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Author's introductionThe media landscape has changed dramatically in recent decades, from one predominated by traditional mass communication formats to today's more personalized communications environment. Mobile telephony plays a central role in this transition, with adoption rates that surpass even those of the Internet. This article attempts to situate the role of mobile communication technology in the changing media environment by examining key areas of social change associated with its widespread diffusion and use. These areas include symbolic meaning of technology, new forms of coordination and social networking, personalization of public spaces, and the mobile youth culture. Drawing from these areas of change, we advance the argument that mobile telephony is iconic of a larger socio‐technological shift toward a new 'personal communication society.'Author recommendsRheingold, Howard 2002. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.From Tokyo to Helsinki, Manhattan to Manila, Howard Rheingold takes us on a journey around the world for a preview of the next techno‐cultural shift – a shift he predicts will be as dramatic as the widespread adoption of the PC in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s. The coming wave, says Rheingold, is the result of super‐efficient mobile communications – cellular phones, personal digital assistants, and wireless‐paging and Internet‐access devices that will allow us to connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime. From the amusing ('Lovegetty' devices in Japan that light up when a person with the right date‐potential characteristics appears in the vicinity) to the extraordinary (the overthrow of a repressive regime in the Philippines by political activists who mobilized by forwarding text messages via cell phones), Rheingold gives examples of the fundamentally new ways in which people are already engaging in group or collective action. He also considers the dark side of this phenomenon, such as the coordination of terrorist cells, threats to privacy, and the ability to incite violent behavior. Applying insights from sociology, artificial intelligence, engineering, and anthropology, Rheingold offers a penetrating perspective on the brave new convergence of pop culture, cutting‐edge technology, and social activism. At the same time, he reminds us that, as with other technological revolutions, the real impact of mobile communications will come not from the technology itself but from how people use it, resist it, adapt to it, and ultimately use it to transform themselves, their communities, and their institutions.Katz, James E. and Mark A. Aakhus (eds.) 2002. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.This edited volume contains a landmark collection of chapters from researchers all over the world. The book offers a multi‐national perspective on some of the key themes that were identified at the outset of the emergent new field of mobile communication studies, ranging from the private sphere of interpersonal relations to the public performance of social groups and structures. In their conclusion, the editors advance the theoretical orientation of Apparatgeist (translation: 'spirit of the machine') to explain cross‐cultural consistencies in how people conceptualize and use personal communication technologies such as the mobile phone.Ling, Rich 2004. The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone's Impact on Society. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.This book, based on worldwide research involving tens of thousands of interviews and contextual observations, looks into the impact of the mobile communication on our daily lives. Areas of impact include accessibility, safety and security, coordination of social and business activities, use of public places, and the social emancipation of youth.Ito, Mizuko, Daisuke Okabe, and Misa Matsuda (eds.) 2005. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.This edited volume explores how Japan's enthusiastic engagement with mobile technology has become part of its trendsetting popular culture. The chapters document the emergence, incorporation, and domestication of mobile communications in a wide range of social practices and institutions. The book first considers the social, cultural, and historical context of keitai (i.e., mobile phone) development in Japan, including its beginnings in youth pager use in the early 1990s. It then discusses the virtually seamless integration of keitai use into everyday life, contrasting it to the more escapist character of Internet use on the PC. Other essays suggest that the use of mobile communication reinforces ties between close friends and family, producing 'tele‐cocooning' by tight‐knit social groups. The book also discusses mobile phone manners and examines keitai use by copier technicians, multitasking housewives, and school children.Castells, Manuel, Mireia Fernandez‐Ardevol, Jack Linchuan Qiu and Araba Sey 2007. Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.This book looks at how the possibility of multimodal communication from anywhere to anywhere at any time affects everyday life at home, at work, and at school, and raises broader concerns about politics and culture both global and local. Drawing on data gathered from around the world, the authors explore who has access to wireless technology, and why, and analyze the patterns of social differentiation seen in unequal access. They explore the social effects of wireless communication – what it means for family life, for example, when everyone is constantly in touch, or for the idea of an office when workers can work anywhere. The authors consider the rise of a mobile youth culture based on peer‐to‐peer networks, with its own language of texting, and its own values. They examine the phenomenon of flash mobs, and the possible political implications. And they look at the relationship between communication and development and the possibility that developing countries could 'leapfrog' directly to wireless and satellite technology. Drawing from a global body of research, the book helps answer the key questions about our transformation into a 'mobile network society'.Ling, Rich 2008. New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Reshapes Social Cohesion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.In New Tech, New Ties, Rich Ling examines how the mobile telephone affects both mobile‐mediated and face to face interactions. Ling finds that through the use of various social rituals the mobile telephone strengthens social ties within the circle of friends and family – sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are physically present – and creates what he calls 'bounded solidarity'. Ling argues that mobile communication helps to engender and develop social cohesion within the family and the peer group. Drawing on the work of Emile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, and Randall Collins, Ling shows that ritual interaction is a catalyst for the development of social bonding. From this perspective, he examines how mobile communication affects face‐to‐face ritual situations and how ritual is used in interaction mediated by mobile communication. He looks at the evidence, including interviews and observations from around the world, which documents the effect of mobile communication on social bonding and also examines some of the other possibly problematic issues raised by tighter social cohesion in small groups.Katz, James E. (ed.) 2008. Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.This edited volume offers a comprehensive view of the cultural, family, and interpersonal consequences of mobile communication across the globe. Leading scholars analyze the effect of mobile communication on all parts of life, from the relationship between literacy and the textual features of mobile phones to the use of ringtones as a form of social exchange, from the 'aspirational consumption' of middle class families in India to the belief in parts of Africa and Asia that mobile phones can communicate with the dead. The contributors explore the ways mobile communication profoundly affects the tempo, structure, and process of daily life around the world. They discuss the impact of mobile communication on social networks, other communication strategies, traditional forms of social organization, and political activities. They consider how quickly miraculous technologies come to seem ordinary and even necessary – and how ordinary technology comes to seem mysterious and even miraculous. The chapters cut across social issues and geographical regions; they highlight use by the elite and the masses, utilitarian and expressive functions, and political and operational consequences. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate how mobile communication has affected the quality of life in both exotic and humdrum settings, and how it increasingly occupies center stage in people's lives around the world.Ling, Rich and Scott W. Campbell (eds.) Forthcoming in Fall/Winter 2008. The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Mobile communication enables us to call specific individuals, not general places. This advancement had changed, and continues to change, human interaction. It also alters the ways people experience both space and time. This edited volume explores these changes through a collection of studies from some of the top mobile communication researchers from around the world. Collectively, the contributions highlight nuanced changes in coordination and cohesion across space and time, the ways people manage mobile communication and mobility in new spatio‐temporal realms, and how individuals relate to their co‐present surroundings while using mobile communication technology.Online materials Resource Center for Mobile Communication Studies http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/ci/cmcs/ The Center for Mobile Communication Studies is the world's first academic unit to focus solely on social aspects of mobile communication. Established in June 2004 at Rutgers University's School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, the Center has become an international focal point for research, teaching, and service on the social, psychological, and organizational consequences of the burgeoning mobile communication revolution. International Journal of Mobile Communication Studies https://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=40 The International Journal of Mobile Communication (IJMC), a fully refereed journal, publishes articles that present current practice and theory of mobile communications, mobile technology, and mobile commerce applications. The objectives of the IJMC are to develop, promote, and coordinate the development and practice of mobile communications. The IJMC aims to help professionals working in the field, academic educators, and policy makers to contribute, to disseminate knowledge, and to learn from each other's work. The international dimension is emphasised in order to overcome cultural and national barriers and to meet the needs of accelerating technological change and changes in the global economy. IJMC is an outstanding outlet that can shape a significant body of research in the field of mobile communications and in which results can be shared across institutions, governments, researchers, and students, and also industry. Wi: The Journal of Mobile Media http://wi‐not.ca/ Wi publishes the latest in Canadian mobilities research, encompassing disciplines such as design, engineering, computer science, communications, and media studies. MobileActive.org http://mobileactive.org/ MobileActive.org is an all‐volunteer community of people and organizations using mobile phones for social impact. They are committed to increasing the effectiveness of NGOs around the world who recognize that the 3.5 billion mobile phones provide unprecedented opportunities for organizing, communications, and service and information delivery. They work together to create the resources NGOs need to effectively use mobile phones in their work: locally relevant content and services, support and learning opportunities, and networks that help MobileActives connect to each other. With these things on hand, tens of thousands of NGOs will be in a better position to enrich and serve their communities. The MobileActive.org community includes grassroots activists, NGO staff, intermediary organizations, content and service providers, and organizations who fund mobile technology projects. Mobile Society http://www.mobilesociety.net/ Mobile Society is an academic research website focusing on social aspects of the mobile phone. The site includes links and information about news, events, publications, and other related sites pertaining to the social consequences of mobile communication. SmartMobs: The Next Social Revolution http://www.smartmobs.com/ A Website and Weblog about topics and issues discussed in the book 'Smart Mobs' by Howard Rheingold.Select sample syllabus topics and readings for course on 'the social consequences of mobile communication' History and adoption of the mobile phone

Ling, Rich. 2004. 'The Mobile Connection' Chapter 1: Introduction.
Castells et al. 2007. 'Mobile Communication and Society' Chapter 1: The Diffusion of Wireless Communication in the World.

Theoretical perspectives on the relationship between technology and society: Part 1, social and technological determinism

Ling, Rich. 2004. 'The Mobile Connection' Chapter 2: Making Sense of Mobile Telephone Adoption.
Campbell, Scott W. and Tracy C. Russo 2003. The Social Construction of Mobile Telephony. Communication Monographs 70: 317–34.

Theoretical perspectives on the relationship between technology and society: Part 2, the 'network' perspective

Castells, Manuel. 2000. 'The Rise of Network Society' Opening Chapter: The Network is the Message.
Castells et al. 2007. 'Mobile Communication and Society' Chapter 5: The Space of Flows, Timeless Time, and Mobile Networks.

Mobile communication in everyday life: Part 1, safety and security

Ling, Rich. 2004. 'The Mobile Connection' Chapter 3: Safety and Security.

Mobile communication in everyday life: Part 2: new forms of coordination

Ling, Rich. 2004. 'The Mobile Connection' Chapter 4: The Coordination of Everyday Life.

Mobile communication in everyday life: Part 3: new social networking practices

Ling, Rich and Birgitte Yttri. 2002. 'Hyper‐coordination via Mobile Phones in Norway' in Katz & Aakhus (eds.) Perpetual Contact.
Licoppe, Christian. 2003. 'Two Modes of Maintaining Interpersonal Relations through Telephone: From the Domestic to the Mobile Phone' in J. Katz (ed.) Machines that Become Us.
Campbell, Scott. W. and Michael Kelley. 2006. Mobile phone use in AA networks: An exploratory study. Journal of Applied Communication Research 34: 191–208.

Apparatgeist: 'Spirit of the machine' and the fashion and function of the mobile phone

Katz, James E. and Mark Aakhus. 2002. 'Conclusion: Making meaning of mobiles – a theory of Apparatgeist' in Katz & Aakhus (eds.) Perpetual Contact.
Campbell, Scott W. 2008. 'Mobile Technology and the Body: Apparatgeist, Fashion and Function' in J. Katz (eds.) Handbook of Mobile Communication.

SMS and the language of wireless communication

Ling, Rich. 2004. 'The Mobile Connection' Chapter 7: Texting and the Growth of Asynchronous Discourse.
Castells et al. 2007. 'Mobile Communication and Society, Chapter 6: The Language of Wireless Communication.

Use of mobile technology in public settings

Ling, Rich. 2004. 'The Mobile Connection' Chapter 6: The Intrusive Nature of Mobile Technology.
Okabe, Daisuke and Ito, Mizuko. 2005. 'Keitai in public transportation' in Ito, Okabe, & Matsuda (eds.) Personal, Portable, Pedestrian.
Ito, Mizuko, Daisuke Okabe and Ken Anderson 2008. 'Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places' in Ling & Campbell (eds.) Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices.
Campbell, Scott W. 2006. Perceptions of mobile phones in college classrooms: Ringing, cheating, and classroom policies. Communication Education 55: 280–294.

M 10/22 Use of the technology around co‐present others and the challenge of 'absent presence'

Cumiskey, Kathleen. 2007. 'Hidden meanings: Understanding the social‐psychological impact of mobile phone use through storytelling' in Goggin & Hjorth (eds.) Mobile Media Proceedings.
Gergen, Kenneth. 2002. 'The challenge of absent presence' in Katz & Aakhus (eds.) Perpetual Contact.

The mobile youth culture

Ling, Rich. 2004. 'The Mobile Connection' Chapter 5: The Mobile Telephone and Teens.
Castells et al. 2007. 'Mobile Communication and Society' Chapter 4: The Mobile Youth Culture.

Mobile communication in the socio‐political sphere

Castells et al. 2007. 'Mobile Communication and Society Chapter 7: The Mobile Civil Society: Social Movements, Political Power, and Communication Networks.
Rheingold, Howard. 2002. 'Smart Mobs' Chapter 7: Smart Mobs – The Power of the Mobile Many.
Campbell, Scott W. and Nojin Kwak. 2008, May. Mobile communication and the public sphere: Linking patterns of use to civic and political engagement. Paper presented at the ICA pre‐conference, The Global and Globalizing Dimensions of Mobile Communication: Developing or Developed?, Montreal.

W 11/7 Mobile communication in the developing world

Castells et al. 2007. 'Mobile Communication and Society' Chapter 8: Wireless Communication and Global Development: New Issues, New Strategies.
Donner, Jonathan. 2008. Research approaches to mobile use in the developing world: A review of the literature. The Information Society 24: 140–159.
Donner, Jonathan. 2008. The rules of beeping: Exchanging messages via intentional 'missed calls' on mobile phones. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13(1). Available: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/donner.html.

M 11/12 Mobile communication and work

Andriessen, Erick and Mattai Vartianen. 2006. Emerging Mobile Virtual Work in Andriessen & Vartianen (eds.) Mobile Virtual Work: A New Paradigm?
Perry, Mark and Jackie Brodie. 2006. Virtually Connected, Practically Mobile in Andriessen & Vartianen (eds.) Mobile Virtual Work: A New Paradigm?
Chesley, Noelle. 2005. Blurring boundaries? Linking technology use, spillover, individual distress, and family satisfaction. Journal of Marriage and Family 67: 1237–1248.

OptionalFocus questions

To what extent does mobile communication lead to changes in family dynamics? On the one hand, mobile communication empowers youth to carry out their social relations 'under the radar' of parental supervision. In the 'old days', kids had to share a domestic landline phone and had less privacy, or had to shut themselves up in their room when on the phone to get privacy. The mobile phone is anytime/anywhere and it a personal object (not shared), so users have much more control over their private relations. Text messaging is an especially effective way of having private communication. Because of all this, young people have more autonomy to live out their social lives as they see fit. On the other hand, the mobile phone also gives parents more control by being able to better keep tabs on their kids and their kids' whereabouts. In some respects, it can actually be considered as an 'umbilical cord' keeping kids accountable to their parents. This is an interesting dichotomy for discussion.
To what extent and how does the mobile phone support 'perpetual contact' among social ties? There seems to be a continual flow of communication now, which some refer to as 'perpetual contact'. Follow‐up questions could be: how is this a good thing? Are there negative aspects of perpetual contact?
How is the mobile phone used for boundary management (i.e., demarcating in‐group members from out‐group members)? This can be seen in names kept in contact lists, who people text with, whose calls they screen, and even the style or brand of a phone ... some groups of friends get the same types of phones.
What are the effects of taking/placing a phone call when interacting with physically co‐present others? What are norms for doing this? How can people mitigate the intrusion?
On a related note to the questions above ... to what extent does the mobile phone lead to 'absent presence?' The notion of absent presence refers to being physically present, but socially absent. To what extent is this problematic?
To what extent might mobile communication lead to 'tele‐cocooning?' Some are concerned that people are getting so wrapped up in their tight little social networks now, that they are less engaged with others who are weak social ties. If this is true, then it begs the question about whether there are benefits to having weak social ties. Most feel there are benefits, like being exposed to a diversity of perspectives and ideas.
With regard to the changing media landscape, where else do we see increased 'personalization' in our uses of traditional mass media? In this sense, 'personalization' can refer to personalized content, interactivity, control, etc.

Research project idea (note this approach can be taken with any of the topics recommended above)Description of the paperMobile communication technology has become a common artifact in public settings, offering a means for social connection for its users and unsolicited melodies, chirps, and half conversations for co‐present others. Because social norms for behavior around others often conflict with those for phone conversations, mobile communication can present as many challenges as it does opportunities for maintaining social order. In class, we will discuss numerous perspectives on this topic, such as absent presence, symbolic fences, front stage‐back‐stage dynamics, and cocooning through mobile media. The purpose of this paper is to conduct an original investigation of the use of mobile communication technology around others. Each student will select a particular aspect of this phenomenon to explore in depth by collecting data first‐hand, analyzing those data, and drawing conclusions to shed new light on this topic. Students may choose to examine mobile communication in a particular setting, compare mobile communication in different social contexts or across different users, examine or compare the use of certain types of mobile technologies, observe reactions of and effects on non‐users of the technology, or select some other such 'angle' for the project that sheds light on this topic.Paper guidelinesYour paper should contain the following sections: (1) An introduction that justifies the importance of your topic and provides a clear explanation of the purpose of the paper, (2) a review of relevant literature/theory/key concepts to frame your particular project followed by specific research questions, (3) a method section explaining how you collected data (observation, interviews, questionnaires, and/or otherwise) and how you analyzed your data, and (4) a discussion section that develops conclusions based on the findings. Each paper should have at least 10 scholarly citations, of which at least half should come from readings other than those assigned for class. Use American Psychological Association (5th edition) to format citations and reference list. Papers should be about 10 pages in length, double‐spaced. In addition to meeting these guidelines, the writing should be clearly organized within each section and (of course) well‐written. Students will present their papers in class at the end of the semester.

Issue 61.4 of the Review for Religious, 2002. ; Identities Spirituality Community Living \ Profiling JULY AUGUST 2002 VOLUME 61 NUMBER 4 Review for Rellgious hdp people respond aria bkfa thful ~ ° ~ to God's ~niversal call to holiness ~ by making available to t~em the ~piH~l legades that flow~om the'charisms of CathoUdeOnsecrated life. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bimonthly 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 ¯ \Veh 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 Mount St. Mary's Seminary; 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 iuside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©2002 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to COl)}, 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 distrihu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. for religious LIVING OUR CATHOLIC LEGACIES Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Adv#ory Board David L. Fleming SJ Clare Boehmer ASC Philip C. Fischer SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Judy Sharp James and Joan Felling Adrian Gaudin SC Sr. Raymond Marie Gerard FSP Eugene Hensell OSB Ernest E. Larkin OCarm Bishop Carlos A. Sevilla SJ Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ JULY AUGUST 2002 VOLUME 61 NUMBER 4 contents 342 feature Reciprocal Identities: Apostolic Life and Consecrated Life Patricia Wittberg sc oudines the role apostolic institutions had in shaping the identity of religious congregations in the past and describes the role of a person who would be responsible for catalyzing a congregation's reformulation of its apostolic identity in the absence of these institutions today. 352 364 spirituality Diocesan Priesthood: Discerning the Fire in Our Midst George Aschenbrenner SJ describes four steps that are part of a discerning life and three dimensions of the human stage on which the drama of a personal love-relationship with God is played. Desert Spirituality Ernest E. Larkin OCarm examines the ancient traditions of desert spirituality and contemplative prayer and proposes ways to adapt them to our times. for l~eligious 375 community living Three Forms of Community Living: A Survey Report Barbara Zajac makes a sociological survey of sisters in one religious community to explore how they define and create "community." 395 Expert Practitioners of Union: Forming, Living, and Sustaining Community Joel Giallanza CSC reviews the complexities involved in defining or describing religious community and suggests strategies to form and live and sustain community. 407 profiling Merton and the Enneagram: The Ritual Enactment of His Myth Suzanne Zuercher OSB examines Thomas Merton from his journals, considering him as an enneagram 4, his true self more acknowledged over the years, then anguished over, and ultimately embraced. 419 Liberal or Conservative: Temperaments and Faith Edward Krasevac OP proposes that awareness of temperamental affinities for liberal/conservative positions can give us a greater and sometimes much-needed sensitivity to what others are saying and give us at least a partial understanding of why we b~lieve what we believe. departments 340 Prisms 430 Canonical Counsel: Involuntary Departure 435 Book Reviews j~uly-Aug~tst 2002 prisms ~hen we say "We had an extraordinary time," for example, at a family reunion or at a church conference, we imply that the event was better than usual. The ordinary, by contrast, seems to be of negligible value. Ordinary means normal, hav-ing the implications of the usual routine. Often when we say that our time has been ordinary we signify that it has been just "more of the same." When the church makes use of the phrase ordi-nary time to describe a part of the liturgical year, we tend to .bring our everyday meaning to the phrase. We think of the routine of following one of the synoptic Gospel readings in weekday and in Sunday Eucharists. Church ordinary time seems not to emphasize cele-bration, just "more of the same." The church, how-ever, intends only to identify this part of the liturgical year as those weeks of the year proceeding in a long, numerical order (deriving from the Latin ordo) that are distinct from the holyday or holiday weeks iden-tified as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. And so there are some thirty weeks, liturgically, of "ordinary time" in every church year. But beyond the fact that ordinary time provides us with weeks in a numbered order, I believe that the church in her liturgy plants the seed that ordinary time is meant to be a time of wisdom. Wisdom might be described as "putting it all together," living an integrated life. For us Christians, wisdom means that we put our life together in the light of our being followers of Christ. The scrip-ture readings that flow through the Sunday and weekday read-ings for Mass and for the Liturgy of the Hours are both an inspiration for and a measurement of our living and acting as children of God. Jesus, as we see him living everyday life in the Gospels of ordinary time, remains the paradigm of what it means to be a human being, one created in the image and likeness of God. Being true God and true man, Jesus shares with us, through the Spirit, how to live our lives wisely in our own every-dayness as sons and daughters of God. We are baptized in Jesus' name; we are fed with his Body and Blood. The Son of God, Jesus, incarnate God--infinitely beyond Adam and Eve's mere creation in the image and like-ness of God--is our Brother. With him, we Christians experi-ence the new creation in his life, death, and resurrection. What our Scriptures in the church's ordinary time impress upon us is that we do not turn to the Gospels just for the high points of suffering or triumph or just for some code of rules. The Gospels are written to enter us into Jesus' wisdom way of living. Like St. Paul, we spend our lives trying to make it ever more true that "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me." The church presents us ordinary Christians with a chal-lenging paradox. Ordinary time is wisdom time. Because we are being formed daily by the word of God and nourished by daily bread, we dare to say with Jesus: "Our Father." David L. Fleming SJ July-August 2002 feature PATRICIA WITTBERG Reciprocal Identities: Apostolic Life and Consecrated Life This year my congregation is celebrating its 150th anniversary. In special symposia and lectures, in liturgies and panel presentations, we have been encouraged to reflect about who ,we are as a community, who we have been--and who we will be. Since I have been researching relationship between religious congregations and their sponsored ministries, these events have spurred me to reflect on what it has meant--and what it will mean--that we are an apostolic congregation. I have, however, found it unexpectedly difficult to do this. How does our charism differ from that of an active monastic or evangelical order? In what way do our apostolates define who we are as a community, especially since very few of us still minister in the schools and hospitals we traditionally staffed? These are important questions to ask--and to continue asking--as we rearticulate our apostolic identity for the coming century. But I ,have come to believe that we lack an importfint kind of resource person who could facilitate our reflections. To the best Patricia Wittberg SC last wrote for us in September-October 2000. Her address is 2141 Dugan Drive; Indianapolis, Indiana 46260. Review for Religious of my knowledge, no religious congregation makes provision for such a person in its reflection processes. There is not even a name for her, so I will call her--however awkwardly--an Apostolic-Identity Catalyzer, or AIC for short2 In this paper I will first attempt to oudine the role apostolic institutions had in shaping the identity of religious congregations in the past. Next I will describe the kinds of activities an AIC might undertake to catalyze a congregation's reformulation of its apostolic identity in the absence of these institutions. Who We Were: Shaping a Reciprocal Identity Throughout their history, apostolic religious congregations have developed in an intimate dialectic with the institutions they created, staffed, and administered. On the one hand, Catholic hospitals, schools, and social-work agencies derived their religious identity primarily from the presence of religious congregations. Religious nurses, teachers, and social workers, all fully habited, served as living icons of the spiritual character of these institutions. As owners they also made the key decisions and policies. Their presence on the staff and in the administration meant that the culture of the congregation infused the entire institution. Without pointing to the congregation's presence, it would have been hard for a school or hospital to articulate what made it Catholic. Until the mid 1960s, however, the two were so intertwined that the question never even arose. In a similar manner, religious congregations derived their apostolic identity from the institutions they staffed. As Margaret Susan Thompson has pointed out in a previous issue of this journal,2 most U.S. women's apostolic congregations did not have a distinctive initial charism: rather, they have a "deep story" developed through years of lived experience. The distinctive identity of my own congregation was forged as sisters worked and lived together in our hospitals in Dayton and Albuquerque, Religious congregations derived their apostolic identity from the institutions they staffed. Wittber~ ¯ Reci~n'ocal Identities as they made bulletin boards together for our elementary schools in Detroit and Chicago, and as they cared for children in inner-city settlement houses and orphanages in Denver and Cincinnati. Young women got to know us through our ministries, and those attracted by our witness in these apostolates joined us. The congregation filled with new entrants who came expecting to perform institutional service, which further tied our apostolic identity to these works. Without citing the particular places where we served, it would have been difficult for many of us to articulate exactly what being an "apostolic" community meant. A Parallel: Mission-Effectiveness Offices in Catholic Institutions Most religious communities today have loosened, and some have completely severed, their ties with their institutions. Within their hospitals, colleges, and other agencies, this has led to some serious institutional soul-searching. Bereft of the iconic presence of the religious order, these institutions were in danger of losing their distinctive religious character. "Isomorphic" pressures from government regulations, professional associations, and economic competitors threatened to make them indistinguishable from other private schools or hospitals) The leaders of these organizations realized that retaining a distinct religious identity in the face of such pressures would require a deliberate effort. An institutional religious identity could not simply depend on the private spirituality the individual workers might bring to their jobs. Such spirituality was likely to remain private to each individual, since there are strong American cultural norms against sharing one's spirituality in the workplace. A school's, a hospital's, or a social agency's institutional religious identity had to be developed and shared in a way that would be transformative: grounding the daily operations of each department, underlying the administrative decisions, and spurring an ongoing, institution-wide search for new and creative ways to be a Catholic (or Jesuit or Vincentian) organization. Many religious hospitals, colleges, and other institutions, therefore, created special mission-effectiveness positions to address these goals. The person filling this role--often the last remaining member of the sponsoring congregation still in full- Review for Religious time ministry there--has typically been responsible for activities such as the following: ¯ orienting new staff and administrators to the charism or ethos of the sponsoring religious community (Jesuit scholarship, Vincentian caring, the spirit of Mercy); ¯ organizing periodic retreats and seminars for long-standing staff and administrators, in order to keep the spirit of the founding congregation fresh and alive; ¯ conducting various spiritual "leaven" activities: leading daily prayers over the public address system, organizing liturgies, providing short reflective prayers before meetings, disseminating newsletters or daily bulletins, erecting and maintaining religious iconography, and so forth; ¯ creating psychic and physical spaces where staff and administrators feel encouraged to share their spiritual journeys; ¯ estab-lishing awards for staff and administrators who most typify the founding spirit, and publicizing the winners of these awards; ¯ writing, updating, and promulgating the mission statement; ¯ raising ~ssues of mission and ethics at meetings of the board of trustees and other instances when key decisions are made; ¯ acting .as liaison with the sponsoring congregation, to help define what the implications of congregational sponsorship are for the institunon; ¯ serving as the religious-identity spokesperson to the media, overseeing public relations activities connected to the institution's religious identity. This is the ideal, of course. Many mission-effectiveness directors are marginalized, lacking any real input into the organization's decision making. A recent study found that "even in colleges that maintain the vice-presidential rank for the mission-effectiveness officer, there is no guarantee that the position will enjoy institutional prominence . Frequently the position operates on the .periphery of the college, resulting in compartmentalization rather than integration of mission concerns into daily senior-level academic or administrative decision making.''4 Mission statements may be mere words, Many mission-effectiveness directors are marginalized, lacking any real input into the organization's decision making. July-August 2002 PVi~tberg * Reciprocal Identities uncoupled from and alongside the day-to-day running of the institution. But at least the concept of mission effectiveness exists in our institutions, and we can readily articulate the kinds of activities such a position would involve. Apostolic-Identity Catalyzer: An Unknown (but Necessary) Role The same is not true for the position which I have termed the Apostolic-Identity Catalyzer. In fact, the apostolic congregations I know of do not have such a person. But, if mission-effectiveness offices are important for maintaining the religious identity of a school or hospital in the absence of its founding religious congregation, an apostolic-identity office should be equally important in helping maintain the apostolic identity of a religious congregation that is uncoupled from its institutions. In this section I will try to explain why I believe this to be so. When apostolic religious congregations withdrew from their institutions, they lost a key component of their former identity. Monastic and evangelical congregations, which had been inappropriately conformed to the apostolic model in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, could--and often did--simply revert to their original identities. But, to the extent that apostolic congregations had drawn their identity from their specific institutional works, they have had to devise a new articulation of who they are as a group and why they exist. "Isomorphic" pressures have also influenced this process. These pressures do not come from government regulations, professional standards, or economic pressures dictating what kind of identity an apostolic congregation should assume. Rather, they come from the ideals or "templates" current in the church and in society, which presume a primarily spiritual basis for the identity of religious groups. These spiritual foci commonly fill the void left by the loss of a congregation's institutional apostolate. Some apostolic communities have thus become more like small Christian communities, faith-sharing groups, or even parishes. The members minister in various locations and professions, pray privately every day, and meet regularly as a group for shared prayer and/or socializing: Other congregations Review for Religious have formed intentional communities that more closely approximate the monastic model: the members live and pray communally, but leave for separate ministries during the day. In either case, the conKregation begins to draw its identity more and more from the common spiritual activities of its members, and less and less from any common apostolic character. New entrants are attracted by the spirituality of the congregation, not by its distinctive common apostolates --which no longer exist. The metamorphosis continues. If apostolic religious life is to retain its distinctive identity, apostolic congregations must take deliberate steps to foster it. As with the religious identity of our former institutions, this will not happen automatically. Nor can we assume that our congregation is apostolic simply because we, as individual religious, give witness to God's love in our individual apostolates. (Surely all Christians are called to do that!) A congregation's apostolic identity must be transformative of the entire congregation, grounding the daily operations within the motherhouse, provincialates, and local houses, und.erlying the decisions of the council or leadership team, and spurring the community on its search for new and creative ways to be an apostolic congregation. This is where an apostolic-identity office would be useful. Since I know of no congregation that provides for such a role, the following list of suggested tasks is deliberately modeled on the activities which mission-effectiveness offices perform in our sponsored institutions. Within a given congregation, therefore, the AIC might be responsible for some or all of the following tasks: ¯ Orienting new members to the apostolic tradition of the congregation, as part of the formation program. This might include workshops or presentations, along with arranging visits to the former institutions and interviews with retired sisters who used to work there. ¯ Organizing periodic retreats and seminars for the professed and associate members of the congregation on the way(s) the congregation currently expresses its apostolic identity. This might include facilitating volunteer opportunities (whether single days throughout the year or six-week summer experiences) at some sites. Or theologians might be invited to community gatherings to discuss the various theologies of the interaction July-Augt*st 2002 Wittberg * Reciprocal Identities between spirituality and the apostolate. Or the clients served may be invited to give input on how they see the apostolic witness of the congregation and how it can be improved. ¯ Conducting various apostolic "leaven" activities within the congregation: circulating specially written prayers for specific apostolates and/or designating specific days of prayer for them; writing feature articles on the apostolates in the congregation's newsletter and/or disseminating a special newsletter on the apostolates; organizing the collection of money and goods; erecting and maintaining displays of apostolic artifacts at the motherhouse and elsewhere; initiating letter-writing campaigns to elected officials on apostolic issues; and so forth. ¯ Creating psychic and physical spaces where members are encouraged to share the insights, joys, and sorrows they have derived from their apostolates. The Daughters of Charity, with whom I currendy live, have a special monthly apostolic reflection wherein each member of the local house shares some incident from her ministry through which God has spoken to her that day. In a local house of another congregation where I once lived, we spent an afternoon and evening visiting each sister's work-place so that we could have a mental picture of the setting in which she spent a good part of her day. ¯ Establishing awards or other forms of recognition for individual members whose apostolic works witness to the character of the congregation, and publicizing these awards in the congregation and in the surrounding neighborhood or town or city. ¯ Leading reflections and other activities on the apostolic aspects of the congregation's mission statement (or facilitating the composition of such a statement if one does not currently exist). ¯ Raising issues of the congregation's apostolic identity at council meetings (which implies that the AIC is a member of the council). ¯ Initiating a congregational reflection to define exactly what the "sponsor" relationship requires of the congregation. As at least one critic has pointed out, the duties and obligations of sponsorship are often specified for the sponsored institution, but rarely are similar duties and obligations spelled out for the sponsoring congregation,s The MC might encourage meetings of both the leadership and the membership to outline the responsibilities the congregation has toward its institutions. Once these are determined, the AIC might be the one to see that they are met. Review for Religious ¯ Serving as a liaison with the various sponsored ministries. If the congregation has a separate board of sponsored ministries, then the AIC should be a member of it (and perhaps chair it). ¯ Serving as the apostolic-identity spokespdrson for the congregation to the media, overseeing public-relations activities connected with the congregation's apostolic identity. Again, this is an idealized picture. As with the mission-effectiveness offices in our former institutions, the activities of the apostolic-identity office may be marginalized in a given religious community. Many religious are so heavily involved in their ministries that they may resist invitations to set aside time to do this kind of communal apostolic sharing. Others may wish to forget about their jobs--especially if they find them draining and exhausting--and focus on more spiritual and recreational matters during the congregation's brief time together. Still others, formed in the days of common ministry within large institutions, may not - feel the need to discuss how apostolate is related to religious life today. And, since an apostolic-identity office is such a novel concept, many may not see why one is needed at all. Surely our congregation is already top-heavy with leadership? Why do we need to release another member from active ministry to do this? Perhaps the demise of the apostolic form of religious life is inevitable. Large hospitals, colleges, and other institutions may have become so bureaucratized and professionalized that they can no longer credibly represent a corporate Catholic vision of education, healthcare, or social service (although, of course, individual teachers or nurses--lay and religious--may still bring their private spiritualities to their jobs in these institutions). Fast-paced American culture, steeped in workaholism, may make it difficult to stop and be reflective about the work we do. There Many religious are so heavily involved in their ministries that they may resist invitations to set aside time to do this kind of communal apostolic sharing. Ju~-dugu¢ 2002 Wittberg * Reciprocal Identities may be a greater need for religious life forms focused on community and spirituality than on work--especially work in large institutions. Certainly monastic and contemplative religious communities are showing stronger growth than most apostolic ones.6 Religious life may thrive in monastic, evangelical, or future undreamed-of forms, even if its apostolic version becomes extinct. Perhaps an AIC would be a useless relic of a time already past. Or perhaps not. Perhaps what the world most needs is the witness of a group whose common vision for a transformative spiritual identity permeates the offices, factories, and marketplaces where its members work. Perhaps the reciprocal dialectic of religious community and sponsored ministry, each forming and transforming the other, is a longed-for alternative to the prevailing, "Enronized" corporate culture. Perhaps apostolic religious congregations possess the seed of a new corporate ministerial presence in the world, over and above the scattered individual ministries of their members. If so, then this vision, this dialectic, this presence, must be fostered and nurtured to growth. An AIC would have her job cut out for her. Notes i This is a terribly unattractive name, of course, but I am unable to think of any other. If this article persuades any congregation to establish the office of apostolic-identity catalyzer, they might consider naming it after a founding member who exemplified the apostolic dedication the congregation wishes to foster. 2 Margaret Susan Thompson, "Charism or Deep Story? Towards Understanding Better the 19th-Century Origins of American Women's Congregations," Review for Religious 58, no. 3 (May-June, 1999): 230-250. 3 According to sociologists studying organizations, "isomorphism" refers to the many pressures, both external and internal, which lead them to adopt similar practices. External pressures would include government regulations, professional accreditation standards, and the demands of customers/clients. Internal pressures would include ways of thinking that administrators develop from all of them being trained in the same schools, clinging to established practices in times of uncertainty, and needing to project an image of competence. See Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalfim in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 4 Dennis H. Holtschneider CM and Melanie M. Morey, "Relationship Review for Religious Revisited: Changing Relations between U.S. Catholic Colleges and Universities and Founding Religious Congregations," Occasional Paper No. 47, Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. s Melanie M. Morey, Leadership and Legacy: ls There a Future for the Past? A Study of Eight Colleges Founded by Catholic VVomen's Religious Congregations, dissertation, School of Education, Harvard University, 1995, p. 203. 6 "Monasteries Enjoy Boom, with Some Help from Marketing," Religion Watch 17, no. 6 (April 2002): 2-3. Promissory In early March buds begin to swell on my peach tree. It is too soon. This uncertain month delivers snow and fro~t with its warm, sweet winds. But there they are, small, swelling promises of succulent fruit, nature's resurrective fiat silently shouting down my wintery worry with summer's certainty. Bonnie Thurston July-Aug~tst 2002 GEORGE ASCHENBRENNER Diocesan Priesthood: Discerning the Fire in Our Midst spirituality These are not easy days for the diocesan priesthood. Sexually inappropriate behavior has been making rousing--and saddening--copy in newspapers and magazines. This behavior can be, must be, viewed from a number of different perspectives. I mention just a few: the horrendous injustice and injury done to the victims; the sickness, often, of the perpetrator himself; the lack of honest dealing with sexual urges; the unjust accusation of some priests; the betrayal and undermining of the trust of many members of the church; and the faithful, generous service of many unheralded diocesan priests. I do not deny the seriousness of the present situation, nor am I insensitive to the many serious repercussions of the publicity. We all have much to learn from this difficult time for the diocesan priesthood. Seminary formation programs--indeed each individual priest--must honestly and carefully look at both sexual orientation and the swirling interior cauldron of sexual impulse, fantasy, and urge. Sexuality George Aschenbrenner SJ was cofounder of the Institute for Priestly Fbrmation at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and.is director of the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth; P.O. Box 223; Wernersville, Pennsylvania 19565. Review for Religious is only one aspect, but always an important one, of the discerning presence 6f the diocesan priest in the midst of a local people. This article is not about the sexual aspect of discernment, but implications for that area of human experience will be easily recognized. I focus on a central constituent of diocesan priesthood, namely, the priest's discerning presence in the midst of a local people. (In a recent book I develop this and other charisms that are needed in diocesan priesthood.)! The desires and needs of his people seek, from the diocesan priest, discernment, the art of holiness, but these desires and needs may not be easily detected. Holiness, in itself, does not seem something most people are daily concerned with. But reflection may suggest otherwise. Though often thought of or spoken of in other words and with a deceptive indirectness, the longing of the human heart for more--for something beyond what we have and appreciate, beyond our present knowing--stirs in all of us from time to time, especially in quiet moments. If we sometimes find this longing in ourselves, we must assume it in others as well. And, when the glow has faded from life and still we cannot say or put into words what we are missing, we and others may recognize that this longing for more is really a desire for an ever greater goodness, for holiness, in fact a desire for God. The ordinary people of a parish feel this in many ways, but may seldom try to express it. They desire holiness, a relationship that gets them out of the narrow confines of their own self. They seek greater meaning, more happiness, and greater love in the humdrum of ordinary living. Other people in the parish are more explicit and direct. They want to pray better; they want to know God's love more; they want their faith to be more alive. Though some may have a counselor or friend with whom they speak of these concerns, the principal person to whom people bring such stirrings and longings is their diocesan priest. They look to him for help, for answers, for the solution to their dissatisfaction. But what can the priest do? What answers does he have? He is presumed to have the graced art of daily growth in holiness. This is precisely what we mean by discernment of spirits. It is a very human process, God's subtle inspiration enlightening us to interpret, make sense of, the fire of God's awesome love present in the ordinary daily experience of us all. In various ways the human psyche is always encountering our Ascbenlrrenner * Diocesan Priestbood loving God. And these experiences are indeed profoundly human, and yet so much more. In faith they are experiences of a love promising a joy that alone can satisfy our longings, to some real extent here and now, but fully only on the other side of death. This discerning art of holiness is not a catalogue of answers to be learned and then distributed on request. Rather, it is a life to be lived in the uniquely personal part of our hearts, and yet with extroverting implication for all our human brothers and sisters and for our union with them in the transformation of our whole expanding universe. This article, then, is not a minicourse on discernment, nor is it a review of the answers a priest will need for all the people's questions. Rather, I want to present something of what is involved in a priest's discerning understanding, in his radiating the fire of the Holy Spirit for the people of his parish. I will describe four steps that are part of a discerning life and then three dimensions of the human stage on which the drama of a personal love-relationship with God is played. As a spiritual leader in the midst of the parish, the priest must have a reflective understanding of the art of discernment, seen as the dynamics of any mature faith life. This charism prepares the priest to play two important roles of service among the people: as a guide into the mystery of God's fire of love and as a soul doctor for those being healed and purified in that same fire. Discernment: God's Story of Mature Faith Growth Holiness and growth in union with God always involve the full human person alive in his or her concrete circumstances. A person's spiritual maturity, then, involves good actions, but also much more. It involves feeling and emotion, but also much more. Together with concern for actions and feelings, spiritual maturity must go down into a person's inner core. It is from this core that God's love should radiate into holy action and feeling so that people can readily become aware of God's love in the world. This radiation is an invitation to notice and welcome God's love in every situation. Discernment of spirits means achieving such recognition. Sometimes discernment is mistakenly seen as one of any number of approaches to mature spiritual development. Indeed, Review for Religious some schools of faith growth have their own terminology. Under these different articulations, however, is one fundamental process of growth toward mature faith, a sorting of inner experiences. For this reason, discernment of spirits is the story of personal faith growth, God's story of it. This process has two roots: our human reality within God's creation and God's revelation in Jesus. Discernment of spirits is God's story of us, narrated both in our makeup as human creatures and in God's love for us all in Jesus. If only this love shone clearly, brilliantly, beautifully in every situation! At times it does, of course, but at other times the radiance of this love is stained by smog or hidden by a heavy cloud of evil. If all were goodness, grace, and beauty, how wonderful--and surely no need for any careful sorting in such a good world. Or, if all were evil, darkness, and wickedness, we would live on the brink of despair--but, again, no need for any sorting or sifting. But, when the world of human beings is ambiguous and mixed, and still we are c~lled to find the goodness in it and to display it in ourselves in our daily lives, then a discernment of spirits within ourselves assumes an essential importance. We must learn to distinguish our selfish impulses from the radiant inspirations of the Holy Spirit of God. Most people have not developed the skills for expert discerning of spirits, but, if they do no discerning at all, mature faith eludes them. The priest, then, the spiritual leader and soul doctor in the parochial community, must do the hard work of learning the theory and practice of soul doctoring, of discerning holiness. In the midst of such careful inner sorting, we must never forget this: God desires and is committed to each of us in Jesus more than we can fully realize--and the Holy Spirit is constandy active in our hearts and our world. Christian holiness always has its initiative in the fire of God's loving desires for us. It is never a figment of our imagination or a product of our willpower. It is the mystery of God's precious gift for us all. But each of us must The priest must have a reflective understanding of the art of discernment, seen as the dynamics of any mature faith life. 3~uly-du~lst 2002 Aschenbrenn~ * Diocesan Priesthood learn to recognize, receive, and nurture the gift. And we need a guide to lead us, in some special ways, into the fire, into the radiant glow of that mystery: God's love burning bright in Jesus. The Material of Discernment God wants each of us to imitate.Jesus uniquely. The great challenge and invitation that haunts us all is to discover our true self in Christ. For each of us God intends a unique revelation of Christ. Though the enterprise has very complex aspects, the point is as simple as it is startling: God wants each of us to imitate Jesus uniquely. The very self that God intends each of us to be is a unique, living imitation of Jesus. And that life of ours is meant to shine for all the world. This true self, this unique revelation, this treasure is camouflaged in the spontaneous interiority of our daily consciousness. This pearl of great price, this treasure beyond all value, must be searched for and recognized when stumbled upon. Into the daily spontaneous consciousness of the priest and of his people come many images, feelings, thoughts, impulses, and moods, sometimes quietly, some-times shockingly. This inner world has a variety of seasons, bright hopeful springs and dark threatening winters. We might wish we could glimpse our true self in Christ conveniently and directly, avoiding tentative efforts to interpret these various elements in ourselves like the weather. But we do not even have anything like a satellite picture of our ow~ inner world. God takes the complexity of our human condition seriously, and so Jesus usually comes to us at the place where our own consciousness tangles with today's large or small historical realities. To try to avoid this encounter would be to deprive ourselves--and other people, too--of our unique opportunity to reveal Jesus Christ as God intends, that is, in daily circumstances that without our presence may lack the glow and radiance of fire. Whenever one person avoids these opportunities, the radiance of us all is somehow dimmed. The diocesan priest, doctor of souls that he is called to be, must not fail to uncover the treasure in these moments; others, seeing it, will carry the glow far beyond him. Revie~ for Religiou~ This discerning search for the treasure of our true self can be described in four steps, steps easier to describe than to apply to real circumstances. My intention is to describe the steps so that the priest can learn to recognize them in his own experience and then make them his own. This discerning process can then help the priest, the soul doctor, to guide people in discovering and welcoming the mystery of God's love in their own hearts and lives. Turned toward God This first step is most important and profound: an identity in Jesus Christ. Until this identity has been cultivated enough, serious discernment is not possible. A serious turning to God readies the heart for discernment and so initiates any trustworthy searching for the treasure of God's personal, uniquely specific love. This turning is a real change that grades the ground of our heart to a new incline: away from ourselves and toward God. It is more than a passing fancy or a momentary quirk. The realization that we are conceived, marked, and shaped from the dawn of our existence by a God who always and only loves, this realization takes root and changes the landscape of our daily lives. This realization of a Love greater than the love we have for ourselves stops us in our tracks. It invites an about-face. It gets us out of ourselves. A whole new vista opens up. We have discovered and been turned toward Someone more beloved than we are to ourselves. Is this Love for real? Can this Beloved be trusted? What are we to make of all this, of these subtle perceptions. As we pay closer attention to them, the realization can come that receiving and responding to such Love assumes an importance beyond all else. The ground under our feet shakes and radically shifts. At this juncture, there is a clarity; something has clearly changed. A central question has been posing itself in our heart for a long time: Am I the ultimate meaning of my own life? As we heard that question, the winds of our contemporary culture kept howling their answer: "Yes, of course! Of course I am the ultimate meaning 'of my own life! If not I, who else could be?" But now that yes is radically shaken and splinters into a clear no. The tree of my life is changed. I am no longer the ultimate July-Augwst 2002 Ascbenlrrenner ¯ Diocesan Priesthood meaning of my own life. Now my life's meaning is God's Love-- as promised and present in the risen Jesus. A new sun has risen, and it will never set. Now life becomes, more and more, fascination with this mysterious Beloved and radical openness and readiness for whatever that Love draws me to. Something has deepened and developed. An early seedling of religious intuition has become the fragile sprouting of a realization that by being tested becomes stronger and more deeply rooted. An early surmise and semiconscious intuition becomes a resolute desire of will. No tall grass shivering in the wind, but a tree, deeply rooted and still growing. This resolute desire shapes and casts our lives in love: first, God's ever faithful love in the risen Jesus and then our own love, our carefully discerned response of love. From now on, life is about love, at times tough love, but love nonetheless, and always. Make no mistake about that! In some important way, we are no longer in charge of our own lives. God is! Life is not yes to self, but yes to God, as shown in Jesus ("with him it was always yes," 2 Co 1:19). Facing Our Spontaneous Life Insofar as the countercultural movement to God's love has begun to take serious rooting in our heart, a second step beckons. Only honest facing of our inner spontaneous life makes it possible for us to find, in faith, trustworthy understandings about God. This statement is true, but it prescinds from the ingenuity of human consciousness for dishonest avoidance and selfish projection. We must learn, as best we can, to stand clear of these deceits and deceptions, whether conscious or unconscious, if we are to discern God's loving desire in our hearts. This is no easy matter, and invites the priest to an asceticism leading to truth and love. Sometimes this asceticism, always motivated by a growing desire to live in God's consoling love, will involve unlearning some previous training. An overly rationalistic view of Christian spirituality downplays, even scorns, the role of spontaneity and feeling, while on the other hand a supersensitivity to feeling and sentiment can smuggle into Christian spirituality a presumption that proclaims, sometimes quite unwittingly, that whatever we feel is God's will for us. In both of these instances, a previous Review for Religious learning must be honestly acknowledged, judged as incorrect, and gradually changed. As difficult as this change may seem, especially when the previously learned viewpoint has taken deep root, such a conversion is always possible for two reasons: first and foremost, the mystery of God's steadfast desire to get through to us and, second, our own soul's desire for ever greater radiance. If the priest stays in close touch with these two desires, he will be capable of whatever transformation is necessary because it will really be the work of the radiant Holy Spirit of God beckoning him beyond his own depth and into the realm of greater mystery in faith. A Wisdom of Interpretation in Faith In the process of the discernment I am describing here, for someone clearly turned toward God and honestly sensitive to the flow of inner spontaneity, the issue becomes a matter of meaning: Where is God in all of this? The answer requires a certain wisdom and ability to interpret. But interpretation could spring from any number of different vantage points, for example, from lived common sense, from majority cultural opinion, from professional human development, or from Christian faith. All of these different "wisdoms" might overlap to a small or large extent, but each would produce a different conclusion when used as the central focus of interpretation. In discernment the focus is profoundly one of Christian faith, a faith radiating with the experience of Jesus Christ and revealed in the Holy Spirit. How God is present here, now, offering a love beyond all loves--that is the central concern for a person turned toward and identified in God. As we have seen already, God is always present in all of our present historical world and in all of our spontaneous inner experience, but never simply and completely present to us. That treasure of a love beyond all value, that revelation of our own unique imitation of Jesus, must be sought in the mixture and confusion of our inner lives. An enlightenment of the Holy Spirit springing from our experience of God's faithful love alone--that is the gift needed at this point. Such enlightenment and wisdom differ subtly, though sharply, from enthusiastic generosity and simplistic sincerity. By themselves, without graced wisdom, these two qualities lack a North Star and can be dangerously ~Tuly-Au~st 2002 Aschenbrenner * Diocesan Priesthood misleading. The wisdom referred to here has a profound paschal orientation and is found more and more decisively present and operative in Jesus as he moves into the depths of his Passion all the way to Calvary and into his resurrected glory. This wisdom and enlightenment is hot the result of taking an academic course or reading a book. And it is not some sleight of hand or guesswork either. It is a grace the priest must pray for regularly. It has a firm context, and this helps the priest to be sure about the giftedness of his insight. The insight is tested in relation to the polestar of our identity in God's love. The. presence of the Holy Spirit is revealed in anything that conforms to our resolute desire to keep God's love, not self-love, as our focus. And anything that violates this focus is not an inspiration from God, but a nudge, large or small, toward self-idolatry. A pleasure-pain instinct in all of us tries to tilt us toward self-idolatry. This instinct of liking pleasure and fearing pain is understandable and healthy. But, when we let it assume a priority and centrality, when it becomes the focal light for our interpretation, then we become narcissistic. This pleasure-pain principle, in itself, is never fully identified with the paschal enlightenment of God's love. It was not so identified in the experience of Jesus. The pleasure-pain instinct did not plot his course to his beloved Father. Escaping 'the dominance of this instinct demands an asceticism. We are not to renounce this instinct pure and simple; rather, we renounce it as the polestar of our identity. Developing in faith our interpersonal relationship of love with God in the beauty of Jesus will not completely get rid of this instinct, but will weaken it. God's love ~n Jesus has become the treasure beyond all value, and what a grace it is to know indescribable pain when deprived of that treasure. To learn how to stand with Jesus, sometimes in pleasure and at other times in pain--this is the mature wisdom of a person consciously living in God's love. It is to claim the treasure intended by God before the foundation of the world: a radiant true self uniquely imitating the mystery of Jesus. Tactics for Intimacy with God The final step in this process is decisive tactics in accord with the paschal-faith interpretation of the previous step. For Review for Religious someone whose heart is resolutely set on following the lead of God's love, anything experienced as an incarnation of that love (often called consolation) is to be embraced, claimed, and lived, and anything that deflects us from God's love and toward self-idolatry (usually called desolation) is to be rejected and courageously withstood. In this step the issue is courage and decisive generosity, something possible only when illumined and strengthened by paschal wisdom. The issue is whether we will follow, and how wholeheartedly, the revelation of the Holy Spirit. This is the time for the soul's character to be healed and for faith to be annealed in the fire of the Holy Spirit. This process helps the hidden self grow strong, so that the priest can be a discerning presence in the midst of the people. Discernment, a life of mature spirituality, always acknowledges, distinguishes, and then interrelates three different dimensions of human existence: external behavior, what I call the core of the soul, and inner spontaneity. To develop and live out of the core of our true self is never easy, if possible at all in our post-modern world, but is always crucial for responsible, mature living in faith. Today's culture has great need of doctors of the soul who can facilitate the development of this core sense of true self through the integration of these three dimensions of human existence. Though our external behavior is perceptible and often consumes enormous energy, it is nothing more than a superficial part of our being. The activity on this stage poses a question of meaning, a question that it cannot itself answer even though it may seem to contain adequate answers for others and even ourselves. In our daily activity we touch and influence many people. As the New Testament reminds us, the activity of sincere loving reveals the genuineness of our faith. In the midst of our busy lives, the question often rises in our hearts: Are we simply what we do? Some careful reflection is needed to answer correctly and accurately. The question often rises in our hearts: Are we simply what we do? 2002 .~chenbrenner ¯ Diocesan Prie~thood A Hidden Self Grown Strong The soul's core is the unique and deepest part of every human person. This core plays a crucial role in the discovery of our true self in the beauty of Christ. A deep-hearted personal world, a treasure beyond value, is gradually revealed, acknowledged, and then laid claim to, though this whole process is much more one of receiving than of making. This inner core has a depth and a simplicity that is beyond words. As we grow in our appreciation of this personal center, its presence dawns, alluringly shrouded in mist and mystery. In the shifting mists of this mysterious realm, a noisy world is hushed. God breathes eternal love and life into this core of our soul moment by moment and on into eternity. This same creative love, unique to each of us, is in all of us. Our experience of God and of ourselves becomes ever more profound, personal, and unique. Even as you now read, this profoundly personal inner experience, this quiet steady conversation of love at our deepest core, gives the lie to feelings of suffocating loneliness. It gives the lie to the hateful notion that anybody is rotten to the core. Because of Jesus' love, a buried treasure, a pearl beyond pricing, a hidden self waits to be discovered in each human being, to be embraced, and to grow strong. Spontaneity takes place in the "skin" of our soul, in the rational and affective human experience of us all. As mentioned earlier, this experience of spontaneity conceals the deep treasure of our true self in Christ. These spontaneities of thinking and feeling may skitter across the skin of our souls, but do not touch the core. Spontaneities of impulse, image, and mood can flail and crackle and roar across our lives like an electrical storm. Such skitterings, such storms, coming and going, can bother or frustrate or enrage us. But they do, finally, pass. This level, spontaneous unintended experience, has the unpredictability of shifting sands and is not capable of the rock-like dependability of the core of the soul. This skin of the soul poses its own question: Are we simply and wholly identified by what we spontaneously think or feel? Though "what I feel" is never equal to "who I am," in the midst of a temporary storm we can all too easily judge otherwise. These spontaneities, though, really are on a different level. They are part of a process of integration, of coming to spiritual Review for Religious maturity, but they have their meaning only in relation to the soul's core. The presen.ce of these three dimensions of our persons and the four-step discernment process for integrating them should be familiar to the priest. Such integration is the way to mature faith and to appropriate activity that mature faith leads to. This integration is sometimes easy and obvious, sometimes confusing and excruciating. But doing it in love, doing it in our own unique imitation of Jesus' way of loving us, makes it possible, encouraging and strengthening us. This is the realm of service for a doctor of the soul. If the seminary communicates this and if it continues long after ordination, the result of this integration, this purification, will be like gold, bright and not sadly tarnished. To his service of their souls, the priest will bring a radiance that can illumine and develop the bright potential of their own lives. This radiance will be God's love shining from the face of the risen Jesus, still serving in our midst. Notes I George Aschenbrenner SJ, Quickening the Fire in Our Midst: The Challenge of Diocesan Priestly Spirituality (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2002). 2 See George Aschenbrenner SJ, "A Hidden Self Grown Strong," in Handbook of Spirituality for Ministers, ed. Robert J. Wicks (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1995), pp. 228-248. "Hidden Self," pp. 236-240. In the Words of Meister Eckhart The soul loves the body tenderly, even when, like a child on edge, it runs rambunctious through desire collapsing at last and won&ring why. Maryanne Hannan ~Tuly-dugv~st 2002 ERNEST E. LARKIN Desert Spirituality Booth Christian Meditation and centering prayer come out f early monasticism, which itself is a development of desert spirituality? Christian Meditation is the prayer of the heart described by John Cassian, the historian of desert spiri-tuality, who brought the wisdom of the desert fathers and moth-ers of Egypt and the Middle East to the West. Centering prayer comes out of the Cloud of Unknowing, a 14th-century English text that enshrines the contemplative traditions of the desert. It is no accident that both these contemplative prayer forms came to us by way of Benedictine and Trappist monasteries. Desert spirituality was the beginning of Christian monasti-cism and the matrix out of which Western monks developed their lifestyle. Contemplative prayer was at the heart of their life, and desert spirituality was the context. This article proposes to examine those ancient traditions and adapt them to our times. Desert spirituality is a technical term that has biblical and early Christian roots. The desert experience is a staple of both the Old and the New Testaments, for example, in the Exodus story, in the life of Elijah and the prophecy of Hosea, in John the Baptist, the forty-day fast of Jesus, and the three-year novitiate of Paul in Arabia (Ga 1:17). This desert experience was devel-oped into a coherent spirituality by the desert fathers and moth- Ernest E. Larkin OCarm wrote for us twice in 2001. His address remains Kino Institute; 1224 East Northern; Phoenix, Arizona 85020. Review for Religious ers in the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Christian era. These fer-vent Christians fled to Egypt and the Middle East to escape the decadence of an effete Roman empire. The wastelands offered a stark and untrammeled setting for a life of penance and prayer. Its rugged emptiness and its silence and solitude invited the flight from the world OCuga mundi). A special appeal to heroic souls was the belief that the demons infested the wastelands and could be met there in open combat. It did not take long for the desert dweller to discover that the demons were within and to be engaged on the battleground of the soul. Life in the desert was simple. Manual labor broke the monotony of the silence and solitude of the cell and provided .its own asceticism as well as sustenance and something for almsgiving. Desert dwellers spent their days in soul searching and the pursuit of the living God. Community life, especially when the solitary life prevailed, and outreach in ministry were clearly sec-ondary and not really part of the inte-rior struggle. Continuous prayer was the focus, and the abbas and the ammas spent their time in lectio div-ina, reading the psalms and the breviary, celebrating liturgy, and cultivating the prayer of the heart. These are the main fea-tures of desert spirituality. In this setting Christian holiness was a kind of white mar-tyrdom, a total giving over of one's life to God, the shedding of all self-indulgence in favor of a single-minded search for God. The desert was a graphic symbol of the emptiness of life and the otherness of God. The emptiness translated into purity of heart, a heart freed from sinful affections and centered on God. Thus the beatitude that best sums up desert spirituality is "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." Contemplation is the goal, and letting go of all lesser aims and surrender to the living God the condition. This general principle is abstract and can be lived out in an imaginary as well as a real desert. The desert as symbol universalizes desert spirituality as a possibility for everyone. There is, however, still place for the physical desert in ordinary Christian life. We examine this role The desert as symbol universalizes desert spirituality as a possibility for everyone. ]My-August 2002 Larkin ¯ Desert Spirituality in the next two sections of this paper, and we will return to the symbolic desert in the third section. Our first question is this: What can the desert do for me? In other words, why should I go out into the desert? The second question is a prophetic one: What can I do for a desert that is now under attack by the forces of neglect or consumerism? How do my efforts to protect the environment or my failure to participate affect my personal life? After these two reflections we will return to the overall princi-ple of desert spiritfiality, the call to emptiness and encounter with God. What Can the Desert Do for Me? In Scripture the desert is primarily the wasteland, and it leads to the garden of the promised land, the desert come to life, as in Isaiah 35:1-2: "The desert shall rejoice and blossom . The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon." Both the bleak image and the flowering one apply to the physical desert as we use the term today. The desert means the wilderness, the great outdoors. This includes barren wastelands like sand dunes or the scrubby flatlands of Texas or Arizona, but also verdant gardens, scenic forests, majestic moun-tains, and rolling plains. The desert is all the places on this beautiful earth that are still largely untouched by city sprawl and offer themselves as a refuge for weary people. These lands can be gift for our spirits. They refresh us and challenge us. They beckon us to "come aside and rest awhile," away from the noise and congestion of the city with its polluted air and harried traffic. The desert is the place to hike a trail, fish a stream, pic-nic with friends, or just smell the sage and be with one's long thoughts. " Except for some few families that have declared their inde-pendence and homesteaded in the wild and some rare hermits who have also settled there, people today only visit this desert; they do not dwell there. They go out for physical exercise and emotional refreshment, for meditation and for fun. They enter desert places hostile to human habitation very gingerly, armed with water jugs, proper sun gear, and ideally with companions. Some visit these "fierce landscapes" (Belden Lane) for excite-ment, others to deal with a crisis, a limit experience, a sorrow Review for Religious that overwhelms them. Perhaps unconsciously they are looking for an environment that mirrors their troubled soul. A good example of this kind of match between soul and terrain is a retreat for middle-aged men described in a recent publication.2 It was conducted by Richard Rohr and designed to help men from many walks of life through their midlife crisis. The retreat took place at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico in the sum-mer of A.D. 2000. The men were challenged to let down their defenses and face themselves squarely. The retreat turned out to be a harrowing rite of passage. The torrid summer heat and the bleak lonely emptiness of the desert combined with soul-search-ing introspection and dramatic rituals to test the most stout-hearted. More often retreats or "a day in the desert" are spent in more friendly spaces. An attractive pastoral setting calms the soul and provides the quiet that people need for facing the real issues of their life. God seems closer in pristine settings. One popular formula for such outings is the poustinia, a concept pop-ularized by Catherine de Hueck Doherty. Poustinia means her-mitage, and folks become poustiniaks for a day, bringing along only a Bible and a bit of bread and cheese. The poustinia can actually be a back room or the attic of one's home, but there are advantages in going out to the woods or the seashore. Getting out in the country, breathing in the fresh air and fragrances of the meadows, walking around the lake or trudging along paths in hilly terrain, can be healthy physical exercise and spiritual refreshment. These are ways of slowing down, of refus-ing to be a couch potato and insuring the balance of mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound body). Grace builds on nature, so a healthy body and soul are a good basis for the life of God in us. A good health regime works directly against anx-ious, workaholic tendencies or the equally bad habit of inertia and laziness. Recreational activities also develop the playful side of our lives. This is our contemplative side. Visitors to the desert know that God is everywhere and that they do not have. to go up to the heavens or across the sea to find the word of God. "No," Deuteronomy says, "the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe" (Dt 30:11-14). But the desert facilitates the search. The wide open spaces, the silence and solitude, reveal God. July-August 2002 Larkin ¯ Desert Spirituality Silence is the best conta.ct point with God, since God is always present, though beyond speech, images, and concepts. The desert fosters this silence, this emptiness, the letting go of every-thing that is not of God. The desert is built for kenosis, the self-emptying of Jesus, who was perfectly open to God and was therefore exalted with the pleroma, the fullness of the resurrec-tion (Ph 2:5-11). The desert way is the way of emptiness and fullness. These reflections belong to the first step on the spiritual journey, the appreciation of creation. Original blessing pre-ceded original sin, and immersion in creation and appreciation and love for this gift ought to precede the work of redemption. This is the thinking of Teilhard de Chardin, Matthew Fox, Francis Kelly Nemeck, and Marie Theresa Coombs. More recently Dorothee Soelle sees "being amazed" as the first of the three ways or stages of the spiritual life? Instead of the classi-cal ways of purification, illumination, and union, she proposes "being amazed, letting go, and resisting" as the three steps. Amazement and appreciation help us take an objective stance before the earth, and this makes it easier to let go, the second of the three ways for Soelle. This leads us to involvement, to compassion and commitment, regarding the world. She calls this resistance, because it involves working against the threats to the environment and society. That is to say, we resist and work for justice in all areas of life, such as the economic and the eco-logical orders. The unitive way calls to action as well as divine union. What Can I Do for the Desert? The work of saving the earth is a challenge and responsi-bility for people everywhere today. The call resonates among informed spiritual persons. They have listened to the new cos-mology presented by scientists like Brian Swimme and the "geologian" Thomas Berry, and they have heard the plaintive warnings of the environmentalists that the earth is wounded and in danger of collapsing. The universe has become part of today's spiritual journey. The whole universe and its crown, homo sapiens, are seen as one vast living organism in which they depend on each other and rise and fall together. In the past the Revieva for Religious earth was looked upon as an appendage of humanity. Humanity alone counted, and the rest of creation was expendable. Human beings pursued their own desires recklessly, without thought about the effects in the environment. They could trash the earth, abuse it or destroy it, without worry because there were always other virgin territories to exploit in the same way. This was an affront to creation; we see it now as an affront to human life as well, because, in the words of Edward Abbey, "the wilderness is not a luxury but a neces-sity of the human spirit just as vital to our lives as water and good bread.''4 The uni-verse is an integral part of our human life. We are partners, and we participate in growth or decline together. In the abuse or destruction of the universe, we are diminished and dehumanized. The commission in Genesis 1:26 to have "dominion" over the earth did not give humans the right to abuse it. We are only caretakers, not absolute owners; we cannot take the myopic view of looking for an immediate return in pleasure or profit with no thought about the long-term loss to creation and the short-changing of future human beings. One reviewer of Thomas Berry's latest book, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, quotes Berry and then adds some strong words of his own: "'What happens to the outer world happens to the inner world,' Berry avers. 'If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished.' Our inner being will die if we continue to transform natural beauty into the soul-deadening, concrete-laden, box-store landscapes of a consumer society." s The obligation to safeguard the environment has three aspects: personal, societal, and spiritual. Each person needs to treat the desert with love and respect. Some of that concern is cosmetic, like cleaning up after using the land and properly dis-posing of the debris, especially nonbiodegradable material. Respect and moderation mean that we do not harm the plant life by careless trampling, that we obey rules about camp fires and camping, that we leave the natural beauty intact without pil-fering plants or otherwise harming the vegetation, that we Each person needs to treat the desert with love and respect. July-Aug;ust 2002 Larkin ¯ Dese~t Spirituality carefully control toxic substances like pesticides or poisonous chemicals. These are cominonsense suggestions. The societal obligation may take the form of joining groups like the Sierra Club that are dedicated to the environment, or of lending one's name to, say, Robert Redford's campaign to save the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Systemic problems can be addressed only by group action that can effect structural changes. We need to support these causes. There is no other way to stop the pollution of our waterways and atmosphere, to keep indugtrial wastes out of our rivers and lakes, to find ade-quate ways of dealing with nuclear waste, to stop the destruction of the ozone layer, to save the rain forests and wetlands, and to halt the woefully unbalanced overconsumption by the few. Elizabeth Johnson writes: "Every year, the twenty percent of Earth's people in the rich nations use seventy-five percent of the world's resources and produce eighty percent of the world's waste." 6 There is a special spiritual component today because of the crisis in saving the earth. Time is running out, and experts say that there are only twenty-five or thirty years left to turn the destructive spiral around. The problems are over-whelming, and the laborers are few. We can organize and we can work, but the odds are against us. At such times we need overt divine help. Specifically the challenge is to pray con-templatively, to face the societal impasse which Constance FitzGerald, in a famous article several years ago, connected with the dark night of St. John of the Cross: The dark night occurs as impasse in all sectors of human life, whether prayer, human relationships, or societal renewal. One response to impasse is trusting acceptance, silence before God, and lov-ing surrender, which bring wisdom and strength and which are qualities of contemplative prayer. We take our insoluble problems to God. We wait with faith and trust, ready to spring into action in changing what we can deal with and accepting what we cannot change. Contemplative prayer is an admission that our problems may be beyond human resources. But our prayer is full of hope, because contem-plation may stretch our imagination and inspire new creative ways of dealing with the problem. Solid prayer will certainly strengthen our resolve to continue the struggle. The popu- Review for Religious larity of contemplative prayer in our time may well be con-nected with the magnitude of the problems of this age. Desert Spirituality in Its Purest Form We return now to the traditional meaning of desert in the spiritual life, namely, desert as physical place and as symbol. The desert of the first abbas and aromas was the real wasteland. Anthony and Pachormus spurned the fleshpots of the Roman cities and went to the bleak deserts of Egypt to be alone with God and to keep careful watch over the movements of their hearts. The purity of heart they sought meant that they tried to choose only the good, to do everything right, in perfect measure, for the right reasons. They prayed and fasted to put to death the old man within themselves, so that the new man could come alive. They underwent this discipline for one reason: They wanted to see God. This goal was not face-to-face vision, as heaven will be (1 Jn 3:1-3); nor was it seeing God as an object, the way I see a person in front of me. Neither was it simply a new understanding, a new image of God, or a new perception. It was a seeing that meant presence, companionship, walking with God. It was contemplative union with God. Contemplation follows purity of heart as night follows day. We have a window into the thinking of the desert fathers and mothers in the first conference of John Cassian.s The imme-diate objective of life in the desert was purity of heart; this he called the skopos (English "scope"). The skopos is oriented to a further good, which he calls the telos, the end or final purpose. An example of these two aspects of human endeavor is the life of the farmer. The farmer prepares the soil, plants the seed, hoes and manures the field. All this is his immediate task, his sko-pos. But he does it all with a view to the harvest, which is the telos, the real purpose of his work. If the skopos of life in the desert is purity of heart, the telos is the fullness of the kingdom of God, the resurrected life. This program of seeking perfect purity of heart in order to find God can be applied to every Christian life. Purity of heart-- as freedom from every actual sin and as right relationships with self, others, the world, and God--is the immediate task of the daily struggle. Purity of heart is more than chastity; it is all the Larkin ¯ Desert Spirituality Purity of heart is all the virtues in perfect integration. virtues in perfect integration. This marvelous condition is often set in negative terminology. It is called detachment, or indif-ference, or freedom from sinful habits. But it is a very positive condition identified with biblical faith. This faith is the response to the word of God wherever it is recognized. It is the faith of the Virgin Mary in St. Luke's Gospel. At the annunciation, for example, she is perturbed at the angel Gabriel's message. How can she, a committed virgin, be the mother of the Messiah? When the angel assures her that God will provide, she gives her full assent to that word. She lets go of her own project in favor of God's word. A high degree of purity of heart means a heart full of faith. It means a heart full of love. The pure of heart are loving per-sons. They will see God, that is, they will know and love God, as described in the First Letter of John: "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love . No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us" (1 Jn 4:7-8, 12). For the desert fathers and mothers and espe-cially for theologians like Evagrius and Gregory of Nyssa, see-ing God meant contemplation. This gift was the reward for the purification, and it consisted in experiencing union with God. This contemplation was not one particular experience, nor an altered state of consciousness. It came out of transformation. By allowing one's life to be brought under the movement of the Holy Spirit, one was born a new person, a "new creation" (2 Co 5:17). This new creature lived in the world of God and expe-rienced God in the whole gamut of his or her worldly occupa-tions. Contemplation was thus a way of life, not a particular experience. The Carmelite Application The evolution of desert spirituality suggested in this paper has special reference to Carmelite history. Carmel came out of Review for Religious the desert, born on Mount Carmel, home to the Old Testament prophet Elijah and to hundreds of hermits at the time of the Crusades. The Carmelites were one group of such hermits; they sought a rule of life from the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Albert of Avogadro, who held the office between 1206 and 1214. The result was the Rule of St. Albert, a contemplative and eremitical document that was simple, practical, and eminently scriptural. The tides of politics and war, however, forced the Carmelites to leave their sacred mountain and go back to Europe as early as 1238. The eremitic style of life underwent change in the direction of community and ministry, eventually making the order a mendicant one like the Dominicans and Franciscans. One of the early general superiors, Nicholas the Frenchman, tried to stem the move to the city. In 1270 he wrote a strong let-ter, called "The Fiery Arrow," calling the men to return to the desert. But the mendicant form of life had struck a chord in their hearts. They continued to foster their contemplative long-ing, but now they carried the desert in their hearts. The desert was a symbol now rather than the physical reality. A second charter of the order, called the Institution of the First Monks, dated 1370 and written by a Catalonian Carmelite, Philip Ribot, presented a symbolic life of Elijah and the example of the Blessed Mother as both a description and a defense of the new lifestyle. The book incorporated the thinking of John Cassian, especially on the structure of the religious life as the search for purity of heart and contemplation. The desert spirituality of Mount Carmel was adapted now to an active apostolic life. Henceforth Carmelite spirituality was at home in communities of active religious and lay people as well as cloistered contem-platives. The reform of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross two centuries later built on this document and renewed and perfected the eremitical-contemplative ideal of Carmel. They did so, not only by promoting desert houses of total contem-plative life, but by organizing a way in which every Carmelite house could be, in the words of a great Carmelite of the next century, John of St. Samson, another Mount Carmel. The desert spirituality of Carmel's beginnings had become democratized and available to all who espouse the ideals of the Carmelite tradition. 3 73- --- July-August 2002 Larkin ¯ Desert Spirituality Notes t Christian Meditation and centering prayer are two popular forms of contemplative prayer, designed by John Main OSB and the Trappists at Spencer, Massachusetts, respectively, the former promoted by the World Community of Christian Meditation under Laurence Freeman OSB and the latter by Contemplative Outreach, whose leader is Thomas Keating OCSO. 2 Donal O'Leary, "High Noon at Ghost Ranch," Furrow 52 (January 2001): 27-35. 3 Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), pp. 88-93. 4 Cited from his Desert Solitaire by Thomas J. McCarthy, "The Ultimate Sanctum," America (9 April 2001): 6. s Stephen Bede Sharper, "A New Heaven and a New Earth," Christian Spirituality Bulletin 8 (Fall-Winter 2000): 15. 6 "God's Beloved Creation," America (16 April 2001): 9. 7 "Dark Night as Impasse," in Living with Apocalypse, ed. Tilden Edwards (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984). s Conferences, of John Cassian, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), pp. 37-43. Devotion I am twelve, have read of the child Virgin martyrs, and decide it is High time I practice such virtue. At My next confession, after the usual Childhood sins, I say I want to Vow myself to God like a saint. The Assistant pastor, thinking fast, replies That at present I don't know The vocation God has chosen For me, but I may promise him My chastity until I take that vow, Or those of marriage. Satisfied, I rejoice in God's favor, and Make my promise. Mary Hanson Review for Religious BARBARA ZAJAC Three Forms of Community Living: A Survey Report For much of the 20th century, sisters who performed charitable service works lived in convents near the institutions they served. As missions and roles changed after the Sister Formation Conference (1950s) and Vatican Council II (1960s), so did the living arrange-ments, often necessitated by travel considerations. Congregations such as these had called themselves "communities" when they held common missions and residences, and they continue to use this term today even though--wearing few or no common ~ymbols, ministering in widely diverse occupations, and residing in locales favorable to their mission assign-ments- many are barely identifiable as members of a group of sisters. Puzzled that this topic received little attention in sociological literature aside from Wittberg's analyses (see Bibliography), I found myself raising several research questions about the meaning of "community." Does it mean a location-based entity? A process? A set of relationships? A task force? A par-ticular goal or ideal toward which people strive? As part of a larger study (Zajac, 1999b), I studied Barbara Zajac first contributed to our pages in 1999. Her current address is Department of Sociology; Indiana State University; Terre Haute, Indiana 47809. July-Aug£ust 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living one religious order of apostolic sisters. Though from their founding the group provided chiefly educational and medical services, individual sisters now select their own mission assign-ments, which include traditional teaching and parish pastoral work, professional careers such as psychologist and speech pathologist, and social activism and feeding the homeless and hungry. Throughout California over a two-year period (1995 and 1996), fifty members of this congregation were interviewed indi-vidually and in-depth. Although the sample was volunteer and purposive, it is considered fairly ~:epresentative of the order in general (see Zajac, 1999a). Additional information was obtained from the group's monthly magazinE, religious periodicals, and selected participant observation. The group is given the pseudonym Sisters of Reconciliation of JesusI (SRJ). Similarly, individual names and identifying factors have been disguised or altered. What Community Means It is evident that there is no widespread consensus about the word community. Putting feelings into words was difficult for the sisters, and they responded in words they were comfortable using. Some began with what I would call generalized notions of community, and others described what community involves or how it can be formed and lived. Still others spol~e of mani-festations of community and of how community is maintained. Nearly everyone cited some of the qualities I will describe under manifestations of community. Anything approaching near agreement on most of the gen-eralized notions of community was absent. Some sisters attached the term to a specific location, while others denied the impor-tance of a spatial component. Some described community as an ongoing process that is never completed, or as an ability, agree-ment, or commitment. Others mentioned the people involved and the human connections among them. A number of the sis-ters spoke of community as a bond or tie among people, a togetherness, while others used such phrases as "a living-out of the vows," "a unanimity of vision and purpose," and "the charism [of the Sisters of Reconciliation] lived out." Regarding Review for Religious the often mentioned familial nature of community, there was much disagreement. Some denied that it is a family, some described it as "like" a family, and others claimed that it is "more than" a family. Certain sisters told me they think community involves notions of struggle, being invested in the group or having a sense of ownership about it. Some explained the factors by which they create for themselves a sense of "community," ger-mane to the can-be-done category. While at least one sister cited similar ministry as the key to community, others thought the key is personal characteristics such as being open to others, try-ing to understand them, and being thoughtful, prayerful, and considerate. Many said that much communication is needed, and a great deal of give-and-take, exemplified in being open to others, trying to understand them, and allowing for the flow of communication, with its misunderstandings, disagreements, and concurrences. Others talked of the mechanisms by which community can be sustained, such as living or working together, "making it happen," or constantly articulating the meanings. The latter suggestions are rather nonspecific, but the next item is quite different. Certain sisters told me they think community involves notions of struggle. Manifestations of Community Nearly everyone listed one or two qualities in the category called manifestations ofcommunity. A good many used a small number of emotionally laden terms, heartfelt terms: empathy, interconnectedness, sharing. Others used different words, but their intent seemed similar enough that I could not justify putting their statements elsewhere. Examples of this are "living together, not singly" and "working on things together." In this "manifestations" category many talked of the people they encountered, or of the work as being a continual process; some continued an articulation of "what community means to me." Human behaviors and interactions, with their sentiments July-August 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living and attitudes, make up the heart of community. Empathy is expressed especially through concern and caring, through notic-ing and having interest in others. One person termed this a "feeling for" others, and many called it "support." Such senti-ments are displayed in such particular behaviors and actions as showing respect and appreciation or at least acceptance; if not, the reality of the sentiments is questionable. If empathy is pre-sent and expressed, the members of a group develop and main-tain an interconnectedness, an interdependence, a mutual sense of belonging. They develop a social solidarity. Empathy, empathic behavior, and interdependence work together in what is called sharing, which seems to be central. Nearly all the sisters interviewed mentioned the sharing of something, whether faith or prayer, tasks, worldly goods, help-ful services, or expressions of caring support. Sharing faith and the spiritual life was mentioned most frequently, and, along with it, the emotional support this sharing provided. Things like housework, goods, and ministry are shared differently, depending on the specific living arrangements (to be described shortly). The sharing of spirituality and various works rein-forces caring sentiments and behaviors and the sense of being interdependent. It is through sharing even ordinary things that crucial personal connections are created and sustained. Representative Community Groupings Three types of community living groups will be described: a self-named "intentional" community, what I term a residen-tial community, and a community of one. These are composite portraits. They do not describe every type of living situation, but seem representative of the arrangements of active Sisters of Reconciliation. Intentional Community "House of Peace" is the sign next to the doorbell of a large house in a run-down neighborhood of the central city where poverty is endemic and violence is the norm. The home of five SRJs, this intentional:community was formed with express pur-poses in mind. The sisters deliberately chose its location amid Review for Religious widespread desolation in order to identify with and serve the poorest people of the city. The members were selected for their personal and professional qualities, namely, a desire for an intense spiritual life and an unwavering dedication to the mis-sion of the Sisters of Reconciliation in serving the city's need-iest people. There are five regular residents. Sister Elaine Sherman runs a transitional housing program for homeless families. Sister Mary Anne coordinates the sisters' social-justice efforts. Sister Ruth Patrick, retired from a full career of teaching, daily trav-els twenty miles each way to where she cooks and serves meals to transients. Sister Bertina Marie, who is bilingual, is a com-munity activist and pastoral minister in the Spanish-speaking community. Sister Jane Th~r~se, who has not yet taken her final vows in religious life, teaches religion in a local Catholic high school and hopes to study divinity in the future. The house is also the home base of a sister working in a residential house for adolescents and of sisters visiting temporarily from mission lands or elsewhere. Sister Ruth Patrick, the oldest sister and the one longest in the SRJs, was the driving force for starting this new house. She had been aware of the brewing turbulence in religious life since the 1950s and thought then that the sisters ought to be living more adult lives than was possible while rigidly observing detailed rules and daily schedules in sequestered convents. She wanted to live out her own values explicitly, holding prayer in common, sharing with the poor, living very simply, and being concerned about others and accountable to them. And so she looked for sisters that she felt had a strong sense of the SRJ mis-sion and were dedicating their lives to living it. She looked for sisters who knew themselves well and.knew what would equip them well for their ministries. She looked for sisters who were aware of what would personally empower them and what might drain them of apostolic energy. She looked for sisters who were willing to give support to others and to receive it as well. Such sisters she approached with her proposal. Perhaps most important, these women must be open to new forms of prayer such as sharing of the heart rather than recit-ing formulaic prayers at specified hours. This prayer involves common reading of a passage from the Bible' and then individ- July-August 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living ual reflection and comment on what the reading means to each one, how it applies to her own life. It demands a willingness to be open and vulnerable to other people. This sharing of faith and spirituality is not for everyone. Some older sisters, in par-ticular, have been reluctant to engage in it. Now, when a new member wishes to join the house, she comes and talks with the existing group about her hopes and ex.pectations for common life. She learns that, in addition to sharing faith and emotional support, the group divides up the house chores, such as bookkeeping and paying the bills, shopping for food and preparing meals, cleaning and yard work. She learns that she is to live on the allotted personal budget and to reserve some of that money to support foreign missionaries. She learns that "one person's guest is every person's guest" here. Although a sister may dislike or resent such an interview before being admitted to a new house, she needs to remind herself that the present residents consider it crucial that new residents know and agree to support these values and their explicit expression. Sister Elaine, who came to religious life through her vol-unteer work and not directly from her Catholic schooling, explains more about this group's dynamics~ Although they min-ister in diverse fields with varied schedules, they reserve one night a week as their community night, when all will be present for prayer, eating, and sharing. Her social-work background leads her to describe the difficulty of working with people "who are blocked up" by past traumas or interpersonal issues. This form of life, this "microcosm of society," is a difficult life to live. It must enable sisters to go out and minister to the world. They must learn to be communicative and must get to know each other's histories. Since there are various workable arrangements for getting through days cooperatively and smoothly, the sisters must con-tinually strive to accommodate themselves to the others in the group. Sister Elaine thinks that an all-female group can be "really beautiful and powerful or really terrible," depending on how they handle interpersonal relations. The key thing, in her experience, is to keep talking to each other and "not whine." She admits that she had to learn some of these things herself in community living and that it is still sometimes difficult to keep her own "space." She is one of those who prefer not to talk to Review for Religious anyone for a few minutes after arising in the morning, so she now showers at this time to maintain her internal quietude. Pastoral ministry to the poor and immigrant Spanish-speak-ing community is Sister Bertina Marie's specialty. While her day is occupied with teaching English as a second language and running a community center with various offices and activities (Head Start, legal clinic, medical outreach services, and chil-dren's programs), she is an integral member of the House of Peace. Seeking more ways to live out the SRJ vision, charism, and values, its members extend love and hospitality to sur-rounding neighbors. The sisters offer their house as a site for Neighborhood Watch and other meetings. They make sure that flowers are always growing in their yard to symbolize nonvio-lence in a locale where drugs, gangs, and hostilities abound. Sister Bertina Marie stresses the integration of the house goals with individual ministries: all identify with and serve the poor, value deep prayer life in common, and support others with goods and hospitality. Sister Mary Anne, the government-affairs coordinator for the congregation, spends her.time researching, writing, lobby-ing, and educating people about political issues that affect the poor. Working for such structural change where results come slowly if at all is for many an enervating and thankless task. She talks of recognizing one's own needs as well as those of others, and of balancing community life with ministry. She speaks from experience. At one time she held a position that "totally consumed" her. She thought she was in a vocation crisis and should perhaps leave the community. She was so burned out that she" had nothing to give to anyone and did not even want to "bring Jesus" to the people she worked with. An extended retreat, however, provided her with reflection time to realize it was her ministerial position that needed to be changed, not her SRJ affiliation. Now she highly values living with oth-ers who think as she does, all of them giying and getting real emotional and spiritual support. "Community has been a gift to me," she recalls, mention-ing the friends she has made and how they "move together in growth." She says she was one of the first to propose and pio-neer small-group living and that her experience with eight oth-ers proved its value for her. Being honest with each other and .~tuly-August 2002 Zajac * Three Forms of Community Living "I'm not accepted just because I'm capable. I can be a failure and I'm still loved." sharing their deepest values were what she had been seeking. When all members had the "same thirst for God and the desire to live out a faith life in mission," they found they did not fight over little things, but rather worked them out, a quality that is sometimes missing in residential communities. The youngest member of the House of Peace commun!ty is Sister Jane Th4r~se, thirty-something, planning to take her final vows within a year. She was attracted to this house for sev-eral reasons besides its location near where she teaches religion to inner-city children. She was pleased that there were a vari-ety of ages together there and liked their outreach to the neigh-borhood. As a newer SRJ, she appreciated this group's willingness to work with younger members and pass on wisdom and insight from their experience. Sister Jane Th4r~se cites a sentence to describe the com-munity's value to her, a line from the SRJ constitution: "With the strength that comes from our life together, we turn to serve the world in need." "This was not only memorized," she says, "it was lived." She remarks that the constitution holds that SRJs share "all that we have and are," including personal uncertainties, frailties, and inabilities, all of which she knows firsthand. Before her current ministry she was locked into a miserable sit-uation where she had no power or auth.ority. She says that, although her sisters in this local community were in no position to give her help or even offer constructive criticism, speaking about her difficulties and receiving support in return were cru-cial to her fulfilling that assignment. Such unconditional accep-tance comes from being a member of the community. She says, "I'm not accepted just because I'm capable. I carl be a failure and I'm still loved." The ability to be vulnerable and to share one another's gifts helps her "to find God active in the world." In addition to these regular residents, House of Peace is also the local community for Sister Mary Kimball, a member of the SRJs of the East Coast. In Califoi'nia to gain experience in a new ministry, she runs a home for truant and delinquent high Review for Religious school girls who show academic or other creative potential. Because this ministerial unit requires her live-in presence, she affiliates with the House of Peace local community. Ordinarily she will be there every Monday evening to share dinner, prayer, and occasional social activities. Being a member of this group keeps her from feeling isolated and abandoned and allows her to give and get support within the context of her commitment to the mission of the SRJs. Residential Community The convent of St. Junipero Serra sits amid a pleasant res-idential neighborhood in the west side of the city. Next to the Catholic church and school, it once housed sisters of the con-gregation responsible for running the school. Now no sisters teach there. Not needed for parish activities, the building is rented to the SRJs for a reasonable fee. The residential com-munity is home to seven SRJs engaged in various ministries; the youngest is in her forties, and two are semiretired. This convent is run by group government, explains Sister William Joseph, who teaches math at Sacred Heart College for Women, established by the SRJs. Group government, originally an experimental form of living, applies now to almost all resi-dential groups and means participatory decision making in mat-ters that involve all members. The group collectively determines the extent of common prayer life, shared meals, other domes-tic activities, and group celebrations. "Respect" and "acceptance" are two words frequently heard in this group because, as one explains, "not all things can be shared well." This group has decided to share morning prayers Mondays through Fridays, and to gather one evening a week to share experiences and discuss the business of the larger con-gregation. They support the large community of sisters at events and serve as a "presence" in the parish. The group evening may be for holiday celebrations or indi-vidual birthdays or religious feast days. At the time of Sister William Joseph's interview in early January, there was a tall dec-orated Christmas tree in the common living room where we talked. She told me that this community would be celebrating its Christmas that evening, exchanging gifts. During the previ- July-August 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living ous week, all were out visiting their families, so a common celebration was postponed. Sister William Joseph was one of those who did not want to break up the convent into smaller residential groups in the 1970s. She has always appreciated the exposure to many other sisters and did not wish to lose contact with those she might not encounter in her ministry or in small-group living. She says she has always had to "stretch herself" for others, but adds that this is part of the commitment they make to each other. Similar is her opinion of all the congregational events this house supports; she really does not care for so many meetings and events, but attends as part of the duty she upholds. Sister Adia Marie Buckley, too, is involved in academics. An administrator at the same college, she speaks about reli-gious- life community a little differently. "Although there must be people with whom one lives and with whom one must main-tain friendly relations," she says, "community extends to much more than this." She explains the kinship sense she feels with the broad congregation of other SRJs in the United States and else-where in the world, and with affiliate members, former mem-bers, and sisters in other orders. Sister Catherine Tivnan, who runs an office at the congre-gational headquarters, explains why she chose this house: "They're kind of middle-of-the-roaders, and I thought I'd fit in with them. I thought this was what I was looking for in peo-ple, for not heavy-duty intensive living, but just a nice, com-fortable place where I would fit in and would be accepted." By "not intensive" she explains that in some places there are peo-ple who "dissect everything and practically have a magnifying glass on everything you say and do." She says she does not mind such psychological probing on occasion, but cannot take a steady diet of it. She gives an example. A sister with whom she used to live would read every article in the Sunday newspaper and then want to discuss it with anyone in the room at the time. Eventually Sister Catherine would explicitly refuse to talk with her. She preferred to look at the paper rather quickly and then move on to other activities like walking by the beach or going to a movie. Sister Elizabeth Conan is a registered nurse and medical instructor who teaches away from home two or three evenings Review for Religious a week. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a plaid shirt, she tells me that she does less of the cooking for the house than some oth-ers because of her split work schedule. Her family also occupies her attention for about one day a month because of some difficult illness. She loves spending time with her sisters in com-munity, however, including their times of play. She likes to barbecue in good weather, and she says that at times she will just put out a sign-up sheet shortly beforehand, rather than planning everything well in advance. "Dressed to the teeth" was the impression Sister Margaret de Lorca made when I met her in her office at the parish hall. She explains that, coming from an artistic family, she had always enjoyed the use of color in her surroundings, although she did not wear it during many years of teaching in the traditional habit. Working part-time now, Sister Margaret works in religious edu-cation, organizing prayer groups, directing occasional retreats, and providing individual spiritual direction. She tells me that the sisters have common prayer in the house at 6:10 a.m. Monday through Friday. They initially prayed together in the evenings, but found it too difficult because of their divergent schedules. She contrasts living here in a small group with living in the congregational center, which is home to about a hundred sisters and was her home for two years. Even though residents here have to work to find time to be together, it takes a lot less energy to relate to this group than it would to everyone in the large community. Life was stressful for her there because, in walk-ing down a hallway, she would commonly encounter ten or twelve different people. By the time the tenth person said "How are you, Sister Margaret?" she would be exhausted. She is "not an extrovert," but also "not a strong introvert," so daily relations with six other people are plenty for her. Another member of this group is Sister Margot Monroe, an educational psychologist who does counseling for individ-ual schools and has a private practice for handicapped children. The sisters have common prayer in the house at 6:10 a.m. Monday through Friday. July-dugv~st 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living Though she loved the children she encountered in her teaching career, she became frustrated by the time required for extracur-ricular events like sports and cheerleading. She wonders if the congregation made a mistake leaving teaching en masse, and thinks the sisters should have taken more risks in starting new schools and programs.' She also expressed her frustration about the church, where "the hierarchy has not accepted our SRJ growth" and women religious are "only tolerated in the church and not really accepted." This leaves her in the painful posi-tion of being more removed from general church affairs than she would like to be. She feels similarly frustrated in her residential community, where not all have grown theologically and personally to the extent she has. Some of the sisters are not accustomed or very open to sharing, which she finds particularly "life-giving." "People can fulfill all their responsibilities," she explains, "and still not share who they really are." Although she tries to encourage certain ones to be more open, she does it in a gen-tle manner. Still, she finds this group to be a little shallow: "I feel I have community with the people I live with, but it's rather superficial. We're nice to each other. Our horarium for the day is not problematic at all, but I wish we had a depth of sharing that would bring us all to a different place." She believes, however, that living in this house is a trade-off. These people are not her best friends, of which she hag a num-ber outside this convent. While she gains depth and stimula-tion from her outside friendships, here she has the freedom and flexibility to come and go as she pleases without making com-mitments for large blocks of personal time and energy. The final resident of this group is also semiretired. Sister Patricia Louise, in her nineties, likes to cook and works in the parish food pantry. She says that "the diversity of ministry now militates against close community life," which they had when all worked together. This way is "harder but healthier"; it keeps people in contact with diverse fields and offers stimulating con-versation. She says: "It used to be that, if you all taught in the same elementary school, your conversation was always about families in the school, problem kids, what was going on in the parish. But this way we also know what is going on at the col-lege, at the high school, and at the hospitals." Review for Religious Despite their interdependence in the common life, how-ever, they are independent about their use of free time. She says that everyone is very "embedded" in what she is doing on her own and that not living with one's best friends is really an advantage. She adds that she never wanted a residence that was "like a hotel" and prefers the interdependence she finds here. Even though these women do not have "a lot of involvement with each other, what they do has value." A Community of One Sister Zo~ Warnercalls herself "a community of one" because no other sisters live or work with her and she does not have weekly contact with members of her congregation. Fifteen years ago she went out on her own with the blessing of the com-munity (but no funding) to create St. Martin's Children's Center, a temporary residential and resource center for children in fam-ilies undergoing major upheavals in their lives. Like an available set of grandparents, this center can care for up to fifteen chil-dren for a maximum of thirty days each, although the staff tries to restrict it to fewer children and shorter periods of time. Sister Zo~ lived in this large residence with a dog as her sole com-panion while the structure underwent remodeling and opera-tions eventually got underway, and she still lives there. Her purpose in inhabiting the building before its operation was to become a "presence" in the town and to begin to get a "community focus" on the center. She is referring not to the SRJ community now, but to the neighborhoods, businesses, and voluntary groups which support the center's activities. Her strat-egy evidently worked, because, as people came to know her and her plans, they wanted to participate and give support in vari-ous ways. One measure of that support is financial. Sister Zo~ "lives on faith" to provide the center's operating expenses of almost a half million dollars a year, because it has no regular income. Contributions tend to be sporadic yet somehow ade-quate for their needs. She says: "The Lord provides when we need it. from the little things to the big things . We just watch the mailbox and say our prayers. We have never run out of money or closed our doors due to lack of funds." Although she hopes to obtain the services of a part-time grant writer later July-Auffust 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living "Community is the same as its core. I am a sister from the core of my being." this year, she has done this and all other duties herself, includ-ing caring for the children and teaching life skills to the parents. Although a few Sisters of Reconciliation have come to work with her for brief periods over the years, Sister Zo~ now sees none of them frequently. Yet her connection to the SRJs is strong, and "our sisters., very much know I'm a community member." She explains that her SRJ area superior holds general gatherings three or four times a year and maybe a day of prayer once in a while. By participating in these activities and attend-ing the funerals of older sisters, Sister Zo~ carries the SRJ charism with her and uses it to create a sense of community with whomever she is working: "There's something I have learned., that, no matter where you go, you bring the sisters with you or you bring your experience of community." In addition to SRJ gatherings and ministry associates, Sister Zo~ has a couple of good friends she sees regularly. One of these is a nun from another congregation; the other is a priest friend. This little group frequently celebrates Sunday Mass in the residence of the non-SRJ, and they sometimes follow it with a potluck dinner, occasionally bringing in other friends or neigh-bors. She had to create this new sense of community herself, however, and she attributes this ability to her long-standing experiences with the SRJs: "By coming out here, community wasn't provided for me. I had to create it, and I used the skills, the tools, the experiences that I had had for all those years. to create a life that was community-oriented. But I had to take the reins and take the initiative and have it happen." Would she like more contact with other SRJs? She says that, although she does not require it, she would welcome another sis-ter if one were to want to live and work with her, and perhaps this new person would help care for her when she gets "old." She emphasizes, "Community is not based on the number of times you see people, but on the feelings and interests to see, hear, and share with others." She also takes he~" identity as an SRJ seriously, having followed the advice of her novice mistress never to abbre-viate the word sister, but always to write it out as part of her name Review for Religious and identity. Sister ZoE puts this together with her feelings about community: "Community is the same as its core. I am a sister from the core of my being, and I am a Sister of Reconciliation." "Good" and "Bad" Community Some sisters gave examples of either "good" or "bad" com-munity experiences, which sometimes held more feeling than the brief descriptive words suggest. One sister said that real community spirit was truly shown when her very good friend died suddenly. She received about a hundred sympathy cards, which told her that the loss of this friend was about more than "my private grief." Another sister described spending some time at a residential therapeutic community for religious congrega-tions. The therapy included the sharing of their life stories, a "first" for this particular sister, where the sharing of those "sad and joyful feelings" created a strong bond within the group. Still another told of the difficult period when she lost her job because of organizational restructuring, but still had had the full support of the community: "I was very glad I was a com-munity woman because otherwise I would have had to get a lawyer. In community I just shared what happened, and they journeyed with me through it." Sister MaryJoyce described her experiences in one of the first experimental communities of group government in 1969. In this new group for which everyone had volunteered, there were between ten and fifteen sisters at various times over several years, and they were trying out new approaches to teaching as well as living. This situation was "life-giving": the participants were all "high energy" types and risk takers as well. They all cared for each other and the outside world, and were concerned about where people were with God, faith, and prayer. Sister Kathryn Ann described something similar. When her ministry took her away from others in her own order, she lived in an apartment house that people came to call The Nunnery because in addition to herself there were six sisters from another con-gregation, a priest, and a brother, all in individual apartments. Although they "lived singly" and ministered in different places, they got together frequently for prayer, meals, and Mass, often signaled by a knock on the wall. July-Angvtst 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Living 3.90 Sister Mary Magdalene has had her share of feeling less than appreciated by other SRJs, yet had a wonderful experience when she lived in a rural area with three other sisters, all teachers, who endured together the crisis of the school's closing. Although one of them was the principal of the school and also the supe-rior of the convent, they interacted as equals and "were just peo-ple together," frequently cooking and sharing meals on the weekends in an era when most convents still had cooks. Although they were together in the school, they also spent outside time together, but "it wasn't mandated. It was a choice we were mak-ing." This relaxed atmosphere where everyone's talents were recognized was contributed to by a pastor who was supportive and friendly and occasionally took them all out to dinner. Another sister, Sister Peg, described an aspect of her first job as a hospital chaplain. Living in an apartment across the street from the hospital, she provided hospitality for visiting sisters and especially those recuperating from surgery or illness. The informality and spontaneous "ease with which the sisters moved in and out of my life" was an exciting and fulfilling period. These positive experiences of community do not necessar-ily require other sisters or vowed people. Sister Benita Rogers shared one such experience when she was leaving an ethnically mixed parish that she had brought together over a number of years. Addressing a large parish group, Sister Benita, who does not speak Spanish, expressed her desire that perhaps now the diocese would assign a bilingual person as her replacement. A Hispanic man stood and spoke for the group: "It doesn't mat-ter whether or not you can speak Spanish. You have the corazon, the heart. That's how you've communicated. You've read us with your heart." It is the major congregational gatherings, however, that sev-eral sisters cited as the "best expression" of community spirit. One of these celebrations is the Congregational Days, when all sisters from the West come together with former sisters as well as affiliate members to celebrate the SRJs as a whole. The other is the jubilee celebration, held anr~ually on the feast day of their patron. Families and friends are invited to participate in the joyful celebration of the anniversaries of their vows as Sisters of Reconciliation. Among these hundreds of people there is a won- Review for Religious derful "spirit that you can almost touch." Everyone feels a part of this group energy and spirituality. It leads people to say that "the most profound experience of community is to experience us praying together." Although Sister Rafaela says she "has never had a bad com-munity experience," this is not the case for many sisters. Sisters described instances where they felt alienated, isolated, or at least not fully appreci-ated in the community, both in their local group and in the larger group. Often the difficulty stemmed from some-one's personality or behavior. When people are too busy to notice others or care about what they are undergoing, those others can feel "deadened" and not supported, making them withdraw from the group. On the other hand, those who "demand too much" from others in terms of time or resources make community living difficult. These people are usually those who have "not done their home-work" regarding their own interpersonal issues. Sometimes, carrying unresolved emotional traumas from their early life, they attempt to hide with the aid of alcohol, a too busy sched-ule, or emotional distancing of others. When people are "afraid of their own spirituality" or are "not willing to be honest" with each other, communal sharing and support are undermined from the start. Sometimes there is a plain lack of openness to others. Sister Joan Claire Mendoza described such a case. She lives in a large convent with eight or nine other sisters, four of whom work in the attached school, while the rest work in various other min-istries. They are together for morning Mass and one evening dinner per week. Although these sisters are "polite" to Sister Joan Claire, it is clear to her that they really do not want her there. Three of them maintain very close relations and actually "make up their own community." Fortunately, Sister Joan Claire has developed a personal and professional network of friends and colleagues from whom she receives most of her emotional Those who "demand too much" from others in terms of time or resources make community living difficult. -201 --- . J~dy-dugust 2002 Zajac " Three Forms of Community Living sustenance. Another sister described a similar case. She felt so rejected that she was "not even sure she was still an SRJ." Others expressed their isolation when they felt that their talents, gifts, or ministry were not appreciated. If community members remain or act unaware or. uninformed about them and their work, those living in common as well as those minister-ing on their own can be affected. Sometimes the personalities of the people living together are too divergent or their schedules too diverse to allow for harmonious living. Highly divergent worldviews in people can also make daily life uncom-fortable. In other instances a quiet person is misconstrued to be someone quite alien to her real self. One sister said she had been surprised to learn that her housemates had thought she was very self-confident and did not need any help or support. In another convent she had been perceived as a threat to others because she had more education than most of the others. The biggest obstacle to community, however, one sister said, occurs when people do not maintain confidences. This causes a shat-tering of trust and pushes people back to isolation. A few sisters expressed frustration or anger with the com-munity at large. One told of an instance when her mother was dying. Although everyone knew about this, there was little inter-est, caring, or support shown. Another sister said that several years ago she was angry with the general community for giving financial support to a foreign political group that she thought was wrong. Another sister said that sometimes lack of equality really bothered her. Because of her age she had been denied permission to study for an advanced degree, yet in that very year three sisters older than herself were approved and funded for graduate education. When this woman protested this as unjust, she received an apology from the president of the con-gregation, but still no approval for further study. In this article we have examined how sisters in one reli-gious community define and create "community." There is lit-tle general consensus about the term, although some common values are evident. In general, all agree that something must be shared and that there is a feeling of interdependence or inter-connectedness. How and what things are shared, however, varies according to the type of living group that is chosen. Individual Review for Religious sisters' stories were interwoven here into three composite pic-tures of community living: intentional community, residential community, and a community of one. Also, some examples of what creates "good" and "bad" community were given. The various types of community exist in various circum-stances and are experienced in various ways by individual sisters. There seems to be no one right way. There is a considerable diversity of views, activities, roles, and living arrangements. This diversity contrasts strongly with the pre-Vatican II con-vents, with their physical proximity to the apostolic work the sis-ters did, their thorough discipline, and their homogeneity of life conditions. Note ~ I later discovered that this was the original European name of a congregation now in the United States with a different name. Bibliography Beane, Marjorie Noterman. 1993. From framework to freedom: A history of the Sister Formation Conference. New York: University Press of America. Eby, Judy, RSM. 2000. "A little squabble among nuns"? The Sister Formation crisis and the patterns of authority and obedience among American women religious, 1954-1971. Unpublished doc-toral dissertation, Saint Louis University. Emerson, Robert M., ed. 1983. Contemporary field research: A collec-tion of readings. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press. Merton, Robert K., Marjorie Fiske, and Patricia L. Kendall. 1990. The focused interview: A manual of problems and procedures. New York: Free Press. Powdermaker, Hortense. 1960. Stranger and friend: The way of an anthropologist. New York: W.W. Norton. Quifionez, Lora Ann, CDP, and Mary Daniel Turner SNDdeN. 1992. The transformation of American Catholic sisters. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Vatican Council H: The conciliar and postconciliar documents and More postconciliar documents. 1975, 1982. Edited by Austin Flannery OP. Northport, New York: Costello Publishing Co. Wittberg, Patricia, SC. 1990. Dyads and triads: The sociological impli-cations of small-group living arrangements. Review for Religious 43, no. 1 (January-February): 43-51. July-August 2002 Zajac ¯ Three Forms of Community Li~ing ¯ 1993. Residence stability and decline in Roman Catholic reli-gious orders of women: A preliminary investigation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 32: 76-82. Zajac, Barbara. 1999a. Becoming a nun: A general model of entering religious life. Review for Religious 58 (July-August): 403-423. --. 1999b. Community suicide: Secularization in Catholic nuns with the manipulation of ritual and symbol. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Riverside. Wounded The unseen spider ripped my flesh, and drew blood, nourishment, afresh, and left a black-red crater there: pink, puffy, filled with pus - not fair. A round wound one inch wide oozing fluid down the side. I've been a meal for a foreign beast, stamped with a bump, a spider's feast. This tiny spider sucked sustenance from me, drew life, left a mark, for all to see - how dare he! Am I any different? Don't I do the same? Feed on the Christ, wound him, without shame? Michael J. Lydon Reviev; for Religious JOEL GIALLANZA Expert Practitioners of Union in Community Once upon a time community was uncomplicated, ever a delight in which to witness and work, a constant joy to be and build. Beg your pardon! Are we talking about reality here? Yes, but only by flashback to the language and imagery of a different era. Let me explain. In researching various writings on religious community--most of them published from the 1930s to the early 1960s--I wondered if the lived experience of community during those decades matched the somewhat romantic and idealistic rhetoric about it. I decided that it prob-ably did not; rather, the rhetoric offered encouragement and hope as supports for the lived experience. Religious knew then and continue to experience now the complexity of community life. The word community itself has a complex meaning. It means more than religious living in the same residence. We know that community members may be scattered across cities and even across continents. Another facet includes the personalities and perspectives of the members. Similarity and unanimity are no guarantee that a community is healthy and thriving or even that the members know one another more than superficially. Community encompasses the members' cultures and customs and their ages and attitudes. And so we can ask: How do we recognize one another as members of the Joel Giallanza CSC last wrote for us in May-June 2000. His address is Province Center; 1101 St. Edward's Drive; Austin, Texas 78704. July-August 2002 Giallanza ¯ Expert Practitioners of Union community? Community also encompasses the unique heritage and history of each religious institute and the cast of charac-ters who have lived that heritage and been a part of that history. And there are our own experiences in life and ministry. The complexity of religious community does not diminish its potential for living up to the rhetoric of earlier eras. In truth, it has all the potential with which humanity was invested by God at creation. And yet, when we discuss the many factors currently influencing religious life, the task of formulating an all-encompassing definition or description of community is quite daunting and sometimes discouraging. This perception, this temptation to invest less time and energy in such discus-sions, can have a detrimental effect on the quality of community we hope to build for the future. These present reflections are intended to resist that temptation and to encourage continu-ing efforts to form and live and sustain community. Forming Community In the apostolic exhortation Vita consecrata (hereafter VC), Pope John Paul II writes: "Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communion as 'witnesses and architects of the plan for unity which is the crowning point of human history in God's design'" (§46). This is a significant challenge; to be "true experts" at almost anything in our world is a considerable achievement. Being expert practitioners in the spirituality of communion calls for more. John Paul's understanding of communion is incarna-tional: communion does not exist apart from those who strive to live it daily. The etymology of the word "expert" provides an important insight. Often the term is used in a static way, indicating an acquired ability needing little if any further development. The root meaning, however, is quite dynamic: an expert is one who tries and who learns by trying. As a person's ability matures, there are always new approaches to try and new things to learn. The words experiment and experience have the same root. One way, then, of becoming experts in communion is through our experiments and experiences in community. We must keep try-ing and keep learning. Community is never finished. Review f

