantee the rights of accused priests. But other priests--those who are more comfortable with ecclesial administrative judgments--are strong critics of Henningson, seeing her work as opportunistic. A final set of tendencies among priests is how they distinguish the private from the public. Priests inclined to understand themselves primarily as separated from oth-ers usually are less inclined to find relevance in the dis-tinction between the private and the public. Priests inclined to service, professional standards, and canon law give the distinction great weight. These feel that they should have private living quarters and be able to dress as they want on their vacation days. Some also see celibacy as an unnecessary intrusion into their private lives. I propose these rights, then, not to extend the divide, but to offer a context in which priests tending in either direction can discuss them, Moreover, I propose them, not as a manifesto or as a confrontational stance for those priests and laypersons who prefer the more service-ori-ented professional model. Rather, I offer a modest pro-posal to both sides of the aisle, and to those as well who try to bridge those aisles. Hopefully, it may let us find common ground upon which we can find agreement rather than disagreement. Question 3: Is rights language appropriate? The answer here is also simple: Yes. I use the word "rights" not as a canonist does, that is, as a very specific right that the Code of Canon Law recognizes; but rather as what moral theologians and Christian social ethicists 141 64.2 2005 Keenan ¯ Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests mean when we talk of the right to food, or work, or healthcare, that is, as an ethical right. Certainly, I propose these with the hope that they may be' eventually articu-lated into canonical precepts, but I do not claim that they necessarily have canonical force now. Moreover, I do not see rights as some sort of volun-taristic assertions of power over and against others; rather, I see rights language as springing from acom- " Way, b foreright . .language appeared in modern liberal democracies, righis Were fi. dt , trinsic .the,. good munity of faith looking to see how its mem-bers can best protect the good of the whole church and its specific members. Following Brian Tierney (The Idea of Natural Rigbts: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 11 Y0- 162$), I believe that rights were originally recognized by l lth- and 12th-century theologians and canonists who tried to articulate those that belonged to popes, bishops, the clergy, and other church members, not as inimical to the life of the church, but as constitu-tive of the church. In other words, way before rights lan-guage appeared in modern liberal democracies, rights were first expressed as intrinsic to the good of the church. Finally, as Aristotle taught us, ethics is for the com-munity, and asserting the ethical rights of priests is cer-tainly not at the cost of the community, but rather for its benefit. Thus, to the extent that these rights are not respected, to that extent not only priests but the com-munity of the church, its own very communio, suffer. Book II of the Code of Canon Law outlines the obli- Review for Religious gations and rights of all the Christian faithful (cc. 204- 223). The first set of rights and obligations belongs to the laity (cc. 224-231), and eventually the Code turns to the rights and obligations of the clergy (cc. 273-289). Here we find three canonical rights: of association, to a vaca-tion, and to fitting and decent remuneration. Instead of these three canonical rights, I propose four "ethical" ones: the right of priests to share respectfully in the episcopal ministry of the local ordinary, the right of association, the right to exercise their ministry, and the right to fair treatment. I propose these rights as modes of helping the church to further understand the way priests today should ethically live and serve in the church. The Right to Share Respectfully in the Bishop's Ministry The first right echoes one that was discussed in the revision of the Code of Canon Law, "the right of coop-erating with the bishop in the exercise of his ministry." It is the right being implicitly invoked and exercised by priests in their recent letters to bishops and bishops' conferences. John Lynch, a canon lawyer who has written on the rights of priests, frequently asserts that the "cleric shares in the episcopal ministry." Interestingly, he roots his claim precisely in the first canon in the section on rights and obligations, canon 273: "Clerics are bound by a spe-cial obligation to show reverence and obedience to the supreme pontiff and their own ordinary." Lynch's claim is derived from three Vatican Council II documents. The Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (Presbyterorum ordinis, §7) says: "Priestly obedi-ence, inspired through and through by the spirit of coop-eration, is based on that sharing of the episcopal ministry which is conferred on priests by the sacrament of order 64.2 2005 Keenan ¯ Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests and the canonical mission." Similarly, The Bishops' Pastoral Office (Christus Dominus, §28) says: "All priests, whether diocesan or religious, share and exercise with the bishop the one priesthood of Christ." Finally, Lumen gentium §28 declares: "The bishop is to regard his priests, who are his coworkers, as sons and friends, just as Christ called his disciples no longer servants but friends." Interestingly, the special obedience that the cleric owes his bishop is based on his sharing in the episcopal min-istry itself. This ethical right is found not only in the Code, its commentary, and Vatican documents. It is found also in the rite of ordination. The first question the bishop asks the ordinand is: "Are you resolved, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to discharge without fail the office of priest-hood in the presbyteral order as a conscientious fellow worker with the bishops in caring for the Lord's flock?" Then in the prayer of consecration we hear the bishop say: "Lord, grant also to us such fellow workers, for we are weak and our need is greater. Almighty Father, grant to this servant of yours the dignity of the priesthood. Renew within him the Spirit of holiness. As a coworker with the order of bishops, may he be faithful to the min-istry that he receives from you, Lord God, and be to others a model of right conduct." In sum, various foun-dational texts recognize the priest as having a share in the exercise of episcopal authority. For this to be conveyed as a right, I suggest that it would be implied in "respect-ful" sharing. When we hear of priests' repeated unsuccessful attempts to meet with their ordinary, we learn that this right is not adequately recognized. In fact, when we note the phenomenon of public letters written and signed by priests, we ought to see this not so much as an indication of that right being exercised, but rather as expressing frus- Review for Religious tration that the presumed right has been ignored. Priests are "going public" because in many instances the right has been long bypassed. When routinely exercised and recognized, the right would foster community, the life of the diocese, and the credibility of episcopal leadership. The Right of Association The right of sharing in the ministry of the bishop leads to fostering right relations among the clergy through association. Canon 275, ~1, states: "Since cler-ics all work for the same purpose, namely, the building up of the Body of Christ, they are to be united among themselves by a bond of brotherhood and prayer and strive for cooperation among themselves according to the prescripts of particular law." Immediately after this paragraph, the Code adds, "Clerics are to acknowledge and promote the mission which the laity, each for his or her part, exercises in the church and in the world." Thus, associations of clerics have reason not to create separa-tion from laypersons, but rather to promote their involvement. In fact, in an earlier draft of the Code, priests were called to recognize the laity's mission; in the promulgated Code they are called to promote it. Though canon 215 defined the right of all the Christian faithful, both lay and clergy, to form associa-tions, canon 278 establishes it as the first canonical right for priests. The Code reads: "Secular clerics have the right to associate with others to pursue purposes in keep-ing with the clerical state." This is the first time that canon law recognized this ethical right. Moreover, in developing the revised Code, the com-mission rejected a proposal that placed associations of priests under the local ordinary. To do so would be to infringe on the exercise of the very right that was being promulgated. 