IntroductionOver the last decade, we have witnessed a number of changes to our welfare state. With the 1996 bi‐partisan‐supported welfare reform legislation (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act; PRWORA), the federal government devolved much of the responsibility for public assistance to the states, instituted time‐limited assistance, and aimed to curb non‐marital childbirths, encourage marriage, and push welfare recipients to become economically self‐sufficient. After PRWORA, a slew of scholars from multiple academic disciplines sought to understand the implementation and implications of the changes to the welfare system for poor families as well as those agencies, staff, and programs that serve them. In this article, Kissane and Krebs synthesize some major findings from this research on welfare reform and its effects. Courses using such a review might situate the exploration of welfare reform within a larger investigation of America's welfare state, poverty, and/or social policy.Author recommendsBrown, Michael K. 1999. Race, Money and the American Welfare State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Through a detailed examination of social policy from the New Deal through the Reagan administration, Brown explores,'how both race and social class bear on the political development of the American welfare state' (p. xiv). As the title of the books suggests, Brown pays particular attention to taxes, fiscal capacity and spending in his account.DeParle, Jason. 2004. American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. New York: Penguin Press.DeParle, a New York Times journalist, moves effortlessly between exploring developments in American welfare policy and chronicling the lives of three poor women. He vividly depicts the complexity of the women's lives in the wake of the changes to the welfare system, while also providing fascinating details on the origins and implementation of welfare reform.Edin, Kathryn and Laura Lein. 1997. Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low‐Wage Work. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.This book presents findings from Edin and Lein's comprehensive, multi‐city qualitative study on the monthly budgets of low‐wage workers and welfare‐reliant women, as well as their strategies for making ends meet. They find that both groups rely on their networks for in‐kind and cash assistance, aid from non‐profit organizations, and earnings from informal work to survive. Edin and Lein also investigate the relative costs and benefits (both tangible and intangible) of work versus welfare.Esping‐Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.An essential book if one is interested in the development of welfare states across advanced Western societies. Esping‐Andersen delineates three typologies of welfare state regimes (conservative, liberal, and social) and explores the factors that establish the differences in welfare states.Gilens, Martin. 1999. Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.In this well‐researched book, Gilens explores public opinion on anti‐poverty policies and the media's role in shaping how the public thinks about welfare. His chapters on the media's representations of poverty and welfare are particularly enlightening.Gordon, Linda. 1994. Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.In this book, Gordon, a social historian, argues that reformers working in the women's movement during the Progressive Era had a significant effect on the development of the welfare state; however, they also helped to cement racial and gender stratification within it and ultimately limit its full development.Hays, Sharon. 2003. Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.In Flat Broke with Children, Hays, a sociologist, does a wonderful job exploring the cultural values behind welfare reform, detailing the contradictory nature of its requirements and procedures, and situating welfare recipients and their behavior within the larger American cultural context. Through her analysis of data collected from years of fieldwork in welfare offices in two states, Hays also investigates how poor women and welfare staff experience and think about welfare reform.Iceland, John. 2006. Poverty in America: A Handbook. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.This book is an excellent overview of poverty in America. Iceland clearly details views on poverty, how we measure poverty, the characteristics of the poverty population, and the causes of poverty.Katz, Michael B. 2001. The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.In this expansive work, Katz, a social historian, details recent developments across various areas of the American welfare state (although he focuses on anti‐poverty policies), while situating these developments within a larger historical context. In particular, he shows how public social policy in recent decades has shifted around three 'great objectives': (i) to end dependence; (ii) to devolve authority; and (iii) to apply market models to social policy.Piven, Frances F. and Richard A. Cloward. 1993. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (updated edition). New York, NY: Vintage Books.In this classic, Piven and Cloward advance their theory that 'expansive relief policies are designed to mute civil disorder, and restrictive ones to reinforce work norms' (p. xv). Their book explores a large span of history – from early poor relief in France and England to developments under the Bush administration.Online materials Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) http://www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/povertyusa/ This website includes some facts about poverty, as well as ideas for educators on ways to generate discussion on poverty. The 'getting involved' section of the website is particularly useful, providing, among other things, a poverty quiz, interactive maps, information on CCHD funded programs, a 'poverty tour' that addresses issues with the federal poverty line, and ways to get involved. Global Rich List http://www.globalrichlist.com/ This website allows you to situate your annual income in the context of the world's population. It is a great little teaching tool to introduce concepts of relative poverty, income inequality, and global poverty to students. Green Book from House Ways and Means Committee
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmprints/green/index.html The Green Book is an excellent resource for descriptions and historical data on many U.S. social welfare programs, such as the Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Foster Care, Medicaid, and Food Stamp programs. MDRC http://www.mdrc.org/ Known best, perhaps, for its evaluations of welfare policies and programs that incorporate random assignment, MDRC provides detailed information on programs and policies that affect the poor. Among other things, the website includes publications, working papers, policy briefs, and videos detailing research findings. The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) http://www.nccp.org/ The NCCP at Columbia University provides statistical information and fact sheets on poverty and policy issues, often with a focus on the links between family economic security and child development. Individuals might find particularly useful the 'State Profiles' section of the website, which allows one to view demographic information (often in clear charts and graphs), issue areas, and policies for the state of one's choosing. U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/ The census website provides an extensive array of data on the U.S. population and economy. Besides navigating from the above link, data and reports on poverty can also be found directly at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty.html. The World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/ The World Bank's website provides resources valuable to exploring worldwide poverty and situating the U.S. globally. In particular, the PovertyNet area (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/0,,menuPK:336998~pagePK:149018~piPK:149093~theSitePK:336992,00.html) of the website presents detailed information and data on poverty and related issues that researchers, educators, and practitioners may find useful.Additional online resourcesScores of additional organizations and centers (too many to list) conduct and disseminate research on issues related to the economy, welfare, public policy, and poverty. What follows is a list of some other key organizations and centers, alongside links to their websites:

Brookings Institute (http://www.brookings.edu)
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (http://www.cbpp.org/)
Center for Law and Social Policy (http://www.clasp.org/)
Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW) (http://crcw.princeton.edu/)
Child Trends (http://www.childtrends.org/)
Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/)
Institute for Research on Poverty (http://www.irp.wisc.edu/)
Joint Center for Poverty Research (http://www.jcpr.org/)
National Poverty Center (http://www.npc.umich.edu/)
Urban Institute (http://www.urban.org/)

Sample syllabusPoverty, Welfare, and the Safety Net (excerpt from syllabus)Description of courseThe terms 'safety net' and 'welfare state' commonly refer to a range of public and non‐governmental programs and policies that seek to protect individuals and their families from distress and hardship and/or improve the quality of their lives. In this course, we will primarily explore facets of the American welfare state that seek to assuage poverty and its effects. Although we will largely approach this topic from a sociological perspective, this area of inquiry is quite interdisciplinary. Consequently, we will be reading works from other academic disciplines throughout the course.This is an advanced course, designed for students who already have substantial familiarity with the causes and consequences of poverty. In the first third of the course, we will investigate the early development of our nation's welfare state, from poorhouses and outdoor relief to mothers' pensions and the New Deal. We then move to exploring Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and anti‐poverty policies of the 1960s and 1970s. Next, we examine changes in federal welfare policy over the last couple of decades, focusing on the welfare reforms of the 1990s, the consequences of these reforms, and the experiences of poor women since these changes. We end the course by looking in more depth at the private safety net (particularly, secular and faith‐based organizations that serve the poor), public opinion, and future directions for welfare policy.Course outline and reading assignments Week 1. Introduction to poverty and the course Iceland, John. 2006. Chapters 3–5 (pp. 20–97). Poverty in America: A Handbook. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Rank, Mark. 2003. 'As American as Apple Pie: Poverty and Welfare.'Contexts 2(3): 41–46.Optional: Katz, Michael B. 2001. 'Poverty and Inequality in the New American City' (pp. 33–56). The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. Week 2. What is welfare? Why have welfare states? Katz, Michael B. 2001. 'The Invention of Welfare' (pp. 1–8) and 'The American Welfare State' (only pp. 9–17). The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.Howard, Christopher. 1993. 'The Hidden Side of the American Welfare State.'Political Science Quarterly. 108(3): 403–436 (note: pages 420–433 are optional).T. H. Marshall. 1977. Selection from 'Citizenship and Social Class' in Class, Citizenship, and Social Development: Essays by T.H. Marshall. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.UN Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html) Week 3. Early developments Piven, Frances F. and Richard A. Cloward. 1993. 'Relief, Labor, and Civil Disorder: An Overview' (pp. 3–42). Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (updated edition). New York, NY: Vintage Books.Katz, Michael B. 1996. 'The Origins and Failure of the Poorhouse' and 'Outdoor Relief' (pp. 3–59). In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America: Tenth Anniversary Edition. New York, NY: BasicBooks. Week 4. Mothers pensions, the New Deal, and ADC Piven, Frances F. and Richard A. Cloward. 1993. Chapter 2–3 (pp. 45–119). Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (updated edition). New York, NY: Vintage Books.Linda Gordon. 1994. Selection from Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Brown, Michael K. 1999. Chapter 2 (pp. 63–96). Race, Money and the American Welfare State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Quadagno, Jill S. 1994. 'Unfinished Democracy' (only pp. 17–25). The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty. New York, NY and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Optional: DeParle, Jason. 2004. Chapter 2 (pp. 20–37). American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Week 5. AFDC, welfare rights, and anti‐poverty policies in the 1960s and 1970s Piven, Frances F. and Richard A. Cloward. 1993. Chapters 4 and 6 (pp. 123–146; pp. 183–199). Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (updated edition). New York, NY: Vintage Books.Quadagno, Jill S. 1994. Selection from The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty. New York, NY and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Tilmon, Johnnie. 1972. 'Welfare is a Women's Issue.'Ms. Spring: 2 pages. http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2002/tillmon.aspDeParle, Jason. 2004. Chapters 3 and 5 (pp. 38–57; 85–100). American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Weeks 6 and 7. Devolution, the 1980s and 90s, and 'ending welfare as we know it' Katz, Michael B. 2001. 'The Family Support Act' (pp. 71–76); 'Governors as Welfare Reformers' (pp. 77–103); and 'Fighting Poverty 1990s Style' (pp. 293–316). The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.Hays, Sharon. 2003. Chapter 1 (pp. 3–31). Flat Broke with Children. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.DeParle, Jason. 2004. Chapters 4; 6–9 (pp. 58–81; 101–174). American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. New York, NY: Penguin Press.Optional: Katz, Michael B. 2001. 'Urban Social Welfare in an Age of Austerity' (pp. 104–136). The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. Week 8. Assessing welfare reform Kissane, Rebecca Joyce and Richard Krebs. 2007. 'Assessing Welfare Reform, Over a Decade Later.'Sociology Compass 1(2): 789–813. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00029.x.Katz, Michael B. 2001. pp. 328–340 of 'The End of Welfare'The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. Weeks 9–11. A closer look at life after welfare reform Hays, Sharon. 2003. Chapters 2–8 (pp. 33–240) Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.DeParle, Jason. 2004. Chapters 10–18 (pp. 175–322). American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. New York, NY: Penguin Press. Week 12.  The Private Safety Net: Nonprofit, Community‐Based Service Provision Katz, Michael B. 2001. 'The Independent Sector, the Market and the State' (only pp. 137–155 and 162–170). The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.Kissane, Rebecca Joyce. 2003. 'What's Need Got to Do with It? Why Poor Women Do Not Use Nonprofit Social Services.'Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare. 30(2): 127–148.Kissane, Rebecca Joyce. 2006. 'Responsible but Uninformed? Nonprofit Executive and Program Directors' Knowledge of Welfare Reform.'Social Service Review. 80(2): 322–345.Reread 'Nonprofit organizations and welfare reform' (pp. 802–804) in Kissane, Rebecca Joyce and Richard Krebs. 2007. 'Assessing Welfare Reform, Over a Decade Later.'Sociology Compass 1(2): 789–813. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00029.x.Edin, Kathryn and Laura Lein. 1998. 'The Private Safety Net: The Role of Charitable Organizations in the Lives of the Poor.'Housing Policy Debate. 9(4): 541–573. Week 13. The Private Safety Net, continued: Faith‐based organizations (FBOs) Katz, Michael B. 2001. 'Faith, Charity, and Inner Cities' (pp. 155–162). The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.Twombly, Eric. 2002. 'Religious Versus Secular Human Service Organizations: Implications for Public Policy.'Social Science Quarterly. 83(4): 847–961.Kissane, Rebecca Joyce. 2007. 'How Do Faith‐Based Organizations Compare to Secular Providers? Nonprofit Directors' and Poor Women's Assessments of FBOs.'Journal of Poverty. 11(4): 91–115.Sherman, A. L. 2003. 'Faith in Communities: A Solid Investment.'Society. 40(2): 19–26.DiIulio Jr., John J. 2007. Selection from Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America's Faith‐Based Future. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Scott W. Allard. 2007. 'Access and Stability: Comparing Faith‐based and Secular Nonprofit Service Providers.' A paper presented at the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan 2007 conference, 'The Impact of Religion and Faith‐Based Organizations on the Lives of Low Income Families.'Optional: Smith, Steven Rathgeb and Michael R. Sosin. 2001. 'Varieties of Faith‐Related Agencies.'Public Administration Review. 61(6): 651–670. Week 14. Public Opinion, the Media, and Policy Gilens, Martin. 1999. Chapters 2–3 (pp. 31–79); Chapter 5 (only pp. 111–132); Chapter 6 (pp. 133–153) and Chapter 8 (only pp. 184–203). Why Americans Hate Welfare. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Reingold, David A. and Helen Liu. Forthcoming. 'Do Poverty Attitudes of Social Service Agency Directors Influence Organizational Behavior?'Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.Optional: Misra, Joya, Stephanie Moller, and Marina Karides. 2003. 'Envisioning Dependency: Changing Media Depictions of Welfare in the 20th Century.'Social Problems. 50(4): 482–504. Week 15. Future directions and course wrap‐up Katz, Michael B. 2001. 'Work, Democracy, and Citizenship' (pp. 341–359). The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.DeParle, Jason. 2004. Epilogue (pp. 323–338). American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. New York, NY: Penguin Press.Gilens, Martin. 1999. 'The Politics of the American Welfare State' (pp. 204–216). Why Americans Hate Welfare. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Rector, Robert. 2005. 'Welfare Reform and the Healthy Marriage Initiative.' Statement before the Sub‐committee on Human Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means U.S. House of Representatives. Available at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/tst021005a.cfmCoontz, Stephanie and Nancy Folbre. 2002. 'Marriage, Poverty, and Public Policy: A Discussion Paper from the Council on Contemporary Families.' The American Prospect. March 19, 2002. Available at http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=marriage_poverty_and_public_policyFilms and videosA Day's Work, A Day's Pay (57 min)This documentary, based in New York City, follows three welfare recipients participating in the city's welfare‐to‐work program. The film not only documents the problems with the city jobs that the welfare recipients have to perform, but it also explores how the welfare recipients become social activists.Eating Welfare (57 min)Told through the youth of the community, this documentary investigates welfare reform's effect on Southeast Asian refugee families living in the Bronx. The film highlights problems particular to this population, as well as general issues facing the welfare recipients under workfare.Ending Welfare As We Know It (90 min)Take it From Me: Life After Welfare (75 min)These two documentaries follow welfare families as they deal with the consequences of welfare reform and the complexities of their lives.Poverty Outlaw (1 h)This documentary follows the development of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), 'a multiracial organization of, by and for poor and homeless people' located in Philadelphia (http://www.kwru.org/), as well as the hardships experienced by its members and other individuals living in poverty in America. A subsequent film, Outriders (1999; 1 h), follows KWRU on its New Freedom Bus Tour, in which the organization sought to document economic human rights violations across America.Tempting Faith: Is Charitable Choice Working? (57 min)This documentary explores the Charitable Choice provision of the 1996 welfare reform legislation through an examination of faith‐based programs in Indiana, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. The film includes views on both the pros and cons of faith‐based initiatives.Waging a Living (85 min)This documentary focuses on the lives of four low‐wage workers as they struggle to make ends meet.Welfare Reform: Social Impact (29 min)This program, released shortly after the passage of welfare reform, explores the history of welfare and issues surrounding welfare reform. It includes interviews with Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, Wendell Primus, and Rebecca Blank.Seminar/Project ideas1. This activity uncovers students' misunderstandings regarding poverty and welfare.Early in the semester (usually the first day of class), students take a 'poverty and welfare quiz' in which they answer factual and attitudinal questions on poverty and welfare. Instructors can then use the survey answers as springboards for weekly discussions on topics covered in the course. As the semester progresses, the students usually discover that they held many misconceptions regarding poverty and welfare.2. This activity explores the hidden assumptions and meanings behind the words 'dependent' and 'independent.' Other words or phrases could also be explored in this manner, such as 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor.Ask the students to list (in separate columns) images, individuals, and/or circumstances that come to mind when they hear the words 'dependent' and 'independent'. Then, as a class or in small groups, discuss and assess the students' lists. How are these lists culturally specific? Do visions of race, ethnicity, class, gender, age and household structure come into play? How? Why do you think certain images come to mind when you hear these words? How do our understandings of 'dependence' and 'independence' relate to our understandings of welfare and poverty? To anti‐poverty policies?3. Among other topics, this activity can be used to launch discussions of deserving versus undeserving poor, universal versus means‐tested transfers, barriers to self‐sufficiency and employment, and notions of 'governmental assistance.'Break the students into small groups and give each group a sheet of paper with about six profiles that cover a variety of individuals and family types. For example, one profile might depict a 30‐year‐old housewife with two children whose husband works. Another might be an unemployed, divorced woman with six children who is clinically depressed, etc. Create profiles in such a way that students will likely consider in their working groups the employment, marital status, age, gender, child‐bearing, physical and mental health, and race and ethnicity of their profiled individuals. Have each group discuss to whom they would give governmental assistance, in what order they would distribute the aid, and what they would give each profiled family. Reconvene the class and compare the groups' decisions. What did the groups' consider 'governmental assistance'? How did they decide how they would distribute the aid? Who was 'worthy' of help? Did they feel as if they needed additional information to make their decisions? What information did they want to have that the profiles did not provide? Why would that information be important to their deliberations?4. This written assignment allows students to investigate a program or policy not covered comprehensively in the course.Each student will choose a program or policy aimed to assuage poverty and/or its effects that we do not cover extensively in this course [e.g., Head Start, Unemployment Insurance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), public housing programs, etc]. All topics must be approved prior to beginning work on the project. After choosing a topic, students will write a final paper that includes the following components:

An introduction. What is the program? How is it meant to assuage poverty or its consequences? Why should we care about your topic?
A brief review of the history of the policy or program. When was the program started? Why? By whom? What key changes have occurred to the program over the years?
A review of the social science research literature on the program. What data and research are available on your program? What does the empirical research tell us about the program's effectiveness, clientele, take‐up rates, strengths, weaknesses, etc?
Specific policy recommendation(s). How can your program be improved? (Note: your recommendation(s) should be based on the empirical evidence not value‐laden opinions)

Instructors may want to add a final presentation to the above assignment. Having students present as part of a panel may be particularly effective if students' topics cluster around several areas, for example 'educational policy', 'family policy', 'housing policy', etc.

Issue 52.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1993. ; rel i gious Christian Heritages and C0mempora~ Living JANUARY-FEBRUARY1993 ,,VOLUME52 ¯ NUMBERi Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048 ¯ FAX: 314-535-0601 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ 5001 Eastern Avenue ° P.O. Box 29260 Washington, D.C. 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ¯ Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Single copy $5 includes surface mailing costs. One-year subscription $15 plus mailing costs. Two-year subscription $28 plus mailing costs. See inside back cover for more subscription information and mailing costs. ©1993 Review for Religious for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Michael G. Harter SJ Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Anti Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ S~fin Sammon FMS Wendy Wright PhD Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JM',/UARY-FEBRUARY 1993 ¯ VOLUME 52 " NUMBER 1 contents 6 feature The Religious Life Futures Project: Executive Summary David J. Nygren CM and Miriam D. Ukeritis CSJ provide a summary of "The Future of Religious Orders in the United States" (FORUS), a comprehensive study of the opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and practices of men and women religious. 56 69 growing spiritually A Developmental View of Salesian Spirituality Joann Wolski Conn examines a process of self-knowledge through the lens of the lives of St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal. The Cloistered Heart Nancy Shuman provides snapshots of her journey into a heart cloister for finding a union with God. discerning vocation 86 The Transfer and the RCIA: Process and Ritual 102 Kathleen Hughes RSCJ and Barbara Quinn RSCJ draw outlines of development from the RCIA process for the transfer of a religious from one community to another. Vocations among Teaching Brothers Eleace King IHM provides the encouraging results of the CARA study of vocations in teaching brothers communities. 2 Review for Religious 111 119 131 living religious life Internationality: Intentional or Accidental Catherine M. Harmer MMS focuses on the structural aspects necessary for a religious group to be intentionally international. Mission before Mission: God's Mission within Us A. Paul Dominic SJ develops the insight that the mission of individual Christians is one and the same as God's mission in themselves. Talents for Living in Community Melannie Svoboda SND proposes eight "lesser" gifts of personality and attitude which enable people to live more graciously with others. departments 4 Prisms 140 Canonical Counsel: New Communities 147 Book Reviews January-February 1993 3 prisms Anew year ushers in new life. Newspapers in every city vie for the picture of the first baby born in the early moments of a new year. Perhaps all of us need to image ourselves in that picture of a newborn and ask our-selves what kind of fresh life we seek in this year 1993. As we enter into this new gift of time, God's grace con-tinues to be a light to our mind and a strength to our will. In 1993, what light do we seek for our faith, and what strength do we need to live in closer union with our Lord? Review for Religious hopes to focus some light where it will be helpful by highlighting an article in each issue of this new volume. Our present issue is privileged to publish "The Religious Life Futures Project: Executive Summary." David J. Nygren CM and Miriam D. Ukeritis csJ have worked some three years on a major study of religious life and its future in the United States. By means of this arti-cle, they present in a concise and understandable form the conceptual background, methodological considera-tions, research findings, and major implications of their three-year study. Because this article attempts to provide easy entrance to the complete study shortly to be pub-lished in book form, it also gives our readers a ready ref-erence for use with future articles that will either critique assumptions and method or suggest further developments implied in this study. The importance of the study lies especially in the breadth and thoroughness of its col|ection of data, rep-resented in it~ six independent elements: a national survey, leadership studies, a study of caring people and one of visioning groups, individual interviews, and a final theo-logical/ historical monograph. There is no doubt about its timeliness gince the church is now looking forward to the Review for Religious ninth assembly (in 1994) of a worldwide synod of bishops. The theme of the synod is "The consecrated life and its role in the church and in the world." Since bishops, priests, lay people, and religious need to be involved in the preparation and the followup of this and every church synod, Review for Religious hopes to be a channel of grace by bringing to its readers clear informative articles as well as inspiring motivational ones for the ever richer living out of the spiritual heritages found in particular religious families such as the Benedictine or the Franciscan. It is especially crucial that members of the institutes of con-secrated life become active participants in the presynodal reflec-tion. As for the hierarchy, the apostolic pronuncio reminded the assembled bishops of the United States in November 1992 that every bishop has a special responsibility regarding consecrated religious life. Ultimately all active Catholics need to become involved because the church is as healthy as religious life is healthy. For if the Spirit's charismatic structuring of the church, represented in the ever fecund religious-life form, appears to be weakening or becoming attenuated, then the body of the church in all its members suffers. Such an interrelatedness is reflected in the Pauline principle about the Body of Christ, and church history provides the data of its reality. While special articles will highlight this synod preparation, Review for Religious through its usual wide variety of spiritual topics will continue to bring fresh understandings and applica-tions of spiritual legacies to our Christian life. We hope that our readers will find both light and strength for their spiritual growth in 1993 through the contributions of our many authors. I would like to draw your attention to a new name added to the listing of our Advisory Board members. Joann Wolski Conn, with her doctorate in theology, teaches in the Neumann College Graduate Program in Pastoral CounselinF and Spiritual Direction, a program which assists spiritual.directors to use four great tra-ditions (Franciscan, Ignatian, Carmelite, and Salesian) in their ministry. Her books, Women's Spirituality (1986) and Spirituality and Personal Maturity (1989), have been well received. In this very issue our readers will profit from her "Developmental View of Salesian Spirituality." We look forward t6 her contribution to our board discussions and decisions for the good health and progress of this journal. David LI Fleming SJ 37anuary-February 1993 5 DAVID J. NYGREN and MIRIAM D. UKERITIS The Religious Life Futures Project: Executive Summary feature In this Executive Summary we attempt to provide in as concise and understandable a form as possible the conceptual back-ground, methodological considerations, research findings, and major implications of the Religious Life Futures Project. VVe also recognize the range of interests and various needs of the many persons like yourself who bare expressed great interest in reading the results. With that in mind, the following description of the con-tents of the various sections may assist you in selecting the point at which you would prefer to begin your reading. Section I presents the purpose of this research project. Section H provides the theoretical perspective. This includes some background information on the concept of trans-formation as used in studying groups and organizations. It also David J. Nygren CM, an organizational psychologist, and Miriam D. Ukeritis csJ, a clinical psychologist, began work on this three-year study at Boston University in 1989 and completed it at De Paul University in Chicago in 1992. Nygren is now director of the Center for Applied Social Research and assistant professor of organizational psychology at De Paul University. Ukeritis is director of the Institute for Leadership of Religious Organizations at De Paul and a research associate in its Center for Applied Social Research. They may be addressed at De Paul University; Center for Applied Social Research; 2219 North Kenmore Avenue; Chicago, Illinois 60614. NOTE. This study in modified form was originally pub-lished in Origins 22, no. 15 (24 September 1992). 6 Review for Religious provides some information on the levels of change (social institution, congregational, and individual) considered in this project. Section III provides a description of each of the six research units and of the methodology for each of them and then offers summary find-ings. Results are presented in terms of the analysis described above. Section IV, "Conclusions: Shaping the Future, "presents the summary conclusions of the entire project. If you are interested in "bot-tom lines, "you may want to start your reading with this section. Some may wonder why we did not present this chapter first. When, in shar-ing our results with some groups, we began by presenting a summary of our findings, we were repeatedly asked, "Where/bow did you reach these conclusions?" Hence, in this executive summary, we begin at the begin-ning and work through to the conclusions. Subsequent publications of the results of this study will refer to these findings as The Future of Religious Orders in the United States (FO~U3). Table of Contents I. Introduction and Purpose .8. II. Theoretical Perspective . 9 A. The Concept of Transformation . 9 B. Levels of Change . 12 III. Research Units . 16 A. National Survey . 17 B. Leadership . 30 C. Visioning Groups . 35 D. Caring People . 38 E. Individual Interviews. . 40 E Theological/Historical Monograph .42 Conclusions: Shaping the Future .42 Acknowledgments . 51 References . 51 Bibliographical Notes . 52 January-February 1993 7 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project I. Introduction and Purpose The 30 years since the Second Vatican Council have been turbu-lent ones for Roman Catholic religious orders in the United States. The average age of the members of many congregations has increased to 67 years, while the number of religious has decreased approximately 45% for brothers and sisters and 27% for religious priests. Sevei'al "traditional" works, have been called into question while other works and other definitions of mission have arisen. The understanding of ways of living the vows ha~ changed substantially within many congregations. The distinction between religious life and the "laity" has also decreased considerably, with many "lay people" now developing some type of formal associa-tion with religious congregations and many religious identifying more clearly with lay people. How can such phenomena, which apply in many congrega-tions and across the traditional distinctioris of religious life (con-templative, monastic, mendicant, and apostolic), be best understood? How do individual religious and congregations expe-rience and understand the changes that have taken place in reli-gious life? What do these changes portend for the future of religious life? And, most important, what changes must yet occur if religious life is to remain a vital gift to the church into the next millennium? These were the questions with which we began the Religious Life Futures Project in 1989. Our own congregations, the Vincentian Fathers and Brothers and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, are but two of the hundreds of congregations that were seeking to transform their lives, ministries, and institutions. With the support of our respective congregations and with a gen-erous grant from Lilly Endowment, we designed a comprehensive study of religious orders in the United States. Basic Purpose of the Research Our purpose was to examine the changes that are occurring in the experience and the understanding of religious life. To accom-plish this end we embarked upon a project that would have as its outcomes: 1. identification of the norm~ative beliefs about religious life and how they will likely shape the future of religious life in this country. 2. building a national data base of all male and female religious 8 Review for Religious that includes current demographic data, membership informa-tion, existing and emerging structures, current member atti-tudes on multiple dimensions, and projections for the future. enabling the leadership of religious orders to identify the current paradigms of effective management of transformation, consol-idation, merging, or extinction. labeling the changes that must yet occur if religious life is to remain a vital social and theological gift to the church into the next millennium. In this summary we hope to indicate how the lives of 121,000 religious are reflected in the opinions of the more than 10,000 religious priests, sisters, and brothers who took time to share their ideas and beliefs with us through personal interviews, ques-tionnaires, workshops, and written communications. We worked from several assumptions: that only religious can describe their experience of faith as religious; that the sociological data we gath-ered would serve them in their own self-direction; that without significant change religious life in the United States will continue to decline an, d, more important, that those who most need the help of religious will not be cared for; and that the generosity and self-sacrifice still present in the lives of religious must be articulated for others if they are to consider following Jesus in this manner. The study sought the broadest possible input from leader-ship, membership, and those with unique perspectives to offer. These latter were persons identified by their peers as possessing vision about the future of religious life and/or possessing notable caring attributes. This summary combines all the results and shows what, after all these scientific undertakings, we believe will make a difference to individual religious, to the various congre-gations, and to their ministry. II. Theoretical Perspective A. Transformation "Transformation" is perhaps most familiar to Christians in Paul's call to "be transformed into Christ," but the dramatic change undergone by religious orders and organizations has expanded the meaning to include organizational considerations. In the organizational realm it refers to qualitative, discontinuous shifts in members' shared understandings of the organization, accompanied by changes in the organization's mission, strategy, January-February 1993 9 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project and formal and informal structures. In contrast to simple and gradual changes, organizations undergoing tranoCormation come to understand themselves and their: .missioh very differently from their original understanding. Studies of transformation focus on one or another level at which .the change occurs: either the industry or the social insti-tution considered as a whole, or a particular organization, or a part of one (individual persons). In contrast, we investigated issues related to change in religious life on all three levels: Religious life as a whole (the social institution). This inves-tigation revealed that, while congregations may differ in their expression of religious life by virtue of gender or tradition (apostolic, monastic, mendicant, or contem-plative), all groups share broad-based beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. ¯ The particular congregation (organization), namely, the 816 groups that participated in the survey. This survey investigated the shifting ways in which the groups expe-riencing transformation interpret a shared past, select value priorities, allocate resources, and assess mission opportunities. It also investigated the shifting metaphors and rituals which members use to express their beliefs and which draw them together with a shared sense of belonging. ¯ The individual (126,000 sisters, brothers, and priests). The study investigated the implications of transforma-tion for the individual members of religious congrega-tions. These three approaches enable a more complete understand-ing of how intercongregational, congregational, and individual experiences can affect each other and of how the various types of change can occur. A Model for the Process of Transformational Change Transformation usually begins with a crisis, an awareness that the understandings currently shared by the organization's mem-bers are no longer adequate. Several types of crisis may occur: performance may be poor, leadership transitions occur, some pow-erful subgroups' interests may no longer be served, management practices may no longer be successful, or, most typically, a major environmental shift may.confront the already existing interpretive schemes. The easiest response for the organization to take is to defend itself against the challenge and perhaps not to respond at 10 Review for Religious all. For transformation to begin, the experience of crisis must "unfreeze" the members' present understandings of the organi-zation by presenting a strong enough challenge to their validity. After unfreezing takes place or in conjunction with it, various individuals and groups begin developing alternative understand-ings. These lead to new types of action and most likely to changes in the structures of the organization. Moreover, the new types of actions that take place are likely to occur out-side the organization's traditional boundaries (for example, AT&T's work moved beyond telephones to include computers and other forms of communication as well); bound-aries are likely to break down. There is likely to be considerable conflict among the original and the developing interpretive schemes and the. subgroups espousing them. Groups that hold one particular new perspective, for example, are likely to find themselves in conflict with indi-viduals or groups that espouse the original perspective or a different new one. The conflict may take various forms: one perspective may clearly dominate various other perspectives and may stand aloof from them, or leaders may acknowledge the potential value of, and .thus encourage, interac-tion between several different perspectives. Leaders can have a strong impact on the outcome of the con-flict between perspectives. If they support only one perspective, they are likely to decrease the creativity of the transformational process and the active involvement of members whose perspectives are not taken into account. If they "separate out" the different perspectives, they are likely to perpetuate splits between the groups. If they enable conflicting perspectives to interact with each other, they will increase the chances of paradoxical trans-formations, of new and creative shared understandings that emerge from the interaction of the competing perspectives. The process of transformation is not affect-free. Rather, it is often paralyzing and disorienting and is experienced as a sequence In contrast to simple and gradual changes, organizations undergoing transformation come to understand themselves and their mission very differently from their original understanding. ~anuary-February 1993 11 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project of deaths and rebirths. Initially, various members' primary feelings are likely to include shock, defensiveness, loss, and anger. Throughout the development of new interpretive schemes, mem-bers will experience both ambiguity and confusion, not only when it is unclear that any satisfactory new understanding is develop-ing, but also when there are multiple potential perspectives. The conflict among subgroups will create additional tension. If and when a new synthesis is reached that people experience as acceptable, there is likely to be a sense of rightness and satisfac-tion, at least among members whose perspectives have been incor-porated. Summary Application of the Conceptual Model In this study we assume that religious life, congregations, and religious priests, brothers, and sisters are in the midst of a trans-formational process and that the new understandings of religious life held by significant numbers of members have not yet been fully developed. We also assume that the environmental change that most stimulated the transformation process was the new understandings of the church proclaimed during Vatican II and incorporated shortly afterward in documents directing religious congregations to begin the analysis and revision of their basic principles and practices. Presently, diverse, sometimes contradictory understandings of religious life have been developed among groups of religious. In addition, environmental forces that strongly support the devel-opment of particular understandings are present (for example, among the hierarchy and in various segments of the laity). How can the process to this point be best understood? What will hap-pen next in the transformational process? To what extent can leaders influence the transformation process? B. Levels of Change Change at the Level of the Social Institution The changes that have taken place generally in religious life have, of course, occurred in many different congregations. Schneiders's (1986) work describes a shared shift across many congregations--in the understanding of many of the components of religious life such as the vows and community. In addition, books suggesting that religious are meant to be "prophetic" or 12 Review for Religious "countercultural:' (for example, Woodward, 1987; Foley, 1988) are written to religi6us as a group, not to particular congrega-tions. Thus, the first level this study will consider is religious life as a shared entity across congregations. Shifts in understanding are frequently intertwined with shifts in structures, both formal and informal, and these structural shifts include not only new types of relationships and divisions among subgroups, but also the breakdown of formerly established orga-nizational boundaries. At the level of the universal church, Molinari and Gumpel (1987, p. 19) ask, "Is the consecrated way of life a structure in the church or a structure of the church?" The latter phrase implies only one structure of divine origin, namely the hierarchical one, while the former implies multiple divinely willed structures in the church. At the core of the dis-tinction is the degree to which the hierarchic structure governs the pneumatic components, the charismatic dimensions, of the church. Depending on the response to the question of one structure ¯ or many, structural diversity and change will occur in very dif-ferent ways. Many religious believe that their traditions repre-sent the pneumatic or charismatic dimension of the church that was evident in their founders and foundresses, and that these tra-ditions are better structured and controlled without the influence of the hierarchic structure. Areas for Investigation. In addition to the changes occurring within religious life in relation to the church, intercongregational structures have also been developing. We examined in a limited way intercongregatiofial changes such as mergers that are associ-ated with shifts in understanding or direction. What in particu-lar has happened to the boundaries separating religious from the diocesan clergy and from the laity? Change at the Level of lndividual Congregations Mthough some changes in understanding have been occur-ring across congregations in religious life as a "social institution," others have been occurring differently within different congre-gations. Moreover, many of the changes that have occurred across the board have been experienced by members of individual con-gregations as occurring within their own congregation more than in religious life as a whole. Thus, this study was concerned not only with changes in religious life generally, but also with changes occurring within specific congregations. .~anuary-Febrtmry 1993 13 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project For example, Bartunek (1984) described how the under-standing of the educational mission in one women's congregation shifted from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s. At the beginning of the change process, education was viewed as synonymous with activities that took place in schools the congregation adminis-tered. By the late 1970s, however, the educational mission was seen primarily as "seeking justice with the heart of an educator," which might or might not take place in formal educational set-tings, let alone schools the congregation administered. Beres and Musser (1987) have described how during that same period another congregation broadened its mission from particular areas of service to a general philosophy of service, with priorities shift-ing from the works of the congregation to the works of the con-gregation's individual members. Within religious congregations Nygren (1988) found that both male and female religious are adapting their structures and categories of membership to their emerging self-understanding. In a survey of 740 leaders of religious congregations, he found that 70% of the female leaders indicate that they are adapting their membership to include the full or partial membership of lay people. Among female congregations 18% of the total sur-veyed expect to amalgamate with another congregation, province, or monastery to adapt to internal changes. Correspondingly, 25 % of the male leaders anticipate altering membership categories, and 12% of them expect to amalgamate with another entity to adapt to change. These anticipated or accomplished changes affect both the existing members and the organization's self-definition. In one congregation studied by Bartunek (1984), members' shifts in understanding were intertwined with the development of several cross-province groups and commissions. They were also intertwined with the breakdown of formerly established exter-nal boundaries. Many congregational members started working with groups that had been clearly outside the original boundaries of the congregation. These structural changes eventually resulted in a merger of the U.S. provinces of the congregation. Areas for Investigation. How broadly applicable are the types of changes described above? What types of structural changes are occurring? What effects.do these changes have on the develop-ment of new understandings? Next, what are the processes through which new under-standings have be~n occurring? The model articulated above sug- 14 Review for Religious gests that change typically includes an initial experience of crisis, accompanied by strong feelings such as sadness, anger, and defen-siveness and followed by the development of differing under-standings on the part of various organizational subgroups. Feeli.ngs and reactions also accompany this stage: ambiguity and confu-sion about the possible understandings as well as conflict between groups. The introduction of the new Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, for instance, introduces legitimacy to a divergent opinion among religious leadership. When a new syn-thesis is reached, a sense of rightness occurs. If it fails to occur, more destructive dynamics may characterize the group's func-tioning. In addition, from which elements of the environment do members of a particular congregation receive messages or con-straints regarding appropriate (or publicly appropriate) self-under-standing? In particular, how do the hierarchical church and the laity have an impact? How do intercongregational groups and networks affect the development of understandings within the congregations that belong to these groups? Next, how has leadership been affecting the experienced changes in religious life? The role of leadership has been ana-lyzed !n detail for an understanding of how leaders contribute to the development or decline of organizations. Change at the Level of Individual Members of Congregations It is clear ~hat changes have not left individual members untouched. For example, Ebaugh (1977) showed that the changes had strong effects on why members of women's religious con-gregations left the congregation. Others have indicated that one of the typical effects of a transformational process is an increase in the stress level of individual members. This is due to the ambi-guity that accompanies the change and to conflict between sub-groups. There should be more to the experience of individual reli-gious, however, than difficult feelings. Bartunek and Ringuest (1987) found that members of a particular congregation whose work took them across the congregation's original boundaries during the early 1970s, and who remained in their congregation, eventually came to perceive themselves as more influential in the congregation than did members who continued to carry out tra-ditional works. January-February 1993 15 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project Thus, we are concerned not only with the change taking place on the congregational and intercongregational level, but also with the way various members of religious orders and particular sub-groups are experiencing the change. In addition, the differences between the experience of men and women religious may be rel-evant. We address two questions regarding this experience. Areas for Investigation. What has the experience of change been like for individual members of congregations? The model we have presented proposes that individual members of congrega-tions should experience a wide range of feelings during the change process. The departure of such a large percentage of religious has also had an impact on those who remain. Those who con-tinue to live the vocation to religious life surely have a unique perspective on their role and are rooted in a spirituality that sus-tains them. With this frame of transformation, then, we designed a .comprehensive assessment that could give us some measure of how change is occurring and affecting religious life at the level of the social institution, congregations, and individuals. III. Research Units The design of the Religious Life Futures Project contained six independent studies. They are described below. Figure 1 depicts the six research units, and a brief description of each unit follows. Figure 1 Religious Life Futures Project Research Units Hist/Theol Monograph Leadership S~udies Interview Survey Caring People Study Visioning Groups 16 Review for Religious The National Survey was a comprehensive questionnaire asking 9,999 religious sisters, brothers, and priests to express their beliefs and opinions about spirituality, motivation, services they provide, issues they consider to be negative or positive influences on the future of religious life, and various other matters of religious life in general and their orders in particular. The Leadership Studies were based on the recognition that leadership is a key factor in sustaining the life of any group. Investigations of leaders' views, of members' perceptions of their leaders, and of the competencies required ~or"~utstanding leadership were pursued in this research unit. The Caring People and Visioning Groups units of our project were constructed on the reason-able assumption that these subgroups could offer distinct perspectives. The caring people were identified by virtue of their exemplary car-ing for others, and participants, in the visioning-groups unit con-sisted of people nominated in virtue of their hopeful, positive, and compelling vision concerning the future of religious life. Individual Interviews, using a standard protocol, were pursued with persons identified as particularly knowledgeable about reli-gious life. These interviews probed for the interviewees' under-standings of the nature and purpose of religious life, of the challenges facing women and men religious at this time, and of the qualities required for leadership in the future. The Theological/Historical Monograph was commissioned to be written by Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, PhD, with a historical postscript by John W. Padberg SJ, PhD. Their material wi!l add perspective to the wealth of information collected, analyzed, and evaluated. The Religious Life Futures Project contained six independent studies. A. The National Survey Purpose and Method The purpose of the National Survey was to obtain informa-tion about members' attitudes and practices regarding religious life. Questions ranged from general demographics to patterns and attitudes about living arrangements and job satisfaction. The sur-vey also sought information regarding attitudes toward vows, var-ious aspects of religious life, spiritual growth, and future plans. .~anuary-Felrruary 1993 17 Nyffren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project Early in 1990 each major superior in the United States was contacted by letter with a request for a list of the names and addresses of their members. From the more than 121,000 names received, a stratified random-sample design selected the partici-pants for the survey. This random sample was stratified to ensure statistically valid comparisons according to tradition (apostolic, contemplative, mendicant, monastic) and vocation (sisters, broth-ers, religious priests). The 335-item questionnaire was mailed in October 1990 to the 9,999 religious priests, brothers, and sisters selected in this manner. With postcard and phone follow-ups, an overall response of 77.4% (7,736 responses) was obtained. The data base used for reporting results consists of 6,359 usable surveys. In the data anal-ysis, the responses were weighted to reflect population proportions of sisters, brothers, and religious priests and of apostolic, mendi-cant, monastic, and contemplative groups. All data were analyzed according to age groups that would reflect developmental stages (ages 19-45, 46-60, 61-73, 74-96). Data Analysis and Results The questions throughout the survey represented a broad range of topic categories. Initial principal-components factor anal-yses were conducted on a select number of the items in the sur-vey. Separate factor analyses were conducted for vocation (sister, brother, priest), tradition (apostolic, mendicant, contemplative, and monastic), and age group (19-45, 46-60, 61-73, and 74-96). The results of these analyses, presented in terms of level of analysis and grouped in meaningful clusters, appear in Table 1. As indicated, four major clusters of factors emerged on the level of the Social Institution: structures, innovations, restraints, and cred-ibility. The clusters of factors are listed on the chart and will be defined and discussed below; summary findings, too, will be pre-sented on the following pages. Social Institution: Structures The National Survey factors related to Structures include role clarity, permanent commitment, external authority, systemic change, and hierarchical alliance. Because of the significance of role-clarity findings in this study, we present an extended discus-sion of this issue and then a summary of the other factors. 18 Review for Religious Categorization of Factors Derived from the Religious Life Futures Project Table 1 Social Institution Congregation Individual STRUCTURES Role Clarity Permanent Commitment External Authority Systemic Change Hierarchical Alliance INNOVATIONS Diversity Expanding Lay Roles Greater Inclusion RESTRAINTS Cultural Threats CREDIBILITY Commitment to the Poor Anomie LEADERSHIP ' Spiritual Intensity Charisma/Individual Consideration Intellectual Stimulation/ Inspirational Laissez-Faire Active Management by Exception Contingent Reward DYNAMICS Community Living Involvement Influence Ongoing Development GUIDANCE Procedural Clarity Effects of Renewal Support of Sponsored Institutions SPIRITUALITY Oneness with God Intensified Spirituality Structured Prayer BELONGING Congregational Commitment Affiliation Intention to Remain ACTION Faithfulness to Vows Works of Mercy Role Clarity. Role clarity for religious is defined as "the indi-vidual's perceived level of understanding regarding his or her pur-pose and function within the current structure of the church." On this measure 55% of the sisters reported high role clarity, along with 65% of the brothers and 68% of the priests. More than 30% of the women reported low role clarity, indicating a lack of understanding or clarity regarding their role in the church today. The discussion of leadership issues related to the National Survey may be found in the section which fbcuses exclusively on this topic. ffanuary-Felr~utry 1993 19 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Projea Considering the data by tradition, we find 77% of the con-templatives and 64% of the monastics reporting high role clarity while only 59% of the apostolic and mendicant religious indi-cated they have a clear understanding of their role. Role clarity may be proportionately greater in the future, for, while only 52% of the youngest members reported high role clarity, 71% of the oldest did so. This finding parallels research that finds in many professions greater role clarity among those who have been in the profession for a longer time. Interestingly, the more highly educated members of religious congregations experience lower role clarity as religious. In terms of the fields of study, religious in the more applied disciplines such as business, education, and health care were less clear about their role as religious in the church than religious whose training is in the more theoretical disciplines such as theology, the human-ities, and the social sciences. The role demands of health-care providers or educators may present pressures that replace or com-pete with, rather than complement, the current role of religious in the church. Other research has demonstrated that ambiguity regarding role can, in general, lead to anxiety, reduced ability to meet role requirements, decreased ministerial satisfaction, lower trust and self-confidence, increased sense of futility, and greater propen-sity to leave a religious order. The lack of role clarity that a high percentage of religious experience may contribute to still more decline in the numbers of religious. There may also be some con-nection between the equal number of women and men entering religious life now (in contrast to women's former, three-times-greater number) and the greater number of women now experi-encing low role clarity. Taken together, this data signals the essential need for role clarity if religious orders in the United States are to be revitalized. Permanent Commitment. In responding to questions related to the normativeness of a lifelong commitment for religious life, all groups (considered by vocation, by tradition, and by age) reg-istered barely moderate agreement. On a scale wher~ 1 repre-sents "strongly disagree," 3 represents "neither agree nor disagree," and 5 represents "strongly agree," the group means ran between 3.1 and 3.5 on the matter of their agreeme.nt that permanent commitment is the norm. External Authority. All respondents tended to disagree that 20 Review for Religious reliance on external authority would influence the future of reli-gious life favorably. There was a general rejection of seeking input regarding thought, opinion, or behavior from outside sources such as church or group authority, indicated by the fact that, on the five-point scale described above, means for all groups were between 2.5 and 3.1. Systemic Change. Sisters, brothers, and religious priests experienced little connection between their work for sys-temic change (defined as "efforts to influence the social and political struc-tures which tend to discriminate against disadvantaged persons") and their per-sonal and spiritual fulfilhnent. All means were greater than 3.0 and less than 3.4. This did not change when considered by age groups or tradition. Hierarchical Alliance. The cluster of items that reflect a positive relationship between the hierarchy and religious or a positive attitude regarding the church's hierarchy and magiste-rial authority was not typically rated highly by religious. The more highly educated members of religious congregations experience lower role clarity as religious. Social Institution: Innovations The National Survey included items measuring participants' responses to trends in religious life that introduce greater diver-sity into community living. Items inquired about the conscious inclusion of persons who have declared their homosexual orien-tation, about the comfort level of minority-group members as perceived by members-at-large, and about the impact of includ-ing lay associate members. Admitting Homosexual Persons. Survey participants were asked to respond to this statement: "Declaring a homosexual orientation would not exclude an individual from being admitted to my con-gregation." Sixty-four percent (64%) of all respondents indicated either agreement with the statement or uncertainty. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagreed. Considering the data by vocation, only 16% of sisters agreed with the statement, and nearly 50% expressed uncertainty. This was significantly different from the responses of religious priests and brothers. Agreement of religious priests registered at 43 %, January-February 1993 21 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project with 22% uncertain. Thirty-five percent (35%) of the brothers agreed, with 25% uncertain. Among the four traditions, 53% of contemplatives indicated disagreement, im:plying the least expectation that persons declar-ing a homosexual orientation would be admitted to their con-gregations. "Agree," "uncertain," and "disagree" percentages were rather evenly split among the other traditions. Among monastics the greatest percentage (39%) agreed. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of the members of apostolic groups (again the greatest percentage) indicated uncertainty regarding admission of candidates with a known homosexual orientation. Considering the data by age, 45% of the members under 45 expressed their belief that a person with a homosexual orientation would be admitted to their congregation. Forty-three percent (43 %) of the oldest age group felt that homosexual persons would not be admitted, and 46% of the same age group expressed their uncertainty. Members of Minority Groups. When asked to respond to this statement, "Members of minority groups may feel uneasy in my congregation," the sentiment among religious in general is fairly well split: 36% agree; 22% are uncertain, and 42% disagree. This response pattern reflected the response pattern of the sisters, the brothers, and the religious priests considered separately and also of the apostolic, the mendicant, and the monastic religious con-sidered separately. But 52 % of contemplatives disagreed with the statement, while 27% agreed. Analysis by age reveals the greatest differences. Fifty-two per-cent (52 %) of the youngest group and 44% of the next age group (46-60 years) indicated their belief that members of minority groups would feel uneasy. In contrast, half of the 61-to-73 age group and 53% of the oldest group did not believe minority-group members would feel uneasy in their orders. At present, less than 10% of the members of religious orders in the United States are members of minority groups even though, in the near future, 50% of the U.S. Catholic population will be Hispanic. The real-ity of multiculturalism must be addressed by religious orders. Lay Associates. In response to this statement, "Inclusion of lay associates as members of my congregation may undermine what it means to be a member of my congregation," only 16% of the respondents agreed; 65% clearly disagreed. Lay associates, includ-ing members of the opposite sex and married couples, appear to 22 Review for Religious have widespread acceptance among religious. In general, religious reported little concern about having lay associates as members of their congregation and about the effect their presence may have on the meaning of membership in it. Other Factors. When asked to rate the impact that expanded lay roles in church ministry, feminist thought, the ordination of women, and the inclusion of married persons would have on reli-gious communities, respondents of all groups consistently indi-cated their belief that these situations and possibilities would have little effect if any. Social Institution: Restraints Respondents were invited to rate (on a five-point Likert scale where 1 represents "not at all" and 5 represents "extremely") aspects of contemporary American culture such as capitalism, technology, and affluence in terms of their potential threat to the future of religious life. Data analysis by age and tradition shows that religious view them as minimal threats. Considering the data by vocation, sisters indicated a greater (but not high) concern regarding the impact of cultural realities than did brothers and religious priests. Social Institution: Credibility The "credibility" cluster consisted in working with the poor and anomie. Commitment to the Poor. To measure a member's stated com-mitment to work personally with the poor, survey participants were asked to respond to this statement: "Although there is in.creasing talk about working with the poor, I feel little commit-ment to that." Mean scores for all vocations, traditions, and age groups did not exceed 3.5. (Sisters, members of apostolic groups, and religious in the 19-45 age group yielded the highest means in their groupings.) Thus, members of congregations express little commitment to participate in an activity which has increasingly become a value espoused by many congregations and, quite explic-itly, by the church. These findings suggest that the greatest commitment to work with the poor would be found in a young sister in an apostolic congregation. This group currently shows the least tendency to increase in size. Anomie, defined as a state in which normative standards of January-Felrruary 1993 23 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Reli~ous Life Futures Project conduct and belief are weak or lacking, is characterized by dis-orientation, anxiety, and isolation. Loss of conviction about the vows, lack of clarity about the role of religious, reactance to authority, lack of a corporate mission and ministry, and disillu-sionment with leadership pose significant threats to the future of religious life. The mean scores for all groups were greater than 3.5. These concerns increased with age. Congregational Level." Leadership The National Survey used specifically designed items related to qualities of spiritual leadership along with Bass's leadership scale to assess members' perceptions of their leaders. So that all leadership studies may be reported together, these findings are incorporated into Section III B, Leadership. Congregational Level." Dynamics The National Survey .also measured several factors affecting community living, including involvement, influence, and satis-faction with opportunities for ongoing development. Involvement and Influence. Involvement is defined as "the expe-rience of having, and the desire to be engaged in, activities related to the life of one's congregation"; influence, as "the experience of having and the desire to have some impact regarding the deci-sions and future of one's congregation." On a scale where 1 rep-resents "strongly disagree" and 5 represents "strongly agree," agreement regarding involvement in congregational activities was high (ranging from 3.9 to 4.0.), with nearly the same means across the three vocations (sister, brother, religious priest). Levels of perceived influence wei-e significantly lower, with means ranging from 3.2 to 3.0. Vv-hen the factors of involvement and influence were considered by tradition, the range was the same. Considering the data by age, interesting patterns surfaced. The youngest group had the lowest mean for influence and the highest mean for involvement. The 74-96 age group, in contrast to the 19-45 group, had the highest mean for influence and the lowest for involvement. A consistent pattern did emerge: The members' perceived or desired level of influence in their congregation is consistently lower than their experience or desire of involvement in it. This raises serious questions that touch on group-commitment and ownership issues. 24 Review for Religious Ongoing Development. Respondents' satisfaction with oppor-tunities for ongoing development through education and forma-tion, rated on a scale of 1 ("very dissatisfied") to 5 ("very satisfied"), averaged about 4.0. In general, the high levels of sat-isfaction and the high expectations that possibly accompany that satisfaction may encounter significant frustrations or difficult choices when, as is likely in most congregations, they encounter decliriing revenue and personnel. Congregational Level: Guidance The National Survey also investigated the degree to which a congregation's policies and structures promote the effective func-tioning of the group. Procedural clarity, effects of the renewal process, and members' willingness to support sponsored institu-tions are the focal points for addressing this question. Procedural Clarity. Analyzed by vocation, tradition, and age, religious indicated a moderate level of satisfaction with the clar-ity of their congregation's policies, and procedures. The group means ranged from 3.5 to 3.9. With the scale ranging from 1 ("strongly disagree") to 5 ("strongly agree"), it is fair to say that members do not experience an.overwhelming sense of clarity con-cerning their congregation's policies and procedures. Effects of Renewal, Thirty years ago the Second Vatican Council directed religious orders to examine their structures and update themselves. A return to the spirit of the founder was identified as a critical part of this renewal process. Members' assessments of their congregation's efforts and success in remaining faithful to the founding charism or in maintaining the prophetic character of religious life reflect once again only a moderate level of agree-ment. Across age groups the highest rating (the mean was 3.8) reflected the assessment of the 61-to-73-year-olds. Significantly, this was the group that provided most of the leadership during the past 30 years. The youngest group expressed the lowest satisfac-tion. There were no differences between the various traditions in their ratings of the effectiveness of renewal efforts. Support of Sponsored Institutions. In an effort to assess the com-mitment of members to their congregation's institutional com-mitments, respondents were asked to indicate their willingness to work in an institution sponsored by their congregation and their willingness to live in such an institution. Overall, 93% of the religious responding to the survey January-February 1993 25 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project answered yes regarding their willingness to work there. This rep-resents 94% of the religious priests and brothers and 92% of the sisters who responded. A smaller but still sizable percentage (88%) indicated their willingness to live at an institution sponsored by the congregation; this figure represents 84% of the sisters, 91% of the brothers, and 92% of the priests. ~'hese results present the opportunity to leaders, congrega-tional planners, and institutional decision makers to consider the availability and willingness of members of religious organizations and to direct their efforts toward a corporate mission. The empha-si~ on individual ministries that has evolved in recent years may now be shifting or open to reconsideration by members. Individual Level: Spirituality Spirituality was considered in terms of the experience of a sense of oneness or harmony with God, the degree of increased spiritual intensity, and the value of structured prayer to personal and spiritual fulfillment. Oneness with God. M1 religious report a moderately high level of agreement on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 represents "not at all" and 5 represents "frequently if not always") to questions assessing a sense of oneness with God. Sisters and contempla-tives score highest. Not surprisingly, this sense appears to deepen with age insofar as mean scores for age groups increased as age increased. Intensified Spirituality. The survey also measured changes in spirituality in terms of the degree to which respondents reported finding greater value in religious life and having deeper belief in Jesus Christ and deeper appreciation of the value of prayer since the time of their first profession of vows. While sisters, contemplatives, and members of the 74-96 age group reported the greatest levels of intensified spirituality, the other groups reflected high levels. StTv~ctnred Prayer. The degree to which structured prayer ex~)e-riences such as common prayer, an annual retreat, confession, and devotion to Mary were reported to be a source of spiritual and personal fulfillment was also measured on a five-point scale. Considered by vocation (si~ters, brothers, priests), all resporidents registered agreement beyond a level of 4. I. Consistent with their tradition, contemplatives had the highest mean of the tradition groupings in reporting structured prayer to be a very valuable 26 Review for Religious contributor. The experience of structured prayer as spiritually and personally fulfilling increased with age. Individual Level'. Belonging The National Survey measured individuals' commitment to their congregation as well as affiliation and the intention to remain. Commitment to Congregation. All traditions, vocations, and age groups reported moderately high to very high levels of congre-gational commitment. Not surpris-ingly, levels of agreement steadily increased with the respondents' ages. Affiliation. As was the case for commitment to the congregation, all groups (vocation, tradition, and age) were strong in their agreement with items indicative of high affiliation. Sisters, contemplatives, and members of the oldest age group had the high-est means in their respective cate-gories. Intention to Remain. Members of all groups (considered by age, voca-tion, and tradition) expressed--at or beyond the 4.2 level on the five-point "strongly disagree/strongly agree" scale--agreement with items related to their intention to remain in their congregation. This high degree of durability may be viewed both as cause for celebration and as cause for concern. Religious women report chastity as most meaningful and least difficult, while men report chastity as most difficult and least meaningful. Individual Levek Actions The National Survey also measured respondents' manifesta-tion of belief through their fidelity to vows and works of mercy. Faithfulness to Vows. Self-ratings regarding faithfulness to their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, when analyzed by voca-tion, tradition, and age, ranged between 3.7 and 4.1. Because the purpose of this study was not to delve into the details of behav-iors of religious women and men as they relate to observance of their vows, the research asked only for individual self-reports of fidelity to each vow. Of greater concern in this investigation were those individual that were related to persons who do or do not perceive themselves as faithful. January-February 1993 27 Nyg~ren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project Regarding practice of the vows, the researchers learned that religious women report chastity as most meaningful and least dif-ficult, while men report chastity as most difficult and least mean-ingful. In a ranking of difficulty, obedience emerges as more difficult for women than for men. Works of Mercy. The belief that direct action to help the sick or poor made a somewhat valuable contribution to their spiritual and personal fulfillment was registered most strongly by religious priests and sisters. Considering the data by tradition, members of the mendicant and apostolic groups reported that their practice of the works of mercy was somewhat valuable to their personal and spiritual fulfillment. Monastic religious experienced such works as less valuable, and contemplatives, perhaps as a function of their lifestyle, experienced them as least helpful. Factor Conclusions: Social Institution The social institution of religious life in the United States continues to reflect the dynamics of an organization in signifi-cant transition. The lack of role clarity for a large percentage of religious and the ambivalence regarding permanent commitment to the classic vows leave the social institution vulnerable to innu-merable other social and cultural forces. The results would indi-cate that the population of religious in general is moving toward a much more permeable system of membership, commitment, autonomy, and inclusion. While on the one hand this reinforces innovation that includes diversity and broadened assumptions about religious life, the research also indicates that religious do not see how clearly they are influenced by cultural assimilation. Likewise, the credibility of many religious may be lessened in the eyes of those they serve and in the society in which they func-tion because of the discrepancies between their espoused values and their practice. By their own admission, religious see indif-ference and a lack of passion to be a major threat to themselves as persons and to religious life overall in relation to other social sys-tems in society. Factor Conclusions: Congregation Leadership is a critical force for the clarification of the role identity of religious in the United States. Within congregations, 2 8 Review for Religious particularly among women, there exists a fair degree of satisfac-tion with leadership. The hidden side of the satisfaction is that it may signal complaisance among members who at the same time find it difficult to influence the direction of the congregation. For many, the congregation lacks a coherent approach to col-lective action, particularly regarding sponsored institu-tions. In addition, the efforts at renewal have not met indi-vidual hopes. Community life continues to engage mem-bers, and they feel deeply committed to congregational life, willing to be more involved than they currently are, but also feel less influen-tial with leadership in the matter of setting the direction of the congregation. The high need for affiliation noted in the survey results may, in fact, stifle the creativity necessary to move groups into the future. Leadership is a critical force for the clarification of the role identity of religious in the United States. Factor Conclusions: Individual A facet of the research that addresses optimistically the lack of role clarity for many religious is the data that suggests how important spirituality and a vital relationship with God really are for many of them. Structured prayer, however varied the forms, continues to be a value. Individuals feel genuinely called by God to religious life and see an intensified spirituality as desirable. They are personally committed strongly to the community, they derive satisfaction from belonging, and most intend to remain in religious life. It is fair to say that the data indicates a stronger ecclesiology than Christology. Individuals emphasize participation in the life of the church and community as foundational to their spirituality. Their relationship to the person of Christ is less clearly drawn, perhaps because of the design of the study itself or maybe because of shifting language schemes to describe one's spirituality. What is clear from the research is that their spirituality will define their uniqueness in the church and their belonging will satisfy their affiliative needs. January-February 1993 29 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project The data suggests also that, if religious experience difficulty, it has to do with the impact of the vows on their life and with their fidelity to the vows. The personal sacrifice that has been the foundation of the vowed life has found support in the effect it has had on the mission of the congregation and the church. Profound shifts have occurred in the interpretation of the vows and the willingness to live them. More fluid interpretations of poverty, obedience, and chastity are widely observed. In addition, some religious describe new vows--of ecology, for instance--as descriptive of the future. Personal understandings of religious life and the commitment required to live the life are very broad. This results in part from lack of role clarity and from the vast cultural shifts in American society that have had a significant influence on religious life. Most religious would see some return to normative behavior as neces-sary, but they are reluctant to do so if that means returning to the sect-like distinction of religious life of the past. B. Leadership The recognition and identification of leadership as a critical factor in the transformation of religious orders prompted the investigation of leadership from many perspectives. These included: 1. a series of regional gatherings attended by 192 leaders of religious congregations; 2. members'oat-large perceptions of their leaders through the National Survey; 3. a separate "Leadership-Competency Assessment of Leaders of Religious Orders" with personality psycholo-gist David McClelland PhD. One of the first issues to surface during the course of the Religious Life Futures Project was the urgency of selecting and training leaders who not only can manage the complexity of reli-gious life that is predicted to intensify during the next 10 years, but also can focus the attention of their communities on a vision that will unite individual efforts inspired by the mission of their founder or foundress. The most striking weakness among cur-rent leaders is their inability to formulate a strategy to achieve a purpose or mission. Also of concern was the increasingly widespread use of con- 30 Review for Religious sensual processes and team leadership. The findings indicate that, while potentially effective, such approaches can often lead to mediocre management, representing the least common denomi-nator within an organization. Uninformed implementation of consensual methods often paralyzes the visionary leader. Leadership Workshops At the Leadership Workshops the participants were asked to write, in the form of a letter to their members, their vision for the future of their congregation, of the people whom their congre-gation serves, and of religious life in general. A content analysis of these "letters" yielded four categories of leadership: Value-based leaders expressed a sense of direction for their con-gregations or themselves in terms of the conceptual and cultural aspects of religious life. They were able to give expression to their values, but were unable to ide.ntify strategies to actualize them. For example, the author of one letter expressed concern about the environment, but only vaguely proposed that the congregation become involved in recycling. A letter simply urging the eradi-cation of "oppressive structures" without any suggested imple-mentation illustrates another value stated without a strategy. Visionary leaders, on the other hand, expressed a sense of direc-tion in terms of the structural and organizational aspects of reli-gious. life. The articulation of a strategy to accomplish their vision marks the difference between visionary and value-based leaders. One of the letters, besides proposing a new form of community in which nonvowed members would participate in governance, named specific guidelines and thus coupled a vision with a strat-egy. Conflicted leaders were unable to address change and often expressed frustration, anger, sadness, and even despair. These feelings were frequently directed toward members of the con-gregations. One such leader wrote, "It seems to me that some of our religious are unconcerned. They seem to have lost the orig-inal enthusiasm for their religious calling. Life has become drudgery for them, and membership in our congregation is a bur-den. Nothing we do or try to do seems to change this picture, and it is of great concern to me." Incognizant leaders, those who are unconscious or unaware of major issues facing their orders, failed to address any of the con- January-Felrruary 1993 31 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project cerns facing their congregations or the church. For example, one leader wrote, "There is no secular history/profane history; there is only sacred history. God is present in everything and in all. God journeys with us, with all people. God is the force, the life, the purpose behind everything and everyone." The researchers note that, while God is ultimately the means and the end of reli-gious life and leadership itself, incognizant leaders do not realize their role in enabling the action of God. From these workshops, the researchers concluded that there is often a gulf between the responsibilities of the office and the abilities some leaders bring to it. In many cases, leaders lack the necessary competencies or training to function effectively. Members' Perceptions of Leadership from the National Survey The National Survey measured members' perceptions of their leaders, using a measure of leaders' spiritual intensity and Bass's transformational and transactional leadership scales. The spiri-tual intensity of their leaders is rated highly by both men and wbmen. Both female and male religious expressed a slighdy higher degree of satisfaction with individual leaders than with leader-ship teams. Women were generally more satisfied with their lead-ership than men were. The survey measured the degree to which members viewed their leaders as transformational and transactional. Transforma-tional leaders provide vision and a sense of mission while instill-ing pride and gaining respect and trust. Transactional leaders focus on administrative and operational details. Typically, trans-actional leaders orient subordinates toward achieving goals by monitoring their performance, rewarding their accomplishments, and taking corrective action when necessary. Sometimes they abdicate responsibilities and avoid decision making. Both women and men tend to consider their leaders to be transformational people who embody charisma and individual consideration as well as intellectual stimulation and inspiration. On a scale where 1 represents "almost never" and 5 represents "frequently if not always," sisters' mean ratings of their leaders on charisma and intellectual stimulation were 3.67 and 3.57, respec-tively. Conversely, male religious consistently rate their leaders higher on transactional qualities, contingent reward (brothers' mean was 1.78; priests' mean was 1.70) and active management by exception (brothers' mean was 2.38; priests' mean was.2.26), than 32 Review.for Religious do female religious (contingent-reward mean was 1.62; manage-ment- by-exception mean was 2.06). The findings showed that, while spiritual intensity was the most frequently observed behavior of all outstanding leaders, charisma or individual consideration of members was the most significant predictor of satisfaction with an individual leader or a leadership team. Leadership Competency Study This research unit assessed systematically the competencies required for outstanding leadership. The model of competency assessment developed by McClelland and associates at McBer & Co. was employed. It began with the convening of a panel of experts to assist in identifying a criterion group of 24 present or former leaders of religious congregations regarded by their peers as "outstanding." Using the "Behavioral Event Interview" (BEI) method also devel-oped by McClelland, the research team interviewed this group of 12 women and 12 men. Similar interviews were conducted with a control group of 15 "typical" leaders (11 women and 4 men) matched with the criterion group for age, gender, tradition, size of congregation, and length of tenure. These interviews were then transcribed and coded by two separate raters for leadership competencies. Analysis of the data revealed that outstanding and typical lead-ers share certain "threshold competencies," including an ability to articulate the mission of their congregations, an inclination to act efficiently, basic conceptual and analytical skills, self-confi-dence, and avoidance of impulsive or emotional expression. These can be regarded as foundational competencies for leaders of reli-gious orders. Outstanding leaders, however, were found to differ from typ-ical leaders in several significant ways. For instance, outstanding leaders expressed, nearly three times as often as did typical lead-ers, a desire to perform tasks well or better than they had been performed in the past. They stated more than twice as often as typical leaders that they wanted to find new ways to achieve goals and to make things better for the people their order serves. Approximately 65% of the outstanding leaders mentioned taking initiative to deal with anticipated problems at least five times. Only 22 % of typical leaders referred that often to taking such actions. January-February 1993 33 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project Outstanding male leaders are more likely to start projects dealing with problems anticipated in the coming years than are typical male leaders and female leaders in general. The study also found that outstanding leaders were signifi-cantly more likely than typical leaders to mention using their power to influence group decisions or behavior; to build consen-sus and team spirit by soliciting the views of others; to attempt to see issues from different perspectives; and to draw on divine assis-tance in their leadership roles. Conversely, typical leaders were more inclined than outstand-ing leaders to mention that they had threatened sanctions to control the behavior of subordinates; had acted out of formal authority, not by building consensus; and had involved themselves with the per-sonal problems of individual mem-bers as opposed to the problems of the entire congregation. Typical leaders seldom refer to God in their leadership activity. The study' also found differ-ences between outstanding men and outstanding women leaders. Outstanding men appeared more likely than outstanding wo~nen to have begun new projects; to have acted assertively; to have offered more opinion, s, particularly negative ones, to subordi-nates; to have developed the leadership capacity of others; and to have experienced the benefit of God's support. The outstanding women, on the other hand, appeared more likely to have focused on consensus building; to have pointed to the spiritual significance of events; and to have positive expecta-tions of others and of religious life in general. The leadership-competency assessment revealed that out-standing male leaders are more likely to start projects dealing with problems anticipated in the coming years than are typical male leaders and female leaders in general. Neither ?utstanding nor typical female leaders appear to initiate such projects. While all male leaders report more behavior that threatens members with termination of an assignment or with dismissal from a con-gregation than do female leaders, this is strikingly true of typical male leaders. Outstanding female leaders behave in this manner more frequently than their typical counterparts. This suggests the desirability of a moderate use of sanctions. 34 Review for Religious C. Visioning Groups Recognizing that various groups of members could offer distinct perspectives, the study was to include the views of persons who could provide specifically clear opinions regarding the future of religious orders. Individuals identified as future oriented yet rooted in their order's charism were invited to participate in one of four Visioning Groups. This research unit was conducted through a series of weekend gatherings. The aim was to learn about the personality characteristics and beliefs of the individu-als and to develop strategies and agendas that could implement the visionaries' images of the future of religious life. Their prospec-tive views would also be compared with those of both leaders and members-at-large of religious orders. Selection of Participants Subjects for the Visioning Groups were recruited through a nomination process that began with a letter sent to the major superiors of 550 randomly selected congregations. The superi-ors were asked to consult with their councils, similar groups of advisors, or members-at-large to nominate one member of their order to participate in a group experience. Criteria for selection asked that the nominee be a person of vision who is recognized for his or her ability to live the charism of the congregation in today's society and that the nominee be able to articulate a sense of hope and a belief in the future of religious life. A total of 92 religious-- 48 women and 44 men (12 brothers and 32 priests)--participated in the Visioning Groups' gatherings. "The Dilemma": Affiliation vs. Transformation One of the most significant findings of the Visioning Group workshops emerged from an exercise conducted during the course of each gathering. Participants were organized randomly into groups of three or four people and given the task of identifying those elements critical to the future of religious life. After a period of private reflection, participants were asked to gather in their assigned groups and share the results of their reflections. Each of these groups then joined another, resulting in groups of 6 to 8. They continued the conversation and were then asked to con-struct an image or metaphor that captured visually and graphically the components they considered essential to a future vision of religious life. The results of their work included such images as a January-February 1993 35 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project kaleidoscope, a prism, a jazz band, a symphony orchestra, and the spiral of unitive consciousness. After all groups in a session had ~'eported and presented their images of the future of religious life, each person was asked to consider all the models and to stand near the one he or she found most compelling in terms of a future vision. Participants were asked to base their choice on their willingness to make a personal commitment and to devote their energy to realizing that future vision. This request invariably created a dilemma for the partici-pants. Preferring a model designed by another group produced in most individuals a sense of guilt, of betrayal and abandonment of the group with which they had worked to produce an image. This process replicated the dilemma which many members of congregations experience in wanting to be involved in actualizing a compelling vision of the future, but desiring also to maintain existing relational bonds. While this sense of loyalty or affilia-tion that inhibits change is not unique to religious groups, it does represent a critical factor in groups moving toward changing the future. Affiliation is generally stronger than vision. This tension is particularly important to consider in light of the National Survey's finding that members of religious orders experience a particularly high need for affiliation. This dynamic is an important challenge for religious leaders. Visioning Groups Conclusions: Social Institution Revitalized religious life, rooted in Jesus Christ and the gospel's values, will manifest that spirit in the world by challeng-ing systems that oppress others, by living in visible simplicity, and by renewing congregations' fidelity to their founding pur-pose. The visioning groups view authority as power that is shared among communities of equals. This perception, however, may level the traditional notions of the vow of obedience and bring more democratic ideals into the classical traditions of religious life. Viewing the global community as the locus of redemption, sisters, brothers, and religious priests will face alterations in prayer, expanding their language for a greater inclusivity. They will choose to share in the world's suffering and will shift away from the rigidity of regional and juridical thinking. Members of reli- 36 Review for Religious gious orders will express their relationship with Jesus in the con-text of belonging, in shared symbolic life, and possibly in a shift in primary language. The dominant language of religious life has shifted from theological constructs to social and psychological paradigms. Many religious no longer use sacramental or tran-scendental frames of reference to describe their experience of God. Multiculturalism as normative is desirable, but confronting the personal and systemic racism that marks our society and reli-gious orders could be the single greatest challenge in the area of membership. Conclusions: Congregation Religious congregations ought to provide opportunities for structural expressions of emerging forms of religious life. To do so, they will have to discern the contemporary expression of their founder's charism, redefine or reestablish boundaries for mem-bership and behavior, and confront the discrepancies between espoused and lived values. The images (discussed above) of a future vision of religious life that were constructed by small teams were efforts to isolate and highlight a particular manifestation of a charism, not as an end in itself but to show a possible direction for the congregation to move in. At present, such efforts to regain the founding spirit are often viewed by the majority of members as marginal. When those who may have the vision are pressured to conform to the group, revitalization may be undermined. Conclusions: Individual Individuals within religious orders will shift from an internal to a global focus. They will need to acquire new interpersonal skills and an ability to cope with moving from stability and secu-rity to change and risk that lead to a more clearly focused mission. Challenging a culture that has supported privatism and indi-vidualism, members of religious congregations will need to reex-amine nonnegotiables. Relinquishing many previously held tenets, they will respond to the call of serving absolute human need in the spirit of their founder. New members must demonstrate the maturity to live a life of sacrifice, must possess or acquire the skills for leadership posi- .~anuary-Fetrruary 1993 37 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Reh~ious Life Futures Project tions in global and church communities, and must be able to sus-tain intimate relationships in the context of a celibate commit-ment. Current members, too, who continue to belong to religious congregations will need these skills and qualities and must prepare to live in communities that require them. D. Caring People The Caring People unit studied the characteristics of persons identified by members of their congregations as "uniquely car-ing" or "unusually helpful, thoughtful, understanding, or caring persons." All selected subjects received mailed packets that included a cover letter, a six-picture story exercise (projective technique), the National Survey questionnaire, and a variety of open-ended and short-answer measures. Because traditional question-and-answer research does not easily permit the study of unconscious motives, open-ended (projective) techniques were used to study the motive structures of these persons. This approach was espe-cially important because much research about traits and behavior typically depends on self-reports which introduce the possibility of bias in the direction of socially acceptable responses. In other words, what might have been measured in other studies was the need for consistency of self-image, not necessarily the subject's willingness to go to the assistance of a needy person. By coding responses to some open-ended questions, we were able to con-struct a profile of caring people. Findings The Caring People study found that, in contrast to typical religious, religious who are perceived as unusually helpful, under-standing, and caring feel closer to and more trusting of God, who is seen as the source of healing and care. On projective measures, caring religious score higher in trust and lower in mistrust than typical sisters, brothers, and priests and tend to portray authority as benevolent. Caring religious con-nect divine assistance, in contrast to individual effort, with heal-ing experiences. They are less self-controlling and more spontaneously inclined to generosity. Caring people state that they often find the experience of contemplative prayer very valuable. They also demonstrate a 3 8 Review for Religious greater interpersonal involvement in caring experiences. Caring religious describe these relationships as growing and mutual and as containing a wider meaning or significance beyond the imme-diate relationship. Finally, these religious experience more joy in caring and more zest for living. This contrasts with typical religious, who describe caring for others in tension-reduction terms. That is, typical religious report their caring as a response to a need in themselves such as caring out of duty or as a repayment, or car-ing in response to special needs such as the illness, rejection, or trauma of other people. Presence of God This research suggests that, for caring religious, helping is not simply a transaction between two people. There is a third force in the relationship that .might most generally be called a "benevolent authority" or, more simply, God. The caring reli-gious stays in close touch with God and wants to share this behev-olent authority with others. When encountering a person in need, the goal of the caring religious is not primarily to relieve his or her suffering, but to create a three-way relationship in which Jesus and the gospel's values are deeply involved. Helpers of this type do not see themselves as agents in the process; at most they are partners with or assistants to the real source of helping. They do not feel ultimately responsible. For this reason and also because the helping is in itself joyous, caring religious do not as readily "burn out." This description also explains why caring religious who are so motivated are perceived to be helpful rather than manipulative. Because they so obviously believe that of themselves they can do nothing and because they want to establish a mutually rewarding i'elationship, caring religious are not perceived as egoistically threatening the self-esteem, interpersonal power, or indepen-dence of others. To the extent that responding to absolute human need is embraced anew as the ultimate mission of religious congrega-tions, the formation and development of this motive for religious life is clearly essential. Caring People Conclusions: Social Institution This part of the research effort assumes that a fundamental ffanuary-Felrruary 1993 39 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project component of the role identity of religious is their call to care for others. It also assumes the motive of desire for oneness with God. Perhaps the future of religious life will be defined increas-ingly by these attributes or actions on behalf of others that medi-ate the presence of God. Caring religious live an operative Christology that is simultaneously immanent and transcendent. Conclusions: Congregation The Caring People study suggests that the heart of congre-gational life is the life of Jesus Christ in the gospel. The imme-diacy of the presence of the caring person to another is possible because of this effort to mediate God, whom they see as a benev-olent authority and the source of their action. Conclusions: Individual The focus of individual formation must be increasingly spir-itual. This research would indicate that those who learn to be authentically caring are inclined spontaneously to generosity, are trusting, and are aware that God acts in and through them. This level of freedom requires viewing God as a benevolent authority in whose name one acts as mediator. E. Individual Interviews Using a standard protocol developed for use in the Individual Interviews phase of the study, the researchers 15robed persons identified as particularly cognizant and understanding of religious life's nature and purpose and of the challenges now facing women and men religious and identified, too, as having the qualities required for leadership in the future. The purpose of this por-tion of the study was to verify the beliefs of members-at-large about the nature and purpose of religious life and its mission, about emerging forms and structures, and about future directions and to compare these beliefs with those surfacing in other forums. Conclusions: Social Institution Interviewees noted that the mission of Jesus will be the cen-tral focus and that the spirituality of congregations will be rooted 40 Review for Religious in their charism. Driven by pressing social and ecclesial needs, charity and justice will be the focus of mission and ministry, and most apostolic community life will be in proximity to the poor. Although a clear church identity will be maintained, the struc-tures of religious life will be based on mission rather than canons, and the unique charism of religious life will remain largely distinct from hierarchical functions. An inclusive atmosphere will be marked by multiculturalism, a clear inclusion of women and the feminine, and a genuine respect for diversity. Perhaps the most striking discrepancy in the portrait of the future of the social institution of religious life that emerges from the Visioning Groups, the National Survey, and the Individual Interviews involves commitment to the poor. The random sam-ple of members reveals at most a moderate commitment to par-ticipate in an activity which has become increasing!y a mission espoused by many religiou~ orders and quite explicitly by the church. Conclusions: Congregation Some of several changes in congregational living could strengthen the religious orders of the future. Specifically, inter-viewees indicate that religious community life will be marked increasingly by the intentionality of sha~ed values, purpose, and resources. Some congregations whose charisms are similar will merge, the number of apostolic groups will decrease, and many groups will become smaller. Because their members report greater clarity of focus and mission, membership in monastic orders may increase. The ranks of religious orders will be marked by older mem-bers, with few younger members and many second-career entrants. New congregations, though few, will contribute to the revital-ization of religious life. Religious congregations must examine the impact of what has often been an uncritical introduction of associational and affilia-tional forms of membership. This will entail a focus on the mean-ing of membership and in many cases the reestablishment of boundaries. Congregations that are vital to the church will have an explicit focus, and their effectiveness will be enhanced by the members' commitment to the collective mission. January-February 1993 41 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project Conclusions: Individual In the view of those who participated in the interviews, com-mitment to works of mercy is critical. Most individuals who belong to religious orders were motivated at the outset by their impulse to generosity and are sustained by their special relation-ship with God. By serving those with absolute human need, sis-ters, brothers, and religious priests will dedicate themselves to a high-cost, high-commitment life in communities that can be wit-nesses to Jesus Christ and the gospel. E Historical/Theological Monograph Because it is important also to understand the findings of the study from both historical and theological perspectives, the researchers commissioned a theological/historical monograph. Elizabeth Johnson CSJ, PhD, of Fordham University, will write a theological monograph focusing on religious life since the Second Vatican Council. John W. Padberg SJ, PhD, of Saint Louis University, will provide a historical postscript to her work. This work, projected for completion in 1993, will add perspective to the wealth of information collected, analyzed, and evaluated in this research effort. IV. Conclusions:Shaping the Future of Religious Life If religious life is to continue to be a vital force in the church and the world, the FORUS study concludes that dramatic changes must occur in most religious congregations in the United States. Fidelity to the spirit of the founder and responsiveness to critical and unmet human needs are basic to the ongoing mission of reli-gious communities. Yet, while individual examples abound, only in limited ways have religious acted collectively to address absolute human needs, new forms of poverty, and demands that seemingly outstrip the capacity of any group to respond. Vatican II called religious to a return to the "spirit of the founder." While most congregations have engaged in much study and have made great efforts to move in this direction, the absence of corporate commitment to meeting currently unmet needs in the light of gospel imperatives stands in contrast to the collective vision and action inspired by God that marked the birth of most apostolic, monastic, and contemplative congregations. Religious 42 Revieva for Religious life as a social institution in United States society is at a crossroads. To achieve a desired future, religious as a group as well as indi-viduals must confront the forces that currently restrain them and reinforce the dynamics that will allow them to be in fact respon-sive to absolute human need in accord with their particular charism. A future marked by significant revitalization will emerge for congregations that--in union with God, in fidelity to their founding purpose, and in response to absolute human need--confront the current gap between the gospel and the culture. The research concludes with an equation of sorts, depicted in Figure 2 below, that can be applied to all con-gregational traditions in vary-ing degrees. The interaction of eight critical factors in the context of personal and collec-tive conversion will move con-gregations from their current states to their desired futures. The research also concludes that for other groups the The absence of corporate commitment to meeting currently unmet needs in the light of gospel imperatives stands in contrast to the collective vision and action inspired by God that marked the birth of most apostolic, monastic, and contemplative congregations. restraints on advancement are severe and may lead to decline. What follows is a brief summary of the conclusions drawn from the various facets of the study. 1. Individualism and Vocation Since Vatican II, shifting paradigms of vocation and con-comitant cultural trends have deemphasized the distinctiveness of the religious life. The research suggests that the personal call to holiness given to all Christians in Lumen Gentium did in fact impact religious life and the understanding of the religious life. Religious feel somewhat ambivalent about their current state while at the same time celebrating the advances of the laity in the church since Vatican II. The age of experimentation in the church paral-leled vast cultural shifts in kanerican society towards individualism, cultural assimilation, and the democratization of all authority. ~anuary-February 1993 43 Nygren and Ukeritis ¯ Religious Life Futures Project Figure 2 Shaping the Future of Religious Life in the US Restraining Forces ~ lndividualisrn]~ ~Average Loadershipl_~ Aut"orit V'i