64.2 2005 Keenan * Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests The Code derives its inspiration from the natural law and from the writings of previous pontiffs. For instance, in his encyclical Pacem in terris (§24), Pope John xxIII upholds the natural right to assemble and says that peo-ple "have also the right to give the societies of which they are members the form they consider most suitable for the aim they have in view." He adds: "It is most necessary that a wide variety of societies or intermediate bodies be established equal to the task of accomplishing what the individual cannot by himself efficiently achieve. These societies., are to be regarded as an indispensable means in safeguarding the dignity and liberty of the human per-son, without harm to his sense of responsibility." Thus from the natural law, our own experience, papal encyclicals, and the Code itself, we recognize the ethical right of priests to form associations. Throughout the United States we have seen in the past few years free-standing priests' associations emerge (the Boston Priests Forum, New York's Voice of the Ordained). This ethical right validates these groups. Their recent initiatives to form local movements are congruent with good thinking within the church. Moreover, these organizations do not replace presbyteral councils, but represent a few of what Pope John xxIII referred to as the "wide varieties" of gatherings necessary for human flourishing. The Right to Exercise Their Ministry While priests have an obligation to exercise their priestly ministry, they also have a right to exercise that ministry according to their particular judgment. Here we can think of pastors, for instance, who must discern whether this particular couple is actually ready to get married in the church. And there are instances where the appropriate place or time for a child's baptism is something that pastors must discern. Review for Religqous The question of the exercise of ministry was raised recently by the Boston Priests Forum regarding preach-ing. They wanted to reflect on what is at stake when the chancery defends a particular value and a pastor won-ders whether he ought to raise in his sermon another possibly competitive value. To what degree is he called to exercise his ministry as expressing his particular voca-tion? In the USCCB document on Sunday homilies Fulfilled in Your Hearing, we find the bishops calling the pastor to listen to the Scriptures and to the congregation and to respond to that listening. Is there something that hap-pens existentially in that listening that could prompt the pastor to hear the needs of the laity of his parish in some other way than what a statement from the chancery may convey? Could there also be times when laypersons believe that something beyond what the chancery has articulated needs to be recognized? And if the cleric, in all this listening, is also obliged "to foster peace and har-mony based on justice" as canon 287 states, could he find himself eventually perceiving an obligation in con-science to respond as a preacher of the Word to the par-ticular congregation he serves? This is not advocacy for rebel priests. Rather it rec-ognizes both the context in which a cleric exercises his ministry and the process by which he comes to articulate the sermon and other forms of ministry. Though by his faculties a priest exercises his ministry at the bishop's pleasure, there seems to be another claim on the priest that comes not from the bishop directly, but from the people whom the priest serves. If the priest is to truly promote peace and justice and communio, it seems that in discerning how to do so he needs to rely on something in addition to the bishops' particular will. Like other expressions of his ministry that he shares with the bishop 147 64.2 200~ Keenan * Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests and with the laity, a priest's preaching calls for a consci-entious integrity to witness to the gospel as he sees it expressed in his midst. The Right to Fair Treatment To appreciate this right we need to turn to the zero-tolerance policy as it appears (§§56-60) in the Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States by the National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People. There the ten lay authors note that the policy "was deemed necessary because some bishops and religious superiors in their assessment of sexual abuse of minors by priests under their authority badly under-estimated the seriousness of the misconduct and harm to victims, and allowed wrongdoers to continue in posi-tions of ministry, from which they went on to harm oth-ers." They conclude: "To prevent any recurrence of such situations, the charter and essential norms remove any further discretion on the part of bishops and religious superiors in this regard." But what, then, is the net effect on an offending priest? Here the report notes: "Accordingly, the zero-tolerance policy applies without regard to any assess-ment of the degree of culpability of an offending priest based upon such factors as (i) the nature of the sexual act (e.g., the improper touching of a fully clothed teenager versus the sodomization of a child), (ii) the fre-quency of abuse (e.g., an isolated event versus a pro-tracted history), or (iii) efforts to address the problem (e.g., successful treatment of a problem that had led to an act of abuse years ago versus untreated problems that manifested themselves more recently). The policy also applies with equal fbrce to a priest who reports himself as having engaged in an act of abuse in an effort to obtain help with his problem." Review for Religious Fair treatment usually observes some form of due proportionality. And, though the review board acknowl-edges objections from a variety of observers about the fairness and effectiveness of the policy and though they write "the zero-tolerance policy may seem to be too blunt an instrument for universal application," they believe, nonetheless, "that for the immediate future the zero-tolerance policy is essential to the restoration of the trust of the laity in the leadership of the church, provided that it is appropriately applied. In assessing individual cases in order to determine whether the priest engaged in an act of sexual abuse of a minor, the bishops must consult with the diocesan lay review board, so that they may strive for individualized justice in light of their developing experience and expertise." The report's caveat with regard to appropriate pro-cedures and diocesan lay review could serve, then, as a witness to the fair treatment of priests, but that witness needs to be guaranteed by the national review commit-tee as it endorses the zero-tolerance policy. Inasmuch as review boards recognize disparity regarding their role and the application of appropriate procedures, they need to witness to priests' rights as well as to the rights of the laity, especially children. Finally, they acknowledge "that any discussion of the charter's zero-tolerance provision would be incomplete without noting that there is no equivalent policy of zero tolerance for bishops o.r provincials who allowed preda-tor priests to remain in or return to ministry despite knowledge of the risks. In fact, in the minds of some priests, the impression was created that the Dallas char- Fair treatment usually observes some form of due proportionality. 64.2 200~ Keenan ¯ Framing the Ethical Rights of Priests 1501 ter and the essential norms were the bishops' attempt to deflect criticism from themselves and onto individual priests . Priests, who now stand uneasily under a sword of Damocles, with their every action scrutinized, under-standably may ask why the bishops do not face such con-sequences if they fail to abide by the charter. This distinction has deteriorated the relationship between priests and bishop." The report concludes this section stating that the bishops "must show that they are willing to accept responsibility and consequences for poor leadership." Fairness then cuts two ways. Not only ought due pro-portionality emerge somehow in the treatment of accused and offending priests, but priests alone cannot and should not bear the weight of the scandal. If a zero-tolerance policy is applied to priests, where is an analogous policy for the scandalous bishops? The scandal will only come to rest when justice has been served, but an inequitable justice is not justice. The national review board has, then, two more responsibili-ties: They must somehow guarantee that due process and due proportionality are granted to priests, and they must hold proportionally accountable both the offending priests and the offending bishops. I want to conclude on a hopeful note. When we read the report, there is the impression that the writers are talking to two constituencies: the bishops and the laity. Regarding priests, they are more talking about them than talking to them. This has been in large measure a com-mon way that judges, reporters, advocates, and others have proceeded. Everyone tries to engage the bishops in order to talk about priests. I propose these four rights--one about participatory leadership, another about right to associate, a third about ministerial vocation, the fourth about fairness--with the hope that these may further encourage the voice of the Review for Religious clergy. Throughout these recent years, when occasionally, though not at all often enough, priests have addressed either the harm and shame attached to the abuse of chil-dren or the rights of the laity and bishops, they have usually done so in the place that they are called to be: the parish pulpit. I suggest that if priests begin to recognize the rights due them--especially at a time when many find themselves, as the report states, demoralized--they might in turn be more vocal from that pulpit in recog-nizing the rights of others and in fostering the communio that the Church so desperately needs. Healing grace always accompanies restorative justice. My Novitiate When I arrived, I was bankrupt: empty, nicotine-stained, desperate, hungry and broke. I had been robbed by those who loved me. The vault held nothing sacred. The bed you gave me was comfortable. I hardly felt the stretching. You smiled and I hoped. Copper penny joy clinked as it hit the floor and echoed in my soul. One by one, the nickels came. Prayer became my treasure. I grew rich with coins of every size. Celibacy became an asset, obedience, my wealth. Who knew that poverty could h'old so much? Finally that time has come. At profession I ask. "Where now may I spend?" Grace Gallant $SM 64.2 2005' ANNE MUNLEY Faith and Solidarity in Action At the heart of religious life is a conviction that the healing and liberating mission of Jesus is for all times and all peoples. This grand mission, the impe-tus for apostolic energy and service, is succinctly stated in the Gospel of John: "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly" (Jn 10:10). The mission of bear-ing life is common to women religious throughout the world. Though of many cultures, the nearly one million women religious in today's world are of one heart in pas-sionate commitment to bringing to birth God's dream of unity, justice, peace, and abundance of life for all. Brought into existence to support leaders of women's religious congregations and to link congregations in ful-filling their life-giving mission of love and service, the International Union of Superiors General (UISG) holds a plenary session every three years to bring members together in an atmosphere of prayer and support to con- Anne Munley IHM, a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Scranton, Pennsylvania), is director of Programs and Social Mission at the International Union of Superiors General (UISG); Piazza di Ponte Sant'Angelo 28; 00186 Roma; Italy. Review for Religious sider urgent matters facing religious life and God's peo-ple. In May 2004 almost eight hundred members gath-ered in Rome for five days to reflect on the theme "Women Disciples of Jesus--Bearers of Reconciliation for Our World." This was an apt theme at a time when millions of people in various parts of the world are suf-fering the consequences of war, violence, abuse of power, and divisions of every kind. Before coming to the UISG plenary session, each con-gregational leader was asked to reflect prayerfully on the following scriptural passage: "For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation . It is all God's work. It was God who reconciled us to himself, and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation" (2 Co 5:17- 18). Those planning the session also requested that each participant, bring a symbol that reflected efforts of the sisters of her congregation to enter into God's work of reconciliation in those parts of the world in which the congregation ministers. Since UISG consists of approx-imately thirty-five regional groups called constellations, delegates representing the constellations were similarly requested to bring pertinent symbols. To engage all UISG members in reflection on the theme, the UISG Bulletin (No. 123, 2003, 21-33) pub-lished in five languages an article by Robert Schreiter CPPS tided "A Spirituality of Reconciliation." It explores the biblical basis for a spirituality of reconciliation and suggests five principles that flow from Paul's reflections on reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5:17-20: (1) Reconciliation is first and foremost the work of God; (2) God's reconciling work begins with the victim; (3) God makes of both victim and wrongdoer a "new creation"; (4) we place our suffering inside the story of the suffer-ing, death, and resurrection of Christ; and (5) full rec-onciliation will happen only when God will be all in all. 64.2 2005 Munley ¯ Faith and Solidarity in Action A strength of the UISG plenary session is that it gathers congregational leaders who have direct experience of religious life and the joys and sufferings of people in all parts of theworld. 1,54 Schreiter speaks of wounds the wounds of victims and of those who would help them as entry points for a spirituality of reconciliation that connects people's sto-ries to the story of Jesus, the "wounded healer." This image speaks to the experience of women religious who, though recognizing their woundedness, persist in efforts to bring about reconciliation because through their faith they are enlivened by God's healing action in their lives. For the God of life nothing is impossible. Hope arises out of confidence in what God will bring forth. A strength of the UISG plenary session is that it gath-ers in one place at one time congregational leaders who have direct expe-rience of religious life and the joys and sufferings of people in all parts of the world. In a multicultural and multilingual meet-ing, prayer, ritual, liturgy, music, dance, and other artistic media are path-ways to mutual understanding and relationship. Explanations of con-gregational and constellation symbols enabled partici-pants to enter into situations in need of reconciliation in other parts of the world and to glimpse the realities of women religious seeking to respond to various circum-stances crying out for healing. It was a humbling expe-rience to hear stories of what being called to be "bearers of reconciliation" means in different parts of the world. Some were stories of steadfast witness in the face of incomprehensible human suffering. Table conversations Review for Religious helped us to understand the stories more intimately, to see into these stories with the "eyes" and "hearts" of oth-ers. Prayer, ritual, and a Power Point presentation of images of people's needs and of sisters' endeavors towards reconciliation and healing provided an enriching pre-lude for further theological development of the theme by Diane Bergant CSA. Working with the biblical accounts of the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau and of Joseph and his brothers, Bergant stressed that it is will-ingness to forgive on the part of the one offended that opens up possibilities for reconciliation and healing of relationships. Participants reflected as well on stories of particular efforts to bring reconciliation to painful situations within the church, society, and religious congregations. These stories were told with eloquent simplicity by three con-gregational leaders. They shared personal experiences of serving in leadership at a time when issues of abuse, life-and-death consequences of ethnic and tribal war-fare, and the need to reconcile long-standing congrega-tional divisions demanded great outpouring of time and energy and unremitting trust in the guidance of the Spirit. Sharing on the part of two congregational leaders from Iraq about the impact of the war on the people among whom their sisters minister evoked poignant response and heartfelt expressions of support and soli-darity. These presentations put flesh on what it means to lead as a "wounded healer." What wove the plenary session, together was a reflec-tion model that moved from sharing experiences (see-ing) to situating reflection in the word of God (judging) to acting on the basis of shared convictions. Throughout the session a writing committee gleaned key ideas and various suggested action steps and fashioned them into a 64.2 200~ Munley ¯ Faith and Solidarity in Action draft version that was brought back and discussed, then further revised, and ultimately approved unanimously in an atmosphere of expectant hope and joy. Here is that approved declaration: Declaration of the International Union of Superior.s General Women Disciples of Jesus Christ: Bearers of Reconciliation in Our World For anyone who is in Christ there is a new creation . It is all God's work. It was God who reconciled us to him-self and gave us the work of handing on this reconcilia-tion. (2 Corinthians Y:17-18) We live in a time of extreme violence, a time when lights of hope and reconciliation are desper-ately needed.We are nearly 800 women leaders from 69 countries and five continents. The International Union of Superiors General repre-sents members of Catholic religious institutes in 98 countries throughout the world. We believe that no more important mission exists at this time than to be bearers of the reconciling hope for which the world cries. Believing that reconciliation is God's desire for the world, we humbly declare our reliance upon God, the source of reconciliation and the source of all healing and forgiveness. We know too that we are not alone as we journey with people of many faiths and traditions who long for a reconciled world. We walk with them in our insecurity, fragility, and need for continuous conversion of heart, recognizing our common desire to make inclusive love and the search for truth the basic principles that govern our lives. As leaders we commit ourselves to work with one another, with the members of our institutes and Review for Religious national conferences of religious by: Living a spirituality of reconciliation. We will witness in community this spirituality of compas-sion, respect, courage, truth, and reconciling hope. Proclaiming publicly our commitment to be bear-ers of reconciliation. We will: ¯ collaborate with other associations for justice, res-olution of conflict, and an end to war in all its forms. ¯ use the media to announce an alternative vision, tell stories of reconciliation, and denounce violence and injustice. ¯ create and promote dialogue, understanding, and reconciliation among peoples, cultures, and reli-gions. ¯ intensify efforts toward healing, reconciliation, and right relationships between women and men. ¯ continue to intensify our efforts, as bearers of rec-onciliation in the world, to eradicate the traffick-ing of women and children. ¯ promote the education and formation of women and girls. ¯ be proactive in peace building and in caring for all creation. We move forward as women religious leaders, disciples of Jesus Christ. We are firm in our belief that, in solidarity with others, our members will collaborate in the Spirit's work of transforming the world. While this 2004 UISG declaration is a Wonderful out-come of the plenary session, an even more precious out-come is the strengthening of the "invisible ties" that bind the women religious of the world together in a spirit of solidarity and collaboration. A poetic prayer by Macrina Wiederkehr suggests an image that pertains not only to 64.2 2005 Munley ¯ Faith and Solidarity in Action the work of the UISG session, but also to the ~uture that is yet to be born: On tiptoe we stand, Lord Jesus ,, eagerly awaiting always expecting you to come some more. Our hands and heart are open to your grace. Our lives are still waiting for the fullness of your