Issue 53.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1994. ; ChriStian Heritages and Contempora~ Living MAY-J~ !994 ¯ VOIdUME 531 ¯ NUMBER3 Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis University. by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048 ¯ Fax: 314-535-0601 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ P.O. Box 29260 ° Washington, DC 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1994 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 libraw 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. review for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Sefin Sammon FMS Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living MAY-JUNE 1994 " VOLUME53 ¯ NUMBER3 contents 326 feature Leadership a New Way: Women, Power, and Authority Janet K. Ruffing RSM explores the Christian concepts of power and the developmental stages which lead to sharing power and to healing the wounds of authority we all bear. 34O 352 life in flux Transition's Holy or Unholy Dark Jane Ferdon OP and George Murphy SJ draw from their experience of spiritual direction to shed light upon some of the darkness experienced by women and men religious. Merging Provinces Gerald A. Arbuckle SM brings insights from cultural anthropology to the process of merging congregational provinces. 364 One Voice from the Middle Place Judith Ann Eby RSM speaks out as part of a new generation which interprets religious life differently from those whose background includes the lived experience of Tridentine Catholicism. 375 life in service Religious, the Laity, and the Future of Catholic Institutions Catherine Harmer MMS suggests that for the good of Catholic institutions it is time for religious to let go of some things and for lay people to take them on so that both groups can act at their best. 386 Being and Acting Holy for Ministry's Sake Clyde A. Bonar proposes some practical ways of being about our one ministry: to be holy. 397 Missionary by Nature William F. Hogan CSC focuses attention upon the essential missionary aspect of every Christian and religious vocation. 322 Review for Rellg~ous life of witness 402 How to Read the Lives of Saints of Old 415 Frederick G. McLeod SJ gives some helps for our understanding and appreciating the richness of meaning found in the lives of saints of old. Prayer Francis J. Ring SJ offers his personal history of praying as a support for all pilgrims in their prayer life. reflective life 420 Even at the Grave We Make Our Song Margaret Bullitt-Jonas explores how three symbols--the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ-- came to life as she prayed over her infant daughter's death. 436 A Letter to Dead Parents about Today's Life Eileen O'Hea CSJ writes about her present-day experience of religious life. 440 452 46O religious life in perspective Journeying to God Together Susan Beaudry PM and Edwin L. Keel SM suggest that what religious have to offer the people of God is the experience of the spiritual journey, with its wisdom and skills. Charism as Sonnet: Developmental Considerations S. Suzanne Mayer IHM offers various perspectives on living the charisms of religious life for the dynamic of personal growth. Hispanic Faith and Culture--and U.S.A. Religious Gloria In~s Loya PBVM explains the pillars, of ministry, community, and spirituality .which support religious life in a Mexican-American setting. departments 324 Prisms 467 Canonical Counsel: Directives for the Relationship between Bishops and Religious: Mutuae Relationes 473 Book Reviews May-.lWune 1994 323 prisms E those of us living in the midwestern part of the United States, the spring and early summer seasons bless us with a burst of flowering trees and shrubs and a continuing array of nature's living vari-ety. Obviously all these signs of life are not created out of nothing each year. In fact, the changing seasons remind us of how much life remains hidden from our daily human perspective. Seeds look to be so dry and lifeless. Even in planting them in lawn or garden, we can only wonder about and wait for the activities of life still hidden from our sight. Oceans appear to our eyes as only a huge volume of water, but oceans teem with life--mostly hidden beneath the sur-face- which marine biologists endlessly discover and observe and marvel at. If we buy into the impressions promoted by contem-porary advertising, we find ourselves acting as if what we see is what life is all about. Life as sold by secular culture seems to bankrupt itself in surface impressions. Just how limited such a vision of life is quicHy becomes apparent when we deal with moral and religious issues of human living. Abortion only becomes an option if people keep human life out of sight. Arguments for abortion deal with choices and rights, with nary a thought about the hid-denness of human life. "Ethnic cleansing," whether it be in E~rope, Africa, Asia, or America, is a cosmetic phrase to disguise the deadly idea that some peoples are more deserving of life than others. Put into practice, this deadly idea joins the age-old slave trading, the Nazi concentra-tion camps, and futuristic scientific cloning as another 324 Reviezv for Religious sadly and horrendously narrow human mishandling of human life. For all the words about environment and ecology and quality of human life, we seem unable to reverence the mystery of life-- visible life and hidden life--with which our world abounds. For the young Christian community at Colossae, St. Paul used the pregnant phrase that "our life is hidden now with Christ in God." Perhaps we need to reflect more on the hiddenness of our faith life and thereby come to an appreciation and reverence for the hiddenness of life in general. The fledgling Christian com-munity at Colossae realized that in everyday life they looked pretty much the same as everyone else. They ate, they drank, they sometimes went hungry, they married and had families, they got sick, they died; they had joys and sorrows. They gathered, of course, for Eucharist, and their concern and care for one another and anyone in need did give them some mark of distinctiveness. But overall they lived with a new reverence for life--from the very young to the very old. Why? Because the risen Christ in whom they all were baptized had brought them into a new rela-tionship to God and to one another--a relationship subtle as the Spirit but as real as the risen Christ himself. As Saul (now Paul the writer) experienced and many other persecutors have learned since his day, a voice insists that it is Jesus whom they persecute. We Christians hear Jesus insisting, "If you do it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you are doing it to me." We touch here the source of the hidden life we all live in Christ. But Jesus does more than affect the hiddenness of human relationships--whatever tribe or nationality, religious affiliation or secular lifestyle. Because Jesus has taken on the darkness and hid-denness of suffering and death and by his rising joined it into a new fullness of life, the physical world in which we live is not the same as it was. Suffering and death are not just problems to be solved and if possible eliminated; suffering and death, now seen in a wholly new relationship to life in the risen Christ, must also be met with reverence. In the midst of all our necessary human efforts to relieve the suffering in our world, we believers stand with reverence before suffering, lfor we know. with the sureness of faith that because of Christ life lies hidden even in suffering, sometimes especially in suffering. Therein, deep down, like life in winter, lives Christian joy and the root of Christian reverence for life. David L. Fleming SJ May-ffvtne 1994 325 feature JANET K. RUFFING Leadership a New Way: Women, Power, and Authority The FORUS study in its general conclusions identified authority as "perhaps the most pressing question for reli-gious to resolve."' Underneath the question of authority, I find at least two foundational themes which need to be explored--the meaning of leadership in religious congre-gations in light of differing interpretations of power and authority and the specifically religious qualities of lead-ership. As I study the current research on religious life, I continue to uncover the deep ground of grace out of which religious life grows and flourishes. I remain convinced that we cannot hope to understand the reality of contem-porary religious life without probing this depth level of religious experience. The present theological, interdisci-plinary, experiential reflections address such questions as: Leadership for what? VChat obstacles impede our ability to collaborate? Part II addresses questions about religious leadership: How do leaders support the ongoing conver-sion implied as we discover new dimensions of the Christ mystery in our lives and ministries? What ultimately sus-tains us in our calling? "Authority in many U.S. institutions, including reli-gious life, has.undergone deconstruction. Variable under- Janet Ruffing RSM is associate professor in spirituality and spir-itual direction in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education at Fordham University. Her address is GSRRE, Fordham University; 441 E. Fordham Road; Bronx, New York 10458-5169. The second part of her article, "If Christ Is Growing in U~," will appear in our July-August 1994 issue. 326 Review for Religious standings of consensus, subsidiarity, discernment, and leadership have diffused understandings of authority. The abuse of author-ity in the past makes individuals reluctant to endorse authority in any way.''2 It is clear from the FORUS study that these differ-ing views of authority and the corresponding understandings of obedience exist within single institutes as well as across insti-tutes. As a result, leadership is sometimes severely impaired in its ability to lead; while in other instances leadership is experi-enced as empowering and free-ing for mission. Authority functions and is understood differently when charism is taken seriously and when governance takes adult discipleship into account. Women religious particularly have been redefining the mean-ing of obedience and authority in ways particularly suited to their awareness of their needs and desires as women. The FORUS study reports that vision groups "view authority as power that is shared among commu-nities of equals,''3 These changes in understandings of authority are related to how such a vision of power and authority and the impli-cations for redefining a vow of obedience appear, to many women to be more compatible with gospel values than does the post- Tridentine version of authority. Women religious as a group, espe-cially at the level of leadership, are pressing for a more enabling exercise of power among themselves. Although religious desire to maintain an ecclesial identity, the FORUS study reports a "lowered respect for the magisterial authority of the church and the U.S. hierarchy in general.''4 According to this study, women are acutely aware of their exclu-sion from leadership by the clerical church. Women religious are looking at church in new ways; they have embraced a clear com-mitment to changing this church. Clerical resistance to this change will further diminish the capacity of women's communities to Apostolic religious women will not fully stabilize nor be able to attract and retain new vocations until ecclesial conflicts about the church's mission and the contribution of religious within it are resolved. NIay-j~ne 1994 327 Ruffing * Leadership a New Way attract the very women who are looking for a public context in society and church that is meaningful for their dedication and service. In my opinion, apostolic religious women will not fully sta-bilize nor be able to attract and retain new vocations until eccle-sial conflicts about the church's mission and the contribution of religious within it are resolved. This includes not only resolving the role of women in the church but also arriving at an operative consensus of the role of the church in the modern world. Religious are in a real sense church people whose mission and identity lie at the heart of the ~hurch's own. The Brooldand Commission Study reported that 94 percent of their respondents named the self-understanding of the church developed in the wake of Vatican II to be a source in forming their ideas about what is essential to religious life.s To the extent that the larger church is ambiEalent about the directions set by the council, religious life will con-tinue to be at risk. In the context of these recent studies which indicate both sig-nificant change and continuing confusion, I will describe the psy-choanalytic roots of our attitudes toward authority, explore several concepts of power disclosed in the New Testament, and reflect on women and power. I will end with the Whiteheads' descriptions of both the developmental stages which lead to sharing power in Christian communities and the necessary task of healing the wounds of authority which we all bear. Formative Experiences with Authority One's basic stance toward authority, those whom I perceive to be "in charge" or more powerful than I, is usually determined by my early experiences with my mother and father and then with institutional authorities such as teachers and other authority fig-ures. This experience forms how I relate to God as an ultimate authority, how I relate to situations of injustice, how I relate to my own authority, and. how I relate to ambiguous authority. (Ambiguous authority refers to that exercise of authority which is usually benign but which is occasionally overbearing or oppres-sive.) If my experience has been one in which authority was exer-cised with genuine love and for my good, I will tend to respect and trust authority. I will creatively participate with authority, and I 328 Review for Religious will feel comfortable being critical of this authority. These responses are based on a sense that persons in authority have benign motives and are both fallible and rational. In other words, were I to present information missing from a decision, that new information would be taken into account and I would not be pun-ished for making a suggestion. Authority exercised with love is neither physically nor verbally abusive, but consistently treats me with respect. On the other hand, if my experience has been one in which authority was not so exercised, fear will be my dominant emo-tional response. I will either conform to the wishes of authority to avoid notice or abuse or I will rebel against it. Neither rebel-lion nor conformity are particularly healthy responses because both are rooted in a feeling of alienation and powerlessness. Authority functions against me and I feel powerless to do much about it. If I rebel, I choose noncooperation. I do not help to change the situation; instead, I may create a separate peace by withdrawing or opposing. If I conform, I do so because I feel powerless. I do not tell the truth but tell them only what they want to hear to avoid conflict. Since I perceive authority to be unloving and irrational, rational discourse cannot achieve any-thing fruitful, so I do not even try. Of course, no one is a pure type, and all usually have had some experience of both forms of authority. But most of the time I inhabit one attitude more than the other. I either offer myself to the process of authority-mak-ing or I withdraw in fear from participation. If my early experience is primarily loving and rational, I will experience God's authority to be for my good; I will recognize and" act against situations of injustice; I will experience my own inner authority and act out of it in nondefensive ways; and I will be able to be critical. I can tell the truth in the face of ambiguous experiences of authority. I can afford to see that a given person in authority has room to grow in the way he or she exercises that authority. New Testament Concepts of Power The New Testament presents two concepts of power. It addresses the way authority exercises power through the behav-ior and teaching of Jesus, and it begins to redefine power as the activity of God in our midst. "Power in the kingdom of God will May-June 1994 329 Ruffing ¯ Leadership a New Way be totally different from power as it is exercised in the kingdom of Satan (the world). The power of Satan is the power of domi-nation and oppression, the power of God is the power of service and freedom." 6 All the kingdoms and nations of this present world are governed by the power of domination and force. The struc-ture of the kingdom of God will be determined by the power of spontaneous loving service which people render to one another. In Mark, Jesus puts it this way: "You know that among the pagans their so-called rulers lord it over them, and their great men make their authority felt. This is not to happen among you. No; any-one who wants to become great among you must be your servant (diakonos), and anyone who wants to be first among you must be a slave (doulos) to all. For the son of man himself did not come to serve but to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mk 10:42-45, Mk 9:35). This teaching occurs in all three synoptics and is par-alleled by the footwashing pericope in John's gospel. "You call me teacher and lord, rightly so--if I your teacher and Lord have washed your feet--so also ought you to wash one another" (Jn 13:14). This is an example of the way power is to be exercised among the disciples--placing ourselves at the service of one another's freedom, calling forth from one another by our exam-ple "kingdom qualities," and releasing the power of the commu-nity in mission. Jesus is very clear about the difference between domination and service. As Albert Nolan says, "The power of this new soci-ety is not a power which has to be served, a power before which a person must bow down and cringe. It is the power which has an enormous influence in the lives of people by being of service to them." 7 Also relevant to this discussion is Jesus' attitude to the law, the power which enabled religious rulers to dominate and oppress. Jesus consistently attacked this abuse of the law. He rejected any interpretation which was used against people. The law was meant to serve genuine human needs and interests. Unfortunately, many fear the responsibility of freedom. We seek the security of a law which gives us prestige and allows us to dominate, or we let others make decisions for us, hiding behind rules, relying on the letter rather than on the spirit of the law. In so doing we enslave ourselves by our fear of freedom, and we deny freedom to others as well. Jesus does not abolish the law, but relativizes it so that we will take responsibility for the sys-tems we create and use them to serve the needs of humanity. The 330 Review for Religious exercise of power and authority in God's kingdom is to be func-tional. It should embody the arrangements that are necessary if we are to serve one another willingly and effectively. Every type of domination and servitude is to be abolished, including religious forms of these abuses. The New Testament also speaks about another kind of power--the power that comes from on high over Mary, the Holy Spirit, who also comes upon the community gathered in Jesus' name after the resurrec-tion. Jesus' ministry is characterized by a release of God's power as he expels demons and heals those who believe. The woman with the issue of blood touches Jesus, and power goes out from him. In Luke, all try to touch Jesus in order to be healed because power emanates from him. When Jesus sends out the disciples to preach, he confers power on them, not to rule but to heal and to cast out demons. Jesus releases in our midst freedom from all that binds us. He heals and forgives sin and invites us to share in this power for good which is the Spirit's action in us. We, as apostolic women, are empowered by that same Spirit. We are called to develop ways of making decisions, organizing our lives, and harmonizing our gifts so that this holy power for mission is released in each of us and in the group as a whole. The disciples had trouble understanding this; they kept mixing up these two kinds of power, wanting to rule and lord it over others rather than releasing the God life to its own ends. Jesus is very clear about the difference between domination and service. Women and Power As women we can often remain confused about these texts and themes. We have been trained in our tradition to be power-less-- to be the servants. Kathleen Fischer puts it this way: "Rhetoric about servanthood has often been used against women, trapping us in subservient roles. As suffering servant Jesus exer-cises power in the service of rglationships,.affirming the dignity and worth of each individual. He empowered others, unlocking their deepest desires and enabling them to use their best gifts."s Women's role in the church has been designated as the subordi-nate one (servants) while others have assumed the positions of May-June 1994 331 Ruffing * Leadership a New Way If we do exercise power unconsciously, we will probably do to others exactly what has been done to us. authority, taking charge, lording it over, and engaging in ritual footwashings while not holding power lightly. As a result, women find themselves oppressed by religious authority and in a posi-tion of permanent subordination. Since power has been a bad word among Christian women, we perceive it as a negative and dangerous reality. Because it is something none of us is to have or exercise, we are therefore often mysti-fied by the use of power in the church and in religious congregations. We do not want anything to do with power, and we may be afraid to exercise it. If we want power, we must be bad. Exercising power in our own interest can leave us feeling selfish, self-destruc-five, or threatened in our relationships. This ambivalence about power and our social conditioning in patriarchal sys-tems create a situation in which we often exercise our power indirectly or unconsciously. Or we may become con-fused and anxious when conflict or struggle comes out into the open. If we do exercise power unconsciously, we will probably do to others exactly what has been done to us. So as not to oppress anyone else as we have been oppressed, we need to understand power differently. We need to see power as a strength and understand how to participate in the healthy use of power. Jean Baker Miller redefines power simply as the "capacity to implement.''9 Expressing power does not need to be coercive or oppressive. Women, however, do not exercise power any better than men unless we become conscious and critical of how and when we express power. The Whiteheads on Power In the American church many men and women, clergy and laity, struggle to reflect critically on their experience of power in ecclesial contexts and to change how that power is expressed. Recent writings by Evelyn and James Whitehead have supported this struggle by exploring gospel understandings of power in the 332 Review for Religious light of the contemporary social sciences. In their work with hun-dreds of teams and in workshops across the country, they found that the single greatest obstacle to collaboration is a mystifica-tion about power along with the inability of many people in authority to share power. The Whiteheads define power and authority this way:l° Authority is the right to command or exercise power in relationship to the goals and values of the group. It is vested in persons (elected leaders) or in offices (specific roles/func-tions). Who or how the "vesting" occurs may be formal (appointment, election, consensus) or informal. But the social group recognizes the function of authority and the process of transferring it from one person to another. Power is the achievement or control of effects. Often it is the ability to produce a change. It may or may not coincide with authority. The Whiteheads continue: It is always present in interpersonal relationships. It is every way of exercising influence over another. One person is always subject to the power of another and no one is com-pletely without power. Power refers to the interactions among us. Finally, they say "power is best. perceived as those interac-tions that both create and threaten human community." According to the FORUS study, it is this definition of power as a resource to be shared that emerges as the dominant view of power among visionary people in religious life. The question remains: How operative is this understanding of power in religious life? In The Promise of Partnership, the Whiteheads consider that one of the primary tasks of religious leadership is to foster the transformation of our experience of power. If religious leaders genuinely exercise power in a manner consonant with the New Testament's understanding, they will use their power to welcome the power of others. They will use their role as leaders to enable those they lead to experience their shared strength in the group. As we mature in personal strength, we experience different modes of power. Early experiences and cultural influences can delay or impede our being comfortable with more mature expres-sions of power. Relying 0n David McClelland's work, the Whiteheads describe four basic orientations toward personal power--receiving power, achieving autonomy, expressing power, and sharing power. ~ May-j~une 1994 333 Ruling * Leadership a New Way Faces of Power Childhood is our basic experience of feeling strong because we are cared for and supported in our growing by our parents. When we are nurtured well, we learn to feel safe in the presence of oth-ers' power. We are empowered by this protection. Feeling empow-ered by others in this way continues into adulthood when we are strengthened by friendship, teamwork, or collaboration. I can feel comfortable receiving care and competence from others, and ][ do not have to rely entirely or only on myself. If I grew up in an unsafe environment, I learned not to trust or I remember depen-dence as demeaning and shameful. Adult experiences can also dis-appoint us and cause us to withdraw, but they are often overcome when we fall in love again or open ourselves again to a new rela-tionship. Autonomy is the strength we have on our own. In achieving autonomy we celebrate our self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Acting on nay own behalf expands my sense of power. Having developed some skills and competencies, I become an agent in my own life. Collaboration depends on my having some basic confidence in my own resources. If I lack autonomy, I will under-mine any partnership through my dependency. However, if I do not learn how to move beyond self-sufficiency, collaboration and openness to outside influence will feel like weakness, for it will imply that my own resources are deficient. Women often have difficulty in achieving autonomy unless the culture in which they function values their self-sufficiency and personal agency. Some religious communities have impeded this development in their members while others have fostered it but have not yet been able to direct this self-reliant energy back into communal projects. Expressing power turns us outward, as we begin to influence others and have an impact on our world. At this stage we feel strong when we influence the world beyond ourselves. A new sense of power stirs when we express our ideas, make demands of others, assume responsibility, take charge, and when others respond favorably. McClelland found that this orientation was prominent among management, supervisors, lawyers, and people in the helping professions. Success in all these fields depends on being able to influence the attitudes and behaviors of others. Personal assertion and social influence are the two particular resources of this power. However, these resources can be dis-played differently. Some express power exclusively in a combative 334 Review for Religious stance of competition with a need to dominate. A leader who feels strong only in this way easily becomes authoritarian. This kind of leader may function effectively in a military unit, but not as well in a helping role or in organizational leadership. !n these roles it is more appropriate to feel power-ful when motivating others, offering assistance, coordinating resources, and helping a group move toward its goals. The shadow side of this abil-ity to influence is dominance and control. Maturity lures us toward still another face of power--feeling strong in sharing power. People at this stage feel themselves to be per-sonally strong and also involved with something larger than themselves. Something beyond self-interest--the will of God, or commitment to a vision--prompts their action. They feel both powerful and empowered, strong both in autonomy and in col-laboration. These people welcome interdependence, the ability to enjoy mutual influence and mutual empowerment. When we work together the power we share increases and enhances my strength. The outcome that emerges from this interplay of interdepen-dence is less mine, yet I feel stronger because something better has resulted. Genuine interdependence is possible only if a significant num-ber of the members of religious communities mature to this fourth level of power. The hierarchical church, in its current exercise of power, shares power minimally. One group is authorized to express power and another group, namely the laity, receives it. If actual partnership is to flourish in the ecclesial community, we need an abundance of religious leaders who value sharing power and who are not threatened by widening the sources of influence. Much of the governance journey in religious life for women has been toward this mode of sharing power. The old way of lead-ership is not capable of fostering the full religious'maturity of its members. A single charismatic leader can function in level three If actual partnership is to flourish in the ecclesial community, we need an abundance of religious leaders who value sharing power and who are not threatened by widening the sources of influence. May-June 1994 335 Ruffing ¯ Leadership a New Way of this schema, but that requires the entire group to submit to that individual charism. I believe the gifts of grace and discern-ment are distributed both more broadly and more abundantly than that. If we truly believe that our charisms live in all of us, that God's spirit releases an outpouring of energy and power, then sharing power is the only style of religious leadership that has the flexibility and openness to engage in the discernment of these movements. Healing the Wounds of Authority The FORUS study critiques dysfunctional religious leader-ship in many religious communities. I understand that much of this dysfunction is a manifestation of incomplete adult ddvelop-ment. For authentic interdependence and collaboration to be pos-sible, those in leadership must be committed to continuing their own development and to fostering the development of their mem-bers. Healing the wounds of authority is often an integral part of the process.12 The Whiteheads describe a continuum of growth in our per-spective about authority. It moves from the perception that power and authority are completely external to ourselves to the percep-tion that we confer authority in partnership with others for com-mon goals. Women in religious life stand all along the continuum. The way authority used to be exercised was coercive. A large part of our individual and corporate journey through renewal has involved deconstructing coercive authority and either avoiding the question of authority altogether (hence not a few resistant women in our midst) or constructing an entirely new way of exer-cising it. Briefly, the Whiteheads portray the function of authority as expanding life, making power more abundant, and calling others to collaborative partnership. However, many of us find ourselves unable to respond to this adult invitation to share power. We per-sist in viewing authority as external to ourselves, with those in authority holding on to power as a permanent and privileged pos-session to be used as they see fit. This kind of authority makes us feel like either children or victims, vulnerable and liable to be hurt when we interact with authority. We project onto our lead-ers impossible expectations, [equiring them to be all things to all people. We treat them as different from us, more knowledgeable, 336 Review for Religious more wise, more talented. Such projection masks our irresponsi-bility and delays our process of maturing. A more mature approach to authority views leaders very much as we view ourselves. We hope they are competent, but we under-stand that they have no special access to wisdom. They, too, are limited, fallible, susceptible to bias and error. No longer something leaders do to us, authority becomes relativized and results in a sense of partnership. Rather than benefi-ciaries, victims, or observers, we become participants with leaders in shaping the best decisions. How do we heal the wounds of authority? Transformation begins, according to the Whiteheads, whenever a crisis causes us to examine behavior that no longer works, whether it he avoidirig authority, fighting it, or trying to win its approval. The process moves through the successive stages of withdrawal, disbelief, self-scrutiny, and authority-making. In withdrawal I recognize that I have put authority outside myself and retreat to an inner place. My external behavior may not change much, hut basically I ignore authority and its claims on me. In the stage of disbelief, I realize that I am more than what authority thinks of me. My sense of self and self-worth no longer depends on external authority. This stage may begin as rebel-lion--" Who says this is the way things are?" I question how things are and think about how things could or should be. I recognize that how things are is often merely the way those in power have decided they should be, sometimes benefiting the leaders more than anyone else. The risk of disbelief is that it can harden into skepticism that rejects all exercise of authority. I can be preoc-cupied with exposing the faults and failings of those in authority when I do not yet see myself as an equal. The stage of self-scrutiny allows me to recognize how I have participated in maintaining coercive authority all along, whether by elevating those in authority, attacking them, or blaming them for things for which I am also responsible. I become able to ask We project onto our leaders impossible expectations, requiring them to be all things to all people. Such projection masks our irresponsibility and delays our process of maturing. May-June 1994 337 Ruling ¯ Leadership a New Way the critical question: When is the influence of external authority-- a leader, a value system, a set of laws--legitimate in my life? A cer-tain level of intellectual and emotional maturity is required in order to respond freely, neither compulsed to negate these demands nor anxious to satisfy a hidden motive. I understand that, as I have contributed to my own oppression, I can participate in my own empowerment. When I can exercise my personal power in response to author-ity both by taking initiative and obeying, I have reached the stage of authority-making. At this stage, I am able to face conflict if nec-essary in the pursuit of a common purpose. This is possible only after I have recognized my prior negative contribution through fear, apathy, or magical thinking. The Whiteheads caution that one cannot wait until this stage is completed; even conscious of wounds and the continuing process of healing, I need to be engaged as a partner in authority.13 The unhealed wounds of authority are frequently the unac-knowledged agenda when leaders and members experience tension between individualism and the common good. Authority will be interpreted and experienced differently depending on the level of healing and the vision of exercising power espoused by each religious. If leaders can encourage communities to begin to heal the wounds of authority and if the majority of the members can endure the pain of growth in this developmental process to become capable of sharing power, our communities will be very different. Both leaders and members will be partners in codis-cernment, as both respond to the ever changing call to be shaped by and to express in life and ministry their shared charism and discipleship of Jesus. According to the FORUS study, outstanding women leaders were extremely active in securing the commitment of the group to appropriate actions or decisions. They used their positional and personal power to influence outcomes, but not at the cost of diminishing the sharing of power in the group. Further they tended "to encourage participation of those they lead, share power and information with them, and enhance their self-worth and energize them." ~4This style of leadership has been pioneered largely by women in a variety of settings as well as in religious life. Clearly, one of the gifts religious women can offer the church is the healing of our wounds of authority and our growth in sharing power, thereby releasing the power of God's spirit in our midst. 338 Review for Religious Notes ~ David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis, "Research Executive Summary: Future of Religious Orders in the United States," Origins 22 (24 September 1992): 271. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid, p. 268. 4 Ibid, p. 271. 5 Katarina Schuth, "The Intellectual Life as a Value for Women Religious in the United States," Appendix: Survey, Brookland Commission paper, 16-18 October 1992, 10. 6 Albert Nolan, Jesus before Christianity (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1976 and 1992), p. 84. v Ibid, p. 85. 8 Kathleen Fischer, VVomen at the Well: Feminist Perspectives on Spi~qtual Direction (Mahwah: Paulist, 1988), p. 140. 9 See Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New P~chology of FVomen (Boston: Beacon, 1976 and 1986), for a full discussion of the topic women and power. ~0 Evelyn and James. Whitehead, Emerging Laity: Retm~zing Leadership to the Community of Faith (New York: Image, 1988), p. 36. ~ The description which follows is dependent on Evelyn and James Whitehead, The Promise of Partnership: Leadership and Minist~7 in an Adult Church (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1991), pp. 115-127. ~2 See "Healing the Wounds of Authority," in Promise, pp. 27-36, for the full description of this schema. ~3 It should be apparent that only in these latter two stages of self-scrutiny and authority-making is discernment possible. 14 David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis, "Religious Leadership Competencies," Review for Religious 52, no. 3 (May-June 1993): 413. May-June 1994 339 JANE FERDON AND GEORGE MURPHY Transition's Holy or Unholy Dark life flux ¯ he renewal of religious life over the past thirty years has generated a series of expected and unexpected results. One of the most puzzling is the persistence of darkness. Despite massive and heroic efforts to update and achieve renewal, many groups and individuals are continually deal-ing with a darkness that nothing seems to dispel. As men and women religious and bishops prepare for the Roman Synod on religious life, people will inevitably both review the transitional years since Vatican II and envision the future. They will gather and analyze data from many different perspectives. We would like to offer the perspective of spiritual direction and our experience of working as spiritual directors with men and women reli-gious.~ Theological, sociological, psychological, economic, political, and cultural perspectives all help in the under-standing of religious life. From spiritual direction we can see how people's experience of God has renewed them and how their experience of darkness, the apparent or real absence of God, has purified or stultified them. People's experiences of God in moments of light, energy, joy, and enthusiasm have received refined attention Jane Ferdon oP and George Murphy SJ are adjunct faculty at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, where they have been directing a practicum in spiritual direction. Their address is Jesuit School of Theology; 1735 LeRoy Avenue; Berkeley, California 94709-1193. 340 Review for Religious and have been deservedly relished. There are encouraging signs of new vitality in religious life: a growing freedom in people, more laughter, a refusal to be victimized, an ability to love and receive affection, a desire to know God more and share with oth-ers how God is present among us. People are taking apostolic risks and are praying regularly and contemplatively. Many are concerned with the poor and with unjust structures. People strive for integrity, some even risking their lives to protest war and nuclear arms. Others give their lives as martyrs, witnesses of God's concern for God's peo-ple. Some are willing boldly to confront evil both within the church and outside it. There are many reasons to hope. It is precisely in this context that we need to interpret dark-ness, both individually and col-lectively, to ponder its impact and to move toward light. The subject of darkness is not attrac-tive. By its very nature it can evoke self-criticism and blame. We intend neither. Our purpose is to portray people's experience and to raise some serious questions for reflection and considera-tion. We are convinced that only by scrutinizing the darkness can we be more free to enjoy the new life and energy in our midst. Then, with courage, we can pass on what we have learned to the next generation of women and men religious. Admittedly, some-times we have neither the strength nor the disposition to deal with darkness. As painful as it might be, we believe that God is calling women and men religious and the church not only to look at the light but also to discern the darkness. Experiences of darkness are only beginning to be probed and 'mined.z Our thesis is that sometimes darkness is holy; God is present and waiting in the darkness. This is the dark night of There are encouraging signs of new vitality in religious life: a growing freedom in people, more laughter, a refusal to be victimized, an ability to love and receive affection, a desire to know God more and share with others how God is present among us. May-.~ne 1994 341 Ferdon and Murphy * Transition's Holy or Unholy Dark senses or of spirit that Teresa and John of the Cross perceptively explored for their times and now needs contemporary examina-tion. 3 Another darkness, however, is unholy because God is not present in the abyss. This darkness is destructive rather than cre-ative. It is the realm of the prince of darkness, a darkness that needs to be named and avoided or robbed of its hold. In prayer as in life many women and men religious have expe-rienced both forms of darkness; but how do we discern the dif-ference? Are some of the more stubborn blocks to the renewal of religious life examples of the power of the unholy dark? Is the future of religious life to be found only in the holy dark? Some women and men religious feel trapped in a dark place, clawing interiorly to be set free, wanting to find a way out of dreary con-trolled maintenance, making work their escape and ministry a substitute for a vital relationship with God. For more than a few, religious life as it is does not satisfy; church life as it is does not satisfy. The experience is one of darkness. One woman religious who had served many years in admin-istration described her experience of darkness this way: There is no doubt that religious life is in transition. Many men and women religious feel something is missing in reli-gious life. We sometimes sense it in liturgies, at meetings, in group assemblies, in discussions. We go away hungry. Something deep within is left unsatisfied. So we try harder, photocopy more papers, quote more authors, add more meetings, review statistics, hire consultants. We multiply information, yet increasingly remain dissatisfied and weary. Deep within we sense something is missing still. We assume it is the times, the culture, the lack of leadership or the apa-thy of membership. Vocations continue to decline. The membership's vitality is diminishing. It is a telling situa-tion. How do we read its message? A male religious who is a college psychologist described his experience: There are signs that religious life is dying or at least seri-ously sick. There are too many unhappy persons, unhappy communities, and unhappy work situations in religious life today. One needn't look far to find depression, codepen-dence, anesthetized feelings, controlled conversations. While one sees many people who work hard, often to the point of burnout, their work has a joylessness about it. No matter how much one does, it seems never to be enough. One sees too many men and women religious who do not 342 Review for Religious have much joy in living. Some clothe their depression with false piety and pious clichds. Others become TV addicts. Some have become drug addicts. They misuse prescriptive medication or alcohol. Many practice massive denial. They think everything is fine or would be if we prayed more or were more cheerful. Few people are entering; some are still leaving or staying because it is too late in life to begin again. Those who stay in religious life are aging. Even our efforts at renewal seem short lived, using bandages and patent medicine. A devil chased out, the house left empty, new devils take up housekeeping.4 If we liken this period of transition in religious life to wan-dering in the wilderness (a "desert experience"), some dynamics become clear. It can be an exodus from what oppresses to what frees, or it can be an endless exile in the wilderness. We must dis-tinguish whether there is movement forward or paralysis. Are we simply wandering in circles? Many in religious life feel an oppres-sion of spirit. What used to work no longer fits the present real-ity. It is a time of letting go, yet there is a fear of losing precious valuables,s We know we cannot go back, yet we have grave diffi-culty moving forward. Perhaps our renewal has not reached the depth of genuine conversion. We may be stuck in a desert place, tired of the journey, helpless in finding direction, and discour-aged about our future. In this desert experience of transition, it becomes critical to notice the difference between honest disenchantment and crip-pling disillusionment. Many forget that disenchantment can be the beginning of a positive experience. "The point is that disen-chantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition. At such times we need to consider whether the old view or belief may not have been an enchantment cast on us in the past to keep us from see-ing deeper into ourselves and others than we were ready to. For the whole idea of disenchantment is that reality has many layers, each appropriate to a phase of intellectual and spiritual develop-ment. The disenchantment experience is the signal that the time has come to look below the surface of what has been thought to be so.''6 Are we unknowingly prolonging our transition because we fear being disloyal to the past by recognizing some of its limits? Would we rather prolong the exile than move to a deeper level of honesty or confront the darkness? "The disenchanted person recognizes the old view as suffi- May-June 1994 343 Ferdon and Murphy * Transition's Holy or Unholy Dark cient in its time, but insufficient now.''7 The disillusioned person simply rejects the earlier view. While the disenchanted person moves on, the disillusioned person stops and goes through the same play or pattern again. Many in religious life remain disillu-sioned rather than disenchanted. There is no real movement from ending to beginnings. So patterns are repeated. One changes one's ministry, school, or parish and never goe~ through the interior process of ending to begin. There are no good-byes. There is no letting go. A priest takes the "geographical cure" and moves to another university or parish only to be hounded by the same issues and behavior, but with a different cast of characters. A sister switches ministry. She leaves grade school teaching, tries pastoral care, goes away for a renewal program, begins a theology degree, and lands in a parish facing the same internal dynamics only in a different set of circumstances. Disillusionment grows. A sense of failure increases. There are many reasons to be afraid. Our fears can be para-lyzing. The crucial discernment is whether God is inviting us into the dark. If so, what are the indications of God's invitation? The danger is that we just presume either that darkness is a reality or that God is welcoming us into the darkness when neither is true. When God asks us to look at the dark, God will be present with us. God's presence may not make the dark less dark, but God's presence assures us that we are not alone. In the unholy dark, God is not present. We often get preoccupied with negative voices. An accusatory voice convinces us that we must save our-selves, and we know that is hopeless. Evil asserts its fascination. We step into the darkness alone and meet chaos. Frequently this same dynamic asserts itself in prayer. For instance, one fears the God who will ask too much, the God who demands great suffering from those who are faithful. Thus, the focus of one's reflections becomes the possible forms of suffer-ing rather than dialogue with God. The accompanying affect is naturally negative: fear, anxiety, worry, stress. Often there is guilt and a loss of self-esteem: "Why is it I cannot do what God wants?" Notice what is really happening: the person is preoccupied with the anticipated suffering, not with God. Has God asked for suf-fering, or is it what we assume God wants? Moreover, does one then avoid the God who asks too much by evading prayer? Instead there may be a dangerous substitute for prayer: reflection on self and what one is unable to do rather than asking God what God Review for Religious wants or telling God of one's fears and worries. Prayer becomes unattractive, Unfortunately, so does God. In place of evoking the presence of God and feeling the security of an abiding presence, prayer becomes a reflection on one's fears. What spirit led us to this quagmire? As fears multiply and resentments fester, even the desire for prayer fades. Sadly, this desolation can go on for years as one comes to resent the God whom we think of as asking the impossible. Perhaps the question we must ask ourselves both individually and collectively is: Have we lost some-thing of a sacred focus? What if it is a divine focus that is missing? Men and women religious frequently claim that rarely does our conversa-tion reach the level of the holy: the moments when a reverent silence fills us, the sense that God is near, not because of a timeless theological assumption, but because of a present shared experience. Is it this elo-quence of the holy that is missing? Is it this level of engagement we can-not seem to reach? The disciples and our spiritual ancestors bonded and dreamed; they boldly proclaimed God's word because they talked among themselves of their encounters with and memories of the holy. Do we? Are we fear-ful, anxious or embarrassed? What if there is no real experience of God? What if others ridicule what is deepest within? What if one has to admit it has been a long, long time since God and I really communicated, not just through rote prayer or disciplined meditation, but by genuine, engaging talk---listening, speaking, feeling, discerning--earthy God-talk. We assume that something is God's will. Rarely do we wres-tle long enough with God's word to know what God really wants. Often we are unable to identify and face our own deepest desires. It is a frightening business to feel underneath the feelings, to ponder something long enough to get to the root emotion. The irony is that sometimes it is easier to acknowledge the depth of feeling than to endure the tiring mechanisms of avoidance. It is no Often we are unable to identify and face our own deepest desires. It is a frightening business to feel underneath the feelings, to ponder something long enough to get to the root emotion. May-.l~une 1994 345 Ferdon and Murphy ¯ Transition's Holy or Unholy Dark wonder we have lost a genuine spiritual fluency. Perhaps it is a clue to why we wander in circles rather than move forward. Thus we prolong the transition. Moreover, in our frustration we can make another or others the enemy rather than going more deeply into a conscious examination of our primary relationship, our indi-vidual relationship with God. How much time, attention, thought, affect, dialogue, and development does this relationship get in my day, week, month? Is it really primary? If it is not, what is primary and why? Did something get lost? Can it be found, renewed, enlivened? Who got distracted? To borrow again from the exodus experience: Have we lost sight of the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night (Ex 13:21- 22)? As a result, do we turn inward with murmuring, grumbling, and accusation (Ex 14:11-12)? Do we feel the disillusionment and strain? As many older men and women religious explain, "This is not the community I entered." We want to tui'n back, not in con-version but out of reluctance. Perhaps we cannot see what is ahead because our backward look prevents us. A woman therapist who sees many men and women religious observed: "Many religious are desperate: body work, crystals, cen-tering prayer, dance, Eastern philosophy, psychotherapy, twelve-step programs, dream work, even hypnosis and psychics have been tried as means to greater peace. The tragedy is that often the means becomes the primary focus. The divine gets lost in the search; searching becomes an end." We become the doers, for-getting that another is there with us, the one to wtiom we are committed by vows. Then we begin consciously or unconsciously to accomplish our own redemption. The Redeemer is forgotten, not deliberately, not consciously, not entirely, but somehow God becomes a distant figure or shadowy image, definitely out of focus, perhaps a memory. Yet, without this presence and this power, there can be no real vision. No wonder we sense something is missing. Someone might be missing, One without whom we can-not move forward. Individual experiences become the dynamic of the group. Often at community or congregational meetings and assemblies there is a clearly defined role for facilitators so that the group process is efficient and the stated objectives are met. Seldom is the same authority given to the spiritual dynamics operative in any group process where men and women religious gather. At times, the belief that God is everywhere becomes an unconscious cover- 346 Review for Religious up for a lack of the divine perspective or an abdication of spiritual responsibility. It can be a form of resistance too. Is there more fear or more freedom in the group? Are there indications of a holy or unholy spirit? Are these named and identified? Which gets more developed. Why have the spiritual dynamics operative in any religious group not been given equal emphasis? One does not wish to propose false piety: the "God will provide" rationale for avoidance. However, we must be wary of an administrative, eco-nomic, or psychological reduc-tionism. Who watches, identifies, articulates the movements or countermovements of the spirit in general chapters? Is it a con-cern? How much time, discus-sion, reflection, or debate is this crucial factor given? Do we assume that all we do is blessed and good, making discernment unnecessary? Are our governing bodies more task- or discern-ment- oriented? If the former, is this one reason we seem so often to repeat patterns? Do we scrutinize the spiritual implications as carefully as we do the financial ones? Do we endure less freedom by letting outside influences rather than spiritual profundities dictate most of our decisions? Do we leave room for the spirit to speak, or do we simply presume or even pretend that we are all speaking in the same tongue? Do we then consider those who disagree misfits? It is worth remembering that, whenever there is no dialogue, there is a breach of freedom. Of course, one can agree to dis-agree, provided one has been heard--but in many congregations many voices are silent. This silence speaks. Can we listen to the silence? Sometimes we are afraid. Besides, the tasks need to get done. Our social analysis must move on to the next phase. The danger is that the tasks do get done, but not always satisfactorily. The initial peace or relief that the job was accomplished does not bear fruit. Too frequently the very same issues come back to haunt us. That experience demands a refined discernment of spirits, not At times, the belief that God is everywhere becomes an unconscious cover-up for a lack of the divine perspective or an abdication of spiritual responsibility. May-June 1994 347 Ferdon and Murphy ¯ Transition's Holy or Unholy Dark just reworded policies. If we were collectively to allow the deeper issues to emerge from a time of discernment, we might face very different topics in our chapters and assemblies and our spiritual governance. Do we tend to look at what we can control? Often the Spirit will introduce us to what is beyond our control. This can be cause for delight or cause for fear, which can of itself be a grace-filled revelation. In this desert experience of transition, we must check where have we built our altars: what are we worshiping? On the exodus journey there were two collections in the desert. In one God asks the people for gold to build a sanctuary that God might dwell in their midst (Ex 25:1-9). The other occurred because of a long delay. The Israelites became impa-tient with Moses, and so they contributed their valuables towards the making of a golden calf. Where are our valuables going? To discern a group's focus and leadership is not a luxury; it is a mat-ter of life and death. To choose life is to have God dwelling among us. This choice comes out of freedom. To choose death is to cre-ate our own god, to guarantee our own future. This choice comes out of impatience and disillusionment. The first heralds a sacred beginning; the second repeats a sinful ending not much different from the pyramid building that was supposedly abandoned, an apt example of disillusionment's repetition of patterns. God bids "a collection from the heart" (Ex 25:1). Where are our hearts calling us? Can we let go of old ways to begin anew? It is imperative to explore the darkness. If it is holy, then there is a presence in the darkness. We are in a safe place, and there is a reason we have been beckoned there. Perhaps a vision will emerge. If it is unholy dark, then we must flee the desola-tion. The dark mood that many men and women religious expe-rience can be a developing spirituality. It is time to go deeper; even if we must first address fear or reluctance. Nonetheless, there is an attraction or longing. Reluctance can be a form of darkness. Depression can sometimes be a side effect. Whether the darkness is a form of the dark night or a stubborn paralysis of spirit needs thoughtful attention as well as careful delineation. To explore the darkness is not an optional task; it is a spiritual mandate. However much good therapy has done for many men and women religious, it can still become a substitute for intimacy, for community, and even for God. It is a contemporary irony that authority is sometimes given to therapists that would never be given to religious superiors or confessors. If the darkness is pri- 348 Review for Religious marily psychological, then one must use therapeutic tools. But what if the darkness is primarily spiritual and the depression a side effect? Is this issue being sufficiently addressed? There is no doubt about the spiritual side effects of depression, but what about the possibility that the current mood among many women and men religious is a form of spiritual desolation or even a form of consolation that goes unrecognized because of the awful sense of empti-ness? The helps for relieving depression might be quite different from the remedy for desolation. Certainly one wants to pursue ther-apy if the darkness in prayer results from psychological blocks or bio-chemical factors. If this darkness is spiritual desolation, however, then an active spiritual response and practical spiritual directives are called for. If the darkness is an exodus leading to something more, then it is consoling. If it amounts to going around in circles, it is frustrating, purposeless, and diminishing. Moreover, fidelity to it is a sham. Discerning the darkness is not only an individual task, but also a collective one. Depression or darkness of spirit can lead to self-absorption or self-transcendence. To know the difference affects the individual, the religious group, and the church. Therefore, one must figure out the source of the dark mood, the imp behind the affect. To mistakenly endure an unholy dark as a dark night of the senses or spirit is abusive and destructive, not purgative. Darkness's fruits also deserve attention. Sometimes what is most obvious is overlooked. For instance, do we leave congrega-tional meetings or gatherings feeling empty, down, or frustrated? Do we feel marginalized or disengaged? Or is our experience joy-ful and revitalizing? Do we feel closer to God and so awed by the Spirit that our prayer is renewed and our ministry energized? Do most of the members feel the same? Again, do we pause and reflect about and then discuss which spirit seems to be dominating the group? If we are on holy ground, we leave one another's com-pany enriched. Or is something lacking? Despite contact with To mistakenly endure an unholy dark as a dark night of the senses or spirit is abusive and destructive, not purgative. May-June 1994 349 Ferdon and Murphy ¯ Transition's Holy or Unholy Dark friends, and gratitude for companionship and laughter with them, is smnething of the sacred absent? It is essential to name that absence lest we bless what is not holy. Religious life as we have known it may be ending, but what about the beginning? If we have failed to negotiate our own indi-vidual transitions, how can we begin to face the group transition? Do we feel heavily burdened? What must we let go of? In-betweenness does not have to last forever. Prolonging the pain only adds to the interior paralysis or feeling of numbness that all-too-many women and men religious experience. Endings are not without sequels, but unless interior conversion takes place no beginnings occur, only *eactions to endings, whether denial, avoid-ance, defensiveness, escape, or repression. How do we begin again? Do we want to do so? We have to acknowledge our pain and voice it to God. We must feel its hold and then move beyond its control to where we can join in a gathering to celebrate survival and new life. We should not let our moaning and grumbling get misplaced and do harm. Transition is the time to ask hard questions, not only of ourselves but also of God. Have we voiced our pain in prayer? Is God with us? What is God communicating? Is God the focus of our gatherings? Are we more lost than we realized? Are we in relationship with God and also in dialogue? What is God saying to us? Is there something we must let go of?. Transition teaches us to get along with less. It removes distractions. Until we discern the darkness, it has a coercive and discour-aging hold. Like a small cancer it can grow undetected until it is too late to cure. Then surgery will not help. What "cancer" might underlie a perhaps subtle but still debilitating lethargy? Our great-est danger is to become numbly resigned to the someday inevitable death of religious life and then stabilize our fear, misplace our anger, distract our anxiety, and live in denial. Religious life is not meant to be endured; it exists for the sake of celebration now and eternally. Unless religious are free enough to name darkness, can-didly, low-grade despair and frenetic avoidance are bound to grow. People close their eyes and shut down to survive. Involvement, activity, ministry become the substitute for contemplation, not the result of contemplation nor food for it. What is really hap-pening is rarely talked about, and thus power is given to the secret. And those who dare to bring up the subject of darkness are quickly judged to be either critical of leadership or disloyal to member- 350 Review for Religious ship and then marginalized by other people's pattern of denial. When denial dictates, dialogue dies. The prince of darkness is empowered, and a divine focus is missed again. The issue is about neither leadership nor criticism; the issue is about neither membership nor loyalty. The issue is that the divine play of light is being overshadowed. In naming the darkness, we allow the light to play, the ligh~ that would illumine all we do, the light that would lighten our lives and allow us even in darkness to be con-fident because the gentle Presence of Mystery reveals that we are indeed on holy ground. Notes ~ We acknowledge our debt to William Barry and William Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction (New York: Seabury, 1982), and to the people at the Center for Religious Developinent; they have had a major impact on our practice of spiritual direction. 2 For a succinct treatment of how darkness appears in directed retreats, see William J. Connolly sJ, "Experiences of Darkness in Directed Retreats," Review For Religious 33, no. 4 (July-August 1974): 609-615. Reprinted in Notes on the Spiritual Exercises, ed. David L. Fleming SJ, (St. Louis: Review for Religious, 1981), pp. 108-114. 3 See Constance FitzGerald's "Impasse and Dark Night" in Living with Apocalypse, ed. Tilden Edwards (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 94ff. Sandra Schneiders IHM also develops this theme in "Contemporary Religious Life: Death or Transformation," a paper given in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1992 and presented at a faculty colloquium at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1993. 4 For the viewpoint of another psychologist on some unhealthy dynam-ics in religious communities, see Charles Shelton, "Reflections on the Mental Health of Jesuits," in Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 23, no. 4 (September 1991), and a companion article by the same author, "Toward Healthy Jesuit Community," in Studies 24, no. 4 (September 1992). s It is worth while to review Gerald A. Arbuckle's thesis "that a major reason for the reluctance or hesitation of religious congregations, parishes, and dioceses to attempt renewal is their failure to mourn or ritually detach themselves from that which is lost or no longer apostolically relevant. Energy that should be directed toward creating the future is instead spent on efforts to restore or retain that which is lost or dying." See "Organizations Must Ritually Grieve," in Human Development 12 (spring 1991): 22. 6 William Bridges, Transitions (Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1980), p. 101. 7 Ibid. May-June 1994 351 GERALD A. ARBUCKLE Merging Provinces "May they be so perfected in unity that the world will recognize that it was you who sent me." --John 17:23 Tdre is a trend within the church today for both institutions apostolates to merge: congregations and provinces of congregations, schools and hospitals. Various pragmatic and inspi-rational reasons are given, such as using personnel and finances more effectively for mission. Yet the actual merging commonly fails to meet expectations because people do not appreciate that mergers demand far more than a rearrangement of administra-tions. The contemporary struggle to unite East and West Germany aptly illustrates the point. When institutions seek to combine, they interact as cultures, and the resulting change is not a bloodless abstraction, but a high order of human drama. This introductory article views, from a cultural anthropologi-cal perspective, the merging of congregational provinces--though the theory applies to any organization. Case studies illustrate the theory, and then I suggest some guidelines for use in practice. First we examine what management studies have learned about the mergers of business corporations. Though religious commu-nities are not businesses, they are nonetheless human organiza-tions or cultures. They can learn from the experience of other human organizations that amalgamate,t Gerald A. Arbuckle SM continues to write, lecture, and conduct work-shops on the refounding of religious life. His address is Refounding and Pastoral Development Unit; 1 Mary Street; Hunters Hill; Sydney, N.S.W. 21 I0; Australia. 352 Review for Religious Lessons from the Marketplace The literature on business amalgamations is filled with dreary warnings about the negative effects of mergers. Management con-sultant Tom Peters concludes that "most studies suggest that, in general, [business] mergers do not pan out.''2 Rather than increased profitability, mergers have come to be associated with lowered morale, job dissatisfaction, unpro-ductive behavior, sabotage, petty theft, absenteeism, and increased labor-turnover, strike, and accident rates.3 Management consultant Stuart Slatter advises that the merger of firms "rarely brings increased effi-ciencies, unless accompanied by sound post-merger management. In fact, inefficiencies may actually increase as . divisive splits develop within the new top-management team as each manager retains loyalties to his of change. former business.''4 James O'Toole speaks of the contemporary stress on business amal-gamations as "merger-mania." He says that "the desire of large industrial bodies to merge is insatiable" and that the purpose and strategies for such actions are rarely thought through.5 Charles Handy warns that organizations contemplating merger are "to some extent stuck with their past., their traditions. These things take years if not decades to change.''6 Some authors wonder if the drive for merg-ers comes from authoritarian, patriarchal values dominant in Western society. These values, they claim, blind organizations to feminine values of creativity, of openness to other ways of coop-eration than formal mergers.7 Overall, most commentators conclude that mergers fail because leaders insufficiently consider the human or cultural dimensions of change. In addition to sensitive leadership there must be, authors claim, a cultural compatibility (or what is termed "culture fit") between organizations that seek to merge. If there is insufficient culture fit, then cultural collisions will destroy efforts to merge organizations.8 Anthropologists agree with these conclusions. But they com-plain that, when management writers (with the exception of peo-ple like Edgar Schein) use the term culture, they fail to grasp the complexity of its meaning. They think culture is what people vis- Mergers fail because leaders insufficiently consider the human or cultural dimensions May-3~ne 1994 353 Arbuckle ¯ Merging Provinces ibly do,9 and they fail to consider what they feel about what they do. People may act in the same way, yet differ radically in their cultures, simply because they do not feel the same about what they do. Feelings (expressed in symbols and myths) are at the very heart of cultures, but are far more difficult to name and control than visible actions. A good many authors--for example, Gerard Egan--see culture as but one of many variables in organizations;1° Peter Senge does not refer to it at all.11 Culture is not one facet of life nor merely what people visi-bly do; rather, it is the complete set of feelings affecting, most often unconsciously, all of a specific behavior pattern of individ-uals and groups. Examples are an organization's interiorized system of authority, its modes of communication, its understanding of mis-sion and stratdgies?z Leaders ignore culture at their peril. People may change with relative ease what they visibly do, especially under external pressure; not so their feelings!13 Anthropology Applied Anyone concerned about mergers of institutional cultures must be awai'e of four fundamental insights of applied cultural anthropology. First, cultures have lives of their own, just as indi-vidual~ do. So we rightly say, for example, that cultures grieve or are depressed, are open or closed to creative ideas. Certainly, individuals influence the life of a culture, but the reverse is also true. Sdcond, any cultural change, even for the noblest of rea-sons, is stressful for the people involved. A culture provides peo-ple with a much needed sense of order or security; it is a defense against the anxiety that disorder or the fear of chaos evokes. When cultures interact this felt sense of security is threatened or under-mined; people feel uprooted, losE, disillusioned, angry, sad. Fears and prejudices about the culture with which they must now inter-act come to the surface. Third, people are likely to resist change for one of two rea-sons: the loss of the known and tried, or concern over the impli-cfitions of personal and group loss. Cultural interaction inevitably calls people to new ways of acting; the familiar must be left behind. Hence, any effort to merge cultures leads to varying degrees of overt or underground resistance. Reactions to cultural change in individuals can build up and then explode in ways that appear totally out of proportion to the provocation of the moment. 354 Review for Religious The resistance has merely been deferred and stockpiled; people finally reach a breaking point and express it dramatically. Fourth, the effort to merge cultures is a highly complex and risky pro-cess demanding the leadership of humanly and culturally sensitive and skilled change agents. Without such help people will so resist the change process that mergers falter or fail. The following axioms sum-marize the practical implica-tions of these four points for leaders of would-be mergers: 1. Appreciate the Complexity of Cultures I explain elsewhere in some depth the nature of culture.~4 For our purposes here, how-ever, culture is a pattern of shared values enshrined in a network of symbols, myths, and rituals and created or devel-oped by a particular group as it copes with life's challenges, instructing its members about what it considers the correct way to feel, think, and behave25 Rituals (that is, visible behavior) are the concrete expression of symbols and myths; symbols are experienced or felt meanings. A myth, a set of narrative symbols, is a story or tradition that claims to reveal to people, in an imaginative way, a fundamental truth about the world and themselves. This truth is considered author-itative by those who accept it. In short, myths inspiringly or feel-ingly tell people who they are, what is good and bad, and how they are to organize themselves and maintain their feeling of unique identity in the world. The most powerful myth in every culture is its creation myth, since it provides people with their primary source of identity as a distinct group.~6 Vv~hen the creation myth's existence is threat-ened-- for example, when major cOltural change is being planned or underway--people experience degrees of anxiety, anger, numb-ness, sadness. Various kinds of creation myths affect people in different times and ways. Three of the kinds can be termed the public, the operative, and the residual myths: Myths inspiringly or feelingly tell people who they are, what is good and bad, and how they are to organize themselves and maintain their feeling of unique identity in the world. May-ff-une 1994 355 Arbuckle * Merging Provinces ¯ The public myth is a set of stated ideals that people openly claim binds them together (like the values inherent in the charism of a congregation); in practice these ideals may have little if any cohesive force. ¯ The operative myth, however, is what actually at this point gives people their felt cohesive identity; the operative myth can and often does differ dramatically from the public myth. ¯ The residual myth normally has little or no daily impact on a group's life, but at times can become a powerful operative myth. For example, a former colonial nation will commonly have a resid-ual myth reminding the people of their former dependency on, or oppression by, a dominant European power. If a member of the former country inter'acts with someone from the latter nation, he or she may experience bitter memories of past colonial relation-ships. Then the painful residual myth becomes the operative myth, creating a climate of suspicion and antagonism. The case studies below illustrate the relevance of the above theoretical clarifications, because .proposed amalgamations of provinces inevitably demand changes in existing creation myths. 2. Encourage "Multicultural" Mergers Mergers are not synonymous with takeovers, that is, the total assimilation of other cultures by dominant cultures. True merg-ers recognize the need for dialogue between equals, so that the best of all cultures is preserved in the new emerging organiza-tional culture. 17 3. Arrange for Rituals of Grieving Change causes loss, and all loss evokes a wide range of human emotions: anger, sadness, guilt. These emotions must be ritually expressed and let go of; otherwise they remain repressed and obstruct change. Since individuals and cultures grieve over loss, these rituals must be personal- and culture-oriented.18 4. Seek Culturally Transformative Leadership Leaders must have skills for guiding people through the uncertainties, anxieties, and risks of cultural change.19 Without these rare people, cultural change of a positive kind is impossible. Case Studies: Merging Provinces Case Study 1: An Overefficient General Administration A general administration decided that three provinces should be amalgamated into one province. No problems were anticipated because 356 Review for Religious the administration believed that the reasons for the amalgamation were obvious to all and that the commitment to the congregational charism was greater than to provincial boundaries. The administration explained to the assembled provincials the major reason for the decision: a better use of human and financial resources for mission. On returning to their respective provinces, however, the provincials, who had been convinced by the arguments given them, were surprised to receive immediate neg-ative reactions from their provinces. The provincial administrations then procrastinated for so long that the general administration finally withdrew its decision, blaming the provincials for their lack of courageous leadership. Comment: The general adminstration's decision may have been theoretically correct, but the process of decision making took no account of the provinces as cultures. The decision to merge, taken without adequate consultation, evoked group and individual anx-iety and resistance because people felt that the operative myths of their provinces, giving them felt predictability, were jeopardized. The general administration wrongly assumed that the congrega-tional charism was simultaneously the public and operative myth. On the contrary, the majority of the religious felt closer bonds to their respective provinces than to the congregational charism. Case Study 2: From Euphoria to Provincial "Nationalisms" Three provincial administrations decided to explore the possibility of merging their provinces. An assembly, attended by as many members of all three provinces as possible, enthusiastically endorsed the idea in a vision statement that highlighted the common charism as the unifying force. Thereupon the provincial administrations quickly planned the formal merger. But to their surprise they later received so little cooper-ation from members of the provinces that they finally dropped the entire idea. Comment: An investigation showed that while the religious were together the public myth (that is the congregational charism-based myth) became the operative myth; they enjoyed being together socially as members of one congregation. However, they avoided the pain of looking closely at what they would have to let go of once the merger occurred; they felt the common con-gregational vision would carry them through. On return to their home provinces, the religious recognized what the merger would cost them, and the support for amalgamation rapidly declined; their respective provincial operative myths were revitalized. Quotations from the founder originally assented to in support of May-June 1994 357 Arbuckle * Merging Provinces the merger were now contradicted by other quotations from the same source. Case Study 3: Fearsof Colonialism Revived An administration of a province in the first world explored the pos-sibility of merging with a province in a third-world nation. It argued that the amalgamation would be beneficial to both provinces. The rich province could supply much-needed money to the third-world province; the latter, having a surplus of vocations, could "export" religious to the former. The proposal was immediately and angrily resisted by the poorer province--to the surprise and annoyance of its richer counterpart. Comment: This case study illustrates that a province's iden-tity or mythology can be influenced powerfully by forces beyond a congregation's internal history. The third-world nation had for over a century been a colony of the first-world country. Members of the third-world province sensed an arrogance in the adminis-trators of the rich province reminding them of the oppressive-ness of the colonial era. They did not want their newfound sense of national self-worth undermined by their receiving financial handouts from the richer province. They also feared that they would be administratively dominated after the merger by people from their former colonial power. In this incident the residual myth of the third-world nation became the operative myth of the province; the latter was prepared to remain extremely poor, but in control of its own destiny. Case Study 4: Fears of "Congregational Colonialism" Revived A superior general encouraged two provincial administrations to investigate the advisability of merging their provinces. The investiga-tion showed that for missionary efficiency the merger made perfect sense. However, the reactions to the proposal were so negative in one province, which had been founded several decades earlier by the other, that the plan was dropped. Comment: This case study is similar to the previous one in that the founding province is equivalently remembered as an arro-gant, congregational colonial power. That memory is the residual myth. The thought of a merger makes the residual myth the oper-ative force for identity and effectively prevents any further seri-ous discussion about merging the provinces. Case Study 5: Ethnic Differences Obstructing Amalgamation A general administration encouraged three provinces in a first-world nation to amalgamate, claiming that three separate administra-tions were a luxury the congregation could no longer afford. However, 358 Review for Religious the provincial administration disagreed, claiming that one adminis-tration could never adequately serve the large geographical area involved. Nonetheless, the merger did administratively take place, but the new administration was confronted with previously unforeseen personnel problems. For example, religious resisted requests to move to apostolates across the former provincial boundaries. Comment: The merger was failing, not for geographical rea-sons, but because the provinces were historically formed along ethnic-migrant lines: Polish, Italian, Irish. The cultural preju-dices of last century surfaced once the provinces were adminis-tratively united; that is, the residual myths became the operative myths for a significant number of religious descendants of the original migrants. If people had been involved in the develop-ment and follow-up of the merging, this critical issue would have emerged and been positively worked through. Case Study 6: Merger Plans Successful Three provincial administrations agreed with an outside consul-tant that from a mission perspective it. was essential for their provinces to amalgamate. They consulted all re.embers of their provinces, and most favored the merger. Once the merger decision was finally taken, the provincial administrations sought professional advice on how to pro-ceed. The merger was done in stages over a seven-year period, accord-ing to frequently evaluated strategies. As part of the merging process, all apostolates were assessed for their pastoral relevance and effectiveness in light of clearly stated criteria. Because all members were invited to be part of the merging and evaluating processes, negative reactions were minimal and the ownership of the changes was at a high level. Comment: In this case study the following actions guaranteed success: culturally s6nsitive leadership, aware that in-depth culture change is a slow process; professional assistance in clarifying the vision of the merger and in developing appropriate strategies; the maximum involvement of members of the provinces in all stages of the merging. Advice to Congregational Leaders The following advice is offered to congregational leaders in view of the above theory and the analysis of the case studies: 1. Clarify the Vision and the Strategies for Mergers. The primary aim of any merger of provinces must be to make the religious congregation better able to serve the needs of the May-.~une 1994 359 Arbuckle ¯ MergingProvinces kingdom of God. Thus, congregational leaders must ask ques-tions such as the following: Is the merger apostolically justified, or is it just a way to maintain existing apostolates without evalu-ating them for their apostolic relevance and effectiveness? Are there better ways, than through amalgamation, to achieve the desired effects of a merger? 2. Involve Members throughout the Process. Organizational amalgamations demand cultural change. Any cultural change, to be effective, is slow and risky, requiring as wide an involvement of members as is possible before, during, and after the formal merger. In order to own the new identity people must feel they are realistically contributing to its development. Congregational leaders, therefore, must ask themselves questions like: What structures will best encourage the maximum involve-ment of members? Are the most-skilled cultural-change agents being used to facilitate the process? 3. Foster Group and Personal Conversion-Grieving. Liminality is the cultural betwixt-and-between position which develops when a previous founding myth and its structural or political expressions have terminated, but a new creation myth has yet to be clarified and owned. It is a painfully dangerous stage of grieving because people feeling intense loss are sometimes tempted to retreat back to the old, comfortably secure ways of doing things. The journeying of the Israelites in the desert, with all its temptations to retreat to Egypt and to blame Moses for their miseries, is an archetypal experience of liminality. Moses, confronted by the Israelites' bickering, pettiness, and anger, rec-ognized that, for the people's grieving to be positive, they must have the space to name their anger and sadness in order to let these feelings go in faith and hope. Only then would the Israelites, freed from their attachments to the past, be open to receive the new creation stoW that Yahweh had for them.2° When provinces decide to merge, religious are invited to enter into the liminality of the desert journey. The old provincial creation mythologies must be let go of to allow the creation myth of a new province to emerge and be confidently owned. Congregational leaders, like Moses, must do two things: (1) encourage the religious to share the stories of their provinces with one another, together with their feelings of grief (anger, numbness) over the loss of the predictability that membership in their respective provinces had given them, and (2) call the religious 360 Review for Religious to help shape in hope the vision or founding myth of the new province. It is a call to an ongoing process of personal and cor-porate conversion. Conversion cannot be hurried, but without it .the merging of provinces will fail. 4. Utilize Cultural Change Agents and Consultants. Change agents assume the responsibility for managing the merging process. They are transformational leaders who under-stand objectively the tensions involved in the process, have acquired personal skills to cope constructively with personal and cultural change in their own lives, and are able to foster with empathy a positive approach in others to changes. In the merging of provinces, such people are needed at all levels: as congregational lead-ers, ritual-grief directors, creators of new and relevant provincial structures for mission, and so forth. Because culture change is so complex, it is advisable for con-gregational leaders to seek the advice of consultants at key points in the merging process. The con-sultant's task is to collaborate with those entrusted with the merger in developing "an understanding of the way things are, thinking about the way they might be, and then working with [them] to consider what, how, and whether to change.''2~ The consultant cannot be effective unless he or she has well-developed cross-cul-tural skills.22 The human person is a striver who yearns for progress and is theoretically open to change. But the human person also has basic needs for order, stability, and predictability. The human person is achievement oriented, a striver who yearns for progress and is therefore theoretically open to change. But the human person also has basic needs for order, stability, and predictability. Applied cultural anthropology highlights the fact that, though people may in theory accept change, in prac-tice they commonly opt for the familiar and secure status quo. May-~:une 1994 361 Arbuckle ¯ Merging Provinces This has important consequences for congregations when provinces are encouraged to merge. In the face of declining numbers and the aging of religious, we must not see the mergers of provinces as the automatic panacea to our problems. We need to be: (a) as certain as possible that the merger will improve the congregation's apostolic effective-ness in accordance with its founding vision; (b) aware that merg-ers require, besides mere managerial action at the top, ongoing personal and cultural conversion, or else, like the Israelites of old, religiou~ will resist the changes and hanker after the security of former, apostolically irrelevant provincial structures; and (c) aware that in mergers one province does not take over other provinces, but all are equal partners in establishing a new province to serve the Lord better. Ultimately, without skilled leadership there can be no positive merging of provinces. Edgar Schein warns: "What the leader most needs is insight into the ways in which culture can aid or hinder the fulfillment of the organization's mission and the intervention skills to make desired changes happen . Leadership and ~ulture management are so central to understanding organizations and making them effective that we cannot afford to be complacent about either of them.''z3 Provinces, like all cultures, are unwise to attempt the process of amalgamation, if they lack the necessary leadership. Notes ~ See C. Handy, Understanding Voluntary Organizations (London: Penguin, 1988), pp. 2-23. 2 Thriving on Chaos (New York: Mfred A. Knopf, 1987), p. 7. See also the evaluation of European mergers in The Economist (London), 20 November 1993, pp. 16f. 3 See G. Meeks, Disappointing Marriage: A Study of the Gains from Mergers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); S. Cartwright and C.L. Cooper, "The Psychological Impact of Merger and Acquisition on the Individual," Human Relations 46, no. 3 (1993): 327-329. 4 Corporate Recovery (London: Penguin, 1984), p. 245. s Vanguard Management (New York: Berkley, 1987), pp. 258, 250. 6 Handy, Understanding, p. 95. 7 See G. Morgan, Images of Organization (London: Sage, 1986), pp. 210-212. 362 Review for Religious s See S. Cartwright and C.L. Cooper, "The Role of Culture Compatibility in Successful Organizational Marriage," Academy of Management Executive 7, no. 2 (1993): 57-70. 9 For example, see T. Deal and A. Kennedy, Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison- Wesley, 1982), p. 4. 10 See his Change Agent Skills in Helping and Human Service Setting (Monterey: Brooks/Cole, 1985), pp. 277-287. 11 See his Fifth Dimension: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1990). 12 See E.H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987), p. 314. ,3 See S.A. Sackman, Cultural Knowledge in Organizations: Exploring the Collective Mind (London: Sage, 1991), pp. 16-23; J. Hunt, "How People Get Overlooked in Takeovers," Personnel Management (July 1987): 24- 26, and "Managing the Successful Acquisition: A People Question," London Business School Journal (summer 1988): 215. ,4 See G. Arbuclde, Earthing the Gospek An Inculturation Handbook for the Pastoral Worker (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 26-78, 167-186. ,s I have modified the definition by E.H. Schein in his Organizational Culture, p. 9. ,6 See G. Arbuckle, "Mythology, Revitalization and the Refounding of Religious Life," Review for Religious 46, no. 1 (January-February 1987): 14-43. 17 See A.E Buono and J. Bowditch, The Human Side of Mergers and Acquisitions, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989), pp. 134-163. ,8 See P. Marris, Loss and Change (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), passim; G. Arbuckle, Change, Grief and Renewal in the Church: A Spirituality for a New Era (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1991), pp. 151-156, and "Organizations Must Ritually Grieve," Human Development 12, no. 1 (1991): 22-27; D.M. Noer, "Leadership in an Age of Layoffs," Issues and Observations 13, no. 3 (1993): 1-5. 19 For a fuller explanation of the leadership needed, see G. Arbuckle, Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993), pp. 98-127. 20 See G. Arbuckle, Change, pp. 151-156. 21 E. Miller, quoted by R. McLennan in Journal of Enterprise Management, no. 3 (1981), p. 251. 22 See Arbuckle, Refounding, pp. 213f, 217. 23 E.H. Schein, Organizational Culture, pp. 320, 327. May-d~une 1994 363 JUDITH ANN EBY One Voice from the Middle Place In the matter of human existence the grave and sensible advice of the King of Hearts--"Begin at the beginning" -- cannot be heeded. We have no choice but to begin where we are; and where we are is the middle. It is not given to us to stand on the far side of human time and then, with all delib-eration and grace, to enter . Our first awareness is that we are swimming. We wake in the water. Our beginnings are not wholly our own. Our endings will most likely be beyond our control. We are middle people.~ MmY reflection upon my own journey in religious life draws e to this quotation from John Shea. My entrance into religious life in 1976 was certainly a beginning. I was twenty-one, full of energy and enthusiasm as i entered this new world. Several years later, though, one event was to etch into the core of my being the awareness that I had really entered into a "middle place," a transitional moment in the life of religious communities. After final vows I attended a large assembly of my regional community where the question was asked, "Shall we plan for our future?" A resounding yes echoed immediately, logically, and enthusiastically in my being. Simultaneously an unusually intense session of debate, frustration, and dialogue began in the larger group. After what seemed to be an eternity, the group came to unanimous agreement to plan for the future and spontaneously sang the song of our foundress. Clearly, something significant Judith Ann Eby RSM is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. Her address is 4133 Hartford St.; St. Louis, Missouri 63116. 364 Review for Religious had taken place. I also understood for the first time that there was a dimension of the community's corporate journey of which I had no understanding. No matter how much I could intellectu-ally grasp their journey, I would never experientially be able to understand part of their lives. Although not the first of such events, it was certainly the clearest one to signal that, at some moment in time, the commu-nity had stepped into an obviously challenging world and world-view different from a former one. I now shared their new world with them. However, there seemed an almost invisible boundary which prevented me from understanding this former world that still played itself out in their collective consciousness. This invis-ible boundary seemed to be not only the actual experience of Vatican Council II, but the experience of pre-Vatican II religious life. Boundaries which mark the end of one period and the begin-ning of a new one in the life of any community or individual can be arbitrary and theoretical. While it is true that many such boundaries could be named, one moment or event often stands out as a clear crossing over from one world into another. For those within religious life at the time of the council and for those who entered near that time, Vatican II was a watershed experience. For better or for worse, life was never again the same. Joan Chittister comments on this reality: For most communities, updating has been the project and process of religious life for 25 years. Clothing has been con-temporized; schedules have been adjusted to compensate for the invention of the light bulb; internal structures have been brought into sync with the best in organizational plan-ning; individual development has been tested by the most recent and most credible of psychological theorems; theol-ogy programs have progressed far beyond the thinking of the medievalists or the Scholastics; community customs books have been amended to meet the nature of contem-porary life. Every dimension of religious life has been scru-tinized and updated. Most of religious life is definitely not in a time warp any more, at least not if relevance is mea-sured by life styles and learnings.2 The renewal after Vatican II was a crystallizing experience which united a number of different age groups around a new interpretation of religious life.3 This focal experience, it must be emphasized, embraces the formative influence and memory of May-~'une 1994 365 Eby ¯ One l~oice from tbe Middle Place pre-Vatican II religious life as interpreted in light of the council. For more than twenty-five years, changes from the council shook the church and religious communities to their roots. Ways of thinking, ways of being, and ways of acting, an entire collective consciousness of a group, were evaluated and reshaped. It is a subdued statement, indeed, to say that such a vast alteration from one world into another has profoundly affected and continues to affect those who were part of religious life at or near the time of the council. A good number of members still form opinions, beliefs, and attitudes in response to the crystallizing experience of Vatican II. Often this leaves them less likely to understand and sympathize with the ideas and beliefs of those who came well after the council and for whom Vatican II is not a watershed expe-rience. This is not necessarily due to a lack of goodwill, yet there is a tendency for one group to judge the worldview of later age groups as misguided or immature. All worldviews are necessarily limited and contain blind spots not easily recognized by those who hold those views. One question slowly emerges from pondering such a vast alteration and its effects on those in religious life: What of those who entered religious communities years after Vatican II? What has been the experience of such members? Much has been writ-ten about the experience of those who entered religious life before and during the time of the council. Other than some articles on formation, little has been written about the experience and from the perspective of those members who remember Vatican II vaguely or not at all. Some members know only the transitional time of religious communities. My hope is to raise a single voice from this middle place so that it may be heard and contemplated and allow the reader, for just a moment, to stand in the shoes of one who has known only the period of transition and to glimpse religious life from a van-tage point relatively rare within communities. The limitation of this essay is that it is a single voice only. Its strength is that it describes a particularized experience that can be known and touched on a human level. There are several assumptions upon which this essay is based. The first is that arbitrary categories of age and experience are not meant to be divisive or to cultivate a we-they attitude. The realization is deep: we are one, many though we are. The focus on newer or younger members and their perspective is not to deny 366 R~view for Religious or diminish the legitimate experience of others. Categories do not have to be mutually exclusive. What is always of uppermost importance is the vitality of the whole group, not of any age group or of any individual. The main issue is not whether we are grow-ing older, fewer, and poorer as a total community, but whether we are growing in wisdom and clar-ity, conversion and gratitude. The second assumption is that congregations as a whole are often unaware or forgetful of the reality that a minority voice is being lost: the voice of the newer or younger members. Newer or younger members, while known individually and usually well-integrated into the larger community, are corpo-rately invisible and often unheard. They do not necessar-ily possess the same opinions, beliefs, or worldviews because great diversity often exists in terms of age and experience. Generalizations about any age group or category are simplistic at their best and crude at their worst. Many who have known Vatican II have moved to new and cre-ative developments very much in line with the renewal of the council while the thinking, beliefs, and actions of many newer or younger members is stale, noncreative, and full of fear. What is suggested here is that the experience and renewal of religious life resulting fro.m Vatican II continues to exert a formative influence upon a significant number of members while the richness and diversity of an exceptionally small population is being lost. Yet in this group are those who will be the leaders well into the 21st century. Middle places imply an ending and a beginning as well as a continuity with what went before. The human experience of end-ings and beginnings will often be bittersweet and both dark and light. Such has been my journey within my own community. It is these experiences of darkness and light, characteristic of tran-sitional moments, as well as the continuity that I want to articu-late. Congregations as a whole are often unaware or forgetful of the reality that a minority voice is being lost: the voice of the newer or younger members. May-.t~une 1994 367 Eby ¯ One Voice from the Middle Place The church and world I knew while growing up was one of constant change. Everything was in flux: the saints, liturgy, sacra-ments, music, religion class, celebrations of church feasts, parish customs, and more. Change was experienced as normal, expected, and part of what it meant to be church. The religious life I entered was in a time of transition and experimentation. It was a world defined more often by the past than by any communal vision of the future. By the time I entered, the initial hope and enthusiasm surrounding renewal in the con-gregation was beginning to give way to fear, anger, agonizing searching, split factions of liberal and conservative groups, and a cancerous doubt. Mary Jo Le.ddy ~peaks of this middle place: At this point in the history of religious life, we are in an in-between moment, a "dark night," when the former mod-els of religious life are disintegrating and a future model has yet to become clear . As the memory and vitality of this conservative model begin to fade, some of the energy and legitimation of the liberal model begin to wane. Those who have a vivid memory of the traditional model of church and religious life seem more clear about the value and sig-nificance of the liberal model of religious life. But does the liberal model make sense in itself, that is, without refer-ence to the more traditi'onal model? There are those who, like myself, never knew the traditional model or never knew it for very long. We know the liberal model was launched from the base of traditional religious life, but we are begin-ning to wonder whether there is enough fuel in the liberal model itself to take it very far. To use another metaphor, we are beginning to feel that driving a liberal model of reli-gious !ife is like driving into the future through a rear-view mirror.4 My inner experience of enthusiasm and belief in religious life often came up against contradictory elements in the community. A few of the major examples focused on the expressions of doubt, grief, and anger in the community. Doubt can be a creative ele-ment. Indeed, it is often a necessary companion on any mature journey of faith. However, the doubt I encountered was often a cancerous doubt that could eat into the core of one's being. It was often disheartening to come up against, time and time again, such cancerous doubt within many members. Grief, usually unresolved grief, was also a major issue for many in the community. It was not unusual for me to become an object of unresolved grief and anger over some former aspect of 368 Review for Religious religious life that had not been sufficiently mourned by the other. As a newer member I stood as a symbol of all that had passed away, of all that was new and unsettling. Grief, doubt, and anger intermingled in various degrees to produce within some people what I experienced as death-dealing statements. Such statements are expressed as a sigh of grief, of loss, of anxious uncertainty toward the future on the part of countless members. They are uttered in the midst of the hus-tle and bustle of life, at com-munity meetings, at times of election and moments of deci-sion, moments of reflection. The private and public acknowledgment of personal experience can be necessary for overall health. Yet it must be remembered that, for those who come at times of transition and do not share the same under-standing or knowledge of a community's history, verbal expressions can take on a particular significance. Language can shape our reality, tell us who we are and who we want to be, can uplift or demolish. A word, once it is spoken, can take on a life of its own; it can have the power to bring about that of which it speaks. At the middle places, when doubt reaches crisis proportions, language is of tremendous significance. Language, in this instance, reflected both lack of vision and lack of credible vision among the members. For older members can often communicate mixed signals to enthusiastic newer or younger members and cause a frequent cri-sis of meaning for them. It is odd but not unusual that entry into any group will always involve the unconscious or conscious assimilation of the larger group's attitudes about some things. Declining numbers was one crisis with which I had to deal. There is a basic difference between the exodus I experienced and the exodus others experienced in the 1960s. When I look ahead of me, I see lots of numbers. When I look around me, I see a handful, and we are the younger mem-bers. Around the time of final vows, I had to come to terms with Grief, doubt, and anger intermingled in various degrees to produce within some people what I experienced as death-dealing statementsl May-j~une 1994 369 Eby ¯ One Voice from the Middle Place this unconscious assimilation of the crisis of numbers. Even today, though, at moments of weakness, fatigue, and real honesty, fear can reach into the core of my being, and I begin to wonder if I will be the last one through the door. Other times, often at commu-nity gatherings, I look around the room and wonder, figuratively speaking, what it will feel like (other things being equal, which they will not be) to bury all those older than I. Numbers can still overwhelm me. Middle places, by their very nature as endings and begin-nings, possess not only elements of darkness, but elements of light as well. As a newer or younger member, I received the best of all that the community had to offer--which was possible because of all that had gone before me. Many of the community's resources of time, finances, personnel, and talents were shared with me. The best of the community's continually growing self-awareness in terms of charism, history, and spirituality encircled me. It would merely be redundant to enumerate these many experiences, work-shops, and activities, since the majority of members are already familiar with them and have themselves participated in many of them. Perhaps I had greater freedom in personal choices and deci-sions than the majority of members had upon their entrance and for a good por.tion of their religious lives. I had greater flexibil-ity in forming relationships with people both outside community and inside. I experienced great exposure to different areas, groups, cultures, and ministries in my regional community. Barbara Fiand SNDdeN, in her book Living the Vision (New York: Crossroad, 1990), discusses the dark side of this high mobility and the exces-sive amount of stress related to it. As one who lived this experi-ence and whose number of moves around my regional community exceeds the example Barbara Fiand gives on page 148, I can well attest to what she says. She does not connect to this mobility the reality that newer or younger members would be more easily exposed to the cancerous doubt of which I spoke earlier. Today I and others who have stayed in religious life perceive our com-munity as larger than the local area in which we live. We are usu-ally well-integrated into the larger community in terms of knowledge, experience, and relationships. Throughout my years in religious life, it has not been uncom-mon for other members to say to me that they do not understand why "we" stay. I suspect these are comments of frustration, despair, 370 Rewiew for Religious lack of hope, or just plain bewilderment. They are comments indicative of middle places where lack of clarity, direction, and insight plague us all. Middle places, besides containing elements of darkness and light, are also by their very nature places of continuity. The con-tinuity is in the interiority. At the time I entered my community, differences were everywhere in terms of clothes, experiences, and theologies of the vows and reli-gious life, in spite of the renewal of Vatican II. The time of forma-tion for me involved excessive mobility and excessive exposure to all of this. After a long process of ¯ sorting through the externals, I found connection and identifica-tion through the interior. This exposure brought me to the real-ization that times were different, details were different, but the essence of the story was the same. Grace had invited me into the deeper myth of religious life. I can speak for no one but myself when I say that the deepest connection I was able to encounter and perceive in others was the experience of religious life as the deepening of one's greatest life and freedom in a journey with the Divine. I would suspect that all newer or younger members who have been in religious life for several years can appreciate, if not marvel at, the journey of those who have been here before us. I have found numerous women whose journey through pre- and post-Vatican II times has demanded much of them. The journey of these women reveals a depth of discipleship and commitment that mine could never rival. These women are part of my congregation and of other congre-gations; some have long been part of my journey and some are recently a part. Some were part of my journey for a time, a sig-nificant time. Some are with me in a new way beyond the bound-aries of space and time. Growth and transformation are profoundly connected to courageous, faith-filled women who show that "a journey with God is the only real source of satisfaction there is, All newer or younger members who have been in religious life for several years can appreciate, if not marvel at, the journey of those who have been here before us. May-June 1994 371 Eby ¯ One Voice from the Middle Place and a life of freedom, no matter how demanding, the only life worth living." s My view is necessarily limited. I merely offer a glimpse of a few of the experiences which could be characteristic of one who has known only this middle place in religious life. And this mid-dle place, too, is necessarily limited. Sandra Schneiders, in her critique of Mary Jo Leddy's book Reweaving Religious Life: Beyond the Liberal Model, gives a good description of the general experi-ence of members who were a part of religious life before Vatican II and those who entered just as the council closed:6 Leddy vividly describes the symbolic malaise, lack of cor-porate vision, tenuous sense of belonging, identity confu-sion, and ministerial disarray that is obviously the experience of some religious, notably those in Leddy's own genera-tional cohort. These religious, now in their forties, entered religious life just as Vatican II closed. Religious congrega-tions, with the permission of the council, began a period of wide-ranging experimentation which left formation pro-grams suspended in mid-air between the collectivist identity that was being repudiated and a new identity that had not yet emerged. The corporate resources of religious life enjoyed by their older sisters were not transmitted to these new members, nor did they have the experiential realiza-tion of the dysfunctionality of much of the older system of religious life which fueled the renewal zeal of professed members. Thus, they could not rely on the deep roots of shared history, symbolic cohesion, and corporate identity as everything began to change simultaneously. Nor could they invest with passion in reforming a life they had never lived. Schneiders goes on to state that part of the significance of Leddy's book lies in the dialogue initiated "between those who lived religious life before the council and those whose experience of this life is almost totally postconciliar." This dialogue is impor-tant since a new generation has emerged today which interprets religious life very differently from those whose background embraces the lived experience of Tridentine Catholicism. My hope is that such a dialogue may be initiated. Newer or younger members are often isolated geographically from one another and lack opportunities to connect with one another. They can easily have a different perception and interpretation of reli-gious life because of differences in culture, generation, and a host of other experiences. Such connection could allow shared dis- 372 Review for Religious cussion of situations and concerns that are unique to newer or younger members. Energy could be channeled into discussion of a vision for the future. Congregations need to become aware of the importance of encouraging and providing financial assistance for structures that facilitate connection, reflection, and analysis among the very members who will carry into the 21st century the depth and dynamic of religious life. There is a tremendous significance in encourag-ing and supporting opportunities of this nature for newer or younger members whose dialogue among themselves can then lead to greater creativity when in dialogue with the larger congregation. This type of connection is not, in and of itself, exclusive. It does, how-ever, allow analysis and reflection which can never go on in larger com-munity gatherings simply because newer or younger members tend to be overwhelmed by the concerns and issues and by the sheer numbers of other members. Congregations as a whole rarely can articulate the dreams, hopes, stories, and experiences relative to newer or younger members. It is a simple fact that newer or younger members often constitutes a minute percentage of any congregation. The newer or younger members' analysis and reflection pre-cede the synthesis with the larger group that they hope ultimately to accomplish. To arrive at a communal vision that will animate and give energy for the future is a primary effort of many religious congregations at this time. Such a communal vision will come with a mixture of risk, wisdom, courage, insight, and pain. Many communities like my own have embraced a new creation, a new moment in their history. Most assuredly, we will be held account-able for choices made, choices not made, choices which will affect not just religious life but the church itself in years to come. Even so, we are invited, individually and corporately, to the awareness that "our own carefully laid plans and world orders should never be regarded as more reliable than the unsystematic reality of God's presence and grace."7 Congregations as a whole rarely can articulate the dreams, hopes, stories, and experiences relative to newer or younger members. May-June 1994 373 Eby ¯ One Voice from the Middle Place Notes ~John Shea, Stories of God (Chicago: Thomas More Press, 1978), p. 11. 2 Joan Chittister OSB, "Religious Life and the Need for Salt," Religious Life Review 30 (November/December 1991): 284. 3 See Patricia \¥ittberg SC "The Problem of Generations in Religious Life," Review for Religious 47, no. 6 (November-December 1988): 906, 907,908. 4 Mary Jo Leddy, "Beyond the Liberal Model," Way Supplement 65 (summer 1989): 47. s John A. Sanford, The Man Who 12Vrestled with God (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), p. 100. 6 Sandra Schneiders, review of Mary Jo Leddy's Reweaving Religious Life: Beyond the Liberal Model in Spirituality Today 42 (winter 1990): 368, 369. 7 Letter of Administrative Team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Union on 19 May 1991 to membership. Paradox Blosso~n-t~othered branches Of whitethorn trees Showing no wood And so full of the hum Of honey-heavy bees Seem to say to me That I should not Register such emptiness In the presence of such plenty Leaning fragrantly down to me In the final days of May. And I say: There is no should! I am a tree Made wood by my winter; Seasons that oppose Are two opposing goods Where envy may not enter To destroy the gift Of paradox. Bernadette McCarrick RSM 374 Review for Religious CATHERINE M. HARMER Religious, the Laity, and the Future of Catholic Institutions Many Catholics have grown up with the assumption that Catholic institutions, especially schools and hospi-tals, are a normal and permanent part of the landscape. Whether or not their children attend either parish or pri-vate Catholic schools, whether or not ~hey ever use the local Catholic hospital, it takes only the hint that these will be closed to cause a great stir. A second common assumption is that the religious congregations who founded and maintained these institutions will continue to do so in the future. Yet these institutions are more at risk now than ever before. Most of the Catholic institutions in this country had their origin in the last century. The parochial school sys-tem developed out of the concern of 19th-century bishops to maintain the faith for the immigrant populations from Catholic European countries. What has become the largest private health system in the country started very simply with religious sisters caring for the sick .and the poor in their homes. The hospitals built and run by their con-gregations were a response to a need to provide profes-sional healthcare in a Catholic setting. For the most part the organizers, builders, and managers of Catholic insti- Catherine M. Harmer MMS has worked as a psychologist in consultation with religious congregations and health systems in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. Her address is Medical Mission Sisters; 300 W. Wellens Street; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19120. life in service May-June 1994 375 Harmer ¯ Religious, the Laity, and the Future tutions for educationl health, and social services were religious sisters, brothers, and priests. Even in the parochial school sys-tems, the bishops depended on the ~isters and brothers to provide the teachers and administrators, and to do so at little cost to parish or diocese. This work of founding and developing the major Catholic institutions, private, parochial, and diocesan, was an immense gift of religious to the church in the United States. Initially they served the immigrant Catholic population. As the years went on, the Catholic contribution was recognized beyond the boundaries of the church, especially in the field of healthcare. Given the social and political status of lay Catholics in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it is doubtful if they could have provided either the impetus or the skill to build these institutions, though their finan-cial contributions were the base for all of them. There is no ques-tion that establishing the institutions was a good thing for religious to do. The question today is whether they can or should continue t.o put as much into them now and in the future as they formerly did. Over the last twenty-five years, there has been a steady decline in the numbers of sisters and brothers, and a steady rise in their median age. During the same period, out of necessity rather than choice, the number of lay people in Catholic institutions has also risen. The cost of maintaining the institutions has increased, par-tially because of salary and benefit increases for the lay staff. In healthcare the potential decline of Catholic-sponsored hospitals was delayed, first by the Hill-Burton funds made available for building and then by the increased availability of third-party insur-ance, Medicare, and Medicaid. The decline of Catholic schools started earlier because there was little financial aid for them except occasional foundation grants. Efforts to acquire tuition credits or direct state support for Catholic schools continue to fail. In many dioceses the future of Catholic schools, even the parochial ones, depends on the ability of the parishes to maintain them independently of the diocese. Thus, only in the wealthier parishes can Catholic schools con-tinue to exist. Even these will last only if the priests and parish-ioners are willing to see fairly large proportions of their income go to the school and if parents are willing to pay increasingly higher tuition. There is the clear possibility that the Catholic school system will gradually disappear through attrition, with 376 Review for Religious only a few schools remaining for those who can afford private education. Creative efforts have been made by congregations. They have involved greater numbers of lay people in their institutions, main-taining sponsorship of the institutions and control over their mis-sion so as not to lose the congregation's charism and values. Particularly in healthcare there have been mergers of different types, from full takeover of one system by another to the collabo-ration of two or more systems forming a new system. Still, while the presence of religious in the institutions continues to decline, the number of lay women and men at high levels of management and in board positions grows. Lay members of the institutions find themselves attracted