presence. We are those who have been promised a kingdom, and we can never forget. Yet we have a foot in both worlds and so we stumble. But we stand on tiptoe, owning our-kingdom-loving hearts and our earth-eyes. We lean forward and hope. (Seasons of Your Heart, 69) Those who had been present left the 2004 UISG ses-sion deeply aware that the women religious of the world are indeed "standing on tiptoe" together. Review for Religiou~ MILLIE CARGAS Women Religious in Treatment for Addictions In early childhood Sister Miriam was sexually assaulted by a family member, a parish assistant, and a neighbor down the road. These malefac-tors never had to answer for their uncon-scionable acts, but Sister Miriam (names have been changed) has paid a high price for them. After many years of competent service in the nursing profession, she was directed to go for treatment of her serious addiction to substance abuse. Sister Miriam is not alone. Many other women religious, with differing stories, have ceased functioning healthily in their ministries and communities. "Women religious" means in this article Catholic women who have taken vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience in one or other religious institute or congregation. Sisters with addictions? Women religious in rehabilitative psychological treatment programs is a difficult concept to accept when typical feel-ings toward sisters are of good, giving, self-sac- Millie Cargas is a registered art therapist (ATR), and her address is 127 Park Avenue; St. Louis, Missouri 63122. 64. 2 200Y Cargas ¯ Women Religious in Treatment for Addictions 160 rificing persons. We remember these valiant women as our teachers, as nurses, parish administrators, and other professional helpers. Often they have been highly respected and admired; people have emulated them. They are capable and articulate persons who have for-saken the materialistic world for the kingdom beyond-- and now they need therapeutic treatment? Yes, for they are human. Like all of us, they need help sometimes. No religious order has escaped the scourge of dys-functions caused by addictive behaviors. The life of Sister Anne had spiraled out of control as her weight climbed to a dangerous three hundred pounds. She could no longer play kickball with eager boys or jump rope with high-spirited girls. During a visit to her internist, Sister Anne was sternly warned of imminent death unless she took immediate steps to reduce the strain on heart and lungs. In response she claimed she had always had a weight problem just as her whole family did; it was not her fault, and nothing could be done. Her intractable anger and alarming obesity, however, limited her physical and professional activities severely and made her a difficult, contrary, and noncontributing member of her community. Sister Anne's uncontrolled addiction to food was not only causing havoc in her pro-fessional life, but was deeply affecting all her relation-ships. Though she did not see the need for treatment, leadership mandated it. This is not always the case. A significant number of other sisters ask for help, realizing, as one said, "I can no longer live this way." Humbled, she admitted her powerlessness. There are various treatment centers in North America. To mention a few: Guest House in Lake Orion, Michigan, and Emmaus Community in Elberon, New Jersey, are for sisters only. Behavioral Medicine Institute and St. Louis Consultation Center, both in St. Louis, Review for Religious Missouri, St. Luke's in Silver Spring, Maryland, Ecclesia Center in Girard, Pennsylvania, and Southdown in Ontario, Canada, are for both men and women religious. Before acceptance into a treatment program, the applicant participates in a series of pretreatment evalu-ations comprising interviews by various staff members, extensive psychological test-ing, and a thorough medical exam. Although therapeutic programs vary, the major components are individual counseling, group sessions, physical activities, spiritual direction, and programs tai-lored to individuals. Sister - - William Mary was a master gardener. Itwas her profes-sion. But gambling was her downfall. Her healthcare facility allowed, her to include gardening in her treat-ment program as long as it contributed to her recovery and was not distracting or distancing her from others. A simple definition of art therapy is using artistic materials in therapy or as therapy. Art Therapy Some treatment curriculums have incorporated art therapy as an effective therapy. This is my area of exper-tise. I have worked with Catholic women and men reli-gious for twenty-five years. I have ~ecently conducted several week-long art-therapy workshops specifically for religious women. A simple definition of art therapy is using artistic materials in therapy or as therapy. For exam-ple, the resident is given a subject and asked to paint or draw images and/or abstract designs. The imagery and other graphic dimensions of art therapy offer a unique way of identifying feelings and expressing oneself. It dif-fers considerably from verbal communication, which can 64.2 2005 Cargas ¯ Wo~nen Religious in Treat~nent for Addictions be insufficient or restricting. A case study illustrates this. Sister Katherine had joined a teaching order even though she was woefully shy and became almost inartic-ulate in group settings. She became the community financial officer. To bolster her much-needed self-con-fidence, she went on shopping sprees that her financial .resources were able to fund. This gave her illusions of power that brought her deeper and deeper into her addiction. This irresponsible money management landed her in therapy, Because she had no experience in art, Sister Katherine felt great risk at getting into it. She did so only reluctantly and even ~belligerently. But, to her great surprise and indeed pleasure, she discovered that her images had a way of speaking and engaging others that her hesitant words and extravagant spending had not. This was real progress for her. Understandably, people fear getting into something new. They fear to make mistakes, to expose their lack of artistic ability. They bring up such familiar objections as "I can't draw a straight line" and "I'm no artist" and "I haven't done art since grade school" as they fight the fears of appearing awkward and becoming embarrassed. Finding a new way of expressing oneself in colors, shapes, and designs in either representational or abstract imagery takes courage. Once they get over their fears, their endeavors are often richly rewarded. Some women revealed skills that they were unaware they had. Others had allowed their artistic talent to lie dormant for far too long. But in art therapy, whether or not the persons are artistically skilled, they eventually welcome the opportunity to go beyond words. An art-therapy badge at one convention appropriately declared, "When words are not enough!" The women in the workshops often relish their wordless therapy once they have worked through their initial resist~ince to art therapy or, more Revie~ for Religious commonly, their anger at finding themselves in treat-ment in the first place. Art Therapy Described The actual week-long art-therapy workshops are all group oriented. After a brief introduction I define the type of art which will be used in the workshop. I stress that artistic talent, no matter how people understand it, is less important than each one's own innate creativity and willingness to plunge into the activity. In these cir-cumstances there is no right or wrong way to do art. I emphasize that one cannot make mistakes, and I advise the group to ignore their own all-too-dominating inner critics. I repeatedly state throughout the week that the process is as important as the product, if not more so. Each session begins with a particular focus. Sometimes I hand out a picture, a poem, or a brief essay to assist creativity, and I always have some music played to support the theme. At age seventy-five Sister Jeanne just knew she was not going to like this mandatory part of her treatment program. But, being a prayerful per-son, she would listen to the proposed topics with her eyes closed, allow the music to seep in, and pray to the Holy Spirit for help. And helpful imagery did appear to her receptive mind and soul. She allowed her initial resis-tance to bow out gracefully and opened herself to lis-tening, ready to entertain new possibilities. Sister Jeanne was a pharmacist, and her issue was addiction to pur-loined prescription medicines. Now, if she could open herself up to some new and different perceptions and experiences, perhaps she could also consider trying alter-native ways of alleviating the pain of her arthritic con-dition. The broad themes of art therapy range from fun and pleasure to themes that are darker and more threatening. 64.2 2005 Cargas * Women Religious in Treatment for Addictions The artistic creations take on a life of their own. Sister Ren~, from Germany, had been sexually abused at a very early age. Paradoxically, she had never actually accepted the art-therapy discipline and yet always com-pleted the assignments--though without enthusiasm. Her colleagues, however, were astonished by her pow-erful imagery done in blacks and grays and blurred opaques. Even though she "resisted" art therapy, she was illuminating, minimally but really, the darkness of her horrendous experiences. Participants are free to work with the broad theme that has been proposed or to select just a small aspect of it to explore more intensively. The themes are vast and varied. Here are just a few that have proved provocative and success-ful: journey, relationships, aging, play, transforma-tion of issues, sexuality, ambiguities, emotions, self-worth, self-identity, joys, anxieties, mixed messages, and change. The "journey" theme can be depicted in any number of ways, including the classic one of marking each milestone in life. Or highlights of success or failure might be featured. Or perhaps the sisters emphasize the eternal goal of their journey. When they have completed their art pieces, each sis-ter presents hers to the group for comments and reac-tions, but specifically not for analysis. The meaning of her work is primarily for her to determine, not those who have not lived her experiences--although the oth-ers' reactions, questions, and support may bring her to deeper insights or different revelations than she origi-nally had in mind. Sister Jude, an elementary teacher with addictions to both food and alcohol, created many figures of herself. Although she was fifty-five years old, Review for Religious they all looked like little girls. She was startled when this was pointed out, but now she was in a position to acknowledge such a "disconnect" in other therapies if she so wished. At the end of the week, each person displays her total body of work to the group. There is always amazement that so much could be done in a short time, that so many issues could be covered in some depth in just a week. As Sister Norine finished presenting all of her works, she said she felt empty, completely drained. She had exhausted her psychic energy. Others in the group read-ily realized that they had similar feelings. Summing Up The art belongs to its creator. Each person does what-ever she wishes with it. Many use a particular piece in their ongoing counseling as it illustrates or illuminates a specific issue. Sister Irene's picture of her attempted sui-cide was more frightening than her bland emotionless oral description. Some pictures have deservedly been framed. Others have been shown with pride or for disclosure to trusted empathetic friends. Others have been destroyed for reasons only to be surmised. No one seems to have been untouched by the week's experiences, which brought forth a myriad of emotions, memories, and hopes. The artistic creations take on a life of their own. They give graphic evidence of people's psychic state and are more permanent than spoken words. They lend themselves to further explorations as the client grows in self-knowledge. They reveal aspects that perhaps were not noted on first viewing. During one workshop the spiritual director asked the group to bring their art on spirituality to the group session the following week. She was impressed by the images created with regard to such a profound and elusive subject. Spirituality is the bedrock 64.2 2005 Cargus * Women Religious in Treatment for Addictions for religious women, and so their attempts to capture it in art are as challenging as they are moving. It is exhilarating to observe artistry and creativity emerge while clients are learning to trust and appreciate their own endeavors. Those who never considered them-selves artistic are often amazed and delighted with their creative results. They have not become "more" artistic, but they have gone beyond their own all-too-limited per-ceptions of their creative abilities. Art has a transformative effect through its ability to transcend time, space, and earthly boundaries. The clients just described have taken risks in telling the group their own sacred stories with the help of original art that enlightens their listeners but most importantly them-selves. One treatment center director told me about being confronted by a new group of residents .upset by the announcement that the regular week's schedule was suspended and that art therapy would replace it. She told them she could not adequately explain why art therapy works or what its therapeutic benefits are, but promised it would work. The group would understand art's bene-fit more clearly and convincingly later. And they did. Creativity is healing. To call forth new possibilities-- a definition of creativity--is to find new directions toward healthier lifestyles. To create new views, rather than remain stuck in old destructive patterns, is some-thing that art can offer. The overeater can picture a thin-ner body; the alcoholic can picture a cornucopia of renewal; the burnt-out person can picture a serene land-scape; and the spendthrift can visualize a pleasing bal-ance and proportion. Art therapy cannot guarantee change, of course, but it can offer graphic glimpses of hope, and hope is a'forerunner to change. It is important to appreciate that these previously functioning women who have gone into treatment have Review for Religious been given and are taking time out for themselves, per-haps for the first time. In a lifetime of giving to others, they are now receiving. Such a respite from their ordi-nary busyness allows them to tell their stories and to explore their concerns by means of art, and art can enlarge and deepen their creative potential. The art-therapy experience encourages people to leave the abyss of addictive behavior behind and try something new. Homemade imagery can reinvigorate deadened or tired emotions and bring joy back into their lives and their spiritual selves. Accepting and working with their cre-ativity assists wounded souls to move from humiliation to humbleness and towards the kingdom where we are all meant to dwell. Easter Monday Morning Prayer 0 God of my forever rising who alone can slip twixt bones and sinews probing the marrow of my being to the dark recesses of my heart wherein by my sin you have been entombed, carving away the stone, I beg you, up-raise me this day with you again and always and forever. Alleluia. Amen. Elizabeth McDonough OP 64.2 200~ VILMA SEELAUS Asceticism and Chaste Celibate Love T biblical understanding of God is captured in ee words: God is love. Created as we are in the image and likeness of God, the core of our being is a "being-in-love" with God.1 Because of our radical con-nection with God, we are conceived and born into the world as preconscious predispositions for love. As Rahner puts it, "man is the event of God's absolute self-com-munication.'' 2 Love therefore is the root and foundation of our being. Life's deepest challenge is to fully accept and give human expression to this foundational reality of love. The vow we call consecrated chastity, or chaste celibacy, has everything to do with love. By it we open ourselves to becoming fully loving persons. Chaste love is love that is single-hearted. Single-hearted love does not of itself exclude a genital expres-sion. Chaste loving is the universal call that includes both married persons and persons who remain single. In mar- Vilma Seelaus OCD last wrote for us in September-October 1999. Her address is Carmelite Monastery; 25 Watson Avenue; Barrington, Rhode Island 02806. Review for Religious riage, love is meant to have a genital expression. The religious vow is not only of chaste love, but also of chaste celibacy intended as a total response to God's uncondi-tional love. The single-hearted love to which religious vow themselves is at the heart of the kind of loving to which we are all invited as human beings. As consecrated celibates we vow to live out in a chaste celibate way the love relationship with God, and with one another, to which all persons are invited.3 Fidelity in chaste celibate loving has its own unique call for asceticism; celibate love must include asceticism. Celibacy for God means that one has a desire to receive God's love and to become passionately in love with God, expressing it in the vow of chaste celibacy. Today we increasingly recognize what the mystics have known for centuries: that, in our universe and in the heart of every human l~erson, there is an energy which as Christians we know to be God's creating love in all that exists. St. Teresa of Avila in her Sixth Dwelling Places describes a remarkable vision in which she sees all things in God. In this vision, "God is like an immense and beautiful dwelling or palace, and this palace is God himself." Teresa now sees all things as taking place in God and therefore in Love. All human love is either an expres-sion or a distortion of this one love, namely, God's unconditional love embracing and encircling the human family. Teresa writes: Could the sinner, perhaps, so as to engage in his evil deeds leave this palace? No, certainly not; rather, within the palace itself, that is, within God himself, the abominations, indecent actions, and evil deeds committed by us sinners take place . The greatest evil of the world is that God, our Creator, suffers so many evil things from his creatures within his very self and that we sometimes resent a word said in our absence and perhaps with no evil intention.4 [16.9 64.2 2005 Seelaus * Asceticism and Chaste Celibate Lo~e How true isoit that even self-centered, narcissistic love contains within itself in a diffused, distorted way the energies ' of divine°iove? 170 Our life unfolds in God! Postmodern Christian ecolog-ical theologians see this reality as the basis of God's rad-ical immanence in the world and as the human challenge to respect and care for the ecological systems of our planet earth, symbolized as the body of God.5 Chaste loving extends itself to loving care of the world in which we live, which, in one of his less-known poems, John of the Cross images as the palace created by God for "all the members of the just," who are "the body of the bride" of the eter-nal Word.6 In viewing all of human love within the ambience of God's creat-ing energy of love, we see how out of harmony is the so-called "sexual revolu-tion," which seeks sexual pleasure apart from genuine love between persons. Yet even self-centered, narcissistic love contains within itself in a diffused, distorted way the energies of divine love. The human urgency for union with God, who alone can offer unconditional love, easily finds expression in dif-fused and distorted ways when God's love is unrecog-nized or rejected. Aware of this reality, Jesus had and has