Issue 47.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1988. ; R~vw.w ~:oR R~L~C~ff)us (ISSN 0034-639X). published every two months, is ediled in collaboration with lhe facuhy members of the Dcpartmcnl of Theological Studies of St. U)uis University. The edito-rial offices are located a~ Room 428:3601 Lindcll Blvd.: St. [~uis, Me. 63108-3393. R~v~w R~a.ffm~us is owned by the Missouri Province Educalional lnslilule of the Sociely of Jesus, St. [~uis, Me. 01988 by R~v~w FO~ R~JG~OUS. Single copies $3.00. Subscriptions: U.S.A. $12.00 a year: $22.00 for two years. Other countries: add $5.00 per year (surface mail); airmail (Book Rale): $20.00 per year. For subsc~iptioh orders ur change uf address, write: REVIEW ~'o~ RELIt;IOUS: P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors JanuarylFebruary, 1988 Volume 47 Number I Manuscripts, books for review and correspondence with the editor shuuld be sent to R~:wt:w FOa R~:L[t:mus; Ruom 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence abuut the department "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709. Back issues and reprints should be urde'red frum Rt:\'~t:w voa Rt:L~t;n~us; Room 428; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues and articles not published as reprints are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, M! 48106. A major pnrtion of each issue is also available on cassette recurdings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New Yurk, NY 10010. Review for Religious Volume 47, 1988 Editorial Offices 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428 Saint Louis, Missouri 63108-3393 Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read M. Anne Maskey, O.S.F. Acting Editor Associate Editor Review Editor Contributing Editor Assistant Editors REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is published in January, March, May, July, Septem-ber, and November on the twentieth of the month. It is indexed in the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index and in Book Review Index. A microfilm edition of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is available from University Mi-crofilms International; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48 ! 06. Copyright© 1988 by REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. A major portion of each issue of REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS is also regu-larly available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually im-paired. Write to the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. The Consecrated Lives of Apostolic Religious Today Mary Linscott, S.N.D. Sister Mary is on the staff of the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes (CRIS), specializing in the area of constitutions and general chapters. Her previous contri-bution to these pages was "The Service of Religious Authority: Reflections on Gov-ernment in the Revision of Constitutions." Sister Mary resides at her motherhouse, Suore di Nostra Signora di Namur; Largo Berechet, 4; 00152, Roma, Italy. When a group of sisters came to my office recently to discuss a theme for a presentation, we had little difficulty in finding one, and the focus seemed to sharpen almost of its own accord. The topic of religious con-secration was an evident subject for at lea~t three main reasons: I) its in-trinsic importance; 2) its importance in renewal; 3) its importance as be-ing at the heart of much of the crisis in religious life since the Second Vatican Council. It is also the key to future development. We concentrated on the consecration of religious, and more espe-cially of sisters whose institutes, are dedicated to works of the apostolate. We assumed as a starting point, that all religious of whatever style of life are both contemplative and apostolic by the fact of their vocation and profession. They express the contemplation and the apostolic effective-ness differently in accordance with the founding gift of their institutes or of the branch of the institute to which they belong, but the dimensions of contemplation and of apostolate are common to all. Having agreed on this, we addressed ourselves to those religious who express their contem-plation and apostolate in an active dedication to works of mission. For the sake of brevity, we called them apostolic religious. 3 4 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 Three lines0of thought emerged: 1) the challenge to sisters of apos-tolic life twenty years after the Second Vatican Council; 2) consecration as the heart of apostolic religious life; 3) living that consecration in the Church today. The Challenge to Apostolic Religious Twenty Years After Vatican II A Matter of Identity The challenge facing many apostolic religious is a matter of identity. The fruitful period for the foundation of religious congregations of sis-ters dedicated to apostolic works was approximately from the end of the French Revolution to the first third of the present century. Emigration, the exploration of new continents, the consequent expansion of the Church, the needs created by the industrial revolution, and the political and social developments of the nineteenth century, all called for a Chris-tian service inspired by the works of mercy. The need was met largely and often heroically by institutes of sisters who responded to the call and founding gift of God by undertaking works which expressed the grace ,' he gave: works of education, health care, social rescue, pastoral serv-ice. At that time, few other people were concerned about these areas of need. The sisters were identified, exteriorly at least, by their works, their dress, their convents, their mode of life. They were easily recognized, usually respected, and sometimes put on a pedestal. But whatever the re-action to them, their own identity was secure. They knew what they were about and what they had come to do. Their future seemed predictable, and a young woman presenting herself as a postulant could have a rea-sonable expectation of what her life of serv.ice would be like. The fact that security of works has changed is a natural historical de-velopment. Evolution is necessary and inevitable. Some religious who identified their vocation with what they were doing, certainly had a cri-sis over this. But even the extraordinarily rapid rate of change which has marked the evolution of apostolic works in the past thirty years, was not enough in itself to challenge the religious of apostolic life as they have been challenged since 1966. The issues are deeper. Two great insights of Vatican 1I have had a profound effect on the sense of identity of the apostolic religious: the universal call to holiness, stated in Lumen Gentium, chapter 5, numbers 39-42, and the criteria for renewal of religious life, ~;tated in Perfectae Caritatis, number 2. The universal call to holiness blurred the traditional notion of religious life as a state of perfection, and the criteria for renewal sent religious back to the gospel, .the primitive inspiration of their institute and the changed Consecrated Apostolic Lives conditions of our times with unexpected results. Let us look briefly at these two insights of the Council since they have both obliged sisters of apostolic life to go tothe roots of their identity and to find these in their religious consecration. The Universal Call to Holiness Originally chapters 5 and 6. of Lumen Gentium were conceived as a single entity so that the universal call to holiness actually did embrace all the members of the Church with no chapter distinction between laity and religious. Even in the present separated presentation, the thought of the two chapters is unified and continuous. Lumen Gentium sees~the Church as the people of God, chapter II) hierarchical (chapter III) lay (chapter IV) and called to holiness (chapters V and VI). The Code of Canon Law follows approximately the same pattern, dealing first with Christ's Faithful and then with the hierarchy and institutes of consecrated life. The decree on the Apostolate of Lay People (Apostolicam Actuosi-tatem, 18, XI 1965) develops much more richly the role of the laity in the Church, and Gaudium et Spes opens.up clearly and strongly, the enor-mous role that is theirs precisely because of the call to holiness. The emer-gence of the laity is the logical fruit of chapter 5 of Lumen Gentium ~nd it is not surprising that some of the best writing in preparatio.n for the coming Synod on "the vocation and mission of the laity in the Church and in the world twenty years after the Second Vatican Council" uses terms that a few decades ago would have been thought proper to relig-ious. The concept of the laity as the people of God and the exploration of the depths of, baptismal consecration havebeen slow to leaven the think-ing of the Church and, like all great truths, may have been liable to ex-agg,~ ration in the process. There has been error both by defect and by excess. One school of thought has argued that, if all are called to holi-ness, no way of life is in itself more holy than another; baptism is every-thing, and there is no consecration~beyond that of baptism. Th~is would cut the ground from under all forms of what the Church specifically calls '"consecrated life." Another school of thought has taken the line that, if all are called to holiness, then all, in some obscure way, are called to echo or model the way of life long recognized in the Church as a ~'state of perfection." This confuses the style of life with the substance of ho-liness and moreover does not do justice to number 31 of Lumen Gentium which insists that "their secular character is proper and peculiar to the laity." 6 Review for Religious, January-February 1988 In practice, a remarkable renewal of the laity is actually going on. This is not simply a matter of effective lay movements such as St. Egidio, i'Arche, the Focolarini, the neo-catechumenates and charismatic groups, all of which are especially attractive to young people, but also of a ground swell in favor of the laity. There is a quality of spirituality, of mission, of responsibility in the Church, of active participation that was not known before the Council l Whereas formerly the lay person was identified negatively as one who is not a c!eric or a religious now the nega-tive description is complemented by something much more positive; the laity are "the faithful who by baptism are incorporated into Christ, are placed in the.People of God, and in their own way share in the priestly, prophetic~.and kingly office of Christ, and to the best of their ability carry. on the mission Of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world" Lumen Gentium .31). The sense of identity is much surer, and it is very clear that one does not have to be a religious to be called to holiness, .to be in .mission in the Church and to be responsible for many of the things that religiOus of apostolic life have done since their foun-dation. This has been a challenge.for many. if all are called to holiness and our work can be done by others, why be a religious? Some Effects of Renewal At the same time as the movement connected with the laity, there has been the parallel movement for the renewal of religious life. Perfe~tae Caritatis (n. 2) called for a renewal and an adaptation of religious insti-tutes in the changed conditions of our times. It is a matter of history that the adaptation, which was the easier and the more evident of the two un-dertakings, happened with great rapidity. In some cases it took place be-fore the implications of true renewal were grasped. In many instances it was not so much an adaptation as a complete transformation which moved an institute away from the expression of its founding gift that had been visible, identifiable and a lived tradition. Adaptation was necessary but the Council assumed an adaptation resulting from and in conformity with the renewal of basic values in religious life. Renewal was to, give a focus to the adaptation~ and criteria of discernment to guide it. With-out such parameters, the attempt to be one with the changed and chang-ing conditions of our times could only involve religious in an endless spi: ral of charige to the point where their identity would no longer be in them-selves but in their conformity to current conditions. The ada.ptations of the past twenty years have gone very far. In a re-action to being identified by their works, many institutes in the early 70s Consecrated Apostolic Lives / 7' laid a heavy emphasis on being rather than on doing. Then a counterac-tion, stressing the idea of mission without adequately defining it, moved back to doing, although this was expressed in new terms, often with a strong social emphasis.~ The shifts were evident in most aspects of apos-tolic religiouslife: There was a far more immediate insertion into soci-ety than .in the past: an active presence and outreach characterized by soli-darity with and preferential option for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized. The types of work done, while not giving up the traditional health, educational and pastoral services where these remained neces-sary, included a wide variety of new ministries, often in the fields of hu-man promotion and some times of socio-political involvement. Forms of community changed. There were fewer large, institution-like convents but a multiplication of small, loosely structured, inconspicuous resi-dences with a relatively short life span. Structures of government cailed for participation and shared responsibility. Prayer had to be adapted to the new forms of life and work and often became largely individual. For-mation was sometimes uncertain because the life itself was not clear. Too much was left to the Choice of the person entering. The dramatic reduc-tion in numbers posed a problem in itself, and there was a lack of confi-dence on the part of many sisters with regard to their own future. Unless there was a strong grasp of the root values of religious life and a genuine renewal of these, the adaptations of the late 60s and 70s could bri.ng sisters to the point of asking serious questions about their idi~n-tity as religious. The crisis was sharper for sisters of apostolic life since their apostolates brought them into close contact with the crisis that the Church was living at the same time in her effort to be open to the world and be a Church of the poor. Those same apostolates also brought to-gether the sisters and the laity. More than one religious asked: what is the difference between me, who am a sister of apostolic life, and my sis-ter at home, who is a professional Christian laywoman?'It is not prayer; it is not work; in many cases it is not dress; it is not home conditions or lifestyle. The question: "why be a religious?" was being posed from adifferent angle. Some sisters left religious life because they could not answer it with any degree of integrity. Convinced that all share the same call to holiness, the same baptismal consecration, that all take part in the same mission of Christ, that we build the same body of Christ in the com-munion of the Church, that we are all members of the priestly, prophetic and royal People of God, and not seeing much evident difference in the works by whi(h religious and laity express all this, these sisters virtu-ally asked whether there was a difference at all. I~ / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 This is the crux of many a vocation crisis for apostolic religious. The answer in individual cases is never easy because the question itself im-plies that there is already doubt and insecurity. The important thing is the basis on which the doubt and insecurity are met. Two points matter. One is to su[gport and encourage all that is said of the dignity and great-ness of the lay vocation. Religious do not find their own identity at the expense of the laity or by playing down the-laity. On the contrary. The stronger and greater the lay vocation, the more it can help religious to develop their own, and all that the laity have by baptism is also the basis of'the Christian life of.the religious. The second point is to make the ques~ tion concrete and positive. In one sense: "How are we different?" is the wrong question if it is a defensive attempt to fix on what separates us. We should rather ask: "What is it that makes us religious? What does it commit us to? How do we live it?" Many sisters who, possibly could not put that essential specification into words are yet s~ufficiently con-vinced to give their lives because of it--and that speaks for itself. When we do try to put it into wgrds, it comes to the Christian call to holiness and to union with Christ in mission in the Church expressed, not in secu-larity as is the case with the laity, and not through ordination as is the case with the c.lergy, but through religious consecration: a consecration of the whole person which is a new expression of baptism and which is effected by public vows accepted by the Church and made in commu-nity. Our identity, our raison d'etre, our place in the Church have their roots in our religious consecration. For many of us this consecration is specifically apostolic. Consecration The Nature of Our Apostolic Consecration The new Code of Canon Law is very clear that consecration is the basis and specific characteristic of our life as religious, and it has two fine a~ticles to this effect. The first is canon 573.1 which says: "Life consecrated through the profession of the evangelical counsels is a sta-ble form of living in which the faithful follow Christ more closely under the action of the Holy Spirit and are totally dedicated to God who is su-premely loved. By a new and special title they are dedicated to seek the perfection of charity in the service of God's kingdom, for the honor of God, the building up of the Church and the salvation of the world. They are a splendid sign in the Church, foretelling the glory of heaven." The second is canon 607. I: "Religious life, being a consecration of the whole person, shows forth in the Church the marvelous marriage established Consecrated Apostolic Lives by God as a sign of the world to come. Religious by their consecration consummate a full gift of themselves as a sacrifice offered to God,. so that their whole existence becomes a continuous worship of him in love." All the important elements are there: the reality of a consecra-tion to God which takes the whole of life; the rootedness in baptism; the newness; the response of love to the love of God which calls to a rela-tion which is mutual gift like marriage; the commitment to a personal fol-lowing of Christ more closely; the form of the consecration which is by public vows; its public nature; the ecclesial dimension which is in the Church and for the building up of the Church; the stability and specific-ity; and the fact that it is for others: a witness to.the fact of God, of heaven, of the reality of the invisible things of faith that is for the good of all God's people. For us, sisters of apostolic life, there are two other very important articles: canon 673 which states that the apostolate of all religious consists primarily in the witness of their consecrated life and canon 675 which makes clear that, for institutes dedicated to apostolic works, apostolic action is of the very nature of the consecration. Such action is to come from union with God. It is to confirm and foster this union and is to be exercised in the name of the Church and in commun-ion with her. Let us look at some of these ~lements more closely. . Consecration involves, at least implicitly, choice by God and the dou-ble idea of separation for him and dedication to him. In the Old Testa-ment, it came to mean a declaring sacred, a setting aside a reserving or separating out for God which recognized his holiness. In the case of per-sons, Yahweh himself consecrated as, for example, in the wonderful call of Jeremiah (Jr 1:5) whom he foreknew, loved, called and set aside for his ~own service even before he was born. In the new dispensation, Jesus is consecrated and sent (Jn 10:36): "For them do I consecrate myself" (Jn 17:!9). His Church is a consecrated nation, "a people set apart to sing the praises of God" (1 P 2:9). From this consecrated nation God° freely chooses and calls certain ones, as he did the prophets and apos-tles, to live their sharing in his covenant in a way which involves a fur-ther or new consecration. This may be sacramental, in the case of priests; secular, in the case of members of secular institut+s; religious, when it is made through religious profession. In each case it is an unmerited gift of God which, like love, cannot be rationalized. It is something that God works in us and to which we respond. The woman called to be a relig-ious is invited by the Father to a closer following of his Son, is given a particular intimacy with the Lord and is transformed by the Spirit in a-unique relationship of love given and love returned consciously, freely, Review for Religious, January-February 1988 totally. She is separated for and dedicated to this and she gives her life to it in joyful hope and gratitude. She finds in it the inexhaustible source of her own growth in holiness and of her effectiveness and fruitfulness at the service of others. Such a consecration is deeply rooted in baptism and is a fuller ex-pression of the baptismal commitment. Baptism, by which we receive the fruits of the redemption in Christian initiation, establishes a relation with God which is trinitarian and ecclesial. Any further bond with God will be marked by the same characteristics. It can only develop further the relationship of baptism. That is why religious consecration is a dedi-cation; not to the following of Christ to Which we are already bound by baptism, but to the closer following; not to the love of God and neigh-bor because that is already contained in baptism, but to God supremely loved and to service as a pledge for life; not to being Church because we are already fully members of the Church by baptism, but to taking that particular place and role in the Church which are indicated by our religious profession. The consecration is rooted in baptism yet it is new. It is not given to all the baptized and is not an automatic consequence of baptism. It is new because it binds us to new dimensions of the bap-tismal consecration. It is new because it is made with awareness and choice; new as a response of love to a particular call; new because it com-mits us to constant ongoing conversion; new because it constitutes a new iife for God in Jesus Christ (see Redemptionis Donum, n. 7). This new consecration has a particular character: it is marked by a love that is mutual gift--the love of choice and self-giving which is the 10ve of one spouse for another. The Code of Canon Law chooses the im-age of "the marriage established by God as a sign of the world to come" as its description of religious life. From the depth of the love of Jesus comes the call'to Consecration, and this saving call by God's grace, as- -sumes in the depth of the person called, the actual form of profession of the evangelical counsels. ~In this form is contained the answer of the religious to the call of Christ's love: a love of self-giving responding to the divine self-giving. This is the heart of religious consecration: a mu-tual surrender of love which embraces the whole person. The words of Isaiah: "I have redeemed you, you are mine" (Is 43: I), seem precisely to seal this love which is a love of total and exclusive consecration to God. However, mysterious as it is from many points of view, religious con-secration is no abstraction. It involves a particular way of life here and now in a form approved by the Church. Of its very nature such-a way Consecrated Apostolic Lives of life wiil include prayer, mission, service and communion with others who have the same consecration in a particular religious family. It is in a down-to-earth community, in the Church and world as they are today, and in accordance with a specific set of approved constitutions in a given institute that we live our religious consecration. Moreover, consecration takes place through the profession of public vows. The vows are public by their nature and they pledge those who make them to a fraternal life in common (see can. 607). Not only do they set apart and dedicate the consecrated person to God but, as a chief means of fostering this new relationship, they incorporate the person into a religious institute which has its own law and which encourages growth in consecration in its own way. We sometimes talk about religious consecration generically but, as a matter of fact, it is always both specific and concrete. There is no such thing as vows made in general. They must be according to the constitu- .tions of a given institute. In their turn, the constitutions express the found-ing gift given by God to a person or group: Francis, Dominic, the seven founders of the Servites, Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, or Julie Billiart. Each of these lived their own consecration in a way which attracted others, and the institutes which they brought into being are channels for the'~work of the Holy Spirit continuing the gift of God in later generations. Fidel-ity to the identity which is rooted in the gift of God is, therefore, of high importance to any institute. It is transmitted through the consecrated lives of the members and through the consecration of new members, for the consecration itself reflects something of the specific grace, purpose, na-ture and spirit of the religious family in which it is made. It is clear that, although religious consecration involves a stable way of life, it is not a once and for all act. It is the beginning of a new phase of the inner journey to union with God, but it requires a lifelong growth that we call formation, and structures of support and order that we call governmept. We deepen our consecration all our life long. Nor is con-secration self-regarding. It is directed to the fulfillment of God's kind purposes and so is:for the sake of the whole Church. It benefits all God's people. The present Holy Father has expressed this very beautifully when he said that by the fact of consecration the heart of the religious is sealed with the sign of the biblical spouse (see Sg 8:16) and at the same time opened to all the sufferings, needs and hopes both of individuals and of the world. Receiving the love of the Father through the heart of Jesus, the religious enters in a particular way into the economy of the redemp-tion: the transformation of the entire cosmos through the human heart from within. This transformation takes place through the love which con- Review for Religious, January-February 1988 stitutes the very substance of religious consecration. It is by their conse-cration itself, then, that religious take part in the most complete and radi-cal way possible in the shaping of the new creation which must emerge from the abundance of the Paschal Mystery. (see Redemptionis Donum, nn. 8 and 9). This is their deepest sharing in the saving mission of Christ. The consecration of the apostolic religious, however, has a special note. In their case the deep, consecrated sharing in Christ's mission has an expression in apostolic and charitable activity which is of the very nature of their religious life. This activity is a "holy ministry entrusted to them by the Church, to be performed in its name" (Perfectae Carita-tis,. n. 8). It is a ministry closely connected with the founding gift and identity and rooted in consecration. To accomplish it, the entire relig-ious life of the members should be imbued with an apostolic spirit, and all their apostolic activities with a religious spirit. Here we touch the heart of apostolic religious consecration in practice. The apostolate is not something added on to our life of consecration: it is essential to that life. Everything in us~must be "imbued with an apostolic spirit." There is nothing outside it. It embraces the whole of life. We are apostolic, not because of What we do or do not do, but because we are consecrated in such a way that all is done as one sent by God in the name of Jesus and in the power of his self-giving love. The complementary side of thee coin is equally important. The works that we undertake to fulfill the "holy ministry entrusted to us by the Church" are not simply professional ac-tivities. By the fact of consecration, they are to be "imbued with a re-ligious spirit." We are consecrated for God, for the Church, for his peo-ple, not simply to do works which, however good, can be paralleled by many a generous person,° whether Christian or not. Our service is to be a sign of Christian vocation, witnessing to realities that are unseen but eternal. That is why our apostolic action must always proceed from un-ion with God and must confirm and foster that union. We are apos-tolically effective to the extent to which we live ourconsecration. The Place of O~r Apostolic Consecration in the Church Our consecration as apostolic religious is an ecclesial reality, exist~ ing only in and for the Church, the sacrament of salvation of the Christ who is consecrated affd sent. The Code says that we exist to'build up the body of Christ (can. 573.1). Certainly, our consecration is mediated through the Church. The public vows of religious are recognized and re-ceived by ecclesiastical authority, and the life to which they give rise is a divine gift to the Church which does not exist outside her. The Church r(cognizes, fosters and encourages the establishment and growth of re- Consecrated Apostolic Lives ligious institutes. She has the responsibility of discerning gifts and of ap-proving the individual constitutions according to which consecration by vows is made. She also gives the particular apostolic mandate according to which we have a specific, visible and public share in the saving mis-sion given to her by her founder. Our consecration commits us to a dou-ble service in the Church. In the first place, by a free expression of God's will, we are called to do and be intensively, exclusively, publicly and with our whole lives what all Christians are called to do and be by the universal call to baptism described in Lumen Gentium. Our consecration by vows in community frees us from many preoccupations and respon-sibilities of daily life in the areas of possessions, affectivity and choices precisely in order that we may be completely given to this one priority. If we are not living for the sake of others, we are not living our religious consecration because it is for them every bit as much as for ourselves that God has given his gift. We see a kind of parallel in civil life. All citizens have a responsibility for public o.rder and the well-being of so-ciety. Usually all strive to keep the peace. But some do it as a service to the others which is a life commitment. They do it publicly, exclu-sively, giving all their time and energy to it and, in some cases, life it-self. They are not more citizens than those who have chosen other ca-reers, but they express their citizenship in.a specific way for the benefit of all. God has always acted in a similar way with his people. All share the covenant; all are a royal,, prophetic, priestly nation; all are a conse-crated people set apart for God. But it is precisely ,because of this uni-versal call to holiness that God has called individuals and groups to im-age the covenant, to recall it, to live it in a way that is a constant re-minder, so as to help their sisters and brothers to be faithful to it. This call from among the people of God and for the sake of the people of God is not merited but free. It does not argue personal sanctity and does not imply any form of superiority. There were kings who failed, reluctant prophets, unfaithful priests, and apostles who betrayed or denied their Lord. But there is aneed for persons in the line of the prophets and apos-tles who are called by God, set. apart and dedicated to him, and who give up everything to follow him more closely. They focus the common call of God's people and keep it before the eyes of all as a challenge, encour-agement and truth that give meaning to life. The first service that results from religious consecration stands in this tradition. The second service is the more obvious one of apostolic works. There is an intimate connection between the founding gift which originated an institute, the consecration by which members are incorporated into the "14 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 institute, and the works which express the institute's corporate sharing in the mission of Christ. The three cannot be separated. In recognizing an'd approving an institute and mediating the consecration of its mem-bers, the Church acts on a discernment which she has made of the action of the Holy Spirit responding to.the needs of God's people. This divine action usually involves a perception on the part of the institute's foun-dress of some aspect or attribute of God which enables her to see human needs in a particular way and to respond concretely. My own foundress' wonderful awareness that God is good made her want to share her per-sonal experience of his goodness with the people of her rural area of north-east France who had never he~ird of him. This corresponded with the des-perate need for social and religious formation which followed the French Revolution. The result was a sharing in Christ's mission by an aposto-late of catechesis and education. Educational works are not one option among many .for Sisters of Notre Dame. They are the apostolate by which we share and continue St. Julie's founding insight and they are mandated for us by the Church because of this. Most apostolic institutes can trace the relation--founding gift, consecration, apostolic works-- pretty clearly. For example, the very name, Sisters of the Good Shep-herd, is a summary in itself. The Sisters of Mercy are another case in point. So are the Sisters of the Good Samaritan and the Little Sisters of the Poor. In each case, the Church is enriched by a concrete service in an area which she herself has approved and which has its roots in a di-vine initiative continued in consecrated life. Such a service is a matter of faith as well as of professional 'competence. It has a solid ground of continuity as well as diversity in its ongoing development. Both in itself and through the forms of service to which it has given rise, religious consecration is a witness in the Church to the reality of things hoped for and believed but as yet unseen. Consecration is a re-sponse of love in faith. The apostolic religious, by the fact of her conse-cration, asserts her conviction about the reality of God, the truth of Je-sus Christ, the presence of the communicating Spirit. She gives her life to this. In full consciousness of her personal inadequacy, she accepts the responsibility of being salt and light, sign and reminder. She accepts it, moreover, corporately in community with others shar.ing the same un-merited gift, and in a stable way--not simply when she feels like it, or when things go w~ell, or for a certain time, but for better or for worse as a life commitment. The ChurCh has the right to count on the witness and works of consecrated religious. Consecrated Apostolic Lives The Place of Consecration in Our Lives At this point it might be helpful to sum up briefly the place of our apostolic religious consecration in our lives as individual members of our institutes. What does it commit us to? First, to a closer following of Christ, .personally and loved above all, and, in him, to a continuous wor-ship of God in charity. This involves a life like that of the apostles: not a knowing about the Lord but a knowing and loving the Lord himself, taking on his mind and heart in the ordinary things of every day, letting ourselves be transformed by him until to live is Christ (Ph 1:24). This deep love of the person of Jesus gives meaning to our consecrated lives and the foundation of any apostolic spirituality. It is expressed in the vows and it alone can ensure the poverty of heart, the surrender of love and the free obedience that we strive for through our vows. Secondly. we are committed to a sisterly life in common precisely because the un-ion with Christ through love also unites us among ourselves. Commu-nity is characteristic of the religious form of consecrated life. It is the expression of a spiritual bond, a communion, which is Christ among us, our hope of glory (Col 1:27). This bond reflects the Church a~ commun-ion: the aspect so strongly brought out at the 1985 Synod of Bishops. It is also the bond of apostolic following: of sharing the same mission of Christ, in the same way and under the impulse of the same Holy Spirit. This bond is stable, and has its concrete expression in commu-nity as our form of life. We commit ourselves in the third place to a shar-ing in Christ's mission which is corporate, personal and ecclesial. We each accept our personal Part in the mandate which the Church gives to the institute as a whole and we carry out our own mission under the author- ~ity of our institute and according to its traditions. Fourthly, we commit ourselves to fidelity to our own religious institute as God's gift to the Church and to us. This means fidelity to its nature, character, purpose and identity, to its way of life, to its spirit, to its mission, apostolate and works. Such fidelity has to be both honest and creative, respecting both the need for continuity ant] the necessity for change. Finally, implicit in all this is that we commit ourselves to Christ's goal and to Christ's means: prayer, service and the cross in the very apostolates that we do with him for the Father's glory and the salvation of the world. Our con-secration requires that our works come from and lead to union with God. That is one reason why our commitment in faith is a source of confi-dence, joy and hope. Review for Religious, January-February 1988 Living Our Apostolic Consecration Today. The Conditions of Our Times (Perfectae Caritatis n. 2) Perfectae Caritatis pointed to the conditions of our times as one of the three major criteria of renewal. They certainly play a great part in the way that the apostolic religious lives her consecration today. Some sisters bemoan them, others exult in them, others a~ain try to escape them or pretend that they are not there. One good way to approach them is to remind ourselves that we are not living our religious life in 1988 by chance. It might seem easier to have been a "Mother of the desert," or a seventeenth-century pioneer, or even one of our pre-Vatican II sis-ters, sure of her predictable horarium and occupations. However, the fact is that it is here and now that we are living our religious consecration because that is God's choice for us. Of all the possible periods of his-tory, this is the one that his love found best for us. It is not a mistake or an oversight. We know and have believed in his love and this is how he shows it. Our first response has to be a wholehearted Yes to the fact that we INe in our own times. This is our hour. We do not have any otfier, and if we do not accept it,'something will be forev~r lost to God's glory and to the Church of Christ. It is here in this place, now .in this time, with these sisters, in this Church, in this society that each of us carries on the saving work of Christ to which our consecration c6mmits US. What are our times? Certainly they are a period of very rapid change, not to say upheaval, both in the Church and in the world. The years since the Council bave seen significant shifts in long-accepted values and atti-tudes and the raising of questions probably unthinkable in a previous gen-eration. Moral problems are complex. Instant communication has brought nuclear issues, violence, the uncertain striving for world peace, questions of human dignity,~ world hunger, armaments into many peo-ple's homes. Computer technology is easing work on the one hand and on the other posing some deep problems about the future of human de-velopment. One thing is sure. The clock will not turn back. These are our times with their hopes and fears and challenges. We have to know them if we are to live our consecration according to the mind of Christ, because they raise questions about the adaptation of our style of conse-crated life and work. Four areas have been particularly affected by social and ecclesial de-velopments since Vatican II: community, works, formation and govern-ment. The extent of the pressure has varied from culture to culture but Consecrated Apostolic Lives / 17 the general lines are worldwide, and I will confine my observations to the English-speaking world as being the one I know best. Community has moved from the accepted model of a more or less en-closed life with its own traditional .interpretation of being-in-common through uniformity of timetable, prayer, presence, habit, to a present state of considerable diversity. There have been successive phases. Im-mediately after the Council,there was a false dichotomy between com-munity and apostolate and, in reaction to this, the tendency to absolu-tize either one or the other. Then there was the cry for small communi-ties. In the late seventies, by a misunderstanding, anything that was termed "monastic" was considered nonacceptable for apostolic life. Then there were cluster communities, intercongregational communities, international communities, and the cases of sisters living alone. Much of the discussion centered on structure, size, location, style of living and form of government. All these are important, but the considerations need to go deeper if we are to renew,community in a way that corresponds to our times. What is needed is a living witness to the possibility of unity among people. The quality and evidence of community living: that is, the fact of persons living like the apostles did, united to Christ, and to each other because of him, is part of the good news that we bring. Com-munity exists as the expression of communion ir~ the Lord. For this rea-son it is an obligation for religious; notan obligation which is imposed, but an obligation of love which flows naturally from our consecration. It is by the values of consecration and corporate mission that commu-n. ity life is to be evaluated. Certainly, there are changes in the require-ments and possibilities of community life, but probably what needs prayer-ful reflection is the connection between present.trends in community styles and structures and the v~alues of consecrated religious life that these are meant to promote. The touchstone is our consecration: the basic ele-ment which determines the.raison d'6tre., the purpose, the relationships and the nature of community. It is not a~clearcut area. There are good apostolic reasons for many of the changes that are taking place: new needs evident in both the Church and society; much greater specialization and professional mobility; fewer sisters; less stable corporate com-mitments because of the variety of demands; a different kind of outreach to the needy and the marginalized. But the criterion for discernment in decisions that have to be made must first of all be the consecration in which religious community is rooted. What kind of community are we building? What values are we trying to support? If the bottom line is our consecration, our communion in Christ will be such that the witness of Review for Religious, January-February 1988 our community living will be an apostolate in itself. "By this all shall know that you are my disciples, that you have love one for another" (Jn 13:35). If the communion of consecration does not solve all the struc-tural problems, it gives the one sure context for the evolution of com-munity. Something similar has happened in regard to works, and this is not separate from but closely related to developments in community. Ours is a corporate mission: a joint sharing in the one mission of Christ which is an ecclesial mandate taken up by the fact of our consecration to God in a parti.cular institute. It has both the strength and the limitation of its specificity. It is strong because it commits the whole institute to a cer- (ain direction: the service and works which express its founding gift. It is limited because it requires us to forego other kinds of works which are not part of that gift or which are more properly done either by the clergy or by the laity. One of the difficult things to foster in recent years has been the poverty of heart that can accept the limitations of consecrated service for what they really are: fidelity to God's will as expressed in the founding gift and lived tradition, and not some kind of failure in gener-osity. We do not look for variety of works for its own sake. We are not called to act as if all the social, political, economic, educational, pas-toral or medical good in the world depended on us. We are not seeking our own fulfillment. But we are living our consecration to the Christ who was sent in ways which are much more sophisticated than they were twenty years ago. We need a good deal more specialization. We find our-selves called by a wider range of needs. We have more collaboration with other religious, with the laity, with public bodies. We find ourselves faced by increasing demands just when our diminishing numbers and ris-ing median age seem to give less possibility of meeting them. Here it is the mission to which our consecration commits us that is the stable cri-terion for discernment. What are we sent to do? For whicl~ service in the Church of today did the Lord prepare our particular institute? That is where our fidelity must lie. It is our fidelity to our institute's part in Christ's mission that determines our corporate decisions and, within the corporate identity, the works of the individual religious. With regard to formation, I want to make only one remark at this point: namely, that the conditions of our time are one important element in the formation process. We donot carry on our formation in a vacuum or, please God, in some airborne way that is out of touch with reality. The young women who come to us come from today's society with its attitudes, values, habits and ways of acting. It is twenty years since the Consecrated Apostolic Lives Second Vatican Council, so very few of our candidates will have expe-rienced the often healthy security that marked pre-Vatican II religious life. Although conditions change from one culture to another, most young women have known only a rapidly changing world and a suddenly changing Church. Why come to institutes in process of changing their lives and revising their constitutions? At the same time, older sisters, em-bracing or resisting or avoiding the changes of the past twenty years, have been faced by the challenge of an ongoing formation which has to take into account the conditions of the times while it deepens and fos-ters growth in all the areas of consecrated life. Alike for the candidate and for the golden jubilarian, the focus is consecration. The candidate is preparing for it. The older sister is deepening it by her daily ongoing formation in community. How do we ensure this process today? How do we set formation in the late 1980s squarely in the perspective of our con-secration to the God who sends us in mission? Finally, government has been greatly affected by the values, particu-larly the political values and principle~s, of our times. Democracy, par-ticipation, subsidiarity, consensus, shared responsibility, collective de-cision making, due process appear in some shape or form in most drafts of constitutions. There is a stress on collectivity and leadership and on the gifts of the individual sister. All this is a curious amalgam of much that is good in the tendencies of our times but it has three striking char-acteristics: it usually avoids with great care any clear authority, organi-zation and general structure, all of which are necessary if government is to work; it makes no a~;sumption of faith, but seems to aim at effi-ciency of function rather than efficacy of purpose; it does not necessar-ily relate the government structures of an institute to its founding gift and tradition, yet this relation is critically important. The influences on gov-ernment have real potential for good but they cannot be accepted uncriti-cally or simply because they seem to be the trend of the times. How do we discern which ones will be helpful? Allowing for the existence of our own traditions and of the general law of the Church, which processes and structures will best promote our religious life and service? Again it comes down to which ones will support and foster our consecration in mission. It is evident that values have to be clear and deeply accepted, but the touchstone for decisions is consecration. Response to Our Times What we offer to the men and women of our time is the dedication to God, to the Church and to the saving work of Christ in our world that is contained in our consecration. It is a self-giving which witnesses to "20/Review for Religious, January-February 1988 love through service: a witness of faith which makes us signs of the God we cannot see, and of the invisible realities that everyone hopes for. It need not be dramatic. Most of the time, it seems very ordinary and rou-tine. But we must be deeply convinced of its necessity and validity. God has chosen each of us before the creation of the world to live through love in his presence and to continue actively the mission of Christ in our world here and now. These are his "kind purposes" (see Ep 1:5). We have, therefore, three centers of focus in our one consecration: Christ, the Church, and the world, and it is from these interrelated centers that our style of response to our times takes its shape. I suggest that the Church and society today need among religious~ not so much planners, as contemplatives; not so much professors as proph-ets; not so much public servants as apostles. It is witness rather than words or works which speaks in our time. It is therefore as contempla-tives who are one with Christ, as prophets who hear and communicate his word in the Church and as apostles sent in our own world that we live our consecration, whatever our work may be. That is the heart of our response. We are to be contemplatives, not because of a lifestyle that is en-closed, but because we have committed ourselves by our vows to live always the particular response of faith, hope and love by which we open ourselvesto the revelation of the living God and to communion with him through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit in every aspect of our lives. The contemplative dimension of our consecration is basically a reality of grace. It is a gift of God by which we know him as Father (see Jn 14:8) in the mystery of the Trinity dwelling within us (see Jn 14:23). By it we savor what Saint Paul calls "the depths of God" (I Co 2:!0) and. by the gradual purification of the paschal cross all our lives long, we come more and more to meet God in everything and in everyone, to serve him in our sisters and brothers, to. love, adore and praise him in the daily round of our duties. Our consecration commits us to this: to live, be and serve in the perspective of God no matter what our workg may be. Our joys and our sufferings, our immediate tasks and the responsibilities which take time, attention, patience and professional competence are very much part of our lives and are the occasion both of our apostolic .effectiveness and of our personal growth, but we can never afford to let them obscure the vision of faith by which we witness to the reality of what we hope for: to the truths that we cannot see. It is in this contem-plative faith suffusing our lives and publicly expressed as the basis of Consecrated Apostolic Lives our consecration that we find the conviction of the validity of our life and of the value in the Church and world of today. We also serve as prophets. Individuals were called from among the people of Israel to listen for God's word, to hear it and communicate it. They were members of a pro.phetic people at the service of that people and they were one of God's ways of keeping the people faithful to the covenant. In the Church, too, the Lord of history has called some, for the sake of all, to a prophetic role among his people. Jesus is the grea~t prophet: the one who is both message and messenger. In him is the full-ness of the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of prophecy. It is in him and to him that we are consecrated as religious. In that consecration there is a distinct sharing in his prophetic mission. We are to be united with God o in our contemplation but, both individually and corporately, we are also to listen to his word, to recognize it in our own times, to speak it in the way that we live and serve and relate to others. This is no easy matter. A look back at Jeremiah or Isaiah or Jonah or Ezekiel will remind us that we cannot talk lightly about being prophets. It is significant that none of the prophets wanted the role. Moses objected. Jeremiah re~proached the Lord. Jonah ran away. Yet something of their vocation is ours, and we have to face the devastating challenge to complete poverty of heart that they recognized and feared. What does it involve? In the first place; a humble acceptance of God's choice and of God's message. Itis his teaching through Scripture, through the Church, through a tested discern-ment of our own situation properly approved, that we are to speak by words, by action and by life. We do not preach our own .message, we do not decide to whom we will go nor with whom we will work; we do not choose where we will give witness. We do not have an eight-hour prophetic day; it is a calling that takes our whole life. We forgo our own security to depend on God. We accept the cost of prophecy: the suffer-ing, the likely rejection, the misunderstanding, the self-giving that may cost life itself. We are sharply aware of our own inadequacy and defi-ciencies, of our inability to be and do anything without the power of Christ acting in us. And most of the time that power acts in secret. The most effective prophets are often the ones who are least a~iare of their prophetic work. But the very fact of our vows, publicly professing val-ues that speak pr.ofoundly to sex, possessions and self-determination, the fact of our life in community, which speaks to the segregation, aliena-tion and marginalization of so many people, and the fact of our service. in mission given out of love, not out of compulsion, all make us a part of a presence and action in the Church that is distinctly prophetic. Review for Religious, January-February 1988 As apostles, we are sent to carry the good news. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. He is alive now and among us. We have met him; he knows and loves us and all those whom we serve. The fruits of our con-templative faith and our prophetic calling are in our apostolic mission. "As the Father has sent me, I als0 send you" (Jn 20:21). This is why t.he element of missioning: of sending and bei.ng sent, is of so much im-portance in our religious life. We are sent into the world, sent to our works, sent to our communities. We accept the" sending, which is the most effective expression of our obedience, with the same love and free-dom as Christ accepted his, because he makes it possible. Through the Church and through the" mediation of our own institute structures we con-tinue in our own times the work of the Christ who was sent. This is a critically important value in setting up p.rocesses of missioning today. Christ, the Church, and the world combine in the consecration of the apostolic religious to give a commitment to God in community in mis-sion which, in, the concrete reality of the conditions of our times, is a witness eloquent in itself. It has to be lived with full generosity and fi-delity if its potential, is to be realized. Rooted in consecration and ex-pressed in apostolate With the rest of our community, it can be a truly prophetic witness and it is on this level above all that we have something very valid tb bring to our times. Conclusion Despite the questions with which we began these reflections, it must be clear that the consecration of sisters dedicated to apostolic works has a particular place in today's Church. It is by vowed consecration lived in community and approved by theChurch, that we are religious at all, and it is as religious that we receive our particular sharing in the Church's mission. This sharing involves witness to God and a service to our sis-ters and brothers in Christ, that can take many forms but the forms have to be consonant with our consecration, with our founding gift and' tradi-tions, and with the Church's mandate. Our life needs love, faith and fi-delity; it needs a constant sensitiveness to Christ, to the Church and to ~he world; it needs a firm conviction as to its own validity. All these are components of the formation we receive and in which we continue to grow. So long as that growth is centered on what is essential to our life: the vowed consecration in community to the Christ who Was consecrated and sent, not to condemn the world but to save it, we will be increas-ingly what God intends us to be in the Church: witnesses of faith, signs of hope, evangelizers through service. The side-effects of this will come of their own accord: the quiet evidence of a way of living that offers al- Consecrated Apostolic Lives / 93 ternate values to those of sex, money and power; the long-term impact on society of educat.ional 'or pastoral works that consistently operate on Christian principles; the witness of service willingly given for reasons that have nothing to do with professional advancement, ambition or per-sonal gain; the existence in the Church on a permanent and reliable ba-sis of persons and institutions who are channels of God's love in action mirroring the presence among us of Christ the teacher, Christ the healer, Christ the reconciler, Christ the Good Shepherd. This is what we are about today as apostolic religious. May the Lord who consecrated us and began his good work in us, bring it to its completion (see Ph 1:6) for it is only in him that we bear fruit for the Father's glory (Jn 15:8)and he has promised to be with us, even to the end of time (see Mt 28:20). The One Prayer of Jesus David P. Reid; SS.CC. Father Reid, whose interests are "peace, family and the relationship between life and religion,;' teaches New Testament at the Washington Theological Union. He is especially grateful to Sr. Margaret Therese Evans, S.N.D., for encouraging him in seeking publication of this article and for editing its text. Father Reid may be ad-dressed at: Washington Theological Union; 9001 New Hampshire Avenue; Silver Spring, Md 20903-3699. The power to praise is itself your gift. ~,.very prayer is ultimately some shadow and some part of the praise of God. To be able to praise God, of course, is itself God's gift. The fact is we do not pray on our own strength; we pray out of discovering a strength within us. We just hope that our presence, our attempt, is itself prayer. In other words, we come with a tremendous sense of humility into the act of prayer. We hope that our effort at doing certain things re-ally is prayer offered to God. There is only one "pray-er": that is Jesus. Anything we do is a par-ticipation in the one prayer addressed to God through Jesus. When we go to pray, we can be mindful of the Japanese Buddhist in a shrine in Kyoto, or the Hindu taking care of a poor man on the streets of Calcutta, or all the people of the world wanting to pray. In the light of the Gos-pel, we believe that we all share but one prayer: the prayer of Jesus. All the prayer of the whole world reaches God through Jesus because God's ultimate revelation to the human is Jesus, the Christ. We enter into a stream, a wide stream of life. We can have a great sense of solidarity with our human family of brothers and sisters through-out the world as each tries to pray in his or her respective way. Some- 24 The One,,Prayer of Jesus how or other, the prayer of each is nudged this way and that, is cele-brated this way or heard that way. Somehow or other the prayer of each is taken by Jesus and offered to the Father. When we pray we hope that we have heard the prayer of Jesus and that we are releasing his prayer into the world. As we enter into prayer, his prayer is released through us into all the nooks and crannies of this huge, complicated world of hu-man beings. "The power to pray is itself your gift." Who is this gift of God? Je-sus! The power to pray is Jesus. Theologians speak about the "anony-mous Christian" and about the convergence of all things towards God as the "omega point." We, even with our.feeble efforts, are a part of that wide drama. Sometimes it is hard to keep .our footing in this mar-velous procession through Jesus to the Father. We want to bail out. But we were never asked to succeed. Rather we have been invited to become pari of the prayer who is Jesus. "Accept my effort, Good God, and make it part of the prayer of Jesus." Deep down we know that all we do is to offer ourselves. The point is made clearly each time we pray at ,.the Eucharist: "Pray, brothers.and sisters, that our offering may be ac-ceptable . " Our offering is united to the offering of Jesus. The of-fering of Jesus is lovingly accepted by the Father. It becomes a sacrifice. We do not presume to call our offering a sacrifice. Only God makes holy. Only God makes a sacrifice. Only God's action accepting our of-fering makes it a sacrifice. Jest]s' prayer, acted out in his loving self-donation on the cross is totally and completely acceptable to God. Jesus is God's gift. Jesus is God's power to pray. Only in his power do we pray to God. Only his prayer fully resonated with the Father's desire to redeem the world. Perhaps all of us experience problems with prayer. These can be prob-lems of all shapes and makes; at times, problems of faith, at other times, problems of discipline. It will help to solve.some problems to underscore the humility and honesty with, which we come to prayer. We place ~ur-selves in the presence of the praying Jesus. The evangelists portray Je-sus in prayer with the intention of inviting us to be with him. The sim-ple statement: "I prayed this morning," may in fact be too proud. All I did was place myself alongside of the only pray-er there is, Jesus. This is the most exciting and beautiful part of prayer. Recall the scene in Luke's gospel where the Pharisee and the publi-can pray. One of them trots up to the front of the temple and pours out his prayer, while the other one i~ depicted as hanging back, terribly con-scious of the small offering that he is making; he knows that this whole 96 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 thing of praying could fall apart in his hands at any moment. I suggest that this reaction is central to the experience of prayer. "I must decrease, he must increase." We come to pray with a deep sense of our frailty but secure in our awareness that Jesus is the pray-er to whom God has re-sponded. God raised Jesus from the dead, sure sig~'J that God heard the prayer of Jesus. His whole life was prayer because his whole life led to the response of God in raising him up. In prayer we are asking that we be heard as was Jesus. This brings a beautiful unity to our prayer and a deep consolation. All the many ways we pray are efforts to enter :the prayer of Jesus. It would be unwise to evaluate the various ways of praying and declare one way better than another. Each comes from our broken lives at a par-ticular moment and is offered through Jesus who likewise knew many ways to pray to his Father. We give a very concrete interpretation to the idea that we should pray always. Many persons have experienced a whole new creativity in prayer by choosing to call up6n this gift of God in a whole.variety of situations. The gifts of God are not to be compared but only identified as God's gift for this time and in this place and in these circumstances of my life. So it is wise not to compare gifts of prayer but to marvel at the way in which God enables us to pray as we need at any given time. This is true also of the prayer of dryness, even the "prayer of distraction" if we are permitted to coin such a term. Distractions in prayer are a big problem. The problem is not, how-ever, that we have distractions but how we handle them. When we find ourselves distracted, we must re-read the distraction. We must put our-selves in touch with the feelings that were experienced in the distraction. It could be that the distraction is what God wants us to bring to conscious-ness and sur~'ender to him in this prayer. When we offer our distractions to God often we are offering our real selves at that moment. We are "praying from the gut." That's what~.~God wants. God wants our real lives, here and now made part of ever-being-prayed prayer of Jesus. Our distractions are putting flesh on the prayer of Jesus now. How? We are enfleshing his prayer in the midst of that distraction. We are taking the prayer ofJesus and allowing it to become part of our world. It may mean praise, it may mean glory, it may mean healing, it may mean contrition. All the more power,fully therefore do we conclude our time of prayer with the simple refrain: "tht:ough Jesus Christ our Lord." As I conclude my prayer'with this refrain I am greatly consoled. It is not just a nice way to end a prayer; itis the only way both to begin and to end. Often I am distracted during'those prayers at the Eucharist when we recall all The One Prayer of Jesus / 97 those for whom we pray. And before I know where I am we are praying the final doxology. If I trust Jesus praying in me, I can abandon myself in that final sweep as our prayer reaches out to God in the outstretched arms of Jesus: "Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever." As the Amen of the community resounds in my ears, I can letgo of my frailty and recognize again that all our strength comes from our being rooted in God. If God could be so "distracted" as to take up his abode in our midst, we can see our distractions as an invitation to take up our abode in God. So our i~sue then is to be very much in touch with the prayer of Je-sus, to believe deeply that we are baptized into his prayer. That prayer is going on inside of us constantly. To take time to pray is to tap into that deep vein, that deep thrust of life which is going on inside. We are in Christ. We are profoundly in Christ.~We are far more in Christ that we shall ever imagine. To pray is to come home to ourselves in the depth to which we are being plunged into Christ. To live is to belong to the community of praise. Now what is Jesus Christ doing in his prayer in the midst of us? He is leading us into the community of the praise of God. We become part of his prayer because his prayer is access to the community of praise. In the imagery of the Letter to the Hebrews, it can be said that Jesus leads us into the Holy of Holies. We are ushered into the presence of God. The wildest dreams of the Old Testament people are fulfilled. Many longed for the joy of going to Jerusalem. Three times a year the pious Jewish person went up to the Holy City. These visits were the high points of the year. All the remainder was lived in the valleys of expectation. Hear the psalmist say it in words of unspeakable beauty: For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the ,house of God than dwell in the tents of wickedness (Ps 84:10 RSV). For them the annual pilgrimages to Jer.usa!em expressed a hope that God would grant such a request: access to God's presence in the midst of the community of praise. They set out for Jerusalem hoping and pray-ing that.they could make the journey and then be .found not unworthy to enter into the very presence of God. Only the high priest could enter the Holy of Hblies once a year. That is what it meant to be alive: to be given access in the community of praise to the very presenc.e of God. 91~ / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 This image of the community of praise is a very powerful image. To develop it I suggest a reading of the healing of the Samaritan leper in Luke's gospel. The story is known to all: On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Gali-lee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their'voices and said, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." When he saw them he said to them, 'Go and show your-selves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned b_ack, praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then said Jesus, 'Were not ten cle-ansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" And he said to him, 'Rise and go your way; your faith has made you whole" (17:11-19 RSVi. A painful part of being a I~per was that one was denied access to the community of praise. Jesus sent the lepers off to thd priests to be read-mitred to the community of praise. They discovered that they were healed while on the way there. The Samaritan did nbt need a priest to declare him readmitted. In a daring move, he stepped out in faith and declared that the new situation~ in which he now stood was indeed the community of praise. He rejoiced and praised God. " Jesus' purpose in preaching the kingdom of God was to direct peo-ple °again to the community of praise. He had come from that~commu-nity of praise and he ,was leading people back to that community of praise. He would give us access to the community of praise to the glory of God. And th'e proclamation of the kingdom was to overcome the things that held us back from that 9ommunity. Call it Satan, call it the reign of Satan, call it whatever you will. But he set himself very directly against those things that held back people from allowing that formula of praise to really resonate in their hearts. It is interesting that the person healed is not only a leper; he is also a Samaritan. There was only one thing worse than being a leper in a Jew's eyes; that was being a Samaritan. Here there is one, both a Samari- ,tan and a leper, who finds that all that Jerusalem ever stood for is right here now before him as he praises God for the gift of Jesus. It is won-derful! One finds a whole new redefinition of Jerusalem, of temple, of Samaritan and of what it means to belong to the community of praise. How lovely i~; thy dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts. My soul longs, yea, fainis for the ~ot~rts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God iPs 84:1 RSV). The One Prayer of Jesus In all of the gospels, but especially in Luke, there is an emphasis put on the response of the people to a miracle performed in their midst. It is part of telling the story to underscore the reaction of the participants. Here Luke gives a story which outdoes all others in presenting this reac-tion of praise. The favorable reaction is proportionate to how much the person felt bound by the particular malady. Every miracle restores a per-son to the community of praise; the story of the Samaritan has as its spe-cial purpose to point out that Jesus restores one to the community of praise by removing the blocks that hold back people from access to God. The purpose of the miracles and the purpose of recounting the miracles is less proving that Jesus was divine than illustrating how Jesus gave ac-cess to the Divine. Only God can give access to Godself and Jegus as God's beloved Son rejoiced in giving to humankind access to his Father. Such access is life. Jesus restored the dead to life as a pledge of the Father's power at work within him to lead us all finally to the praise of God's glory forever. Jubilate Deo As our singing in harmony fades and dies Jubilate Deo the music of the silence rises from within our hearts set free by the Spirit who loves to play in the stillness of united hearts. Noel Davis 257 Abercrombie Street Chippendale, N.S.W. Australia 2008 A Word About Praising John Sheila Galligan, I.H.M. Sister John Sheila resides at Mary Immaculate Convent; 10th and Moore Streets; Phila-delphia, Pennsylvania 19148. Without doubt, even a cursory reading of Scripture reveals that the theme of praise pulses in the depths as well as on the surface of the biblical tra-dition. We are swept along at an almost breathless pace as explicit prayers of praise, invitations to praise, and reflections on various aspects of the act of praising come to the fore. With enthusiasm and confidence the Psalmist proclaims resolutely: "I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be ever in my mouth" (Ps 34:2). God himself praises his gen-tle servant: "Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights" (Is 42: 1). In the Gospels these words are reit-erated in reference to Jesus: "This is my beloved Son, on whom my fa-vor rests. Listen to him" (Mt 17:5; see Lk 9:35; Mk 9:7). A close ex-amination of the countless references to "praise" shows that praise is not merely an emotional outpouring, but a theological statement of depth ¯ and seriousness. Throughout Scripture the central meaning of praise seems to indicate the human person as receptive and responsive: recep-tive to the discernible presence of God, responsive in the expression of wonder and awe. Praise is a key element in the life of the spirit. Abraham Heschel, a noted Jewish theologian, makes an incisive comment: The secret of spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then we believe. The fun-damental issue is not faith but sensitivity and praise, being ready for faith. ~ 3O A Word About Praising Little do we think about the nature of praise--though nowhere does the might of the spirit appear so openly, so directly and tangibly present as in the act of giving praise. What does it mean--to praise? Surely, an examination of the nature of praising and its place in our lives would be an enriching endeavor. Praise: Its Nature Several passages from the writings of the acclaimed Christian apolo-gist and literary critic C. S. Lewis offer substantive material for reflec-tion and application. The theme of praise is etched into his works with a laser-like intensity of conviction: conviction crystallized in his experi-ence. An understanding of its determinative importance in human life per-meates his works. The tenor and thrust of Lewis' insight are most fully developed in a chapter of his book Reflections on the Psalms. There he affirms that praise is an expression 9f approval, a positive affirmation.2 To praise God is to acclaim, magnify, honor, and glorify him. Praise is a commin-gling of wonder, awe, adoration, and thanksgiving. To praise is to ac-knowledge lovingly and accept gratefully not only what God is in him-self, but what he is for the human person. Authentic praise involves ex-altation, sensitivity to the sacred, awareness of indebtedness to God. It seems to be born when the mystery of God and the mystery of the hu- ¯ man person meet. Praise, Lewis maintains, is th~ dynamic response of a creature who knows himself or herself to be the object of God's infinite love. Lewis personally gave "praise" for coming to this discovery after a slow and hesitant faith-struggle of more than thirty years. With. straightforward sim-plicity he writes of his conversion: The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape?3 Here again we see that praise is essentially a receptive and respon-sive attitude, the diffuse and grateful conviction of being known and loved by God. Lewis draws our attention to the fact that praise is a response to an objective value and, therefore, an expression of the will. As such, he sug-gests it is not just something sentimental, nor does it primarily refer to a special intensity of feeling. Rather, it concerns the extremely solid and sober matter of responding to an objective good. Praise is the "correct, 39 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 adequate, and, appropriate response" to someone or something that de-serves it.4 Therefore, the Psalmist can state, "Praise is rightfully yours, O God" (Ps 65:2). In every conceivable case praise signifies much the same as approval.5 We find that the Psalms frequently issue an invita-tion to praise with a "because" as they proclaim the reason for honor and praise: "Praise the Lord, for he is good; sing praise to our God, for he is gracious; it is fitting to praise him" (Ps 147:1; see Ps 33:1). Thus, the issue of praise is not primarily our feelings and our words; the issue of praise is God." Essentially then, to praise is to discover a value, appreciate it, and in some way express this appreciation. Overtones of ampler meaning emerge from Lewis' attempt to clarify the meaning of "appreciation." The word appreciation for him, means to "love and delight in. ,,6 The beginning of praise is appreciation--and the beginning of appreciation is a sense of humble awe in the face of the mystery of the enduring love and goodness of God. In the light of this we could perhaps say that praise is a form of the truth to be grasped by the spirit. Lewis stresses, too, that to praise is to forget the self and break down the walls of self-absorption and resistance to God. Praise is fueled by love; therefore, selfishness smothers praise. With a dash of daring and characteristic dry humor, Lewis points out his discovery that "the hum-blest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised the least.''7 Praise and Creation: Matter Really Matters Not surprisingly, Lewis constantly affirms the sheer "goodness" of all that God has created. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature .He likes matter. He invented it.8 This marvelous truth is illustrated with a clear and steady focus through-out Scripture and in consequent theological reflection. "God saw that it was good" is a refrain repeated seven times within the first thirty-one verses-of Genesis (see Gn 1:4,10, 12, 18,21,25,31). Heschel's comment is apt: The biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth are not words of information but words of appreciation. The story of creation is not a description of how the .world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being: "And God saw that it was good" (Gn 1:25),9 A Word About Praising The whole earth is full of God's glory. Psalm 148 calls us to recog-nize the wonder of God's work and express it in word. Because God has clothed creation with loveliness, the Psalmist sings: "All "your works praise you" (Ps 145:10). We find the theme frequently in poetry, per-haps most beautifully expressed in the Canticle of the Sun by St. Fran-cis. Throughout his works Lewis indulges his delight in the reality of the world with i~nthusiasm and zest. Readers find themselves immersed in powerful imagery and scenes which create the memorable impression that matter really matters. Lewis constantly celebrates the "profusion of pleasure" which lies about us. Always he extends the marvelous in-vitation: Come out, look back, and then you will see--this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas: this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, canaries, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads.~° in the. mystery of creation he sensed the presence of God. It filled him with wonder and gratitude. According to Lewis, not to praise what God has crea~ed is not to see. He would agree with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's pertinent observation in the poem "Aurora Leigh": Earth's crammed with heaven And every common bush afire with God; And only he who sees takes off his shoes-- The rest sit around and pluck blackberries. The world is "crammed" with the marvelous. Yet our perception is frag-ile and lacks intensity. We can be blind and deaf and dull. Therefore, Lewis is adamant: We may ignore, but we can fiowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him . The real labor is to remember, to at-tend. In fact, to come aware. Still more, to remain awake. I I Lewis' insights are unambiguously positive. He urges us to rejoice in the "joy, pleasure and merriment which God has scattered broad-cast.''~ 2 He thrilled to the genuine delight which one should discern in the patterns of pleasure that God has created. The inexhaustible fecun-dity of the "glad Creator" provides a riot of light and color, taste and smell. ~3 Even Sci'ewtape, the senior devil in Lewis' Screwtape Letters, attests tO the truth that God "is a hedonist at heart . Out at sea, out in his sea, there is pleasure and more pleasure. He makes no secret of 34 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 it; at his right hand are pleasures forevermore." 14 Praise and the Present Moment: Time Touches Eternity Without doubt, Lewis roots praise, in an appreciation of what is "ex-traordinary" in the ordinariness of the present moment. An intuitive and pervasive perception of the fact that every moment is significant, draw-ing its power from God's presence and efficacy in it, under,,lines Lewis' assertion that the "Present is the point at which time touches Eter-nity." ~5 That God's loving and caring presence is~prismed through the present moment strikes the core of his understanding of the nature of praise and its intimate connection with Providence. This notion is crucial in the great theological vision of Julian of Nor-wich, whose statement "All shall be well" is rooted in the reality of "All is well.''~6 A splendid text in Romans also embraces the vision: "We know that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love him" (Rm 8:28). Reality and actuality exist only in the present moment. Because of this, Lewis exhorts us to reflect upon the question, "Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met.9''~7 A disciplined and intelligent grasp of the art of appreciatipn of the present moment permeates Lewis" works. In his science-fiction novel Perelandra we are told that Maleldil (God) is in every place, "even in the smallness beyond thought." Realizing that a glimpse of God's hand at work in the zigs and zags of our experience can be bewildering, yet providential, he writes: The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can . Before the world was made, all these things had so stood together in eti~rnity that the very, signifi-cance of the pattern at this point lay in their coming together in just this fashion.~8 And in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves, he shrewdly observes: The great thing, if one can~ is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptionsOof one's own or "real" life. The truth is, of course, that whht one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life--the life God is sendingone day by day. 19 Thus, a realization that the present moment is enlivened with an incar-national intensity and. vision is crucial to spiritual growth. And in the won-der of this awareness we respond with. praise. To prai~se thi~ singularit.y A Word About Praising of the moment is the fruit of spiritual maturity. Praise and Joy: The Serious Business of Heaven Praise, according to Lewis, is an outburst of the heart, an act of buoy-ancy and spontaneity. Praise transmutes feeling into delight. He urges us to remember that praise is the "mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.''2° It is immediately apparent that here Lewis is as-serting something that strikes at the heart of the meaning of praise: In human experience praise is intimately intertwined with joy. In short, we are confirmed in our sensing that profound joy can generate praise and praise is the springboard for joy. Again Lewis observes that "all enjoy-ment spontaneously overflows into praise."2~ He states, "I think we de-light to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses, but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation . The delight is incomplete until it is expressed.' ,22 The richness of this state-ment rests on its suggestiveness as well as on its explicit message. It brings to the fore that fact that a sense of admiration, permeated by love, is drawn to completion in praise. Praise and Suffering: A Sacrifice of Praise If a primal and central quality of praise is joy, what are we to under-stand in Scripture's invitation tooffer the Lord a "sacrifice of praise" (see Heb 13:15; Ps 50:14; Ps 54:8)? It is a remarkably powerful and some-what unsettling image. Perhaps further exploration of the truth that a proper and healthy awareoess of our "dependency" on God is the most fertile soil for growth in spiritual maturity would be helpful. We have already noted that a reverently' surrendered heart is the wellspring of praise. Nothing so ham-pers the capacity to praise as the desire to control and the temptation to manipulate. The focus of praise is not the self; therefore, praise is part of an asceticism. :Lewis comes to grips with this notion in the summary statement: The proper good of a creature is to surrender itself to its Creator--to en-act intellectually, volitionally, and emotionally, that relationship which is given in the mere fact of being a creature . In the world as we now know it, the problem is how to recover this self-surrender.23 "Self-surrender" demands courageous fidelity to the demands of disci-pleship. It urges that we cut through all the swaggering and petty indul-gence of the ego, .that we crack the hollow of self-reliance. The death 36 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 to self that constitutes surrender becomes an instrument of hollowing and hallowing, a means of rooting our security in God. Bluntly challenging, this "self-surrender' '--and almost more dismay-ing than comforting! A superficial reflection might give the impression that this is a negative kind of experience, with no connection to the act of praising. 'Delving more de.eply, we find yet another level of meaning. For praise must flow out of and then back into the reality of a silent sur-render to the mystery of God's love for us--love most fully exemplified in the crucified and risen Christ. In reality, there are no deep expressions of love, no deep experiences of love that are not in some way the consequences of a sacrifice of self. We may deny it, ignore it, or repress it, but deep down we know it is true. Yes, we are involved in a paradox here. Marvelously concrete, Le-wis states: "We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the suf-ferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to him; throwing away all defensive armor."2'~ Through offering a "sac-rifice of praise," we are drawn out of the shallows of life to greater depth, to newness of life. God provides us with situations in which we must be more faithful, more patient, or more loving th~in we ever imag-in( d being before. This draws attention to our experience of contingency and limitation. Our fickle natures shy away from offering a sacrifice of praise because the "sacrificial" element hurts. Lewis' insight is on target: "We shrink from a too naked contact [with God], because we are afraid of the di-vine demands upon us which it might make too audible.' ,25 The rich in-terplay between love and suffering is acknowledged in his assertion that Christianity is "hard and tender at the same time. It's the blend that does it; neither quality would be any good without the other,''26 To be poised and ready to plunge into living out this surrender is to desire conformity to God's plan for us. Thus, "obedience" is at the heart of offering a sacrifice of praise. In his book Perelandra, the man Ransom jolts us with the challenging question: ".Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless He bids you do something for which His bid-ding is the only reason?''27 The paradoxical meaning of offering a sacrifice of praise is evidenced in the experience of great joy. A deeply appreciative perception of truth, beauty, or goodness triggers a reaction, or rather a response, in which the feeling of joy is linked with a feeling of lack. Lewis develops this notion by describing his moments of greatest joy as experiences of :'in- A Word About Praising consolable longing."28 Our inability to rest in such moments, to grasp and cling to and somehow claim them, reveal them as an anticipation, a,preparation for full enjoyment of their source: God. Lewis. reminds us that we have "a root in the Absolute''29 and therefore he can state, too, that "all joy reminds; it is never a possession."3° God's design is to keep us on tiptoe, to nourish our thirst for himself with little "glimpses" into what will some day be forever. The painful lack that is constitutive of these '"patches of Godlight" in the woods of our experience"3~ summon us to move beyond. To offer a "sacrifice of praise" is to allow our innate appetite for the Infinite, our thirst for God himself, to dislodge us whenever we are inclined to settle down. Praise and Adoration: Fused Moments of Felicity Authentic praise sometimes goes beyond the scope of emotion; it is the threshold to the transcendent. Thus Lewis speaks of praise in con-nection with what spiritual theologians would call contemplative prayer. He notes that praise is intimately linked with what he calls "Apprecia-tive Love." This love rejoices in exclaiming, "We give thanks to You for Thy great glory." Appreciative love, Lewis writes, "gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist." and he adds that God "can awaken in man, toward himself, a supernatural Appreciative Love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired."32 In an-other place he calls this special love "the gift of adoration.''33 In such a profound and pervasive spiritual experience, knoffledge 'and love are so intimately united that they can actually be identified with each other. To understand what happens here is to enter into the lovely land of the mystique of the heart. "Praise" at such moments involves ~imazement, not understanding; awe, not reasoning. Seized and refreshed by.the overwhelming spell of the loveliness of~God's words and works we exclaim, "How right it is to love You!" (Sg 1:4). In the smallness beyond thought we discover a level where we are stunned by the ineffable: "Who can utter the mighty doings of the Lord or utter all his praise?" (Ps 106:2). There are insights that lie beyond the power of expression; the heart perceives more than the word can convey. At such moments the human person deeply expe-riences the disparity between desire for expression and the means of ex-pression. We are stunned at the inadequacy of the spoken word to inter-pret the heart's knowing. In a sense, then, the highest form of praise is silence-~creative si-lence pervaded by an awed sense of the grandeur of God. A reverential and sacred silence best expresses our admiration and love. This kind of Review for Religious, January-February 1988 silence touches the face of the Father, embraces Christ, and experiences the reality of the Spirit. Even though a loving heart has no words, it cannot contain itself. St. Augustine gifts us with a memorable image: "Love grown (old is the heart's silence; love on fire, the heart's clamor" (En. in Ps 36: 14). He gives us a rich and comprehensible description of the heart's clamor, the melody of the heart: This kind of singing is a sound which m~ans that the heart is giving birth to something it cannot speak of. And who better to receive such "jubi-lation" than the ineffable God--ineffabl~ because you cannot talk about him. And if you cannot talk about him; and it is improper just to keep silence, why, what is there left for you to do but "jubilate"--with you, r heart rejoicing without words, and the immense breadth of your joy not rationed out in syllables (En. in Ps 32:8; see En. in Ps 99:5). In this marvelous fusion of thought and feeling, in the heart's rejoicing without words, praise and wonder are born. In her poem Interior Tree Anne Morrow Lindbergh echoes Augustine. She describes one of those rare moments of ecstasy, one of those inexpressible "joy touched with glory" (see I P 1:8) moments when a whisper of eternal truth overwhelms one with its beauty: Fused moments of felicity, When flame in eye and heart unite Come they from the earth, or can they be The swallow of eternity? Authentic praise springs like a song from the depths of our hearts~. It steps beyond the act of giving thanks because it often becomes an ex-pression. of adoration. In an act of ardent praise we turn to God in de-light, attend to him with loving appreciation. Therefo.re, Lewis can fit-tingly link up praise as we know it on earth with the idea of the ultimate joy of praising God in heaven: If it were possible for a created soul fully to "appreciate," that is, to love and delight in the worthiest object of all and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul should be in supreme beatitude.34 In saying this Lewis follows a very ancient Christian teaching which can be traced back to the writing of Augustine. Delving into his works, we find he mulled over the meaning of heavenly beatitude: There it will be our whole task to praise and ~to enjoy the Presence of A Word About Praising God . . . all our sorrows will be taken from us, and nothing will remain but praise, unmixed and everlasting (En. in Ps 86:8). He states it again with typical depth and clarity: What shall we do? . . . What will be there? What business shall we have? . . . What activity? . . o This will be our activity, the praise of God (En. in Ps 85:23). The tenor and thrust of this vision introduces into the meaning of praise the essential components of love and joy. Here Lewis writes with com-pelling suggestiveness: The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.3'~ Lewis' vision is baianced; therefore, he moves beyond the present exis-tence-- calls us to reflect upon the untold resources Of meaning in the es-chatological dimension of praise. Conclusion This exploration into the nature of praising reveals that if we seek to grasp the reality of praising in its full breadth and depth, we must strive to live in the light of the truth of who God is and who we are. What elicits, inspires, and sustains pra.ise is the word of God, the Scripture. Fed by this word the response of praise will become the leitmotif and ba-sic tenor of our lives. Its ordinary, transcendent, and eschatological di-mensions will mold the soul-line, the inscape of our hearts. The contemporary milieu, with its unhealthy emphasis on utilitari-anism and materialism, continues to strangle and corrode our sense of wonder. Its hollow hedonism tends to smother~radical amazement and appreci~ation and their consequence--praise. Perhaps we have bartered a sense of wonder and praise for facts and function and gradually numbed our senses and darkened our vision. Even 'so, the human person has the capacity and power to grasp the lasting values of beauty, harmony, tenderness, and truth. Little wonder that Augustine invites us to glory in the splendor of the truth and good-ness of praising with our whole being: Sing praises with your whole being; that' is, praise God not only with your tongue and your voice, but with your conscience, with your life, with your deeds (En. in Ps 148:1-2). 40 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 This straightforward invitation underlines the truth that praise is a way of understanding, insight into a way of "being" in touch with God. Scrip-ture invites us to sing praises with our "being"--to sing praise like David, of whom it is written: With his every deed he offered thanks to God Most High, in words of praise. With his whole being he loved his Maker and daily~had his praises sung (Si 47:8). NOTES t Abraham J. Heschel, Who is Man? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), p, 116. z C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (Glasgow: Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1977), chapter IX, pp. 77-83. 3C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early L~ ife (Glasgow: Collins, Fount P.aperback,, 1977), pp. 182-183. 4 Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, p. 78. 5 Further clarification on the etymology of the word praise is helpful. Praise is de-rived from the Latin pretiare, "to prize," which in turn derives from pretium, "the prize." To prize something is to value it highly, to appreciate it. Appreciation is a.n essential element of all praise. See Paul Hinnebusch, Praise: A Way of Life (Ann Arbor; MI: Servant Books, 1976), p. 247. 6 Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, p. 81. 7 Ibid, p. 80. 8 C, S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Paperbacks, 1960), p. 65. .9 Heschel, Who is Man?, p. 115. ¯ ~0 C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Mac~nillan Pape~'backs, 1978), p. 66. I~ C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1964), p. 75. ~z C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmill~in Paperbacks, 1962), p. 115. ~3 Lewis, Miracles, p. 114. ~4 C. S. Lewis, The Screwiape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast (New York: MaXimilian, 1961), pp. 101-102. ~5 Ibid, p. 68.~ ~6 See Julian of Norwich, The:Revelations of Divine Love, trans. James Walsh (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), Chapters 34, 35, and 82. ~7 C. S. Lewis, "Historicism," in Christian Reflections (Glasgow: Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1981), p. 146. ~8 C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Macmillan Paperbacks, 1965), pp. 147- 148. ~9 W. Hooper, ed.,'They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur: Greeves (1914-1963)(New,York: Macmillan Paperbacks, 1979), p. 49 I, December 20, 1943. A Word About Praising Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 90. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, p. 80. Ibid, p. 81. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pp. 90-91. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1971), p. 170. 25 Lewis, 26W. H. novich, 27 Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 114. Lewis, ed., Letters of C. S. Lewis (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jova- 1966), p. 250, July 17, 1953, to a lady. Perelandra, p. I 18. 28 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, p. 65. 29 Ibid, p. 177. 30 Ibid, p. 66. 3~ Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 91. 32 Lewis, The Four Loves, p. 191. 33 Ibid, p. 178. 3,~ Lewisr Reflections on the Psalms, p. 81. 35 Ibid, p. 82. Expressing the Feminine: In Search of a Model Marietta Ger~iy, O.S.B. Sister Marietta is a member of the Department of Religious Studies at the Univer-sity of Dayton where she may be addressed at 300 College Park; Dayton, Ohio 45469- 000 I. In The Flight from Woman (1965) Karl Stern wrote about the defeminiza-tion of society caused in part by the scientific revolution of the last three hundred years. The rejection of feminine wisdom, he explained, contrib-uted to a dehumanization which has affected us relationaily. Today a movement flows from deep within the unconscious, that in-vites us to value and express our total personhood, to act in a holistic manner. The strong opposition to the feminine in our culture and tradi-tion is one of the reasons for this movement and for the corresponding interest in rediscovering feminine images. Whenever individuals or the human race are imperiled, something begins to stir within and move them toward the fullness of graced human living. Today we are becoming aware that both femininity and masculinity are innate in each of us and that both are to be valued and given expres-sion. Just as in a musical creation there can be a melody and counter-melody which alternate in prominence, so our femininity and masculin-ity ought to alternate in prominence. Even though in music these melo-dies can stand alone, the presence of the other enhances and creates a fuller, stronger, more pleasing effect. So if either masculinity or femi-ninity is suppressed or dormant, our manner of communication will be less effective or even less destructive. This, in fact, has been the situ-ation in our Western culture. Now that the sleeper, femininity, is awak-ening, new energies are being activated. When activated, those energies 42 Expressing the Feminine / 43 begin to personify themselves and to seek expression. How this creative power will manifest itself will depend in part upon our fantasies, our crea-tive imagi.nation which needs to be stimulated by the symb.ois and mod-els of both our culture and our Christian heritage. A musician receives inspiration hearing a number of different interpretations of the same com-position, yet her own performance flows from her inner well of sensitiv-ity. In such a way the new awakening of our femininity urges us to look beyond ourselves in a new way to reflect upon the lives of people in our tradition, to search for ways of expressing this femininity, ways which resonate with and enhance our own imagination. Virginity Regina Coil draws attention to an ancient understanding of virgin-ity. In her article "Challenging and Reclaiming Symbols" Coll states that at one time the word "virgin" meant "a woman who had grown, to some kind of integrity and wholeness." ~ Esther Harding in Women's Mysteries writes that it meant being "one-in-herself."2 Helen Luke is on to the same sense as she indicates virginity "is so thin a concept when confined to the physical plane."3 It takes On a full and beautiful mean-ing when the older and broadermeaning is recovered. The ancient mean-ing is significant today because it applies to both men and women. It calls for a unified way of being and of relating. It calls for non-fragmentation. David Knight writes about virginity in a similar manner by suggesting that virginity is an active and harmonious oneness of our bodies with every other part of our being.4 He states that virginity means a refusal to respond out of only a part of ourselves, a refusal to promote separateness or disintegration; it is an intense .yearning for integrity. Knight further indicates that virginity accents our unity with others, not an easy task when we have built up our egos and relied on our false identities. Alienation of selves, building of walls, setting ourselves apart; above, over and against, insensitivity and a lack of intrapersonal and in-terpersonal connectedness are violations of this integrity. And so our past exclusionary emphasis on personal autonomy needs to be modified. Hans Urs von Balthasar also speaks of virginity as unity as experienced within someone who is free of division. Such an approach also seeks to retrieve the lost meaning of this important reality. This emphasis on unicity invites us to let go of all that holds us back and prevents the release of energies so necessary for a full life. A musi-cal analogy says it well: for music to be music the musician must involve the entire physical, mental and emotive self in expressing the music. Just as the musician must be totally involved to render the music in an aes- 44 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 thetic manner, we too must be totally involved, be fully alive in order to be effective relationally. Today's movement toward the rediscovery of the feminine is a move-ment toward the fullness of personhood which ought to render us more cap~ble of unrestricted responses. Femininity This present movement toward the feminine is flowing from our new consciousness. Today femininity is being acknowledged and valued. Be-cause of this, various modes of expressing femininity are being sought. Does Mary as Mother present an image for the expression of femi-ninity that can be honored today? Before addressing that question a clari-fication or description of femininity is necessary. F.J.J. Buytendijk de-scribes it as that adaptive dynamism (which) does not elicit any resistance and leads to the discovery of quality and .stature, to encounter with things as they are, and thus to the discovery of value. This discovery, however, is never complete; there is an inexhaustible wealth of value in being that never ceases to elicit a meditative and tarrying contact with being.5 Openness, receptivity, creativity, gracefulness and tender caring are considered characteristics of this adaptive dynamism. This adaptive dy-namism or femininity, according to Buytendijk, manifests itself as a way of being-together-with that is both giving and receiving, that is recipro-cal, and 'not one-sided. This adaptive dynamism is not to be equated with the female sex, though it is woman who is capable of giving the clearest expression of femininity, just as man gives the clearest expression of masculinity. No individual existence in the concrete is exclusively masculine or ex-clusively feminine. It is not possible for an existence to develop so en-tirely according to one mode that it lacks all traces of the other. Mascu-linity and femininity are both possibilities of human existence as such, understood in terms of consciousness or an approach to reality, which is necessarily intentional and equally necessarily a "togetherness" with other being.6 When we are dealing with real people, all that we often can see is a predominance of masculinity or femininity. However, full human dig-nity flows from a balanced harmonization of botlq dynamisms. Without a balance of masculinity we would have a feminine imbal-ance getting lost in a chaos of pathic connection without any ability to stand apart or to objectify. Unbalanced masculinity may be described as Expressing the Feminine the projection of a world of hardness, of stubborn resistance, of precipi-tousness. ~On the other hand, this masculine capacity for expansiveness, functioning in a supportive role, provides a precious balancefor our femi-nine capacity of being~together-with, of connectedness. Motherliness Forms are being sought today for expressing our adaptive dynamism, femininity. This femininity is not to be limited to one form or manifes-tation. A variety of forms is possible, one being motherliness. Motherli-ness is best characterized as a fostering, supporting, cherishing, caring manner which flows from a receptive, adaptive dynamism. It is a man-ner of being that sets aside the temptation to analyze, to plan, to project. It can be described as a presence which receives the other into self and sees and feels with the other. Feeling, though essentially involved, is not all tfiat is involved. "Motherliness" or "caring presence" is basically an empathic presence. It is a receptive presence that invites an inner trans-formational change. If "caring" is truly motherly, the one cared for will feel ~he recognition of freedom and will grow under its expansive sup-port. "Motherliness" need not smother. The one cared for will be free tO respond as herself, to follow her own interests without fear and anxi-ety. Motherliness, as a respectful, careful togetherness in selfless giving, fos-tering, nourishing, cherishing and caressing, is always the powei'.ihat everywhere elicits the unfolding, the realization of hidden potential of what is good, tender, fragile or subtle, whether in human beings or in nature or in culture. This is what happens in human relationships of friendship and love, in real education and in loving work.7 Buytendijk speaks of motherliness as caring, as feminine fruitful-hess. 8 The transformational effect of caring can only happen if the car-ing person conveys that he values the intensity of the connection with the other and if the caring person is genuine. A Contemporary Model: Mary Today's renewed interest in rediscovering our feminine images, in-cluding our scriptural Marian images, flows from our new consciousness, our movement toward the feminine. 19Iodels and images are needed to stimulate our imaginations, to aid in the shaping of our feminine energies. A variety of models is needed because femininity can be expressed in various ways. Mary, as repre-sented in Scripture, is one of those models. 46 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 The images of Mary as the attentive, Virgin, Mary as Woman, and Mary as Mother are receiving renewed interest and are taking on a new meaning. The ancient meaning of virginity as a holistic and integrated way of being is expressed by Mary. She possesses a unity which can help other people find their unity. In the Magnificat we see the fullness of her re-sponse: decisive, responsible, total and caring, a response that made and continues to make a difference to the world. This way of Understanding virginity can give us reason to pause and give the image of Mary as Vir-gin further consideration. The representation of femininity through motherliness can be seen in the scriptural passages which presentoMary as a "caring presence," a presence which encourages a change of heart, a personal togetherness where there is a call of one heart to another, a call to the other in the freedom of each to realize self. Some of these passages are Mary's visit to Elizabeth (Lk 1:39-45), the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-56), Mary at the wed-ding feast at Cana (Jn 2:1-12), Mary at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25- 27), and Mary gathered together with the disciples in prayer at the birth of the Church (Ac 1: 12-14). Each presents Mary manifesting this genu-ine way of being-together-with, of acting holistically, and with integrity. These scriptural representations, as well as others found in tradition, can serve a dialogic function in our movement toward the rediscovery of the f+minine. By pondering them in our hearts we too might conceive creative ways to shape our lives in response to the invitation from the unconscious to accept our femininity, to live out our total personhood. NOTES ~ Regina Coil, "Challenging and Reclaiming Symbols," Religious Education 80 (1985), p. 381. 2 Esther M. Harding, Woman's Mysteries: Ancient and Modern (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 197.1), p. 125. 3 Helen M. Luke, Woman, Earth and Spirit (New York: Crossroad,. 1981), p. 48. '~ David Knight, The Good News About Sex (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press), pp. 30 I-312. 5 F.J.J. Buytendijk, Women: A Contemporary View (New York: Newman.Press, 1968), p. 299. 6 lbid, p. 299. 7 Ibid, p. 357. 8 Ibid, p. 355. Collaborative Leadership in Apostolic Ministry: Behavior and Assumptions David Coghlan, S.J. Father Coghlan reaches management and organizational behavior and works as a proc-ess consultant with groups on planning and change. He may be reached at the Col-lege of Industrial Relations; Sandford Road; Ranelagh; Dublin 6, Ireland. The ~zontext of religious apostolic leadership has changed a lot over the past twenty years. Twenty years ago religious had a very definite pre-dominance in institutions of ministry. They were dominant numerically. They were the sole formulators of policy. They created the culture of the institutions. Lefidership was exercised in an autocratic manner that did ¯ not readily allow for dissent or question. Since Vatican II there has been a gradual~change. Religious life has been renewed, in terms of spiritual-ity, structures, and culture. The number of religious has declined, chang-ing the way religious are present in their ministries and provoking ques-tions about the future of particular ministries. On the level of values there has been growth in an appreciation of the ministry of the laity. Overall there has grown a neff focus of ministry---evangelization--with its en-couragement of a greater openness to the contemporary world and the articulation of the integral relationship between faith and justice. Lead-ership too has changed. In research on leadership there has been a move-ment away from a focus on the person of the leader toward a focus on the process of leadership. Leadership is no longer understood in terms of personal traits but in terms of a process between roles, a group, and a situation. In the religious-life context terms like "collaboration," "sharing ministry" are prominent. Decision-making appears to have be- 47 48 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 come a group activity, with, perhaps, the consequent role of the formal leader sometimes ambiguo.,us. It is the purpose of this article to chart the issues of leader behavior so as to clarify the implications in the develop-ment of contemporary apostolic leadership in an environment of change. Patterns of Leadership Styles Thirty years ago an article written on leader behavior posed the ques-tion, "Should a leader be democratic or autocratic in dealing with sub-ordinates-- or something in between?" That article became a standard text on the complexities of how leaders behave. ~ In the article the di-lemma of leader behavior is presented in terms of a scale, with points on the scale related to the degree of authority used by the leader and to the amount of freedom available to the group of followers. The extreme left end of the scale represents the leader behavior that maintains a very high degree of coAtrol in decision-making, while the extreme right of the scale represents the leader releasing a high degree of control. The points in between represent varying degrees of the use and release of control. On the extreme left point.of the scale the leader makes the d~cisions and informs the followers. The definition of the problem, the diagnosis, and the selection of a solution from among alternatives is done by the leader. He provides no opportunity for the followers to participate di-rectly in the process. Coercion may or may not be implied. Further to the right of the autocratic position is where the leader, rather than sim-ply announcing a decision, persuades the followers to accept it. This ap-proach might assume a resistance to the decision, hence the persuasion. The next point to .the right on the scale is where the leader Presents his idea and invites questions. The followers get the opportunity to under-stand more fully the leader's thinking. The leader is still in control of the decision-making process. The point to the right of this is where the leader presents a tentative decision which is open to cha0ge. The leader continues to have the initiative of defining the problem and choosing the solution, but he is open to influence. This is more or less the midpoint of the scale--all the points to the left are those where the leader's use of authority predominates. The points to the right are those where the followers have an increasing degree of freedom in terms of a decreas~ing use of power by the leader. To the right of the midpoint is the point' where the leader presents the problem, invites sflggestions, and then makes the decision. Here there is a critical change. The leader no longer presents a solution. The followers get the opportunity to suggest solu-tions, from which the leader may select. Giving the followers more free-dom is the point where the leader defines the limits of the problem- Collaborative Leadership / 49 solving process and gives the followers the right to make the decision. The point on the extreme right of the scale is where the leader permits the group to make decisions. The question then follows: How does the leader decide where his be-havior should be located on the scale? How autocratic must he be? How democratic can he be? There are three areas to be considered in answer-ing such questions. Fir~;tly, there is the leader himself. The leader must ask himself questions about his own values, needs, motives, skills, goals, and assumptions about subordinates. His value system and assumptions about people, particularly his subordinates and how they are motivated, are significant elements in leadership behavior.2 Th+ leader needs a de-gree of self-awareness to be in touch with what personal needs are being met in a particular leadership style. The leader's tolerance for ambiguity is another key element. The leader's self-image and self-knowledge are the ground on which an individual style of behavior is built. Secondly, there is the group of subordinates to be considered. The leader, besides looking at himself, must look at the group he is leading. He must con-sider the expectations, motivations~, knowledge, experience, competence, skills, and goals of the subordinates, and how they are interested in and committed to the issues. There is the added complication of the effect of the leader on the group, intended or unintended.3 What a ieader per-ceives to be flexibility the group may perceive to be inconsistency. So leader will need to be clear on °the impact of his behavior, particularly an unintended impact.4 Thirdly, there is the situation to be considered. The leading of~groups does not occur in a vacuum. There is the effect of the nature of the issue to be considered. An issue that has far-reaching effects on the life of the group may require a more participa-tive approach .to a particular decision than would a practical decision that has a less significant effect. There is the amount of time available to be considered. Some emergency decisions can often be appropriately made in an autocratic manner because there is not the time for consultation. The organization or wider cultural context may set limits to the ways de-cisions are made. In a context where participation is perceived as hav-ing a high °value, autocratic decisions may not be appreciated or permit-ted. In summary, there are three areas to be considered in the decision on choosing an appropriate leadership behavior. There are the leader's own values,, assumptions, skills, and self-confidence. There is the actual group of subordinates, with its level of experience, skills, and commit-ment. There is the situation, whicl~ includes the organizational context, 50 /ReviewforReligious, January-February 1988 the amount of time available, the nature of the issues, and the cultural assumptions. The effect of the leader on the group is a significant fac-tor. From a sensitive balancing of each of these three areas, the leader chooses what is appropriate behavior. This requires the leader to be self-aware and have diagnostic skillsin the areas of organizations, groups, and individuals in relation to particular tasks. The emphasis on "appro-priate" is the emphasis that emerges from the definition of leadership that is , ontin, gent on the process between a specific role, the group that is constituted as followers, and the situation. Leadership is situational. The Dilemma of Contemporary Apostolic Leadership The above framework for understanding the choices of behavior a leader has in contemporary apostolic ministry has very cleai" uses. There has been a definite movement from the autocratic, nonconsult~itive style of former generations to a more participative, collaborative style. This has grown out of a number of factors. From Vatican II there has devel-oped a new sense of the ministry of the laity which has opened up ques-tions of how the laity can be colleagues in ministry with religious. Re-ligious themselves, because of the renewal of religious life and the de-cline in numbers, have reviewed their approach to their apostolates. There.remains a~dilemma. The search for the appropriate point on the leadership behavior scale is a real search. There is a discomfort with an apparent slide to the right along the scale from autocracy to abdication of power. There is an ever-growing sense in religious, through renewal of the charism of each congregation,' that the values the religious stand for are central to a congregation's ministry. Religious do not want sim-ply to hand over their apostolates, for they value the mission they have in those apostolates. They want their mission to continue, perhaps with-out them, and certainly not in the same way as formerly. That isthe first area from which an appropriate choice is made. The leader values the mission of the~congregation and wants that to continue to be enshrined in the new situation or in a new structure. At the same time the leader values c'ollaboration and the s.haring of ministry. Sharing is an activity that implies mutuality. Ministry can perhaps only be shared with those who are willing andable to be in a sharing relationship. Therefore, the group with which sharing is hoped for must be evaluated in those terms. Thirdly, there is the situation. The decline in the numbers~of religious must be faced. The state of the world demands an urgent response. The issues are deeply significant. So the choice of appropriate lehdership style is made in the weighing up of the values of the leader, the assess-ment of the group, and the nature of the situation. In those terms it seems Collaborative Leadership that the choice is that of a collaborative style, that is, of a position some-what to the right end of the scale discussed, but not at the extremity. I am attempting to clarify what is actually happening so that relig-ious, by having a framework, can understand it. My hypothesis is that, in seeing that the choices are not simply the two extremities of the scale, the dilemma can be intelligently faced and appropriate choices made. Organizational Leadership A great deal has been written on leadership in organizations over the years. Famous leaders of organizations have written their autobiogra-phies to share with the world how their particular approach to leadership was successful in their organizations. In abstracting from all these ac-counts it seems that a leader of an organization has three roles.5 The leader is an "organizational leader," by which is meant that he leads the organization in a general management role. This typically in-volves being responsible for the accomplishment of the organization's stated plans. It means creatively maintaining and developing the organi-zation's capabilities in its external and internal domains so that achieve-ment of its taTsks is possible. The organizational leader integrates the mul-tiple functions and specialist areas within the organization. These are com-plex tasl~s and require all the qualities of efficiency that are accepted as being a core ingredient of a high management role. Secondly, the leader is a "personal lead+r," a leader of people. He must be personally able to create loyalty. He personally stands for and promotes the values of the organization, and so his actions must be congruent with those val-ues. It is his behavior as leader that forms the culture of the organiza-tion. Thirdly, the leader is the "architect of purpose." In this role he is the custodian of corporate objectives,'establishing and presiding over the setting of goals and the allocation of resources, and making choices from strategic alternatives. He defends the organization from external threats and internal erosion. The instillation of purpose in place of im-provisation and the substitution of planned progress instead of drifting are the most demanding tasks of the leader of the organization. It requires great intellectual capacity to con(eptualize corporate purpose, and it re-quires creativity to recognize strategic alternatives. It requires a critical capacity to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of proposals on paper. A novel system in an American company is one where the pension of the retired chief executive officer is reviewed five years after he has re-tired. The rationale is that after five years the co .mpany will know how good a leader he was when he was in office! 52 / Review for Religious, January-February 1988 There is a parallel in relation to religious apost61ic leadership. A ma-jor superior or a director of an apostolate has those same roles. He is an organizational lead,r, a personal leader, and the architect of purpose. He is entrusted with thb effective administration of the organization, be it a region, a school, or a hospital. The organizational leader role is exer-cised in the day-to-day desk work, the eternal round of meetings and re-ports, all working to keeping the organization in operation and fulfilling its mission. As personal leader there is the maintenance of the charism and values of the congregation. The personal care of one's fellow relig-ious is akey responsibility of a major superior. As architect of purpose, the apostolic leader integrates the processes of planning and renewal in terms of the congregation's charism, the needs of the external environ-ment, and the internal resources.6 It involves going beyond the immedi-ate arid everyday decisions and emergencies to thinking strategically about a future to be created. These three roles of high-level leadership can be applied to the di-lemma of leader behavior. The choice of leader behavior in terms of the scale of options and in terms of the three areas of consideration is fun-damental to the roles of organizational leader, personal lead

Criterio Libre magazine has played an important role in promoting scientific dissemination as a fundamental mechanism in the transformation processes of our Latin American nations towards better formed societies, with a healthy balance between the necessary growth of the production of tangible and intangible goods and a more fair distribution of wealth, for the benefit of all its populations, which seek to eradicate poverty, which is the greatest scourge that humanity has not yet been able to overcome. Therefore, we rely on criteria of the development of science that contribute to these ideals, choosing then the best articles, subjected to rigorous evaluation processes by recognized national and international researchers, who have also contributed to raise the scientific quality of them through his thoughtful observations and also to develop scientific thinking and the use of the best style for their communication, enriching the social scientific thought in our nations. We can summarize these principles as follows: the development of science and technology as an expression of given sociocultural and valorative systems, the development of science at the service of productive transformation for the benefit of society, the awareness of the role of science and technology in the definition of power relations at the national and international levels and its insertion in development policies, the use of science and technological innovation as instruments of autonomy, openness to novel approaches in the consolidation of social science, the freedom of critical thinking at all levels of scientific knowledge management, among others. In this sense, we have tried to strengthen the analysis and critical development of economic, administrative, financial and accounting sciences, opening a space for the discussion and development of the epistemology of these social sciences, which increasingly becomes the central axis of our magazine. The present edition of Criterio Libre includes two articles that enrich this epistemological discussion: in the first one the researcher José J. Ortiz B. poses a dilemma that accompanies the development of accounting science, "The crisis of accounting representation: problems of science social or power politics?", which seeks to clarify the factors that originate the problem of accounting representation from a reflection on the theoretical foundations that support this important topic and the empirical references that show this problem, factors that have been seen as an epistemic obstacle in the consolidation of this young science and to which the author intends to contribute in his epistemological clarification and in the proposal of alternative solutions, which he proposes for discussion to the scientific community with an interdisciplinary approach and from the paradigm of complexity. In the second article, Professor Jean Paul Sarrazin poses an interesting dissertation on "Religion: do we know what we are talking about? Examination on the feasibility of an analytical category for the social sciences". The objective of this review was to find an analytical category that is precise, clear and sufficiently broad to study empirically the vast range of sociocultural phenomena that can be or have been considered as "religious". It concludes that in spite of the absence of a unified analytical category, some of the most prominent elements in the different definitions can constitute, by themselves, useful analytical categories for empirical research. It can be deduced that this section has been faithful to the principles that we exposed at the beginning of this editorial and that we hope will continue to become an open forum for the scientific development of our disciplines. A second section, devoted to accounting and finance, defines topics that have become of substantial interest due to the strong theoretical development that these disciplines have reached, arriving to a phase in which the disputes of the paradigms that support different approaches have been decanted, and it is in this field where contributions arise that consolidate important theoretical schemes or that, on the other hand, discard hypotheses that allow debugging systems that, in the manner of the layers of an onion, are grouped by levels, which contributes to the consolidation of the social sciences. In this section we find two important articles oriented under this philosophy: the first one analyzes the effects on the accounting information of public companies in the Colombian electricity sector of the implementation of Resolution 743 of 2013 regarding the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for some public companies. This topic is one of the applications of the important advances in the development of accounting theory for the financial economy, which in spite of this does not manage to establish solid roots for the conditions of the developing countries, as this article proves that the transformations assumed are the result of a change in the organizational economic model, where, rather than attending to the international regulation model, it responds to a process of concentration of strategic assets by actors that have the ability to capture regulation, demonstrating that the interdisciplinary approach is a fertile ground to explain in a better way the reality of these countries in the globalizing environment that characterizes the current economy of these countries. The second article, about the "Impact of self-financing on the innovation of micro, small and medium-sized Colombian companies," allows us to delve into an aspect that has not been explicitly studied and that is located at the frontiers of knowledge between economics, finance and the administration, especially directed at an important sector of the economy of the developing countries, that of the MSME companies, which despite their great contributions to the economic well-being of the population, occupying 80% of it in these countries, no intellectual effort has been devoted by our researchers, wasting a space of potential development of autonomy that will clear the way for the true socioeconomic development of our region. The descriptive results show that Colombian MSMEs use their own resources as a priority for their investments, and inferential results obtained through linear regressions indicate that internal financing has a positive and significant influence on their overall innovation, as well as on their products/services, productive processes and management. This is a variable of fundamental importance to be involved in the development policies for the Latin American industry and that very little is taken into consideration until now, in what has been called the Orange economy, which countries like Colombia want to promote. The reality is that internal or own resources are still the main source of funding for the investment projects of these companies, and while this is consistent with the postulates of the theory of financial hierarchy, everything seems to indicate that the reasons for this are mainly the barriers they encounter to access the external financial market. The next section, dedicated to economic discipline, shows us an important article focused on the analysis of the relationship between "Good governance and effectiveness of development aid", a topic of high relevance for our economies. The article aims to deepen the origin and changes experienced by the notion of good governance; analyzes the constituents and determinants of it, as well as its relationship with close concepts such as institutional quality, and above all, the ideas and evidence created on the relationship between good governance and the effectiveness of development aid. Finally, it concludes that there is no general consensus that aid has been effective in promoting economic growth, and there are both supporters and opponents of this idea. Reflectively, it paves the way for empirically verifying the true effects of economic aid and the conditions under which better results would be possible for the benefit of large masses of the population. This edition closes with two sections: the first one, traditional on topics of administration as a discipline that is structurally integrated with the economic, accounting and financial, and where two articles are developed: the first of these is entitled "Co-creation and new challenges of generating value that organizations face". This matter is very topical and marks a trend in modern administrative theory, which is revolving around the new approaches to the generation of value. It is concluded that, in order to generate a sustained value in organizations, the focus of the managers' actions must be the creation of joint value with their clients and not the exclusive goal of increasing the sales of their products or services usually designed internally and closed. The second article, under the title "Model to analyze the incidence of social capital in human development in Bogotá, DC", focuses on identifying whether there is a type of relationship between social capital and human development in the endogenous context of the city of Bogota. For this purpose, it is proposed to conduct a descriptive investigation, based on multiple regression analysis, which facilitates the proposal of a model that determines the level of incidence of social capital in human development, based on the calculation of the Human Development Index and the Index Decomposed social capital in cognitive capital index, ICSC, structural social capital index, ICSE, social representation index of social capital, IRSCS, components of the integral calculation of the social capital index. Based on these calculations, it is verified that the scope and use of social capital are unknown in the city, which generates a society with a high level of atomization and disinterest about the problems of citizenship. Being able to verify these assertions has the utmost importance to adopt policies of social and human development in the D.C., taking into account the different analytical components that were used in the study. In the last section, dedicated to knowledge management, the issue of bullying is analyzed pedagogically by sexual orientation among male students in the environment of secondary education, which seeks to contribute to the prevention of bullying behaviors, due to the effects that this has in the welfare of a population that tends to segregate in an undemocratic manner and that is already part of the educational models that should be oriented towards the formation of values. As pedagogues, we believe that education can and should create environments of respect and appreciation of difference, where everyone can access it, regardless of sexual orientation, gender or other social or cultural constructions. The set of the eight articles that we put at the disposal of the academic community, organized in the sections oriented according to the principles that support the scientific philosophy and the editorial policy of the magazine, is configured in a new effort that we are sure will contribute to the strengthening of the scientific and technological development of our disciplines in an environment that is ours, but that dialogues with the universality of knowledge at a global level, and that progressively will become the great pillars of our human and social development ; La revista Criterio Libre ha venido desempeñando un rol importante en la promoción de la divulgación científica como mecanismo fundamental en los procesos de transformación de nuestras naciones hispanoamericanas hacia sociedades mejor conformadas, con un sano equilibrio entre el necesario crecimiento de la producción de bienes tangibles e intangibles y una más justa distribución de la riqueza, en beneficio de todas sus poblaciones que buscan la erradicación de la pobreza, el mayor flagelo que la humanidad aún no ha podido superar. En ese orden de ideas, nos hemos fundamentado en criterios del desarrollo de la ciencia que contribuyan a esos ideales, seleccionando los mejores artículos, sometidos a procesos rigurosos de evaluación por reconocidos investigadores nacionales e internacionales, quienes también han contribuido a elevar la calidad científica de los mismos con sus atinadas observaciones y también a desarrollar el pensamiento científico y la utilización del mejor estilo para su comunicación, enriqueciendo el pensamiento científico social en nuestras naciones. Dichos principios los podemos sintetizar de la siguiente manera: El desarrollo de la ciencia y la tecnología como expresión de sistemas valorativos y socioculturales dados, el desarrollo de la ciencia al servicio de la transformación productiva en beneficio de la sociedad, la concientización del papel que tienen la ciencia y la tecnología en la definición de las relaciones de poder en los niveles nacional e internacional y su inserción en las políticas de desarrollo, la utilización de la ciencia y de la innovación tecnológica como instrumentos de autonomía, la apertura a enfoques novedosos en la consolidación de la ciencia social, la libertad del pensamiento crítico en todos los niveles de la gestión del conocimiento científico, entre otros. En tal sentido hemos querido fortalecer el análisis y desarrollo crítico de las ciencias económicas, administrativas, financieras y contables, abriendo un espacio para la discusión y desarrollo de la epistemología de estas ciencias sociales, que cada vez más se convierte en columna vertebral de nuestra revista. En el presente número se incluyen dos artículos que enriquecen dicha discusión epistemológica: en el primero de ellos el investigador José J. Ortiz B. nos plantea un dilema que acompaña el desarrollo de la ciencia contable, "La crisis de la representación contable: ¿problemas de la ciencia social o de la política del poder?", en donde busca dar claridad a los factores que originan la problemática de la representación contable a partir de una reflexión sobre los fundamentos teóricos que sustentan este importante tópico y los referentes empíricos que muestran dicha problemática, factores que necesariamente se han expresado como un obstáculo epistémico en la consolidación de esta joven ciencia y al que el autor pretende aportar tanto en su esclarecimiento epistemológico, como en la propuesta de alternativas de solución, que pone para discusión a la comunidad científica con un enfoque interdisciplinario y desde el paradigma de la complejidad. En el segundo artículo el profesor Jean Paul Sarrazin nos plantea una interesante 18 Universidad Libre disertación alrededor del concepto "Religión: ¿sabemos de lo que estamos hablando? Examen sobre la viabilidad de una categoría analítica para las ciencias sociales". El objetivo de esta revisión fue encontrar una categoría analítica precisa, clara y suficientemente amplia para estudiar empíricamente la vasta gama de fenómenos socioculturales que pueden ser o han sido considerados como "religiosos". Se concluye que a pesar de la ausencia de una categoría analítica unificada algunos de los elementos más destacados en las diferentes definiciones pueden constituir, en sí mismos, categorías analíticas útiles para la investigación empírica. Se puede deducir que esta sección ha sido fiel a los principios que expusimos al comienzo de este editorial y que esperamos se siga convirtiendo en tribuna abierta para el desarrollo científico de nuestras disciplinas. Una segunda sección, dedicada a la contabilidad y las finanzas, define temáticas que se han tornado de interés sustancial dado el fuerte desarrollo teórico que han venido alcanzado esas disciplinas, llegando a una fase en que las disputas de los paradigmas que sustentan diversos enfoques se han venido decantando y es en ese terreno donde florecen aportes que consolidan esquemas teóricos importantes o que, por otro lado, descartan hipótesis que permiten depurar sistemas que, a la manera de las capas de la cebolla, se van agrupando por niveles, lo cual contribuye a la consolidación de las ciencias sociales. En esta sección encontramos dos importantes artículos orientados bajo esa filosofía: el primero de ellos analiza los efectos que sobre la información contable de las empresas públicas del sector eléctrico colombiano tuvo la implementación de la Resolución 743 de 2013, la cual se refiere a la adopción de Normas Internacionales de Información Financiera (NIIF) para algunas empresas públicas, siendo este tópico uno de los aplicativos de los avances importantes del desarrollo de la teoría contable para la economía financierista, que a pesar de ello no logra asentar sólidas raíces para las condiciones de los países en desarrollo, como lo comprueba este artículo que encuentra que las transformaciones asumidas son el resultado de un cambio de modelo económico organizacional, en donde más que atender el modelo de regulación internacional, responde a un proceso de concentración de activos estratégicos por parte de actores que tienen la capacidad de capturar la regulación, demostrando que es el enfoque interdisciplinario un campo fértil para explicar de una mejor manera la realidad de estos países en el entorno globalizador que caracteriza la economía actual de dichos países. El segundo artículo acerca del "Impacto del autofinanciamiento sobre la innovación de las micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas colombianas", permite profundizar en un aspecto que no ha sido explícitamente estudiado y que se ubica en las fronteras del conocimiento entre la economía, las finanzas y la administración, dirigido especialmente a un sector importante de la economía de los países en desarrollo, el de las empresas Mipymes, que a pesar de sus grandes aportes al bienestar económico de la población al ocupar 80% de la misma en estos países, no se le ha dedicado un esfuerzo intelectual por parte de nuestros investigadores, desaprovechando un espacio de potencial desarrollo de la autonomía que permitirá desbrozar el camino del verdadero desarrollo socioeconómico de nuestra región. Los resultados descriptivos muestran que las Mipymes colombianas utilizan prioritariamente recursos propios para sus inversiones, y los resultados inferenciales obtenidos mediante regresiones lineales señalan que el financiamiento interno influye positiva y significativamente en su innovación global, así como en la de sus productos/servicios, procesos productivos y gestión. Esto es una variable de importancia fundamental para ser involucrada en las políticas de desarrollo para la industria latinoamericana y que muy poco se toma en consideración hasta ahora, en lo que se ha venido denominando la economía naranja, que países como Colombia quieren fomentar. La realidad es que los recursos internos o propios siguen siendo la principal fuente de financiación para los proyectos de inversión de estas empresas y si bien ello es coherente con los postulados de la teoría de la jerarquía financiera, todo parece indicar que las razones de esto son principalmente las barreras que encuentran para acceder al mercado financiero externo. Nuestra siguiente sección, dedicada a la disciplina económica, nos muestra un importante artículo enfocado al análisis de la relación entre "Buen gobierno y eficacia de la ayuda al desarrollo", tema de altísima pertinencia para nuestras economías. El artículo se propone profundizar en el origen y los cambios experimentados por la noción de buen gobierno; analiza los constituyentes y determinantes del mismo, así como su relación con conceptos cercanos como el de calidad institucional, y sobre todo, las ideas y la evidencia creada sobre las relaciones entre el buen gobierno y la efectividad de la ayuda al desarrollo. Finalmente llega a la conclusión de que no existe un consenso general en cuanto a que la ayuda haya sido eficaz para promover el crecimiento económico, y existen tanto defensores como detractores de esta idea. De manera reflexiva deja abierto el camino para verificar empíricamente los verdaderos efectos de la ayuda económica y las condiciones bajo las cuales se harían posibles unos mejores resultados en beneficio de grandes masas de la población. Cerramos este número con dos secciones: la primera, tradicional sobre temas de administración como disciplina que se integra estructuralmente con la económica, la contable y financiera, y donde se desarrollan dos artículos: el primero de estos se titula "La co-creación y los nuevos retos de generación de valor que enfrentan las organizaciones", siendo esta temática de gran actualidad y que marca una tendencia en la moderna teoría administrativa, que está girando sobre los nuevos enfoques de la generación de valor. Se concluye que, para generar un valor sostenido en las organizaciones, el foco de las acciones de los gestores debe ser la creación de valor conjunta con sus clientes y no la exclusiva meta de aumentar las ventas de sus productos o servicios habitualmente diseñados de manera interna y cerrada. El segundo artículo bajo el título "Modelo para analizar la incidencia del capital social en el desarrollo humano en Bogotá, D.C.", se centra en identificar si existe un tipo de relación entre el capital social y el desarrollo humano en el contexto endógeno de la ciudad de Bogotá. Para tal fin, se propone hacer una investigación descriptiva basada en análisis de regresión múltiple que facilita la proposición de un modelo que determina el nivel de incidencia del capital social en el desarrollo humano, partiendo del cálculo del Índice de desarrollo humano y del Índice de capital social descompuesto en índice 20 Universidad Libre de capital cognitivo, ICSC, índice de capital social estructural, ICSE, Índice de representación social del capital social, IRSCS, componentes del cálculo integral del índice de capital social. Con base en esos cálculos se llega a comprobar que en la ciudad se desconocen el alcance y uso del capital social, lo que genera construir una sociedad con alto nivel de atomización y desinterés por los problemas de la ciudadanía. Poder comprobar estos asertos es de suma importancia para adoptar políticas de desarrollo social y humano en el D.C., atendiendo los diferentes componentes analíticos que se utilizaron en el estudio. En la última sección, dedicada a la gestión del conocimiento, se analiza pedagógicamente el tema del bullying por orientación sexual entre estudiantes masculinos en el ambiente de la educación media, que busca contribuir a la prevención de comportamientos de bullying, por los efectos que ello tiene en el bienestar de una población que tiende a segregarse de manera antidemocrática y que ya hace parte de los modelos educativos que deben orientarse a la formación de valores. Como pedagogos, creemos que la educación puede y debe crear ambientes de respeto y valoración de la diferencia, en donde todos puedan acceder a ella, sin importar la orientación sexual, el género u otras construcciones sociales o culturales. El conjunto de los ocho artículos que ponemos a disposición de la comunidad académica, organizados en las secciones orientadas según los principios que fundamentan la filosofía científica y la política editorial de la revista, se configura en un nuevo esfuerzo que estamos seguros contribuirá al fortalecimiento del desarrollo científico y tecnológico de nuestras disciplinas en un entorno que nos es propio, pero que dialoga con la universalidad del conocimiento a nivel global, y que progresivamente se constituirán en los grandes pilares de nuestro desarrollo humano y social. ; La revue Criterio Libre a occupé un important rôle en promouvoir la divulgation scientifique comme mécanisme fondamental dans les procès de transformation de nos nations latino-americaines vers sociétés meilleure conformées, avec un sain équilibre entre la nécessaire croissance de la production de biens tangibles et intangibles et une plus juste distribution de la richesse, au profit de toutes ses populations, que cherchent éradiquer la pauvreté, qu'il est le majeur fléau que l'humanité encore n'a pas pu surpasser. Par l'antérieur, nous basons sur des critères du développement de la science qu'ils contribuent à ces idéals, en choisissant alors les meilleurs articles, soumis à des rigoureux procès d'évaluation par des reconnus chercheurs nationaux et internationaux, qui ont aussi contribué à élever la qualité scientifique des mêmes par leur sages observations et aussi à développer la pensée scientifique et l'utilisation du meilleur style pour sa communication, en enrichissant la pensé scientifique sociale dans nos nations. Nous pouvons résumer dits principes: le développement de la science et la technologie comme expression de systèmes d'évaluation et socio-culturelles donnés, le développement de la science au service de la transformation productive au profit de la société, la prise de conscience du rôle de la science et la technologie dans la définition des relations de pouvoir en les niveaux nationaux et internationaux et son insertion dans les politiques de développement, l›utilisation de la science et de l›innovation technologique comme des instruments d›autonomie, l›ouverture à nouvelles approches dans la consolidation de la science sociale, la liberté de la pensée critique en tous les niveaux de la gestion de la connaissance scientifique, entre autrui. Dans ce sens, nous avons essayé fortifier l'analyse et développement critique des sciences économiques, administratives, financiers et comptables, en ouvrant un espace pour la discussion et développement de l'epistemologie de ces sciences sociales, que de plus en plus se convertit dans l'axe central de notre revue. La présente édition comprend deux articles qu'ils enrichissent dite discussion epistémológique: en le premier d'ils le chercheur José J. Ortiz B. pose un dilemme qu'accompagne le développement de la science comptable, "La crise de la représentation comptable: ¿problèmes de la science sociale ou de la politique du pouvoir?", dans lequel cherche éclaircir les facteurs qu'ils causent la problématique de la représentation comptable à partir d'une réflexion sur les fondements théoriques qu'ils soutiennent cet important question et les référents empiriques qui montrent cette problématique, facteurs qui ont été considérés comme un obstacle épistémique à la consolidation de cette jeune science et aux quels l›auteur entend contribuir dans sa clarification épistémologique et dans la proposition de solutions alternatives qu›il donne à lacommunauté scientifique avec une approche interdisciplinaire et du paradigme de la complexité. Dans le deuxième article, le professeur Jean Paul Sarrazin fait une thèse intéressante sur "Religion: savons-nous de quoi nous parlons? Examen de la faisabilité d›une catégorie analytique pour les sciences sociales". L'objectif de cette revue était de trouver une catégorie analytique précise, claire et suffisamment large pour étudier empiriquement la vaste gamme de phénomènes socio-culturelles qui peuvent être ou ont été considérés comme "religieux". Il conclut qu'en dépit de l›absence d›unecatégorie analytique unifiée, certains éléments les plus saillants des différentes définitions peuvent euxmêmes constituer des catégories analytiques utiles à la recherche empirique. On peut déduire que cette section a été fidèle aux principes que nous avons énoncé au début de cet éditorial et que nous espérons qu'ils continuera à devenir une plateforme ouverte pour le développement scientifique de nos disciplines. Une deuxième section, consacrée à la comptabilité et à la finance, définit les sujets qui sont devenus d›un intérêt substantiel en raison du fort développement théorique que ces disciplines ont atteint, atteignant une phase dans la quelle les différends des paradigmes qui soutiennent diverses approches ont été réglés et c'est dans ce domaine que les contributions surgissent qui consolident des schémas théoriques importants ou qui, d'autrepart, écartent les hypothèses qui permettent des systèmes purifiants qui, à la façon des couches d›oignons, sont regroupés par niveaux, contribuant ainsi à consolider les sciences sociales. Dans cette section, nous trouvons deux articles importants orientés selon cette philosophie: le premier analyse les effets sur l›information comptable des entreprises publiques du secteur de l'électricité colombien de la mise en oeuvre de la résolution 743 de 2013 concernant l'adoption des normes internationales d›information financière (IFRS) pour certaines entreprises publiques. Ce sujet est l›une des applications des avancées importantes dans le développement de la théorie comptable pour l›économie financieriste qui malgré cela ne parvient pas à établir des racines solides pour les conditions des pays en développement, comme enté moigne cet article qui constate que les transformations supposées sont le résultat d›un changement du modèle économique organisationnel, où, plutôt que de s›intéresser au modèle de réglementation internationale, répond à un processus de concentration des actifs stratégiques par des acteurs qui ont la capacité de saisir la réglementation, démontrant que l'approche interdisciplinaire est un terrain fertile pour mieux expliquer la réalité de ces pays dans l'environnement mondialisant qui caractérise l›économie actuelle de ces pays. Le deuxième article, intitulé "Impact de l›autofinancement sur l'innovation dans les micro, petites et moyennes entreprises colombiennes», donne un aperçu d'un aspect qui n›a pas été explicitement étudié et qui se situe aux frontières de la connaissance entre économie, finance et administration, en particulier dans un secteur important de l›économie des pays en développement, celle des MPME, qui malgré leur grande contribution au bien-être économique de la population, occupant 80% de la population de ces pays, n'a pas fait l›effort intellectuel de nos chercheurs, gaspillant un espace de développement potentiel d'autonomie qui ouvrira la voie à un véritable développement socioéconomique de notre région. Les résultats descriptifs montrent que les PMI colombiennes utilisent principalement leurs propres ressources pour leurs investissements, et les résultats inférentiels obtenus par régression linéaire indiquent que le financement interne a une influence positive et significative sur leur innovation globale, ainsi que sur celle de leurs produits/services, processus de production et gestion. Il s›agit d'une variable d›une importance fondamentale à impliquer dans les politiques de développement de l'industrie latino-américaine et que trèspeu de choses sont prises en considération jusqu›à présent, dans cequ›on a appelé l'économie orange, que des pays comme la Colombie veulent promouvoir. En réalité, les ressources internes ou propres restent la principale source de financement des projets d'investissement de ces entreprises et, bien que cela soit conforme aux postulats de la théorie de la hiérarchie financière, tout semble indiquer que les raisons en sont principalement les obstacles qu›elles rencontrent pour accéder au marché financier extérieur. Notre prochaine section, consacrée à ladiscipline économique, nous présente un article important centré sur l'analyse de la relation entre "La bonne gouvernance et l'efficacité de l'aide"; un sujet de la plus haute pertinence pour nos économies. Il analyse les composantes et les déterminants de la bonne gouvernance, ainsi que sa relation avec des concepts étroitement liés tels que la qualité institutionnelle et, surtout, les idées et les preuves créées sur la relation entre bonne gouvernance et efficacité de l'aide au développement. En fin, il conclut qu'il n'y a pas de consensus général sur l'efficacité de l'aide dans la promotion de la croissance économique, et qu'il y a à la fois des défenseurs et des détracteurs de cette idée. D'une manière réfléchie, elle laisse ouverte la voie à la vérification empirique des effets réels de l'aide économique et des conditions dans les quelles de meilleurs résultats seraient possibles pour le bénéfice de larges masses de la population. Nous clôturons ce numéro avec deux sections : la première, traditionnelle sur les thèmes de l›administration en tant que discipline structurellement intégrée à l'économie, la comptabilité et lafinance, et où deux articles sont développés: le premier d'entre eux estintitulé "Co-création et lesnouveaux défis de création de valeur aux quels les organisations font face. Ce sujet est d›actualité et marque une tendance de la théorie administrative moderne, qui s›articule autour de nouvelles approches de la création de valeur. Il est conclu que, pour générer une valeur durable dans lesorganisations, les actions des gestionnaires doivent être axées sur la création de valeur conjointe avec leurs clients et non sur l›objectif exclusif d'augmenter les ventes de leurs produits ou services habituellement conçus en interne et de façon fermée. Le deuxième article, intitulé "Modèle d'analyse de l'incidence du capital social sur le développement humain à Bogotá, D.C.", vise à identifier s›il existe un type de relation entre capital social et développement humain dans le contexte endogène de la ville de Bogotá. Cette fin, il est proposé demener une recherche descriptive, fondée sur une analyse de régression multiple, qui facilite la proposition d'un modèle qui détermine le niveau d'incidence du capital social dans le développement humain, à partir du calcul de l'indice de développement humain et de l'indice de capital social répartis en composantes du calcul intégral de l'indice de capital social, soit l'indice de capital cognitif, l'ICSE, l'indice de capital social structurel, l'ICSC et l'IRSCS, et de l'indice de représentation du capital social. Sur la base de ces calculs, on constate que l'ampleur et l'utilisation du capital social dans la ville sont inconnues, ce qui engendre la construction d'une société avec un haut niveau d'atomisation et un désintérêt pour les problèmes de citoyenneté. Pouvoir vérifier ces affirmations a une importance capitale pour l'adoption de politiques de développement social et humain à Bogotá, D.C., en tenant compte des différentes composantes analytiques qui ont été utilisées dans l'étude. Dans la dernière partie, consacrée à la gestion des connaissances, le sujet des brimades dues à l'orientation sexuelle chez les élèves de sexe masculin estanalysé pédagogiquement dans l'environnement de l'enseignement secondaire, qui cherche à contribuer à la prévention des comportements debrimades, en raison des effets que cela a sur le bien-être d'une population qui tend à se séparer de manière antidémocratique et qui fait déjà partie des modèles éducatifs qui doivent être orientés vers la formation des valeurs. En tant que pédagogues, nous croyons que l'éducation peut et doit créer des environnements de respect et de valorisation de la différence, où chacun peut y accéder, indépendamment de son orientation sexuelle, de son sexe ou d'autres constructions sociales ou culturelles. L'ensemble des huit articles que nous mettons à la disposition de la communauté académique, organisés en sections orientées selon les principes qui sous-tendent la philosophie scientifique et la politique éditoriale de la revue, s'inscrit dans un nouvel effort qui, nous en sommes sûrs, contribuera à renforcer le développement scientifique et technologique de nos disciplines dans un environnement qui nous est propre mais qui dialogue avec l'universalité du savoir à un niveau global et qui deviendra progressivement les grands piliers de notre développement humain et social. ; A revista Critério Livre tem desempenhado um importante papel em promover a divulgação científica como um mecanismo fundamental nos processos de transformação de nossas nações latino-americanas para sociedades melhor formadas, com um equilíbrio saudável entre o necessário crescimento da produção de bens tangíveis e intangíveis e uma mais justa distribuição da riqueza, em benefício de todas as suas populações, que buscam erradicar a pobreza, que é o maior flagelo que a humanidade ainda não conseguiu superar. Pelo exposto, nos baseamos em critérios do desenvolvimento da ciência que contribuam para esses ideais, escolhendo então os melhores artigos, submetidos a rigorosos processos de avaliação por renomados pesquisadores nacionais e internacionais, que também contribuíram para elevar a qualidade científica dos mesmos através de seus atinadas observações,e também a desenvolver o pensamento científico e a utilização do melhorestilo para sua comunicação, enriquecendo o pensamento científico social em nossos países. Podemos resumir esses princípios assim: o desenvolvimento da ciência e da tecnologia como expressão de sistemas valorativos e socioculturais dados, o desenvolvimento da ciência a serviço da transformação produtiva em benefício da sociedade, a conscientização sobre o papel da ciência e da tecnologia na definição das relações de poder nos níveis nacional e internacional e sua inserção nas políticas de desenvolvimento, a utilização da ciência e da inovação tecnológica como instrumentos de autonomia, a abertura a abordagens inovadoras na consolidação da ciencia social, a liberdade do pensamento crítico em todos os níveis da gestão do conhecimento científico, entre outros. Neste sentido, tentamos fortalecer a análise e o desenvolvimento crítico das ciências econômicas, administrativas, financeiras e contábeis, abrindo um espaço para a discussão e desenvolvimento da epistemologia de estas ciências sociais, que cada vez mais torna-se o eixo central de nossa revista. A presente edição inclui dois itens que fazem parte desta discussão epistemológica: no primeiro deles, o pesquisador José J. Ortiz B. planta um dilema que acompanha o desenvolvimento da ciência contábil, "A crise da representação contábil: problemas da ciência social ou política do poder?", em que busca esclarecer os fatores que originam a problemática da representação contábil a partir de uma reflexão sobre os fundamentos teóricos que sustentam este importante tema e os referentes empíricos que mostram esta problemática, fatores que foram vistos como um obstáculo epistémico na consolidação dessa jovem ciência e o que o autor pretende contribuir para seu esclarecimento epistemológico e a proposta de alternativas de solução, que propõe para discussão com a comunidade científica com uma abordagem interdisciplinar e a partir do paradigma da complexidade. No segundo artigo, o profesor Jean Paul Sarrazin levanta uma interessante dissertação sobre "Religião: nós sabemos do que estamos falando? Análise da viabilidade de uma categoria analítica para as ciências sociais". O objetivo desta revisão foi encontrar uma categoria analítica, precisa, clara e suficientemente ampla para estudar empiricamente a vasta gama de fenômenos sócio-culturais que podem ser ou foram considerados como "religiosos". Conclui que, a pesar da ausência de uma categoria analítica unificada, alguns dos elementos mais destacados nas diferentes definições podem constituir, em si mesmos, categorias analíticas úteis para a investigação empírica. Pode-se deducir que esta seção tem sido fiel aos princípios que expusemos no início deste editorial, e que esperamos que continue transformando em uma tribuna aberta para o desenvolvimento científico de nossas disciplinas. Uma segunda seção, dedicada à contabilidade e as finanças, define temáticas que se tornaram de interesse substancial devido ao forte desenvolvimento teórico que atingiram essas disciplinas, chegando a uma fase em que as disputas dos paradigmas que sustentam várias abordagens foram decantado e é nesse terreno onde surgem contribuições que consolidam os importantes esquemas teóricos ou que, por outro lado, descartam hipótese que permitem depurar sistemas que, à maneira das camadas duma cebola, serão agrupadas por níveis, o que contribui para a consolidação das ciências sociais. Nesta seção encontramos dois importantes artigos orientados sob desta filosofia: o primeiro analisa os efeitos que sobre a informação contabilística das empresas públicas do setor elétrico colombiano teve a implementação da Resolução 743 de 2013, relativa à adopção de Normas Internacionais de Informação Financeira (NIIF) para algumas empresas públicas. Este tópico é um dos aplicativos de importantes avanços do desenvolvimento da teoria contábil para a economia financierista, que apesar disso não consegue establecer sólidas raízes para as condições dos países em desenvolvimento, como o comprova este artigo que encontra que as transformações assumidas são o resultado de uma mudança de modelo econômico, organizacional, onde, mais que atender o modelo de regulação internacional, responde a um processo de concentração de ativos estratégicos por parte de atores que têm a capacidade de capturar a regulação, demonstrando que a abordagem interdisciplinar é um campo fértil para explicar de uma maneira melhor a realidade destes países no ambiente globalizador que caracteriza a economía atual de tais países. O segundo artigo, sobre "o Impacto do autofinanciamento sobre a inovação das micro, pequenas e médias empresas colombianas", permite aprofundar um aspecto que não tem sido explicitamente estudado e que se situa na fronteira entre a economia, as finanças e a administração, dirigido especialmente a um setor importante da economia dos países em desenvolvimento, as empresas Mipymes, que apesar de suas grandes contribuições para o bem-estar económico da população, ao ocupar 80% da mesma em cada um destes países, não lhe foi dedicado um esforço intelectual por parte dos nossos investigadores, desaprovechando um espaço potencial de desenvolvimento da autonomia que permite desbrozar o caminho do verdadeiro desenvolvimento sócio-econômico de nossa região. Os resultados descritivos mostram que as Mipymes colombianas utilizam prioritariamente os recursos próprios para os investimentos, e os resultados inferenciales obtidos através de regressões lineares indicam que o financiamento interno influencia positiva e significativamente na inovação global, assim como a de seus produtos/serviços, processos produtivos e de gestão. Esta é uma variável de importância fundamental para ser envolvida nas políticas de desenvolvimento para a indústria latino-americana e que muito pouco se leva em consideração até agora, no que se tem denominado a economía laranja, que países como a Colômbia querem promover. A realidade é que os recursos internos ou próprios continuam sendo a principal fonte de financiamento para os projectos de investimento destas empresas, e se bem que isso é coerente com os postulados da teoria da hierarquia financeira, tudo parece indicar que as razões são principalmente as barreiras que encontram para acessar o mercado financeiro externo. A nossa seguinte secção, dedicada à disciplina económica, mostra-nos um importante artigo focado à análise da relação entre "Bom governo e eficácia da ajuda ao desenvolvimento", tema de altísima pertinência para as nossas economias. O artigo propõe-se aprofundar na origem e as mudanças experimentadas pela noção de bom governo; analisa os constituintes e determinantes do mesmo, bem como a sua relação com conceitos próximos como a qualidade institucional, e sobretudo, as ideias e a evidência criada sobre as relações entre o bom governo e a efetividade da ajuda ao desenvolvimento. Finalmente chega à conclusão de que não existe um consenso geral quanto a que a ajuda seja eficaz para promover o crescimento económico, e existem tanto defensores como detratores desta ideia. De maneira reflexiva deixa aberto o caminho para verificar empiricamente os verdadeiros efeitos da ajuda económica e as condições baixo as quais seriam possíveis uns melhores resultados em benefício de grandes massas da população. Fechamos esta edição com duas secções: a primeira, tradicional sobre temas de administração como disciplina que se integra estruturalmente com a económica, a contável e financeira, e onde se desenvolvem dois artigos: o primeiro destes se titula "A co-criação e os novos reptos de geração de valor que enfrentam as organizações". Esta temática é de grande atualidade e marca uma tendência na moderna teoria administrativa, que está a girar sobre as novas focagens da geração de valor. Conclui-se que, para gerar um valor sustentado nas organizações, o foco das ações dos gestores deve ser a criação de valor conjunta com os seus clientes e não a exclusiva meta de aumentar as vendas dos seus produtos ou serviços habitualmente desenhados de maneira interna e fechada. O segundo artigo, baixo o título "Modelo para analisar a incidência do capital social no desenvolvimento humano em Bogotá, D.C.", centra-se em identificar se existe um tipo de relação entre o capital social e o desenvolvimento humano no contexto endógeno da cidade de Bogotá. Para tal fim, propõe-se fazer uma investigação descritiva, baseada em análise de regressão múltipla, que facilita a proposição de um modelo que determina o nível de incidência do capital social no desenvolvimento humano, partindo do cálculo do Índice de desenvolvimento humano e do Índice de capital social decomposto em índice de capital cognitivo, ICSC, índice de capital social estrutural, ICSE, Índice de representação social do capital social, IRSCS, componentes do cálculo integral do índice de capital social. Com base nesses cálculos chega-se a comprovar que na cidade se desconhecem o alcance e o uso do capital social, o que gera construir uma sociedade com alto nível de atomização e desinteresse pelos problemas da cidadania. Poder comprovar estes asertos é de soma importância para adotar políticas de desenvolvimento social e humano no D.C., atendendo os diferentes componentes analíticos que se utilizaram no estudo. Na última secção, dedicada à gestão do conhecimento, analisa-se pedagógicamente o tema do bullying por orientação sexual entre estudantes masculinos no ambiente da educação média, que procura contribuir à prevenção de comportamentos de bullying, pelos efeitos que isso tem no bem-estar de uma população que tende a segregarse de maneira antidemocrática e que já faz parte dos modelos educativos que devem orientar à formação de valores. Como pedagogos, achamos que a educação pode e deve criar ambientes de respeito e valoração da diferença, em onde todos possam aceder a ela, sem importar a orientação sexual, o género ou outras construções sociais ou culturais. O conjunto dos oito artigos que pomos ao dispor da comunidade académica, organizados nas secções orientadas segundo os princípios que fundamentam a filosofia científica e a política editorial da revista, se configura em um novo esforço que estamos seguros contribuirá ao fortalecimiento do desenvolvimento científico e tecnológico das nossas disciplinas em um meio que nos é próprio, mas que dialoga com a universalidade do conhecimento a nível global, e que progressivamente constituir-se-ão nos grandes pilares do nosso desenvolvimento humano e social.