great compassion for all of us, who in ways small or great live love's distortions. Asceticism enlarges the heart to receive a greater out-pouring of God's love. It also allows the energies of divine love to flow more freely through us into the lives of others. This asceticism is a matter of self-denial and self-emptying.7 What we deny ourselves and allow God to empty out are the things within us or around us that we tend to hold on to tenaciously. The purpose of asceti- Review for Religious cism is freedom for self-surrender, not self-punishment, not the giving up of things out of self-hate. Rather, gen-uine asceticism springs from a desire to be rooted in love. It is an expression of our willingness for our love to be freed of its distortions. The asceticism that leads to self-surrender can be sustained only in prayerful com-munion with God and is itself a form of prayer. Self-sur-render softens the soil of our inner being so that stubborn willfulness may more easily be uprooted by God, leaving room for God to plant seeds of willing-ness. 8 These are seeds of the Christ-life. Frans JozefVan Beeck, the Dutch theologian, in an early work of his titled Christ Proclaimed, points out that Jesus "was with-out the need for anxious self-possession, self-mainte-nance, and self-affirmation." Jesus was content to receive his being in a stance of total surrender to his Father.9 To love is to love someone--other persons as well as God. Self-denial can be psychologically harmful and even sinful outside of the context of our relationship with other people and with God. There is, however, some-thing in our being that clings to aloneness, to private and even narcissistic self-possession, distorting the inner solitude of our uniqueness. This distortion, the denial of relatedness, is sin. Sin would have us cling to our sep-arateness as something absolute. This is an ontological illusion, but it nevertheless lures us to rest on its com-forting bosom in the hope of avoiding the pain that comes with reaching out in love. Relatedness can be painful, as we discover early. Although other persons reflect our uniqueness and help us discover our gifts and potential, they also mirror our inadequacies. As we struggle with the demands of friend-ship and human encounter, that relatedness undermines personal myths of omnipotence and reveals our finitude. The insecurity of finitude is hard to accept, and, just as 7171 64.2 200~ Seelaus * Asceticism and Chaste Celibate Love 172 others willy-nilly make demands of us, we place all kinds of expectations on ourselves to be all-knowing and all-capable, to be fully adequate to every situation. Amid these usually unconscious self-expectations, the gifts and talents of others threaten us, so we turn them off or become defensive. Insofar as we are out of touch with these inner movements, enW, jealousy, and competi-tiveness keep us outside of the unifying energies of God's love that flow between people. The opposite can also happen. Self-doubt can so overwhelm us that we give up trying. The gentle vigilance of self-knowledge is an excel-lent form of asceticism. Self-knowledge keeps us in touch with the polluting elements that can be present in love's stream. Self-knowledge looks squarely at emotional and attitudinal dams that cause love's flow to stagnate.1° It strengthens us to bear the pain of our failures as we struggle to learn new patterns of behavior more expres-sive of love. The asceticism of self-knowledge necessar-ily opens us to a deeper understanding of God in our life. God is compassionate, unconditional love; God accepts us just as we are. Imperfection is normative to our finitude. For us to be perfect is to accept the reality of our imperfection. God's only expectation seems to be that we surrender to God's Trinitarian love and that we ourselves become passionate lovers. Fasting is a very traditional and helpful form of asceticism. As self-punishment it is harmful; nevertheless, fasting can be sincere worship. It can express genuine love toward God, who is father, mother, beloved, and friend, the source of all we have and are. The stomach's empty feeling reminds us that we are a hunger for God, who alone can fill our emptiness. Fasting can be an expression of praise and adoration of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Jesus, alive in his Review for Religious Spirit worshiping in us, becomes more than a desire; he fills our emptiness with his own praise of his Father. Like the young Carmelite Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, we too are destined to be a "praise of His Glory." Fasting is a form of worship; it is also a form of the prayer of petition. Our finitude has many needs. We eas-ily come to the limits of our human potential, especially in the realm of love and relat-edness. Times exist when a , relationship reaches an impasse or when persons dear to us seem stuck in self-destructive tendencies, or are struggling with seemingly impossible sit-uations. Our fasting for them can be a hidden silent petition that God nourish the loved one to newness of life. Fasting can also be a prayer for the gift of detachment from the things we cling to in anxious self-possession and which keep us from self-surrender. Asceticism therefore can take many forms. It is cru-cial to the critical moments when a committed celibate is being tempted along a path whose ending would inevitably be genital intimacy. Here one is faced with the asceticism of choice. One. needs to set appropriate boundaries to love's expression while still fostering warmth and caring in the relationship. Fidelity to love is always a paschal experience. The asceticism of choice, in this instance the appropriate channeling of love's warmth, can be painful. But it is pain that is life-giving. Unlike the repression of feelings, which imprisons the self in the turmoil of unacknowledged emotions, the asceticism of choice is an encounter with greater inner freedom and is a call to growth in love. One's pain How would I explain that fasting is a form of worship and also a form of the prayer of petition ? 64.2 200Y Seelaus ¯ Asceticism and Cbaste Celibate Love becomes redemptive not only for oneself and the loved person, but for others as well, because it springs from genuine love and is a true love response. Because love is the creating energy that sustains the universe, and its energies flow through all of'humankind, it is necessarily the very heart of the church. Therefore any decision that one makes out of love and with the intent of fostering love has apostolic value. It shares in the life-giving, redemptive mission of Christ. This real-ity is worth pondering. It broadens one's understanding of the apostolate and of the meaning of mission for con-secrated celibates. We participate in God's creating action through the choices we make, and in doing so we inevitably affect the lives of others. Decisions drawn from the deep well of love enter into love's stream flowing from the womb of God, the source of life, the one life that flows through all of humankind. Even the smallest of our decisions is like the proverbial pebble thrown into the water whose ripples expand in ever widening circles. Here I am reminded of an experience in my own life that becomes increasingly meaningful. My monastery in Rhode Island is located on Narragansett Bay. Occasionally I take an early morning walk along the beach to enjoy the sunrise reflecting itself across the water. One such morning the bay was unusually calm. As I walked along I heard a sudden strong swish of incoming surf. This usually announces the changing of the tide, but the waters of the last high tide had not yet fully ebbed out. I turned and scanned the bay. In the far distance a tiny craft was speeding across the water, split-ting its quiet surface and leaving behind rolling waves of water. As the craft disappeared between the islands, the waters returned .to their previous unruffled state. The swish at my feet settled to a calm. I have experienced this phenomenon many times, Review for Religious and it never ceases to amaze me that the movements of such a small craft, hardly visible in the distance, can affect such a large expanse of water even to a distant shore. This symbolizes for me the awesome reality that the choices we make, no matter how small, are not insignif-icant. Humanity is bonded in a common stream of con-sciousness and love; the movements of one person, toward life or toward diminishment, necessarily affect the whole. Asceticism in its many forms is a prayerful desire that not only our activity but also our entire being may be apostolic, that is, life-giving for others. It fos-ters human solidarity as an enduring reality, by creating a fleer channeling of divine life through the collective body of humankind.12 Notes 1 See Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), p. 105. 2 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 126. 3 This paper was first written in the 1970s. Since then, much of great value has been written regarding the vows. In this recent minor revi-sion, no attempt was made to connect with the fine work of recent authors. 4 In terior Castle, VI. 10.2- 3. Collected Works of St. Teresa ofAvila, Vol. 2, trans. Otilio Rodriguez OCD and Kieran Kavanaugh OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1980), p. 419. s See Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril by Sallie McFague (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), pp. 138ff. See also the writings of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme. 6 Romances, nos. 3-6, "On Creation," in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriguez OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), pp. 62ff. [See especially no. 4, pp. 63-64. Ed.] 7 See Vilma Seelaus OCD, Self-Emptying: Philippians 2 and the Carmelite Tradition (Washington D.C.: ICS [Audio] Publications, 2004). 8 See Gerald May MD, Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982). 64.2 200Y Seelaus * Asceticism and Chaste Celibate Love 9 Frans Jozef Van Beeck sJ, Christ Proclaimed (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), p. 421. ,0 For a further development of the value of self-knowledge, see Vilma Seelaus OCD, "Effective Ministry through Contemplative Self- Knowledge," Review for Religious 41 (May-June 1982): 390-399. " See Elizabeth of the Trinity, The Complete Works (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1984). ~2 The asceticism of chaste celibate love has yet a deeper dimension, which is the asceticism of prayer, especially contemplative prayer. To remain faithful to love and to prayer during the painful times of dark night and the seeming void of love would be a topic in itself. See Hein Blommestijn, Jos Huls, and Kees Waaijman, The Footprints of Love: John of the Cross as Guide in the Wilderness, trans. John Vriend (Leuven [Bondgenontenlaan, 153; B-3000 Leuven; Belgium]: Peeters, 2000). Prayer Psalm 73 Let the words of the psalm help you pray: Yet with you I shall always be; you have hold of my right hand; With your counsel you guide me, and in the end you will receive me in glory. Whom else have I in heaven? And when I am with you, the earth delights me not. Though my flesh and my heart waste away, God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever. But, for me, to be near God is my good; to make the Lord God my refuge. I shall declare all your works in the gates of the daughter of Zion. Revie~v for Religious ROBBER E MALONEY Snapshots of Three Lesser-Known "Saints" In 1918 the historian Lytton Strachey said in the preface of his Eminent Victorians that in writ-ing history less is often more. In other words, true selectivity is more important than volume. He wrote: "It is not by the direct method of scrupulous narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict a singular epoch [or per-son]. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strat-egy. He will row out over the great ocean of material and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring to the light of day some characteristic specimen . . . to be examined with a careful curiosity." Surely few events say more about pex~sons than their death. Death not only closes life, it defines it. Christians have always regarded mar-tyrdom as the preeminent form of the follow-ing of Christ. From the earliest time, martyrs captured the Christian imagination and inspired Robert E Maloney CM, the former superior general of the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians), continues to live at Via dei Capasso, 30; 00164 Roma, Italy. 64.2 2005 Maloney ¯ Snapshots of Three Lesser-Known "Saints" 1781 others to incredible heroism in living the Gospels even to the end. The Book of Revelation sings the praise of these heroes: "Love for life did not deter them from death" (12:11). Some, of course, renounce their faith rather than die a martyr's death. But for others, some-times even people whose lives seemed mediocre, death is their finest hour. In Shakespeare's Macbeth (I,iv), Malcolm says of the previous thane of Cawdor: "Nothing in his life / became him like the leaving it; he died / as one that had been studied in his death / to throw away the dear-est thing he ow'd / as 'twere a careless trifle." In this brief article, I offer a snapshots of the deaths of three lesser-known martyrs who in turbulent times were like a "lamp shining in a dark place" (2 P 1:19). Joseph Chow Tsi-Che Did you ever want to be pope? I have sometimes heard Catholics say, with a bit of humor and a bit of frus-tration: "If I were pope for a week, here is what I would do!" Of course, very few of us get that opportunity. But a priest of my own community, whom some of my older friends knew, was actually offered the job. Joseph Chow was born in 1891 in Shijiazhuang, about 180 miles south of Beijing. He made his vows in the Congregation of the Mission in 1915 and was ordained to the priesthood four years later. After serving as a pro-fessor in the minor seminary in his hometown and then as a philosophy professor in the major seminary of Beijing, he was ordained a bishop in 1931, serving ini-tially as the vicar apostolic in Baoding, not far from his birthplace. In 1946 he was named the archbishop of Nanchang, much farther to the south, a city I visited a number of years ago, where his memory is still revered. In 1950, soon after the establishment of the revolu-tionary government in China, Joseph received the invi- Review for Religious tation to become pope. A delegation from Beijing came to visit him. A writer of the time describes their con-versation as follows: "Because you have so many gifts, you have been des-ignated to be the head of the Progressive Chinese Church. Are you willing to become the pope of China?" "Do you really believe that I have the necessary qualities?" "We do." "In that case, I would prefer to become the pope of the entire world." The delegation left, angry at his refusal. From then on, he was kept under constant surveillance. In May 1951 he was arrested, tried, found guilty, and thrown into prison. The charges against him were that he had opposed the reform of the church, that he had listened to the Voice of America, and that he had recruited members for the Legion of Mary. He was condemned to forced labor, toiling in isol'ation for twenty-two Joseph Chow renounced a very prestigious offer: to be the pope of China. ConSequently, he endured a slow, arduous, hidden martyrdom. years. Just before his death he was released, so that he would not die in prison, and was carried to the home of a Christian in Nanchang. There he went peacefully to the Lord. By all accounts Joseph Chow was an extraordinarily gifted man. Those who knew him attest that he was good-humored, quite funny at times, but very clear in what he believed. He surely knew what he was willing 179 64.2 2005 Maloney ¯ Snapshots of Tbree Lesser-Known "Saints" to die for. He renounced a very prestigious offer: to be the pope of China. Consequently, he endured a slow, arduous, hidden martyrdom. In the end the government, by freeing him from prison several days before his death, tried to deprive him of the title of martyr, but Catholics in China today recognize that he was precisely that. 180 Jean Le Vacher I doubt that Jean Le Vacher will ever be beatified, even though the cause for his beatification was actually introduced in 1923. Jean was born in Val-d'Oise, France, on 15 March 1619 and entered the seminary along with his brother Philippe on 5 October 1643. He was ordained a priest in 1647 and went to Tunis almost immediately. Within a year after his arrival, the superior of the mission there died, as did the French government's representative in Tunis. Jean, at the age of twenty-nine, was named both head of the mission and French consul, a combi-nation of jobs which seems strange to us today. Two years later he also became vicar apostolic. Twenty-five years later, history repeated itself in Jean's life. Having been named vicar apostolic of both Algeria and Tunis, he again became the French consul, this time in Algeria. That is the root of the problems surrounding his beatification. On the one hand, Jean was a remarkably zealous missionary, laboring for years among the slaves in the capital, whom he estimated to number about fifteen thousand. But he was also the con-sul, a difficult political post at a time when relations between France and Algeria were steadily worsening. In late June 1683, fighting broke out. The French fleet began to bombard the capital. At the same time a plague raged within the city. The Turkish forces in Algeria asked Le Vacher to mediate peace. He, two Turkish diplomats, and an interpreter arrived under a Review for Religious white flag at the French admiral's ship. As negotiations dragged on, Admiral Duquesne was inflexible and at one point yelled at Le Vacher: "You,re more a Turk than a Christian!" During the negotiations one of the Turkish diplomats deceived the French, promising to work with them to reinstate their control over Algeria. But, once back on land, he himself seized power and began to fire on the fleet again. When the French retaliated, Le Vacher was arrested, along with the few other French citizens who remained in the capital. Le Vacher's martyrdom took place on 16 July 1683, toward sunset, on a small pier in the port. He was asked to renounce his faith and declare himself a Muslim. Instead, he bade farewell to the Christian slaves in a loud clear voice and exhorted them to remain firm in their faith. He was tied to a wooden frame which was then attached to the mouth of a cannon. Then a little drama occurred which it is affecting to recall in the midst of all the strife in the Middle East and North Africa today. None of the Muslims in the crowd was willing to light the cannon's fuse. Many Jews were there, but they too were unwilling. Finally a renegade Christian lit the fuse. Le Vacher was blown to pieces. Ten other Frenchmen followed him to the same type of death. The French campaign was ultimately unsuccessful; a shortage of supplies forced Admiral Duquesne to return home. Because of Jean Le Vacher's political post, some have questioned whether he was really a martyr. Reading the accounts of his death, I have little doubt myself. He died professing his faith courageously and encouraging others to profess it too. In fact, many followed him to death. Marguerite Rutan Marguerite Rutan was born in Metz in 1736. There, at the age of twenty, she began her postulancy in a hos- 181 64.2 200Y Maloney ¯ Snapshots of Three Lesser-Known "Saints" 182 pital as a Daughter of Charity. A year later, on her birth-day, she entered the novitiate in Paris and just five months afterwards was sent to serve at a hospital