Criterio Libre magazine has played an important role in promoting scientific dissemination as a fundamental mechanism in the transformation processes of our Latin American nations towards better formed societies, with a healthy balance between the necessary growth of the production of tangible and intangible goods and a more fair distribution of wealth, for the benefit of all its populations, which seek to eradicate poverty, which is the greatest scourge that humanity has not yet been able to overcome. Therefore, we rely on criteria of the development of science that contribute to these ideals, choosing then the best articles, subjected to rigorous evaluation processes by recognized national and international researchers, who have also contributed to raise the scientific quality of them through his thoughtful observations and also to develop scientific thinking and the use of the best style for their communication, enriching the social scientific thought in our nations. We can summarize these principles as follows: the development of science and technology as an expression of given sociocultural and valorative systems, the development of science at the service of productive transformation for the benefit of society, the awareness of the role of science and technology in the definition of power relations at the national and international levels and its insertion in development policies, the use of science and technological innovation as instruments of autonomy, openness to novel approaches in the consolidation of social science, the freedom of critical thinking at all levels of scientific knowledge management, among others. In this sense, we have tried to strengthen the analysis and critical development of economic, administrative, financial and accounting sciences, opening a space for the discussion and development of the epistemology of these social sciences, which increasingly becomes the central axis of our magazine. The present edition of Criterio Libre includes two articles that enrich this epistemological discussion: in the first one the researcher José J. Ortiz B. poses a dilemma that accompanies the development of accounting science, "The crisis of accounting representation: problems of science social or power politics?", which seeks to clarify the factors that originate the problem of accounting representation from a reflection on the theoretical foundations that support this important topic and the empirical references that show this problem, factors that have been seen as an epistemic obstacle in the consolidation of this young science and to which the author intends to contribute in his epistemological clarification and in the proposal of alternative solutions, which he proposes for discussion to the scientific community with an interdisciplinary approach and from the paradigm of complexity. In the second article, Professor Jean Paul Sarrazin poses an interesting dissertation on "Religion: do we know what we are talking about? Examination on the feasibility of an analytical category for the social sciences". The objective of this review was to find an analytical category that is precise, clear and sufficiently broad to study empirically the vast range of sociocultural phenomena that can be or have been considered as "religious". It concludes that in spite of the absence of a unified analytical category, some of the most prominent elements in the different definitions can constitute, by themselves, useful analytical categories for empirical research. It can be deduced that this section has been faithful to the principles that we exposed at the beginning of this editorial and that we hope will continue to become an open forum for the scientific development of our disciplines. A second section, devoted to accounting and finance, defines topics that have become of substantial interest due to the strong theoretical development that these disciplines have reached, arriving to a phase in which the disputes of the paradigms that support different approaches have been decanted, and it is in this field where contributions arise that consolidate important theoretical schemes or that, on the other hand, discard hypotheses that allow debugging systems that, in the manner of the layers of an onion, are grouped by levels, which contributes to the consolidation of the social sciences. In this section we find two important articles oriented under this philosophy: the first one analyzes the effects on the accounting information of public companies in the Colombian electricity sector of the implementation of Resolution 743 of 2013 regarding the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for some public companies. This topic is one of the applications of the important advances in the development of accounting theory for the financial economy, which in spite of this does not manage to establish solid roots for the conditions of the developing countries, as this article proves that the transformations assumed are the result of a change in the organizational economic model, where, rather than attending to the international regulation model, it responds to a process of concentration of strategic assets by actors that have the ability to capture regulation, demonstrating that the interdisciplinary approach is a fertile ground to explain in a better way the reality of these countries in the globalizing environment that characterizes the current economy of these countries. The second article, about the "Impact of self-financing on the innovation of micro, small and medium-sized Colombian companies," allows us to delve into an aspect that has not been explicitly studied and that is located at the frontiers of knowledge between economics, finance and the administration, especially directed at an important sector of the economy of the developing countries, that of the MSME companies, which despite their great contributions to the economic well-being of the population, occupying 80% of it in these countries, no intellectual effort has been devoted by our researchers, wasting a space of potential development of autonomy that will clear the way for the true socioeconomic development of our region. The descriptive results show that Colombian MSMEs use their own resources as a priority for their investments, and inferential results obtained through linear regressions indicate that internal financing has a positive and significant influence on their overall innovation, as well as on their products/services, productive processes and management. This is a variable of fundamental importance to be involved in the development policies for the Latin American industry and that very little is taken into consideration until now, in what has been called the Orange economy, which countries like Colombia want to promote. The reality is that internal or own resources are still the main source of funding for the investment projects of these companies, and while this is consistent with the postulates of the theory of financial hierarchy, everything seems to indicate that the reasons for this are mainly the barriers they encounter to access the external financial market. The next section, dedicated to economic discipline, shows us an important article focused on the analysis of the relationship between "Good governance and effectiveness of development aid", a topic of high relevance for our economies. The article aims to deepen the origin and changes experienced by the notion of good governance; analyzes the constituents and determinants of it, as well as its relationship with close concepts such as institutional quality, and above all, the ideas and evidence created on the relationship between good governance and the effectiveness of development aid. Finally, it concludes that there is no general consensus that aid has been effective in promoting economic growth, and there are both supporters and opponents of this idea. Reflectively, it paves the way for empirically verifying the true effects of economic aid and the conditions under which better results would be possible for the benefit of large masses of the population. This edition closes with two sections: the first one, traditional on topics of administration as a discipline that is structurally integrated with the economic, accounting and financial, and where two articles are developed: the first of these is entitled "Co-creation and new challenges of generating value that organizations face". This matter is very topical and marks a trend in modern administrative theory, which is revolving around the new approaches to the generation of value. It is concluded that, in order to generate a sustained value in organizations, the focus of the managers' actions must be the creation of joint value with their clients and not the exclusive goal of increasing the sales of their products or services usually designed internally and closed. The second article, under the title "Model to analyze the incidence of social capital in human development in Bogotá, DC", focuses on identifying whether there is a type of relationship between social capital and human development in the endogenous context of the city of Bogota. For this purpose, it is proposed to conduct a descriptive investigation, based on multiple regression analysis, which facilitates the proposal of a model that determines the level of incidence of social capital in human development, based on the calculation of the Human Development Index and the Index Decomposed social capital in cognitive capital index, ICSC, structural social capital index, ICSE, social representation index of social capital, IRSCS, components of the integral calculation of the social capital index. Based on these calculations, it is verified that the scope and use of social capital are unknown in the city, which generates a society with a high level of atomization and disinterest about the problems of citizenship. Being able to verify these assertions has the utmost importance to adopt policies of social and human development in the D.C., taking into account the different analytical components that were used in the study. In the last section, dedicated to knowledge management, the issue of bullying is analyzed pedagogically by sexual orientation among male students in the environment of secondary education, which seeks to contribute to the prevention of bullying behaviors, due to the effects that this has in the welfare of a population that tends to segregate in an undemocratic manner and that is already part of the educational models that should be oriented towards the formation of values. As pedagogues, we believe that education can and should create environments of respect and appreciation of difference, where everyone can access it, regardless of sexual orientation, gender or other social or cultural constructions. The set of the eight articles that we put at the disposal of the academic community, organized in the sections oriented according to the principles that support the scientific philosophy and the editorial policy of the magazine, is configured in a new effort that we are sure will contribute to the strengthening of the scientific and technological development of our disciplines in an environment that is ours, but that dialogues with the universality of knowledge at a global level, and that progressively will become the great pillars of our human and social development ; La revista Criterio Libre ha venido desempeñando un rol importante en la promoción de la divulgación científica como mecanismo fundamental en los procesos de transformación de nuestras naciones hispanoamericanas hacia sociedades mejor conformadas, con un sano equilibrio entre el necesario crecimiento de la producción de bienes tangibles e intangibles y una más justa distribución de la riqueza, en beneficio de todas sus poblaciones que buscan la erradicación de la pobreza, el mayor flagelo que la humanidad aún no ha podido superar. En ese orden de ideas, nos hemos fundamentado en criterios del desarrollo de la ciencia que contribuyan a esos ideales, seleccionando los mejores artículos, sometidos a procesos rigurosos de evaluación por reconocidos investigadores nacionales e internacionales, quienes también han contribuido a elevar la calidad científica de los mismos con sus atinadas observaciones y también a desarrollar el pensamiento científico y la utilización del mejor estilo para su comunicación, enriqueciendo el pensamiento científico social en nuestras naciones. Dichos principios los podemos sintetizar de la siguiente manera: El desarrollo de la ciencia y la tecnología como expresión de sistemas valorativos y socioculturales dados, el desarrollo de la ciencia al servicio de la transformación productiva en beneficio de la sociedad, la concientización del papel que tienen la ciencia y la tecnología en la definición de las relaciones de poder en los niveles nacional e internacional y su inserción en las políticas de desarrollo, la utilización de la ciencia y de la innovación tecnológica como instrumentos de autonomía, la apertura a enfoques novedosos en la consolidación de la ciencia social, la libertad del pensamiento crítico en todos los niveles de la gestión del conocimiento científico, entre otros. En tal sentido hemos querido fortalecer el análisis y desarrollo crítico de las ciencias económicas, administrativas, financieras y contables, abriendo un espacio para la discusión y desarrollo de la epistemología de estas ciencias sociales, que cada vez más se convierte en columna vertebral de nuestra revista. En el presente número se incluyen dos artículos que enriquecen dicha discusión epistemológica: en el primero de ellos el investigador José J. Ortiz B. nos plantea un dilema que acompaña el desarrollo de la ciencia contable, "La crisis de la representación contable: ¿problemas de la ciencia social o de la política del poder?", en donde busca dar claridad a los factores que originan la problemática de la representación contable a partir de una reflexión sobre los fundamentos teóricos que sustentan este importante tópico y los referentes empíricos que muestran dicha problemática, factores que necesariamente se han expresado como un obstáculo epistémico en la consolidación de esta joven ciencia y al que el autor pretende aportar tanto en su esclarecimiento epistemológico, como en la propuesta de alternativas de solución, que pone para discusión a la comunidad científica con un enfoque interdisciplinario y desde el paradigma de la complejidad. En el segundo artículo el profesor Jean Paul Sarrazin nos plantea una interesante 18 Universidad Libre disertación alrededor del concepto "Religión: ¿sabemos de lo que estamos hablando? Examen sobre la viabilidad de una categoría analítica para las ciencias sociales". El objetivo de esta revisión fue encontrar una categoría analítica precisa, clara y suficientemente amplia para estudiar empíricamente la vasta gama de fenómenos socioculturales que pueden ser o han sido considerados como "religiosos". Se concluye que a pesar de la ausencia de una categoría analítica unificada algunos de los elementos más destacados en las diferentes definiciones pueden constituir, en sí mismos, categorías analíticas útiles para la investigación empírica. Se puede deducir que esta sección ha sido fiel a los principios que expusimos al comienzo de este editorial y que esperamos se siga convirtiendo en tribuna abierta para el desarrollo científico de nuestras disciplinas. Una segunda sección, dedicada a la contabilidad y las finanzas, define temáticas que se han tornado de interés sustancial dado el fuerte desarrollo teórico que han venido alcanzado esas disciplinas, llegando a una fase en que las disputas de los paradigmas que sustentan diversos enfoques se han venido decantando y es en ese terreno donde florecen aportes que consolidan esquemas teóricos importantes o que, por otro lado, descartan hipótesis que permiten depurar sistemas que, a la manera de las capas de la cebolla, se van agrupando por niveles, lo cual contribuye a la consolidación de las ciencias sociales. En esta sección encontramos dos importantes artículos orientados bajo esa filosofía: el primero de ellos analiza los efectos que sobre la información contable de las empresas públicas del sector eléctrico colombiano tuvo la implementación de la Resolución 743 de 2013, la cual se refiere a la adopción de Normas Internacionales de Información Financiera (NIIF) para algunas empresas públicas, siendo este tópico uno de los aplicativos de los avances importantes del desarrollo de la teoría contable para la economía financierista, que a pesar de ello no logra asentar sólidas raíces para las condiciones de los países en desarrollo, como lo comprueba este artículo que encuentra que las transformaciones asumidas son el resultado de un cambio de modelo económico organizacional, en donde más que atender el modelo de regulación internacional, responde a un proceso de concentración de activos estratégicos por parte de actores que tienen la capacidad de capturar la regulación, demostrando que es el enfoque interdisciplinario un campo fértil para explicar de una mejor manera la realidad de estos países en el entorno globalizador que caracteriza la economía actual de dichos países. El segundo artículo acerca del "Impacto del autofinanciamiento sobre la innovación de las micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas colombianas", permite profundizar en un aspecto que no ha sido explícitamente estudiado y que se ubica en las fronteras del conocimiento entre la economía, las finanzas y la administración, dirigido especialmente a un sector importante de la economía de los países en desarrollo, el de las empresas Mipymes, que a pesar de sus grandes aportes al bienestar económico de la población al ocupar 80% de la misma en estos países, no se le ha dedicado un esfuerzo intelectual por parte de nuestros investigadores, desaprovechando un espacio de potencial desarrollo de la autonomía que permitirá desbrozar el camino del verdadero desarrollo socioeconómico de nuestra región. Los resultados descriptivos muestran que las Mipymes colombianas utilizan prioritariamente recursos propios para sus inversiones, y los resultados inferenciales obtenidos mediante regresiones lineales señalan que el financiamiento interno influye positiva y significativamente en su innovación global, así como en la de sus productos/servicios, procesos productivos y gestión. Esto es una variable de importancia fundamental para ser involucrada en las políticas de desarrollo para la industria latinoamericana y que muy poco se toma en consideración hasta ahora, en lo que se ha venido denominando la economía naranja, que países como Colombia quieren fomentar. La realidad es que los recursos internos o propios siguen siendo la principal fuente de financiación para los proyectos de inversión de estas empresas y si bien ello es coherente con los postulados de la teoría de la jerarquía financiera, todo parece indicar que las razones de esto son principalmente las barreras que encuentran para acceder al mercado financiero externo. Nuestra siguiente sección, dedicada a la disciplina económica, nos muestra un importante artículo enfocado al análisis de la relación entre "Buen gobierno y eficacia de la ayuda al desarrollo", tema de altísima pertinencia para nuestras economías. El artículo se propone profundizar en el origen y los cambios experimentados por la noción de buen gobierno; analiza los constituyentes y determinantes del mismo, así como su relación con conceptos cercanos como el de calidad institucional, y sobre todo, las ideas y la evidencia creada sobre las relaciones entre el buen gobierno y la efectividad de la ayuda al desarrollo. Finalmente llega a la conclusión de que no existe un consenso general en cuanto a que la ayuda haya sido eficaz para promover el crecimiento económico, y existen tanto defensores como detractores de esta idea. De manera reflexiva deja abierto el camino para verificar empíricamente los verdaderos efectos de la ayuda económica y las condiciones bajo las cuales se harían posibles unos mejores resultados en beneficio de grandes masas de la población. Cerramos este número con dos secciones: la primera, tradicional sobre temas de administración como disciplina que se integra estructuralmente con la económica, la contable y financiera, y donde se desarrollan dos artículos: el primero de estos se titula "La co-creación y los nuevos retos de generación de valor que enfrentan las organizaciones", siendo esta temática de gran actualidad y que marca una tendencia en la moderna teoría administrativa, que está girando sobre los nuevos enfoques de la generación de valor. Se concluye que, para generar un valor sostenido en las organizaciones, el foco de las acciones de los gestores debe ser la creación de valor conjunta con sus clientes y no la exclusiva meta de aumentar las ventas de sus productos o servicios habitualmente diseñados de manera interna y cerrada. El segundo artículo bajo el título "Modelo para analizar la incidencia del capital social en el desarrollo humano en Bogotá, D.C.", se centra en identificar si existe un tipo de relación entre el capital social y el desarrollo humano en el contexto endógeno de la ciudad de Bogotá. Para tal fin, se propone hacer una investigación descriptiva basada en análisis de regresión múltiple que facilita la proposición de un modelo que determina el nivel de incidencia del capital social en el desarrollo humano, partiendo del cálculo del Índice de desarrollo humano y del Índice de capital social descompuesto en índice 20 Universidad Libre de capital cognitivo, ICSC, índice de capital social estructural, ICSE, Índice de representación social del capital social, IRSCS, componentes del cálculo integral del índice de capital social. Con base en esos cálculos se llega a comprobar que en la ciudad se desconocen el alcance y uso del capital social, lo que genera construir una sociedad con alto nivel de atomización y desinterés por los problemas de la ciudadanía. Poder comprobar estos asertos es de suma importancia para adoptar políticas de desarrollo social y humano en el D.C., atendiendo los diferentes componentes analíticos que se utilizaron en el estudio. En la última sección, dedicada a la gestión del conocimiento, se analiza pedagógicamente el tema del bullying por orientación sexual entre estudiantes masculinos en el ambiente de la educación media, que busca contribuir a la prevención de comportamientos de bullying, por los efectos que ello tiene en el bienestar de una población que tiende a segregarse de manera antidemocrática y que ya hace parte de los modelos educativos que deben orientarse a la formación de valores. Como pedagogos, creemos que la educación puede y debe crear ambientes de respeto y valoración de la diferencia, en donde todos puedan acceder a ella, sin importar la orientación sexual, el género u otras construcciones sociales o culturales. El conjunto de los ocho artículos que ponemos a disposición de la comunidad académica, organizados en las secciones orientadas según los principios que fundamentan la filosofía científica y la política editorial de la revista, se configura en un nuevo esfuerzo que estamos seguros contribuirá al fortalecimiento del desarrollo científico y tecnológico de nuestras disciplinas en un entorno que nos es propio, pero que dialoga con la universalidad del conocimiento a nivel global, y que progresivamente se constituirán en los grandes pilares de nuestro desarrollo humano y social. ; La revue Criterio Libre a occupé un important rôle en promouvoir la divulgation scientifique comme mécanisme fondamental dans les procès de transformation de nos nations latino-americaines vers sociétés meilleure conformées, avec un sain équilibre entre la nécessaire croissance de la production de biens tangibles et intangibles et une plus juste distribution de la richesse, au profit de toutes ses populations, que cherchent éradiquer la pauvreté, qu'il est le majeur fléau que l'humanité encore n'a pas pu surpasser. Par l'antérieur, nous basons sur des critères du développement de la science qu'ils contribuent à ces idéals, en choisissant alors les meilleurs articles, soumis à des rigoureux procès d'évaluation par des reconnus chercheurs nationaux et internationaux, qui ont aussi contribué à élever la qualité scientifique des mêmes par leur sages observations et aussi à développer la pensée scientifique et l'utilisation du meilleur style pour sa communication, en enrichissant la pensé scientifique sociale dans nos nations. Nous pouvons résumer dits principes: le développement de la science et la technologie comme expression de systèmes d'évaluation et socio-culturelles donnés, le développement de la science au service de la transformation productive au profit de la société, la prise de conscience du rôle de la science et la technologie dans la définition des relations de pouvoir en les niveaux nationaux et internationaux et son insertion dans les politiques de développement, l›utilisation de la science et de l›innovation technologique comme des instruments d›autonomie, l›ouverture à nouvelles approches dans la consolidation de la science sociale, la liberté de la pensée critique en tous les niveaux de la gestion de la connaissance scientifique, entre autrui. Dans ce sens, nous avons essayé fortifier l'analyse et développement critique des sciences économiques, administratives, financiers et comptables, en ouvrant un espace pour la discussion et développement de l'epistemologie de ces sciences sociales, que de plus en plus se convertit dans l'axe central de notre revue. La présente édition comprend deux articles qu'ils enrichissent dite discussion epistémológique: en le premier d'ils le chercheur José J. Ortiz B. pose un dilemme qu'accompagne le développement de la science comptable, "La crise de la représentation comptable: ¿problèmes de la science sociale ou de la politique du pouvoir?", dans lequel cherche éclaircir les facteurs qu'ils causent la problématique de la représentation comptable à partir d'une réflexion sur les fondements théoriques qu'ils soutiennent cet important question et les référents empiriques qui montrent cette problématique, facteurs qui ont été considérés comme un obstacle épistémique à la consolidation de cette jeune science et aux quels l›auteur entend contribuir dans sa clarification épistémologique et dans la proposition de solutions alternatives qu›il donne à lacommunauté scientifique avec une approche interdisciplinaire et du paradigme de la complexité. Dans le deuxième article, le professeur Jean Paul Sarrazin fait une thèse intéressante sur "Religion: savons-nous de quoi nous parlons? Examen de la faisabilité d›une catégorie analytique pour les sciences sociales". L'objectif de cette revue était de trouver une catégorie analytique précise, claire et suffisamment large pour étudier empiriquement la vaste gamme de phénomènes socio-culturelles qui peuvent être ou ont été considérés comme "religieux". Il conclut qu'en dépit de l›absence d›unecatégorie analytique unifiée, certains éléments les plus saillants des différentes définitions peuvent euxmêmes constituer des catégories analytiques utiles à la recherche empirique. On peut déduire que cette section a été fidèle aux principes que nous avons énoncé au début de cet éditorial et que nous espérons qu'ils continuera à devenir une plateforme ouverte pour le développement scientifique de nos disciplines. Une deuxième section, consacrée à la comptabilité et à la finance, définit les sujets qui sont devenus d›un intérêt substantiel en raison du fort développement théorique que ces disciplines ont atteint, atteignant une phase dans la quelle les différends des paradigmes qui soutiennent diverses approches ont été réglés et c'est dans ce domaine que les contributions surgissent qui consolident des schémas théoriques importants ou qui, d'autrepart, écartent les hypothèses qui permettent des systèmes purifiants qui, à la façon des couches d›oignons, sont regroupés par niveaux, contribuant ainsi à consolider les sciences sociales. Dans cette section, nous trouvons deux articles importants orientés selon cette philosophie: le premier analyse les effets sur l›information comptable des entreprises publiques du secteur de l'électricité colombien de la mise en oeuvre de la résolution 743 de 2013 concernant l'adoption des normes internationales d›information financière (IFRS) pour certaines entreprises publiques. Ce sujet est l›une des applications des avancées importantes dans le développement de la théorie comptable pour l›économie financieriste qui malgré cela ne parvient pas à établir des racines solides pour les conditions des pays en développement, comme enté moigne cet article qui constate que les transformations supposées sont le résultat d›un changement du modèle économique organisationnel, où, plutôt que de s›intéresser au modèle de réglementation internationale, répond à un processus de concentration des actifs stratégiques par des acteurs qui ont la capacité de saisir la réglementation, démontrant que l'approche interdisciplinaire est un terrain fertile pour mieux expliquer la réalité de ces pays dans l'environnement mondialisant qui caractérise l›économie actuelle de ces pays. Le deuxième article, intitulé "Impact de l›autofinancement sur l'innovation dans les micro, petites et moyennes entreprises colombiennes», donne un aperçu d'un aspect qui n›a pas été explicitement étudié et qui se situe aux frontières de la connaissance entre économie, finance et administration, en particulier dans un secteur important de l›économie des pays en développement, celle des MPME, qui malgré leur grande contribution au bien-être économique de la population, occupant 80% de la population de ces pays, n'a pas fait l›effort intellectuel de nos chercheurs, gaspillant un espace de développement potentiel d'autonomie qui ouvrira la voie à un véritable développement socioéconomique de notre région. Les résultats descriptifs montrent que les PMI colombiennes utilisent principalement leurs propres ressources pour leurs investissements, et les résultats inférentiels obtenus par régression linéaire indiquent que le financement interne a une influence positive et significative sur leur innovation globale, ainsi que sur celle de leurs produits/services, processus de production et gestion. Il s›agit d'une variable d›une importance fondamentale à impliquer dans les politiques de développement de l'industrie latino-américaine et que trèspeu de choses sont prises en considération jusqu›à présent, dans cequ›on a appelé l'économie orange, que des pays comme la Colombie veulent promouvoir. En réalité, les ressources internes ou propres restent la principale source de financement des projets d'investissement de ces entreprises et, bien que cela soit conforme aux postulats de la théorie de la hiérarchie financière, tout semble indiquer que les raisons en sont principalement les obstacles qu›elles rencontrent pour accéder au marché financier extérieur. Notre prochaine section, consacrée à ladiscipline économique, nous présente un article important centré sur l'analyse de la relation entre "La bonne gouvernance et l'efficacité de l'aide"; un sujet de la plus haute pertinence pour nos économies. Il analyse les composantes et les déterminants de la bonne gouvernance, ainsi que sa relation avec des concepts étroitement liés tels que la qualité institutionnelle et, surtout, les idées et les preuves créées sur la relation entre bonne gouvernance et efficacité de l'aide au développement. En fin, il conclut qu'il n'y a pas de consensus général sur l'efficacité de l'aide dans la promotion de la croissance économique, et qu'il y a à la fois des défenseurs et des détracteurs de cette idée. D'une manière réfléchie, elle laisse ouverte la voie à la vérification empirique des effets réels de l'aide économique et des conditions dans les quelles de meilleurs résultats seraient possibles pour le bénéfice de larges masses de la population. Nous clôturons ce numéro avec deux sections : la première, traditionnelle sur les thèmes de l›administration en tant que discipline structurellement intégrée à l'économie, la comptabilité et lafinance, et où deux articles sont développés: le premier d'entre eux estintitulé "Co-création et lesnouveaux défis de création de valeur aux quels les organisations font face. Ce sujet est d›actualité et marque une tendance de la théorie administrative moderne, qui s›articule autour de nouvelles approches de la création de valeur. Il est conclu que, pour générer une valeur durable dans lesorganisations, les actions des gestionnaires doivent être axées sur la création de valeur conjointe avec leurs clients et non sur l›objectif exclusif d'augmenter les ventes de leurs produits ou services habituellement conçus en interne et de façon fermée. Le deuxième article, intitulé "Modèle d'analyse de l'incidence du capital social sur le développement humain à Bogotá, D.C.", vise à identifier s›il existe un type de relation entre capital social et développement humain dans le contexte endogène de la ville de Bogotá. Cette fin, il est proposé demener une recherche descriptive, fondée sur une analyse de régression multiple, qui facilite la proposition d'un modèle qui détermine le niveau d'incidence du capital social dans le développement humain, à partir du calcul de l'indice de développement humain et de l'indice de capital social répartis en composantes du calcul intégral de l'indice de capital social, soit l'indice de capital cognitif, l'ICSE, l'indice de capital social structurel, l'ICSC et l'IRSCS, et de l'indice de représentation du capital social. Sur la base de ces calculs, on constate que l'ampleur et l'utilisation du capital social dans la ville sont inconnues, ce qui engendre la construction d'une société avec un haut niveau d'atomisation et un désintérêt pour les problèmes de citoyenneté. Pouvoir vérifier ces affirmations a une importance capitale pour l'adoption de politiques de développement social et humain à Bogotá, D.C., en tenant compte des différentes composantes analytiques qui ont été utilisées dans l'étude. Dans la dernière partie, consacrée à la gestion des connaissances, le sujet des brimades dues à l'orientation sexuelle chez les élèves de sexe masculin estanalysé pédagogiquement dans l'environnement de l'enseignement secondaire, qui cherche à contribuer à la prévention des comportements debrimades, en raison des effets que cela a sur le bien-être d'une population qui tend à se séparer de manière antidémocratique et qui fait déjà partie des modèles éducatifs qui doivent être orientés vers la formation des valeurs. En tant que pédagogues, nous croyons que l'éducation peut et doit créer des environnements de respect et de valorisation de la différence, où chacun peut y accéder, indépendamment de son orientation sexuelle, de son sexe ou d'autres constructions sociales ou culturelles. L'ensemble des huit articles que nous mettons à la disposition de la communauté académique, organisés en sections orientées selon les principes qui sous-tendent la philosophie scientifique et la politique éditoriale de la revue, s'inscrit dans un nouvel effort qui, nous en sommes sûrs, contribuera à renforcer le développement scientifique et technologique de nos disciplines dans un environnement qui nous est propre mais qui dialogue avec l'universalité du savoir à un niveau global et qui deviendra progressivement les grands piliers de notre développement humain et social. ; A revista Critério Livre tem desempenhado um importante papel em promover a divulgação científica como um mecanismo fundamental nos processos de transformação de nossas nações latino-americanas para sociedades melhor formadas, com um equilíbrio saudável entre o necessário crescimento da produção de bens tangíveis e intangíveis e uma mais justa distribuição da riqueza, em benefício de todas as suas populações, que buscam erradicar a pobreza, que é o maior flagelo que a humanidade ainda não conseguiu superar. Pelo exposto, nos baseamos em critérios do desenvolvimento da ciência que contribuam para esses ideais, escolhendo então os melhores artigos, submetidos a rigorosos processos de avaliação por renomados pesquisadores nacionais e internacionais, que também contribuíram para elevar a qualidade científica dos mesmos através de seus atinadas observações,e também a desenvolver o pensamento científico e a utilização do melhorestilo para sua comunicação, enriquecendo o pensamento científico social em nossos países. Podemos resumir esses princípios assim: o desenvolvimento da ciência e da tecnologia como expressão de sistemas valorativos e socioculturais dados, o desenvolvimento da ciência a serviço da transformação produtiva em benefício da sociedade, a conscientização sobre o papel da ciência e da tecnologia na definição das relações de poder nos níveis nacional e internacional e sua inserção nas políticas de desenvolvimento, a utilização da ciência e da inovação tecnológica como instrumentos de autonomia, a abertura a abordagens inovadoras na consolidação da ciencia social, a liberdade do pensamento crítico em todos os níveis da gestão do conhecimento científico, entre outros. Neste sentido, tentamos fortalecer a análise e o desenvolvimento crítico das ciências econômicas, administrativas, financeiras e contábeis, abrindo um espaço para a discussão e desenvolvimento da epistemologia de estas ciências sociais, que cada vez mais torna-se o eixo central de nossa revista. A presente edição inclui dois itens que fazem parte desta discussão epistemológica: no primeiro deles, o pesquisador José J. Ortiz B. planta um dilema que acompanha o desenvolvimento da ciência contábil, "A crise da representação contábil: problemas da ciência social ou política do poder?", em que busca esclarecer os fatores que originam a problemática da representação contábil a partir de uma reflexão sobre os fundamentos teóricos que sustentam este importante tema e os referentes empíricos que mostram esta problemática, fatores que foram vistos como um obstáculo epistémico na consolidação dessa jovem ciência e o que o autor pretende contribuir para seu esclarecimento epistemológico e a proposta de alternativas de solução, que propõe para discussão com a comunidade científica com uma abordagem interdisciplinar e a partir do paradigma da complexidade. No segundo artigo, o profesor Jean Paul Sarrazin levanta uma interessante dissertação sobre "Religião: nós sabemos do que estamos falando? Análise da viabilidade de uma categoria analítica para as ciências sociais". O objetivo desta revisão foi encontrar uma categoria analítica, precisa, clara e suficientemente ampla para estudar empiricamente a vasta gama de fenômenos sócio-culturais que podem ser ou foram considerados como "religiosos". Conclui que, a pesar da ausência de uma categoria analítica unificada, alguns dos elementos mais destacados nas diferentes definições podem constituir, em si mesmos, categorias analíticas úteis para a investigação empírica. Pode-se deducir que esta seção tem sido fiel aos princípios que expusemos no início deste editorial, e que esperamos que continue transformando em uma tribuna aberta para o desenvolvimento científico de nossas disciplinas. Uma segunda seção, dedicada à contabilidade e as finanças, define temáticas que se tornaram de interesse substancial devido ao forte desenvolvimento teórico que atingiram essas disciplinas, chegando a uma fase em que as disputas dos paradigmas que sustentam várias abordagens foram decantado e é nesse terreno onde surgem contribuições que consolidam os importantes esquemas teóricos ou que, por outro lado, descartam hipótese que permitem depurar sistemas que, à maneira das camadas duma cebola, serão agrupadas por níveis, o que contribui para a consolidação das ciências sociais. Nesta seção encontramos dois importantes artigos orientados sob desta filosofia: o primeiro analisa os efeitos que sobre a informação contabilística das empresas públicas do setor elétrico colombiano teve a implementação da Resolução 743 de 2013, relativa à adopção de Normas Internacionais de Informação Financeira (NIIF) para algumas empresas públicas. Este tópico é um dos aplicativos de importantes avanços do desenvolvimento da teoria contábil para a economia financierista, que apesar disso não consegue establecer sólidas raízes para as condições dos países em desenvolvimento, como o comprova este artigo que encontra que as transformações assumidas são o resultado de uma mudança de modelo econômico, organizacional, onde, mais que atender o modelo de regulação internacional, responde a um processo de concentração de ativos estratégicos por parte de atores que têm a capacidade de capturar a regulação, demonstrando que a abordagem interdisciplinar é um campo fértil para explicar de uma maneira melhor a realidade destes países no ambiente globalizador que caracteriza a economía atual de tais países. O segundo artigo, sobre "o Impacto do autofinanciamento sobre a inovação das micro, pequenas e médias empresas colombianas", permite aprofundar um aspecto que não tem sido explicitamente estudado e que se situa na fronteira entre a economia, as finanças e a administração, dirigido especialmente a um setor importante da economia dos países em desenvolvimento, as empresas Mipymes, que apesar de suas grandes contribuições para o bem-estar económico da população, ao ocupar 80% da mesma em cada um destes países, não lhe foi dedicado um esforço intelectual por parte dos nossos investigadores, desaprovechando um espaço potencial de desenvolvimento da autonomia que permite desbrozar o caminho do verdadeiro desenvolvimento sócio-econômico de nossa região. Os resultados descritivos mostram que as Mipymes colombianas utilizam prioritariamente os recursos próprios para os investimentos, e os resultados inferenciales obtidos através de regressões lineares indicam que o financiamento interno influencia positiva e significativamente na inovação global, assim como a de seus produtos/serviços, processos produtivos e de gestão. Esta é uma variável de importância fundamental para ser envolvida nas políticas de desenvolvimento para a indústria latino-americana e que muito pouco se leva em consideração até agora, no que se tem denominado a economía laranja, que países como a Colômbia querem promover. A realidade é que os recursos internos ou próprios continuam sendo a principal fonte de financiamento para os projectos de investimento destas empresas, e se bem que isso é coerente com os postulados da teoria da hierarquia financeira, tudo parece indicar que as razões são principalmente as barreiras que encontram para acessar o mercado financeiro externo. A nossa seguinte secção, dedicada à disciplina económica, mostra-nos um importante artigo focado à análise da relação entre "Bom governo e eficácia da ajuda ao desenvolvimento", tema de altísima pertinência para as nossas economias. O artigo propõe-se aprofundar na origem e as mudanças experimentadas pela noção de bom governo; analisa os constituintes e determinantes do mesmo, bem como a sua relação com conceitos próximos como a qualidade institucional, e sobretudo, as ideias e a evidência criada sobre as relações entre o bom governo e a efetividade da ajuda ao desenvolvimento. Finalmente chega à conclusão de que não existe um consenso geral quanto a que a ajuda seja eficaz para promover o crescimento económico, e existem tanto defensores como detratores desta ideia. De maneira reflexiva deixa aberto o caminho para verificar empiricamente os verdadeiros efeitos da ajuda económica e as condições baixo as quais seriam possíveis uns melhores resultados em benefício de grandes massas da população. Fechamos esta edição com duas secções: a primeira, tradicional sobre temas de administração como disciplina que se integra estruturalmente com a económica, a contável e financeira, e onde se desenvolvem dois artigos: o primeiro destes se titula "A co-criação e os novos reptos de geração de valor que enfrentam as organizações". Esta temática é de grande atualidade e marca uma tendência na moderna teoria administrativa, que está a girar sobre as novas focagens da geração de valor. Conclui-se que, para gerar um valor sustentado nas organizações, o foco das ações dos gestores deve ser a criação de valor conjunta com os seus clientes e não a exclusiva meta de aumentar as vendas dos seus produtos ou serviços habitualmente desenhados de maneira interna e fechada. O segundo artigo, baixo o título "Modelo para analisar a incidência do capital social no desenvolvimento humano em Bogotá, D.C.", centra-se em identificar se existe um tipo de relação entre o capital social e o desenvolvimento humano no contexto endógeno da cidade de Bogotá. Para tal fim, propõe-se fazer uma investigação descritiva, baseada em análise de regressão múltipla, que facilita a proposição de um modelo que determina o nível de incidência do capital social no desenvolvimento humano, partindo do cálculo do Índice de desenvolvimento humano e do Índice de capital social decomposto em índice de capital cognitivo, ICSC, índice de capital social estrutural, ICSE, Índice de representação social do capital social, IRSCS, componentes do cálculo integral do índice de capital social. Com base nesses cálculos chega-se a comprovar que na cidade se desconhecem o alcance e o uso do capital social, o que gera construir uma sociedade com alto nível de atomização e desinteresse pelos problemas da cidadania. Poder comprovar estes asertos é de soma importância para adotar políticas de desenvolvimento social e humano no D.C., atendendo os diferentes componentes analíticos que se utilizaram no estudo. Na última secção, dedicada à gestão do conhecimento, analisa-se pedagógicamente o tema do bullying por orientação sexual entre estudantes masculinos no ambiente da educação média, que procura contribuir à prevenção de comportamentos de bullying, pelos efeitos que isso tem no bem-estar de uma população que tende a segregarse de maneira antidemocrática e que já faz parte dos modelos educativos que devem orientar à formação de valores. Como pedagogos, achamos que a educação pode e deve criar ambientes de respeito e valoração da diferença, em onde todos possam aceder a ela, sem importar a orientação sexual, o género ou outras construções sociais ou culturais. O conjunto dos oito artigos que pomos ao dispor da comunidade académica, organizados nas secções orientadas segundo os princípios que fundamentam a filosofia científica e a política editorial da revista, se configura em um novo esforço que estamos seguros contribuirá ao fortalecimiento do desenvolvimento científico e tecnológico das nossas disciplinas em um meio que nos é próprio, mas que dialoga com a universalidade do conhecimento a nível global, e que progressivamente constituir-se-ão nos grandes pilares do nosso desenvolvimento humano e social.

Issue 49.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1990. ; REVIEW I:OR RELIGIOUS (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at St. Louis University by the Mis-souri Province Educational [nslilule of lhe Sociely of Jesus; Editorial Office; 360~ Lindell Blvd., Rm. 428; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis MO. Single copies $3.50. Subscriptions: United States $15.00 for onc year; $28.00 for two years. Other countrics: US $20.00 for one year: if airmail, US $35.00 per year. For subscription orders or change of address, write: Ri~vn-:w FOR R~uc, ous: P.O. Box 60"/0; Duluth, MN 55806. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RF:VlEW vok REI.I~;IOt~S; P.O. Box 6070; Duluth, MN 55806. Ol990 REVIEW voR REt.l~;Iot~s. David L. Fleming, S.J. iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Richard A. Hill, S.J. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editor "~ Contributing Editor ~.~o' Assistant Editors Advisor\, Board David J. Hassel, S.J. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. Ma\'/June 1990 Volume 49 Number 3 Manuscripts, books fl~r review and correspondence with the editor should be sent to REVIEW ro~ REt.l~aOt~s; 3601 Lindell Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the departmenl "Canonical Counsel" should be addressed to Rich-ard A. Hill, S.J.; J.S.T.B.; 1735 LeRoy Ave.; Berkeley, CA 94709-1193. Back issues and reprinls should be ordered from REVIEW VO~ REI.tC;IOt~S; 3601 IAndell Blvd.; St. I~mis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of print" issues are available from University Microfilms Internalional; 300 N. Zeeb Rd.; Ann Arbor, M1 48106. A major portion of each issue is also available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write tn the Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS . Questions play an important part in our biblical tradition. The first question presented in the Bible is the one which God directs to us hu-man beings, "Where are you?" In the gospels, Jesus" question, "Who do you say that I am?," demands a response from every Christian, per-haps more than once in a lifetime. "Woman, why are you weeping? Who is it you are looking for?" challenges us in our sorrow and our dis-appointments. "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" pricks the con-science of sinner and saint alike. Not all questions are neatly answered. For example, "how does one pray" and "how does one love" have pieces of answers which together make up a simple but intricate mosaic that stretches as far as human ex-perience can reach. Jesus, in trying to share with us his experience of God, seemed to be most at home in everyday images of the living world around us and the parables which capture some basic human experience writ large. Who does not remember a woman sweeping a house for a lost coin? That is the way God searches out each of us in our lost moments. Who has not been touched by a story of a person, robbed and left half-dead by the roadside, and the various passers-by among whom there is one who cares? From such a parable, we all know a little better what it means to be neighbor. Stories, symbols, and images become so often the prisms whereby we gain new or fresh insight into some of our deepest human and divine realities. Some of our authors in this issue are directly led into their reflec-tions by a question. "What is a priest?" led Richard Hauser, S.J., to his considerations on the "Spirituality of the Ministerial Priesthood.'" Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O., is making a report on the Religious Life Futures Project as he looks at the question "Where is Religious Life Go-ing? . Whence Come the Candidates?" stirs Gabrielle Jean, S.C.O., to focus once again on the instrumentation for the screening of candi-dates for the priestly and.religious life vocations. William Mann, F.S.C., raises the question "Brothers, Do We Have a Future?" and enters into his own religious life experience to provide a response. If I could make five wishes for a new novice director, Melannie Svoboda, S.N.D., asks, what would they be? Her answer to that ques-tion is her article "Wishes for a 'Novice' Novice Director." Mary Polu-tanovich, D.C., faces the questions, "do the poor need the artist'? does 321 322 / Review for Religious. May-June 1990 the artist need the poor? how is Christ served and the gospel preached by this charism?" Her reflections are captured in her article "More than Bread: Art, Spirituality, and the Poor." Religious imagination unveils how God may be working in "The As-sociate Movement in Religious Life" according to Rose Marie Jasinski, C.B.S., and Peter C. Foley. Thomas F. McKenna, C.M., seeks out meta-phors as he tries to stimulate our thinking about "Images for the Future of Religious Life." Correcting some metaphors may be important in our understanding of "Obedience and Adult Faith" as presented by James D. Whitehead and Evelyn Eaton Whitehead. Other authors in this issue suggest creative ways to pair a deeper un-derstanding of violence and ministry as a response, the connection be-tween the stages of conversion and the gift of tears as imaged in the spiri-tuality of Catherine of Siena, naming experiences that represent the sur-rendering of ourselves to the Divine Other, discovering the gifts and the pitfalls of praying through a tradition which is non-Christian, and re-flections on the historical sweep of foreign mission involvement and its effect on the renewal movement in women religious congregations dur-ing the past quarter-century. It is true that questions sometimes only lead to more questions. But questions also lead to ways of responding that affect the direction of our lives and our ministry. Some questions can truly affect our relationship with God, with our fellowmen and women, and with our world. Perhaps our authors will raise some of those questions and also provide us with some of those images which will call forth such a personal conversion. The God who asks questions is also a God of surprises. Our Pentecost prayer: recreate in us your own Spirit, Lord. David L. Fleming, S.J. Spirituality of the Ministerial Priesthood Richard J. Hauser, S.J. Father Richard Hauser, S.J. is Chairman of the Theology Department at Creighton University in Omaha. Nebraska. His last article in Rv.\,lv.w FOR R~.L~(;IOUS was pub-lished in July-August, 1986. His address is Creighton University: California at 24th Street: Omaha, Nebraska 68178. [~uring a recent board meeting of the Emmaus Priest Renewal Program I had a disconcerting experience. The discussion moved to the question: what is a priest? For the next hour we worked in vain to come to a con-sensus. In exasperation someone said, '~No wonder priestly morale in the United States is so low. We don't even know what it means to be a priest?" At that point the Emmaus board commissioned me as their theo-logical consultant to put together a five-day retreat on priestly idefitity and spirituality. Immediately I found myself resisting the task, claiming ignorance of the topic. This resistance was even further disconcerting. Since I have been a priest more than twenty years and writing on spiritual topics for almost as long, why wouldn't I have something to say on the spirituality of the priest, supposedly my own spirituality? Gradually I realized that my hesi-tancy had many roots. First I was self-conscious about my identity as priest because rightly or wrongly as a priest I have felt under attack by two very important movements in the Church, the lay movement and the women's movement. As a result I have inadvertently downplayed this aspect of my identity so as not to occasion criticism from these groups. Further as I reflected on the documents of Vatican II, I became more aware that they gave thorough treatment both to the roles of the lay per-son and the bishop in the Church but have said very little about the role 323 :324 / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 of the priest. Though Vatican II did set some new directions for a recon-sideration of the identity of the priest, it did not develop this theology to any great extent. Finally I saw that many currents in the Church have subtly made me hesitant to reflect on the area: the debates on priestly celi-bacy and married clergy, the prevalent--and inadequate--theology of the priest as the "holy man" set apart in a separate caste to "mediate" grace to the laity, the tendency to "clericalize" most ministries in the Church, the ecumenical movement. I should also note that as a priest from a religious congregationl had defined my spirituality almost solely by the charism of n~y order and therefore neglected aspects of spiritual-ity related to my role as priest of the universal Catholic Church. In this I suspect I am typical of many religious order priests. The following reflections are an effort toward a theology of priestly identity and spirituality. I believe the lack of such a theology has had dele-terious effects both on morale of many current priests as well as on re-cruitment of future priests. The American bishops in their statement is-sued 1988 "Reflections on the Morale of Priests" agree that there is a morale problem: " . . it is aiso clear to us that there exists today a se-rious and substantial morale problem among priests in general. It is a prob-lem that cannot be simply attributed to one or another cause or recent event, but its profile and characteristics can be clearly described, and its presence needs to be addressed directly." It is my conviction that one of its causes is an ambiguity about what it means to be a priest. These reflections attempt to address that problem using guidelines from Vati-can II as well as recent documents from the Priestly Life and Ministry Committee of the American bishops. All Christian spirituality flows from incorporation into the Body of Christ through faith and baptism. The priest's spirituality is no excep-tion. Basically, then, priestly spirituality is Christian spirituality. How-ever, since the priest has a special role in the Body of Christ it is appro-priate to discuss how this role specifies the practice of Christian spiri-tuality. But an integral examination of priestly spirituality must first situ-ate the priest within the Body and only then discuss the aspects of spiri-tuality proper to the priest as priest. This article is concerned with priest-hood in the Roman Catholic Church; hence the terms Body of Christ and Church have primary reference to this community. Body of Christ: Priest as Member Priests are members of the Body of Christ. Their dignity as mem-bers of the Body has frequently been obscured by treatment of their spe-cial role within the Body. The Decree on the Ministt3, and Life of Priests Ministerial Priesthood / 325 from Vatican II clearly situates the priest's leadership role through ordi-nation within the priest's membership in the Body through the sacra-ments of initiation: "Therefore, while it indeed presupposes the sacra-ments of Christian initiation, the sacerdotal office of priests is conferred by that special sacrament through which priests, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are marked by a special character and are so configured to Christ the priest that they can act in the person of Christ the head" (par. 2). Membership and leadership must be seen together for comprehensive understanding of priestly identity and spirituality. It is significant that Vatican II chose the image of the Body of Christ to discuss priestly identity and ministry. This image highlights both the equality of all in the Body as well as the difference of roles in the Body. The equality of all members within the Body is clear: "There is but one body and one Spirit, just as there is but one hope given all of you by your call. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all, and works through all, and is in all" (Ep 4:4-6). Equally clear is the difference of roles within the Body: "There are dif-ferent 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" ( I Co 12:4-7). Furthermore Paul's image of the Body of Christ highlights the Spirit as the source of all life within the Body. Membership in the Body flows from the Spirit received through faith and baptism. Specific roles (charisms) within the Body flow from the special gifts given by the Spirit to different members of the Body for the sake of the entire Body, Finally, the Church as the Body of Christ shares Christ's mission. This mission so clearly presented in all the Gospels is serving the king-dom of God. Each member is called by baptism to assume a share of re-sponsibility by accepting ministry according to his or her specific charisms. This ministry is oriented to serving the kingdom of God both within the Body of Christ itself as well as beyond the Body in the world. The example is, of course, Jesus himself. Jesus ministered to his disci-ples; the washing of the feet in John's gospel is the most dramatic exam-ple of his role of service to his disciples. Still this concern for his own in no way lessened his ministry toward those outside his community of followers; his preaching, healing, and love extended to everyone he en-countered. These reflections presume that the priest's basic identity is that of a member of the Body of Christ and consequently the priest's ba-sic spirituality will be living that identity. 326 /Review for Religious, May-June 1990 Body of Christ: Priest as Leader As members of the Body of Christ priests have received the Spirit incorporating them into the Body and giving them charisms for the ser-vice of the Church and of the kingdom. What, then, differentiates the priest's identity and spirituality from that of other members of the Body? Most agree that ministerial priesthood in the Church implies a permanent office flowing from charism and formally recognized by the Church. The very important statement of 1977 from the Bishop's Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry "As One Who Serves" expresses the consen-sus well: "In summary, the holder of an office in the Church would be (1) a person endowed by the Spirit, (2) with personal gifts (charisms), (3) called to a public and permanent ministry, and this call is formally recognized by the Church" (par. 20). The fact that this office implies a role of leadership in the community is also agreed upon by the magis-terium and by most theologians. Yet there remain theological disagree-ments on the relationship of the priest's role as head of the Body (always with the bishop) to the Body itself. The discussion is focused on a pas-sage from The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church from Vatican II: "Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in de-gree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hier-archical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated. Each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ" (par. 10). Since this article is concerned primarily with the spirituality of priests as leaders of the Body--an identity that is acknowledged by most--it does not seem necessary to treat the doctrinal disputes. Christian spirituality flows from response to the Holy Spirit, the sanc-tifier. Priestly spirituality is simply the priest's effort to respond faith-fully to the Spirit in living the priestly identity as defined by the Church. The Church teaches that ordination establishes the priest in three new, distinctive, and permanent relationships: with Christ, with the Church, and with the world beyond the Church, This identity today includes-- for both diocesan as well as religious order priests--a call to observe the evangelical counsels. Since observing these counsels affects the living out of the three basic relationships, they must be discussed with them. It should be recalled again that this discussion focuses on those aspects of priestly spirituality that distinguish the priest as priest; it does not fo-cus on aspects of spirituality common to all Christians through baptism. Priest and Christ: Person-Symbol of Christ the Head of Body Through ordination the priest is established in a new, distinctive, and permanent relationship to Christ: the priest becomes the person-symbol Ministerial Priesthood / 327 of Christ, the head of the Church. Priests receive an anointing of the Spirit which enables them to act in the name of Christ the head. Thus priests are empowered to act in persona Christi. "As One Who Serves" makes the crucial observation that priests can be the person-symbol of Christ the head of the Body only because of their membership in the Body: "It is only because of the Church that the priest can be said to act in persona Christi. He is called to be an effective sign and witness of the Church's faith in the reconciling Christ, who works through the Church and through the one whom the Church has sent to be the steward of its gifts and services" (par. 22). It is the Body of Christ that is holy through the presence of the Spirit. The priest, as the preeminent head of this Body, becomes the symbol of the holiness of the Body. And as head of this Body, priests can now act in persona ecclesiae and so also in per-sona Christi. Through ordination the priest is established in a special relationship to Christ. As head of the Body, the priest becomes an "effective sign" or sacrament of Christ's authoritative presence in the Church. All aspects of priestly spirituality flow from this relationship. Since it is the role of a symbol to make present what it represents, the priest is called by the Church through ordination to awaken Christ's presence within the com-munity in all service for the community. Consequently all priestly min-istry to the Church must be done in a way that awakens faith within the community. This awakening of faith in others is possible only if the priest has a deep relationship personally with Christ. The biggest chal-lenge of priestly spirituality is becoming internally the Christ symbolized externally. To a great extent the effectiveness of priestly ministry flows from a heart transformed by the Spirit and then ministering to others. All Christians desiring to follow Christ fully are called to observe the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience within their own state of life. The priest is no exception. However, the priest's ob-servance of the evangelical counsels is orientated toward conforming the priest more closely to Christ and so increasing effectiveness as the person-symbol of Christ the head of the Body. The priest today is called by the Church to celibacy and so to meet personal affective needs in ways con-sonant with the celibate state. Christ is the model of priestly celibacy in his relationships with the Father, his community, and his apostolate. Above all the celibacy of Christ was founded on his relationship to his most dear Father, Abba. From within this intimate and often solitary pres-ence before his Father Christ's entire life flowed. Christ's relationship to the Father is the model for the priest's relationship to Christ. As 328 / Review jbr Religious, May-June 1990 Christ's heart flowed instinctively to the Father, so does the priest's heart flow to Christ and the Father. Love unites without obliterating personal distinctiveness. As Christ was able to say "The Father and I are one," and as Paul could say, "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me," so the priest prays to become equally one with the Father and Jesus. By em-bracing celibacy the priest imitates Jesus in allowing sufferings of fail-ure, loneliness, and isolation to foster even deeper intimacy with God and with Jesus himself. Christ is the model of priestly celibacy in his relationship to his com-munity. He looked to certain of his apostles and disciples for the per-sonal support he needed to sustain the failures and loneliness of his min-istry. So Christ is the model for priests in developing deep human rela-tionship, especially with fellow priests. Finally Christ's affectivity was also directed toward those he served. We recall how Jesus wept over Jerusalem because he was not able to draw the chosen people of God to himself as a mother hen draws her chicks to herself. In embracing the vow of celibacy the priest strives to imitate Christ in each of these three dimensions of affectivity and so become a more effective person-symbol of Christ as head of the Body. To be faithful to the call of today's Church to live this identity of person-symbol of Christ we priests must ask some basic questions. First, do I see my vocation primarily as a call to become Someone, Christ, and not merely as a duty to perform certain ministerial functions closed to others? The Church today is saying to priests that who we are is more primary than what we do; presence has replaced power. We are being called to be so configured to Christ that our actions radiate his presence and so awaken awareness of God's own love. Have I built into my daily life the rhythms necessary both to grow continually in knowledge and love of Christ and to allow this knowledge and love to permeate my ac-tions? And second, have I actively embraced my celibacy'? Do I cherish my celibacy as a gift intended to foster intimacy with Christ and the Fa-ther and thereby increase my effectiveness as a person-symbol of Christ in my leadership? DO I imitate Christ in meeting my affective needs pri-marily in my relationships with Christ and the Father and with my pres-byterate? Do I allow myself to be supported by and do I support my fel-low priests'? Do I allow the crosses of celibacy to deepen intimacy with Christ? Priest and Church: Servant-Leader of Body Through the anointing of the Spirit at ordination the priest is also es-tablished in a new, distinctive, and permanent relationship to the Church: Ministerial Priesthood / 399 the priest becomes the servant-leader of the Church, the "effective sign" of Christ the head of the Body. As the preeminent leader of the community the priest thereby acts in persona ecclesiae. This leadership of the Body is marked by four functions essential for the community. The priest is called to serve the Church by proclaiming the Word of God, by presiding at worship, by pastoral care of the People of God, and by fa-cilitating the different charisms within the Church. But the priest's lead-ership will take many differing forms depending on the talents of the priest and the needs of the community. The American bishops high-lighted the importance of sensitivity to varying forms of priestly leader-ship with which the Spirit endows priests: "All priests are endowed by the Spirit in various ways to serve the People of God. There are forms of leadership . The gifts differ and each must discern in the Spirit how he has been gifted. No one has all the gifts. Some seem to disap-pear in the history of the Church; some are transient even in the lives of priests" ("As One Who Serves," par. 32). Christ is the model for the priest's leadership of the Church. Just as Jesus' love of the Father impelled him to live for the Father's kingdom, so does the priest's love of Christ impel the priest to live for the Body of Christ. The priest wil.I, furthermore, exercise leadership in the same way Jesus exercised leadership--through service: "The Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve--to give his life in ransom for the many " (Mk 10:45). And through the special anointing of the Spirit in ordination Christ now stands with the priest empowering the priest to be an "effective sign" of Christ in all ministry to the Church. Thus the priest can fulfill the vocation to be the sacramental symbol-person of Christ actually awakening Christ's presence in the community through his .daily service. In a new way since Vatican I! priests are being called to facilitate service and leadership of others within the Church. The role has been com-pared to that of a conductor of an orchestra: "The conductor succeeds when he stimulates the best performance from each player and combines their individual efforts into a pattern of sound, achieving the vision of the composer. The best leader is one who can develop the talents of each staff person and coordinates'all their efforts, so that they best comple-ment each other and produce a superior collective effort" ("As One Who Serves," par. 46). In facilitating ministry of others the priest is not unlike Christ who prepared the disciples and then sent them off on their own. The priest recognizes that the Spirit in baptism incorporates mem-bers into the Body and simultaneously gives them differing gifts of min- 330 / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 istry for the Body. Yet according to the above document the priest re-mains the one "in whom the mission of the Church, and therefore its ministry, finds focus and visibility" (34); thus the priest acts within the community preeminently in persona ecclesiae. To enhance the priest's effectiveness as a person-symbol of Christ, the Church calls the priest to evangelical obedience through the promise or vow of obedience to their bishops or ecclesiastical superiors. This prom-ise or vow of obedience places the priest in special union with the uni-versal Church and so enhances the ability to act in persona ecclesiae. The priest symbolizes the unity of the entire Church in Christ: the local parish or community, the diocese, the national Church, the universal Catholic Church. In addition, the priest symbolizes the continuity of the Church through the ages from the apostles and Peter to the present-day bishops and pope. It follows from this that the priest must fully own this position in the Church by loving, protecting, and defending it at every level and, even when called to prophetic criticism, by doing so with love. While acknowledging the Church's faults and foibles past and present, the priest still believes that it is the privileged place of the Spirit's activ-ity in this world for the kingdom of God: "I for my part declare to you, you are "Rock," and on this rock I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it" (Mt 16:18). The model for the priest's obedience is again Christ. Nothing stood between Christ and doing his Father's will. The priest's obedience is to God. The priest is convinced that the will of God is now revealed through the authoritative structures of the Church. In obeying these structures the priest is obeying the Father. The priest's obedience to the bishop or ec-clesiastical superiors gives eloquent testimony to the belief that Christ continues to work through the ages within the authoritative structures of the Church. By embracing the promise or vow of obedience the priest refuses to allow any personal desire not in accord with God's will as ex-pressed through Church superiors to determine actions. The sufferings of obedience to God's will are accepted and offered to the Father in the same manner as Christ's. To be faithful to living this identity of servant-leader of the Body we priests must reflect on our underlying attitudes toward ministry. First, do I truly see myself as servant to my community, that is, do I radiate the attitude of Christ who came to serve and not to be served'? Do I strive to be an effective servant-leader in each of the four major ministerial roles, that is, teaching, presiding at worship, pastoral care, facilitating gifts of community? Or do I find myself holding back in some particular Ministerial Priesthood / 331 aspects of my ministry'? Have I identified charisms of leadership that are unique to me and used these in a special way for the Church? Do I fully grasp that as a person-symbol of Christ in my leadership role I can trust that Christ stands behind each aspect of my ministry enabling me to be an effective sign of his presence'? Second, do I embrace my promise or vow of obedience? Do ! see it as a gift enhancing my effectiveness as a person-symbol of the universal Church, the Body of Christ'? Do I love the Church and protect and defend it at every leve~? If necessary to criti-cize, do I speak in love? Is my obedience ultimately to the Father? Do I allow the crosses of obedience to conform me more totally to Christ'? Priest and Society: Promoter of Justice in the World Through ordination the priest is established in a new, distinctive, and permanent relationship to Christ and to his Church. Contained in this iden-tity is a new relationship to the world beyond the Church. Because the priest now acts in persona ecclesiae and in persona Christi, the priest becomes the preeminent witness of the Church's and Christ's concern for the world. Vatican II and subsequent documents of the Church both on an international and national level have put increasing emphasis on this aspect of the Church's mission. The statement of the World Synod of Bish-ops in 1971 entitled Justice in the World is apt: ". action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully ap-pear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or in other words, of the Church's mission." The priest today is called to integrate this dimension into ongoing ministry. The American bishops echo this thrust by presenting their descrip-tion of the priestly ministry under four co-equal divisions: To Proclaim the Word of God, To Preside at Worship, To Serve the Christian Com-munity, To Serve Humankind. The last-named section begins as follows: "The Church is called to serve all of society: that is its mission and the hope of its ministry. While the priest may have a certain primary respon-sibility to the Catholic community which he serves, nonetheless he has been sent by Christ and the Church to all people who comprise the larger community in which the parish community exists. The concern for all people gives reality to the presence of the risen Lord" ('~As One Who Serves," par. 50). The priest has a double role in this ministry to humankind. As ser-vant- leader of the Body tile priest is called to be engaged personally in actions on behalf of justice to witness most effectively to the Church's concern. In addition, the priest is called to facilitate action and leader-ship by others for the transformation of society. Church teachings ac- 339 / Review Jbr Religious, May-June 1990 knowledge that time constraints may limitthe priest's personal involve-ment but also point out that the apostolate within society is also most ap-propriate for the laity: "The apostolate of the social milieu, that is, the effort to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws, and structures of the community in which a person lives is so much the duty and responsibility of the laity that it can never be properly performed by others. In this area the laity can exercise an apostolate of like towards like" (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, para. 33). In addition to working for justice throughout society, the priest is called to have spe-cial concern for the poor: "Although the presbyter has obligations to-wards all persons, he has the poor and the lowly entrusted to him in a special way. The Lord himself showed that he was united to them, and the fact that the Gospel was preached to them is mentioned as a sign of his messianic a.ctivity'" (Decree on the Miniso3, and Life of Priests, par. 6). Again Christ is the model of the priest in this dimension of minis-try. Jesus' concern for others was not limited to his immediate commu-nity of disciples. He continually extended himself beyond his followers to others. His entire ministry is marked with personal compassion for any person who came to him in need. In addition to his one-on-one concern for others, Jesus also spoke out against society's injustices. At times the condemnation was marked by actual disobedience to laws when he viewed them as contradictory to the revelation he received from his Fa-ther. Indeed, his criticism was so threatening to the establishment that it eventually precipitated his death. And finally the Gospel reflects that Jesus had special care and concern for the poorest of the poor, the out-casts of society. The parable of the Last Judgment testifies to the cen-trality in Jesus' eyes of service to the hungry, thirsty, shelterless, impris-oned. To enhance the priest's effectiveness as a witness of Christ, the Church asks all priests to have special concern for evangelical poverty within their own priestly vocation, diocesan or religious. And again the model is Christ himself. Christ was poor. He let no material desire or possession come between himself and doing the Father's will. He was detached from possessions in order to be more free to serve. And Christ chose to live a simple lifestyle, perhaps to be more approachable by the poor or to witness to the sufficiency of the Father's providence for his material needs, taking his cue from the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Through embracing evangelical poverty the priest refuses to al-low any inordinate attachment to food, clothing, shelter, possessions to Ministerial Priesthood / 333 affect service of the kingdom either within or outside the Body of Christ. With this inner quality of heart the priest thus becomes an even more ef-fective witness of Christ to the Church and world. To be faithful and responsive to the call of promoting justice in the world we priests must ask whether we have adapted to this rather new dimension of priestly ministry. First, does my ministry include leader-ship in witnessing to Christ's concern for the world both through actual "hands-on" service to promote justice in society as well as through fa-cilitating service of my congregation? Most especially am I an effective sign in witnessing to Christ's concern for the most needy and under-privileged of my parish and my society'? Second, what is my attitude to evangelical poverty? Do I desire to imitate Christ by adopting a simple lifestyle? Do I embrace evangelical poverty as a gift because it conforms me more closely to Christ and so makes me a more effective symbol-person of Christ in my leadership, especially in his concern for the poor'? Do I allow the crosses of poverty to deepen my bonds with Christ'? Ministerial Priesthood: Challenge and Consolation The challenge of priesthood is perhaps greater today than ever be-fore. In the ministry of leadership for the Church the priest is called to become the person-symbol of Christ and so live and serve in a way that awakens awareness of God's continual presence and love both for the com-munity and for the world. A recent document from the American bish-ops catches the immensity of this challenge putting it in the context of the role of the pastor today: "The pastor in the parish today becomes-- whether he knows and likes it or not--a religious symbol to his people. The pastor becomes a religious symbol of tradition, the keeper and speaker of the revealed Word in all of its rich expressions. He becomes the religious symbol of God's care for his people, expressing compas-sion for the wounded and outrage at injustice. He becomes the religious symbol of order, calling the community to an effective stewardship of its gifts and shared use of its resources" ("A Shepherd's Care: Reflec-tions on the Changing role of Pastor," 1988). But if the challenge is immense, so is the consolation. Through or-dination the priest exists in a new, distinctive, and permanent relation-ship to Christ, to the Church, and to society. But like all sacraments the sacrament of orders confers the grace it proclaims and signifies. There-fore, priests have the immense consolation of knowing that the Holy Spirit stands behind them enabling them to live this threefold relation-ship conferred at ordination. In their relationship to Christ, the Spirit en-ables priests to be configured to Christ poor, celibate, and obedient and 334 / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 so be more powerful person-symbols of Christ. In their relationship to the Church, the Spirit enables priests to be effective servant-leaders in the fourfold dimensions of priestly ministry: proclaiming the Word of God, presiding at worship, caring for the pastoral needs of community, and facilitating charisms of the community. Finally in their relationship to society, the Spirit enables priests to be eloquent witnesses of Christ's care for.the world in promoting justice in society and most especially in serving the poor both personally and in their leadership of the Body of Christ. Priestly ministry, like all ministry, is a charism, a gift of the Spirit. The challenge for us priests is living in a way that facilitates the Spirit's action. We must take a serious look at our daily schedules and ask whether they, in fact, foster our living in tune with the Spirit, thereby growing in knowledge and love and Christ and so radiating a Christ-presence in all our ministry. Being fully effective sacramental signs of Christ demands daily attention to our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. And this may require rearrangement of our schedules, especially to assure we have the leisure to grow in an ever deeper union with Christ whom we sacramentalize in our leadership. A recent document from the Priestly Life and Ministry Committee pointedly advises us that the crite-ria for the effectiveness of our ministry ought not be the quantity of our work but its quality: "One of the most probable causes of difficulties with spirituality in a priest'~ life today is simply his ability to find (or at least justify) sufficient time to spend in solitude and prayer. A consci-entious priest, especially when under pressure of incessant demands, can forget that the quality of his work is more important than the quantity. What people are looking for in him more than anything else is a spiri-tual guide and model who will help them come to know the Lord and find his peace. Thus he must be, first of all and above everything else, a man of God's peace. Regular time each day for prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading is a sine qua non for the unfolding in a priest's life of an authentic Christ-centeredness" ("The Priest and Stress," 1982). There are many ministries in the Body of Christ. The priest's is but one of these, yet it is distinctive. Only the priest is called by today's Church to a ministry of leadership whose essence is symbolizing Christ's presence. Hopefully a deeper appreciation of this calling will have its ef-fect on morale of current priests as well as attract many others to this vo-cation. Where is Religious Life Going? M. Basil Pennington. O.C.S.O. Father Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O., is well known for his conferences and writings on centering prayer. His address is Assumption Abbey: Route 5: Ava, Missouri 65608. This is a question that is being asked with concern not only by religious themselves and the Church at large but even by the wider community. One significant indication of this is the fact that a secular foundation has recently given a secular university over a half million dollars to study the question. Lilly Endowment, Inc. has awarded Boston University a $575,000 grant to have its Center for Applied Social Sciences serve as the site to study the question "Factors Influencing the Transformation of Religious Life in the Catholic Church in the United States." This cur-rent research grant follows the successful completion of an earlier $100,000 planning grant. It is almost twenty-five years since the close of the Second Vatican Council which called for an adaptation and renewal of religious life. In that time the average age of members of many religious congregations and monastic communities has increased dramatically while the number of members has decreased just as dramatically. Many traditional works of religious have been called into question. New works have been un-dertaken and the whole understanding of mission reconsidered by some groups. The sense of separation from the laity is greatly diminished. Lay persons take a much greater part in the life and mission of religious and religious generally feel closer to the active lay Catholic. What does all this portend for the future'? More importantly, what must religious do in order to be truly renewed, adapted to the twenty-first century Church, so that they may continue to bring to the Church 335 336 / Review Jot" Religious, May-June 1990 and to society as a whole the gift that they are? The proposal submitted to the Lilly Endowment set forth six basic or broad objectives for the study: I. Identify the interpretative schemes used by reli-gious to describe the meaning structure of their commit-ment and their perceptions of the distinctions of religious life in relation to the other ministerial roles in the Church. The interpretive schemes will be examined from the perspective of the psychological, theological, and or-ganizational changes that have occurred over time, with special attention to the degree to which religious orders are becoming more or less distinct. 2. Describe and analyze the psychological, struc-tural, and organizational changes that have occurred and those yet to occur both in religious life in general and within congregations in order to predict the future shapes of religious life. 3. Identify individual religious who are perceived as the emergent leaders of religious life and explore with them systematically the changes that have occurred and must yet occur if religious life is to remain a vital social and ecclesial reality. 4. Describe and analyze some effects of change and perceptions of religious life on the commitment of in-dividual religious, former religious, and recent candi-dates to religious life. 5. Describe the environmental influences on re-ligious life in the United States, including cultural shifts that influence commitments, the supply and demand econ-omy for religious service, and the enhancement of the role of the laity in the Church within the historical con-text of theology. 6. Provide a paradigm for developing strategies of leadership that will enable leaders to move the pro-cess of renewal that was begun in Vatican II through a process of systematic transformation. The term "interpretive schemes" may not be familiar to many but it refers to a very important factor in religious life. Interpretive schemes are made up of the understanding the members of the group or commu-nity share in regard to the world and their place in it. They are primary Where is Religious Life Going? in drawing the members together, giving them a shared sense of belong-ing. These guide religious as they interpret their own past and look at their present environment, select their value priorities, and allocate their resources. Oftentimes these interpretive schemes are not explicitly articu-lated by a group. They are revealed rather in the metaphors the mem-bers use to describe their community, the stories they tell and the rites they celebrate. Transformation involves a shift in interpretive schemes. The pro-posal describes transformation as "qualitative, discontinuous shifts in organization members, shared understandings of the organization, accom-panied by changes in the organization's mission, strategy, and formal and informal structures." Transformation usually begins with a crisis that unfreezes dominant organizational members' current interpretative schemes by presenting a significant challenge to their validity. The Sec-ond Vatican Council did this to religious. But not the Council alone. The transition from the modern to the postmodern era, one of the three great cultural shifts in the history of humankind necessarily brought on a "cri-sis" for all human organizations. The next step in the transformation pro-ess is the development of alternative interpretative schemes leading to new types of action which in turn leads to changes in the structure of the organization. There is likely to be considerable conflict among the origi-nal and developing interpretive schemes and the subgroups espousing them. Leaders of the community will necessarily have a large impact on the process and its outcome. If they support only one perspective they are likely to decrease the potential creativity of the transformational pro-ess and the sense of belonging and involvement of the members whose perspectives have not been taken into account. If they try to separate out the different perspectives they are likely to perpetuate splints within the community. If they facilitate the interaction among the conflicting per-spectives they will increase the chances of paradoxical outcomes of trans-formation, of new and creative shared understandings, of a truly renewed and vital religious life. During the course of the process members will experience discomfort both with the ambiguities and the confusion. The conflict of understandings and those who espouse them will create ten-sions. But when (and if) a new synthesis is reached that is experienced by the whole group as acceptable, there will not only be a sense of satis-faction but there will be a new force in the community for life. In its study of the factors influencing the transformation for religious life, the study is going to give special attention to two: the environment, 338/Review for Religious, May-June 1990 that is, the factors external to the community that impinge on it in some way and can effect the transformation process by inducing the crisis and affecting the development of new interpretative schemes, and the lead-ership. Two types of leadership within the communities need to be and will be considered. There are formal leaders, those who are designated to see that the roles, resources, and necessary structures are maintained to provide for both the mission and the members. Emergent leaders are members who are generally recognized in the community as complemen-tary to the formal leaders, but distinct from them in purpose and func-tion. These often act as catalysts for new ideas within the community and, as such, are seldom selected by the membership to represent them. The study hopes to explore the underlying changes in interpretive schemes both qualitatively and quantitatively arid at several levels: within the social institution of religious life as such, within individual congre-gations, and within individual members of religious communities. This will involve questionnaires, regional meetings, and individual interviews to be carried out over the course of the next two to three years. The proposal sees as the outcome of the project: I. Identification of the normative beliefs about reli-gious life and how they will likely shape the future of re-ligious life in this country. 2. Build a national comparative data base of all male and female religious that includes current demographic data, membership information, existing and emerging structures, current member attitudes on multiple dimen-sions, and projections for the future. 3. Enable the leadership of religious communities to identify in the current context paradigms of planning that enable transformation, consolidation, merging, or extinc-tion. 4. Label the changes that must yet occur if reli-gious life is to remain a vital social and theological gift to the Church into the next millennium. The results of the study will, of course, be published and generally available to interested parties. But the researchers hope also to work with organizations and groups of religious to consider and further explore the findings. The principal researchers for the project are David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis. Father Nygren is a Research Associate at the Center for Applied Social Science, a unit of the Graduate School of Boston Uni- Where is Religious Life Going? / 339 versity. He has been a member of the Congregation of the Mission (Vin-centians) since 1968 and has served his congregation in many capacities over the years. He holds six academic degrees. Sister Miriam, a mem-ber of the Congregation of Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet, is com-pleting a term as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Community Health Plan, Boston. She is a clinical psychologist by profession and has served as a director of the House of Affirmation in Hopedale, Massachu-setts. Besides the extensive facilities of the Center for Applied Social Sci-ence, the researchers will be aided by a National Advisory Board which includes Archbishop Thomas Kelly, O.P., the newly elected chairper-son of NCCB's Committee on Religious; Abbot James Jones, O.S.B. of Conception Abbey; Howard Gray, S.J., former provincial of the Detroit Province, five religious women, two brothers, a monk and two represen-tatives from the Lilly Endowment. The Advisory Board will meet regu-larly with the researchers to assess the results of their work and offer guid-ance to the pursuit of the project. The success of the project will, of course, depend largely on the col-laboration of religious, both as groups and as individuals. But the bene-fits that they can hope to reap from it are considerable, so such collabo-ration is well assured. However, they will not be the only ones to profit from the study. Reviewing the expected outcomes it is easy to see why the Lilly Endowment and a community oriented university are willing to make such a considerable investment in this study. If the study does suc-ceed in producing the results it projects, there can be little doubt as to the significance of the contribution it will make not only to the Church but to society as a whole by enlivening and promoting the social outreach which depends so heavily on the leadership and support of the religious communities. Whence Come the Candidates? Gabrielle L. Jean, S.C.O. Sister Gabrielle Jean, S.C.O., last appeared in these pages with her article. "'The Alcoholic Religious Woman," in September/October 1985. Her address is 715 Per-shing Drive: Silver Spring, Maryland 20910. Over the past several years, authoritative articles on the assessment of can-didates for the priestly/religious life have appeared in Catholic periodi-cals. Kraft (1978)~ clearly stated the differential role and competencies of the psychiatrist and psychologist relative to evaluation and treatment of religious personnel. While both professional groups are involved in therapy, the psychiatrist focuses on the abnormal behavior while the psy-chologist deals with a much broader range of human behaviors. The psy-chiatrist's forte lies in his medical expertise and pharmacological arma-mentarium; the clinical psychologist's educational background provides for research and evaluation of human behavior, especially personality as-sessment. Kraft strongly recommended that such professionals have a working knowledge and appreciation of the role of spirituality in the life of religious men and women. Values incongruent with those of the cli-ent could prove prejudicial to his or her ongoing spiritual growth. A more recent article by O'Connor (1988)~- addressed the appraisal of candidates with attention directed to the formation process, the test-ing of the applicant's spirit, assessment of his or her motivation and fit-ness for the chosen institute. The key elements lie in the interactional pro-ess of interview and dialogue. The present article focuses on the instrumentation for the screening of candidates, that is, the psychological tests selected for that purpose. It is intended to inform superiors, vocations directors, and formation teams of the rationale and philosophy inherent in the selection of instru- 340 Whence Come the Candidates? / 34"1 ments; a "model" battery will then be suggested. Do the candidates come from the general "normal" population or from a psychiatric pool? The choice of instruments such as the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), TAT (Thematic Apper-ception Test) and Rorschach Inkblots reflect the latter since they are stan-dardized or normed on a psychiatric or dysfunctional population. Granted, they provide valuable information (in terms of impairment), but would it not be more helpful for the formation teams to know the strengths and weaknesses of the personality of their candidates? Would they not be in a better position to maximize the psychological and spiri-tual growth of their charges with a positive set of data on them'? If one begins the psychological screening process with scales normed on a psy-chiatric population, the results can only reveal the extent of the pathol-ogy found in that individual when compared to psychiatrically impaired individuals. The strengths of the personality are clouded by the pathol-ogy and the formation personnel are left to ferret for themselves the per-sonal resources of the recruits. Personality measurement is a typically American phenomenon; it originated in the United States and has evolved greatly, especially since the early 50s. Its scope includes both personality inventories (standard-ized on the general population) and instruments designed more specifi-cally to detect the presence and extent of behavior pathology. The re-spective personality theories provide the background for such instruments and caution the user relative to the holistic nature of the person. Because of the importance of the psychological screening process, further clarification seems warranted, especially since Vatican II alerted to the need of heeding the advances made in the behavioral sciences. So-ciology and psychology do shed scientific light on human behavior both as individuals and in groups. Purpose and Ethics Tests are standardized tools for the measurement of individual dif-ferences in intellectual, emotional, social, and motivational aspects of behavior. Personality assessment focuses primarily on the emotional ad-justment, social relationships, motivation, attitudes, interests, and val-ues of the individual. The American Psychological Association has codified ethical prin-ciples to govern psychological testing. Many personality tests are re-stricted to qualified users, and the qualifications vary with the type of test. The rationale is that test scores should be released only by and to persons qualified to interpret them. The candidate is entitled to know the 342 / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 information he or she revealed in the testing. Knowledge of the test scores only may be emotionally disturbing to the candidate; they should be properly interpreted to him or her in a situation that allows for dis-cussion of the results. Many personality instruments and measures of emotional, motiva-tional, or attitudinal traits are necessarily disguised; the subject may re-veal characteristics about the self without realizing that he or she is do-ing so. It is of primary importance that the examinee have a clear understanding of the use that will be made of the test results, who will receive the report, and how long it will remain in his or her file. Quot-ing directly from the Ethical Standards of Psychologists: "The psycholo-gist who asks that an individual reveal personal information in the course of interviewing, testing, or evaluation, or who allows such information to be divulged to him, does so only after making certain that the person is aware of the purpose of the interview, testing, or evaluation and of the ways in which the information may be used." No report should be sent without the consent of the examinee through a "release of confiden-tiality" form. The receiver of such information is bound by confiden-tiality; the information is privileged; if the examinee agrees to release such information, it is because it will be handled as privileged commu-nication. Evaluation: Testing, Interviews, or What? There are many arguments for and against testing, and I wish to share my biases with you; I do so willingly because psychological test-ing is my area of specialization and, therefore, I feel better qualified to support them than I would be in other areas of psychology. The arguments I would advance in favor of a sound testing program are these. First, it serves to provide an appraisal of candidates who feel attracted to the religious/priestly life. Secondly, it can help the candidate gain insight into his or her own behavior. Thirdly, it can serve as a basis for counseling in view of overall personal growth. The reservations I would have to comprehensive testing are many; my remarks here pertain primarily to candidate assessment for the priestly/religious life. ( I ) Psychiatric screening should not be required of all candidates; if the findings on the personality inventory suggest more than average pa-thology, a psychiatric instrument could be used to determine the extent of the pathology. If psychiatric screening is required for all candidates, are we not suggesting that our pool of subjects lies in the "disturbed" group? However, I favor scheduling a psychiatric interview/evaluation Whence Come the Candidates? / 343 for applicants to monastic life. The withdrawal from the world implied in the lifestyle could attract individuals ill-equipped for social inter-course. (2) There is a danger of categorizing people for life, very much like the penal system where no room is allowed for growth and change. (3) In the hands of poorly trained people, these instruments are ex-tremely dangerous. Granted that most formation personnel would not ad-minister the tests themselves, there is still grave danger that reports will be misinterpreted. People with little sophistication in this area tend to put more faith in the instruments than is warranted. (4) The use of test information for acceptance/refusal makes sense only if the results are validated by information from other sources: let-ters of reference, observed behavior, and the like, No matter how good and competent that psychiatrist or psychologist is, the dynamics of grace elude measurement, and everyone involved in the assessment process must be mindful of this fact. (5) I would not advocate involvement in a screening program unless there is a willingness to share the information with the candidate. A good policy is to provide a feedback interview to discuss the test findings with the examinee. Should the evaluation be psychodiagnostic (with the use of psychiatric questionnaires), the feedback would then be provided by the therapist who would be in a better position to decide on the timing for such disclosure. In all such work, Catholic psychologists consciously strive for the fundamental attitude which Pope Pius XII advocated in 1953: 'Psychotherapy and clinical psychology must always consider man as a psychic unity and totality; as a structured unit in itself; as a social unit and as a transcendent unit, that is to say, in man's tending towards God.' ,3 Candidate Assessment We are reminded through the Second Vatican Council documents that the unity of the Church thrives on the variety of gifts in its mem-bers. In Perfectae Caritatis, it is explicitly stated that religious are to bring "to the execution of commands and to the discharge of assign-ments entrusted to them the resources of their minds and wills and their gifts of nature and grace" (PC, Art. I). The text is supported by Paul's I Corinthians: "All these gifts are the work of one and the same Spirit, distributing them separately to each individual at will" (I Co 12:l I). The decree on religious life was intended for all religious men and women, whether in the ranks or in authority. It must be admitted; how- 34"4 / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 ever, that when it comes to acknowledging the "special gift of each," we are somewhat in the dark. The Superior/Director/Coordinator is ex-pected to be respectful of the Giver of gifts by avoiding arbitrary assign-ments. The religious man or woman may be an individualist who feels that one owes it to oneself to fulfill the self in the sense of using one's gifts for personal enhancement and satisfaction; a correct interpretation would lead one to regard all gifts as intended for service to the commu-nity and to the whole Church. A scientific way of arriving at a knowledge of these gifts is psycho-logical testing and evaluation. I would set as one of the primary func-tions of candidate assessment: the identification of the assets of the indi-vidual. There is room for screening out undesirable applicants but this aspect of screening should not supersede the screening in of those who have great gifts of heart and mind to use in the service of the Church. As a marginal note, may I add that it is usually enlightening for the vocation directors (or whoever requests the assessment) to subject him-self or herself to the whole process. It may be an eye-opener as to the anxiety-provoking experience of personality assessment. For some cli-ents, self-disclosure is a very traumatic experience, and counseling may be advised. For most who have been exposed to testing in all forms, the whole procedure is taken in stride. Criteria Used What are we looking for in a good candidate to the priesthood/ religious life? The criteria have generally been clearly stated by the vari-ous religious groups, rectors of seminaries, experienced masters in the formation of candidates, and vocation directors. In general, they can be grouped as follows. ( 1 ) Intelligence I think we are justified in looking for average intelligence or better; without it, a religious professional cannot grasp the import of his or her commitment to Church service within the framework of a religious life-style. During the assessment, the candidate's intellectual efficiency is con-sidered in the light of one's intellectual potential. Does the client oper-ate better in a situation where conformity is rewarded or where auton-omy and independence are viewed as positive behaviors? The individ-ual's cognitive style is also studied along with factors capable of reduc-ing his or her mental efficiency such as anxiety, perfectionism, compul-sivity, or poor thought control. (2) Personality Here, it is important to have inventories/questionnaires standardized Whence Come the Candidates? / 345 on a non-psychiatric population; the candidate is not expected to live in a psychiatric ward! Instruments are usually selected which address prin-cipally the personality characteristics important for social living and so-cial interaction. Attention focuses first on personal integration: the individual's self-concept as covered by such factors as social presence, sociability, self-acceptance, sense of well-being. The candidate's social maturity and re-sponsibility come under scrutiny in a cluster of scales tapping socializa-tion, self-control, and tolerance. Temperamental variables such as per-sistence, cooperation, aggressiveness, tact, moodiness, impulsiveness, and adaptability are given some attention. The motivational aspects of the applicant are usually considered in a separate scale covering the home environment, career, religion, social endeavors, needs, values, and in-terests. A social-religious orientation is usually a more favorable indica-tor of a true call than a political or power orientation. (3) Sexuality This area is considered critical for today's candidates who will com-mit themselves to a celibate life. Projective techniques (disguised tasks) are used in this case to assess the basic sexual orientation of the candi-date and impulse control. The leads provided by the test data are openly discussed with the candidate in view of verification of the findings and subsequent recommendations. Not all information gathered in the inter-view need to be reported; problems resolved earlier fall in this category. (4) Magisterium The candidates are also queried about their attitudes toward author-ity, toward the Church and her teachings, and toward the ministry or apos-tolate. Feedback The feedback interview can be used advantageously to cover impor-tant areas such as interpersonal relationships: at home, at school, and at work, and for the older candidates, relationship to the local church. The individual can be further interrogated relative to anger and hostility: what triggers his or her anger and how is it handled? Recommendations for the proper handling of st.tong emotions are usually in order. The area of sexuality is probed further: orientation, ~,ex education, if given (when, by whom), dating history, the applicant's understanding of celibacy/ chastity, and his or her readiness to make the commitment to a celibate life. The last area tapped in the interview pertains to "spiritual evolu-tion," or the applicant's personal spiritual journey. When was he or she first attracted to the Church, (rites, sacraments, music, service, and so 346 /Review for Religious, May-June 1990 forth) and how did that attraction grow (or lapse) in the course of his or her life? Conclusion It is obvious to whoever has read up to this point that the evaluation/ assessment of candidates is serious business and a time-consuming propo-sition. Is it not worth the effort for a lifetime of service to the Church? The full day of testing and the few hours needed for the feedback/ interview are little when one considers the benefits to be derived through a lifetime of dedicated service to others. It is a rewarding task tbr the examiner who is constantly confronted with the promptings of grace in the life of today's young people. NOTES ~ William F. Kraft, "'Psychiatrists, Psychologists and Religious." R~vw.w FOR RF.LIGIOUS, Vol. 37, (1978), pp. 161-170. 2 David F. O'Connor, "Appraising Candidates for Religious Life or Priesthood," Human Development IX (Fall. 1988), pp. 26-30. 3 Address of His Holiness Pope Plus XII, "On Psychotherapy and Religion," Fifth International Congress on Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology (April 13, 1953). Converted i come into Your glorious presence Changed, Newly dressed In Your garments, Feeling strangely at home there. Delighted, excited, I am waiting . . . Longing once more For Your kiss of peace. Sister Columba Howard St. John of God Convent P.O. Box 14 SUBIACO 6008 Western Australia Wishes for a "Novice" Novice Director Melannie Svoboda, S.N.D. Sister Melannie Svoboda, S.N.D. is currently dividing her time between teaching and writing. She served as novice director for six years. Her address is Notre Dame Academy; Route One, Box 197; Middleburg. Virginia 22117. For six years I was novice director for my religious community. During those years, the number of novices I had was anywhere between nine and one. As I reflect back on my experience as novice director, especially now that I have a little distance from that ministry, I ask myself, "What advice would I give to a new novice director--to a novice novice direc-tor? What would I wish for him or her?" There are many things I could say, much I could wish for. But if I had to limit myself to five words of advice, five wishes, what would they be? My answer to that question is this article. Warning.t Self-knowledge. Beware.t And give thanks. In my second year as novice director, I made my annual retreat as usual. During my first one-on-one conference, the retreat director asked me what my min-istry was. When I told him I was novice director for over a year, he smiled and said, "Well, well! I bet you've come to a beck of a lot of self-knowledge this past year!" His words struck me. They encapsulated something I had been experiencing, but something I had not yet been able to name: formation ministry has a terrible and marvelous way of en-couraging growth in self-knowledge--and this growth is usually accom-panied by discomfort, confusion, or even pain. Prior to becoming novice director, I had been a successful teacher and free-lance writer. It was easy for me to begin to find a good meas-ure of security in my obvious successes in these two areas. Success has 347 348 / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 an insidious way of leading us into a kind of "spiritual coziness." My success tended to give me the illusion that, indeed, God is in his heaven, I am in my classroom or at my typewriter, and all is well in the world. Formation work, which was both new and challenging, had a way of nudg-ing me (sometimes even shoving me) out of my complacency. I noticed my prayer becoming less pharisaical: "I thank you, Lord, that I am so successful!" and more "publican-ish": "Lord, now what do I do? Help!" As disconcerting as this growth in self-knowledge was at times, I see it now as a very real blessing for me. There is another reason why formation work was such a challenge for me personally. Both teaching and writing have goals and objectives by which one can, to an extent, measure one's success. Are my students learning? Yes. Are editors accepting my articles? Yes. The'n I am doing something right. I am a success. But formation ministry does not have such clear-cut ways of measuring success. In fact, by some measures, I was quite unsuccessful as novice director. Were novices flocking to our novitiate now that I was director? No. In fact, the formation team and I were not even accepting all of the few that did apply. Once they came to our novitiate, did they stay'? No. Some stayed, but many left. And, worse yet, some of the ones that did leave, ! even encouraged to leave. Formation ministry forced me to redefine success. More than that, it caused me to question how much l needed success in order to minis-ter. The ministry of formation challenged me to devote time, energy, and creativity to a work that, for the most part, did not give me the steady encouragement of measurable results. It called forth new kinds of strengths in me--such as patience, trust, letting go, and greater depen-dence on others who could help me. I needed such qualities which might otherwise have remained undeveloped because of apparent outward suc-cess. Decisions, decisions! Shortly after receiving my appointment as nov-ice director, I met my own novice director in the lunch line at our pro-vincial house. She had been a novice director for more than twenty years. Now, confined mostly to a wheelchair, she continues to serve the com-munity in the mailroom and archives. When she saw me in the lunch line, she took me aside, wished me well, and then said, "Just remem-ber: as long as you believe your decisions are right before God, that's all you've got to worry about." In those few words, my novice director had gotten to the core of for-mation ministry: the making of decisions. For me, the crux of being nov-ice director (and I use the word "crux" intentionally) was having to Wishes for a Novice Director I 349 make a decision that affected the future of another human being. Of course, I knew that I was not totally responsible for deciding whether a woman should remain in our novitiate or leave. The novice herself played a paramount role in that decision. I also knew full well that I had other people I could and did consult for valuable advice and input. I also realized that the provincial and her council ultimately were responsible for this decision. But despite knowing these things in my head, I still felt in my heart that the decision whether a novice should stay or leave was essentially mine. For me there was nothing ever easy about making such a decision--one way or the other. And there certainly was nothing easy about being the one to tell a novice that she could not stay--especially if she was unable to understand why. As I told my provincial superior onc+ after the council had decided to let a candidate go, "You're not the one who has to look into her eyes and tell her. I do." For me personally, this was the greatest challenge as novice direc-tor: trying to make the right decision for each individual. It meant I also had to face the possibility that, despite my conscientiousness and my good will, I could, indeed, make the wrong decision about someone. I had to ask myself, "Do I trust God enough that ! can be at peace with every decision I make? Can I entrust even a possible wrong decision to his love and creativity?" I never fully appreciated what a burden this was for me until I no longer bore it. After | left formation work, I was given other big respon-sibilities- among them was being local superior of a rather large com-munity. But, so far, none of these new responsibilities quite compares with the responsibility I felt as novice director: having to make a deci-sion that profoundly affects the future life direction of another person and a religious community. At the risk of sounding pious, this is a burden we cannot bear alone. As my own novice director implied, we make our decisions before God. I add: we also make them with God. With hoops of steel. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Polonius gives some beautiful advice to his son, Laertes, before he sets out on his own. His words of advice should be given to every new novice director: Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel. l, iii One of the greatest needs of a novice director is friends. Hopefully, most novice directors enter their ministry with a "generous supply" of good and loyal friends. But even if this is the case, a novice director soon 350/Review for Religious, May-June 1990 learns that the ministry of formation has some built-in obstacles to the retention of friends. First of all, as novice director, I was in a ministry all by myself. No one else in my community did exactly what I did. As a teacher and writer, I had enjoyed the camaraderie of other sisters in my community who were actively engaged in the same ministry. We swapped stories, shared ideas, and encouraged each other in our com-mon ministry. But when I became novice director, I suddenly had no one. There is another reason for the sense of aloneness that novice direc-tors sometimes feel. Much of our ministry involves things we cannot talk about or share with others. Even our schedule may prevent us from so-cializing with our friends. For example, as a teacher I looked forward to weekends when I had a little time to "unwind" with my sisters and friends. But as novice director, my weekends suddenly became my busi-est time. That was when 1 had classes with the novices, I tried to see them individually, and I "socialized" with them. These factors cannot be allowed to become excuses fo~" losing touch with our friends. But they are challenges for us to find new and creative ways to "grapple" our friends to our souls "with hoops of steel." Eventually, I did find considerable support from novice directors in other religious communities. Sometimes when we got together, we tended to "talk shop." We found ourselves talking only about problems in formation and expressing to each other worries and frustration. This has its place, of course, but we soon realized we needed each other not merely to "gripe with" but also to "play with." As a new novice di-rector, find ingenious ways to hang on to your old friends, and be ready and eager to make new ones. The wideness of the sea. One of my favorite old hymns says this: "There's a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea." I think we could paraphrase those words and say. "There should be a wideness in a novice director's life like the wideness of the sea." A nov-ice director could be tempted to live in a very narrow world--a world no larger than his or her novitiate. Do not succumb to this temptation. It is important for a novice director to receive some professional prepa-ration for the ministry of formation. Yes. It is also vital for him or her to keep abreast of developments in the field of formation. Definitely. But we novice directors must not limit our input solely to formation. My ad-vice is to widen your world. Get involved with other groups of people, with issues besides formation and religious life. As novice director, for example, I taught a course in pastoral ministry at our college almost Wishes for a Novice Director / 351 every semester. The course met once a week in the evenings. Teaching that course was extremely healthy and beneficial for me. When I was not teaching a course, I was often taking a course. Some of these courses had nothing to do directly with formation. I also continued to write arti-cles for publication--the vast majority of them riot on formation. I know other novice directors who widened their world by being life guards at swimming pools, music ministers in parishes, volunteers in soup kitch-ens, or teachers in seminaries. As directors, we need ample time for a ministry of formation, true. Bui we also need time to extend our bounda-ries beyond the walls of the novitiate and our religious community. Let them love you. So far I have said nothing specifically about the novices themselves. As novice director, you must love your novices. Sometimes your love will take the form of gentleness and kindness. Other times it will assume the shape of firmness or even apparent hard-ness. Whatever form it takes, love is essential. This goes without say-ing. But there is a flip side to this fact that gets too little attention: allow your novices to love you. Be open to their love. More than that, encour-age it, welcome it. As directors we can become overly conscious of our role as director, as formator. We can shield ourselves from the give-and-take of relationships by setting strick boundaries with our novices. I am director, you are directee. I form you. I love you. Formation becomes a one-way street. When we do this, we are forgetting this great truth about formation: while we are helping to form our novices, they are also helping to form us. If we allow them. My novices helped form me in many ways--sometimes gently, other times almost roughly. They formed me by their honesty and humility-- especially in the one-on-one sessions I had regularly with each one. I was always amazed at how the novices were, for the most part, incredibly honest with themselves. By their honesty, they encouraged me to be more honest with them. During my six years, I found myself trusting the novices more and more. I had always basically trusted other people, I believe, but my six years as novice director only encouraged this atti-tude. The novices ministered to me at times in my need. One time a friend of mine in the community was dying of cancer. I left her infirmary room one night on the verge of tears. Shortly afterwards I ran into one of my novices in the hall. My initial reaction was to put on a cheerful front and hide my tears from her. After all, I was her director. In fact, I was the one who had dried the tears of this particular novice on more than one 359 / Review for Religious, Mav-Jttne 1990 occasion. But when I saw the concerned expression on her face, I was unable to hold back my tears. I cried, "Nadine's dying." Without a word, she took me in her arms and held me for a few minutes, comfort-ing me. In one way, it was a reversal of roles, but I still treasure the mem-ory of that moment when I allowed the novice to minister to me. Sometimes novices will love us in "tougher" ways--challenging our judgments, questioning our decisions, asking us to explain something we would just as soon leave unexplained. As novice directors, we must be open to that kind of love, too. My father, now retired, spends much time growing things on my par-ents' three-and-one-half acre plot of land. He grows apple trees, exotic grapes, peach trees, English walnut trees, and'the like. He once told me, "I get a kick out of figuring out how to help things grow." I would hope that every new novice director could say something similar: "I get a kick out of figuring out how to help people grow." My final wish for the "novice" novice director is this: May you figure out (often through trial and error--plus the help of God's grace) how to help (not "make" or "'force") people grow. And, in the process of your helping, may you yourself grow in faith, hope, love, and much joy! Retreat at Glenstal Abbey I have no preacher here but only quiet trees that pray one solemn silent so-be-it frown cell, from sap, from sinewed standing stem frown bough and branch from twig and sprig all said all summed in this brief silent now. The Master called and with the stars each answered to the limit of every limned lettered lace-like latticed leaf: "Here 1 am." Cothrai Gogan, c.s.sp. Naraiga Catholic Church Box 220 Limuru Kenya, Africa The Associate Movement in Religious Life Rose Marie Jasinski, C.B.S., and Peter C. Foley Sister Rose Marie Jasinski. C.B.S. is currently director of the associate community for the Sisters of Bon Secours and president of Bon Secours St. Joseph Hospital and Nursing Care Center in Port Charlotte, Florida. Peter C. Foley is presently working as a free-lance consultant and facilitator for religious congregations, dioceses, and parishes. Correspondence should be addressed to Associate Membership Office: Sis-ters of Bon Secours: 1525 Marrionsville Road: Marriottsville, Maryland 21104. The task of the imagination, specifically the religious imagination, has been described as naming, even "composing," the real. Another way of saying this is that the religious imagination unveils where God is at work among us. Stories of God at work, and of the unfolding of a real-ity whose scope and power have not yet been imagined were told in May 1989 at the Bon Secours Spiritual Center in Marriottsville, Maryland where more than 100 Directors of Religious Associate Memberships, and associates too, gathered to share the histories of their associate move-ment. It was the first such gathering of lay people and religious designed .just to explore how spiritualities or charisms of the Church, previously identified with particular religious congregations, were being assimilated by groups of lay people who claim the identity, history, and traditions of a particular spirituality as their own. The reality that emerged is that the traditional spiritualities are alive and well, even flourishing, but in ways we had not imagined. Most congregations reported more applicants to the associate program than to the congregation, and some associate members outnumbered the sisters themselves. But even more striking than the rapid growth of associate memberships was the intensity of the 353 Review for Religious, May-June 1990 commitment brought to them. These were not casual or sentimental re-lationships- it was clear that there was great personal significance in be-longing to an evolving spiritual community. This powerful movement has been quietly erupting within the Church for the last ten to fifteen years. Among the groups gathered to-gether in May we discovered associate members of women, men, sin-gle, married, of various professions, of differing faiths and even a few clergy and religious of other congregations. Associate membership tends to look and act differently within individual religious communities. The basic ingredient, however, is a strong emphasis on forming bonds be-tween laity and religious around a specific charism and mission; attempt-ing to live out that spirit and charism in one's particular lay lifestyle be-comes a significant piece of the "bonding" together. An area of richness that was shared by the groups in May was the expressed felt need and desire to journey together toward deeper spiri-tual growth. The word "together" here is significant and seems to be gaining in popularity. While indeed there still lingers the sentiment that "sister is better at this than I am" we discovered also that the notion that "the same Spirit moves among all of us" is gaining ground as well. Of course, this growing sense and desire for "bonding" also tends to blur the distinctions between laity and religious which is a challenge for some and a gift for many. Developing a sense of community was an important and, at times, a primary reason for approaching associate membership. For some it is the lack of community experienced in the local parish setting; for others it is the desire to deepen their prayer life that initiated the attraction. This sense of community and "bonding" that begin to take shape between the lay and religious members is encouraged and strengthened through regular times of coming together to share prayer, ritual, reflections, Eucharist, and other social feastings. Along with these activities the de-sire to have a "significant" role within the religious community is also exerting its influence among laity and religious. Participating in commu-nity decision-making, committee functions, chapter meetings and the like were not an uncommon topic at our May meetings. The area of service or ministry had a broad range of response among the groups. For some it was an integral part of the associates" role; for others it almost appeared as a distraction from the original intent of spiri-tual development; and still others seem to be on a progressive path of moving through spiritual development outward to "mission.'" This brings us to the progression of "gerierations" that is becom- The Associate Movement / 355 ing evident to those people who have been around this movement ['or a period of time. A pattern appears to be evolving within the associate move-ment. The first generation seemed to be people who wanted to be "filled up" spiritually plus a few who just could not say "no" to sister in those communities where the religious extended the invitation to join. In this generation the religious were looked to for the leadership. The second generation seemed to move more deeply into spiritual development in that the laity and religious have journeyed that path together as equals. The third generation emerges as associates become active in, or are in-vited into, various ways of participating in community life itself. Spiri-tuality as well as leadership is shared. A fourth generation seems to be spiritually motivated and supported by a faith community to go out in mission to share the charism. Throughout this progression of generations has remained a growing, though sometimes ambiguous, sense of commitment--ambiguous in that it is not always clear if the commitment is to the congregation, to the lo-cal community, to the associate community, or to individual sisters. And growing in that there are those rich experiences when associate members feel they have no choice but to live the charism--they have become so imbued it is as though "the charism has me!'" It seems most desirable for each group to grow in its own understand-ing and expression of, and comfort with, the focus of its commitment. While all groups expressed uncertainty about the long-term embodi-ment of their spirituality, they were equally comfortable with a sense of journeying together, accompanying ehch other in a life of prayer, shar-ing, and service. This was the area of greatest commonality among the participants. Otherwise their differences were so great that many of our assumptions about the associate movement were exposed and dispelled. Our first assumption was that a healthy associate program needed to be closely knit to the sponsoring congregation, starting with a strong for-mation program (conducted by the sisters), ongoing liaison with or lead-ership from the sisters, and some degree of monitoring of prescribed norms of behavior. Not so. Although many of these chara~:teristics were present in most programs, there were some that were not even started by the sisters, much less "managed" by them. A "healthy" and vigorous program depended more on the quality of the relationship between indi-vidual lay person and sister (living or dead) than on the sophistication of its organization and structures. The spirit or charism of the congrega-tion was passed on most effectively, it seemed, from person to person. In one group, the "formation" program consisted primarily of one-to- Review for Religious, May-June 1990 one storytelling on the part of the retired sisters with the prospective as-sociate. Another had an adoption structure, in which the associate and sister became family with each other. Another assumption was that there were sisters, on the one hand, and associates on the other. But for some, the associate membership con-sisted of lay people and those sisters who chose to join it including, in-terestingly, sisters from other congregations. These groups, obviously, had no trouble "getting sisters involved"--one of the more common problems expressed. The sisters were free to commit themselves to this other expression of their charism, or not. Another surprise was the range of expectations or requirements for associates to "keep up their membership." Many groups had calendars of annual events that included monthly meetings, annual retreats, "home-coming weekends" with all the sisters at the motherhouse, and some even offering weekly prayer meetings. But it was clear, due to geo-graphical movement of both sisters and associates, that the real and ef-fective criterion of memberships for some groups was the intention and commitment of the individual associate. In a movement like this there is a lot of giving and receiving. Who is giving? Who is receiving'? The obvious answer is that the congrega-tion is extending itself to others, including them, giving them something that they could not have by themselves. The opposite seems to charac-terize many of the groups reporting. The more the sisters listened to what was going on in the desires, dreams, and active faith life of their friends and dedicated collaborators, the more they received. Their own appre-ciation of their congregational charism and history was renewed and en-livened. Many sisters reported "receiving their charism back" from their lay associates. And, on a more pragmatic vein, the more the con-gregation included its associates in governance and community struc-tures, the greater the commitment of time and energy of the associates to the religious group. Finally, we had assumed, of course, that we were talking about per-sons of the Christian faith when we were discussing associates. Not so. A number of congregations reported including not only non-Catholic Christians in their associate programs, but also non-Christian persons. How could this be? We did not ask. If we had had the time, we would have asked three other questions: -What human behaviors facilitate the "passing on" of a charism from person or group to another'? -This seems to be more a women's movement than one The Associate Movement / ;357 commonly or equally shared by men and women. If so, how does it relate to the larger feminist or women's move-ment? And, also, how is it related to earlier women's movements in the history of the Church? -Are congregations that have a vital and active associate membership capable of having an equally vital and ac-tive group of "lay volunteers"? We ended the May meetings with no conclusions other than it was very good to get together and share what is happening; that some groups would initiate regional networks: and that we should all meet again in two years to hear the continuing story of the associate membership move-ment. As participants and observers we rejoice and hope to see the continu-ing openness to the Spirit-filled variety of associate memberships in the Church. A variety that may lead us to a fifth generation of associate mem-bers and "religious" sharing community: living together in a variety of many different ways, providing a variety of different services, praying in a variety of different styles--all through the power of one Spirit-- one baptism. Sunrise When the earth tipped its rim this morning, letting the sun in, filling itself with color and.light, You handed it to me; putting my mouth to the other side, I drank the dawn wind, the morning sun rising, dripping with glory. Then handing the cup back to You, I wiped the drops from my mouth, touching my lips again with Your light: Satiated with splendor, so glad of Your love. Sister Columba Howard St. John of God Convent P.O. Box 14 SUBIACO 6008 Western Australia Images For The Future Of Religious Life Thomas F. McKenna, C.M. Father Thomas McKenna, C.M., is an assistant professor in the theology department at St. John's University in New York. He has also served as novice director for the Eastern Province of the Vincentians. His address is Vincentian House: 101-25 104th Street: Ozone Park, New York 11416. One of the signatures of any age is the time-dimension to which it is drawn. At a given period, a culture is fascinated by past, present, or what is to come. For a number of interwoven reasons, religious life in this pres-ent age is taken with the future. The harder times it has fallen upon in filling up its thinning ranks and the upsetting wonder about what forms will take it into the next. century raise questions which only forward-looking answers will give. Add to this the growing appreciation that the origins and, therefore, the identity of religious life lie in visions precisely about what could be, and the reasons for concern about that future be-come all the more apparent. Often enough, these worries and hopes find expression in a search for what is termed "The New Image.'" That taken-for-granted inner land-scape which grounded the operations of a congregation for generations is less and less able to hold the center. Members realize that some new image is required, a different "root metaphor"~ which once in place will again provide that clear prism through which the apostolates, govern-ance, prayer styles, and, indeed, the very self-concept of the order can be freshly perceived. In his book on the meaning of history,2 Theodore White describes the precariousness of trying to peer into the future from the only van-tage point available, the present. He invites the reader into a small boat 358 Images of Religious Life / 359 bobbing up and down on the swells of the mid-Pacific, thousands of miles from any coast. Inside, the waves lifting and lowering the boat feel much the same, but in fact they are not all alike. Some are only surface ripples blown up for a few hundred yards or even miles. Others are surges left from mid-ocean storms out still farther over the horizon. They, too, will smooth out and die. But others still are the tips of deep running transoceanic currents. They were born in the river canyons of continents two thousand miles to the east and will crest on the shores of another coast four thousand miles westward. The historian is the person who thinks himself able to read which of the waves are shallow and so eventually will fade, and which reach to the floor of the sea and so will roll on into the future. While the bases for his judgments are not the kind which can serve up airtight predictions, they are rooted eno'ugh in pres-ent conditions to get him beyond clairvoyance. His knowledge of the cur-rents and tides enables him to give some backing for claims about what will continue beyond the horizon. This article intends to feel for some of those currents. While there are any number of root images which might be the synthesizing meta-phors on which religious life will be carried into the future, there are some which because of their ancient lineage in the religious movement on the one side and their attunedness to present society on the other show promise beyond mere guesswork--though, to be honest, not perhaps be-yond wishful thinking! The metaphors to follow can stand by themselves, but are more use-ful when anchored in the first. Connecting them sequentially allows for a certain priority but also for enough interaction that each can be a cor-rective for the others. The Religious Infiltrators of the Culture The scenario here is one body of people led forward by a common vision who insert themselves into the dead spots, so to speak, of the world of another group. They attempt to work their variant view into the places in the dominant culture which are spiritually empty and hunger-ing for freedom and new meaning. The sportscaster's phrase "in the seams" catches the idea. In a zone defense, players are assigned to cover certain sectors of the field or rink. The weakest points are along the bor-ders of zones because that is where confusions and even collisions be-tween the defenders are most likely to occur. The pass or shot is aimed "in the seams" between the zones; it is put "in the crease" at the edges of the coverage where the system most often breaks down. This analogy places religious among those believers who carry the 3BO / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 cause of Mystery to those border areas in a culture. Into those margins where the prevailing world view has lost its depth or has failed in nerve, religious bring the riches, appropriately enough, of religion. They are the outriders of the culture, the hikers along the margin where moder-nity has unraveled and is dealing death rather than life. The orders are among the entrepreneurs of the Mystery in a resistive society. This last figure brings out the assertive and perhaps even aggressive side of the image. Not intimidated by the muscular idols of the culture, religious purposefully seek out opportunities for evangelization and join with other groups who struggle to inculturate kindred values. They are convinced of the profundity of what they carry and so actively search out the soft spots in a society for chances to penetrate. Opportunistically, they move into the seams. In the description of the mid-ocean sailor, we spoke of the need to justify the use of a particular image. Why does this metaphor show more promise than another'? In this case, what signs of the times recommend the infiltrator over competitors'? Both negative and positive warrants come to mind. The negatives cluster around a foreboding sense of the spiritual bank-ruptcy of certain sectors in the modern world. By modern we connote here modernity, that whole ethos born in the Enlightenment and bred in the industrialized West whose place in history is slipping off its assumed highest perch to a level of one era among others, but one, indeed, whose effects are threatening to annihilate the gains of all the rest. Interestingly, this critique is being mounted by commentators who truly admire many of the accomplishments of the modern era such as freedom, communi-cation, labor saving devices, democracy, and so forth. They counsel not so much a nativist return to some pre-technological world, but rather a move beyond technology. To that end, they make the case that within the soil of the very blessings modernity bestows are sprouting the mostly unnoticed seeds of its own destruction. The most noxious plants on the American scene are being fed by the system of total capitalism. When left unchecked, they poison the very kind of moral character needed to sustain the democratic society in which capitalism flourishes. Among the more widely known critics are Robert Bellah and his as-sociates3 who have detailed the ways in which individualism threatens to remove its communal counterbalance, republicanism, from the ethi-cal arena in American life. A flattened self, the person as a "bag of needs" disconnected from other subjects and unable to collaborate from motives beyond self-gratification is the narcissistic prospect. Barbara Hat- Images of Religious Life / 36"1 grove's depiction of the "New Class" analyzes the ways which the spe-cializing and rationalistic tendencies of the baby boomer culture can shut down its own best possibilities.'~ In a more popular vein are the addresses of Franciscan preacher, Richard Rohr, who of late has been announcing "the death of the liberal agenda."-s An inability to cooperate with any-one besides an elite few, an idolization of personal feelings, and a per-fectionistic search for the fullest experience and/or the flawless process are some of the disturbing undersides he fears now beginning to surface. A more philosophical warning is being sounded by a group known as the Post-Modernists. Taking negative expression in its Deconstruction-ist variety,6 the critique is more optimistically stated by a group who call themselves, fittingly so, the Constructionists.7 Affirming the benefits of modernity, they also desire to move beyond its pitfalls and so join the assault on individualism. Their particular contribution is not only to have analyzed further its pedigree and progeny, but to have proposed means by which it can be overcome. There is an anthropomorphism in the culture, they contend, which immoderately subordinates the whole of creation to its human part. The attitude denies any "inwardness" to what is not human, thereby remov-ing nature's intrinsic value and laying it open to the worst kinds of ex-ploitation. The social counterparts of this dominative style are the patri-archal rules in society, assumptions which prevailed in all ages but get honed to their sharpest edge by the competitive, rationalistic, and ef-ficiency myths of the present.8 Powering everything are the twin dynamos of economism and con-sumerism. The blanket moral pardon granted the so-called side effects of the free market (steered by its invisible hand of self-interest) is ex-tended to all sectors of life. Social, aesthetic, moral, and religious issues are approached as if their ultimate bearings were also supply and de-mand. The pressures to define self by possessions, to regard the public good solely as economic wealth, and to eliminate concern even for one's posterity are some of the more chilling prospects when the profit princi-ple is transmuted into the universal moral touchstone. Such a world, in a Constructionist phrase, has lost its enchantment.9 Emptied of mystery and dulled to the wisdom of the best of its myths, it can no longer re-spond to the deeper hopes and so begins to feed on itself. Modernity's prospects: a superficial and morally spinning world set on a disastrous course that of itself modernity is powerless to change. If the infiltrator metaphor stayed only with condemnations, its indict-ments could have the ring of a culture-bashing fundamentalism which 369 / Review for Religious. May-June 1990 railed against the society but did not involve itself in it. Happily, these critiques are simultaneously stirring up a kind of religious revival or at least the beginnings of one. ~0 In the so-called secular disciplines for in-stance, there is a growing movement to sacralize the world. Proponents in the natural sciences for one, awed not only by the indeterminacy of things but also by their interconnectedness, are proclaiming a newly dis-covered mystery in creation. Various schools of psychology for another are reclaiming a spiritual base. Educational circles are feeling a surpris-ing pressure for more theology and religion courses at secular universi-ties. ~ These and other indications mark a widening search for values which are rooted in something other than the economic. This quest has a prag-matic ring to it inasmuch as the conviction is spreading that religiously grounded foundations are the only ones on which lasting social change can be built. Interestingly, the revival appears to have gathered greatest momentum among Roman Catholics. A 1987 Gallup poll names them as the denomination which feels most able to provide religious leadership in American society because of both the wide backing they accord their bishops' social teachings and because of the stronger communal bonds they enjoy. ~- In sum, there is on a number of fronts a growing unease about the spiritual vacuum in the culture together with initial signs of an initiative to fill it. Motivation for the renewal is not the self-righteous and con-demning sort, but comes from culturally sympathetic people who at the same time sense the dissonance between their own religious experience and the hollowness in key sectors of modernity. This analysis was done to indicate possible points at which religion could be inserted into the culture. Such intersections hold invitations for religious to join with other subgroups in society~3 in witnessing to firmer grounds of meaning. Carrying in their traditions such wisdom as the in-terrelationship between humans and the rest of creation, the universal dis-persion of spiritual energy, the immanence of the divine feminine, and the riches which cannot be packaged as a commodity and which flow out of the acts of loving and hoping, members of orders do not come empty-handed to those vulnerable seams. Nor do they come alone. The infil-trator is meant to work alongside of other servants of Mystery who are soon discovered to be, in Thomas Merton's phrase, "the monks' natu-ral allies in the world.''~4 If this line of thought sounds familiar to the religious reader, it is likely because something of the sacred time of his or her beginnings is hnages of Religious Life / 36:3 evoked. All founding persons were in effect entrepreneurs of religion in a culture. The desert journeys of the monks as response to the dying and brutal fourth-century society, the ingenuity of the mendicants in evan-gelizing a world of new city-states, the missionary fervor of the congre-gations of the seventeenth century reaching across from the Old World to the New--all these were tides taken at the ebb to penetrate a weak-ened and changing society. The crisis of meaning in American culture today and some initial responses to it present new windows of opportu-nity for would-be refounders. What special qualities are required of these so-called otitriders of re-ligion? In an essay on the future of spirituality, ~5 Karl Rahner addressed the situation of believers living in a time of sociological diminishment. Their faith must be sustained by what he termed "a solitary, immediate experience of God." They are to be new types of mystics whose con-viction does not come from any place other than the hearts of their own existence. Infiltrators are, therefore, marked in the first place by a per-sonal experience of God. Their second trait might be called culture-friendliness. Refounding persons exhibit that certain feel for the divine possibilities in society, that willingness to mix it up with the shapers of meaning in the wider world. While they are not uncritical of the age, their more basic desire is to engage it in order to move quickly into the spiritual openings it presents. But infiltrators also have blind spots. A common one is to so con-centrate on the strategy and practicalities of insertion into a culture that they lose sight of the sources of the salvation they bring it. Two further images, each able to stand on its own, speak more pointedly to ways of listening for the Word which religious carry to the world they would serve. The Navigator A type of spiritual sensibility long associated with the religious move-ment is at the core of this metaphor. To arrive at it, we add to Theodore White's image of the boat bobbing in the mid-Pacific the lore surround-ing certain revered individuals in Polynesian culture known as Naviga-tors. Now gone, these adventurers were the last repositories in their so: ciety of the secrets of open ocean sailing. Without modern navigational instruments, they could make landfall on a tiny dot of coral thousands of miles across the seemingly trackless Pacific. Anthropologists found their basic talent to be an ability to read the movements of the waves. Through a long and spiritually intense initiation, they learned to tell the crucial difference between the surface disturbances and the ocean- 364 I Review Jbr Religious, May-June 1990 spanning bottom currents which led in definite directions, changed head-ings with the seasons, and were deflected as they ran past the archipela-goes that speckled the Southern Seas. From their minuscule platform on the raft, they could judge which of the great ocean waves to follow and which to let roll past. In terms we will use, these were the special ones who could read in the present which movements had the long-range prom-ise and which would not reach the far shore of the future. Joseph Campbell speaks of an analogous phenomenon in other primi-tive societies which today might come under the title recruitment. While undergoing the long initiation to adulthood, one of the adolescents suf-fers a kind of nervous breakdown. He seems to take things too seriously. He does not see reality the way his peers do and is not in step with their pace and general rhythms. Observing this, the elders remove him from the group--and make him their religious leader! Their intuition, says Campbell, is that the youngster is picking up the contours of another world. He is reading signals from a different depth and perceiving a pic-ture of the way the tribe could be when at its very best. In the language of the previous example, this person becomes the tribal navigator, not just in sailing but in all things, because he can discern directions com-ing 'back from the future,' directions which the rest of the clan recog-nizes as valuable and even salvific. In this metaphor, religious are among those special ones with sensi-tivity for what of God's future is just over the horizon. Intuiting the source and goal of the divine good working in the world, their faith vi-sion focuses more on the da~vning of God's presence than on its fruition in the present. To paraphrase Karl Rahner, they are among the first to catch the glimmer of the morning light on the far mountain which will eventually turn into the brilliance of day. ~6 Following him again, these are the eschatologically inciined believers whose intimations of God's grace which comes from beyond the world creates the saving tension with those disciples whose more incarnationa[ faith celebrates the pres-ence of that grace already come. ~v Two signs of the times which in an obverse way recommend the Navi-gator are the sleek idol-making machines of secularism and materialism. To those driven by them, all observable ~:eality is explainable in terms of itself, and things (including persons perceived as things) hold the high ground of ultimacy. To counteract this massive message, there is great need for the relativizer, the individual who cherishes the good of this world but who also spots its incompleteness and inability to save. These are the ones who catch the presence of the world-to-come in the midst hnages of Religious Life / 365 of the world-that-is-here and so can accept the graciousness of the pres-ent while rejecting its different pretensions to absoluteness. Groups who can "name grace''~8 because they know the difference between groundings which are ultimate and penultimate help save a world which too indiscriminately mixes the two. And indeed, has it not always been one of the liberating functions of religion to lead people into places where, in one writer's imagery, "they can transcend the mazeways they have known to glimpse new visions of what may be"?~9 If this metaphor again seems an old friend, it is because it carries strains of both a classic description of religious communities and of a strong trait in the spiritual experience of their founders. Magisterial docu-ments depict religious orders as witnesses to the world-to-come, as fore-tastes of the kingdom's fullness, and as apostles of the transcendent.2° The innovative apostolic strategies of founding women and men sprang from their ability to see the world which hemmed in their contemporar-ies against the backdrop of the better one illuminated by the light of the coming kingdom. The ancestry of religious life is heavily eschatologi-cal. Witness to that faith-dimension is needed in every age but for the reasons discussed above crucially so in this one. The community which images itself as Navigator values discern-ment. As a group it not only spots the religious possibilities and then im-plements them, but lays explicit hold of the power and source of its vi-sion. It is a mobile group, able to roam free, and has a lower than usual need for the security and predictability of set roles. Its critique of the status quo will disturb those less attuned to the future and it will line up more quickly with other visionaries in the world and Church. For all its sensitivity, such a community also has its limits. Naviga-tors can so focus on the land over the horizon that they miss some of the places they travel through in the present. Eschatological types have their eyes on the better world ahead and tend to be impatient with the slow birthing process needed to bring that world to light of day. In the lan-guage of psychology, they can be perfectionistic, enamored of the ideal, and intolerant of development toward it. In theological talk, they are tempted to angelism, imagining they can detour around the process of history instead of laboriously going through it.2~ Often enough, naviga-tors need to be brought back down to the agitated ocean surface and re-learn the wisdom of the journey itself. Enter the next image, a specialist in the art of journeying. The Lean and Light Remnant The title draws the scene for this third metaphor. It is the Israelite 366/Review for Religious, May-June 1990 people on a long and ragged trek across the desert. Their march this time is not toward the new Promised Land but toward their old one, having just been released from their captivity in Babylon and now heading back to rebuild a ruined Jerusalem. They have little to carry because recent slaves do not amass many possessions. They rely on no social standing other than the dubious kind of the refugee. Most telling, because so many of their kin fell off the trail on the way to Babylon or chose to remain behind there, their numbers are hardly the kind to pose a threat to world order. For all that, they are grateful for their station because they have learned from their experience and their prophets that dispossession and pilgrimage have a way of opening hearts to Yahweh. They are the Remnant. Not lamenting their losses nor ashamed of their smallness, they are in some measure even glad for them because these deprivations have proved to be better teachers about what counts before their God than the power they wielded generations ago. These travelers have no preten-sions of overwhelming their world with multitudes or even talent. What they have to offer is what they are constan,tly aware of receiving, the di-vine mercy and sustenance. At best, they see themselves as catalysts, tiny enzymes in a large mass, invisible and unobtrusive. They are satis-fied on the circumference of society because their ordeal has convinced them that circumferences can often enough in God's eyes be near the cen-ter. The fit between Remnant and the orders of the 1990s is the obvious demographic one of diminishment. Not just on the way, smallness is al-ready here. To begin to extol the benefits of shrinkage at such a time could be written off as a kind but unreal attempt to console the dying, a thought which most likely occurred to Babylon-bound Israelites as they heard the same sentiment from their preachers. But to at least some of them, the truth of the claim proved itself over time. That proof is being given again today in a number of testimonies to the spiritual good which can come of vulnerability and powerlessness. One especially forceful witness is given by the liberationists who in their own pragmatic way have unearthed the riches at the margins. The poor evangelize the wealthy, the no-accounts unlock the Gospel's mean-ing for people of consequence, the small, ordinary, and forgotten ones are revealed as standing at the hub of the kingdom's activity. The very meaning of insignificant is transposed. Another more quiet testimony comes from Jean Vanier and his years of living with the handicapped.22 These sociologically most invisible of Images of Religious Life / :367 people have their own ways of making very visible the presence of grace in creation. The precariousness of their existence and their survival-need for the compassion of others lays bare the essence of how it is be-tween God and all of humanity. Such little people, when cared for and allowed to progress on their own terms, turn out to be large gifts to the caretakers. Gospels such as these are advancing the claim that diaspora time is the spiritually best time. Facing the onset of their own smallness, reli-gious communities could do worse than take to heart this winter spiritual-ity. In its bleakness they might come to see another kind of beauty and in its silence a call to a more anonymous style of influencing the world around them. Is this not the climate in which most all orders and con-gregations began? In the desert where smallness reveals itself as bless-ing by keeping the group real, minority status does not allow social and numerical superiority to figure in its estimation of success. Pilgrim com-munities of the coming decades will have both grieved the loss of high visibility and learned better to rely on their own inner experience as sus-tainer and guidepost. Like the tiny band of emigres approaching the out-skirts of Jerusalem, they will recognize their smallness as the lean and light condition which best suits them for the task of building their old/ new city. Scripture experts tell us that when the exiles entered the settlement, they found others already there, both their own who had been left be-hind as well as others who over the decades had wandered in. To move to our final metaphor, we add the following piece of imagination. Because the project of reconstructing the Temple and city would re-quire more arms than these pilgrims could supply, they realized they needed the help of the resident aliens. But the Jews also noted that these foreigners possessed building skills different from their own which might add much beauty to the final product. The New Jerusalem could better be built collaboratively. The last image is at hand. The Square Dance The picture here is of a swirling group, moving to the rhythm of the same tune and the shouts of the one caller. The dancers begin as a single couple, then join larger and still larger circles, change to other partners along the way, then come back to the original two--and repeat the cycle again and again. While at the beginning the steps and switches are a bit ragged and the caller's instructions hard to understand, the promenaders do not drop out because the energy spreading across the floor has caught them. They know best the partners they came with, but they also know 368 / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 how much more dance there is when they can join hands with other cir-cles and be part of the bigger whirl in the room. They trade some of the freedom of couple-dancing for the chance to be part of something larger to which they now know they can contribute. The dance metaphor speaks of new ways for the religious communi-ties to be together, both with themselves and with others. Beginning within the circles of their own congregations, they move out to other prov-inces and communities, to laity, to their natural families, couples, friends outside their order, co-workers, to other Infiltrators, Navigators and Remnants both Christian and non. The image encourages them to listen for the rhythm which matches the cadence of their own religious experi-ence no matter where in society it is sounding. With a graciousness, they let go the hands of the community partners with whom they began so that these too are free to step off into the bigger enterprise. But they are also happy to welcome them back when the time for regrouping comes round again. Each member of the congregation sacrifices some independence, convinced that the overall cause is worth the initial unsettlement and risk. The sign of the times for Square Dance is quite simply its present existence. Many congregations have already moved the borders on their maps of inclusion. Associates, service corps, laymission extensions, in-terprovincial apostolates, joint ventures by men's and women's branches of the same order all testify to the shifting sense of what it means to be-long. If the initial enthusiasm for widening circles produced some overly fluid boundaries, it did enlarge perceptions of membership. This stretch-ing permitted groups to recognize certain natural allies outside their walls who were in effect anonymous carriers of the community charism. A more recent attempt to strike a better balance between centrifugal and cen-tripetal forces has sought to tie tighter but still flexible bonds between the members. One fine instance is the recent essay by George Wilson which tracks the sharp change in attitudes of Jesuits about inclusion.-~3 The image of a single closed circle embracing all the spiritual, profes-sional, familial, apostolic, and even recreational aspects of communal life has largely been supplanted by another of many smaller circles, some not connected to each other and most tellingly not to the Jesuit one. Be-longing no longer means fitting everything inside the one ring of total community but rather negotiating between the different circles (for ex-ample, professional societies, local living group, non-Society friends both male and female, the world Jesuit fellowship, and so forth), espe-cially between those of one's primary and secondary commitments. hnages of Religious Life / 369 Useful as it is on the intra-community level, a Square Dance model also serves the wider society, Any truly collaborative venture on behalf of issues other than the group's self-preservation is a prophetic word to a culture so tilted away from the ability to cooperate by the weight of individualism. And could it not also be that arguments within religious communities themselves against widening the circle (phrased at times as the loss of needed autonomy or dilution of our special spirit) are partially an echo of the privatist bias in the wider society? Whatever the case, the move to collaborate for reasons beyond self-interest is not only evangeli-cally countercultural, but hearkens back to that surrender to something greater which gave rise to the religious movement in the first place. People of the Square Dance have a mind for the communal. The op-posite of in-house types who require the safety of same-sex, walled-off environments, they still maintain primary loyalties to their own, Their toleration for fluidity in boundaries is high. They have opted to learn ne-gotiation between different memberships rather than to close ranks around the one. This insight that collaborative communities are in a position to infil-trate the individualistic culture completes the circle. The Square Danc-ers widen the Remnant's sphere of influence. Both look to the Naviga-tors for the source and direction of their projects. And all three join in the Infiltrator's attempt to bring the depth of the kingdom to the shallow places of the world. It is time to conclude. Conclusion Nearly twenty years ago when reflecting on the spirituality of the fu-ture, Karl Rahner predicted that whatever forms it takes, it "will remain the old spirituality of the Church's history."24 He meant that even though the relationship between the different parts of Christian existence will shift, its essential elements (for example, adoring the incomprehensible God, following the suffering and triumphant Lord, protesting the world's forms of wealth, power, and pleasure, living within the Church, and so forth) will remain. In a somewhat reverse way, the same holds true for the different images of religious life with which we have been playing. These paradigms do not submerge those components which the recent Vatican document termed "Essential Elements,''25 but they do recon-figure them. Communal living, for instance, is linked to mission in a much different way in a Square Dance framework than it had been in more tightly inclusive forms of the Augustinian one-heart-and-one-spirit tradition. It is precisely that repatterning which makes all the dif-ference. For it allows religious the suppleness not only to set new courses 370 / Review for Religious, May-June 1990 by the waves of the future moving past them, but also to take conscious advantage of the momentum those waves contain. To return to Rahner, religious life will and will not remain the same. Its refounders are those people who through freshly imaging its possibilities will keep the reli-gious movement intact and at the same time reshape it into its most us-able form for the coming age. The overall interplay between the images seems an apt point on which to conclude. The Remnant calls the Infiltrator to remember the hum-ble conditions under which the message is given; the Infiltrator in turn cautions the Remnant against enshrining smallness as a value unto itself. The Navigator supplies the direction for the Infiltrator; the Infiltrator pow-ers the boat which the Navigator might be content only to steer. All three are vitalized by community living, but now expanded into its Square Dance form. Our attempt has been to suggest culturally relevant paradigms which might anchor 'newly emerging syntheses for religious life. If these par-ticular ones do not speak to individuals or communities, they might at least trigger the power of other imaginations to discover even deeper ly-ing metaphors which can again hold the center for this ancient and ever new blessing in the Church. NOTES ~ Thomas Clark, "Religious Leadership in a Time of Cultural Change," Religious Life at the Crossroads, David Fleming, ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 169. 2 In Search of History (New.York: Harper and Row, 1978). 3 Habits of the Heart (New York: Harper and Row, 1985). 4 The Emerging New Class (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1986). 5 "Religious Life Of The Future," Origins, Sept. 22, 1988 (Vol. 18, no. 15) pp. 234-239. 6 For a general sketch of this school and its leading proponent, Jaques Derrida, see Religion and Intellectual Life, Wint