in Pau. She had the happiness of seeing her two sisters enter the same community shortly after her and the sadness of seeing both of them die at a young age. From Pau she moved to several other hospitals, finally arriving in Dax, near the border of Spain, where in 1779 she was named superior. Ten years later, with the outbreak of the French rev-olution, life became increasingly difficult for the sisters. Resources for the running of the hospital were scarce. The government provided fewer and fewer funds. After 3 October 1793 all sisters employed in running hospitals and schools had to choose between taking the oath of allegiance to the state church or leaving the institutions where they served. Sister Marguerite and her companions refused the oath. From then on they were constantly under surveillance, but their services in the hospital were so needed that they were allowed to continue. Finally, however, on 24 December 1793, Marguerite was arrested on charges of "corrupting the revolutionary, republican spirit of the soldiers who went to this hospital." What had happened, in fact, was that a group of sol-diers, to express gratitude for the care given in the hos-pital, returned to do some songs for the sisters. Sister Marguerite stopped to listen to them, offered them refreshments, and gave them some money. That was her crime. She was taken to a prison at the nearby Carmelite house. At the beginning of March 1794, a guillotine was constructed in the central ~quare of Dax. Simultaneously most prisoners were transferred to another city, but Marguerite was left in the Carmelite prison, a sign that her fate had already been decided. After a brief trial, her name was placed upon the list of those to be guillotined. A commission arrived in Dax Review for Religious to review the cases of those facing capital punishment. On 9 April after a quick hearing in which the same charges were repeated, Marguerite was condemned to death. The sentence was to be carried out immediately. She and the local cur~, also condemned, were tied back to back, placed on a cart with soldiers surrounding them, and rushed to the execution place accompanied by the sound of tambourines. Having first witnessed the behead-ing of the cur~, Marguerite asked the executioner not to assist her and mounted the scaffold by herself, removed the shawl from around her shoulders, put her head on the guillotine, and was executed. In their accounts of Marguerite's death, all observers noted her dignity. She seems to have been undaunted by the prospect of death, wearing those around her gently while speaking her mind clearly and unflinchingly right to the end. Tertullian tells us that "the blood of Christians is seed" (Apology 50.13). The martyrs strengthen those who come after them. They demonstrate that some things are worth dying for. By their witness they proclaim that fidelity to one's central commitments is more important than life itself. In the darkness of persecutions or of oppressive regimes, martyrs are like flashes of lightning that illumi-nate the nighttime sky, a surge of electricity that ener-gizes those who live on beyond them. The church has been blessed by many such martyrs right up to the present. This great "cloud of witnesses" (Heb 12:1) strengthens us to be faithful, no matter what the cost. 183 64.2 2005 JULIANA DEVOY Learning to Live Serenely: The Wisdom of Francis de Sales 184, Ewvery day in the Eucharistic liturgy we pray the ords "Protect us from all anxiety." The daily repetition of this invocation is not without meaning. We have only to open the newspaper or turn on the evening news to find plenty of material for angst. After 9/11 and its consequences, not only individuals but whole nations are experiencing increased anxiety. But it is not only the world scene that disturbs us. We witness divisions in the church, breakdowns of family life, loved ones' illnesses, financial reversals, and many other problems that threaten our peace of heart. Undue worry, anxiety, and agitation not only are detrimental to our psychological well-being, but also impede our spiritual growth. A spiritual guide who can teach us serenity and Christian optimism no matter what happens in the world is St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), bishop and doctor of the church, a man with a wonderfully balanced and integrated personality, who combined a deep spirituality Juliana Devoy RGS last wrote for us in May-June 1999. Her address remains Good Shepherd Sisters; 30 Estrada da Vitoria; Macao. with a penetrating insight into human psychology. Separated from him by a cultural, theological, and linguistic gulf of four centuries, we nevertheless find in his published works and in his letters of spiritual direction gems of wisdom which, if we take the trouble to extract them, will both counsel and console us on our spiritual journey. In this essay we will examine several points of Salesian spirituality that can aid us in gracious living and tranquillity of spirit. Befriending Reality In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis says that, aside from sin, anxiety is the greatest evil that can happen to us. "It proceeds," he says, "from an inordinate desire to be freed from a present evil or to acquire a hoped-for good. Yet there is nothing that tends more to increase evil and prevent enjoyment of good than to be disturbed and anxious.''~ In one of his colorful images, he likens anxiety to birds caught in a net: the more they flap their wings trying to escape, the more they become entangled. Francis knew well what he was talking about. As a nineteen-year-old student in Paris, he had undergone a spiritual crisis over predestination, asking himself whether it was possible for him to be separated from God for all eternity. The moral and spiritual anguish that he suffered was so great that he fell ill and could not sleep or eat. The crisis was resolved only when he abandoned himself unconditionally to God's love, praying for the grace to love God here and now if he could not love God in eternity.2 Francis emerged from his persOnal "dark night" with two profound convictions about reality: his radical dependence on God and God's utter trustworthiness. In the Salesian worldview, creation is suffused with God's goodness and our peace is found in conformity to 64.2 2005 Devoy ¯ Learning to Live Serenely ~DO we live ,the truth, that every vocation is the lo~cus fo~" meeting God andeve~ Christian is called to a life of holiness,? -°186 God's will because God is a GodJbr us. Our particular life circumstances are where we will find God. Francis, therefore, counsels a loving acceptance of the situation in ¯ . which we find ourselves. His Introduction was written especially for lay people who desired to live in closer intimacy with God. Predating Vatican Council II by hundreds of years, he taught that every vocation is the locus for meeting God and that every Christian is called to a life of holiness. But the way to holiness would be different for everyone because the practice of devotion must "be adapted to the strength, activities, and duties of each particular person." A bishop is not called to live like a Carthusian, nor a skilled workman to spend his day in church like a religious. There is no need to emulate the lifestyle or the virtues proper to a vocation that is not one's own. His letters of direction illustrate this teaching in practice: I should like you to consider how many saints, both men and women, have lived in the married state like you, and that they all accepted this vocation readily and gladly. We must love all that God loves, and he loves our vocation; so let us love it too and not waste our energy hankering after a different sort of life, but get on with our own job. Know that God wishes nothing else of you save what he sends at the moment, and do not be on the lookout for other things . What is the use of building castles in Spain when you have to live in France? What a marvelous thing you said when you wrote to me: as long as I am serving God I don't care what kind of sauce he puts me in . Come now, you Review for Religious know very well into what sauce he has put you, into what state of life and condition; and, tell me, is it all the same to you?3 But it would be a mistake to imagine that what is being advocated is a passive acceptance of the status quo. In his Treatise on the Love of God, Francis devotes a large section to "The Will of God.''4 He distinguishes between God's signified will and the will of God's good pleasure. Although obviously God has only one will, our discernment of what God wants of us will have to take account of two different sets of realities. In the first case we are guided by the commandments, the counsels, teachings of the church, and holy inspirations. When there is question of something clearly ordained by God, there is nothing to discern; we have only to obey. For choosing a vocation, however, or choosing one action rather than another, Francis counsels a great liberty of spirit since it is impossible to know God's will absolutely. In important matters we should pray, consult a spiritual director, and then do what we think is best. Even if doubts arise afterwards about whether we chose well, we should remain in peace and continue on the course we have chosen. In lesser matters we should "do freely what seems good to us, so as not to weary our minds, waste our time, and put ourselves in danger of disquiet, scruples, and superstition." The "will of God's good pleasure" is God's will already done. It is the actual circumstances of our lives, the "sauce in which God has placed us," the events that take place and the things that exist outside our control. It is not that God causes everything that happens, but that "whatever is, is in some way within God's providence; it is not outside the loving embrace of the creative and redempt