Collected data and research material presented in the monograph are a result of financing of the Polish science budget in the years 2011−14; the research project was financed by the National Science Centre according to decision no. DEC-2011/01/B/HS4/04744. The project that resulted in this monograph was financed from public funds for education for 2011 − 2014, the National Science Center under Contract No. DEC-2011/01/B/HS4/04744. ; Value-Based Working Capital Management analyzes the causes and effects of improper cash flow management between entrepreneurial organizations with varying levels of risk. This work looks at the motives and criteria for decision-making by entrepreneurs in their efforts to protect the financial security of their businesses and manage financial liquidity. Michalski argues that businesses exposed to greater risk need a different approach to managing liquidity levels. The scientific aim of this monograph is to present the essence of financial liquidity management under specific conditions faced by enterprises with risk and uncertainty. Enterprises differ from one another in risk sensitivity. This difference affects the area of taking decisions by the managers of those enterprises. The result of interactions between levels of liquidity and sensitivity to risk affects the managers of such enterprises (Altman 1984; Tobin 1958; Back 2001; Tobin 1969). In this monograph the research hypothesis is the claim that enterprises with a higher sensitivity to risk are very different from enterprises with a lower sensitivity to risk, resulting in a different approach to managing their working capital. Enterprise managing teams react to risk, and this reaction is adjusted by an enterprise's sensitivity to risk. Because of its subject area, the book will address the issues of corporate finance. The monograph discusses the behavior of enterprises and the relationships between them and other factors in the market occurring in the management process under the conditions of limited resources. As a result of these interactions with the market and the environment in which individuals who manage enterprises operate, there is an interaction between money and real processes that in the end are the cornerstone of wealth building. This chapter discusses the objectives and nature of enterprises in the context of their risk sensitivity, as well as the relationships between the objectives of enterprises and the characteristic features of their businesses. Enterprises operate in various business environments, but generally speaking, they all have one main aim: wealth creation for their owners. The realization of that aim depends on an idea of business in which the enterprise is an instrument to collect money from clients of the enterprise's services and products. Business environment is crucial not only for future enterprise cash inflows from the market but also for risk and uncertainty (Asch, and Kaye 1997; Copeland, and Weston 1988; Fazzari, and Petersen 1993). According to the author, it is necessary to include an understanding of that risk and uncertainty of future in the rate that reduces the net size of free cash flows for the enterprise owners, beneficiaries, or more generally stakeholders. Enterprise value creation is the main financial aim of the firm in relation to working capital components (Graber 1948; Jensen, and Meckling 1976; Lazaridis, and Trifonidis 2006). Working capital management is a part of a general enterprise strategy to its value maximization (Laffer 1970; Kieschnick, Laplante, and Moussawi 2009; Lyland, and Pyle 1977). This chapter presents a definition of financial liquidity and liquidity-level measurements. This chapter contains four subchapters that address the specific role of short-term financial decisions, a classification of definitions of financial liquidity, sources of information about liquidity level, and liquidity-level measurements (Lazaridis and Tryfonidis 2006; Long, Malitz, and Ravid 1993; Kieschnick, Laplante, and Moussawi 2009). Financial liquidity definition and liquidity-level measurements Here we have an opportunity to present the author's opinion on what assets should be financed with short-term funds and what the level of liquidity is in an enterprise (Michalski 2012a). The discussion also pertains to the issue of the dividing line between long-term and short-term decisions, with greater emphasis on the durability of their effects, rather than the decision-making speed. This section also attempts to answer the question: What are the short-term effects of operations under conditions of uncertainty and risk? The reason for the considerations in this section is the need to characterize the decisions that affect the level of enterprise liquidity. The research hypothesis of this monograph assumes that differences between more risk sensitive and less risk sensitive enterprises are seen in liquidity management. Simply because the enterprises, during financial liquidity management, take into account the differences in their risk sensitivity. This chapter discusses the relationship between firm value and business risk sensitivity. The chapter starts with a presentation of intrinsic liquidity value and firm reactions to market liquidity value. This is the basis for target liquidity level in the enterprise. Liquid assets are the main part of working capital assets, so the next part of the chapter focuses on working capital investment strategies and strategies of financing such investments in working capital in the context of firm value creation. The chapter concludes that, from a firm-value-creation point of view, more risk-sensitive entities should use flexible-conservative strategies, while less risk-sensitive entities have the freedom to use restrictive-aggressive strategies. In the context of a crisis, this is the clear answer and explanation for higher levels of working capital investments observed empirically during and after a crisis. The determinants of intrinsic value of liquidity are attributed to liquidity by enterprise management. Enterprises in which financial liquidity has a high internal value will have a tendency to maintain reasonable liquid resource assets at a higher level. The levels of stocks of funds maintained by enterprises are also the result of the relationship between the liquidity market value and the intrinsic value of liquidity. It demonstrates how to approach the estimation of liquidity and presents the market value of liquidity. Having connected this information with the knowledge of manifestations of the internal liquidity, we can offer an explanation as to why the target (and also probably the optimal) level of liquidity for enterprises with higher-than-average risk sensitivity is at a higher level than the corresponding target (optimal) level for enterprises with a lower level of risk sensitivity. Working capital value-based management models In this part of the monograph we discuss the items contained within the cost of maintaining inventory. Using this approach, a model of managing inventories is presented. Theoretically, the value-maximizing optimal level of inventory is determined to be the modified EOQ model, presented as VBEOQ model. We also present an outline of issues associated with the risk of inventory management and its impact on the value of the enterprise for its owner. We also discuss the principle of the optimal batch production model and how the size of the production batch affects the value of the enterprise for its owner. Here also is demonstrated a modification of the POQ model: VBPOQ. The proposed modification takes into account the rate of the cost of capital financing and the measures involved in inventory when determining the optimal batch production. When managing the commitment of the inventory, it is crucial to take into account the impact of such decisions on the long-term effectiveness of the enterprise. This chapter also discusses the relationships between the management of accounts receivables and the value of a business. A modified (considering the value of a business) model of incremental analysis of receivables is presented, as is a discussion of the importance of capacity utilization by an enterprise for making management decisions pertaining to accounts receivables. Issues related to the management of working capital and enterprise liquidity are and will be an area of research. The analysis in this study focused primarily on working capital and liquidity management; understanding its specifics will facilitate the management of liquidity in any type of organization. Working capital as a specific buffer against risk has its special role during a crisis and can serve as a good forecasting indicator about future economic problems in the economy if a whole business environment notices higher levels of working capital and its components, like cash, inventories, and accounts receivables. The scientific value of the issues discussed in the book is associated with the issue of working capital and liquidity management in enterprises. It is also a result of the exploration and definition of the main financial objective of businesses and the relationship between the objective and the management of working capital and enterprise liquidity. The choice of topic and the contents of research resulted also from empirical observation. Empirical data on enterprises that operate in countries touched by the last crisis document higher-than-average levels of working capital before, during, and after the crisis in these enterprises. These conditions provided the means for a "natural experiment" of sorts. From that point, working capital management theory faced a necessity of even wider development. ; Collected data and research material presented in the monograph are a result of financing of the Polish science budget in the years 2011−14; the research project was financed by the National Science Centre according to decision no. DEC-2011/01/B/HS4/04744. The project that resulted in this monograph was financed from public funds for education for 2011 − 2014, the National Science Center under Contract No. DEC-2011/01/B/HS4/04744. ; How to Cite this Book Harvard Grzegorz Michalski . (April 2014). Value-Based Working Capital Management . [Online] Available at: http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137391834. (Accessed: 28 May 2014). APA Grzegorz Michalski . (April 2014). Value-Based Working Capital Management . Retrieved from http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137391834 MLA Grzegorz Michalski . Value-Based Working Capital Management . (April 2014) Palgrave Macmillan. 28 May 2014. Vancouver Grzegorz Michalski . Value-Based Working Capital Management [internet]. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; April 2014. [cited 2014 May 28]. Available from: http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137391834 OSCOLA Grzegorz Michalski , Value-Based Working Capital Management , Palgrave Macmillan April 2014 ; Author Biography Grzegorz Michalski is Assistant Professor of Corporate Finance at the Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland. His main areas of research are Business Finance and Financial Liquidity Management. He is currently studying the liquidity decisions made by organizations. He is the author or co-author of over 80 papers and 10 books, and sits on the editorial board of international conferences and journals. Reviews 'Due to the recent financial crisis, interest in the topic of working capital has grown significantly to both theory and practice. The research results presented by Grzegorz Michalski contribute to the development of a comprehensive theory of liquidity management and the creation of an integrated working capital and liquidity for different types of business model. The job is processed on a high quality level." -Marek Panfil, Ph.D, Director of Business Valuation Department Warsaw School of Economics 'The book of Grzegorz Michalski is a very good publication that has found the right balance between theory and practical aspects of financial liquidity management. It is extremely timely and valuable, and should be required reading for all corporate finance practitioners, academicians, and students of finance. Value-Based Working Capital Management is comprehensive, highly readable publication, and replete with useful practical examples. It has also enabled corporate leaders to make better-informed decisions in their efforts to protect the financial security of their businesses and manage financial liquidity.' -Petr Polak, Author of Centralization of Treasury Management, and Associate Professor of Finance, University of Brunei Darussalam ; REFERENCES Introduction Adner, R., and D. A. Levinthal (2004). "What Is Not a Real Option: Considering Boundaries for the Application of Real Options to Business Strategy." Academy of Management Review 29(1). Altman, E. (1984). "A Further Empirical Investigation of the Bankruptcy Cost Question." Journal of Finance 39. Back, P. (2001). "Testing Liquidity Measures as Bankruptcy Prediction Variables." 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Issue 30.6 of the Review for Religious, 1971. ; EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editors, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to I~VIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 6:31o3. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pe.nnsylvania 191o6. + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by faculty members of the School of Divinity of Saint Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Edu-cational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright ~) 1971 by REVIEW 'VOg RELIGIOUS. Published for Review for Religious at Nit. Ro\'al & Guilford Ave., Baltimore, .Xld. Printed in U.S.A. Set'ond class postage paid at Baltimore, .Maryland and ,at addithmal mailing offices. 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 renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order paya-ble to REVIEW POg RELIOIOGS in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. Change of address requests should include former address. Renewals and new subscriptions should be sent to REviEW FOR RELIGIOUS; P. O. Box l 110; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Manuscripts, editorial correspondence, and books for re-view should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 619 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; Saint Louts, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of the Questions and Answers editor. NOVEMBER 1971 VOLUME 30 NUMBER 6 JOSEPH F. GALLEN,.S.J. Decree on Confessions of Religious. In a decree dated December 8, 1970, effective immedi-ately, and confirmed by the Pope on November 20, 1970, the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Instb tutes made the following.changes in the canon law on the sacrament of penance for religious, especially religious women, and on exclusion from a religious institute of one in temporary vows because of ill health. These provisions will remain in force until the new Code of Canon Law is effective. Number 4, e), of the Decree states that the pre-scriptions of the present canon law that are contrary to the new provisions, incompatible with them, or which because of them no longer apply, are suspended. Any provision of the Decree that~ affects novices will apply to those in a temporary commitment other than temporary vows. The numbering of the Decree has been retained in the following explanation. 1-2. The Decree exhorts religious to value highly the sacrament of penance as a means of strengthening the fundamental gift of metanoia or conversion to the king-dom of Christ, and to esteem in the same way the fre-quent use of this sacrament, which debpens ~true knowl-edge of self and humility, provides spiritual direction, and increases grace. These and other wonderful effects, according to n. 2, contribute not only to daily growth in virtue but are highly beneficial also to the common good. 3. All religious, men and women, clerical and lay, ex-empt and nonexempt, should strive to receive the sacra-ment of penance frequently, that is, twice a month. Supe-riors are to encourage this frequency and make it possible [or the members to go to confession at least every two weeks and even oftener, if they wish to do so. In the past, canon law did not oblige religious to go to confession at least once a week. The canonical obligation extended onl~ to superiors, who had to make it possible for their subjects to confess at least once a week. How-÷ ÷ ÷ Joseph F. Gallen, s.J., writes from St. Joseph's Church at 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Penn-sylvania 19106. VOLUME 30, 1971 4" 4" J. F. Gallen, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 944 ever, the Code of Canon Law presupposed that an obliga-tion of weekly confession, existdd at least from custom, and very universally the constitutions obliged religious to confess at/east once a week. 4, a). "All women religious and novices, in Order that they may have proper liberty, may make their confession validly and licitly to any priest approved for hearing confessions in the locality. For this no special jurisdiction or designation is henceforth required." The first sentence of this number" gives all women reli-gious and novices, in orders, congregations, or societies of common life, the right always to go to confession validly and licitly to any priest of their choice, whether he is diocesan or religious, who is approved for confessions in the locality of the partic.ular confession. Furthermore, as this number of the Decree also states, the confessor does not have to be designated or appointed, for religious women.' Even in the past there were no canonical norms on the confessions of men or women postulants, who were regulated canonically by the same laws on confession as secular men and women. Religious women and novices are therefore .no longer obliged to go to ordinary or ex-traordinary confessors, eveh when such confessors exist for their houses. The special confessor of a particular reli-gious woman of canon 520, par. 2, no longer exists be-cause a religious woman may go, even habitually or al-ways, to any confessor of her choice. The same reason excludes the supplementary confessors (c. 521, par. 2), the occasional confessor (c. 522), and the confessor of seri-ously sick religious women (c. 523). Number 8, e), of the recent norms on the papal enclosure of nuns permits the following: "A priest [even if he possesses no jurisdiction for confessions] may likewise be admitted to assist those religious suffering from a chronic or greave illness." Mere spiritual direction, unlike absolution, does not require jurisdiction for confessions. Because of the sus.pended canons listed above in this paragraph, canon 2414, the last canon in the Code, is also suspended. This canon reads: If a superioress acts against the prescriptions of canons 521, par. 3, 522, and 523, she shall be admonished by, the local or-dinary; if again delinquent, she shall be punished by removal from office, and the Sacred Congregation of Religious is to be immediately informed of the matter. By reason of the second sentence of this number, spe-cial jurisdiction is no longer required for the valid or licit confessions of professed women religious or novices, whether in orders or congregations, nor for those in the analogons states of societies of women living in common without public vows (c; 675). All of these are now ab-solved in virtue of the same jurisdiction as secular women. Priests ordinarily possess jurisdiction for the con-fessions of the faithful ol~ both sex~esf@hey may therefore, in the locality for which they posses such jurisdiction, valid!y absolve the religious women listed" above any-wherd, in the confessional or outside of it. They may licitly do the latter in a case of sickness or for any other reason of like import (c. 910, par. 1). In the pa.st, to absolve validly and licitly the~ same religious women listed above, special jurisdiction was nec-essary. The jurisdiction was special becfiuse it "~as not contained in the jurisdiction granted for the faithful of both sexes~or for women. It had t3 be given expressly for religious women (c. 876, par. 1). The pres.ent suspension of the necessity of special jurisdiction also implies the suspension of the necessity of the designation of a special spiritual director (c. 520, par. 2) by the local ordinary or the regular superior. The i'eason for the necessity of this designation was that special jurisdiction for confession was granted to such a spiritual director. Lay religious institutes o[ men. According to n. 5 of the Decree, the applicable norms of n. 4 on women appertain~ also to lay institutes of men. Therefore, all religious and novices of such institutes may go to confession to any confessor, as explained above for women (n. 4, a). Be-cause of this right of choice, the special ordinary ~onfes-sor of professed °(c. 528), for whom the permission of the religious superior was° required, no longer exists," as is true also of the supplementary confessors of novices in the same institutes (c. 566, par. 2, n. 3),'and likewise of the occasional confessor of both professed and novices (c. 519). All of canon 566, par. 2, on confessors of novices in lay and clerical institutes of men is also suspended. Clerical institutes o[ men. Nothing is said directly in the Decree on the confessions of members of clerical or-ders' or congregations except that they too Should go to confession twice a month (n. 3). However, the applicable provisions on the confessions of women religious and nomces must also apply to clerical institutes. Otherwise, their members would be in an inferior condition to that of religious women and of the members of lay institutes of men, which has not been their status thus far in the laws of the Church. It is also the sufficiently evident intention of the Sacred Congregation to simplify the law on confes-sion [or religious and to grant greater liberty, and these are also desirable in the laws affecting clerical institutes. Therefore, all religious and novices in clerical institutes may make their confession to any confessor, as explained above [or women (n. 4, a). It would be incredible that clerical religious alone would be excluded from the pre-ceding concession. As above for lay institutes of men, the occasional confessor of both professe.d and novices (c. 519) ÷ ÷ ÷ Conlesslons VOLUME 30, 19TI 945 ~. l~. Gallen, $.~. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 946 no longer exists nor the supplementary confessors for novices of canon 566, par. 2, n.3. 4, b). An ordinary confessor must be named for monas-teries of contemplative nuns, for houses of formation of women, and for large houses of women. An extraordinary confessor is to be named at least for the first two types of the preceding houses. The women religious and novices are not obliged to present themselves to either such ordi-nary or extraordinary confessors. The provision for the monasteries of contemplative nuns should in practice be extended to nuns who are doing immediate apostolic work, for example, conducting schools within their monasteries, and also to the houses or monasteries of contemplative congregations of sisters, for example, the Sisters Adorers of the Precious Blood, who have monasteries in the archdiocese of Portland, Oregon and in the dioceses of ~Brooklyn, Lafayette, Indi-ana, Manchester, Ogdensbu?g, Portland, Maine, and To-ledo Houses of formation of women include novitiates and juniorates, although the small number of novices and juniors and other circumstances can in some cases render the appointment of ordinary and extraordinary confessors impractical. There is no canonical definition of a large religious house. The determination of such houses should be made hy the local ordinary after a considera-tion of all the circumstances and even by consultation of its members. It could happen that the members of a very large house in a city can and prefer to go to any confes-sor. The presence or absence of members who cannot go outside the house for confession is obviously an impor-tant factor. Nor is consideration for the confessor to be forgotten, for example, an ordinary confessor who would come every two weeks and find nothing to do. In some cases a priest such as the one Or" ones who celebrate daily Mass in a larger house may be able to handle readily the few confessions that will occur. The fact that no religious woman or novice is obliged to present herself to any of these ordinay or extraordinary confessors follows from the general principle of the decree in n. 4, a), that all women religious and novices may make their confession validly and licitly to any priest approved for hearing confessions in the locality. This number of the Decree commands merely [he appointment of an extraordinary confessor, that is, the confessor who frequently, not neces-sarily at least for times during the year, is accessible that the members of the community may have the opportunity of confessing to another than the ordinary confessor. This was the definition of the same wording in canon 528 on the extraordinary confessor for professed religious in lay institutes of men. The Code explicity commanded the extraordinary confessor of professed religious women and novices (c. 521, par. 1)and of novices in institutes qf men' (c. 566, par. 2, n. 4) to be available atleast four times a year, but this provision is suspended by the Decree, In a liouse of ~formati0n, ord_i.nary .and extraordipar.y_, confeS, sors are to be app0intedl only for those in formation unless, with regard to an ordinary confessor, tbe other members of the house are sufficient to constitute a large house. This doctrine is evident from the fact that ordi-nary and ~xtraor,dinary confessors would not be ap-pointed [or these other members if they were in another house. Therefore, for example, in a novitiate house these confessors are appointed for the novices, not [or the mem-bers of the generalate or provincialate staff residing in tbe same house of formation. 4, c). "For other co.mmunities [in additition to the monasterieg of nuns, houses of formation, and large houses of n. 4, b) immediately above] an ordinary confes-sor may be named at the request of the community itself or after consultation with its members if, in the judgment of tlie ordinary, special circumstances justify such an ap-pointment." The "special circumstances" will be at least very com-monly those that prevent the religious women of a house fi'om going to confession twice a month unless an ordi-nary confessor is appointed. This can arise from the pres-ence in the house of religious who cannot go out for confession, from the location of the house that makes access to other confessors difficult, or that allows such access to only one confessor, for example, the sole priest in the one parish in a small town, and so forth. Lay and clerical institutes oJ men. With the exception of that on monasteries of nuns, the provisions of n. 4, b) and c) immediately above apply also to lay institutes of men by reason of n. 5, and to clerical institutes in virtue Of the arguments given under n. 4, a). It would again be incredible that ordinary contessors would continue to have to be appointed for all houses of clerical institutes (c. 518, par. 1) but only for the restricted number of houses of religious women and lay institutes of men ac-cording to n. 4, b) of the present Decree. Houses of for-mation in Clerical institutes include also houses of study (C. 587) and houses for the apostolic year and tertianship (see Sedes Sapientiae, nn. 48, 51). The judgment on the existence of a large house and on the special circumstan-ces tbat justify the appointment of ordinary confessors in houses that are not houses of formation or large apper-tains in clerical orders and congregations to the religious superior who has the right of appointing ordinary confes-sors according to the constitutions 0f the particular insti-tute. 4, d). "The local ordinary should choose confessors 4. 4. 4. ~. F. Gallen, S.]. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 948 ~arefully. They should be priests of sufficient maturity and possess the other necessary qualities. The ordinary may determine the number, age and term of office of the confessors and may name them or renew their appoint-ment after consultation with the community concerned." This paragraph of the decree commands the local ordi-nary to choose the ordinary and ektraordinary confessors of women religious and novices of the tw9 preceding sections with care. The suitability of priests for these two duties appertains to the judgment of the local ordinary. For example, it is no longer required that these confessors be 'forty years of age (c. 524, par. 1). The local ordinary also determines the number of such confessors, and it is no longer demanded that per se only one ordinary and extraordinary confessor be appointed for each house (cc. 520, par. 1; 521, par. 1). The local ordinary may but is not obliged to determine the duration of the term of office of these confessors, for example, two year.s, and may reappoint them immediately and indefinitely after con-sultation with the community concerned. He may also, with the same consulation, immediately appoint an ordi-nary coiafessor as extraordinary of the same commun.ity (see c. 524, par. 2). Clerical and lay institutes o[ men. The ordinary and extraordinary confessors in these institutes from the na-ture of the matter are to be priests suitable for the office. The provisions, however, of n. 4~, d) of the Decree imme-diately above apply only to institutes of women both from their wording, which is based on the canons on confessors of religious women, and from the fact that the present canon law prescribes no qualities for the ordinary and extraordinary confessors in institutes of men, whether clerical or lay. It is evidently permitted to follow such a provision as the previous consultation of the com-munity concerned. The following are the canons specifically on confessors of religious that remain in force: Can. 518, par. 1. In . every clerical Institute there shall be deputed. [ordinary] confessors with power, if it be ques~ tion of an exempt Institute, to absolve also from the cases re-served in the Institute. Par. 2. Religious Superiors, having faculties to hear confes' sions, can, in conformity with the law, hear the confessions of their subjects who spontaneously and freely approach them for that purpose, but they may not without grave reason hear them habitually. Par. 3. Superiors must take care not to induce, personally, or through others, by force, by fear, or by importunate persua-sion, or by any other means, any of their subjects to confess his sins to them. Can. 524, par. 3. The confessors, whether ordinary or extra-ordinary, of religious women are not, in any manner, to inter- fere either in the internal or external government of the com-munity. Can. 525. For all houses of religious women immediately subject to the Apostolic See or to the local Ordinary, the latter selects both ordinary an.d extraordinary ,confessor;. ~o~" those subject to a Regular Superior, this Superior presents the con-fessors to the'Ordinary who will grant them the approval to hear the confessions of'the nuns; the Ordinary also shall supply, if necessary, for the negligence of the Regular Superior, Can. 527. According to the terms of canon 880, the local Ordinary can, for a serious~ cause, remove both the ordinary and extraordinary confessor of religious women, even when the monastery is subject to Regulars and the confessor himself a Regular, nor is the Ordinary bound to make known the reason for the removal to anyone except to the Holy See, if it should require the reason from him; he must, however, if the nuns are subject to Regulars, inform the Regular Superior of the removal. Can. 875, par. 2. In an exempt lay Institute, the Superior proposes the confessor, who, however, must receive jurisdiction from the Ordinary of the place in which the religious house is situated. The preceding are taken from the authorized but unof-ficial translation, Canonical Legislation concerning Reli-gious. Canon 891, which also remains in force, is ~not contained in this translation. It reads as follows: Can. 891. The master of novices and his socius, the superior of a seminary or of a college may not hear the sacramental con-fessions of his students residing in the same house with him, unless the students spontaneously request this in particular cases for a grave and urgent reason. The canons therefore specifically on confessors of reli-gious that remain are part of canon 518, par. 1, and all the rest of this canon; all of canons 524, par. 3, 525, 527, 875, par. 2, and 891. "II The final clause of canon 637 is to be understood in the sense that a religious in temporary vows who, because of physical or mental illness even if contracted after pro-fession, is judged by the competent superior with the consent of his council, on the basis of examinations by physicians or other specialists, to be incapable of living the religious life without personal harm or harm to the institute, may be refused admission to renewal of vows or to final profession. The decision in such cases is to be taken with charity and equ!ty." According to canon 637 a professed of temporary vows could be excluded from the renewal of temporary vows or from making perpetual profession because of ill health ofily if it was proved with certainty that the ili health had been contracted and fraudulently concealed or dissi-mulated before the first profession of temporary vows. The same principle is true of the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows (c. 647, par. 2, n. 2). These canons are not completely logical. The time of temporary vows is Confessions 949 4. 4. 4" J. F. Gallen, S.J. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 950 one of probation; the canons permit exclusion or dis-missal of such professed for other inculpable causes; and canon 637 otherwise requires only .just and reasona-ble causes for exclusion and canon 647, par. 2, n. 2, only serious reasons for dismissai. These canons also caused serious and, without recourse to the Holy See, even insol-uble problems. This was verified especially with regard to psychological disorders when the subject would not vol-untarily leave the institute. His retention could cause great difficulty to the institute, even intensify his own condition, and cases occurred in which superiors could not in conscience admit such subjects to further profes-sions, particularly to perpetual profession~ It is evident that the decision in these cases of physical or psychologi-cal health is to be made with proper regard and considera-tion for the subject, and, as the Decree states, with char-ity and equity (see REVIEW I~OF RELIGIOUS, 16 [1957], 218-9, 271; 25 [1966], 1104-5). In virtue of the present legislation in II, an exclusion from further temporary or perpetual profession because of physical or psychological illness, even if contracted after the first temporary profession, may be made by the competent superior with the consent of his or her council if they judge, on the basis of examinations by physicians or other specialists, that the subject is incapable of living the religious life without personal harm or harm to the institute. The subject should ordinarily at least be first encouraged to leave voluntarily and this as soon as such a condition is sufficiently ascertained. The new legislation is concerned only with an exclu-sion from further profession; it does not extend to the dismissal of a professed of temporary vows in the same case. This can cause a serious difficulty if the case comes to a head when a considerable part of a temporary profes-sion is unexpired, for example, in the early part of the second year of a three-year profession, and the subject will not leave voluntarily. This case, when it occurs, may be proposed to the Sacred Congregation for a solution. Practical summary o[" the Decree. The~ norm'~f fre-quency of confession is every two weeks. All religious may always confess to any confessor in the locality. Spe-cial jurisdiction is not required for religious women. The only confessors proper to religious are ordinary confessors in monasteries Of nuns and in the following houses of men and women: houses of f6rmation, large houses, and other houses in special circumstances, and extraordinary confessors in the same monasteries and houses of forma-tion. Such confessors of women do not have to be forty years of age. A professed of temporary vows may be ex-cluded from further professions because of physical or psychological illness. CHRISTOPHER KIESLING, O.P. Ministry in the Schools of the Church Religious should get out of Catholic schools. Such schools should not exist.The Church should not be in the business of education, but should devote its resources to the social problems of our day. Moreover, Church schools serve the affluent middle and upper classes more than the oppressed minorities. Religious, ther~efore, should go into other ministries in which they can serve the world, especially the underprivileged. Undoubtedly it is good that religious are venturing into nev~ ministries besides ~eaching or administration in schools of the Church. It is good for sisters and brothers because some have temperaments, inclinations, interests, and talents which equip them much better for other min-istries titan that of the church school. It is good for the Chnrch and the world because both have grave needs which can be met only by the service of highly motivated and generous people such as religious. But while some religious should be encouraged to enter into new forms of apostolate, it would be most unfortu-nate if others were not encouraged to enter Or Continue in the apostolate of the schools of the Church. This apos-tolate is extremely important and even assumes, a ni~wness today by virtue of the many changes taking place in both the Church and the w6rld. As is well known, these schools are threatened with extinction today. The demise of the schools of the Church, however, is a most grievous set-back to the emergence of mature Christian laymen in the life and apostolate of the Church and hence in the Church's mission to the world, especially to the world's social problems. Vatican II expres'~d the int.egral mission of the Church with special clarity. It was compelled to do tiffs in its efforts to describe p, ositively the place, digni_ty, and role of the laity in the Church. The Decree on the Apostolate o] the Laity, for instance, says: 4- 4- Christopher Kies-ling, O.P., is a fac-ulty member of Aquinas Institute School of Theology in Dubuque, Iowa 52001. VOLUME 30, 1971 951 + C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW I:OR REI.IGIOUS 952 Christ's redemptive work, while of itself directed toward the salvation of men, involves also the renewal of the whole tem-poral order. Hence the. mission of the Church is not on!y to bring to men tlie message and grace of Christ, but also to pene-trate and perfect the temporal sphere with the spirit of the Gospel (n, 5). Tlie missiofi of the Church, in other words, is not to rescue men from this world for salvation in another world, but to unite men to God in this world and through them permeate human activity, culture, and his-tory with fl~e spirit of Christ, thus cooperating with God in bringing all creation to its divinely intended goal: eternal life and resurrection of the body for men in a new heaven and a new earth. Every member of the Church participates in her mis-sion: For this the ChurCh was founded: that., she might bring all men to share in Christ,s saving redemption; and that through them the whole world might in actual fact be brought into relationship with him. All activity of the Mystical Body directed to the attainment of this goal is called the apostolate, and the Church carries it on in various ways through all her members. For by its very nature the Christian vocation is also a vocation to the apostolate (ibid., n. 2). The Church is the whole body of baptized believers, sent by Christ into the world to bring men his truth and grace and to work for the divinely willed perfection of creation. In order to accomplish this mission, baptized believers nfinister to one a~aother, building up the whole Body of Christ in truth and grace for service to the world for the glory~of tlte Father. Some ministries are purely charismatic, the fruit of the Spirit's quickening believers to particular services to fellow members of Christ's Body for their joint mission to the world. Some ministries are also institutional, that is, in addition to the call of the Spirit, they have a more or less per.manent place and a more or less defined [unction in the structure of the Chnrch as ordained by God in Christ or by the Christian community in the course of history; consequently, these ministries appear in the canon law of the Church. But whether institutional or not, all these ministries are in-cludetl in the Spirit-inspired serf-help which the members of Christ's Body give to one another for the vigorous life of His Body and for its continuing mission and ministry to the world. What is required of the members of Christ's Body if they are to fulfill their apostolic vocation? They need articulate faith, a keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures, and zeal coupled with skill for building a better world of truth, justice, love, and freedom for every man, woman, and child. By "articulate faith" is meant a faith with some under- standing of the assertions.of faith, .including recognition of the difficulties which these assertions present to human intelligence today, their historical conditioning, and their need for continual reinterpretation and restatement if they are going to remain vali'd'expression~ of'~tuthentic faith in the midst of constantly changing human con-sciousness of reality. More importantly, articulate faith is aware of itself as.an adventure into ineffable mystery and personal communion with the living God, for which faith's assertions are a means not an end: a gateway, not the end of the road. Articulate faith also includes the willingness, ability, and c6nfidence to talk about what one believes. Because faith is a great adventure toward the fulfillment of men's deepest longing, one is willing, even eager, to discuss matters of faith; and one does not shy away from such discussion for fear of being wrong, because one is aware that faith is response to a loving Person who is more interested in drawing men to per-sonal communion with Him than He is in theological niceties. Vatican II expects the members of the Church to have such articulate faith, in accord with their capacity for it. According to the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, "the apostolate of the Church and of all her members is designed primarily to manifest Christ's message by words and deeds and to communicate his grace to the world" (ibid., n. 6). Noteworth~ in this statement is that all mem-bers of the Church are to manifest Christ's message by words, as well as deeds, and to communicate His grace. The ministry of teaching and sanctifying is not restricted to the clergy's ministry of the word and the sacraments. The decree proceeds to note that one of the ways in which the laity exercise their apostolate of "making the Gospel known and men holy" (ibid.) is through the testi-mony of a good life. But it goes on to say that "an aposto-late of this kind does not consist only in the witness of one's way of life; a true apostle looks for opportunities to announce Christ by words addressed either to non-believ-ers with a view to leading them to faith, or to believers with a view to instructing and strengthening them, and motivating them toward a more fervent life" (ibid.). ¯ In other words, the laity, as well as the clergy and religious, are responsible for building up the Body of Christ in truth and love and [or implementing its teach-ing and sanctifying mission. To fulfill this responsibility, laity, as well as clergy and religious, need articulate faith. A second need which each member of Christ's Body has is for a keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures: The Lord wishes to spread his kingdom . In this kingdom, creation itself will be delivered out of its slavery to corruption 4- 4- 4- Schools VOLUME 30, 1971 4" 4" 4" C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 954 and into the freedom of the sons of God (cf. Rom. 8:21) . The faithful, therefore, must learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation~ and how to relate it to the praise of God. They must assist one another to live holier lives even in their daily occupations. In this way the world is permeated by the spirit of Christ and more effectively achieves its purpose in justice, charity, and peace (Constitution on the Church, n. 36). In the light of revelation,, baptized believers must see and appreciate creatures in their original goodness and in their relationship to the Incarnation and the eschaton; They should perceive and treasure creatures as the poet does, with awe and reverence for the uniqueness and beauty of each. They should not view them simply with the detached, calculating eye of the technician. Yet tech-nology too is a creature of God, so that Christians should understand and evaluate rightly its place and products in the scheme of things. Especially must the Christian be aware and appreciative of man and the mysteries of his being: the human body, feeling and emotion, love and sex, work and play, community and celebration, art and science, the aspirations of the human spirit~and the long-ings of the human heart--all bathed in the light of God's gracious love. Thirdly, the members of Christ's Body need zeal cou-pled with skill for building a better world: By their competence in secular fields and by personal activity, elevated fr6m" within by the grace o[ Christ, let them labor vigorously so that by human labor, technical skill, and civic culture created goods may be perfected for the benefit of every last man. Let them work to see that created goods are more fittingly distributed among men and., in their own way lead to general progress in human and Christian liberty (ibid.). Baptized believers should also "by their combined efforts remedy any institutions and conditions of the world which are customarily inducements to sin, so that all such things may be conformed to the norms of justice and may favor the practice of virtue rather than hinder it" (ibid.). They need to "imbue culture and human activity with moral values" (ibid.). The question now arises: By what means are the mem-bers of Christ's Body going to develop articulate faith, appreciation of the meaning and value of creatures, arid zeal with skill for building a better world? Can weekly liturgies of the word (including homily) and the Eucha-rist accomplish this end? Even supposing the Scriptures are well read, the homilies well prepared and delivered, and the celebration well carried through, weekly liturgies alone hardly seem capable of generating the qualities which Christ's members ought to have to fulfill their apostolic vocation. CCD classes are not going to yield the needed qualities. They are limited in time. They p~vide little sustained interaction between mature Christians and growing ones over a wide spectrum of life. Their very organization fosters the idea of faith as a gegment of life, [,or Which one sets aside a piece of time each week. Finally, they are impeded in effectiveness by the forced and often chaotic conditions under wliich .they operate. Newman Centers too are very limited in what they can do to develop the necessary qualities in the members of Christ's Body beyond a small circle. Courses in "religiqus studies" are far from adequate means. They are by definition uncommitted, objective examination of religion and religions. They are highly intellectual, speculative, whatever existential and subjec-tive use an individual student may make of them. They are also limited in the amount of time given to them and, being a self-cOntained part of a curriculum, they convey the impression that religion also is a self-con-tained part of life, rather than~a dimension of all life. Adult education does not appear to be the solution. The competition for adults' time and attention is ex-tremely intense. Moreover, dae qualities required of a mature Christian should be well developed before he reaches the age at which l~e would enroll in adult educa-tion courses that are more than remedial. The answer is not Catholic newapapers, magazines, and books. People who love and profit from reading are relatively few in our activist culture, and are becoming even fewer in this post-linear age of happenings and tele-vision in the global village. The Church's recourse to happenings and television will not be much more fruitful than literature for achieving the necessary goal. Once people are gathered, happenifigs and television can be extremely effective instructors, but the problem is pre-cisely gathering the people. Unless people are already rather strongly motivated religiously, they are not going to prefer religious happenings and television programs to their secular coi~nterparts. As for parents as the source of the needed Christian maturity, parents are limited in what they Can do for their children. They cannot ,.lead their children to an articulate faith much beyond their own. They will find themselves limited especially when they come to helping their children develop that keen appreciation of the meaning and value of creation which Vatican iI urges for all members of Christ's .Body. Parents may be able to foster such apl~reciation for the simpler things of life, but they may be at a loss in matters of biology, the physical universe, history, poetry, drama, music. Parents' social consciousness and involvement may or may not be very highly developed, and will almost always be limited in 4- 4- 4- Schools VOLUME .'30, "1971 955 + 4. 4. C. Kiesling, O.P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 956 scope because of family responsibilities and finite human energies. Social services of the Church are not ordered, by defini-tion, to the development of mature Christians, but to relieving the pressing needs which men and women have in their personal and social lives, in order that their lives may meet basic standards of health, decency, dignity, and happiness. It is difficult to imagine any project of the Church which offers the opportunities that schools do for p.ro-viding the members of Christ's Body with the develop-ment of faith, .appreciation of creation, and apostolic zeal and know-how which they need and to which they have a right. Several points are to be noted about this affirma-tion. First, it does not mean that schools alone do the whole job. There is still need for good liturgies, adult educa-tion, and all the rest. Secondly, the schools referred to are not only elementary schools. High schools and colleges are more important. Thirdly, the assertion speaks of schools for providing the needed qualities of articulate faith, appreciation of creation, and apostolic zeal with skill. It does not speak simply of religion courses in schools operated by the Church, though such courses have their rightful place. It is not a matter of the Church going into the education business, so that it can, with ease, slip religion courses into the curriculum. It is, rather, a matter of providing a Christian milieu in which learning to live a full life can Occtlr. Finally, the argument is not based on the actual con-duct or achievements of the Church's schools in the past. Whatever judgment is rendered on the past, the situation has changed so much since Vatican II that the schools of the Church today constitute an entirely new set of oppor-tunities. In recent years new methods of teaching have evolved which make learning boi:h more exciting for students and more in contact with life in society. Lay teachers have become a familiar part of the faculties of the Church's schools. Priests' and religious' styles of life have changed, bringing them into closer contact with ordinary life and with the laity, particularly their students. The ghetto mentality has largely disappeared, so that Church schools are less prone to be instruments of defense and more liable to be openings to the world. The ecumenical spirit enables Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox Christians, as well as Jews and men of other beliefs, to have some place in the education that goes on in the schools of the Church. Administrators, faculties, and students are more aware of the school's obligations to the civic community in which it exists, All these new [actors mean :that the value of the Church's schools today cannot be judged on the basis of their past conduct and achievements. The opportunities which the schools of the: Church offer do not consist only or even mainly in the possibili-ties for religion courses or religious pract~ices. They con-sist in the possibilities for the young to develop articulate faith, a keen appreciation of creatures, and zeal with com-petence for building a better world by close association in learning and doing with mature Christians who them-selves have such faith, appreciation, and zeal. There is a difference, I would maintain, between what a youth derives from a course in English literature taught with competence and enthusiasm by a Christian whose faith permeates his life, and what he derives from such a course taught by someone else. A course in English litera-ture well taught by a Christian tells a young person that Christianity embraces all of life, that it is willing and able to learn from human experience as well as from revela-tion, that it recognizes the Spirit of God working in the world and speaking to men through human events, per-sonal and social. Besides this non-verbal communication, there can be explicit comparisons between the views of life in English literature and the view of the gospel. These comparisons are opportunities to develop articu-late faith without indoctrination. But even without any explicit mention of Christian faith, this course in English literature is a Christian ministry. As Vaticap II affirmed, Christians should have a deep sense of the meaning and value of all creation. The Church, therefore, has a duty to provide for its members to learn about creation through the arts and sciences illumined by the gospel. It is a precious gift which a Christian teacher gives to a student in patiently helping him to appreciate-a poem, even though faith is not explicitly referred to. If this Christian teacher of English literature is also aware of the world's and ldcal community's problems; if he is involved outside the school in trying to build a better world, if he lets this be known to his students and even involves his students in his social concern outside the classroom, his students will be made aware of another dimension of the Christian vocation and will even gain some knowledge of what they can do concretely to build a better world. If the administrators and teachers in a school of the Church are articulate in their faith, if they treasure God's creatures, if they are socially concerned and involved, if they constitute the nucleus of a genuine, open Christian community into which they assimilate their students, that school offers unparalleled opportu.nities for developing in the members of Chris,t's Body the qualities nece~ssary for + ÷ + Schools VOLUME 30, ].971 957 + 4. + C. Kiesling, O,P. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 958 their sharing the mission of the Church to mankind and the world. But, it may be objected, should not such a Christian teacher of English literature or physics or sociology or mathematics be in apublic school? Could he not perform a most valuable Christian ministry there Yes, he could; and such Christian teachers--lay, religious, cleric-- should be in public schools. They would be fulfilling the Church's apostolic mission to the world in a most excel-lent way. But could his pupils derive as much benefit from him in the public school as they could in a school of the Church---or of the Churches, as some would propose in this ecumenical age? In a public school, his pupils could only rarely, and then with the greatest circumspection, explicitly view the subject with the teacher in the light of the gospel. Never could they celebrate their Christian awareness of the subject in worship, liturgical or other, unless they met outside the school and school time. This condition raises the complex problem of finding a con-venient opportunity for such celebration; and it intro-duces a division into the public school community, which could Iead to all sorts of unpleasant complications: More-over, students in a public school would not experience their learning within a known Christian milieu and hence would not see it as part of Christian life and Chris-tian life as embracing it. But is this not the age of anonymous Christianity? Is it necessary for students to examine explicitly a subject in the light of the gospel, to celebrate it in worship, and to see it as part of Christian life and Christian life as em-bracing it? Recourse to the concept of anonymous Christianity is a way Christians have adopted to take the sting out of the widespread de-christianization and secularization that has occurred in modern times. But anonymous Christianity, though a good thing in comparison to being altogether outside the influence of God's grace,'is a humanly imper-fect thing. To be human is to have self-awareness. Man is not only conscious as animals are, but reflectively con-scious; he is aware of himself as animals are not. If man's self is actually graced by God, then his self-awareness should include that fact, otherwise he is not fully self-aware, not fulIy human. Hence it is important, not only for Christian education but for the human education of the Christian, that he see what he learns as part of Chris-tian life and Christian life as embracing it. When one reads carefi~lly the documents of Vatican II in regard to its ideal of what Christian laymen should be in the life and mission of the Church, one cannot help asking how they are ever going to achieve that ideal, and how clergy and religious are going to help them in fulfill- ment of their priestly and religious responsibilities to serve their fellow members in the building up of Christ's Body. What i~ called for is not comprehended under the labels of religious instruction or religious practices. Nor is it adequately described as handing on, preserving, or nourishing Christian faith, What is required is education in the fullest sense of the word, education of the whole man for the whole of life, bnt education with a'Christian quality to it. Of all the Church's projects, its schools offer the most opportunities for such education. With such education, Catholic laymen would exercise their role in the mission of the Church, not by contributing money to a Human Development Fund, of which the hierarchy is the banker, but by becoming involved in human development in the neighborhood, city, state, nation, and the world. This latter is the more authentic fulfillment of the Christian apostolate by which the members of Christ's Body partici-pate in its mission to the world. The schools of the Church will very likely be fewer in number in the future. But they remain unique opportun-ities for building up the Body of Christ for its mission. Abandonment of the struggle to maintain them and, still more important, to exploit their new possibilities under the conditions, which have arisen since Vatican II will grievously set back the emergence of the layman and the mission of the Church to the world. It will promote the tendency of the Church to be identified with the clergy and religious rather than the whole People of God, and to become a club for fellowship in subjective re_ligious experience rather than the leaven in the dough ~of his-tory. Religious' involvement in the schools of the Church remains both~an important and challenging ministry. Schools VOLUME $0, '].97~ 959 SISTER MARY JEANNE SALOIS, R.S.M. Opinions of the Laity on Changes in Religious Life Sister Jeanne is director of research services at the Sis-ters of Mercy Gen-eralate at 10000 Kentsdale Drive, Box 34446; Be-thesda, Maryland 20034. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 960 Literature concerning recent developments in the re-ligious life provide little information on the effects of these developments on the laity. Since the prima.ry pur-pose of adaptation and renewal as stated in the docu-ments of Vatican II is to become more effective in promoting the kingdom of God on earth---"That this kind of life and its contemporary role may achieve greater good for the Church, this sacred Synod issues the following decrees" 1--it should be helpful to know how a section of this kingdom feels about the adaptation they are observing. Such knowledge should contribute sub-stantially to an honest evaluation of the changes being made. This article summarizes the thinking of lay people on adaptation in religious life in seven parishes distributed geographically from the New England coast to mid-western United States. A random sampling of 60 families from each of the parishes listed in Table 1 participated in this study. Treatment o[ the Data: The investigator sent an in-strument entitled "Opinionnaire to Obtain the Lay-man's Assessment of Religious Women in the Church Today" to 420 randomly selected persons. Of these, 220 responded, constituting 53.4 percent returns. Distribu-tion of respondents is shown in Table 2. Eighty-three men and 137 women responded to this opinionnaire. Of these only One was black, the others being white. Age of respondents varied as indicated be-low: 1Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., The Documents o[ Vatican II, "Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life," n. 1. Age of Re~#ondent Number in Category Percent 20-29 16 7 30-39 59 27 40-49 77 35 50-59 42 19 60-69 19 9 70- 7 3 Approximately half of the respondeqts attended a Catholic grade and high school and most of them at-tended college. Most of the respondents indicated they were professional or sell-employed with very few saying they were semi or unskilled workers. TABLE :1 Parishes Participating in Study to Obtain Opinions of Laity on Changes being' Made in Religious Congregations Parish* City and State Our Lady of the Assumption St. Joseph Immaculate Heart of Mary Sacred Heart Immaculate Conception St. James Gate of Heaven Atlanta, Georgia Denver, Colorado Detroit, Michigan Hattiesburg, Mississippi Memphis, Tennessee New Bedford, Massachusetts Dallas, Pennsylvania * Parishes were selected at random from the total list of parishes being served I~y a religious congregation of women. TABLE 2 Distribution of Laymen Who Responded to Opinionnaire New Denver, Bedford, Hatties- Dallas, Colorado burg, Atlanta, Detroit, Memphig, Penn~yl, chusettsMassa" Mississippi Georgia Michigan Tennessee vama No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % ~o. % No.! % 17 58.3 26 43.3 41 68.3 28 46.6 37 62.7 36 Findings from Opinionnaire: Items and comments of respondents will be summarized under the three headings on the instrumefit: (1) The individual's personal contacts with sisters, (2) the religious life, and (3) sisters' aposto-lates. Personal Contacts with Religious Sisters Almost three-fourths (72%) of the respondents at-tributed most of the credit for helping them become religious persons to their parents. Twenty-six percent credited the sisters for having provided them with in-spiration, and 9 per cent mentioned the clergy. When asked how much influence for good religious sisters had exerted on them, participants responded as 4. 4- 4. Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 961 Sister 1eanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 962 follows: A mount of Influence Number Percent Very great influence 58 '26 I~reat influenc'e 54 24 Some influence 63 29 A little influence 29 13 No influence 13 6 Thus, 50 percent of respondents indicated that re-ligious sisters had influenced them greatly for good and 29 percent said sisters had influenced them some. Most of the respondents consider sisters friendly and easy to meet (192 or 88%). Nineteen respondents (13%) consider the sisters unaware of people around them, and four persons said they were unfriendly. When asked if they would go to a sister for help if they had some personal religious problem, 106 (48%) said they would go rarely, 71 (32%) said they would never go, and 38 (17%) said they would usually go to a sister for help. Most respondents feel that sisters show respect for them as persons (all do--61%; some do--36%). Ninety percent of respondents indicated that the sisters they have known spend most of their time in the educa-tion of children. Ninety percent are pleased with this effort, 6 percent are indifferent, and 3 percent are un-happy. Most respondents believe that sisters manifest an in-terest in the welfare of people in general (78%), and 18 percent don't know. Two percent said that sisters do not manifest an interest in the welfare of others. When asked to express their thinking on the age distribution of the sisters serving them, 81 respondents (37%) said age is not important, 74 (34%) s.aid the age distribution was about right, 25 (11%) said they did not have enough younger sisters, and 5 (2%) said they did not have enough older sisters. The Religious Life Two-thirds of the respondents believe there is no difference between the religious life and mariage in so far as thei~ comparable merits are concerned. Seventeen percent believe the religious vocation more pleasing to God, and 25 respondents (11%) said they didn't know. One hundred and twenty-five respondents (57%) said they would respond favorably if they had a daughter who wanted to become a religious, 77 (35%) would be neutral, and 15 (7%)would respond unfavorably. Most of the respondents (93%) said the sisters they have known seem to be happy. Respondents were widely distributed in their thinking on the economic level of religious living. One hundred and nine (50%) of the respondents believe that the sisters are living on the same or better economic level than they are. Sixty-nine (31%) believe they are living more comfortably than~ the sisters, and 41 ~(19%) said they don't know. When asked whether the sisters seem more progressive since Vatican 11, 161 (73%) said they were either out-standing or quite progressive. About 10 percent found them too progressive and approximately the same per-centage considered them not progressive at all. Almost three-fourths (70%) of the respondents pre-ferred to see religious women living in a convent espe-cially designed for them. Fourteen percent prefer to see ~them in a middle-class residence near their employment. Only two persons said they prefer to see sisters in a home in a poor neighborhood, and three persons said in an apartment. Thirty-eight respondents (17%) said they didn't care. Fewer than half (44%) of the persons responding in-dicated that they like to see religious dressed in a habit which includes a veil. About one-third (32%) like to see religious in conservative attire which does not include a veil, and 7 percent like to see them in contemporary clothing with accessories identical to lay women. Four-teen percent don't care what religious wear. Two-thirds of the respondents like to see sisters par-ticipating in all parish activities. Twenty-four percent-wish religious to participate in all parish activities ex-cept those which are purely social, such ,as dances. Seventeen respondent,s (8%) prefer that sisters attend only those activities related to the school, such as home-school meetings. Apostolic Services When asked how they would react if the sisters would decide to withdraw entirely from the school in order to do other works in the parish, 72 percent said they would respond unfavorably. Eighteen percent said they would be neutral, and 9 percent said they would respond fa-vorably to such a decision. Respondents .were asked if they thought the sisters should be 'more active in working with the poor. Re-sponses were evenly distributed with 68 (31%)in the affirmative, 70 (32%) in the negative, and 72 (33%)with no opinion on thismatter. Responses to items which attempted to find out which apostolaies seemed most necessary to the laity left no room for doubt. They strongly endorse the Catholic school concept and wish sisters would continue in this endeavor. In response to an item concerning the services they 4- 4- 4" 4" 4. Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 964 would prefer sisters provided for them if they were .in need of such services, 68 percent said they wished them to teach children. Other services given some priority by respondents were to administer to the sick in institutions (12%), administer to the sick in homes (5%), and teach adults (4%). Only one percent wish sisters to teach poor children only. Respondents were asked which apostolic works, if any, sisters should discontinue in which they are presently engaged. Each respondent could list three works. Results follow. Campus Ministry on Secular Campus 32 Diocesan services 92 Social work 19 College 16 High School I 1 Elementary school 10 Hospital 9 Religious Education 5 Respondents were asked to list in order of priority the works which they believed sisters should be engaged in at the present time and in the future. The following priorities were established by.averaging the ranks of the 220 respondents. 1. Teaching religion in Catholic school 2. Administrator in Catholic school 3. Teaching secular subjects in Catholic school 4. Teaching in Religious Education Program 5. Administrator of Religious Education Program in parish 6. Serving in Parish Ministry working with families 7. Staff position in health institution 8. Administrator in health institution 9. Social worker in inner city 10. Rehabilitation of drug addicts 11. Serving in Campus Minstry on secular campus 12. Administrator or staff position in public institution Comments of Laity on Adaptation and Rerlewal of Sisters In their comments on the adaptation they are observ-ing in religious communities, participants expressed di-verse opinions, presenting a kaleidoscopic view of re-ligious congregations. Many respondents praised the sisters for some of the changes they are making and for their continued dedication. Some, accustomed as they are to uniformity within religious communities, are using similarity of dress and dutifulness to t~aditional occupations as the criteria for evaluating renewal in religious life. Some are using normal standards of ac-ceptable behavior and are surprised and scandalized at the extremes to which some sisters are going in their new freedom. To the laity, these sisters seem immature and insincere, wanting the best of two worlds. Thus, much of the renewal effort is suspect to some of the laity, both that being made by large groups of sisters attempting to renew sincerely in keeping with the changing needs of the world and by the small group of extremist whose actions the layman is questioning. The comments below are typical of those made by many respondents. I don't think the'sisters are'adapting to the needs of the Church. Some sisters are radical; some are conservative: Some are in habits; some are not. Some are worldly; some are not. They seem to be divided among themselves. Some seem to act as immature young women wanting the best of both worlds. They ~vant the respect due to religious and the fun and entertainment of single women. They are mainly interested in satisfying their own desires. Opinions concerning the habit differed with many respondents reluctantly accepting the demise of" the traditional habit in favor of some lesser form of identifica-tion. Many emphasized the, importance of a religious identity and regret the loss of respect which the habit has always commanded. On careful analysis, responses seem to set forth the .primacy of "habit" over "person" in the thinking of some lay persons. I feel the sisters should have uniform attire~ even if it is a simple colored dresg with a large cross. They are married to God and should be proud of their vocation. They would also command more respect and be more useful, as people would be aware of their vocations and ask for help seeing the gar-ment, not the per.son. It was surprising to see how the laity identify religious with the traditioffal professions to the extent of con-sidering new occupations completely incompatible with the vocation itself. Sisters should either be in the religio~as vocation, or if they want to do soc.ial work they should not do it under the guise of a religious. Religious have pushed into social care areas where .they are not qualified. They have given scandal, betrayed their com-munity life and their origina! vocation. Sisters should work where they can influence and strengthen the faith and morals of young Catholics. Let others care for their social and physical needs. The laity continues to look for the dedicated, hard-working sister wh6 spends her time going from her work to her prayers in the convent where her physical, and social needs are met. They are surprised when they see sisters becoming more like other women in their use of leisure and in the external manifestation of their fem-ininity. They feel that the purpose o[ religious women was + + + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 965 ÷ ÷ Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 966 and is to stay in the classroom and teach their children, and that to betray this purpose is to betray their calling as religious. Sisters should do what they have done for many years--see to the education of our future citizens. Most of God's work is just that--hard work--and this is probably the main thing I have always admired about the nuns I have known. They were committed and worked hard with little thanks or praise, and I'm sure they were often discour-aged and unsure of their accomplishments. Some of the laity are interpreting the trend to leave the traditional apostolates as a sign of individualism which prompts one to wish to "do her own thing." I find it disturbing that some sisters, when given the op-portunity to work in the world today, become concerned with their own needs or interests under the guise of making money for their order. Since Vatican II, I feel that many nuns are confused and at odds with their own previous commitment. Teaching sisters now seem to feel social work is their bag, nursing nuns feel that teaching would be more appropriate, etc. Confusion stems, I believe, from a lack of the whole spirit we used to know as dedication to God's work. It is being replaced today in all of society by a personal need to do your own thing. A change very pleasing to the laity where it has taken place is the updating observed in methods of teaching and curriculum. They praise the sisters who are more understanding of child nature than they used to be and who are ready to meet the explosion of knowledge which today's children are experiencing. They complain if these changes are not taking place. Unfortunately, older nuns are not adjusting methods, cur-riculum, and themselves personally to many facts, namely,. that today's children know much more in space and science study than is in textbooks and they often know more than the the teacher herself. The teacher's attitude often becomes bel-ligerent rather than pleased that children are this way. Some personal evaluation seems necessary. The older nuns seem to adapt to the needs of the Church. Younger nuns could learn from them. It is no longer a voca-tion to them, it is ajob. Some middle class lay people feel that religious are now prejudiced against them. They argue .that their needs for the services of religious are as great as those of any other segment of society. We who are just ordinary people--working, living, and .dying--also need the help and example of the religious sister in today's world. We feel that what's the use when our lives and struggles are treated with disdain. We don't want to be applauded, but we feel that by living an honest and decent life and ever-striving to do the works of Christ, that we ought to be considered at least as human as the girls who have il-legitimate babies who you would think had won the grand prize for all the attention they are given. In short, love us too, even though we have never broken a law. I believe ~many sisters aye giving up "their 6wn" to work in the inner cities and for social causes. A poor soul is not .Primarily found in a poor person--the person may be rich, middle 'class or ~poor. We should try to help all equally so all can be saved. Another change taking ~place among religious women which is greatly appreciated by the laity is the attitude of considering all persons as equals. They are happy that sisters have come down from their pedestal and no longer seem to expect deference from the laity. The sisters, I believe, are progressing to include all persons with whom they come in contact as equals. I used to. feel the sisters considered themselves.very special and should be looked up to by all. I think they are more aware of people's needs than previ-ously. They are more sensitive and less untouchable. Some have lost self-respect by playing down to the laity too much. Much of the advice given to religious by respondents argued for the maintenance, of balance in the matter of adaptation and warned against extremes. Don't go overboard! Keep attire and sense of misSio~a in line with Catholic beliefs. If the sisters participate in secular affairs, I feel they should remember they are sisters and uphold the traditions and reputation Catholic sisters have always had. General impressions reported by respondents include the following: I get the feeling they are not of the Church but of the world. Instead of giving up things of the world they are acquiring things of the world. Nuns, in general, appear ito be departing from a way of life which identified them as religious, and as a result of ,this proc-ess, society appears tO have less respect for religious orders. I think sisters are doing a fine job. This is a time for all people to join t.ogether and to remember that God is the father of all, not just the white man, Many so-called Christians have forgotten this. General Statements on Opinions of Laity From the many ideas expressed by the laity responding to this opinionnaire, a few generalizations can be stated: There is little evidence at this time that the changing needs of society, for example, the rapid increase of Catholic students on the secular university campus, have penetrated the thinking of: lay people to any great extent. Criteria used by most of the laity for judging sisters remain the. same today as before Vatican II in spite of the shift toward greater personal freedom and more leisure in society as a whole~ However, a few of .the respondents 4- 4- + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30~ 1971 967 Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 968 do seem to comprehend rather accurately the reasons for change in religious congregations. A few religious who, in the eyes of the laity, have seemingly lost sight of the meaning of religious vocation are impeding acceptance of the necessary changes large numbers Of religious women are making. There are certain paradoxes in the thinking of the laity concerning religious sisters at present. The laity are happy that sisters consider them as equals, no longer expecting deference; yet they lament the elimination of' external signs, such as the habit, which commands special respect. The laity give major credit to their parents for being the grea.test influence for holiness in their lives; yet they insist that the sisters are essential to growth of holiness in their children. The laity are happy that sisters have stepped down from their pedestal to walk among them; yet they wish to continue admiring them at a distance when they need help in the solution of their personal religious problems. In summary, respect for religious among the laity in this sample has decreased as a result of the changes made by religious congregations since Vatican II. This loss of respect can be attributed to a failure on the part of laymen to understand the reasons basic to change and their failure to recognize new needs in society for the services of religious women. It is also the result of unwise individual choices which some religious are making in their personal lives. The laity need the assistance of sisters if they are to understand the motives for their new behaviors. Perhaps the greatest need of the laity, as well as of religious, is familiarity with social doctrines of the Church and the emphasis given to these doctrines in the documents of Vatican II. Reflections of the Writer Religious congregations are attempting to implement the new emphases of Vatican II. The laity, familiar with the old structure, fail to understand the inevitable re-suits "of implementing such documents as "Declaration on Religious Freedom" from Vatican II, and Mater et Magistra, the encyclical letter of Pope John XXIII. An example of this implementation is the attention religious congregations are now giving to the dignity of the human person. In Mater et Magistra (215) we read, Whatever the progress in technology and economic life, there can be neither justice nor peace in .the world, so long as men fail to realize how great is their dignity; for they have been created by God and are His children. According to the social teachings of the Church, society is at~the, service of the human person to respect his dignity and allow him to attain his end and his full human development: "Society is made for man and not man for society.''2 Plus XII s~aid: "Man is a personal being, endowed.with intelligent& and free will;" ~a~ being who has the final choice of what he will or will not do," s Enhnciating this principle of the dignity of the human person, the ""Document on Religious Freedom" from Vatican II states: God calls men to serve Him in spirit and in truth. Hence they are bound ih consdence but they standunder n0: Com-pulsion. God has rbgard for :the dignity of the human person who.m He himseff created; man is to be guided by his own judgment and he is to enjoy freedom. . In contemplating these teachings concerning the basic freedoms o[ man and applying them to herself, a religious may conclude that she does not relinguish her innate freedom to govern herself when she enters a religious congregation. She believes that she is responsible to God alone for her actions and that she is responsible for keeping these actions in line with the life she has com-mitted herself to live. If this reasoning is correct, obe-dience in religious life needs to find its meaning apart from the responsibility of one person to govern the life of another. If religious growth takes place through responsible choices made freely, each person must be free to choose in matters pertaining to her personal life. In their efforts to implement tile new emphasis on the dignity of the person and_ her freedom of choice, religious congregations are eliminating rules which formerly gov-erned the personal life o[ each member. Remove pro-hibitive rules designed to channel actions according to a certain pattern which all members are exp6cted to observe and they are going to act as do all other members of the human race uniquely and differently. Some per-sons are going to make unwise choices as is true of persons in other walks of life. Freed from rules which prevent extremes, religious women are going to demon-strate their good taste or lack of it in their external appearance, their behavior, their use of leisure, and in their professional activities. But the end of this process is good the coming to being of a religious who is interiorly motivated to govern herself in a manner suited to her commitment as a woman who has dedicated her life to Christ and the service of His kingdom on earth. The new religious will come to r~alize as never before th~it she has been made = Plus XI,'Divini Redemptoris. a Pius xIi, "Allocution to the Sixth International Congress on Criminal Law," October 15, 1954, + Laity Opinion VOLUME 30, 1971 969 Sister Jeanne REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 970 in God's likeness to imitate His perfection, His goodness, and His love and mercy for men. She will realize that sh~ must 'lift herself up to God freely if she wishes to l~articipate with Christ in life eternal, in the divine life of God and of the Blessed Trinity. This is the destiny of all men, the religious included, and all must freely choose to follow this path, for with Christ there is no coercion, no forcing, no want of freedom. Surely every adult' outside of a religious community reaches the period in her life when she is no longer told what to wear and where to go. The fully committed re-ligious woman who has dedicated her life to Christ and to the service of his kingdom on earth should "be equally capable of" exercising her God-given freedom and of assuming the responsibility for her actions and her destiny. Lay people need to understand that they will be observing some evidence of poor taste as religious use the freedom they now have. Poor judgment is not a monopoly of the laity; it can also be expected of religious. Unless the formation period in the life of young re-ligious provides an understanding of how the gospel message is translated into daily living as a religious, sisters cannot be expected to make decisions in keeping with their form of life. In their uncertainty regarding the preparation which best prepares individual religious to exercise greater freedom, some congregations are ab-dicating their responsibility fbr the formation of young religious. To supose that new members who have not developed an understanding of the religious life will make personal decisions in keeping with it is a rash assumption. If religious congregations are to make wise choices. during this period of renewal and adaptation, they must take time to study the past and realize Gully the import of char~ge on the present and future. Unless changes are in line with the purposes for which the congregation was formed in the first place, the congregation will give way to a new entity or disintegrate completely. In-dividual members of apostolic religious congregations in the past realized their service of Christ in His Church through service of the congregation whose corporate end was this divine service. Today, many religious see them-selves as groups of dedicated individual members with a diversity of tasks. If religious retain the apostolic dimension of their original commitment, the transfer from corporate to individual commitment may be a change of means rather than ends. However, if the apostolic dimension of one's service is lost, the primary purpose of apostolic religious congregations in the Church no longer exists. When no unifying purpose is present, organizational structure becomes meaningless. It has been the purpose of this study to provide some insight on the reaction of the laity to observed change in religious congregations in the year 1971, Hopefully, the opinions expressed in this report will be.helpful to religious congregations as they chart their c0urse'for the future. + 4- 4- Laity Opinion VOLUME ~0, 1971 97! SISTER MARY JOHN MANANZAN, O.S.B. Must I Love You for God's Sake? ÷ ÷ .I. Sister John is a graduate student of the Gregorian Uni-versity and resides at Via dei Bevilac-qua, 60; Rome, Italy (00165). REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 972 Read the title without a pause and with the correct intonation lest you miss the point of this article, it is not an exasperated exclamation like "Must I put up with you, for heaven's sake?" The article concerns itself rather with the question whether we should love others "for the sake of God." This phrase has been so misinterpreted in the past and still also in the present that the word "char-ity" has fallen into disrepute or at least it has acqui~?ed a cold, antiseptic atmosphere. People say "I don't want your charity"--"I will not be an object of charity." In the stu-dent house where I lived while I was studying in Ger-many, the girls were very wary of "nuns" doing things for charity. Once an Idonesian girl living in another house got sick. A German friend of mine announced her inten-tion of driving over. I spontanously exclaimed: "I'11 go with you." She looked at me and cautiously asked: "Are you doing it for charity?" The reason for such wariness is that doing things for charity or for God's sake is taken to mean something like: "Actually you are a nasty fellow and for yourself I wouldn't lift a finger. But I am doing this because I see Christ in you." I don't tbink for a moment that Christ is at all pleased with such pious prattle. And the person concerned rightly feels himself an "object" of charity--a means to some altruistic, humanitarian or still worse to a spiritual ideal. C. S. Lewis in his delightful book Four Loves gives a punchy example of an "unselfish . self-sac-rificing" mother who "just lived for her family." In a remarkable self-deception she literally worked herself to the bone for them but actually what she managed to do was to suffocate each member of her family, because she did not actually see them as persons and did not really consider their real needs; She looked through them to work for her image of being an ideal mother. She used them as means to fulfill her need to be needed. In a similar manner "loving others for God's sake" has some-how taken on the meaning of disregarding the individual person. On this point one can learn a great deal from Kant who has been accused of having never written a word on love. But he actually offers a very solid foundation for what we call "love of neighbor" in his famous (infa-mous?) categorical imperative. This principle has also suffered a very one-sided treatment. The frequently cited formulation is the one that approximates the Golden Rule wearing a grim duty-conscious facial expression. A less quoted formulation however reads: "Act in such a way as to treat humanity whether in yourself or in others never only as a means but always also as an end/' Kant's moral theory is based on the absolute valuation of the person. A person is for him an autonomous subject. He alone possesses the dignity to be happy (Wtirdigkeit, glficklich zu sein). For this reason, a person may never be regarded only as a means but should be willed as a good-in- himself. This absolute valuation of a person manifests itself first and foremost in doing one's duty towards him. Again on this point Kant is frequently misinterpreted. No less than the great German poet Schiller is guilty of this shallow interpretation of Kant when he writes: Gladly I serve my friends but alas I do it with pleasure Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person. This is answered by a similarly poor interpretation of Kant and a worse poetry: Sure your only recourse is to despise them entirely And then with aversion do what your duty enjoins you. Kant did not mean at all that interest and affection would detract from the moral worth of an action. His term "duty" is a limiting term. It simply isolates the factor which accounts in the last analysis for the moral worth of an action. But once this is ascertained, one can embellish one's action with all the affection one is capa-ble of. I think it is important that Kant makes this em-phasis. There are really people who lavish their affection here and there and everywhere but neglect their elemen-tary duty towards these same persons. It is this forgetfhl-ness of Kant which is responsible for the benevolent tyr-anny in many lands suffering from social injustice, where the rich landlords or employers give to their exploited laborers "in charity" what they owe them in justice. The elementary duty of "love of neighbor" is thus to take the person as an'end in himself and never a means for anyone or anything. Truly? Not even for God? No, not even. God needs no means. He is His own End. He ÷ ÷ Love VOLUME 30, 1971 973 doesn't rely on any means to reach it. What then does loving others "for God's sake" mean? If it means anything at all, it means: one must take the other in his totality. Man is essentially a relation. A per-son is most a person in his relation to God. One can give him absolute value because he has already been radically affirmed by an absolute Person, He is worthy to be loved because he has already been radically loved. One can therefore love him for his own sake if one regards him in the totality of his being rooted in God. But the totality of man also means his being an individual distinct person. Therefore "love of neighbor" means taking this concrete person beside me for what he is and loving him with all his quirks. I think it is one of the characters of Peanuts who said: "I love humanity; It is people that I cannot stand." To love another is to see him. It is to love him "interestedly." "Disinterested love" is no love. It is too pretentious. It is being in love with one's perfectly selfless way of loving. This is the reason why I think foreign aid to developing countries miserably fails in arousing the gratitude of the people it helps. It is literally disinter-ested. There is no interest in the people as persons. No wonder they feel insulted and are resentful. They do not feel loved--they feel that they are objects of love. The same is true in individual relationships. One wants to be loved,' becau'se one is lovable. A boy who tells a girl "I love you, because of your pug nose" is not necessarily being superficial. Maybe he grasps the point of love better than if he were to enumerate the noblest .motives in the world. I think the art of loving is to find something very concrete .in someone (be it a pug nose, a crooked smile, a naughty left eyebrow--whatever it is. There is one in every person aching to be discovered!), to discover this recapitulation of his personality and in this burning focal point of his being, to love him intensely. 4- + Sister John REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 974 TENNANT C. WRIGHT, s.J. A Note on Poverty This is simply a report on a mode of poverty lived at one Jesuit house in Mexico City. The report is drawn from a conversation with several members of the commu-nity there, including the Father Minister who was influ-ential in setting up the program and helps with its ad-ministration. The program seems particularly enlightening at this moment when there is such discussion of poverty and how it fits with a religious' psychological need to feel economically productive and responsible. The Mexican community is made up of Jesuits who receive a salary at one of the Universities (non-Jesuit) in Mexico City. The salary i.s paid by the University directly to the individual Jesuit~ It is turned over by the Jesuit to the community. The community treasury, derived from the salaries, is then divided into three parts: First, there is a common fund for the community, out of which comes such general expenseg as house upkeep, and the room and board of the Jesuits living there. Second, there is a monthly personal amount returned to each Jesuit, an equal amount to each, no matter what his salary from the University. Out of the monthly "allowance" the Jesuit is expected to take care of his or-dinary personal items, such as clothes, recreation, the or-dinary personal necessities of his study and work, his ordinary travel. Third, there is a fund retained by the community for emergencies. As I understand it, the emergencies are gen-erally of two types, each handled differently. There is that personal emergency which arises from the unexpected, for example, an accident, a particularly large medical bill. Such personal emergency expenses are met by the community in a direct payment (not a loan) out of this emergency fund. But this third fund also covers those personal but more expensive items needed by some but not all. For instance, if one of the Jesuits in the course of his work needs some particularly expensive equipment or books or a car, then the community lends to this Jesuit the money to buy the T. C. Wright is a faculty member of the University of Santa Clara; Santa Clara, California 95053. VOLUME .30, 1971 975 special item. The loan is made without interest, but it is gradually paid back to the community out of the individo ual's monthly allowance. This question of loans to the individual for special expenses is crucial. The Mexican community is clear that this is not a case of dominion, of true ownership. Rather it is a more sophisticated way of responsible use. The special item is only purchased after consultation with the superior. The ultimate decision remains with the supe-rior. Although the item is used with the responsible dis-cretion of the individual, when and if his need for it is no longer present it is sold and the money returned to the community fund. Although this three-fold scheme of community use of [unds seems simple and clear in presentation, Father Minister and other members of the Mexican Jesuit com-munity emphasized that the implementation of this mode of poverty has more difficulties and is more complex than its simple outline indicates. 4- 4- 4- T. C. Wright REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 976 W. L. L~CROIX,.S.J. The New Property" and the of PovertY In the past ten years there has taken place a consider-able change in the attitudes of many vowed to the reli-gious life with respect to their "having" material goods. At times, this change in attitude has been reflected by attempts to patch the tearsin earlier lived interpretations of the vow of poverty by talk of a "vow of common life," or something of the sort. By these patchwork efforts, peo-ple have tried to bring within a reflective understanding of the vow such new lived interpretations of poverty that permit individuals to have exclusive control over many more material items (from transistor radios to individual vacations) than were ever previously found acceptable. In this brief essay, I would like to suggest that these efforts are of secondary consequence. I submit that there is a much more pressing problem for the practice of vowed poverty in contemporary America. This more pressing problem emerges from the recent, qualitative leap taken in the lived interpreta)ion of property. If the vow of poverty at all concerns some deliberate taking up of a life style that is designated by its extraordi-nary attitude toward property (this does seem to be the "matter" of the vow), then it is of major importance to talk about that which a political economist might call today the "new property." This concept is both simple and subtle, so let me briefly try to present what lines of thought are involved, and then appraige the implications of "new property" for what I will call the positive "thrust" of the vow of poverty. The "'New Property" Property may be described as a socially acknowledged relation that a person has to what is considered, in the broadest sense, an item of value. Now what is considered of value (except for subsistence in food, clothing, shelter) is to a great extent determined by the concrete attitudes W. L. LaCroix, S.J., is a faculty member of Rock-burst College; 5225 Troost Avenue; Kansas City, Mis-souri 64110. VOLUME 3~0, 1971 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 978 within a cultural milieu. And what are the manifold ways in which, ordinarily understood, one may acquire rela-tion to items of value are familiar to us all. And so we have our ordinary image of what we talk about when we use the term "property." But this imagining is so easy only because so few have done serious reflection on some significant socio-economic developments of the last fifty years. Many people today. continue to be undisturbedly at ease with talk about property exclusively under the rubric of the individual's possession, use, and control of "permanent" and fixed (real property) or of manipulable or consumable items of value (personal property). In fact, however, with the growth of a corporate society in America, some are able to argue convincingly that this familiar rubric of prop-erty has become at least partially obsolete, and that the part where it is obsolete is the more important part. One major indication of the need for a new rubric is that, in, our society heavily toned by business relation-ships, political economists and businessmen now are will-ing to say that, for most of the large business corporations, there are capital investors, there are top and middle man-agers, there are employees, customers, unions, the govern-ment, and the society at large that are related to the corporate organization, but there are no owners. That is, there are none except the impersonal (albeit legal) entity of the corporation itself. Certainly one reason here is that the business corporation is no longer an item compassa-ble by any individual who might attempt personally to organize and control it, that is, to "possess" it, to have it as private property. This growth to bigr~ess is one that has moved not only vertically in the size of an individual corporation, but hlso horizontally to interlace organizations of diverse kinds into one corporate society. Qualitative alterations have taken place in how and by whom social relation-ships are determined within the individual private orga-nization, in the relations between the individual private organizat~ions, and between these organizations, govern-mental bodies, and the social community itself. Corpora-tional businesses today act less with attention to the com-petitive market and more with attention to a mutual self-interest of the leading businesses, or even at times with a mixture of this and "public interest." Government does not hesitate to curtail initiative from a "private" firm for the sake of "public interest," or, conversely, to subsi-dize private sector business for the "public interest," or to contract out to business and to educational institutions some "public interest" undertaking. Educational institu-tions concern themselves with good relations with the business community and government for financial assist- ance; and with accreditation agencies for professional prestige. In a society composed of such interlaced organ~izations, the sharp distinctions between the public and the private sectors of activities have faded (I will suggest a test for this further on), and all members of society have been drawn into new and manifold relations to all the organi-zations. This means that those items of value, or wealth, which the individual can have as "private property" have become secondary in social significance. From Locke to World War I in Anglo-American thought these items have been the key to civic freedom, self-identity, and individual capacity to initiate effects in society. Now the socio-economic fi'eedom, identity, and initiative--in one word, the social power---of the private property holder are minimal. As a society we have entered an era where the initiative comes from organizations which act for or-ganizational or for "public" interest. And the "public" interest today means .less and less each individual's inter-ests and more and more only organized interests~ As part of a growing consensus on the relations of persons to new items of value today, A. A. Berle, Jr., has spoken of the divorce from older property of the socio-ec-onomic power to make determinations in society. He terms this the distinction between "individual possessory holdings" and "power systems." What is at stake here :is not merely the separation of ownership from socio-eco-nomic control, but the "increasing elimination of pro-prietary ownership itself and its replacement by, substan-tially, a power system." Charles A. Reich has spoken of the new form of wealth which one obtains in a corporational social structure through the relationships one has to various organiza-tions. These relationships gain for one a place in the interlaced socio-economic system of organizations. The new marriage of wealth and power is a union within the blood line of the power structure itself, for the wealth is itself new power. One has this new wealth of socio-eco-nomic place, or power status, in so far as one has actively functional relations to the power systems. As active within the power systems, one individually has the socio-economic power without the need of property in the tra-ditional sense of individual possessory holdings, One only needs to obtain a place, a status in the power systems. To clarify how this change brings in new dimensions in the question of poverty, let me develop briefly how one acquires this power, what the power is, why it is special today, and whether it is legitimate. ~ (How acquired) One enters a place of power not by ownership, but by the possession of whatever credentials the people presently with an active function in an organi- 4- "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 979 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 980 zation designate as required. They in turn designate what matters are required in response to the organization's demand in view of~ its present strength and future fate in the interlaced system. These admission credentials are supposed to, and often do, signify the possession of some expertise, some "know how" in terms of the functions and goals of the organization. One's relations to active power status in an organiza-tion is always conditional. It is forever a trial marriage and lasts only as long as the person's power decisions make things function well for the organizational system. In turn, one is subject to those interchanges of power which constitute the organization to which he belongs directly, and to those interchanges of power by which his organization is interlaced within the American corporate system. One is tied to his organization's fate, which itself is precarious, by one's personal credentials, which are constantly under test. For brevity~s sake, let us call one's conditional relations to this new wealth of power status the "new property" (even though I have modified Reich's use of the phrase). Some kind of status in a community or in a private orga-nization, of course, is nothing new. But the status now at point is no longer simply a social by-product of possessory holdings, ancestry; or profession. The new status is a place of socio-economic power within active organiza-tional power. (What is power) As Berle has noted, we are still philo-sophically immature in reflections on power. For our pur-poses here, let us be satisfied with a simple concept: power allows the wielder to initiate decisions on the transmission, use, and determinations of socio-economic assets for the lives of persons. One who holds power has a "scope of significant choice" (Carl Kaysen) open to his decisions within a corporational social structure that widely and significantly affect the determinations of how one himself and others experience and express human values. Today we have large social and economic organi-zations which depend upon and which generate power to their members. These organizations are managed by non-owners whose decisions and instructions, by the mecha-nism of the organization, are made causative at distant points of application, both inside and outside the indi-vidual organization. Normally one distinguishes "power to do things" and "power over persons," but this distinction often is only in the relative immediacy of the results of power's exercise. And the exercise of "power over" brings a reduction for those affected in the range of personal alternatives in socio-economic activities, and an increase in dependence on the power's exercise. (Why special) As society's organizations become more complex, they become more interlaced and thereby more counterbalanced in their scope of initiative action. This primordial counterbalance, however, is less in terms o~ conflict and more in terms of agreement. As a result, as organizations grow to need each other, they become less counterbalanced in the consequent effects o~ their actions in the public arena. This is an important point. It any-one subject to a function of organizational power is still ultimately free to disassociate himself from .the power, with some but with no drastic repercussions in his total li~e style, then the "power over" that person may be said to be private. Sucb a freedom of the one subjected to private "power over" presupposes other, significantly dis-tinct sources of "power to do" things which produce real options for the one subject to the power system at hand. But if the disassociation, if possible at all, from one power would at best only bring about the substitution o[ tbe one by another qualitatively the same source of 'power over," then the "power over" may be said to be public. From this test of the distinction of the public and tbe private sector o[ society, one sees that the real c~runch of the "new property" power is that, more and more, its consequent effects can no longer be balanced out by deci-sions made by others with power. It is so far forth public. Power status is thus one's place in the organizationally active determination of the quality of people's lives. As holders of "new property," individuals exercise the resultant social power to determine some relations that others will have to the organization or to its products, and thereby to the corporateI society. With an ethical vocabulary based on the old p, roperty rubrics, many sta-tus power people still speak ofI these determinations they bring about in tbe lives of ot[~ers only in terms of privi-leges or options, and not in terms of rights and basic human values. They thereby presume that to deny a rela-tion to the orgamzat~on or to deny a cr~uc~sm of its products is merely to deny a lprivilege or to deny tbe immediate value of certain options. There is no wonder that umvers~t~es, for example, st~ll ~ns~st that students are there not by right but by privilege. When orgamzauons were private, such talk was movie acceptable ethically. But today, when org~inizations both decide upon and, in their interlaced stance, supply thos~ credentials which deter-mine a person in the roles he b~ts in tbe corporate society, the subject's relation to them i~ now public and nearly or completely in the area~of rigltts. We are less and less a society o~ persons who receive entrance into "private" organizations by privilege or lwho use the products of organizations by option. Simp,ly stated, the "new prop-÷ ÷ ÷ "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1973. 981 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 982 erty" gives not only "power to do," but, more signifi-cantly for human and Christian values, direct "power over" persons. " (How legitimate) Such "power over" persons requires justification. One must question such power that can "make things happen" in respect to basic values in a society and ask if it is legitimate. The question is raised today for non-owned economic organizations and is espe-cially vital for all organizations which by the interlacing of society have had their power effects take on the "pub-lic" quality noted above. Power is a fact, but the persons concerned can ask for the rights to its possession and to its use. By "legitimate" I signify that there are good answers in terms of human values to the questions "How come such and such has power" and "For what purpose does such and such have power." Such questions ask for standards by which to judge the possession and use of power which are extra-neous to the power itself. In a society of fre6 persons, power can legitimately be obtained and legitimately be used only under the aegis of some expression of "public consensus." Berle has sug-gested two phases in any legitimization. (1) People get control, within an organization's power mechanism by some inner organizational ritual established by the orga-nization and accepted at least passively by the public consensus. (2) Such people use socio-economic power le-gitimately if the organizati6n has a [unction to perform within the values of the full society which is acknowl-edged by consensus, and if their use of the power is appropriate to that function. (Of course, few such func-tions are well-defined, but public consensus has positive though vague ideals here of what is acceptable.) Let us stipulate that, ambiguous as it is, power over persons can be legitimate. And let us for convenience designate anybne with legitimate power over persons in our corporate society as one who has "authority," but let us call such authority in the socio-economic structure "authority (P)." By this authority (P) ~ person rightfully can affect others in societal relationships by making things happen [or them, and thus can determine them in respect to some of the values in their lives. Given that individuals are persons, non-counterbal-anced power to affect their lives will be legitimate ulti-mately only if it positively contributes to their develop-ment as individual and as social persons. In our corporately interlaced society, this legitimacy will imply that those who have power will be accountable to all per-sons whose lives the exercise of the power affects. In summary, then, the argument is that today "new property" is identified with the exercise of "power over" in the socio-economic field, d one's "power over" activ-ities, one's authority (P),g ~"ves one's social identity and one's social initiative.°Keep in]mind that, in a true sense, one need not "own" anything [in order to have this "new property." " [ I do not wish to argue here that the concept of "new property" is accurate. This h~s been done forcefully by the political economists. All I need is this brief and un-doubtedly inadequate overview in order to ask for Some reflection on the relation of ~his advent of "new prop-erty" to the vow of poverty in ~eligious life. / The Vow ol Poverty In every activity within the[ corporate society, ,persons make and express their selves as they transact with other persons. Thus each one in deeds gives answers to those questions which are either exp!icitly or at least implicitly in every personal encounter: "~Who are you?" and "What do you mean for me?" ,, The social power that is theI new property' makes one respond in terms of status and function: "I am one who has tlus place m the social sttqucture and "I determine these values for you." Let me at once contrast withlthese responses what I call the positive thrust of the vow of poverty and suggest that tt ~s that wluch would permit one to respond: I am the human being Ch~'ist has made !me, are you such a human being, too?" On~ thereby expresses the message and the challenge of the Good News by one's very life style itself. Usually in activities we express a functional connection between some parts of ourselves and some parts of the supporting socio-economic system. We are teachers, pro-fessors, administrators at such and such an educational institution; we are experts and on such and such commit-tees; we have such ahd such training, such and such de-grees, such and such publications to our credit; thereby we are in such and such relationships to this organization within the complex of interlaced organizations. That is "who we are." By this part-function'ality we conceptually merge a re-sponse to "Who are you" with the response to "What do you do?" or even more broadly "How do you fit into the socio-economic system?" Thus when .asked "Who are you?" or when we ask of others "Who is that?" we really change the meaning of the question in,our minds and then employ functional categories "to handle" other per-sons in our thoughts and to have identification as we are "handled" in the thoughts of others. (We must be taught to do this: a little girl at the border, when asked if.she was an American, replied, "No, my daddy is an Ameri-can. I'm a girl.") 4- 4- + "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 983 ÷ ÷ ÷ W. L. LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 984 Generally then, and perhaps more especially in a "new property" milieu, one's functional roles in the corporate society determine one's self identity. And this identity is more and more dependent upon the fate of one's immedi-ate organization within the corporate society, and upon. one's acceptance by functional peers and one's perform-ance among functional inferiors. Thus the primary con-cern of the person with "new property" must be organiza-tional. This is antithetical to the thrust of vowed poverty. A second, equally significant factor from "new prop-erty," the socio-economic power endemic to organiza-tional place also jabs at the thrust of vowed poverty. One with "new property" determines the lives of others Jor them because, as functional within and dependent upon socio-economic power, one exercises "power over" per-sons. Those who consider the vow of poverty as significant for Christian religious life can no longer ignore the con-tradiction that occurs when one points only to one's "min-imal individual possessory holdings" and Overlooks one's "new property" holdings. Since many religious in the United States are in education, let us use an example from this organizational area to put the problem strik-ingly. Let us ask: Can one who has a vow of poverty act consistently if he becomes the president of a uniyersity? Even if he lives a most frugal and Spartan private life, one stripped of all but the immediately necessary mate-rial items, can he in deeds live the thrust of the vow of poverty, since 'he has willy-nilly status wealth in the pub-lic socio-economic system and acts constantly with "power over" persons? Can he express the message and challenge ¯ of the Good News in any continuous form coming from his life style itself if he so connects himself with the interlaced set of organizations whose basis is a power to determine for other persons items basic to their values in life? The same questions can be put to the tenured profes, sor, the high .school principal, and so on. Perhaps a test for an opposition to vowed poverty would be: Do the respect and consideration one has from peers and inferi-ors in societal transactions come primarily from one's "new property" functions or not? Some have argued that poverty does not mean the neg-ative "not using material items of value," but rather the positive "sharing of the effects and experiences resultant from any possession and use with the concrete religious community." These values are one's talents, the experi-ences of one's apostolate, as well as the gifts one receives, one's former individual possessory holdings, and so forth. Thus they might argue that one can also use the "new property" consistently without effect on poverty in reli-gious life. I suspect that such an argument misses the qualitative newness of the "new property.~" It also un~terplays the positive thrust in the rentmciation of the old property, suggested in this section's opening. I will stipulate that some of the inward thrust of pov-erty may be in terms of mutual sharing with the commu-nity. But the vow must be ultimately for the life of the Good News in the mission of the whole Christian com-munity. It cannot have for its final term the limited reli-gious community: And ~he outward thrust (and part of the inward thrust itself) of poverty is precisely so that one can respond to contact with others as a (Christian) human person and challenge the others also to be (Chris-tian) human persons. Poverty has been an attempt to remove those identification handles which passively ob-struct the transmission of the Good News which chal-lenges others to be in, deeds what Christ has made them. Perhaps more importantly in our time and place, poverty seeks to remove that public power which actively ob-structs others from determining for themselves their free response to the challenge of the Good News. This mission of the Good News one legitimately .ob-tains and legitimately exercises by the action of the Trin-ity in human history. Let us for convenience designate anyone with the legitimate mission to challenge others with the Good News as one who has Christian authority, but let us call this challenging authority "authority (C)." By this authority (C), a person in encounter~ can legiti-mately challenge others to be consistent with themselves as individual and social persons, but the challenger has no power to determine the others in respect to their values as human persons, because the thrust of one's Christian mission is to leave the others confronted with the Gospel challenge but free to determine themselves, As there is authority (P) which is legitimate power to challenge others by determining to some extent human values for them, so here there is authority (C) ~hich is the mission to transmit a legitimate challenge but with-out any power to determine for the one c.hallenged. Those who live a vow of poverty would seem to want to specialize in ~some continuity of deeds and life style in this Christian authority (C). Of course, it is not impossible for one tO have status property and to exercise the consequent determining power and still,, in addition, to transmit by authority (C) the challenge of the Good News. Christians who do not vow poverty do it every day. But they do not attempt to specialize in a continuity of deeds .which emphasize au-thority (C). 4- "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 985 ÷ ÷ W, L, LaCroix REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 986 Some would argue that those with the vow of. poverty also can utilize the "new property" and its logically con-seqt~ ent authority (P) as a means in their life style. They argue that religious do not rest in this "new property" but can have it and remain true to the thrust of the vow because, for example, they use the "new property" to make professional contacts vital to the universalization of the Good News. Let us reflect here not on the strengths of such a defense, and there are some, bnt on its weaknesses. A. Some would say that religious need the status, which is the wealth of the "new property," in order to contact the important people in a society organized around power status on their own level. From the "new prop-erty" gained by administrative, academic, or other cre-dentials, religious can contact the organizational profes-sions of the clay and influence them. But do religious as status members speak to others as trans-status human beings or as co,possessors of power status? Do religious who contact as holders of "new property" contact the whole person and challenge the other with authority (C)? Must religious not necessarily, if they are fellow "new property" holders, speak to others pronouncedly as fun-damental co-members who are equally bound to the power and th'e fate of the structure in dominance in today's corporate society? Remember, unlike the old property, one never "owns" the "new property;" One is always conditionally and precariously subject to the orga-nizations which generate the active power place. One keeps the p.lace only by somehow contibnting actively to a successful exercise of socio-economic "power to do" and "power over." B. Why was not a parallel argument valid for religious to have the "old" property? If it was not valid, what value did Christians place on the vow of poverty in the past that made it so? Was it simply the release from worry over those things which other people must daily worry about? Certainly not. Christians held [or some rea-son that religious vowed to poverty could give a special continuity to the use of authority (C) lrom the very form their life style gave to all their activities. Religious could give this special continuity to the use of authority (C) if they were not the equals of others as holders of individ-ual possessory property, if they encountered the others not in a role of co-wielders of social power from that property, but radically as persons unconnected with a social function category. Can this thrust be realized if religious with a vow of poverty are equal co-holders of social economic public power from the "new property" of today? It is not easy to answer this with a simple "no." Many seem successful in their mission with the Good News to challenge others t(; be "the persons Christ has made them even though these present challengers, vowed religious, or lay Christians, are co-holders with the chall~n~ged of the "new property." X~'hether such success is limited to this period of transi-tion, wherein few are fully .aware of the i.mplicationS of "new property," is a good question. But whether even such success continues to make a religious vow of poverty meaningful is a better one~ ÷ ÷ ÷ "New Property" VOLUME 30, 1971 987 ROBERT OCHS, S.J. Experiments for Closing the Experience Gap in Prayer ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs is a faculty member of Bellarmine School of Theology; 5't30 South University Avenue; Chicago, Il-linois fi5615. REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 988 "Speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another"- these are the words with which Ignatius Loyola character-izes what he calls "colloquies," conversations with the Father, Christ, or Mary which conclude so many of the exercises which make up his Spiritual Exercises. This prayer of conversation, explicitly evoking a personal part-ner, is not the whole of prayer. To try to make it such, to focus on the divine Thou in all our prayer, is a strain which can cut us off from other avenues of divine contact. Trying to force all prayer irito a conversational mold can even short-circuit what it intends to further, by making us hurry past the "impersonal" world of divine power and energy, fire and spirit, not to mention Silence and nothingness. Yet to turn our back on it would be to lose a vital dimension of religious experience. Prayer as conversation, dialogue, or encounter with God has recently become much harder for increasing numbers of Christians, as they have rediscovered God both as transcendent mystery and as immanent Spirit. But, I submit, neither our new awareness of God's tran-scendence or of his immanence is the real cause of our inability to meet God in a face to face encounter. For some reason we are not bold enough, or realistic and imaginative enough, in our use of dialogal prayer. Prayer of colloquy is not nearly "colloquial" enough. Speaking with God "exactly as one friend to another," as Ignatius flatly states it, has yet to be really explored, partly out of a misplaced fear of anthropomorphism, partly because our personal relationships themselves have become so bland that we have forgotten exactly how intimate friends do speak to one another. (I sometimes feel Dr, George Bach's paperback, The Intimate Enemy: How to Fight Fair in Love and Marriage, would be a better aid to prayer nowadays than many books directly on prayer,) Underlying our lack of imagination is a peculiar mind set of ours which renders any boldness in encountering God all but impossible. Until we alter this mind set about where and how God is encountered, about the mediurn of any encounter with God, any modeling of our encounter with God on the model of human encounters will look merely like improved make-believe. The Spiritual Exercises speak a great deal about this medium, what Ignatius calls creatures or .simply "all things." Early in the text~ the so-called "Principle and Foundation" insists on "indifference" to things, using them "in as far as" they help find God. And toward the end, the "Contemplation to Attain Love" reminds us that love manifests itself in deeds and consists in a mutual sharing of goods. Between these two exercises, which span the whole Ignatian retreat, the effort is to make things a vehicle of mutual communication instead .of an obstacle, to make them a locus of encounter and matter for shar-ing. As an introductory school of prayer the Exercises teach us to find God in all things, so that things become the means of exchange for dialogue. The whole effort to encounter God involves us therefore in a vast transforma-tion of our view of things. All this sounds terribly obvious. And yet the shift in point of view we are called on to effect in ourselves is enormous, and if we could do it we could pray. The effort involves, for a Christian who supposedly "already believes in God" but does not yet really live in faith, the overcoming of an attitude about God and things which is perhaps the great obsta_cle to encounter with God in our lives, an attitude I Choose to call Deism. Deism sounds at first a harmless enough term, and that is partly why I have chosen it. Giving a harmless name to what one feels is The Great Obstacle has the advantage that it opens us to look for the obstacle to prayer within ourselves and our own pale Christianity. For much that goes by the name of Christianity is no more than Deism, and Deism is as far removed from Christian faith as ag-nosticism or atheism. At any rate, Deism stands along with agnosticism and atheism on the opposite side of the line dividing belief from unbelief. And it is perhaps more dangerous than those two, because it apes Christianity and obscures it own lack of faith. After all, is it not at least theistic, admitting the existence of God? But it ad-mits a God with whom one does not deal, an inaccessibld God with whom one does not argue or wrestle. From the viewpoint of faith the Deist is worse off than the atheist who seeks an accessible God but cannot find him. It is not true that believing in a Deistic God is better than + ÷ ÷o VOLUME 30, 1971 989 ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 990 believing in none at all, because to believe in a God who does not enter into intimate relationships with men im-plies giving him certain personal attributes opposed to such relationships, making him aloof, arbitrary, uncon-cerned. While faith says He is our Father. Deism is far from harmless. It is religion without reli-gious experience, religion without encounter and without prayer. It declares God inaccessible. It views the world of things precisely as providing no access to God. It would be profitable to read Ignatius' "Contemplation to Attain Love" as an overcoming of Deism, seeing God dwelling in creatures, "conducting Himself as one who labors" for us in all creatures on the face of the earth. The "Contempla-tion" is the effort to see deeds as potential manifestations of 10ve and all goods as material for mutual sharing. I somewhat regret having to use the term Deism, be-cause it sounds too exclusively associated with the ages of' enlightenment and rationalism. What I mean by it is less a theological position than a state of mind, one which is still very much with us. Deism is a whole sensibility impeding our prayer. One could almost define it as the opposite of finding God in all things, as finding things and supposedly finding God, but not putting these two together except in an awkward juxtaposition. It is what modern thinkers are trying to overcome when they talk of transcendence in immanence and of encountering God in the world. We are Deists when we find God in religion and' not in secular things, and when we admit that reli-gion is more important but more boring than life. We are Deists in our inability to talk about God without using pale language divorced from life, language made more and not less abstract when it becomes pious. We are Deists when we live out our own human growth Odyssey without relation to our spiritual Odyssey. These are old accusations. We are no doubt overfami-liar with these aspects of our Deism. Accordingly, in the following pages I propose taking a look at certain things in which we are not used to finding God. We do not look for God in these things because we think He is already there. We are already aware of the problem of finding God in matter, in the secular, in the ugly. But the things I want to look into with the reader are, briefly, the will of God, our thoughts (especially our religious thoughts), and our images of God and ourselves as we engage God in dialogue. If we looked more for God in these things, .we would be much more able to pray. The best way to take this look is not by direct description, but by watch-ing our spontaneous reactions provoked by certain thought experiments. This way we can uncover the var-ious Deistic mind sets we are caught up in. We should not be surprised by this procedure. The Exercises them- selves proceed often in this same fashion, asking us, for example to imagine three classes of men or to imagine ourselves at tile hour of deatli, or to enter in fantasy into a gospel scene and then ',reflect On myself." The itinerary through the Exercises proceeds as much by uncovering and then healing attitudes of unbelief as by appropriat-ing attitudes of belief. God Present in the Things .That Are His will The second is that love consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example the lover give and shares with the be-loved what he possesses, or something of that which he has or is able to give: and vice versa, the beloved shares With the lover. Hence, if one has knowledge, he shares it with the one who does not possess it; and' 'so also if one has honors, or riches. Thus, one always gives to the other.--Spiritual Ex-ercises, n. 231. Let us start hy a look at our will-of-God-talk. There is, in fact, a curious anomaly in much recent will-of, God-talk. This anomaly can be expressed in different ways. For example, we seem to be theists in our discei:ning process, and secularists in our carrying out process (and therefore Pelagian Deists all round: Discern as if every-thing depended upon God; act as if everything depended on you). Our talk of discerning God's will sounds more convincing than our talk of God's will once discerned. We do talk rather convincingly (that is, convincedly; with words that at least sound as if we were convinced of the reality we were talking about) about finding God'S will, but our handling of God's will once we have supposedly found it seems to give the lie to such talk. It is not iust that we fail in performance, that we are slow to fulfill what we think we must do, as Christians have always felt themselves to be. It is that the talk that accompanies our efforts to fulfill the wi.l,1 of God sounds as if we were~less than convinced that there was any such thing as a will of God manifested in discernment. In short, our talk gives the impression that we aim at doing more than merely discerning "What the situation calls for," because we in-sist on giving it a theological dimension. And yet once we have discerned "the will of God," we carry on as if this theological dimension were sheer ideology. Various Symptoms point to this, especially Our vacilla-tion and our regrets (and recriminations). Our vacillation during the process of discernment, weighing and search-ing our motives, 'indicates that we take seriously what we are doing. But vacillation after the moment of deciSion indicates rather the opposite. Again, it is not so much vacillation in performance I am talking about, but a kind of vacillation in the belief which governs the perform-ance. (If you are going to believe in a will-of-God uni-verse, an agnostic observer might say, at least take the ÷ ÷ ÷ Prayer VOLUME 30, 1971 991 ÷ ÷ ÷ Robert Ochs REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS 992 advantages as well as the onus of your world view, and taste a bit of the joy and enthusiasm that ought to accom-pany such a belief.) For example, a line of action em-barked upon as a result of discernment will be aban-doned with a lightness incompatible with the discern-ment talk which launched it. The project is not adjusted in the light of new circumstances, discerned anew, as we say, but is changed without recourse to any discernment process at all. A project may be entered upon with some sense of vocation, and then abandoned with neither a sense of infidelity to any call, nor a sense of a new version of the call. If it does not work out, it is simply dropped as a misguided enterprise shot through with human fallibil-ity. After this, curiously enough, the whole discernment process may be started again, with'hopes inexplicably undimmed of finding this time the will-of-God project that will not turn sour. This phenomenon makes one wonder if any genuine discernment was ever done at all, especially when one considers that true discernment does not just provide the knowledge of what to do, but the grace to carry it out, the grace not to forget for long that one is about the Lord's business. Nadal remarks that what struck the early companions about Ignatius was his single-mindedness once he had adopted a course of action through discernment. Ignatius especially deplored the failure of spiritual nerve or what he called courage in difficult enterprises. Another index is regret. We have pursued a course under the aegis of God's will, expended our energies on it, and it does not work out, or works only tolerably well. Hindsight reveals all the deficiencies of our original choice--it looks dated, it is not what we would have chosen if we knew then what we know now. We regret, we recriminate, we think rather quickly .that we have been duped, wasted our efforts, labored under a very human delusion. Even though when we made the deci-sion we claimed to be aware that we had no choice but to choose, further postponement of decision being a worse choice than the one we made, yet we have no sense of accomplishment, no sense of having done God's will or even qf having done our best trying. For another index, let us observe our reactions to the account, in Chapter I of Acts, of the drawing of lots to fill up the vacancy left in the Twelve by Judas' betrayal. Matthias and Barsabba

Issue 56.4 of the Review for Religious, July/August 1997. ; for re,lig i ous Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY-AUGUST1997 ¯ VOLUME56 ¯ NUMBER4 Review for Religious (s a forum for shared reflection on the lived experience of all who find that the church's rich heritages of spirituality support their personal and apostolic Christian lives. The articles in the journal are meant to be informative, practical, or inspirational, written from a tbeological or spiritual or sometimes canonical point of view. Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is pul31ished bi-monthly at Saint Louis University by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone:314-977-7363 ¯ Fax: 314-977-7362 E-Mail: FOPI~I~MA@SLU.I~I)U Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP 1150 Cedar Cove Road ¯ Hendersou, NC 27536 POSTMASTF~R 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. ©1997 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy auy 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 creatio,i of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review fi3r Religious. for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Editorial Staff Advisory Board David L. Fleming sJ Philip C. Fischer sJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Mary Ann Foppe Tracy Gramm Jean Read James and Joan Felling Iris Ann Ledden SSND Joel Rippinger OSB Edmundo Rodriguez sJ David Werthmann CSSR Patricia Wittberg SC Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JULY/AUGUST1997 * VOLUME56 ¯ NUMBER4 contents prayer 342 Evoking the Spirit: Reflections on How to Pray ¯ ~°~Richard Hauser SJ explores the role of the Spirit in bringing about a communion with God, the goal of all prayer methods. 359 Liturgy of the Hours: Path to Integration Judy Roxborough STJ describes how praying the Liturgy of the Hours in community offers many ways in which we can find unity and wholeness, with ourselves, with our commutfity, with the world, and with all of creation. 364 370 spiritual direction What Is a Spiritual Director's Authority? Steve R. Wigall refocuses the question about the spiritual director's authority by considering the role of the Holy Spirit and the directee's freedom in this ministry. Confidentiality Issues in Spiritual Direction Shaun McCarty ST explores the nature and necessity of confidentiality in the ministry of spiritual direction and also some legal considerations affecting its practice. Review for Relig4ous 378 387 psychology Psychology: An Aid to Religious Formation Sefin D. Sammon FMS considers three specific and pressing initial and ongoing formative challenges and examines how psychology may help. Mental-Health Consultation with Religious Orders Alexander H. Smith Jr. considers elements of effective consultation from the perspective of both consultant and community in order to inform, to caution, and to encourage well-grounded principles and practices. 4O2 412 consecrated life Visiting a Scene. of Election Janet K. Ruffing RSM focuses within congregational elections on the ongoing partnership and collaboration of each assembly member and the entire body with those who are elected. The Rewards of a Costly Community Roger Finke ~ses sociological data to demonstrate that new members are attracted to religious congregations that have a distinctive community and mission. 340 433 departments Prisms ~,~, /~,~ -,¢- -r~ Canonical Counsel: Levels of Legislation in an Institute Book Reviews July-August 1997 prisms Jesus Christ is central to our faith and to its practices. As we continue our preparations for celebrating the third millennium in the spirit of John Paul II's 1995 letter, we could well reflect on how central Jesus is to our life, our prayer, and our work--to our everyday world. Jesus identified himself as one "preaching the good news." Jesus, first and foremost, proclaimed himself an "evangelizer." He talked about God. He talked about God's sons and daughters. He talked about God's world. Everything Jesus described--the first rays of sunlight, birds nesting, an old woman giving her little bit of money in the temple; whatever he listened to--spring water flow-ing, a baby's cry, musicians at a wedding feast; things that he could smell and taste--the freshness of a spring rain, the rich flavor of wine; whatever he touched--the mud to put on a blind man's eyes, the coldness of a young man's dead body, the warmth of John's embrace, or the lock-tight hold of Mary Magdalen on -Easter morning: every-thing spoke to him of the wonder of each of God's creatures, but even deeper down the wonder and beauty of God. And so Jesus could tell simple stories about seeds and growth, about wedding banquets and joy, about being neighbors and doing good to battered strangers Every time, in every instance, he is talking about God and our dealings with God. There is a Latin verb--conversari~-which means "to turn in relation with" and thus "to interact with," "to have dealings with," "to engage," or "to converse with" (our English word conversation obviously derives from it). In the light of this Latin derivation, we might say that all R~iew for Religious. our conversation--all our "talking"--is much broader in meaning and takes in all our dealings with others. Jesus was an evangelizer in all his dealings with the men and women of his time. Every incident in the Gospels is a picture of Jesus evangelizing--engag-ing people in the divine context of their lives. What does that say about us as Jesus' followers? To be evan-gelizers we do not have to go off to school and get degrees in theology. We do not have to exile ourselves to another country. All we need do is deal with the people in our everyday world the way Jesus talked and dealt with the people in his ~veryday world. He presented to each person a new quality of life; he uncovered divine values beneath the surface of all our human dealings. But for us to act in such a way implies that our world and the events in our lives speak of God to us so that we can speak of God to others. Like Jesus, we have to become aware of a world alive in God. Isn't that an essential to the good news which we live and speak about and deal with others about? John Paul has stressed repeatedly that we are being called to a new evangelization. Today we call our effort a "new evange-lization" because our educated world seems so ignorant of Jesus' way bf seeing (seeing deeper down) and because we ourselves, whatever our vocation in life, whatever our age, whatever our tal-ents and .education, are newly conscious of our responsibilities to preach the good news. For us to be Christian, to be like Jesus, we must be missionary; we must be evangelizers. How do we, neophyte evangelizers, start to live in Jesus' world? By reading the Gospels. Throughout the rest of this year. dedicated especially to Jesus, we need to set an agenda for our-selves of reading the Gospels through--slowly and over and over again. We need to let their words, their stories, become the warp and woof of our lives. We will be imbibing Jesus' way of being an evangelizer. We will assume more and more a stance of dealing with people in Jesus'. kind of world--a world alive in God. Like Jesus, we will be doing our part in making ourselves and our world come alive.in God. Like Jesus, we will be preaching good news to the "poor," that is, those who have so little a sense of God's pres-ence permeating their everyday world. David L. Fleming sJ 3~uly-August 1997 prayer RICHARD J. HAUSER Evoking the Spirit: Reflections on How to Pray Students in my graduate spirituality classes frequently ask about the most effective method of prayer for attaining union with God. They ask whether centering prayer from The Cloud of Unknowing is more effective than lectio prayer from the Benedictine tradition. (Lectio prayer is short-hand for lectio-meditatio-oratio-contemplatio prayer, a method from the 12th century for praying with Scripture.) Recently claims have been made for one method over the other. I am uncomfortable with assumptions behind such ,questions: that a method is necessary, that one method is more effective than another, that the effects depend upon our activity. After teaching methods of prayer conscien-tiously for years, I have been led by experience to soften my assertions about the use of method. My uneasiness regarding methods relates primarily to people's almost Pelagian lack of awareness 6f the role of the Holy Spirit, in any method of prayer or spiritual dis-cipline. The basic question for all spirituality is how we ¯ integrate our human effort with the role of the Spirit. Pope John Paul's 1986 encyclical, "Lord and Giver of Life," offers an apt response. Reflecting upon the Gospel of John and Christ's promise.to send ;another advocate to take his place, the pope summarizes the Christian tradition Richard J. Hauser SJ is chair of the Department of Theology at Creighton University and director of its graduate programs in theology, ministry; and spirituality. This is his tenth article for our journal. ,His address is Creighton University; 2500 California Street; Omaha, Nebraska 68178. Revie'w for Religious. on the Holy Spirit as sanctifier: "The redemption accomplished by the Son in the dimensions of the earthly history of human-ity-- accomplished in the 'departure' through the cross and res-urrection- is at the same time, in its entire salvific power, transmitted to the Holy Spirit: the one who 'will take what is mine'" (§11). The pope echoes Vatican Council II's emphasis on the Holy Spirit by insisting we adequately understand Christian vocation only when we understand the role of the Holy Spirit: the entire effect of the redemption is brought about by the Holy Spirit. We post-Vatican II Christians are challenged,to renew our theolog-ical models of the church, of the self, and of spirituality in light of our renewed understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit--an understanding all but lost before the council. And we are then challenged to renew every spiritual discipline, including personal prayer. The Spirit and Vatican II: Shift in Models One shift in models concerns the church. In recent decades we have witnessed two different, ~ough complementary, models of church. Each model assigns a distinctive role to the Holy Spirit. (Since I am a Roman Catholic, my primary understanding of church is that of my own tradition, but I have learned that my insights are applicable to Protestant traditions as well.) In the first model the Holy Spirit is indeed present in the church, but the church is seen primarily as an institution governed by hierarchi-cal authority--for Catholics: priests, bishops, pope. The Holy Spirit guides the institution through the hierarchy, and the hier-archy, especially the local priest, guides the people. The institu-tion rests secure because an infallible guidance in faith and morals was promised to it. In the second or Vatican II model, the Holy Spirit is present in the church, but the church is seen as the peo-ple of God, the entire community of believers, head and members united in the one Body of Christ. While continuing to guide the church corporately, the Holy Spirit also guides the members indi-vidually. The following excerpts from chapter 1 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium) highlight this truth elegantly. The Spirit dwells in the church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a temple. In them he prays and bears wimess yuly-A ugust 1997 Hawser ¯ Evoking the Spirit to the fact that they are adopted sons. The Spirit guides the church into the fullness of truth and gives it a unity of fellowship and service. He furnishes and directs it with var-ious gifts, both hierarchical and charismatic, and adorns her with the fruits of his grace. In order that we may be unceasingly renewed in him [Jesus], he has shared with us his Spirit, who, existing as one and the same being in the head and in the members, vivifies, unifies, and moves the whole bod);. Another shift in models is related to the church as the Body of Christ and concerns the nature of the self. Christians are dis-covering anew a central element of the New Testament message: the role of the Spirit within the self. Before Vatican II this role was virtually absent from our consciousness; now it dominates theo-logical consciousness. The plethora of books on the Spirit and spirituality in recent years are a sign of this. What is the role of the Spirit within the self?. Our treatment of this topic must begin with the Last Supper discourse in John's Gospel. Jesus is comforting his disciples, having told them of his imminent departure. But now I am going to the one who sent me, and not one of you asks me, "Where are you going?" But because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts. But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. (Jn 16:5-7, revised NAB here and throughout) Jesus assures them it is better for them that he'goes; the, Spirit he sends will take his place, guiding and strengthening' them in their mission. Indeed, this union with himself through the Spirit is the condition for apostolic effectiveness. The Gospel could not be more clear: Remain in me, as I' remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so nei-ther can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are °the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. (In 15:4-5) Jesus' prediction is fulfilled at Pentecost when the Spirit descends on the community. The Acts of the Apostles gives wit-ness to the working of the Spirit in the apostolic church. Note the difference in the disciples before and after the coming of the Spirit. Review for Religious Among New Testament writings the epistles of Paul are a most eloquent witness to this power of the Spirit--a power he received only after his conversion to Christ at Damascus. For Paul, belief in Jesus with the subsequent infusion of the life of the Spirit is the source of all power. It is a new principle of life. Paul contrasts it with the flesh and its tendency to sin. But you are not in the flesh; on. the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you. (Rm 8:9-11) This principle of life infuses the Christian community, form-ing one body, the Body of Christ, with every member united and animated by the Spirit. As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. (1 Co 12:12-13) A note on the activity of the Spirit in the self: The Holy Spirit joins our human spirit; it does not replace it. We humans enjoy three modes of activity flowing from the three dimensions of our being: physical, psychological, and spiritual. It is helpful to imag-ine three concentric circles: the center is the spirit, the middle is the mind, the outer is the body. Every human activity engages all three levels. Our physical and psychological activities are obvious to all. But what are our spiritual activities? The spiritual level is the level of our freedom, our freedom to respond to the Spirit or not to respond. The Holy Spirit joins our human spirit, initiating within us the desire for goodness~without the Spirit's presence we would nbt even have the desire. Responding to the Spirit, then, transforms the other levels of our b.eing, the physical and the psychological. The Spirit is the principle for all Christian life. Traditionally this indwelling of the Spirit has been called sancti-fying grace. Personal prayer--like every spiritual activity--is a response to the Spirit. An important corollary flows from this truth: We can trust our inner selves. At our center we have God's Spirit to guide us. .l~uly-Aug'ust 1997 Hauser * Evoking the Spirit Previous approaches to spirituality did not adequately acknowl-edge that presence. Commonly they taught that the self cannot be trusted because of fallen human nature and inherited original sin. This inherited brokenness so dominated our consciousness that we undervalued the power of redemption from sin. Since we could not trust this inner self, it became necessary to look outside our-selves for external guidelines. Contemporary approaches, too, acknowledge human brokenness--hence the emphasis on dis-cernment of spirits--but they also acknowledge the real effect of Christ's redemption. We have been freed from the slavery of sin; therefore, we can trust our inner selves. Grace in us is stronger than sin in us. Frequently we Christians have substituted fidelity to prescribed formal prayers--morning and night prayers, meal prayers, divine office, prayerbook formularies--for a more inte-rior response to the Spirit. Unfortunately, the Vatican II theological renewal concerning the Holy Spirit has not yet permeated popular consciousness thor-oughly. Many of us live within a different model of the self, which I will call the Western model because I recognize that it dominates the approach to God of many in the Western Hemisphere, In this model God is solely transcendent--in heaven--and so not dwelling within the self through the Spirit. This God in heaven is not readily seen as the initiator of good actions. Though the Western model duly acknowledges that we are made to know, love, and serve God in this life and so be happy in the next, it tends to give God no role in these actions until after they are performed, when rewards of grace are given in this life leading to the reward of heaven in the next. In this model, people tend to see themselvesas the initiators of their own good deeds, including personal prayer. Sanctifying grace is often erroneously under-stood as the treasury in heaven of merit earned by good works on earth. This Western view of self is not taken from the New Testament, but rather absorbed from several aspects of our culture. Our culture is secular. Our .view of the self tends also to be sec-ular; we do not recognize God's presence within us and its influ-ence on our inner motivation. At best we give intellectual assent that through baptism we receive sanctifying grace and so God is with us, but this notion of God's presence does not tend to affect our daily motivation. Our culture is also capitalistic, and financial rewards are conditioned on performance; we presume God gives Review for Religious spiritual rewards the same way, rewarding the just with grace--and perhaps even material prosperity--and withholding these rewards from the unjust. Our culture is individualistic. We prize inde-pendence and eschew any dependence, even finding dependence on God's grace demeaning. Without giving it much thought, we just presume we earn our salvation as we earn everything in life: by our own hard work. This view has disastrous effects on our understanding of how to pray: since the Spirit is not present within us, prayer cannot be a response to the Spirit, Another shift in models concerns spirituality itself. Unfortunately, we Christians have not drawn out implications of the Vatican II-renewed models of the church and the self and applied them to our practice of spirituality or to our personal prayer. Christian spirituality is a response to the Spirit. Today attention has shifted from performing spiritual disciplines (like prayer) externally to responding internally to the Spirit pres-ent in our hearts. Paul teaches his Jewish communities that they have been freed from subservience to the 613 Mosaic laws and are now called to respond to an inner law: "Now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may sePce in the newness of the spirit and not under the obsolete letter" (Rm 7:6). This truth also highlights the inadequacy of the Western-model understanding of good actions as self-initiated and emphasizes the scriptural teaching that~all good deeds are Spirit-initiated. Prayer and service not flowing from the heart do not fulfill Jesus' commandment of love. The Gospels present Jesus as hav-ing the most difficulty with a group of people who perfectly ful-filled all the commandments externally: the Pharisees. Jesus refers to them as whitened sepulchers. Externally they kept the com-mandments, internally they violated their very essence: love. Luke's parable on the Pharisee and the tax collector going to the temple to pray calls attention to the centrality of one's heart in prayer. The Pharisee boasted of his fidelity in keeping all the commandments, emphasizing his superiority to the tax collector. "But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me.a sinner.' I tell you, the latter went home jus-tified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be Grace in us is stronger than sin in us. Hauser ¯ Evoking the Spirit humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted" (Lk 18:13-14). Previous approaches to spirituality often seemed more con-cerned with the external performance of prayer and service than with the quality of heart underlying them. Indeed, we usually examined our consciences in terms of sinful actions performed or omitted. For instance we focused not on whether we hated our neighbor, but on whether we performed hateful actions. Likewise we focused not on whether we praised God at Sunday Mass, but on whether we fulfilled our obligation by being physically pres-ent- our dispositions were irrelevant. Luke's presentation on the love commandments catches the quality of heart central to spirituality. Recall that the questioner was coming from a mentality that focused on the external obser-vance of many Torah-related precepts as central to observant Jews. Jesus, however, echoes the simpler injunction from the same Scriptures: "Teacher,'what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?" He said in reply, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." He replied to him, "You have answered correctly; do this and you will live." (Lk 10:25-28) We should recall that love is always a response to the Spirit: love in us originates with God in us: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love . Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to per-fection in us. (1 Jn 4:7-8, 11-12) The Spirit and Spontaneous Prayer How does the above apply to how we pray? that is, to what we do when' we withdraw individually to be with the Lord? I will begin with our commonest experience of prayer, spontaneous prayer, prayer outside of formal prayer times. Prayer itself I describe simply as "the movement of the heart toward God under the influence of the Holy Spirit": no heart movement, no prayer. Review for Religious (Prayer cannot be identified with either words we say or thoughts we think; indeed, prayer need not be accompanied by either words or thoughts. In Christian tradition the deepest prayer transcends both.) The movement occurs only when we are "under the influ-ence of the Holy Spirit." When we are not in touch with the Spirit, we cannot respond to it. The movement of the heart under the influence of the Spirit is "toward God." The Spirit moves us towards the Father and towards Jesus. As Christian theology sees the Spirit as the bond of union between the Father and the Son in the Trinity, so the Spirit is our bond of union with the Father and Jesus. In the communion of saints, the Spirit unites us also with Mary and the other saints. We on earth are united with them as they now are in heaven, where they continually love and praise the Father and Jesus. There they can be pri;cileged intercessors for us. With them we move toward communion with the Father and Jesus. A note about the purpose of prayer: Often we unreflectively assume that prayer is for the pur-pose of seeking specific favors from God. Deeper reflection, however, reveals that in prayer we are really seeking a confirmation of God's love for us. The purpose behind all our prayer is a deeper communion with the Father and with Jesus. Though we may be led to prayer for many different reasons, as we continue praying we eventually realize that our deepest need is for God's presence and support: the Spirit has transformed our initial desires. The process is not unlike Jesus' transformation in the Garden of Gethsemane. He initially seeks to have the chalice removed, but ends yielding to God's will and presence. I believe we experience over and over again the truth of Augustine's excla-mation "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." In prayer there are many levels of .communion, of experienc-ing God's presence. The very desire for God's help is already a rudimentary experience of communion, even though the desire may be interspersed with distractions. The desire is real, but at this level the Spirit has not yet transformed other dimensions of the self. At a deeper level the movement toward God in prayer may be accompanied by tranquillity and peace. The Spirit makes us aware that the world is in God's hands, and we rest in the secu-rity of our relationship with our loving Lord. This is the usual In prayer we are really seeking a confirmation of God's love for us. ~uly-August 1997 Hauser * Evoking the Spirit experience. But, at an even deeper level, the Spirit so unites us to God that we lose conscious awareness of our communion with God. During the momentary experience itself, self-awareness recedes, but we are able to reflect upon the experience afterwards. The experience leaves a residue. The residue is described as wholeness, joy, contentment. Reflection on my own prayer experiences leads .me to a sur-prising conclusion (one I would not have made ten years ago): I find my heart drawn to God as frequently during spontaneous prayer as during the times I set aside for formal prayer. I have noticed that certain conditions foster these experiences--am I describing for myself a method for spontaneous prayer? The times and places are important. On schooldays the expe-riences occur mostly in the evenings after I have completed my day's work. Having put aside preoccupation with projects, I either take a leisurely walk around the campus or sit in one of my favorite places, such as a secluded university garden or the fountain-piazza in front of the church. On weekends the experiences can occur anytime, provided I have put aside preoccupations with work. I must give myself enough time for the experiences to occur--min-imally fifteen minutes, ideally a half hour--and must never be rushed. These experiences of spontaneous prayer, especially as they occur in natural settings, have affected my retreats and vacations. I now choose places for my annual retreats primarily for their setting. I find that my heart moves to God through nature in spontaneous ways that thoroughly refresh me. I consider the for-mal reflections characteristic of retreats as no more important than simply enioying the Lord's presence in nature. In these places God gives me the insights I need for my life. For my annual vaca-tions, too, I choose settings that facilitate spontaneous prayer. I see vacations as similar to retreats, as times for being re-created by God's presence, not simply as times to be distracted from my daily life. I find myself breaking into spontaneous prayer also at other times during the day. Most commonly this occurs after a partic-ularly successful class or during a walk down the campus mall. on an especially beautiful day. And it occurs when I am faithful to times of formal prayer. I believe we sensitize ourselves to the Spirit's presence during formal prayer, making it more likely that prayer will break forth spontaneously during daily activities~ Review for Religious The Spirit and Formal Prayer Only after discussing spontaneous prayer do I feel comfortable discussing formal prayer. Recall that formal prayer refers to time specifically.set aside for personal prayer. The question about the merits of centering prayer and lectio prayer makes sense only in the context of formal prayer. What method of prayer should we use to facilitate responding to the Spirit and reaching commu-nion with God? Remember that our role is to provide the condi-tions for responding to the Spirit. We all have our own rhythms for maintaining union with God. The observations I make here are attempts to share what has been working for myself. They do not imply that this is the way it should be done. Since we humans are complex beings of body, mind, and spirit, it is important for us to 0 find our own personal ways of getting our bod-ies and our minds ready to respond to the Spirit. The following patterns work for me. Time, place, and setting are important. First, the time. After rising, showering, shaving, and getting a cup of coffee, I light a candle and begin a period of sixty to ninety minutes. I sip the coffee and do some journaling; then, putting the coffee aside, I pray the morning office; finally, I move to personal prayer for the last twenty to thirty minutes. I never rush, spending as much time journaling as needed. It.clears my head and allows me to process what has built up in my psyche, matter which could emerge as distractions in my prayer. Often journaling provides the topic for the subsequent prayer. Next, the place. I pray in my own room, in a chair next to a large window that looks eastward over the secluded garden I men-tioned above; the chair, facing my prayer wall, is upholstered and comfortable, but supports me firmly in an upright position. On a side table are all the things I need: my journal, a Bible, the daily office, a lectionary, meditation books related to the liturgical season. I love this room, away from my offices. The window, open in warm weather, gives direct access to the sights and sounds of the garden and to the warmth and light of the rising sun. My prayer wall is hung with favorite icons, prints, and crucifixes gathered over the years; I rearrange it for the various liturgical seasons and feasts. Physical details are key: the time, the place, the furniture and furnishings. The regular rhythm of entering this environment at I believe we sensitize ourselves to the Spirit's presence during formal prayer. July-August 1997 Hauser ¯ Evoking the Spirit this time each day not only helps one to be receptive to the Spirit, but often occasions immediate communion with the Lord. Given the desire for communion with God, praying can be simple: just find the right time and place and go there regularly! Prayer methods, too, can dispose one to receive the Spirit. The methods of lectio prayer and centering prayer differ. Lectio prayer is a response to God's presence in the word. The word of God has many meanings. God is present in the scriptural word; traditionally most have found this to be the most helpful starting point for prayer. God is also present in the word of creation; some find focusing on God's presence in the beauty of nature a more effective beginning. God is present in the existential word as well; many find focusing on God's presence in the events and people of their lives the most effective beginning. But all aspects of cre-ation- images, poetry, music--are words of God and possible starting points for prayer. God is present in all of reality, sus-taining it in existence and using it to bring us into communion: "Creation proclaims the glory of God." In lectio prayer we choose an aspect of God's word to focus our attention; and then .we wait, listen, and respond to that word--under the influence of the Spirit. Our effort is to attend to God's word and, as much as pos-sible, avoid letting our attention be drawn toward distractions. In lectio prayer we are led by the Spirit toward a progres-sively deeper response to God's presence in the word. Frequently the dynamic is from thinking (meditatio) about God's presence~in the word, to praying (oratio) to God in response, to simply rest-ing (contemplatio) in God's presence without either thinking about God or even consciously praying to God. Guido II, a 12th-cen-tury Carthusian abbot, gives the classic expression of the internal dynamic of this prayer: You can see., how these degrees are joined to each other. One precedes the other, not only in the order of time but of causality. Reading (lectio) comes first and is, as it were, the foundation; it provides the subject matter we must use for meditation. Meditation (meditatio) considers more carefully what is to be sought after; it digs, as it were, for treasure which it finds and reveals; but, since it is not in medita-tion's power to seize upon the treasure, it directs us to prayer. Prayer (oratio) lifts itself up to God with all its strength and begs for the treasure it longs for, which is the sweemess of contemplation. Contemplation (contemplatio) when it comes rewards the labors of the other three; it ine-briates the thirsting soul with the dew of h~avenly sweemess. Review for Religlous Reading is an exercise of the outward senses; meditation is concerned with the inward understanding; prayer is con-cerned with desire; contemplation outstrips every faculty. (Guido II, Ladder of Monks, Cistercian Publications, 1978) The goal of the process is contemplation which "outstrips every faculty" and rests in communion with God unmediatated by our own activity. Our activity recedes; God's increases. God holds us close with little or no effort on our part. An image, adapted from Abbot Thomas Keating, helps us understand the process. The Spirit is the river; the word of God the boat; God the ocean. We live in the river (the Spirit). In prayer we allow the Spirit to direct our attention to the boat (the word of God). Focusing on the boat, we move with the boat into the ocean (God). Quite similar to this is the dynamic of spbntaneous prayer. Some aspect of God's word catches our attention. Through the Spirit we respond and are brought into divine communion. Centering prayer is quite different from lec-rio pra~er. It is based bn the truth of God's pres-ence in the center of our being, beyond the level of thoughts and desires. It presumes the scrip-rural model of the self. In centering prayer we respond to God directly, unmediated by reflections on God's word. The method, taken from the 14th-century English classic The Cloud of Unknowing and popularized by Trappist Fathers Keating, Pennington, and Menninger, is simple. We choose a favorite appellation for God, such as, "Father," "Abba, Father," "Jesus," "Lord," "Rabboni." We begin prayer with this "prayer word" and simply sit in faith and love before God. We do not begin With any reflections about God flowing from the word of God; we simply are in faith before God. Our goal is to be totally receptive to the Spirit so that it can hold us in communion. Interior silence, is the matrix for our receptivity. Keating's advice for handling thoughts is simple: Resist no thought, react to no thought, retain no thought; simply return to the. prayer Word. Note that we do not return to this word unless a thought arises. Thoughts inevitably arise and we let them pass, returning to the prayer word. Thoughts even have a positive qual-ity to them because, as we let them pass, ,;re are removing from In centering prayer we respond to God directly, unmediated by reflections on God's word. ff~uly-Auffust 1997 Hauser ¯ Evoking tbe Spirit our psyches obstacles to the contemplative communion with God; they are actually part of the purification process. Handled well, they move us toward interior silence, that is, nonattachment to thoughts. Eventually thoughts may recede and we can be before God in faith with little use of the prayer word. Once you grasp the fact that thoughts are not only inevitable, but an integral part of the healing and growth initiated by God, you are able to take a positive View of them. Instead of looking upon them as painful distractions, you see them in a broader perspective that includes both interior silence and thoughts--thoughts that you do not want but which are just as valuable for the purpose of purifi-cation as moments of profound tranquillity. Vghen everything in the unconscious is emptied out, the kinds of thoughts that were~passing by in the beginning will no longer exist. There is an end to the process of purifi-cation. Then the awareness of union with God will be con-tinuous because there will be no obstacle in our conscious or unconscious life to ~interfere with it. (Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart, Amity House, pp. 112 and 102) The goal of the process is contemplation which outstrips every faculty and rests in a communion with God unmediated by our own activity--the same goal as that of lectio prayer. The image of the river (the Spirit), boat (the word of God), and ocean (God) is helpful. Remember that we live in the river (the Spirit); in centering prayer we simply move in the river directly into the ocean (God).The prayer word is not a boat; we do not use it to support thinking (meditatio) and loving (oratio) as in lec-tio prayer. The prayer word serves only to symbolize our inten-tion. The Spirit brings us directly into communion without reflection on the word of God. ~ A third method should be discussed, mantra prayer. Its assumptions and dynamics are similar to those of centering prayer. It enters the Christian tradition formally in the 5th century in the Conferences of John Cassian. In mantra prayer, too, we respond to God directly, unmediated by reflections on God's word. But we come to prayer with a previously chosen mantra, not merely with a prayer word. We begin prayer slowly repeating dae mantra, coordinating its four phrases (separated by asterisks) with our inhaling and exhaling. (Most authors, but not all, suggest coor-dination with breathing). Cassian notes that the desert fathers preferred: "O God * come to my assistance * O Lord * make haste Review for Religious to help me." The most famous.mantra in the Christian tradition, however, is the Jesus Prayer that arose among the Greek fathers in the 5th century: "Lord Jesus Christ * Son of God * have mercy on me * a sinner." Any phrase can serve as a mantra. I frequently recast scriptural passages into mantra form. Among my favorites: "The Lord * is my shepherd * there is nothing * I shall want"; "You are my servant * whom I have chosen * my beloved * with whom I am pleased"; "I am the vine * you are the branches * with-out me * you can do nothing." The method for handling thoughts is similar to that of cen-tering prayer. When thoughts occur, we simply let them pass and return to the rhythmic repetition of the mantra. This repetition is the matrix for our receptivity to the Spirit. Our effort in this method is to let pass all thoughts that occur and to return to the repetition of the mantra. We do not reflect upon the mantra, but simply use it as a way to focus our minds and symbolize our inten-tion to pray. (If we begin reflecting upon the. mantra itself, we have switched from mantra prayer to lectio prayer.) As we become still, we may want to drop parts of the mantra or even the entire mantra. We may use only the appellation "Lord" to symbolize our intention. If this occurs, we have moved from mantra prayer to centering prayer. But, in any case, the goal of all these methods is contemplative union with God which "outstrips every faculty." The holy men of the Orthodox Church see the essential task of the Christian life as being to restore this unity to man with a mind and heart integrated through prayer. The mantra provides the integrating power. It is like a harmonic that we sound in the depths of our spirit, bringing us to an' ever-deepening sense of our own wholeness and central har-mony. It leads us to the source of this harmony, to our cen-ter, rather as a radar bleep leads an aircraft home through thick fog. (John Main, Word into Silence, Paulisy Press, p. 15) The Best Method of Prayer? Praying is an art, not a science. The goal of all prayer meth-ods is communion with God. Since only the Spirit can bring about this communion, our role ,is providing conditions conducive to our receiving the Spirit. Communion remains a gift. I once believed--erroneously--that my conscientious use of a particular method guaranteed good results in prayer. There is no best way to pray. Through trial and error we individually discover what works best for ourselves. The following reflections about formal prayer July-~lug~tst 1997 Hauser * Evoking the Spirit present what has been working for me, but may not be helpful for everyone. Sometimes no method is needed. Frequently, after lighting my candle, settling into my prayer chair, sipping my coffee, and doing some journaling, I find myself already close to God with no further effort needed on my part, so I stop journaling. I am already centered; no method is needed. Perhaps my journal writings have brought to mind some blessing, some word of God, from the pre-vious day. The blessing becomes the occasion, the sacrament, for awakening consciousness of God and for resting gratefully in God's presence. The Spirit moves me from gratitude to commu-nion and contemplation. All I know is that I have no desire either to reflect upon or pray over the blessing. Or perhaps the jour-nalings have recalled a need which then becomes the occasion, the sacrament, for awakening consciousness of dependence on God and resting in silent acknowledgment of my helplessness without God: "Be still and know that I am God." Occasionally while I am journaling, saying the office, or doing my personal praying, my attention is caught unexpectedly by something in the garden outside my window: the sun rising through the trees, the song of a bird or the rusde of leaves, the fra-grance of blossoms, the wind blowing. Then I have no desire to continue reflecting Or praying: I find myself held close by God-- I am centered. Nature has become the sacrament occasioning communion with God and contemplation. Frequently my attention is caught by an icon or print on my prayer wall, the Vladimir Madonna, perhaps, or Fra Angelico's Annunciation, or a photograph of the Vatican Museum's 4th-cen-tury sculpture of the Good Shepherd. In the various liturgical seasons I may be especially caught by Hicks's Peaceable Kingdom, Gorgione's Adoration of the Shepherds, Perugino's Crucifixion, Fra Angelico's Noli Me Tangere. I believe the Spirit offers seasonal graces. Sometimes a combination of prayer methods is helpful. If I have not experienced the drawing of the Spirit toward communion and contemplation during journaling and the morning office, I readily choose lectio prayer. Usually something from the previous day or one of the readings from the office presents itself. Sometimes I look over a seasonal meditation book, reading alit-tle and then putting the book aside to see how the Spirit will move in me. Meditation books are helpful as starting points, but Review for Religious then we need to be sensitive to our own inspirations, to the exis-tential word of God as we ourselves experience it in our own lives. We need to wait in God's presence, listen to God's speaking through the word in my heart, and respond in the way the Spirit moves us. We speak only in response to the Spirit and only after we ha~;e listened. The goal of prayer is resting in a communion with God that is beyond thoughts and desires. When I reach this peaceful state, I find it helpful to switch from lectio prayer to mantra prayer. I use the mantra to keep my mind occupied and prevent distractions from arising. The gentle repetition of the mantra sustains my intention. At this point I am held to God by God with virtually no effort on my part. This restful state is often referred to as the prayer of quiet. This beginning contemplation is marked by con-scious awareness and enjoyment of God's presence. But sometimes this reflective consciousness recedes and we enter momentarily an even deeper state of contemplation. We become aware of this special grace only when we return to reflective awareness. I often move from mantra prayer to centering prayer. After a period of mantra prayer, I may find the mantra unnecessary and even bothersome. My faculties are quiet; I am centered. Using a simple prayer word, I move in faith and love toward God. When distractions arise I let them pass, renewing my intention by my prayer word, all in response to the Spirit. We speak only in response to the Spirit and only after we have listened. Evoking the Spirit God made us to be fulfilled in communion with the Father and Jesus through the Holy.Spirit--a fulfillment expressed both in prayer and in service to our neighbor. The Spirit in us yearns always for this fulfillment. In formal prayer we consciously attend to our relationship with God; ~n Sl~Ontan60us prayer it just hap-pens. Both are identity experiences, both are "movements of our hearts to God under the influence of the Spirit." The prayer expe-rience is the experience of our deepest identity; complex methods ought not get in the way of this basic yearning, of our being. I believe that all methods of Christian prayer are somehow related to one another. .~dy-,qug~st 1997 L3-S-7- Hauser ¯ Evoking the Spirit Each of us has the challenge of discovering how the Spirit is moving within us to help us experience our deepest identity. We ought never be discouraged. No matter how disturbing and pre-occupying the external events of our lives may be, we can always pray because we have been given the Spirit to help us in our weak-ness. I think Paul had his own tumultuous life in mind--and per-haps also Jesus' experience in Gethsemane--when he wrote the following words to the community in Rome, a comraunity expe-riencing persecution and even death for their faith in Christ: The Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.~And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the holy ones according to God's will. (Rm 8:26-27) AMORALTHEOLOGIAN'S REQUEST¯ Professor Germaln Gnsezas beg~nmng to work on the fourt~i volume of his systemau9 treatment.of moral theolo, gy ennded The Way of the Lord Jesus. ThiS,final volun~e will troat~thE i'esp0hsibilities proper to women and men lbiing the coiasecrated life and to men who have been ordained as deacons, priests, or bishops. He seeks a~dv~lce from those whose responslbdmes he will be ~eating. To stimulate reflection tfe proposes'some questions: - What Would you expecl~ of the book ] am undertaking? What is a ~bmpa~:able resource yod Can~ think of and Would recommdnd,to a no,ice or a seminarian? ¯ What moral problems'do religious or clerics sometimes experience that are never touched on by magisterial documents and~ perhaps, seldom or never discussed in., books and journals? ~ . ¯ What rec~nt books and/or ~a_rticles have y9ufound "" ¯ especially helpful?~, ~ ¯ ,~,~,* Besides obvious ~6pics such as obedience and virginity or, celibacy for the kingdom's sake, what Other matters sh6uld I~onsider? : - ¯ ~3esid~s stu~13?ing~relevant paSs~ag~ in Scripture and. - " rele~cant magisterial docunient~,of the.tweritieth century, o whatother sources should I use?~ " Any communication he reEeives will be kept in .~tfictest confidence. All real cases used as examples in the book will be fictionalized to safeguard.~ privacy Please contact: Germain Gi'isez; Mount Saint Mary's College; En~mitsburg, Ma~land 21727, USA. Review for Religious JUDY ROXBOROUGH Liturgy of the Hours: Path to Integration Rilar Feliu STJ, former superior general of the Teresian sters, once described the Liturgy of the Hours as the frame that encloSes our day. Like the frame of a painting, our common prayer time can radically change the way we perceive the day as we look forward to it at Lauds, and back on it at Vespers. Bringing our lives to prayer through the Hours can effect far more than bringing a new perspective or adding a rosy tone' to our view. It can also be the channel for the powerful working of the word of God, which is "living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword" (Hb 4:12). Encountering in a prayerful setting the psalms and other scripture texts again and again through the cycle of the seasons, allows them to work on us, "penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow,., to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart." Perhaps the image of a loom is more appropriate than a simple frame, for through the Hours run the threads of the word, and the threads of our lives, which can be woven together into a fabric both beautiful and whole. The Liturgy of the Hours is the frame on which we can discover unity and wholeness, helping us to integrate our lives. The first task at Lauds is to become engaged in the act of prayer. For some of us this may not be .an automatic event. At times I have found myself physically present at Lauds, perhaps Judy Roxborough STJ, a sister of the Society of St. Teresa of Jesus, has been a computer programmer in rocket-data analysis, meteorology, and telephone-circuit simulation and also an editor. She is currently involved in her first love, teaching, at Sacred Heart School in Uvalde, Texas. Her address is 343 North Crisp Street; Uvalde, Texas 78801. t-3- 9 July-August 1997 Roxborougb ¯ Liturgy of the Hours even mentally present, but somehow not engaged. I haste not tuned in to the act of prayer, the fundamental attitude of wor-ship. It is as if I were racing the engine, but in neutral. With the clutch disengaged, the highest octane gas is not going to produce one foot of forward motion. And so it seems with prayer when we are not engaged--nothing happens, in spite of all the proper rituals and words. For me it is often something from .without that calls me into prayer--a word of introduction, a song, or perhaps a line from a psalm engages me and leads me into prayer. When this happens, I am integrated into prayer, into the moment, and into relationship with my Creator. My focus changes as once again I realize the simple truth that I am creature entering into praise of my Creator. This shift in focus is the narrow doorway through which I can encounter the divine. The Liturgy of the Hours also provides a way of bringing.us a deeper .awareness of the passage of time, not just in a chrono-logical sense, but as sacred time: time as participation, together with the universe, in God's plan of salvation. The cycle of the Hours, praying Lauds at sunrise, Vespers at sunset, helps to inte-grate us with the rhythm of the day. We find our place in the diur-nal cycle. The day begins at Lauds, and in a sense the whole day becomes present as we look towards it. This is the proper moment to consecrate the day to God, to invoke the Spirit, to ask for a blessing on all that we will do, to form within our hearts the inten-tion to serve God well this day. At Vespers the day is again pres, ent--in memory--and is gathered together in thanksgiving. Whether we have succeeded or failed, found joy or sorrow, there is thankfulness that God has brought us through the day, never abandoning us. Vespers joyfully remembers, gives thanks, cele-brates, and offers the day back to God, with a sense of completion. Through the celebration of the seasons, we also find our place in the liturgical year. Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, ordinary time, and special community feasts all give us reference points within the flow of time. The simple act of becoming aware of the season in a prayerful setting helps us to become more inte-grated in time. Just as the priest puts on vestments to celebrate the Eucharist, so do we put on the season thr.ough the Hours. The mood and nuances of the season become our own. P~rticipafing in the season in this wa.y heightens our own sense of wholeness and of being at one with the world we' dwell in. This is especially meaningful in a society which anticipates seasons for commercial Review for Religious purposes, discarding them as soon as their monetary potential has expired. In many ways, as we have become insulated from natural surroundings, we have lost much of our connection with seasons, and the Liturgy of the Hours helps to mend this separation. At times we commemorate special moments of our lives in the Liturgy of the Hours: personal milestones, community feasts, civil occasions. This too helps bring unity to our lives, putting the milestones in Christian perspec-tive, forging new bonds as we each cel-ebrate our unique heritage, and making connections with the stream of civilian life. In a different sense we may find a new integration in time through the repetition of the psalms themselves. I may be struck for the first time with an application of a psalm to some event of the past. Suddenly both the psalm and the event become fresh for me and acquire new meaning. The psalm becomes my own (integrating my life with Scripture), and the past is inte-grated with the present.as it is reinterpreted in the context of the whole. This process is like weaving, going back to pick up the old threads of our lives and weaving them together with the new. The fabric of my life becomes a little more whole; time itself is being redeemed. The past is not lost forever, but brought back, cleansed a little, purified a little, healed a little, as it is brought to prayer and we discover God moving within those bygone events. The very act of praying together with the community has aspects of integration. The community chooses an hour for prayer, often one that few actually find optimal. Nevertheless, we com-mit ourselves to this time, integrating our desires and needs as community. Our physical presence at community prayer enfleshes and symbolizes our commitment to be one, a commitment that will demand a little dying from us each day. The intercessions that we offer also provide an opportunity for further integration within the community. To the extent that we are willing to bring our petitions to God beftre our brothers and sisters, to the extent that we are willing to hear their interces-sions and hold them in our hearts, to the extent that we are will- Our physical presence at community prayer enfleshes and symbolizes our commitment to be one, a bommitment that will demand a little dying from us each day. ~7~tly-Augttst 1997 Roxborou~b ¯ Liturgy of the Hours ing to pray earnestly for one another, making one another's bur-dens our own, we deepen our community life. Here is a wonder-ful opportunity to risk loving one another in community by sharing our concerns, our needs, our failures; by accepting the concerns, needs, and failures of others. Our union with the entire Body of Christ is also strength-ened as we pray the church's own prayer. We join with all the church in praying the psalms, in celebrating feasts and seasons, in lifting up our hearts to praise God for the resurrection, in thank-ing God for the day. In daily intercession we pray with and for the church, just as we do for our own needs~and for those of the com-munity. We expa~nd our horizons to the whole church, indeed, to all of humanity, through prayer. We can give a voice to the voice-less as we offer prayers of praise and petition on behalf of all those who cannot pray, those who do not know how to pray, those whose hearts are hardened against prayer. When we speak to the Lord on behalf of others, we share their burden~ and find com-munion with them. This communion, the fruit of prayer, is a grace for us, a gift that brings us to our rightful relationship.with our brothers and sisters, a relationship that allows us to become more whole, more human. Our prayer with and on behalf of others is not limited to our fellow Christians, nor even to all humanity, but includes all of God's creation. We are voice for the whole universe, awaiting redemption: "Creation awaits with .eager expectation the revela-tion of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who sub-jected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slav-ery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now" (Rm 8:19-22). All creation is groaning, crying out for redemption. The universe itself suffers the wounds of sin and alienation and yearns for healing. We can become voice for all creatures, for all creation, in our prayer. When we lift our voices in praise or petition to the Creator, we offer praise and petition on behalf of all creatures, all creation: .birds and fish, trees and rocks. The same psalms that we recite proclaim the praise of God's silent ones: . Let the rivers clap their hands, the mountains shout with them for joy. (Ps 98:8) Let the plains be joyful and all that is in them. Review for Religious Then let ~ill the trees Of the forest rejoice. (Ps 96:12) You mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars; You animals wild and tame, you creatures that crawl and fly; You kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all who govern on earth; young men and women too, old and young alike. Let them all praise the LORD's name, for his name alone is exalted, majestic above earth and heaven. (Ps 148:9-13) The untilled meadows also drip; the hills are robed with joy. The pastures are clothed with flocks, the valleys blanketed with grain; they cheer and sing.for joy. (Ps 65:13) In becoming voice for the speechless, we find union with cre-ation, and in that union we also find our creaturehood, so that we can become more the persons we are called to be: creatures, redeemed, proclaiming God's goodness, There is a wholeness and unity suggested here, a sense of peace deriving from this kind of connectedness to the whole of God's world. To make that con-nection, even for a few moments of prayer, spins another thread that can help bind the wounds of separation for ourselves, for our communities, for "our world. Indeed, the hour we spend praying the Liturgy of the Hours offers us a path toward wholeness. Speechless In wordless psalmody I watch the sun strike golden fire atop the trees. A finite moment stills Infinity, emboldens a dare to spell a sunrise ignited by Divinity. Anna Marie Mack SSJ 3~dy-Aug~lst 1997 spiritua direction STEVE R. WIGALL What Is a Spiritual Director's Authority? One of the most debated issues in the literature of spiri-tual direction is that of the spiritual director's authority. Some argue that it is improper for spiritual directors to wield authority over their directees. They see the author-ity that has been traditionally and historically invested in the role of the director as a problem to be apologized for and avoided. Others view spiritual directors as people who properly carry a divine authority by reason of their being gifted by God to be divine instruments in directees' lives. This article surveys thes~ arguments and suggests an alter-native way of understanding the issue. Authority Is Negative Numerous articles and books begin their discussion of spiritual direction with an almost embarrassed effort to avoid, or at least redefine, the classic terms spiritual guidance or spiriiual direction. The Reverend Peter Ball, canon of S~. Paul's Cathedral in England, writes about his discomfort with both words, spiritual and direction. He considers them ambiguous and liable to be misunderstood. He expresses particular concern that the word direction implies "a sense of authority, even authoritarianism." After Steve R. Wigall is a Presbyterian clergyman and a candidate for the Th.D. degree at Boston University School of Theology. His address is 296 Lowell Street; Lawrence, Massachusetts 01841. Review for ReIigious all, he says, "a director directs, steers, is in charge. Directions are orders. You are supposed to comply with them, to obey." l William Barry and William Connolly, too, find spiritual direc-tion an awkward term: "The term spiritual direction unavoidably suggests to people of our contemporary Western culture a spiri-tualism and an authoritarianism that sound theology and psy-chology must repudiate." The fear they express is that the classic terms guidance and direction describe a practice that places exces-sive authority in the hands of the director) Green agrees that a director should not be given too much authority. He insists that the director's role with the directee must be only that of a "co-discerner" of God's voice? Doherty addresses the same concern by insisting the director should be merely the directee's friend.4 Schneiders insists that the spiritual director must exercise no authority at all over the directee. She writes that the director is just a companion whose role is to point the directee to God, but who in no way speaks, to the directee in God's name. The director-directee relationship, she writes, is fraternal or sis-terly, rather than parental,s She goes on to argue that it is invalid for the director to take an authoritarian role or to set the direc-tion of another's life, since people must exercise that responsibil-ity themselves. The director, she states, does not and cannot give direction, but merely helps directees find or discern God's direc-tion for themselves.6 Authority is Positive Other writers are less hesitant to describe the role of the director as one of authority. Guenther, for example, argues that the role of the spiritual director cannot possibly be one of mutuality and friendship. She writes that spiritual direction is essentially a hierarchical relationship in which the focus is not meant to be shared, but is to be on the directee.7 Bots and de Vries agree'that a spiritual director is not a spiritual friend. The image of friend-ship, they contend, places too much emphasis on the human aspect of the relationship and not enough on the role of the Holy Spirit.s William McNamara, who runs a spiritual retreat center in Sedona, Arizona, attributes to the spiritual director the high authority of a spiritual teacher, much like that of a guru in the Hindu tradition.9 Kallistos .Ware, like many writers who speak from the Orthodox tradition, describes the spiritual director as .y~dy-August 1997 Wigall * Wbat ls a Spiritual Director's Authority one to whom a directee gives trust and obedience, In Ware's view, the directee submits to the director's authority in order to avoid the ego trap of trying to make spiritual progress by self-will and personal effort.1° Those who invest the spiritual director with significant authority do so because they believe that God gifts and uses the director. Andrd Louf, for example, argues that a director is accorded authority as a spiritual elder because he or she is given a spiritual gift or charism by God, and that the charism enables the director to receive and impart God's authoritative word of guid-ance.~ 1 Sister Donald Corcoran explains that, in the Orthodox tradition, the authority of the spiritual director is based on the recognition that the spiritual director is a person in and through whom God works. Directors, she states, are called spiritual father or mother because they are used by God, in parentlike manner, to engender, convey, and nurture spiritual life in their directees.~2 Looking back in history, we find many authors expressing this same confidence in the spiritual director's authority. St. Symeon the New Theologian, for example, taught that the directee should understand that, because of the director's God-given gift, "fol-lowing [the director] . . . is following Christ." This is not, as Blessed John of Avila says, that directees should "subject [them-selves] to another person. [or] confide in. a person alone." The directee's confidence in the director's authority is based on his or her faith "in God, who will speak to you and strengthen you through another person."~3 Merton explains the original histor-ical reason for the authority that was accorded to spiritual direc-tors: He writes that historically the authority of spiritual directors was based on a recognition of their charism and that--when the first hermits went out into the desert, leaving behind established Christian communities--they exchanged the hierarchical guid-ance of their bishops for the guidance of the spiritually gifted.~4 An Alternative Perspective Obviously, some are comfortable investing the spiritual direc-tor with divine authority, while others are not. The question of authority is approached from different perspectives. Authority is seen as something negative by those who believe in egalitarian relationships and by those who are concerned about avoiding its abuse. Authority is seen as positive by those whose worldview is Review for Religious hierarchical and by those who are concerned about avoiding chaos and disorder. There are legitimate concerns on both sides ofithe authority question. I suggest that, when we look at the concerns that are dis-cussed under the ~bric of the spiritual director's authority, two fundamental questions can be found at the heart of this debate: (1) Does the director see and acknowledge the Holy Spirit as the authority for and source of his or her ministry? and (2) Does the director's ministry set the directee free to follow where God is truly leading? Ouestion One: Corcoran is a good example of an author who argues that Christ's Spirit is the Christian's one and only spiritual director. She points out that, while othe~ religious traditions have master-disciple relationships in which the disciple obeys the authority of an earthly master, Christianity does not have an equivalent relationship. Christ still lives. His Spirit is still pre sent with and within each of his followers and is still the one master of every Christian disciple. Christ's Spirit, says Corcoran, is still the Christian's only authority.Is Because Christ is the Christian's one true spiritual director, the only authority a human spiritual director can have is derivative. This insight is cru-cial to the debate over the spiritual director's authority. Whether spiritual directors claim to speak with God!s authority or claim to .be merely spiritual friends who point their directees toward God, it is crucial that directors acknowledge to themselves and to their directees as well that God and God alone is the central authority in their life and ministry. Question Two: St. John of the Cross, along with St. Teresa of Avila, stands at the head of the great Carmelite tradition of spir-itual direction, one which is not the most laissez-faire of traditions. Yet St. John is an outstanding example of those who champion the freedom of the individual directee. In The Living Flame of Love, John strongly advocates that each directee needs to be granted the freedom to follow God's Will. Those who are born of the Spirit, he says, are wildly free and need to know that God alone is their Lord and guide.~6 This second insight is crucial t6 Those who invest the spiritual .director with significant authority do so because they believe t hat God gifts and uses the director. ~dy-August 1997 Wigall * What Is a Spiritual Director's Authority the debate over the spiritual director's authority. No matter how spiritual directors understand or carry their authority, a more important question by far is whether and to what degree spiri-tual directors are able to set the individual directees free to follow the unique path along which God is leading each one. How spiritual directors envision their own authority is deter-mined to a large extent by the theological tradition and the cul-tural context within which they operate. One director may be comfortable claiming to be a spiritual abba or aroma or a spiri-tual elder; another may be more comfortable claiming to be a spiritual friend. Both sides of the authority question can benefit from realizing that the important issue at stake in this matter is not so much how spiritual directors conceptualize their authority; rather, it is how they answer the two questions raised in this arti-cle, both of which refer to the crucial underlying matter of the quality of the director-directee relationship. These two questions also directly relate to the issue of authority. However, they shed light on the practice of spiritual direction in a way that the'debate over the authority of spiritual directors has failed to do. I suggest that what underlies the concern for affirming the director's authority as God-given is the question of whether direc-tors acknowledge their dependence on God's Spirit. I suggest that the question of whether they protect and assure their directees' freedom is what underlies the concern for limiting the director's authority. Both of these questions represent concerns that relate to the director-directee relationship, and both are essential for spiritual directors to address. No matter how spiritual directors understand their authority, they need to deal with these two issues, They need to acknowledge openly their submission to God's authority. And they need to set their directees free to seek and follow Gdd. Notes 1 Peter Ball, Journey into Truth: Spiritual Direction in the Anglican Tradition (London: Mowbray, 1996), pp. 4-5. 2 William A. Barry and William J. Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction (Minneapolis: Seabury Press, 1982), pp. 9-11. 3 Thomas H. Green, Opening to God (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1977), p. 49. 4 Rose Marie Dbherty, "Doing Spiritual Direction in a Group," Praying 29 (March-April 1989): 6-7. Review for Religious s Sandra Marie Schneiders, Spiritual Direction (Chicago: National Sisters Vocation Conference, 1977): 19-20, 47-48. 6 Schneiders, "The Return to Spiritual Direction," Spiritual Life 18, no. 4 (Winter 1972): 275, and "The Contemporary Ministry of Spiritual Direction," Chicago Studies 15 (Spring 1976): 123. 7 Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications, 1992), p. 3. 8 Jan Bots and Piet Penning de Vries, "On Spiritual Direction," Review for Religious 40, no. 4 (July-August 1981): 496. 9 William McNarn~ara, "Psychology and the Christian Mystical Tradition," in Transpersonal. Psychologies, ed. Charles Tart (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), pp. 408, 425. ,0 Kallistos Ware, "The Spiritual Father in Orthodox Christianity," Cross Currents 24 (Summer-Fall 1974): 296. 11 Andr~ Louf, "Spiritual Fatherhood in the Literature of the Desert," in Abba: Guides to Wholeness and Holiness, East and West, ed. J. Sommerfeldt (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1982), pp. 38-40. lz Donald Corcoran, "Spiritual Guide: Midwife of the Hig,her Spiritual Self," in Abba, ed.J. Sommerfeldt, 356-357. 13Jerome M. Neufelder and Mary C. Coelho, eds., Writings on Spiritual Direction (Minneapolis: Seabury Press, 1982), pp. 18-19. 14 Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1960), pp. 3-4: is Donald Corcoran, "Spiritual Guidance: The Role of Spiritual Directors in Christian Spirituality," in Christian Spirituality, ed~ B. McGinn and J. Meyendorf (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995), pp. 444, 448-451. 16 Joel Giallanza, "Spiritual Direction according to St. John of the Cross," in Spiritual Direction: Contemporary Readings, ed. Kevin G. Culligan (Locust Valley, New York: Living Flame Publishers, 1983), p. 202. July-Aug~tst 1997 SHAUN McCARTY Confidentiality Issues in Spiritual Direction Cdonfidentiality is a critical consideration in a spiritual-irection relationship as well as a serious ethical impera-tive for the director.-This derives from the nature and history of spiritual direction, which deals with the most intimate levels of a person's life. The topic, theh, merits careful cqnsideration. I intend to e~xpl0re: (1) the nature of confidentiality; (2) why it is critical for the spiritual-direction relationship; (3) some legal considera-tions concerning its observance; (4) the relative merits of church regulation of this ministry to protect the confidentiality rights of the one :guiding and the one guided; and (5) an alternative to out-side regulation in dealing with the need for the exercise of a' responsible ministry of spiritual direction. Nature of Confidentiality "Confidentiality" has to do with keeping secrets. Something is "confidential" when a private matter is imparted in secret. "Confidence" carries the sense of firm belief in, reliance on, and assurance of another keeping trust. "Confiding," then, assumes a trusted "confidant." A "secret" is a hidden fact which may not be divulged, whether it be a fault or even something good that needs protection, for example, inventions or special recipes. There are three kinds of Shaun McCarty ST, currendy on a sabbatical, l~as been director of Trinity Ministries Center for several years. He writes from 1733 Metzerott Road; Adelphi, Maryland 20783. Review for Religious secrets: (1) A "natural" secret, in which the obligation to secrecy arises from the nature of the case, for example, deeply personal matters spoken of within close human fellowship or matters whose revelation would in some way injure or displease another (such as defamatory gossip). (2) A "promised" secret, which is to be kept, not by the nature of the case, but because of one's subsequent promise not to reveal the matter; the obligation arises from fidelity to one's declared word, but does not apply to useless or inane matters. (3) An "entrusted" secret, wherein the matter is revealed on the condition (whether explicit or implicit) that it will be kept secret. A special kind of entrusted secret is referred to as a "pro-fessional" secret; it obliges doctors, lawyers, the clergy, and some others by reason of their professions. This is the most binding secret of all. It is with this privileged category of professional secret that spiritual direction is concerned. Those bound to secrecy include not only the director, but all those'who may become privy to it, such as supervisors, consultants, and supervi-sory and peer-supervisory groups. The Necessity of Confidentiality Confidentiality is an imperative that arises from the need for discretion in matters where serious harm may come to self, oth-ers, or communities. People have a right to privacy. Confidentiality is a practical demonstration of reverence for the personal, inti-mate, and sacred values of another person. There is also a need on the part of both individuals and the public at large for a climate of freedom and trust wheri it comes tb seeking help that involves the revelation of confidential material. Vital to the effectiveness of guiding, helping, . and healing professions.are these elements of freedom and trust. Few events can be more destructive or preclusive of contin-ued help than the violation of trust and loss of such freedom of exchange. Not only is a violation of confidentiality destructive of the relationship with the person who divulges personal informa-tion, but it often can make the person betrayed wary of ever entrusting anyone else with similar confidences. It leaves deep wounds that are a long time healing. Some mention should also be made concerning the damage done to the integrity, reputa-tion, and future effectiveness of the one revealing the confidence. It can compromise that person's integrity and credibility for the ~dy-Aug~st 1997 McCart~ ¯ Con~dentiali~ Issues in S~iritual Direction future. The matter of confidentiality is of special concern in a ministry as sensitive as spiritual direction, for it is especially dependent upon the establishment and maintenance of that trust-ful silence so vital to open dialogue. In Catholic circles especially, spiritual direction has tradi-tionally been distinct from, yet closely akin to, sacramental con-fession and the confidentiality surrounding it. Spiritual direction is referred to as belonging within the "internal, nonsacramental forum"; sacramental confession, the "internal, sacramental forum." Exceptions With the exception of sacramental confession (and, as some would hold, spiritual direction), some secrets may be revealed under certain circumstances. A basic axiom in regard to most secrets is: The more important the secret, the greater the reason needed to reveal it. The obligation to secrecy ceases ordinarily when (1) there is permission from the one who owns and reveals it; (2) when it has already been disclosed by others; (3) when there is sufficient reason to avert a greater evil, that is, to avert a grave danger to the common good or serious harm either to a third party or to the person revealing it. It is permissible to discuss confidential material in consulta-tion with a prudent third party while at the ~ame time taking care to protect the anonymity of the person revealing it--unless that person objects. In regard to spiritual direction, such a likelihood should be discussed and agreed to when the initial working rela-tionship is negotiated. As with the revelation of secrets, it is,also unethical to probe into secrets unless for a serious reason and by using just means. The fields of investigative journalism and criminal investigation have in recent years brought public attention to the ethical ques-tions of both what may be investigated and what methods may be used. Some Legal Considerations In the United States there are civil and ecclesiastical laws both protecting and restricting confidentiality that may some-times be in conflict or simply inadequate.~ Review for Religious Traditionally, constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court have deferred to ecclesiastical law, not wishing to interfere with the free exercise of religion which is protected under the religion clause of the first amendment of the United States Constitution. As a consequence, not only has the confidentiality concerning sacramental confession by an ordained Catholic priest been respected, but likewise the legal right to keep priv-. ileged communications confidential has been afforded to clergy of other traditions. Though they vary from state to state, statutes con-cerning the "clergy" privilege are part of each state's rules of evidence. Under them the fundamental rule is that the public has a right to every person's evidence. Privileged communications are an exception and must meet certain restrictive requirements. While "minister" is usually interpreted in a strict sense, that is, one who is ordained in the church, the parameters of this clergy priv-ilege vary from state to state. In familiarizing oneself with particular statutes, there are some questions that need to be asked such as: Who qualifies as a member of the "clergy"? What types of communi-cation are covered? What do the statutes require in terms of the regulation of the ministry of spiritual direction by a given church, denomination, or community? What must be the expectation of the one making the communication? What must be the nature of the relationship between the 'spiritual director and the one mak-ing the communication? 2 There have been conflicting decisions in the courts concern-ing those not ordained who are consulted as spiritual directors and who have claimed clergy privilege. In a case arising in 1971 in New Jersey, a Catholic sister was cited for contempt for her refusal to testify in a murder trial of a former pupil for whom she had been spiritual director. She claimed the statutory privilege allowed by New Jersey law protecting the confidentiality of those authorized by her church as a minister of spiritual direction. Her plea was rejected because counsel was unable to find anything in Catholic doctrine or practice that would give her the right to claim privileged communication? More recently, in 1985, a sister in Missouri refused to make a deposition concerning a plaintiff because of a previous relationship as spiritual director and was granted the clergy privilege by way of extension,4 The more important the secret, the greater the reason needed to reveal it. 37zdy-August 1997 2VlcCarty * Confutentiality Issues in Spiritual Direction ~ As more recognition is given to nonordained people who are nevertheless exercising ministries such as spiritual direction, it might be hoped that clergy privilege would be extended further. Yet legislators and courts, understandably and for obvious reasons, favor restriction of privilege when it comes to withholding evi-dence. In recent years, even pre~;iously recognized clergy privilege has been abrogated in many states with reference to child abuse. ~ Ecclesiastical law in the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law (1983) carefully protects the secrecy of material confided in sacra-mental confession (cc. 983-984),,but has little to say with direct reference to the nonsacramental ministry of spiritual direction, in which.a growing number of nonordained people have become involved. As previously noted, civil law will generally respect the provisions of ecclesiastical law. Given the absence of specific eccle-siastical recognition of spiritual direction in the ministries of the church, it is difficult to discuss the rights of the nonordained in reference to privileged communication. Both official recognition and outside regulation of spiritual direction are problematic. There are some who have advocated regulation of this min-istry by ecclesiastical law to protect people from civil- and crim-inal- law requirements.5 They suggest that special guidelines, standards, or even statutes be created by denominations and reli-gious communities to protect members from having to divulge confidential information obtained in spiritual direction. Such statutes would call for defining spiritual direction as ministry, establishing it as an office in the church requiring certain quali-fications, providing for the presentation or selection of candi-dates, and making a statement concerning confidentiality that includes specified exceptions. If this course of regulation is fol-lowed, it has been suggested that such statutes or policies be pro-posed on an interfaith basis. This takes into consideration that frequently the spiritual director and the directee do not belong to the same denomination. So as to protect the rights of the confidant, such regulations would provide for no waiver of confidentiality on the part of the one confiding.: The regulations would be clear and consistently implemented. It has been further proposed that they would also include confidential communications received in pastoral coun-seling. and other nonsacramental ministries in which information is communicated in an atmosphere of confidentiality. Such regu-lation has benefits and deficits that will be dealt with later. Review for Religious There has been some inclination for courts to recognize the right of~nonordained spiritual directors to withhold privileged communications. (Of all the states at the present time, Illinois seems to have legislation most consistent with ecclesiastical pro-visions, even though it limits the privilege to those accredited by the religious body.6) However, for now at least, it would seem that spiritual directors may not assume that th4y can successfully claim clergy privilege in a civil court.7 To Regulate or Not to Regulate? On the one hand, it would seem beneficial for churches and communities officially to recognize and to regulate ministries of spiritual direction. On the other hand, though laws protect, they also tend to con-trol and thus hinder freedom. Regulation would have the advantage of gaining church recognition of the min-istry of spiritual direction. This would seem to make it more likely that the civil authorities would recognize privileged communications made to the nonor-dained, thus providing more legal protec-tion for those involved. In addition to official recognition of a ministry, it would also, seemingly, render malpractice and other forms of litigation less likely in that regulation would require evi-dence of a person's competency to be a spiritual director, would make statements of policy, and would provide for sanctions. On the negative side, with regulation there wouldbe certain trade-offs. Regulations would bring tighter outside controls to what has traditionally been more of a free and charismatic ministry. Recognition of bona fide spiritual directors has.come to a large extent from local faith communities in which people gifted for the ministry have been recognized and sought out, and much less from the approval of some institution, often at a distance from the local scene. Every ministry need not be created into an office. Moreover, regulation raises the question of who determines qualifications, policies, sanctions, and the like. Would such reg-ulation not raise the further complication of limiting the choice of directors to denominations recognized by the regulating agency? I would wonder whether, with the growing number of Both official recognition and outside regulation of spiritual direction are problematic. L3-75-- j%dy-August 1997 McCarty * Confidentiality Issues in Spiritual Direction malpractice suits, a regulating agency might be more liable for suits brought againsf an "approved" or "licensed" director. Such suits tend to go after the "deep pockets" of agencies having affin-ity with the individual. What Is the Alternative to Outside Regulation? Without a doubt, there is need for responsible stewardship in the exercise of any ministry and especially spiritual direction, which deals with the deepest and most delicate matters of a per-son's interior life. But, instead of regulation from the outside or from above, is it not,preferable for provisions and standards to come from within agencies preparing people for this ministry and professional societies supporting and challenging people in their practice of it? Laudable efforts at self-regulation by such groups as Spiritual Directors International, perhaps, have greater promise of balancing freedom with responsibility in exercising a respon-sible stewardship. Ethical and moral guidelines developed in this fashion are apt to call for even higher standards of professional-ism than would legal restrictions or an external regulating agency. Such guidelines would be concerned not just with confidentiality, but also with other important issues such as: (1) help in discern-ing whether one is genuinely called to exercise this ministry; (2) careful preparation and enrichment that would include pertinent understandings, processes, skills, and supervision; (3) encourage-ment: for ongoing education and formation in theological, scrip-tural, psychological, and other related disciplines; (4) maintenance of integrity in the role of spiritual director with regard to time, frequency, place of meetings, and so forth; (5) recognition of lim-its of competency in making or declining to make referrals; (6) avoidance of fostering emotional dependency; (7) ongoing assess-ment of each spiritual-direction relationship; (8) measures of accountability such as insisting that spiritual directors also receive spiritual direction and individual or pee~'-group supervision; and, most of all, (9) keeping, in the relationship, the focus on the per-son's God-relationship. Needed: A Poised Balance In this article we have explored the nature and necessity of Confidentiality in the ministry of spiritual ,direction and also some Revie~ for Religious legal considerations affecting its practice. We have considered some pros and cons of official recognition and outside regulation of this ministry. Hopefully, these considerations underscore the need for faithful stewardship in maintaining a poised balance between freedom and responsibility in the exercise of a ministry that calls for both sacred silence and public accountability. One who goes shopping for a product is cautioned: "Let the buyer beware!" Perhaps it is also wise advice for those seeking official recognition or outside regulation: "Let the seekers beware and proceed with caution!" We need open ears and closed mouths as we fulfill a sacred trust. Notes ' R.P. Stake, "Professionalism and Confidentiality in the Practice of Spiritual Direction," The Jurist 43 (1983): 214-232. z Stake, 227. 3 Stake, 228. 4 D.K. Iopollo et al., Confidentiality in the United States: A Legal and Canonical Study (Washington, D.C.: CLSA, 1988). s Stake, 231-232. 6 Iopollo, pp. 60-61. 7 Stake, 229. Wild Things Wild strawberries in the grass, tiny spots of red amid the green. One does not always understand how the wild things grow, rooted and strong though appearing fragile. So am L Lord, a wild thing, eager to grow anywhere, but there are times when the wind's so strong and it rains so hard and long that my weakness shows. Virginia Skrdlant SHCJ j%dy-August 1997 SEAN D. SAMMON Psychology: An Aid to Religious Formation psychology At the outset, let ug set the record straight: Psychology can be a help or a hindrance to formation for religious life. In the right hands it becomes a valuable tool for help-ing young people take up the life and mission of their congregation or institute. Its findings and principles can assist men and women religious in the middle years, too, and those of us facing the inevitable diminution that comes with age. Psychology, however, can also tyrannize us. In the wrong hands and incorrectly applied, it can lead to exces'- sire self-involvement and give rise to less than adequate preparation for today's demanding apostolic life~ With all that said, this admission must also be made: In some quarters of religious life, considerable suspicion continues to .exist about psychology and its practitioners. While in some instances good reason may support such wariness, in others it might very well be unfounded. This article will explore a possible place for psychol-ogy in initial and ongoing formation. There is nothing magical about the science of psychology. It is made up of many schools of thought, and its pr~actitioners engage in the same kind of debate as researchers in other human sciences do. Psychology is also a young science and, as Sehn D. Sammon FMS is vicar general of the Marist brothers. His address is Fratelli Maristi delle Scuole; C.P. 10250; 00144 Rorna, Italy. Review for Religious such, struggles still to find its place among those other sciences with longer and more established traditions. In spite of its many and varied approaches to the human per-son and its rather brief history, however, the findings of various schools of psychology--when correctly and appropriately applied--can assist formators in calling forth apostles for today. While formation is always the Lord's work, at the present time the~ fruit of the hard labor of some people in the mental-health field might be able to help us in a number of areas. Let us consider, for example, three specific and pressing ini-tial and ongoing formative challenges and examine how psychol-ogy may help: (1) educating for a healthy sense of our sexuality and life of celibate chastity, (2) preparing for the interpersonal chal-lenges found in today's ministry and community, and (3) deepen-ing our self-knowledge so as to ensure that some of our less than sterling motives~ do not interfere with the action that the Lord wishes to take through us. Before we address these issues, though, let us examine a few of psychology's tools and critique their pur-ported power. Psychology Is No "New Priesthood" Every profession has its rituals. Doctors, attorneys, teach-ers-- all have certain agreed-upon methods, principles, points of view. If, for example, you visit a doctor's office with a sore throat, a persistent cough, a headache, chills, and other aches and pains, you expect the physician to carry out a thorough examination and perhaps order some tests in order to diagnose correctly a head cold or pneumonia. Both conditions are treatable; the appropri-ate remedies, however, are different. Psychologists also have their rituals. Testing is one of them. Is there anything magical about the Rorschach test, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Reitan battery, or other somewhat more culture-free instruments? Not really. Psychological testing will unearth little more than a perceptive person w0uld find out about another after a year or so of living together. Ask yourself this question: Do many months have i:o pass before you realize who is selfish, self-centered, generous, even-tempered, moody, very intel-ligent, and so forth, in any new community you join? What test-ing does is .give us this information more quickly. July-August 1997 Sammon ¯ Psychology Findings from testing can be of great help to any candidate for religious life and to his or her formators. IL for example, testing tells me that I am overly sensitive, opinionated, rigid, and stub-born-- well, then I have some grist for the mill of formative direc-tion. On the other hand, test results will also tell me about my strengths: my intellectual level, my ability to manage life's chal-lenges. Such findings are powerful allies in the work of forma-tion, for both the candidate and formator. Apostolic religious life has for years judged the admissibility of candidates by three general criteria: at least average intelli-gence, good judgment, and adequate physical health. A medical examination provides information about the last item; psycho-logical testing can help with the first two, To avoid pitfalls in testing, however, one should know, for example, how the test was normed. Obviously, an instrument that used a population of middle-income, midwestern United States citizens to establish its scoring criteria needs to be normed anew before being applied to candidates for religious life in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Psychological examiners also need to be well acquainted with religious life and its values. How else will they be able to write a helpful report and provide feedback that encourages rather than hinders the process of formation? Before men and women in lead-ership or formation engage a psychologist to carry out the psy-chological assessment of a candidate or a member of the province, they need to be sure that the examiner understands and respects the values and commitments that are integral to religious life~ Formators also need to know the place of psychotherapy. This can be essential to growth for some members of a province or congregation, but psychotherapy cannot be the very mode of for-mation, even though a formator's accompaniment or direction may have therapeutic aspects. The psychotherapeutic relation-ship is different. It involves, for example, a different kind of per-sonal privacy for the client. If I am a psychologist in a therapeutic relationship with a client, I have no right to reveal anything disclosed to me in that relationship without the client's expressed and written permis-sion. The only exceptions to this rule are the laws in certain juris-dictions that mandate the reporting of some disclosed actual or anticipated criminal behavior such as child sexual abuse or homi-cide. The strict right to privacy that governs therapy allows clients Review for Religious to unburden themselves without fear of reprisal or judgment on the part of the therapist. That right must be protected. Formative direction or accompaniment is, in my opinion, dif-ferent. I prefer the word mentoring to describe this relationship. Mentors are like older brothers or sisters, persons close in age but with more experience. Mentors help younger people--and at times contemporaries and older folks--to identify the dreams in their life and to give those dreams a place in that life. Mentors are both parents and peers, and not exclu-sively one or the other. They offer example, challenge, acceptance, counsel, and at times friendship. The following distinction between a therapist and a mentor might help clarify their differing roles. Therapists, in general, do not disclose to clients information about their own personal lives. In contrast, an accompaniateur (a companionable guide) or person doing'formative direction might often enough use a per-sonal example to encourage the person being directed, to chal-lenge him or her or illustrate a point. Do accompaniateurs and those doing formative direction, then, need to be psychologists to be effective? Of course not. Do they need adequate and up-to-date information about human devel-opment and its principles? Absolutely. Most accompaniateurs can also benefit from having at hand a mental-health person to help with advice or to provide supervision when needed. To insist that every accompaniateur or person doing formative direction be a psychotherapist, however, misses this important reality: religious formation is a spiritual and not a psychological journey. Religious formation is a spiritual and not a psychological journey. Education for a Healthy Sense of Human Sexuality and Celibate Chastity Celibate chastity is in trouble today. When a colleague, friend, student, or family member asks us why we are living a life of celi-bate chastity, we respond quickly: For the sake of the kingdom, to love everyone and not just one person, to be more available. Then we pause and hope that there will be no more questions.~ The vast majority of us in religious life' have had inadequate education about human sexuality and celibate chastity. How many Sammon ¯ Psycholo~ of us, for example, recognize the important distinction between sexuality and genitality or realize that celibate chastity cannot be equated with asexuality?. Celibate chastity is a particular way of liv-ing out my sexuality. Today, more than before, psychology can provide us with realistic information about our human sexuality, information that will also help us to grow in our appreciation of our life of celibate chastity. God can be held responsible for passing out sexual energy. Just as we have spiritual energy, so also we have sexual energy. For what purpose? Our sexual energy draws us into relationships with other people and with our God. For some of us it might come as a surprise to learn that. the purpose of sexual and spiritual energy is the same: union with God and with others. Any adequate program of education for celibate chastity would do well to include information about the factors that advance or impede healthy psychosexual development. In addition, we could benefit today by some additional frank discussion about sexual orientation, masturbati~)n, intimacy in relationships (and the dif-ferent expectations of men and women in this latter area), and the spiritual foundation for celibate chaste living. During our religious formation many of us were warned about "particular friendships." Stop for a moment now and consider that phrase, Then ask yourself this question: Is there any other type of friendship than a particular friendship? I do not think so. Obviously, this preoccupation with particular friendships was often at the heart of past concerns about sexuality: a fear that . people might lose control of one very powerful part of their lives. We need to be quite clear about this important point: All of us must make decisions in life about our human sexuality. Married people, single and single-again people, celibate chaste people--no ¯ one escapes the process of decision making. For our peace of mind, the decisions we make need to be in keeping with our val- . ues and commitments. If I am a married man, for example, and I )want to remain faithful to my wife, I will have to set some limits in other important relationships in my life. If any of us believe that we do not, from time to time, have to make some difficult deci-sions about how we will channel our sexual energy, we are living in a dream world. Psychology can assist us in our education about .human sexu-ality. Furthermore, studies made of stages of growth in lives of celibate chastity2--~ith its fidelities and failures can help all of Review for Relig4ous us appreciate the wonder of this way of being a sexual person. Paradoxically, in the end psychology can help us understand that to be at home with our life of celibate chastity we must ultimately face what it means to be a spiritual person. Most of us are quite at ease when talking about the place of poverty and obedience in our lives. While we might not always agree on the day-to-day specifics involved in living out these vows, we can, without too much difficulty, discuss their place in our lives. Psychology and its current findings about human sex-uality might help us achieve the same ability to discuss celibate chastity. Interpersonal Challenge,s Found in Today's Ministry and Community Life Have you ever lived with a'chronic complainer? This simple test will help you decide if there is one in your life: When some-one comes to talk with you, does he or she generally sit down right away? You know the reason full well: they are going to be there for a long, long'time. The story of Jonah illustrates this: even God tired of such incessant whining! How about life with negativists--those people who, when faced with a new and hopeful idea, respond by saying "it won't work," "we tried it last year and it failed," and "those in charge around here are not intelligent enough to see to its implementation." Do stallers hold a prominent place in your life of ministry?- folks who ~iust could not make a decision even if your life and theirs depended on it. And what about men and women who with'- hold information unnecessarily so as to keep undue control of any situation? Realistic people do not expect their lives of ministry or in community to be altogether free of troublesome folks. There are, however, some individuals whose behavior can sap energy from us that would be better directed toward the work of the mission. Organizational psychology and some of its principles can teach us to cope with these difficult characters and their kissing cousins.3 With what outcome? So that all of us can get on better with the task at hand:'living together harmoniously and carrying out our mission in the church. Every community, too, passes through its own stages of growth.4 Some communities are healthy places in which to live, Jvdy-August 1997 Sammon * Psychology others less so. We have all participated in community meetings, for example, where the real meeting took place in small groups after the formal meeting had come to a close. Poor communica-tion skills, the lack of a vocabulary with which to discuss some difficult topics, a failure to learn ways to respectfully disagree with one another when necessary--all those factors can make life in community something other .than what it should be: a support to us in carrying out our mission. Psychology can help a community identify where it is in its own development and can suggest steps that can be taken to enhance its spiritual, ministerial, and interpersonal growth. Psychology can also help us develop the skills we need to live together more effectively and with genuine Christian charity. We all need a place to come home to. If our religious com-munities fail to be places where friendship is possible, human hnd spi~ritual support available, and the love that can exist between sisters, and brothers evident--well, then, who would freely choose to live this life? In many church ministries today, there are tensions. Sometimes it is tension between men and women. At times strife develops between priests and lay religious or between religious and their lay partners. Tension can spring up among members of any ministry team. If the level of tension in our ministry reaches a point where the mission is no longer being carried out effectively, the science of psychology can provide some specific help. More importantly, principles of psychology can. be used to nip in the bud any developing problem before it becomes something larger than life. 3-84 Self-kngwledge in the Service of the Mission Did you know that there is no such thing as a perfect family? There are good enough families--where 'the people and the place provide what we need for life, along with a push out the door so that life can expand--but, no, perfect families exist only in the imagination of some people. We take our families with us when we come into religious life. ~While its members may not be physically visible, they do participate in some way in every community meeting that we attend. Families shape and form us--for good or ill. We: also bring along to religious life what we learned about Review.for Religious ourselves while living in our family. In yours, for example, how was anger dealt with, was sexuality talked about openly, did disagree-ment give rise to alienation from the family at large? In some families, for example, members may stop talking to one another in the face of a disagreement or disappointment. In my family, for example, I realize in retrospect that expres-sions of anger were not encouraged. To signal that events were getting out of hand with me, my mother would often use the phrase "Sefin, be nice!" Though nowadays I pay less attention to it, still--when I am feeling angry, even at my present age--I hear her saying "Se~in, be nice!" Some of us suffer from low self-esteem. Simply put, we do not think we are worth very much. Low self-esteem is often the result of receiving information coming from my world through a series of faulty filters. Because of what we have been told about ourselves, some of us eventually come to believe that we are worthless or, at best, not worth very much. When people with low self-esteem make a mistake, for exam-ple, they suffer shame rather than embarrassment. Rather than learn from the error of their ways, they "beat themselves up" instead and insist that .they are bad people undeserving of any recognition or praise. We take our families with us when we come into religious life. Low Self-esteem a Threat to Effective Ministry Low self-esteem is a threat to effective ministry. Why? When our self-esteem is low, we begin to look to have our needs met by those we are called to serve. Eventually we need them more than they need us. When such a situation develops, we are no longer doing ministry. Rather, by our "serving" others we are promoting our own well-being, our own good feelings about ohrselve.s. Once again psychology can help us--towards enhanced self-esteem that is in the service of mission. Self-intimacy--a gift that often comes with mid-lifeS--helps us accept the particular and perhaps peculiar amalgam of bits and pieces that make up who we are. By mid-life we know full well that our motives for doing things in life are often mixed. Tha~: knowledge, in itself, helps keep us honest when it comes to ministry. Sammon ¯ PsycholoKv The Lord came for sinners and not the saved. At mid-life many of us feel more of a need to be redeemed than ever before. We have become distinctly aware of personal and social sin. But this self-understanding paradoxically enhances our self-esteem. This knowledge, in itself, helps keep us honest when it comes to ministry, helps us to carry out the Lord's mission free of illusion. Psychology and its principles can play an important role in this purification. Psychology Can Help In summary, then, psychology--used as one formative tool among many others--can be a friend to formators in religious congregations and institutes and an ally for mid-life and senior women and men religious in their ongoing formation. Today in particular it may help deepen our understanding about our com-mitment to celibate chastity, provide us with skills for greater effectiveness in ministry and a rich life in community, and help ~us grow in .greater self-awareness and self-acceptance in service of the mission of Jesus. If it does help a~complish these ends, that fact in itself will be a blessing beyond measure. Good psychology has more to do with self-transcendence than with self-fulfillment. It is not antithetical to the concept of sin, to admitting guilt, nor to penance and self-sacrifice. Rightly used, psychology leads to greater freedom of spirit and more effective ministry. Notes ~ Sefin D. Sammon, An Undivided Heart: Making Sense of Celibate Chastity (Staten Island, New York: Mba House, 1993). 2 A.W. Richard Sipe, A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for CeJibacy (New York: Brunner/Mazel, Publishers, 1990). 3 Robert M. Bramson, Coping with Difficult People (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1981); Se~n D. Sammon, Don't Get Eaten for B~eakfast: Making Sense of the Impossible People in Your Life (forthcoming). 4 Rosine Hammett and Loughlan Sofield, Inside Christian Community (Jesuit Center for Human Development, 1981). s Se~n D. Sammon, Life afier Youth: Making Sen~se of One Man's~ourney through the Transition at Mid-life (Staten Island, New York: Alba House, 1997). Review for Religious ALEXANDER H. SMITH Mental-Health Consultation with Religious Orders Myental-health consultation has evolved over the past thirty ears in a specialty with a large body of literature on the process and technique, with diverse applications (Caplan and Caplan, 1993; R. Caplan, 1972; Altrocchi, 1972). Relatively few of these studies directly apply to religious orders, where their mem-bers have made lifelong commitments to membership and where the consultative process must be crafted to accommodate the unique features of religious life in a group setting. Mental-health consultation with a religious community requires a clarity of purpose at,times even more demanding than that in agency, school, or other ifistitutional setting. Within 'the community beats the heart of its spiritual tradition, one that pre-sumably drew its members, at least at a conscious level, to seek God and serve others. Beyond these oversimplified parameters, the climate of expected altruism and fraternal charity can paradoxically create the possibilities of boundary confusion, difficult limit set-ting, self-righteous entitlement, and exaggerated expectations of being understood and accommodated. Herein lie the often found tangle of inspired devotio0 and the all-too-easily-disillusioned psyche with its comple~es, hidden desires and aversions, power struggles, and longings. Not infrequently these very issues drive the community to seek assistance. Religious communities frequently experience a range of needs for outside help. The problems occur in group-level issues such Alexander H. Smith Jr., EdD, is a profession~il counseling psychologist. His address is 3150 Willis Avenue; Cincinnati, Ohio 45208. j~dy-August 1997 Smith * Mental-Health Consultation as conflict resolution, factioning, and decision making, They occur often to individuals as thorny personality conflicts and in groups as resistance to assimilating new tasks and letting go of old ones. Almost all communities have been faced with the problem of dwindling membership, including losses both of old timers and of new members who do not stay. Many communities are half the size they were thirty years ago, and few have found effective ways to integrate "then and now." Administrative talent varies across com-munities, and the management of the group according to its charism in this subculture of increased psYchological awareness is very challenging. Renewed individualism often stretches the best of minds to steer a course that supports the individual and the group as well. Most communities must cope with practical realities of day-to-day community life that become too hot to handle as a group. The community that approaches consultation in an informed way can realize more effective outcomes. The community's effort to make these course corrections with the consultant's assistance is best served when both the community and the consultant are familiar with what tO expect from each other. Such an informed recogni-tion of issues that are often unique to religious communities helps facilitate a more hopeful tone from inception to termination. The application~ of consultation to religious life appear to range from uninform~ed and sometimes naive "hacking" to highly competent psychological models that integrate diagnostic and intervention strategies from group process theory, models of con-sultation, knowledge of defense organization-in individuals and groups, and so on. This essay considers in very basic form these elements of effective consultation from the perspectives of both consultant and community in order to inform, to caution, and to encourage well-grounded principles and practices. What Type of Consultation Is Best for This Community? The consultant must help the community to select the appro-priate type of consultation. Caplan and Caplan (1993) have iden-tified four major ones: client-centered case consultation, consultee-centered case consultation, program-centered admin-istrative consultation, and consultee-centered administrative con-sultation. These me~hods differ in their targets of service delivery. Review for Religfous They were developed primarily for assisting other therapists work-ing with clinical populations, and they range across a spectrum of targets within a system from problems of an individual client to those of program development and organization. This model of reflective, "indirect" consultation differs substantially from that of organizational development where the focus is on team building, conflict resolution, and other modalities of more direct action methods (see Altrocchi). Two main types of consultation are probably most frequent for religious communities. These are consultation for individual cases where a mental-health issue has emerged, and administrative con-sultation where group-process difficulties need to be addressed. An adaptation of these principles to the :exigencies of life in religious communities is essential for both the consultant and for the com-munity. Usually there are crossing lines of communication, author-ity, and role functions, and the consultant must recognize that decision-making boundaries may be more fluid and that author-ity lines may vary from centralized to decentralized ones. More importantly, the nature of community life involves life commit-ments by its members to form and to maintain a group which supports its members' very livelihood. This reality requires that the consultant reconceptualize the consultation model as one which impacts not only service or "case management" in a work setting, but one which accommodates and supports the manifest structures .of a group whose very livelihood depends upon inter-personal competence and adherence to a task. The Alliance between the Consultant and the Community: Clarifying the Stated Purpose The initial phase of consultation includes the assessment of the community's tolerance for self-observation and for facing uncomfortable and at times painful issues. Some communities are more rigid than others. Some communities are more capable of examining attitudes, beliefs, and practices which interfere with accomplishing their stated aims. Some communities roll with the inevitable punches of difficult times and problematic personalities in a fairly relaxed way. Others struggle frequently, often appear-ing brittle and easily fragmented. The community's decision to seek consultation is rarely unan-imous; the events that lead up to the decision are themselves diag- ~dy-Aug'ust 1997 Smith ¯ Mental-Health Consultation The initial phase of consultation includes the assessment of the commumty s tolerance for self-observation and for facing uncomfortable and at times painful issues. ---.-390 nostic for the group and'for the consultant. The consultant who works with a religious order encounters a network of unique opportunities to assist individuals in a group. The consultant faces with the client community the same human foibles found in any organization. The! engagement with the community from its inception requires that the consultant maintain an integrity about the consultation. Often the initial request for consultation concerns unrecog-nized scapegoating. All group processes invariably include struggle with how to handle anger, disappoint-ment, and disavowed responsibility and therefore with the phenomenon of scapegoating. The process of scape-goating in religious life is surprisingly frequent. Historically it was often fos-silized in such matters as the status of lay brothers. A community's history with these major conflictual issues can be read ,off the contemporary problem foci, and the consultant can begin to read between the lines. For example, one community sought help about how to deal with a difficult member who was "conserva~ tive" and who would isolate himself from the rest of the communify, not participating in common prayer and work. The stated problem, of course, was to address the community's difficulty with its member. However, the com-munity had been chronically divided within itself about liturgical and dress practices. The community maintained the conflict for years by censuring any differentiation from the "new" majority norm. It had ironically created an authoritarian norm that resem-bled the very ones it prided itself for opposing in the larger cl~urch and had scapegoated "problem" members as they came through the ranks. The consultant initially should convey an acceptance of these problems as they are stated, while maintaining the accompanying desire to help the community in the most appropriate way possi-ble. The task here is to open the door to reasonable consideration of all the forces that define the problem as it appears to the com-munity and to be able to further negotiate the community's will- Review for Religious ingness to redefine it or "reframe" it in adaptive ways. In a way quite similar to (but by no means the same as) the initial stages of a psychotherapy, the consultant conveys a tolerance for the ambi-guity of the problem and seeks to draw the community into a more self-observing stance. Elaborating the Consultative Request The initial request usually stands as the consciously stated reason for help. Inevitably it includes a variety of unconsciously associated "agendas." The consultan~ recognizes these hidden forces that have coalesced to prompt the seeking of assistance and will respectfully inquire about them without attempting to inter-vene. They have a much longer life than the consciously stated one., The consultant for religious communities should maintain a particular ear for the historical context of these problem areas. Initially the community often challenges the consultant to do something impossible and then waits to see whether she or he is grandiose enough to try to tackle it. Questions like "Can you help us, deal with all the unspoken anger in this bunch?" need to be answered in a modest but respectfully humorous way: "Well. let me think a minute . . . what happened to the last guy who tried it?" After the ice is broken with the group's powerbrokers, the question can be restated in terms that can more easily be addressed, again hopefully with some humor: "Well . . . some-thing is getting in the way of people here being able to speak their piece., without getting sent ~to New Guinea . " The consultant takes these intangibles into account and for-mulates in clear language an agreement with the community about what consultation will be about, what it can and cannot accom-plish, when and how it will occur, when it will conclude, and what the sort of fee would be involved. The community should expect some response from the consultant that clearly formulates the current understanding of the problem.from perspectives of both community and consultant. Such a statement is usually best if it is,simple and colloquial and contains a potential for redefinition later on: You guys have really been struggling with this prob-lem about who lives with whom., and you're also saying you want to start closing out some parish work, that every-body is getting burned out., you really don't have to wait July-August 1997 Smitb * Mental-Healtb Consultation until the whole team is carried off the field before changing the game plan., let's see if it makes sense to meet a few times and see if there's some connection between these issues, how the community presently thinks about it and what would give the problem some fresh air . The initial phase is a get-acquainted one for both par-ties. The community needs time to size up the consultant and vice versa. The anxiety that accompanies a community's need for help can prompt it (and the consultant) into a pre-mature determination of type of consultation. The com-munity may be panicked about a growing tension between members or between subgroups and may demand quick results from the consultation. It is the height of folly for the consultant to rush in with psy-chological inventories or group-assessment devices. The religious in a community live there as well as work there. The consultant goes home. The context is different from industry, whei'e people at least have the escape of going home themselves in the evening. One community had be~n very reserved about seeking, con~ sultation. Careful assessment revealed that a previous consultant had come in for some "team building" and had required the com-munity to take a popular (but psychometrically compromised) test and then had proceeded to place the results on newsprint around the walls of the'community recreation room. No one would attend any further meetings; the community felt railroaded, overexposed, and very upset with the consultant. The consultant never stayed around long enough to get the feedback about how such cavalier interventions affected real people's lives. The community members' response to the proposed method is significant, for it often reflects attitudinal force and counterforce at work. For example, one community's s~uperior would not directly address the issue of the fee~ The consultant was told to contact the financial officer, an individual who was rather irrita-ble and demanding. The financial officer spoke to the consultant in a veiled condescending way, expressing dismay that the con-sultant even dare to charge a fee to a religious order. Such interactions in the initial phase reflect not only an anx-iety which the community cannot master, but also the manner by which it resolves it. Here the problem is manifested as anxiety about having adequate supplies and resources, whereas the uncon-scious fears seem to be around loss of control and authority. The community has designated someone who is rather difficult to con- Review for Religious trol the purse strings. The resolution is observed in the superior's being unable to address the financial issue directly and hiding behind the irritability of the financial officer. This kind of maneu-ver results in the superior coming across as a weak negotiator and never allowing the community to meet the financial issue head on. Some other forces are at work: the superior is set up as a "pup-pet" and the actual control resides in "old-timers" who are direct-ing the choice of leadership. The consultant's appearance on the scene is less than welcome, for they fear that the whole consultative process will undermine their "fiefdom." The community rarely lets the consultant in on the main difficulty all at once, especially in the beginning phase. The community has grappled with some issue for a long time; it has seen various personalities struggle with it with varying degrees of success. There have usually been fluctuations in leadership styles, in gov-ernance and decision-making processes, and in community responses to the changes. The texture of the com-munity's approach is often tied into its history and charism as well as to the current composition of

Issue 32.4 of the Review for Religious, 1973. ; Review ]or Religious is edited by faculty members of the School of Divinity of St. Louis University, the editorial offices being located at 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. It is owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute; St. Louis, Missouri. Published bimonthly and copy-right © 1973 by Review ]or Religious. Composed, printed, and manufactured in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.25. Sub-scription U.S.A. and Canada: $6.00 a year; $11.00 for two years; other countries, $7.00 a year, $13.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should be accompanied by check or money order payable to Review [or Religious in U.S.A. currency only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent Review ]or Religious. Change of address requests should include former address. R. F. Smith, S.J. Everett A. Diederich, S.J. Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Editor Associate Editor Questions and Answers Editor July 1973 Volume 32 Number 4 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, books for review, and materials for "Subject Bibliography for Religious" should be sent to Review for Religious; 612 Humboldt Building; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S.J.; St. Joseph's Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106. The Testament of Unmeasured Love Congregation [or the Discipline o[ the Sacraments The following is an instruction on the Eucharist dated January 29, 1973, but not publicly released until March 29, 1973. The Latin title of the instruction is lntmensae caritatis; the translation is that which appeared in the English edition of Osservatore ro/~ltltlo. Christ the Lord has left to the Church, His Spouse, a testament of His im-mense love. This wonderful gift of the Eucharist, which is the greatest gift of all, demands that such an important mystery should be increasingly bet-ter known and its saving power more fully shared. With the intention ot~ fostering devotion to the Eucharist--the summit and center of Christian worship--the Church, moved by pastoral zeal and concern, has on more than one occasion issued suitable laws and appropriate documents. Present-day conditions however demand that, while the utmost reverence owing to such a Sacrament~ is constantly maintained, greater access to Holy 1See the Council of Trent, Session 13, Decretutn de SS. Eucharistiae Sacramento, c. 7; DB 880 (DS 1646-1647): "If it is not fitting .for anyone to approach any sacred functions except in a state of holiness, then certainly to the extent that the holiness and godliness of this heavenly Sacrament is more and more known to the Christian, all the more must he take care that he does not come to receive it without great reverence and holiness, especially because of the fearful words of the Apostle which we read: 'A person who eats and drinks without recognizing the Body of the Lord is eating and drinking his own condemnation' (I Cor 11:29). Thus the following precept should be recalled to the one desirous of receiving Holy Communion: 'Let a man so examine himself' (1 Cor 11:28). Ecclesiastical custom declares that the proving of one's self is necessary so that no one, conscious of having committed mortal sin, though considering himself contrite, should approach the Holy Eucharist without first having made a sacramental confession. This Holy Synod declares that this must perpetually be observed by all Christians, even by priests whose duty it is to celebrate Mass, as long as there is an availability of confessors. If in the case of urgent necessity 721 722 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 Communion should be made possible so that the faithful, by sharing more fully in the fruits of the sacrifice of the Mass, might dedicate themselves more readily and effectively to God and to the good of the Church and of mankind. First of all, provision must be made lest reception become impossible or difficult owing to a lack of a sufficient number of ministers. Provision must also be made lest the sick be deprived of such a great spiritual consolation by being impeded from receiving Holy Communion because of the law of fast, which they may not be able to observe, even though it be already very moderate. Finally, it seems appropriate to determine in which circumstances the faithful who ask to receive sacramental Communion a second time on the same day may be permitted fittingly to do so. After a study of the recommendations of episcopal conferences the fol-lowing norms are issued in regard to: 1. extraordinary ministers for the distribution of Holy Communion; 2. a more extensive faculty of receiving Holy Communion twice in the same day; 3. mitigation of the Eucharistic fast for the sick and elderly; 4. the piety and reverence owing to the Blessed Sacrament whenever the Eucharist is placed in the hand of the communicant. Extraordinary Ministers of Communion There are various circumstances in which a lack of sufficient ministers for the distribution of Holy Communion can occur: --during Mass, because of the size of the congregation or a particular difficulty in which a celebrant finds himself; --outside of Mass, when it is difficult because of distance to take the sacred species, especially the Viaticum, to the sick in danger of death, or when the very number of the sick, especially in hospitals and similar insti-tutions, requires many ministers. Therefore, in order that the faithful, who are in the state of grace and who with an upright and pious disposition, wish to share in the Sacred Banquet, may not be deprived of this sacramental help and consolation, it has seemed appropriate to the Holy Father to establish extraordinary ministers, who may give Holy Communion to themselves and to other faithful under the following determined conditions: I. Local ordinaries have the faculty to permit a suitable person indi-vidually chosen as an extraordinary minister for a specific occasion or for a time or, in the case of necessity, in some permanent way, either to give a priest will have celebrated without previous confession, he is to make a confession as soon as possible." See also Sacred Congregation of the Council, the decree Sacra "Tridentina Synodus (December 20, 1905), AAS, v. 38 (1905-1906), pp. 400-6; Sacred Congregation for the Do(trine of the Faith, Normae pastorales circa absolu-tionem sacramentalem generali modo impertiendam (July 31, 1972), Norm 1, AAS, v. 64 (1972), p. 511. The Testament of Unmeasured Love / 72:1 the Eucharist to himself or to other faithful and to take it to the sick who are confined to their homes. This faculty may be used whenever a) there is no priest, deacon, or acolyte; b) these are prevented from administering Holy Communion because of another pastoral ministry or because of ill health or advanced age; c) the number of faithful requesting Holy Communion is such that the celebration of Mass or the distribution of the Eucharist outside of Mass would be t~nduly prolonged. II. Local ordinaries also have the faculty to permit individual priests exercising their sacred office to appoint a suitable person who in cases of genuine necessity would distribute Holy Communion for a specific occasion. III. The above-mentioned local ordinaries can delegate these faculties to auxiliary bishops, episcopal vicars, and episcopal delegates. IV. The suitable person to whom numbers I and II refer shall be desig-nated according to the following order: lector, student of major seminary, male religious, woman religious, catechist, Catholic man or woman. This order, however, can be changed according to the prudent judgment of the local ordinary. V. In oratories of religious communities of either sex the office of dis-tributing Holy Communion in the circumstances described in number I can fittingly be given to a male superior not having major orders or to a woman superior or to their respective vicars. VI. If time permits, it is fitting that the suitable person individually chosen by the local ordinary for administering Holy Communion, as well as the person appointed by a priest having the faculty spoken of in number II, should receive the mandate according to the rite annexed to this instruc-tion; they are to distribute Holy Communion according to the liturgical norms. Since these faculties are granted only for the spiritual good of the faith-ful and for cases of genuine necessity, priests are to remember that they are not thereby excused from the task of distrib.uting the Eucharist to the faith-ful who legitimately request it, aid especially from taking and giving it to the sick. The person who has been appointed to be an ~xtraordinary minister of Holy Communion is necessarily to be duly instructed and should distinguish himself by his Christian life, faith, and morals. Let him strive to be worthy of this great office; let him cultivate devotion to the Holy Eucharist and show himself as an example to the other faithful by his piety and reverence for this most holy Sacrament of the Altar. Let no one be chosen whose selec-tion may cause scandal among the faithful. Communion Twice in the Same Day According to the discipline currently in force, the faithful are permitted to receive Holy Communion a second time: 724 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 ---~n the evening of Saturday or of the day preceding a holyday of obli-gation, when they intend to fulfill the precept of hearing Mass, even though they have already received Holy Communion in the morning of that same day'-'; --at the second Mass of Easter and at one of the Masses celebrated on Christmas Day, even if they have already received Holy Communion at the Mass of the Paschal Vigil or at the midnight Mass of Christmas:~; ---likewise at the evening Mass of Holy Thursday, even if they have re-ceived Holy Communion at the earlier Mass of the Chrism." Since, beyond these circumstances which have been mentioned, there are similar occasions which suggest that Holy Communion might fittingly be received twice in the same day, it is necessary here to determine more pre-cisely the reasons for the new faculty. The norm which the Church, a most provident Mother, has introduced according to venerable custom and included in canon law by which the faith-ful are permitted to receive Holy Communion only once a day remains in-tact nor is it permitted to be set aside merely from motives of devotion. To a simple desire for repeated reception of Holy Communion it should be an-swered that the power of the Sacrament by which faith, charity, and the other virtues are nourished, strengthened, and expressed is all the greater to the extent that one more devoutly approaches the sacred table.~ For, from the liturgical celebration the faithful should go out to the works of charity, piety, and apostolic action so that "they may hold fast by their conduct and life to what they have received by faith and the Sacrament.''" Special circumstances, however, can occur when the faithful who have already received Holy Communion that same day, or even priests who have already celebrated Mass, may be present at some community celebration. They may receive Holy Communion again in the following instances: 1. at those Masses in which the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, Sacred Orders, and Matrimony are administered; also at a Mass at which First Communion is received~; 2. at Masses at which a church or altar is consecrated; at Masses of religious profession or for the conferring of a "canonical mission"; '-'Sacred Congregation of Rites, the instruction Eucharisticum mysterium (May 25, 1967), n. 28, AAS, v. 59 (1967), p. 557. :qbid. q.bid.; see also Sacred Congregation of Rites, the instruction Inter oecumenici (Septem-ber 26, 1964), n. 60, AAS, v. 56 (1964), p. 891; and the instruction Tres abhinc annos (May 4, 1967), n. 14, AAS, v. 59 (1967), p. 445. ~See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 3, q. 79, a. 7 ad 3; and a. 8 ad 1. ~Sacred Congregation of Rites, the instruction Eucharisticum mysterium (May 25, 1967), n. 13, AAS, v. 59 (1967), p. 549. rSee Missale romanum, "Institutio generalis Missalis romani," 329 a; p. 90 in the "editio tipica" of 1970. The Testament of Unmeasured Love / 725 3. at the following Masses of the Dead: the funeral Mass, the Mass celebrated after notification of death, the Mass on the day of final burial, and the Mass on the first anniversary; 4. at the principal Mass celebrated in the cathedral or in the parish on the feast of Corpus Christi and on the day of a parochial visitation; at the Mass celebrated by the major superior of a religious community on the oc-casion of a canonical visitation, of special meetings, or of chapters; 5. at the principal Mass of a Eucharistic or Marian Congress, whether international or national, regional or diocesan; 6. at the principal Mass of any congress, sacred pilgrimage, or preach-ing mission for the people; 7. in the administration of Viaticum, in which Communion can also be given to the relatives and friends of the patient; 8. also local ordinaries may, besides those cases mentioned above, grant permission "ad actum" to receive Holy Communion twice in the same day, as often as they shall judge it truly justified by reason of genuinely special circumstances, according to the norm of this instruction. Mitigation of the Eucharistic Fast Above all it remains firmly decreed that a person to whom Viaticum is administered in danger of death is not bound by any law of fasting,s Like-wise remaining in force is the concession already granted by Pius XII whereby "the sick, even if not confined to bed, can take non-alcoholic drinks and medicines in either liquid or solid form before the celebration of Mass and the reception of the Eucharist without any restriction of time."" In the case of foods and drinks taken for the purpose of nutrition, that tradition is to be respected according to which the Eucharist should be re-ceived, as Tertullian said, "before any food""' so as to indicate the excel-lence of the sacramental food. In order to appreciate the dignity of the Sacrament and to prepare with joy for the coming of the Lord, a time of silence and recoliection before the reception of Holy Communion is opportune. In the case of the sick, how-ever, it will be a sufficient sign of piety and reverence if, for a brief period of time, they turn their minds to the greatness of the mystery. The period of time of the Eucharistic fast or abstinence from food and alcoholic drink is reduced t+ approximately one quarter of an hour, forthe following: 1. the sick in hospitals or in their own homes, even if they are not con-fined to bed; 2. the faithful advanced in age who must remain at home because of age or who are living in a home for the aged; ~See canon 858, § 1. 9Motu proprio Sacram Communionem (March 19, 1957), n. 4, AAS, v. 49 (1957), p. 178. ~OAd uxorem, 2, 5; PL, v. 1, 1408. 726 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 3. sick priests, even if not confined to bed, and elderly priests, who wish to celebrate Mass or receive Holy Communion; 4. persons looking after the sick and the aged as well as those relatives of the sick and aged wishing to receive Holy Communion with them, when-ever they are unable to observe the fast of one hour without inconvenience. Reverence During Hand Reception Since the instruction Memoriale Domini was published three years ago, some episcopal conferences have sought the faculty from the Apostolic See to allow the minister of Holy Communion to place the Eucharistic species in the hands of the faithful. As that instruction recalled, "the precepts of the Church and the documents of the Fathers amply testify that the deepest reverence and the greatest prudence have been shown with regard to the Holy Eucharist,''11 and should continue to be shown. Especially in this man-ner of receiving Holy Communion some points indicated by experience should be most carefully observed. Let the greatest diligence and care be taken particularly with regard to fragments which perhaps break off the hosts. This applies to the minister and to the recipient whenever the Sacred Host is placed in the hands of the communicant. Before initiating the practice of giving Holy Communion in the hand a suitable instruction and catechesis of Catholic doctrine is necessary con-cerning both the real and permanent presence of Christ under the Eucharistic species and the reverence due to this Sacrament.lz It is necessary to instruct the faithful that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior and that the same worship and adoration given to God is owed to Him present under the sacramental signs. Let the faithful be counseled there-fore not to omit a sincere and fitting thanksgiving after the Eucharistic ban-quet, such as may accord with each one's particular ability, state, and duties.1:' So that participation in this heavenly table may be altogether worthy and profitable, the value and effects deriving from it for both the individual and the community must be pointed out to the faithful in such a way that their familiar attitude reveals reverence, fosters that intimate love for the Father of the household who gives us "our daily bread,''1'~ and leads ~lSacred Congregation for Divine Worship, the instruction Metnoriale Domini (May 29, 1969), AAS, v. 61 (1969), p. 542, which remains in force. lzSee Vatican Council II, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Con-cilium, n. 7, AAS, v. 56 (1969), pp. 100-1; Sacred Congregation of Rites, the instruc-tion Eucharisticum mysterium (May 25, 1967), n. 9, AAS, v. 59 (1967), p. 547; and Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship, the instruction Memoriale Domini, which states: ". all danger of the spreading of irreverence or false opinions concerning the Holy Eucharist is to be avoided," AAS, v. 61 (1969), p. 545. 13Paul VI, the address Ad membra Consilii Eucharisticis ex omnibus nationibus con-ventibus moderandis habita, AAS, v. 64 (1972), p. 287. 14See Lk 11:3. The Testament of Unmeasured Love / 727 to a living relationship with Christ of whose flesh and blood we partake.'~ The Supreme Pontiff Paul VI has approved and sanctioned this instruc-tion by his authority and directed that it should be published, decreeing that it should enter into force on the day of its publication. Given in Rome, at the Sacred Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments, 29 January 1973. A. Card. SAMORE Prefect ¯ J. CASORIA Secretary l~See Heb 2:14. Documents on the 1975 Holy Year Paul VI At the general audiences of May 9, 1973, and of May 16, 1973, Pope Paul VI an-nounced a Holy Year for 1975. Previous to May 9, 197'3, a set of directives for the celebration of the 1975 Holy Year had been drawn up and was published in the English language edition of Osservatore romatto, May 16, 1973, page 11. On May 9, 1973, Monsignor Enrico Bartoletti and Monsignor Wladislaw Rubin gave a Vatican Press Conference on the 1975 Holy Year. These four documents are given below in the translations published in the issues of May 16 and May 24, 1973, of the English language Osservatore romano. ALLOCUTION OF MAY 9 Today there is something we would like to tell you, something which we believe is important for the spiritual life of the Church. It is this: After having prayed and meditated we have decided to celebrate in 1975 a Holy Year when the interval of twenty-five years fixed by our predecessor Paul II in the papal bull inefJabilis providentia of April 17 1940 will haveexpired. The Holy Year, which in canonical language is known as the "Jubilee," meant in the Biblical tradition of the Old Testament a year of special public observance, with abstention from normal work, a return to the original distribution of land, the cancelation of existing debts, and the freeing of Hebrew slaves (see Lev 25: 8ft.). In the history of the Church, as you know, the Jubilee was instituted by Boniface VIII in the year 1300 for a purely spiritual purpose. It consisted in making a penitential pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Dante was among those who took part in it and he gives a description of the crowds thronging the city of Rome (see Inferno 18, 28-33). Later in 1500 there was added to the Jubilee the opening of the Holy Doors of the Basilicas which were to be visited. This was intended not only to facilitate the influx of penitents but also to sym-bolize easier access to divine mercy through the gaining of the Jubilee indulgence. 728 Documents on the 1975 Holy Year / 729 We have asked ourself if such a tradition should be continued in our times which are so different from times gone by and so conditioned both by the style of religion given to ecclesial life by the recent Council and by the practical lack of interest .of many parts of the modern world in the ritual expression of other centuries. We have, however, been convinced that the celebration of the Holy Year not only can be consistently fitted in with the spiritual line adopted by the Council itself which it is our responsibility to develop faithfully-~but can also be very well harmonized with and con-tribute to the tireless and loving efforts being made by the Church to meet the moral needs of our time, to interpret its deepest aspirations, and to ac-cept honestly certain forms of its preferred external manifestations. Essential Concept of the Holy Year In view of the variety of purposes it is necessary to stress what is the essential concept of the Holy Year. It is the interior renewal of man: of the man who thinks and who in his thought has lost the certainty of truth; of the man who works and who in his work has realized that he is so extro-verted that he no longer fully possesses communication with himself; of the man who enjoys life and who so amuses himself and has so many exciting ways to gain pleasurable experience that he soon feels bored and dis-illusioned. Man must be renewed from within. This is what the gospel calls conversion, penance, and a change of heart. It is the process of self-rebirth. It is simple, like a clear and courageous act of conscience and at the same time complex like a long, instructive, and reforming apprenticeship. It is also a moment of grace, and usually one does .not obtain grace without bowing one's head. And we do not think we err in detecting in modern man profound dissatisfaction, satiety coupled with insufficiency, unhappiness produced by false formulas for happiness with which he is intoxicated, and dismay at not knowing how to enjoy the thousand and one pleasures that civilization offers him in abundahce. In other words, man needs an interior renewal such as that hoped for by the Council. The Holy Year is oriented precisely to this personal and interior renewal, which under certain aspects is also exterior. It is an easy and at the same time extraordinary therapy which should bring spiritual well-being to every conscience and indirectly, at least to some extent, to the attitude of society. This is the general theme of the next Holy Year which, however, will also be centered upon another and special theme that is oriented to practical living: reconciliation. Reconciliation The term, "reconciliation," evokes the concept opposite to that of a break. What break would we have to mend in order to reach that recon-ciliation which is the condition for the desired renewal of the Jubilee? What break? But is it not perhaps enough to use this word reconciliation, which 730 / Review 1or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 involves a whole program, to realize that our life is disturbed by too many breaks, too much disharmony, too much disorder to be able to enjoy the gifts of personal and collective life according to their ideal finality? We need above all to reestablish a genuine, vital, and happy relationship with God, to be reconciled with Him in humility and love, so that from this first basic harmony the whole world of our experience may express a need and acquire a virtue of reconciliation in charity and justice with men to whom we im-mediately give the new title of "brothers." Moreover, reconciliation takes place in other vast and very real areas: within the ecclesial community it-self, in society, in the relations among nations, in ecumenism, in the sphere of peace, and so forth. If God permits us to celebrate the Holy Year, it will have many things to tell us in this regard. Local Churches First Let us now limit ourselves to pointing out an important aspect of the structure of the next Holy Year. According to the centuries-old custom, the Holy Year has its focal point in Rome. And it will still be so, but with this innovation. The conditions prescribed for acquiring special spiritual benefits will this time be anticipated and granted to the local churches so that the whole Church spread throughout the world may be able to profit immedi-ately from this great occasion of renewal and reconciliation. In this way the entire Church will be better able to prepare for the climax and conclu-sion of the Holy Year, which wil~ be celebrated in Rome in the year 1975, and which will give to the traditonal pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles its traditional~ meaning for those who are able and wish to make the pil-grimage. And this important and salutary spiritual and penitential move-ment, which involves the entire Church and which will be accompanied by the granting of special indulgences, will begin on the coming Feast of Pentecost, June I0. On former occasions, the extension of the Holy Year came after its celebration in Rome; now this extension will precede the cele-bration in Rome. Everyone can see how this innovation also includes an intention of honoring with more evident and effective communion the local churches which are living members of the one universal Church of Christ. This will suffice for the present. But by the grace of God we shall have many other things to say on this matter. May our Apostolic Blessing be with all of you. ALLOCUTION OF MAY 16 Last week we announced to our visitors at the general audience that there will be a Holy Year in 1975, but with an opening in the local churches, that is, in the various dioceses and therefore in the individual parishes and ec-clesial communities, on the forthcoming Feast of Pentecost on June 10 [1973]. In this way all the faithful in the world will have the time and the opportunity to take part in this great exercise of religious and moral renewal Documents on the 1975 Hoiy Year / 731 even before it is celebrated in Rome in the year that has been established. Thus the spiritual benefits can be obtained even by those who will not have the happy possibility of coming on pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles in, the "Eternal City." Interest in the Event The announcement has aroused great interest in the world as a fact which, because of its extension, concerns in various ways the entire earth. It has. also, as is natural, aroused great interest in the Catholic Church. It is an event which concerns every one of her members, renewing in her the spiritual vibrations of years and centuries of her past history and bringing back the tide of renewal of the recent Council. It provides a motive and a strength for her perennial evangelizing discussion with human society, per-vaded in our days by deep and restless changes. This first welcome of the sound of the Jubilee trumpet (the term, "Jubilee" refers in fact to the trumpets with which the seventh, or sabbatical year, and the beginning of the fiftieth year were announced among the Jews in ancient times) gives us great pleasure and reason to hope for the positive outcome of this recurring ecclesial initiative. Among many voices, we must single out as highly significant and authori-tative that of Cardinal Marty, Archbishop of Paris, who on his own behalf and on 'behalf of all the French bishops, w~lcomes our decision with jo~, and makes it ~his own, all the more willingly in that it coincides with his own pastoral concerns. So too we warmly thank the Italian Episcopal Conference for having at once echoed our invitation with its fervent and promised support. We tell you this, beloved Brothers and Sons, and dear Visitors, and together with you all those who may hear of this comment of ours on the announcement of the forthcoming Holy Year, to exhort all of you to give this announcement its due importance. It must really be taken seriously. It does not concern a fleeting moment of our journey in time; it concerns an orientation of our modern life at the end of the twentieth century. It does not refer to a particular aspect of our mental and moral behavior but invests our entire way of thinking and living. Two Principal Realities It is a question, in other words, of an overall examination of our out-look with regard to two principal realities: the religion that we profess and the world in which we live. Religion and the world; faith and mundane experience; the Christian conception of life and a conception without light, principles, duties, and hopes transcending our journey in time which leads inexorably to temporal death. The time has come to measure our adherence to Christ in the conflict which it must wage with forms of thought and action that disregard the gos- 732 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 pel and its salvation. The moment is ripe for a complete act of conscience about supreme values and subordinate values; it is time for a choice that is not only practical and submissive, but also pondered and binding about the general character we wish to imprint upon our existence: Is it Christian or is it not? And this means ultimately, is it really human or not? We could prolong this interrogation by proposing so many other alternatives, or rather so may other antitheses, such as: Do we want to be real followers of Christ or just mere names on the' register of the baptized and therefore freewheeling hypocrites condemned by the principles and exigencies that we ourselves claim to profess? Do we want to make God and Christ the center that conditions and harmonizes our fife with its drama of redemption and its un-failing present and final happiness, or do we wish to place in ourselves, in our absorbing and fallacious selfishness, the hinge of our every movement? Do we want to embrace in love and solidarity our brothers, near and far, or do we wish to close the circle of our social outlook within narrow self-interest, walled up in a bitter individual or collective selfishness, and there-fore armed with hatred and struggle, incapable of real love? And so on. A New Synthesis We wish that this the Holy Year may constitute a general balance sheet of our ideas, of our conception of our higher duties, and our real interests, and that it may guide us to a new synthesis of our ancient faith, living and necessary, and the pressing program of modern life, not so much in a supine compromise, but rather in an intelligent Christian harmony, admittedly demanding certain renunciations and austerities but yielding fruits of sincere humanity and authentic happiness. In a word, it is the philosophy of life that is at stake, that which recog-nizes, with Bergson, that the greater the progress of scientific, technical, economic, and social development today, the more man needs a "spiritual supplement" in order not to fall victim to his own conquests. It is the theology of life as outlined by the Council which, ten years after its conclusion, challenges our faithfulness to its renewing word and our capacity to reconstitute our personal conscience and our society in justice and peace. For the moment we thank the Lord who breathes upon the world, upon the Church, and in our souls these majestic thoughts; and we pray to Him that they may enlighten and bring life to you, to everyone, according to His Spirit. And we bestow on you our Apostolic Blessing. DIRECTIVES FOR THE 1975 HOLY YEAR On May 9 the Holy Father will make the preliminary announcement of a Jubilee Year for the interior renewal of men. In Catholic tradition going back to the year 1300, the Holy Year has a purely spiritual meaning and Documents on tJ~e 1975 Holy Year / 733 has always been seen as a manifestation of profound piety and of the unity of the Church expressed especially in the widespread practice of going on pilgrimage to the tomb of Peter in Rome. Particularly in the difficult periods of the Church's history, it constituted a privileged time of concord and an occasion of abundant grace offered to the People of God. In the present circumstances the coming Holy Year takes on a special significance in that it coincides with the tenth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, which was meant as a solemn appeal of the Church to all her members to undertake for the salvation of the world a profound renewal of spirit, structures, and pastoral organization. This indeed was the message of the constitution Lumen gentium which recalled that Christ has made us sharers in His Spirit in order that we may continually be renewed in Him. It reminded us also that although the Church is, through her divine calling, holy and without spot, she is in her members defectible and "continually in need of conversion and renewal" (no. 8). For this reason she misses no_opportunity of calling to penance, in order that she may remain the "worthy spouse of her Lord" with the aid of the Holy Spirit "so that through the cross she may attain the light that knows no setting" (no. 9). Necessily of Penance The Church is aware that a return to God is indispensable in order to also attain the reestablishment of Christian unity and in order to give peace to all men who are striving for tranquillity in the midst of disquieting events. She therefore invites everyone, non-Catholics included, to have re-course to the sources of salvation; and "she does not cease to pray, hope, and work, while exhorting her children to purify and renew themselves in order that the image of Christ may shine forth more clearly in her counten-ance" (no. 15). She likewise asks mankind to turn "with renewed spirit to true peace" (Gaudium et spes, no. 77) since the "reform of hearts" remains the principal path for the attainment of this reform. The Second Vatican Council has inculcated the necessity of penance so that man, by freeing himself from evil, may cling wholeheartedly to Christ, "the model, master, liberator, savior, and lifegiver" (Ad gentes, no. 8). The apostolic constitution Poenitemini of Pope Paul VI has expla.')ned the meaning and the truly Christian value of penance in the affirma,'~ion that only through "the profound affd total transformation of the whol~ man, in all his feelings, judgments and acts" is it possible t'o reach the kingdom pro-claimed by Christ (Poenitemini, no. 5). By virtue of these salutary messages and in order to ascertain in what measure they have borne fruit, the coming Holy Year will have as its funda-mental purpose the Christian's commitment to an act of profound conver-sion, metanoia, that brings him closer to God and affects the ecclesial com-munity and temporal communities as well. It will be a great penitential act 734 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 involving the whole People of God and leading it, through meditation, prayer, and the celebration of the Eucharist to a deeper and hoped for personal and community reform. This testing of the genuineness of one's personal life of faith, the fruit of a total interior change in the voluntary exercise of acts of penance "over and above the renunciations imposed by daily life" (Poenitemini, no. 12), will lead to reconciliation at all levels. This is meant to be the central and operative theme of the entire Holy Year. Levels of Reconciliation Evangelical conversion and every penitential practice that accompanies it lead essentially to reconciliation with God in Jesus Christ and to recon-ciliation with one's brethren. They lead to reconciliation within the Catholic Church herself and in her relationships with the other Churches, to recon-ciliation in society among all men, over and above every difference of class, race, nation, and degree of economic, social, and cultural development. They lead to reconciliation as the path to that unity which is realized in Christ, the restorer of all things on earth, the unifier of heartg through the sacrifice of His Blood, the unfailing fount of life and salvation (see Eph 2:11-4). The Holy Year will offer to all men the opportunity for genuine reflec-tion upon the basic values of life directed towards a new seeking for Christ. The Holy Year will be concerned more with the interior life of the spirit than with external manifestations; it will be directed towards the world that the Church wishes to serve, that the world may believe: ut mundus credat: It will call for and promote works of piety, penance, and charity as signs of renewal in faith and as the condition for gaining the indulgences granted in the name of and as the gift of the infinite and almighty saving mercy of the Lord. With this a{m in yiew, the coming Holy Year will be conducted in such a way as to offer the greatest possible number of people the chance to share fruitfully in the Jubilee. Therefore, unlike previous Holy Years, which were celebrated in Rome and then extended to the other communities and dioceses, it will be first proclaimed for all the local churches in harmony with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council'and finally to avoid the situa-tion in which it would become a privilege of the category of people who have the means to go to Rome. Pilgrimages to Rome As the culmination of the whole process of reflection and as the fruit of the work of renewal carried out in the local churches, pilgrimages to Rome will be held in 1975. This will constitute the final point and conver-gence of the penitential activity. The influx of the faithful to the Eternal City should be representative of the local churches from which the various groups come; these latter will Documents on the 1975 Holy Year / 735 be aware of the spiritual burden which they fraternally undertake. They will have contact with the most significant traces of the ancient Church; and they will meet the Church of Rome and above all its bishop, the pope, to whom they will give the witness of their faith in his evangelical mission and in his primacy. In the pope they will see the one who by confessing the divinity of Christ, the indispensable foundation of the Christian faith, has become, by Christ's mandate, the living cornerstone of the entire divine economy, the rock of the Church. Of this, St. Leo the Great gives the follow-ing illustration: "In the whole Church Peter daily says: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God' and every tongue which confesses the Lord is filled with the teaching of this voice" (Serrno 3; PL, 54, 146c). In the pope they will find the bond of unity of all the local churches, the safeguard of the plurality of their pastoral and cultural experiences, and the animator of the universal charity of the Church which today more than ever before is concerned with the evangelization and integral development of peoples in the spirit of charity because "only love is worthy of trust." The Holy ~Year and the Local Churches In order that the Holy Year may have the hoped for results, it will be appropriate, as soon as the Holy Father makes the announcement on May 9, for the local churches to give thought to the immediate initiation of ac-tivities directed toward this movement of conversion and renewal on a parochial, diocesan, and national basis. Each church must seriously employ its resources at all levels to stir up in the faithful a serious and authentic penitential act. The episcopal conferences shall seek ways most suited to the mentality of their peoples of ensuring that they understand the ecclesial importance of the event and realize what interior and exterior results are expected from it. The objectives of the work to be done would seem to be especially the following: 1. To explain the purpose of the Holy Year proclaimed by the Holy Father and the documents which will be issued on this theme. 2. To prepare the faithful sp.iritually with extensive preaching in all its forms of the Word of God for personal and communal penitential acts which will be promoted to bring about reconciliation in Christ. 3. Toorganize appropriate liturgical celebrations in accordance with the Second Vatican Council for promoting the sense of prayer in the com-munion and participation of the graces of the Holy Year. 4. To select the churches where the Jubilee indulgences can be gained, inserting the indulgences into an integral process of interior renewal and hence of sanctification. The cathedral is to be preferred since it is the meet-ing point of various liturgical and pastoral movements so that it may be clearly seen that the entire ecclesial movement has as its center the bishop 736 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 who is coresponsible with the pope for the spirtual renewal of the whole People of God. 5. To point out the connection--in the ways that the episcopal con-ferences deem most suitable and effective--between the movement of spiritual renewal, which will culminate in the Holy Year in Rome, and the reflection of the ecclesial community on the theme of the next general as-sembly of the Synod of Bishops (1974): "Th~ Evangelization of the Modern World." 6. As far as possible to secure the participation of the separated brethren in the initiatives undertaken for the celebration of the Holy Year in order to have cooperation in the areas of piety, charity, and penance. It is in these spheres that there is more easily found, through the conversion of hearts, unity in Christ, and thus reconciliation in the Church comes to maturity (see the decree Unitatis redintegratio, no. 7). Similar attention shall be given to those belonging to non-Christian religions. 7. Care shall likewise be taken to give to the celebration of the Holy Year a radiating expansion reaching the widest sectors of humanity, includ-ing those Who do not believe, by involving them at least in those initiatives that have as their common purpose reconciliation and peace. 8. The pilgrimages to Rome in 1975 shall be carefully prepared. Central Committee for the Holy Year These initial directives will be followed by others. A Central Committee for the Holy Year will be set up which will maintain close contact through the episcopal conferences with the local churches in order to inform them of the various initiatives which will be promoted in the doctrinal and liturgi-cal fields and in order to provide possible clarifications. THE VATICAN PRESS CONFERENCE OF MAY 9 Remarks of Monsignor Enrico Bartoletti At the general audience today the Holy Father announced the proclamation of a Jubilee Year which will have its culmination in Rome in 1975. The peculiar characteristics of this Jubilee Year which the Holy Father outlined do not sweep the Holy Year off the course of its centuries-old tradition but wisely gear it to the modern socio-cultural context and set it better in the framework of the ecclesiology of Vatican II. Tl~e first and most conspicuous variation that characterizes this Holy Year is that it will take place first in all the particular churches or dioceses scattered all over the world and then conve~:ge and culminate afterwards at Peter's See in the Church that is the mother of all the churches. The difference from the past may seem only an exterior one. Previously, the Jubilee was celebrated in Rome for the whole of the Holy Year, and only there could the Jubilee indulgence be obtained. Only at the close of Documents on the 1975 Holy Year / 737 the Holy Year were the spiritual favors extended to the whole world, thus reaching those who had not been able to enjoy them. Now, on the contrary, the Jubilee year is to be celebrated first all over the world, later reaching its conclusive climax and the fullness of its signifi-cance at the tomb of the Apostles Peter and Paul. The difference, therefore, is not just an exterior one, on the purely chronological and organizational level. It deeply modifies the meaning of the Holy Year and highlights its value as a spiritual and ecclesial move-ment intended to involve the whole of the Lord's Holy Church or, as people prefer to say today, the whole People of God on its pilgrimage in the world. The particular churches and all the ecclesial communities of believers and of the baptized are thus highlighted and urged to renewal, while unity of faith and fellowship is reaffirmed and solicited in the convergence upon Peter's See which is their permanent source and foundation (see Lumen gentium, no. 18). Conversion and Reconciliation In this way the Holy Year takes on the configuration of an intense and universal Church movement, not triumphalistic but pastoral and spiritual, personal and communitarian, aimed at realizing and checking that process of continual and permanent "conversion" which is the fundamental message of the gospel and which was admirably echoed by Lumen gentium and the whole of Vatican II. The goal and purpose of this ecclesial movement is indicated in the very theme of the Jubilee Year: Reconciliation; The itinerary to reach it, which the whole Church is invited to follow, is that of "metanoia," that is, repentance or change of mentality, effort of purification, commitment of charity. It is, in fact, along this path of repentance that man, in Christ, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, is reconciled with God and becomes capable of reconcilia-tion with his brothers. It is this brotherly reconciliation, ecclesial and human and therefore also civil, which becomes at once the fruit and the verification of reconciliation with God, while it is in many cases the premises and beginning of it. And it is in this sense that the Holy Year takes on a value and a dimen-sion that is not only intraecclesial but also ecumenical and universal. Thus the connection of the Holy Year with Vatican Council II becomes not only chronological and exterior but also deep and consequential. On the tenth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, the theme of the Jubilee Year and the itinerary of repentance that must characterize it will be nothing but a renewed ecclesiological reflection and a renewed commitment to carry out what the Spirit told the Church of our times at the great Pentecost of the Council. From Lumen gentium to Gaudium et spes, from Pacem in terris and 738 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 Poenitemini to Octogesima adveniens and the Synodal documents of 1971, the pressing appeal to the Church has constantly been that of conversion and reconciliation. The celebration of the Holy Year, ten years after the Council, will be a verification and a common examination of conscience of the whole Church with regard to the fruitfulness of those salutary messages and the faithful-ness of our response to the voice of the Spirit. The Holy Year and Evangelization There is a clear connection also between the celebration of the Holy Year, especially in the particular churches, and the subject of the next Synod ---evangelization in the modern world--which will also have to stimulate the reflection, the effort and the commitment of the whole People of God. Monsignor Rubin, the Secretary General of the Synod, will explain in detail the convergences of content and commitment. Let it be enough to point out here that the whole spiritual movement of the Holy Year will be a process of evangelization inside and outside the Church, in the awareness that she exercises her evangelizing mission not only through what she says but also through what she is. Holy Year in the Local Churches and in Rome Witness, especially in the secularized world, is an integral part of evangelization. The first phase of the celebration of the Jubilee Year will take place, therefore, in all the particular churches. The solemn announce-ment will be made by the pastors in those churches on Pentecost Day (June 10) and the spiritual and organizational movement will be started. The center of convergence of the various catechetical, liturgical, and pastoral initiatives will preferably be the cathedral. There it will be possible to obtain the Jubilee indulgence; there the ecclesial movement will find in the bishop its visible center and foundation of unity and fellowship with the universal Church. The climax of the whole pro.cess of renewal, the sign and seal of recon-ciliation in the unity of faith and in the charity of fellowship, will be the pilgrimage to Rome which will take place from December 1974 throughout 1975. The crowds of the faithful who will flock to Peter's See will have to be representative of the particular churches. Therefore, more than pil-grimages of individuals or groups, it will be diocesan and regional pil-grimages or the pilgrimages of whole episcopal conferences with their pas-tors that will be of importance. The need for representativeness and the necessary sign of ecclesial and brotherly charity will prompt initiatives of mutual help so that the less well-to- do, the sick, and the young will be present in large numbers in the pil-grimages to the Church of Rome which in her bishop "presides over charity." It will also be necessary for the pilgrimage to °Rome to be distinguished from Documents on the 1975 Holy Year / 739 the tourist trip. Regaining its old meaning as a Christian pilgrimage, it should be a real spiritual itinerary to find again in Peter's successor "the one who everyday proclaims in the Church faith in Christ, the Son of the Living God." In this way the particular churches will find once more in the pope the bond of their unity, the guarantor of their itinerary of faith, the animator of their charity. Remarks of Monsignor Wladislaw Rubin The "essential features of the central theme of the Holy Year" stress the existence of a connection between the movement of spiritual revision dictated by the Holy Year and the reflection of the ecclesial community on the subject of the next General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (in 1974): "The Evangelization of the Contemporary World." The Holy Year and Evangelization It is useful to indicate the reasons for this connection: 1. The first link to emphasize is the one with the growing participation of the episcopate in joint responsibility toward the universal Church and her task in the world. The Synod of Bishops is a particularly evident expression of this collaboration since it is the central ecclesiastic organism in which ¯ the world episcopate expresses its concern to cooperate with the sovereign pontiff for the solution of the most serious problems 'that emerge and challenge the ecclesial community, It is, therefore, the place of confluence and convergence of the local churches which live in an attitude of listening comparison, adherence, and availability for the influences of the Holy Spirit and the service of the good of the universal Church. ,The approach to the Holy Year--different from the traditional and cen-turies- old approach of preceding celebrations--which consists in initiating the celebration with the local churches and giving the world episcopate more direct participation in the celebrations in Rome corresponds to the line of renewal that the institution of the Synod of Bishops represents in the Church. 2. Then there exists a deeper link between the idea of the Holy Year-- which is repentance--and that subject chosen for the next Synod, that is "The Evangelization of the Contemporary World." It can be said that the reflection of the ecclesial community on the subject of the Synod is, from this point ofview, preparation for a correct celebration of the Holy Year. The Synod of Bishops, proposing the subject of evangelization in all its radical instances, will urge believers to an inner conversion which is indis-pensable to be able to prove one's readiness to follow Christ and to com-mune with Him. We all know the Gospel text which directly connects the proclamation of the gospel with the appeal for repentance: "Repent, and believe the gospel!" (Mk 1:15). Repentance. therefore is necessary for conversion and 740 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 adherence to Christ, as the Second Vatican Council says. Repentance is the first stage of evangelization, of conversion of the heart, and of the renewal of the individual and of mankind for which all men of good will long. 3. The celebration of the Holy Year--as we read in the "essential fea-tures"-- offers all men the possibility of genuine reflection on the funda-mental values of life, open to a new search for Christ; it is addressed to the world that the Church wishes to serve in order that it may believe: ut mundus credat. Renewal of Faith The Holy Year, therefore, wishes to be a "renewal of faith." Never, perhaps, in the history of the celebrations of the Holy Year has the ecclesial community felt this need so strongly as now. In modern society, space for God's word is constantly and progressively reduced and it does not reach its efficacy; it is listened to little, understood and lived little. It is necessary, therefore, to revise method and contents thoroughly and to multiply efforts in order that God's word may have its place and its role of primacy in the chorus of men's messages. The subject of the next Synod, "The Evangelization of the Contem-porary World," commits the whole ecclesial community to careful and deep reflection on the message of Christ, liberator and savior, to be communi-cated with every effort and every means to the men of our times. It is to be hoped that the effort of the Synod of Bishops will be sup-ported by a deep awareness of the whole People of God, accompanied and followed by a multiplicity of initiatives capable of bringing to maturity reflections and exigencies in vital terms of faith. 4. The specific subject proposed by the Holy Father for the 1975 Holy Year, that is, reconciliation, meets one of the main concerns of the episco-pate expressed in the preceding Synods which aimed at ensuring constant progress for the Church and for mankind in an atmosphere of peace and love in conformity with the teaching of the gospel. The world episcopate is the qualified witness of all the peoples it repre-sents who suffer from the conflicts and lacerations that exist on the political, social, and religious planes. The Synod, which will have to study how to bring the gospel of love and peace to the world of today, will aim at reaching, through evangelical con-version, this reconcilation with God and with our human brothers. Address to. Religious Women Paul VI On May 12, 1973, Pope Paul VI gave an audience to the women religious partici-pating in the General Assembly of the Union of Major Superiors in Italy. On the occasion the Holy Father delivered the following talk printed here in the translation given in the English language Osservatore romat~o, May 24, 1973, page 3. It is a happy and refreshing parenthesis for us today, willingly agreeing to your request, to receive you, the major superiors of Italy, who have taken part in the General Assembly of the Council of Presidency and of the Cen-tral Council of the Union. We greet the newly elected superiors, and those who have ended their term of office; and we welcome all of you, as well as your fellow sisters whom you represent. Be Confident We are glad to pause, if only for a short time, among you because you bring before our eyes the image of the ranks of Italian religious women who, on all fronts--teaching, support for the priestly ministry, missionary cooperation, physical and spiritual works of mercy, and so forth--offer the Church irreplaceable assistance and the community of brothers a continual lesson of kindness, disinterestedness, and self-sacrifice. We thank you for this "evangelical witness'~ given as it is with total fervor; and we address you a word of consolation: Be confiden!! At this moment when many things are questioned, though in the praiseworthy in-tention of rediscovering and following your own "identity" in conformity with the gospel and with the origin of each religious institute, there is need of a higher certainty to guide and illuminate this effort of absolute au-thenticity. 741 742 / Review for Religious, l/olume 32, 1973/4 Confidence in the Religious Vocation Yes, be confid~nt! 1. Be confident in the choice of the religious vocation which you made in full freedom and in serene response to God's grace by g!ving the highest and deepest significance to Christian life. What is religious life if not the carrying to their extreme consequences--death to sin and its roots, dedica-tion to God, union with the risen Christ--of the instructions of baptism? Is it not the bringing to complete maturation of the seeds received in that decisive sacramental meeting with the Trinity that loves us and saves us? This was the ancient teaching that the recent Council recalled when it said that in religious life every member of the faithful "in order to derive more abundant fruit from this baptismal grace intends by the profession of the evangelical counsels in the Church to free himself from those obstacles which might draw him away from the fervor 6f charity and the perfection of divine worship. Thus he is more intimately consecrated to divine service" (Lumen gentium, no. 44). You, therefore, with faithfulness to the gospel taken literally indicate that the realities that count, the ones that will remain beyond the contingent flux of time are the spiritual ones. Religious life is a sign and a presence of the eschatological reality of the kingdom of God. In this l!ght your lives as consecrated women take on full significance in their forms, in their essen-tial commitments represented by the three vows, in their strong, happy, sacrificed, loving, welcoming style, guided only by the thought of the love of God and of your brothers, particularly those most abandoned, as well as in spiritual growth fed at the crystal clear fountainheads of prayer and union with God, of silence and contemplation, and especially of the Eucharist and the liturgical life according to the points that we developed in the apostolic exhortation Evangelica testiJ~catio. We invite you to meditate on this docu-ment more and more because .it was dictated solely by the desire to facilitate that renewal of religious life which was among the most conspicuous fruits of the Second Vatican Council. Confidence in the Church 2. Then be confident in "Mother Church" who has given you her full confidence in the first place. You have a particular relationship of love for the Church, as you have for Mary. The .mystery of Mary and that of the Church are closely linked and illuminate each other: "The Church . . . be-comes herself a mother . For by her preaching and by baptism she brings forth~ to a new and im. mortal life children who are conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of God. The Church herself is a virgin who keeps whole and pure the fidelity which she has pledged to her Spouse. Imitating the Mother of her Lord and by the power of the Holy Spirit, she preserves with virginal purity an integral faith, a firm and sincere charity" (Lumen gentium, no. 64). Address to Religious Women You are closely linked to these realities which, mysteriously, must be reproduced and continued in your consecrated lives. Hence you must al-ways feel moved to a particular love for the Church. The fervor of ecclesiological studies, in the light of the teaching of the Council, and, above Jail, personal reflection in the life of prayer must stimulate in all sisters a new esteem, a new reliance, a new confidence in the Church. All in-stitutes, becoming more and more open and available, should be animated to seek new services so that the Church may reach everywhere in the world, bringing it the sacrament of love with which God meets mankind in Christ and save it in every age and in all latitudes. Confidence in Our Times 3. And finally be confident also in our times, so full of aspirations and tensions, greatness and wretchedness, needs and hopes. The conciliar con-stitution Gaudium et spes highlighted them in a precise synthesis which must be kept in mind by all those in the .Church who wish to serve the needs" of the world. Your vocation puts you in a special relationship with the world which has, as you know, so many sufferings and sores but which also possesses so many secret richeswin the advance of new generations, in the faithful-ness of families, in the sacrifices of workers, in the sorrows of the sick and the old. Before them you must be "sign posts." .And in this you have a great responsibility. People watch you and judge if your faithfulness to the gospel is genuine and sincere. For them you must be in the world the sign that the gospel is alive, that the kingdom of God is amongst us (see Lk 17:21). Moved by this concern, we called you to this commitment of witnessing in our recent exhortation when we wrote that "this world needs, today more than ever, to see in you men and women who have believed in the Word of the Lord, in His Resurrection and eternal life, to the extent of committing your earthly life to bear witness to the reality of this love which is offered to all men . Is not this gra.ce, for the man of today, a kind of life-bringing breath from the infinite, a kind of liberation from himself, in the prospect of eternal, absolute joy?" (Evangelica testificatio, no. 53). The Coming Flame of Light and Grace In this triple invitation to confidence, then, we wish the Union a renewed effort in order that these instructions may be lived with growing awareness by all Italian sisters. This is demanded by the state of consecrated life; it is required by the duty of the hour when a great flame of light and grace is about to pass over the local churches in preparation for the Holy Year. Be in the front line in the work of reconciliation and inner renewal as well as of revision of your own social life in the kind of reaction which we expect from all the faithful of good will. The forthcoming Pentecost will be the beginning of a new effusion of the Spirit upon the whole Church: Get ready 744 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 for it and help in a special way the various categories of persons you serve to understand this hour of grace and to give it their support. We thank you; and in token of the special protection of the Holy Virgin, an incomparable model of complete dedication, we willingly impart the special Apostolic Blessing to you and to your fellow sisters in your institutes. Prayer and Life Edward Carter, S.J. Father Edward Carter, S.J., is associate professor of theology at Xavier University; Cincinnati, Ohio 45207. There is an intimate connection between prayer and life. It can be no other way. Prayer, a function of the Christian life of grace, has an undeniable con-nection with the human condition because the Christian life itself does. The Christian is not one-half natural and the other half supernatural. Although grace and nature are distinct, they do not exist separate from one another as if grace is placed atop nature like a kind of,superstructure. Karl Rahner observes: "The nature of a spiritual being and its supernatural elevation are not opposed to each other like two things which lie side by side, so that they must be either kept separate or confused. The supernatural elevation of man is, though not due to him, the absolute fulfillment of his being . Grace and the Authentically Human The Christian is one graced person. The Christian life does not in any way destroy or lessen anything which isjauthentically human. Rather the Christian life gives human nature a deepened capacity for fulfillment. In our elevation through grace, we possess a deepened capacity for love, for joy, for suffering, for peace, for happiness. Whatever we do, as long as it is authentically human, is also meant to be Christian. St. Paul reminds us: "The fact is that whether you eat or drink--whatever you do~-you should do all for the glory of God" (1 Cot 10:31). The Christian life, then, is divinized human life. It is man and wife deeply and tenderly loving one another. It is friend sharing with friend. The Christian life is a nurse caring for the sick, a mother rearing her children, 1Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, Volume 4 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966), p. 183. 745 746 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 a businessman serving his customers, a teacher communicating with his students. Life in Christ is sharing a meal with loved ones, enjoying a movie, taking a refreshing swim, quietly watching the falling white snow gently covering the hillside, or being buoyed up by the greenness of spring. The Christian life is the thrill of being loved, the ioy of success, the satisfaction of completing an important task. It is a concern for one's neighbor, an at-tention to his needs. The Christian life is experiencing failure, being mis-understood, feeling unloved, experiencing the slight pains of life, but also occasionally the deep suffering which makes one weep. No, there is nothing really human which is alien to our graced existence in Jesus. Jesus Himself has gone before us indicating the connection between the human condition and the life He came to give. Jesus redeemed us, not by fleeing the human condition, but by relating to it properly according to His Father's will. Jesus loved life, and He beautifully used human existence to give us the possibility of becoming more perfectly human. As Jesus achieved objective redemption within the framework of the human condition and His own human existence, so also must we assist Him in the ongoing work of subjective redemption. We receive the life Jesus came to give us within the human condition and the confines of our own humanity or we do not re-ceive it at all. This is also the way we help give this Christic life to others. Prayer and Human Life Prayer, since it is a very important exercise of this Christian life we have been describing, has an obvious relationship with the human condition. Prayer is deeply interrelated with life. From experienci.ng life I am led to seek prayer, and frbm experiencing prayer I am led to seek life. Thomas Merton, because he was a Trappist monk, was not directly involved with certain aspects of the temporal order. But in the manner his Trappist voca-tion permitted, he was deeply immersed in life. He was deeply interested in his fellow human beings. He was deeply concerned with the agonizing prob-lems of modern man. Precisely because he was a man of profound prayer, he understood contemporary man and the human condition go well, and his writings are a legacy of wisdom helping modern, man to achieve successful and happy living. In one of his books he i'eminds fis of the connecti6n which must exist between prayer and life: A false supernaturalism which imagines that "the supernatural" is a kind of Platonic realm o~ abstract essences totally apart from and opposed to the concrete world of nature, offers no real support to a genuine lif~ of meditation and prayer. Mediation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in liJe.,,Without such roots, it can produce nothing but the ashen fruits of disgust, acedia, and even morbid and degenerate introversion, masochism, dolorism, negation. Nietzsche pitilessly exposed the hopeless mess which results from this caricature of Christianity.''z 2Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (Garden City: Image, 1971), p. 39. Prayer and Li[e / 747 Prayer is intimately bound up with life in that it helps us to find our-selves and our role in life. Prayer shows us how to live. Prayer helps us achieve self-identity, and in achieving self-identity we see what our relation-ship to God and our fellowmen should be. One of the gravest issues facing contemporary man is the problem of alienation. Modern man feels alienated from himself, from God, from the society of men. Prayer helps cut across these inroads which alienation has made. As prayer develops self-awareness, it develops and deepens one's love relationship with God and the society of men. Prayer and the Quest for Self-identity We have said prayer aids in the quest for self-identity. The contempo-rary man of i~ndustrial-technological society to a large extent finds himself in a very ironical position. With his fantastically advanced knowledge, he has increasingly controlled and shaped his material world. He has achieved knowledge to a highly precise degree of what we might call the identity of the material world. But modern man's own self-identity more and more elud6s him. In directing so much of his quest for knowledge at the material world outside himself, he increasingly has become a stranger to his own self. He has failed to look within. He has failed to know himself. Some, in a desperate attempt, as it were, to make quick amends for modern man's failure to know himself, have taken the misleading route of psychedelic, drugs in the quest for self-identity, inner unity, and integration. But this is an abortive attempt, because it violates the laws of gaining true self-knowledge and integration. In prayer, self-awareness is not achieved in an isolated, self-enclosed fashion. Self-identity is achieved through encounter with God. The psy-chologist Sidney Jourard tells us: "And it seems to be another fact that no one can come to know himself except as an outcome of disclosing himself to another person.'''~ If I need an encounter with a human person in order to grow in self-knowledge, much,~much more do I n~ed encounter with God in prayer to achieve self-identity and self-integration. God is the origin of my life. He is also the goal of my life. He knows and understands me per-fectly, so much more intimately than I know and understand myself. He has created me. He has created .me unique, and therefore, there is no one who can tell me more about my unique self than God. There never has been anyone like me in the pasl~. There is not now, and there never will be any-one like me. God has c~'eated me in His own image, and I reflect Him more perfectly the more I become myself, the more I develop my God-given uniqueness. The God-life, the grace-life, which is given in baptism, deepens ~Sidney M. Jourard, The Transparent Sel! (2nd ed.; New York: Van Nostrand Rein-hold, 1971), p. 6. 748 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 my uniqueness. The more Christian I become, the more unique I also be-come, and the more I become myself. I become more God-like, more Chris-tian, more myself in, with, and through Jesus. Jesus mediates God's gift of a share,in Trinitarian life, and He mediates our response, our living this life. There is no other way I can develop my graced uniqueness except in Jesus and according to the pattern of His life. Rahner states it very succinctly: "And yet every grace has analogously the same structure as its source, viz. the structure of the Word become man . In prayer God shows me all this. He shows me all this as He allows me to realize that He loves me. I begin to really be, really to achieve my true self-identity when I begin to realize how much God loves me. God helps me achieve my self-identity and self-integration by showing me what I uniquely am, what I am called to be. He shows me through the light of prayer that my existence and quest for self-identity must be rooted in a love-relationship with Him. He tells me that the more I open myself to His loving Self-communication and the more I respond with a love of my own, the more I become myself, the more my self-image becomes finely honed, the more I become what He wants me to be. Prayer and My Evil Dimension Achieving self-identlty through encounter with God in prayer is not a completely painless task. The light of prayer shows me my uniqueness, my particular talents and gifts, the good I have already achieved, and the future possibilities for further growth in Christian holiness. But God, through the light of prayer, also shows me my evil side. He shows me how I have failed Him, how I have wasted opportunities to love Him and others, how much my search for self-integration and union with Him has been obstructed be-cause of my selfishness. How deeply the light of prayer can penetrate one's being and uncover the unpleasant side of nature is graphically attested to by some of the saints. As they grew in prayer, the ligtit of prayer illumined pockets of selfishness and pride that had previously escaped their awareness. The light of prayer, then, helps one achieve self-identity and self-integration by illuminating both the good and evil dimensions of one's existence. Finally, this illuminating encounter with God in prayer always has a thrust of bring-ing me into closer union with Him. The light of prayer shows me my unique self, shows me more what I should become, shows me that I am made for God, shows me how lovable this God is--and all this is intended to deepen my love relationship with God. In turn, as I come closer to Him, I become more myself. I achieve a greater existential hold on my true self-identity. 4Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, Volume 2 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1960), p. 33. Prayer and Lite/ 749 Some say that this encounter with God in prayer is a risk. They say that if we really pray we do not know what might be asked of us. If prayer is a risk, it is a risk for happiness. God gradually, and tenderly, and lovingly, shows me myself and shows me Himself so that I may be increasingly ful-filled. Of course, as God shows me myself and Himself in prayer, as He shows me how to become more myself as directed by His loving will, all this will involve a certain suffering. A price is asked of me if I am to grow. There is no other way. But what God asks of me in prayer is always aimed at my greater fulfillment and happiness. Again, if prayer is a risk, it is a risk for happiness. In one of his earlier writings, Thomas Merton observed: "It is becoming increasingly evident that the only men in the world who are really happy are the ones who knowhow to pray.''~ Prayer and Immersion in Life As God shows me myself .and Himself in prayer, and shows me how my quest for self-identity is rooted in a loving relationship with Him, He shows me how the process of self-integration is connected with life. He shows me how it has a relationship with daily living in all its myriad and diverse di-mensions. He shows me that I must become more my unique self--lay greater existential hold on my self-identity--through authentic immersion in life. This immersion in life can differ so widely--from that of the inner city worker to that of the Trappist contemplative--but immersion in life there must be. Prayer, then, thrusts me into life. Authentic prayer gives me a taste for life, a desire to be and to become by situating myself properly, and ac-cording to my uniqueness, in the world of men. Conversely, my immersion in life thrusts me back to prayerful encounter with God. The more honest I am with myself, the more clearly I see that if I am properly to be and to become through my encounter with life, I need the light and strength of prayer. There is this cycle of prayer and life, then. From experiencing prayer I am led to seek life, and from experiencing life, I am led to seek prayer. Much of my imme~:sibn in life concerns itself with my relationship with human persons, both in a general manner and in a more particular way re-garding those relatively few individuals with whom I am especially close. Not unexpectedly, then, prayer shows me how my being and my becoming are inextricably bound up with loving relationships with my neighbors. God inexorably shows me through the light of prayer that my achieving self-identity through a love relationship with Him is inescapedly connected with my love relationship with my fellowmen. The light of prayer gradually, gently, but so persistently, increasingly engrains upon my being those well-known words of St. John: ~Thomas Merton, "The Contemplative Life: Its Meaning and Necessity," Dublin Review, v. 223 (1949), p. 32. 750 / Review [or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 If anyone says, "My love is fixed on God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. One who has no love for the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. (1Jn 4:20) Prayer and lhe Love of Neighbor Prayer sustains me in the gift of myself to my fellow human beings. The light of prayer allows me to see the priceless dignity of each individual. Prayer shows me how each person is truly made in the image and likeness of God, how each has been touched by the redemptive blood of Jesus. Prayer not on!y shows me this; it also gives me the strength to live accord-ingly. Prayer sustains me especially when it is so difficult to live according to this faith vision--when others do not love and appreciate me, when some even hate and ridicule me. Prayer enlightens me and strengthens me in the daily struggle to be generous in my service of others at those times when self-interest and self-comfort pull me the other way. And as indicated earlier, prayer shows me that if I am to love others properly, I must love them as they are actually situated in this real world of ours, a world with so much beauty, but also with a great deal of ugliness; a world with so many great accomplishments and future possibilities, but also a world with a staggering number of the gravest problems. Prayer also shows me that if I truly love my neighbor, I have to be concerned with all this according to my vocation, my talents, and my opportunities. Prayer and Close Relationships ~ In God's providence, the love of neigl~bor leads one to relatively few close relationships. To cite certain examples, husband and wife, parents and children, friend and friend, are engaged in a particular kind of intimacy that is absent from their general encounters with others. This closeness can be the occasion of simple joys and the greatest happiness, but it can also give rise to frustration, anger, disappointment, and even deep anguish oc-casionally. Prayer is a great source of light and strength relative to these close relationships. It sustains a person in working at the proper development of these encounters--to enjoy them as one should, to profit from them ag one ought. Prayer sustains a person when he or she is tempted immaturely to flee the suffering involved in these relationships. Prayer keeps one there, enables one to endure the pain, enables one to see the value of these rela-tionships for Christ and the world. Pray6r shows the person that the pain properly endured and assimilated will lead to a greater love. Prayer and Life / 751 Conclusion The Christian, then, seeks the solitude of prayer not in order to flee the presence of others. Among the reasons he seeks out the quiet of prayer is that he may better find people. He seeks prayer so that he may be for them more, become for them more, suffer for them more, do good for them more. He seeks prayer so that he may simply love them more. Prayer and life, life and prayer--these are inseparably interwoven. As I pray, and grow in prayer, I see this connection with deeper penetration and conviction. Prayer shows me that it can be no other way. Prayer leads me to seek life, and life leads me to seek prayer. The Five Steps of Prayer Manuel J. Costa Father Manuel J. Costa is the pastor of St. Bernard's Church; Post Office Box 999; Eureka, Calil~ornia 95501. Many people in the post Vatican II Church are feeling estranged from God. They do not experience the same secure closeness to Him that they had in former days. A number of times just this past year I have had parishioners complain to me in words like these: "I reach out for God, but He doesn't seem to be there anymore. I want to be in better touch with Him, but I don't know how." Doubtlessly, we have all been distressed, perhaps more often than we care to admit, by a sense of God's absence from our lives. But the way to feel His presence is not so much to "reach out" for Him as to reach in. We must learn to take the inner journey of prayer to find the living God who dwells within us. We can be so concerned about trying to find Him that we miss Him where He is--right under our noses: "The kingdom of God is within you" (Lk 17:21). A religious philosopher little known in Catholic circles, Henry N. Wieman, has written a brief but illuminating analysis of prayer, which is quoted in the anthology, The Choice Is Always Ours, edited by Phillips, Howes, and Nixon (Harper and Row, 1948). Wieman sees prayer as hav-ing five steps and speaks of it as a means of "reshaping ourselves in such manner that we as personalities with all our behavior can serve as connect-ing links between disconnected parts and thus enable the integrating process of the world to fulfill itself" (p. 206). In prayer, he says, we become "circuit-closers" and find the way to join ourselves with God in His work of wider and richer integration. 752 The Five Steps of Prayer / 753 Waiting for God The first step in prayer, according to Wieman, is "to relax and to be-come aware of that upon which we are dependent, that which sustains us in every breath." As I begin prayer, then, I should not strive to ttiink about anything in particular, but should rather enter into an attitude of waiting for God, of letting Him fill me with a consciousness of His all-encompassing, sustaining, integrating Being. So this first step can be described as tuning into the Presence; being open to the Other; acknowledging that which is beyond myself; letting go of my many preoccupations in order to focus on Him who is the Source and Ground of Being; clearing the circuits on my interior switchboard, moving, Advent-like, into the darkness and waiting for the Light; becoming aware of the integrative process, both within me and outside me, that God has already started. God as Working for the Good Wieman's second step in prayer is "to call to mind the vast and un-imaginable possibilities for good which are inherent in this integrating process called God." Before I can actualize these possibilities for good in my life, I must first renew my faith that they exist, that God is truly mov-ing both the world and myself forward--slowly, painfully, but surely. In this moment of prayer, I try to become intensely aware that God is working in ways that I do not understand and, in fact, cannot even imagine. I affirm the reality of unimaginable possibilities for growth and wholeness. Just what these possibilities may be remains unknown to me; all that is re-quired now is that I acknowledge them. This kind of openness to what the day wants to be in me will demand a radical willingness to change what needs to be changed, to stretch, to choose, to struggle, to let go of my egocentric patterns in favor of larger values. During this second step in prayer, I make a positive decision to opt for whatever will be growth-producing this day without seeking to determine now just what that will be. I resolve to choose as consistently as I can for life, to seize each opportunity to become more than I am, to help others to become more than they are, and to do all this now, since today with all its particular circumstances will never again exist for me. But if I am to be as open as I can to the unknown, "vast and un-imaginable possibilities for good," I must face whatever in me prevents the thrust forward. In other words, what are the Ways in which I am most pulled by a disintegrative process rather than the integrative process that Wieman speaks of? Might it be that I let myself get overinvolved in busy work and trivial things that make me stay on the surface of life rather than plumb into its depths? Am I always responding to outer events and demands in order to avoid confrontation with my own inner depths? Or perhaps I permit my-self to be sucked into role expectations, doing what I think others want me 754 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 to do rather than what I see is really best for me. Maybe for me the dis-integrative pull takes the form of saying, "I can't do that" or "why put out the effort--it won't do any good anyway" or "I'm too tired" or "I'll do it tomorrow when I have more time." Or is it that I am unwilling to sacrifice pleasure,and comfort for truth and growth? Do I crowd my days so much with people and things and work that I fail to leave breathing spaces for reflective evaluation and prayer? Do, I, fall into the trap of making up my mind beforehand that someone or some event is superficial or unimportant and thereby miss the meaning that they could proffer? Am I just plain lazy about cultivating an interior life, about trying to conceptualize and give expression to what I think and feel? It is extremely important that I seek to understand as much as I can about the God I be-lieve in and the process by which He works in me and in my world. I have a better chance of joining in with the process if I know what it is: "Blessed is he who knows what he does." Facing My Problem Wieman's third step in prayer is "to face the chief problem with which we are struggling., in its entirety and get it in its true perspective." If I do not take time to pray and to bring my problem before the Lord, then I will very likely be distracted by some pressing detail of the difficulty rather than face it in all its fullness. I will get taken in by what only looks like the main problem. This third step helps me to relate my problem to the total situation of my life, to look at it objectively, to assess all the data about it that I possi-bly can. For every problem has a body of facts to it that I must examine, sift, and integrate. I must creatively explbre the possibilities for good and for growth in my problem. I must be convinced that it really does have all kinds of positive possibilities and that I can join even my problem to the integrative process called God that is hard at work in me and in the entire universe. Prayer gives my problem a wider frame of reference. It stretches my perception so that I begin to see that what is bol~hering me contains some light and goodness in addition to darkness and evil. I can then begin to ac-cept that my problem has an aspect of mystery to it, that it is not so neatly packaged as I had previously thought. When I enter into this movement of prayer, I can. take a religious atti-tude toward whatever is troubling me. I will learn to regard it as an "inner brother" to whom I must first go and be reconciled before I offer my gift at the altar (see Mt 5:23-4). When I deal with my problem in this reconcilia-tory way, I rob it of its power to be infectious on the day and on its possi-bilities for good. The Five Steps o] Prayer / 755 Changing Myself Wieman presents the fourth step in prayer as "self-analysis to find what change must be made in our own mental attitudes and personal habits." Usually I expect the people around me, or my environment, or some aspect of my problem to change. Prayer enables me to see that I am the one who has to change. In prayer I come to see where the outer and inner problems lie.~Then I can decide where I ought to go. During this fourth step I can ask myself: "What are the facts of my life today? What am I to be present to?" Then I invoke God's help and strength so that I can adjust my attitudes and habits to meet the reality of the moment. Reality as it actually exists is the only arena in which I will meet the Lord. Prayer enables me to discern what my reality is, to discover what changes are required of me in order to live in that reality, and to work those changes in me. Prayer helps me to develop right attitudes. From these will flow right behavior. Verbal Formulations of Readjustments The fifth step in prayer is "to formulate in words as clearly and com-prehensively as possible the readjustment of personality and behavior which I have discovered is required of me if I am to close the circuit between cer-tain disconnected factors in the world around me." Wieman emphasizes that this verbal formulation should be affirmative, not negative, for in prayer "we are not primarily trying to break a connection but to establish a con-nection." When I can put my resolution into words, I concretize and channel my prayer experience. Otherwise, it may easily remain vague and undefined, with the result that I may lose much of the power that could come from my encounter with the Lord. Taking the time and trouble to put a feeling or an insight into words makes that feeling or insight more truly my own. It brings them to fuller and more explicit consciousness. Words do much more than label a reality; in a very true sense, they c~'eate the reality. The philospher Martin Heideg-ger says that man does not create language; rather language creates man. The effort required in expressing an inner experience in words makes that experience arise out of unconsciousness into consciousness. In this way, I am "created," that is, more integr~ated and more whole. Besides, it is good for me to make myself say things, even if only to my-self. For when I actually say them, there is, the terrible danger that I will really hear them and do something about them. So, for example, if during my period of prayer I discover that I am acting too much because of role expectations, or for "image" reasons, I may formulate my resolve in this way: "I will strive to act in accordance with the truth of a situation and in relationship to the Source of truth who is within me." Wieman suggests that we repeat our resolution often during the day. Such repetition wild gradually establish the needed readjustment of our at- 756 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 titude deeply and firmly in our beings. And in this way our conscious thoughts, feelings, and behavior will be more surely connected to God and his integrating process in the world. We will become thereby better instru-ments of wholeness both in ourselves and in our environment. Conclusion While certain similarities are obvious between Wieman's five steps and more traditional Catholic methods of meditation, like the Jesuit and Sulpi-cian forms, the originality and uniqueness of the five steps seems to lie in the effort to join ourselves with God in his work of integration. It is a form of prayer which has its unifying insight that each of us can serve as con-necting links between the disconnected parts within ourselves and in our world. We thereby consciously press ourselves into the service of our God who ever seeks to make all things one in Him. Intercession and Community Development Anthony ).° Kelly, C.Ss.R. Anthony J. Kelly, C.Ss.R., is the chairman of the Department of Theology at the Yarra Theological Union in Melbourne and lives at the Redemptorist Monastery; Majella Court; Kew, Victoria 3101; Australia. In recent times we have seen the emergence of many quite sophisticated techniques and exercises for the development of community. These have been applied with considerable effect to religious communities and other Christian groups. A greater intensity and variety of involvement in decision making, shared programs of learning, sensitivity and encounter groups have been commended. All this is the outcome of a genera[ effort to promote growth together, to promote acceptance of healthy diversity within the genuine community. Emotional and intellectual conflicts have been sifted out into more manageable proportions. Conflict itself, once located, identi-fied, and properly handled, has been appreciated as a positive factor in com-munity development. Then, and most of all, there is the almost over-developed theology of community which continues to inspire and challenge. In such an ongoing context of community endeavor, the following re-flections on intercessory prayer are offered. I will commend intercession as a basic form of belonging, creating and redeeming all our other relation-ships to those with whom we share the life of the community. Intercession and Our Relationships First, there is a general remark to be made. The value we put on the prayer of intercession depends on the way we see our relationships with others. For instance, do we grasp ourselves "from the beginni.ng" to be in-volved together, "chosen in him before the foundation of the world" (Eph 757 758 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 1:4)? A prior appreciation of our co-humanity in Christ disposes us to believe that we are governed by quite surprising laws of solidarity. How-ever, if there prevails another kind of understanding of the human world that would divide humanity off into self-enclosed monads where each one is goaded into building risky bridges to the rest of the world, the value of intercession cannot be expected to have much antecedent weight. It is too general and facile. Community suffers violence, and only the violent will achieve it. The correct theological emphasis would be in the direction of a great original solidarity. We are already together "in Christ," already irrevocably ¯ part of the one ultimate world. Such a unity has been offered as a gift, not attained as the outcome of an effort. To be realistically open to this more gracious view of reality would mean an attunement to intercession as a deeply obvious and elemental feature of our existence. We have received grace together; and the first grace is this being together in Christ. Aware-ness of our given co-humanity would mean that intercession follows as a natural ecstasy of our being whereby we make ourselves and others more receptive to the grace at work in our world. Intercession of Christ The above general remark invites us to enter the form of the prayer of Christ in whom we are called. St. John reveals Christ to us as the One who is related to us in the power of prayer, His priestly prayer for Unity: ". that they may all be one, even as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us" (Jn 17:20). The unfailing answer to Christ's prayer is the emergence of the Church. The unity of the Spirit embraces our union with Christ as it does His with the Father. As the risen Christ "lives to make intercession for us" (Heb 7:25), the force of His whole new humanity is to be for man, that we might all grow in the unity 0f the Spirit. Our inter-cession derives from the intercessory existence of Christ Himself. It is enter-ing into His risen consciousness, participating in His colnmunicative ex-istence, we come to share in the power of His risen life by being for others in the way He is for them. With Him, the Christian who prays for others breathes the Spirit that unites, heals, and enlightens. Intercession is in the interests of a more abundant life for all. Intercession of the Church The presence of the Church to the world is basically intercessory, being for the world by praying for it. St. Paul gives his pastoral injunction in the letter to Timothy, to pray for the world, "first of all": "First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers and intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all men . . . this is good and acceptable in the sight of God.our Savior who desires all men to be saved" (1 Tim 2:1-5). There are a lot of people who work for the world, but there is only the Church to pray for it. The Intercession and Community Development / 759 stress on the intercessory presence of the Church to the world does seem a little odd today. All of us as Christians feel the need for a deeper, more active, perhaps even violent engagement to aid the underdeveloped, to find some kind of justice for the oppressed, in doing to death all forms of dis-crimination on the basis of color, sex, race, ideology, and so forth. How-ever, it is precisely at this point that the Christian approach to intercession bears some thought. There is no need to introduce a cleft stick that will eventually snag our thinking. Clearly, there is always going to be some kind of praying for others, some kind of charity, some kind of particularized ser-vice. The point is to find the most comprehensive and creative activity that governs our being in the world. How does Christian love most radically express itself? Community and Interaession Let us now reflect more directly on the community implications of inter-cession, now that we have indicated a certain theological perspective. It is hardly original thinking to note that many of our problems of com-munication are the result of not being honestly and reverently open to the reality of "the other." What dominates communication is a fixed and truncated image of the unknown reality of the other person. If such a domi-nating kind of communication prevails, dialogue is destroyed. Communica-tion must therefore be approached more redemptively. The affirmation of the existence of the other is the vital factor. It reduces to having a real hope for' the other, in accepting the other person as finite, indeed, yet unfinished. A creative relationship to the other must imply that he or she can change and that we are willing agents of such a growth. We need to transcend all our preconceptions about the other for the sake of an acceptance that allows for this person as the outcome of a particular past and on the way to a spe-cial future in which we are involved. It is a question of consenting.to their total existence, not of abridging it in some way as though they had been finished by the past, or were locked irreversibly in the present. In respect to such an affirmative attitude, what does intercession imply? What basic stance am I taking up in relationship to the other? When I truly pray for you, what do I mean by "you"? Openness 1o lhe Mystery of the Other The activity of intercession is not any kind of affirmation or openness. It is the positing of a religious act: I pray to God for you. The divine di-mension is the living space of this ~elationship of praying-for. In this sense, it is the most open kind of bpenness, the most total kind of affirmation of the other person. To pray to God for someone else is to affirm, accept, and hope for the existence of theother, not as defined by my-self, but by' the gracious freedom of God. The beginnings and end of those for whom we pray are lost in the divine mystery, in the expanse of God's 760 / Review for Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 creative love that bursts our preconceptions and transcends our categories. When I pray for others, I accept them as related to the ineffable mystery of God Himself. At least, then, prayer for others means this: we avoid summing people up, and affirm the fact of their future. It is not some kind of neutral open-ness, but a hopeful acceptance of the mystery of the other even if I cannot grasp it. Though I do not know the real name of the other person, though "it has not yet appeared" what he or she will be, I want this other to have a name and to enter into the fullness of a particular personal existence. Hence, prayer is an expression, a religious expression of respect for the other, and a total kind of acceptance. It is a readiness for dialogue and realistic communication. Intercession and Self-Statement If praying for others means that we are saying something about them, it also means that we are stating something about ourselves. Intercession as a sincere personal act will lead to its own moment of truth. For we are affirming something irrevocably about ourselves: we belong with those for whom we pray. There is an identification implied; a belonging in God; a co-humanity. Before intercession wants anything or makes any petition, it affirms our desire for communion, that we belong with those for whom we pray in the unity of the Spirit. Intercession must mean that we have time for this other. seemingly trite aspect. But the triteness will vanish when we how seldom it is that we really make time for others in the of their existence. Even if we are doing something for them, often distracts us from them. But when we pray for them, we are really making time for them, having time for them. Intercession of its nature does not admit a distraction from the reality of the other since it is such a deeply personalized activity. There is no "something to be done" to cloud the pres-ence of the other to me. It is being-for the other in an intense manner. Now this is a ask ourselves total mystery - the something The Seriousness of Intercession There is a deeper aspect. We pray to God for others. This is to say that we are relating to them in the deepest seriousness of our being as we stand before God. Before God we are "with" them. Whatever words we speak to them in the ordinary circumstances of life, whatever we do for them or to them, however we affect them, it is through intercession that we enter into the most all embracing and deeply founded relationship. To pray for others is an act of relational existence. When we intercede we are caught up in the dynamism of Christ's being-for others. He is ever giving Himself for the many. His flesh and blood, the symbols of His whole being are ever available to men. He is the food and drink of real life. For us to be united to Christ as we enter into His being-for others through intercession means Intercession and Community Development / 761 that we too begin to nourish the existence of others with what we are our-selves. It is true that intercession does not always appear to have such a grandeur and intensity about it. Considering it, nonetheless, as a central value in Christian life, we are invited to sense the shape of Christian ex-istence as Christ reveals it, and thus to enter more deeply into what we should be. What we call "praying for others" often enough is a rationaliza-tion for doing nothing for our neighbor. But this is not authentic interces-sion: being-for others in the unity and power of the Spirit is always action and always leads to further action and service. It is,-after all, entering into the prayer of Christ. Intercession and Our Work for Others There are' many ways in which this prayer of intercession may be an-swered and appear as an effective force in Christian existence. Perhaps the most obvious result of praying for others is our enablement to act more creatively and sensitively towards them. It would take a brave person to state categorically that his or her service for others, be it pastoral care, teaching, nursing, administration, or social work, was utterly selfless. Are we capable of being quite so certain about the authenticity of our existence-for- others? We know a good deal today about the subtle dynamisms of manipulation and rationalizing. So often our "selfless" work aims at ex-tending our own little empire of dependents. We need to affirm our position of power and status. We need others to need us. Prayer for others works to redeems us from the frailty of our not quite selfless service. When we pray for others, especially those we work for, we are "purifying our motives" as the old phrase had it. We are building into our service of others that total kind of self-giving already referred to. That special kind of being-for-others in prayer gradually pervades our more ex-ternal activity. It makes that strange forgetfulness of the other less likely, because in praying for them we are concerned with the ultimate mystery of their being. A service of others that is nourished by intercession is much more complete. In short, intercession makes our work for others more open, sensitive, creative, and free: open in that we are drawn out of our limiting precon-ceptions; .sensitive because we are concerned with the real mystery of the other; creative because we are putting ourselves in the position to see ever greater possibilities of service and support; and free in the sense that we are not turned in on ourselves in our activity but concerned for others in a Christian kind of love. Intercession and Witness There is a second grace following from intercession. It is that of a more effective witness. No doubt, there is a certain discretion implied in one's 762 / Review [or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 prayerful concern for others. However, this can be overdone. It is surely part of the confession of our faith to give some expression to our interces-sion for others. The problem is often our own lack of conviction rather than the reaction of the people for whom we might pray. Whatever the case, the experience of the prayerful concern of others for us is a beautiful aspect of our experience of grace. When we hear someone saying with sincerity and simplicity, "I am praying for you," we sense something of the real delicacy and power of Christian love. The one who prays for us reveals himself as concerned with the most fundamental and hopeful affirmation of our being. In the horizon of our ultimate development, someone is with us and for us. The redemptive love of God finds a simple and tangible expres-sion in this intercession made for us. There remains the main question of the efficacy of ihtercession. It changes us in relation to the other for whom we pray. It is a strong yet delicate witness of love. But is it more effective, and if so, how? The Effectiveness of Intercession The effectiveness of intercession is bound up with the effectiveness of all prayer. It is part of the deep Christian question of how our asking is always receiving, of how our searching is always finding, of how our knock-ing is always admittance into the home. The assurance of the gospel is there. It is this extraordinary assurance that theology always seeks to penetrate in an effort to understand the inner dynamic of prayer. The best explanations bear on a thorough acceptance of the 'two ele-ments, the sincerity of God's gift and the genuineness of man's freedom. The Spirit makes us more active and open in our great desires. We are led to consent to the grace of God and make ourselves receptive to it~ There is no question of changing God who has already done His utmost, but of being changed ourselves, of becoming receptive to the gift of God: "If you but knew the gift of God!" It is man who is limited in his redeptivity to God, and so part of the experience of grace is to ask, to seek, to knock to en-large our responsiveness to the availability of the Lord. There is no need to employ a completely different explanation to come to some understanding of the effectiveness of intercession. For it is still a matter of man becoming more open to God, but now the setting is com-munitarian. We share a solidarity with one another in Christ, a communion of saints that bears on the personal fulfillment of each of us as individuals. We are bound together in the new humanity in the unity of the Spirit and in mediation. When I pray for others, I am acting out my solidarity with~them in Christ. I am recovering a fundamental dimension of my existence. Inter-cession is not some unwarranted intrusion into the life of the other, but the affirmation of our mutual belonging in Christ. Christ is not~only the mediator between man and God, but also between man and man. Intercession and Community Development / 763 Our free acts of praying for the other are, in the design of God, the condition of the Spirit's deeper penetration of ore" world. Salvation can come to us only insofar as we accept it in faith and prayer. By our inter-cession our world is made less impervious to the grace of Christ, more open to his healing redemption. We do not in any sense constrain the liberty of those we pray for. The ultimate effect of our prayer must be understood to serve the mystery of God's dealings with each individual: it is ultimately part of the mystery of God coming to the personal mystery of each of us. The practical point for our present reflections is that our intercessory concern with others makes our one world more open to the healing and transforming power of grace. Clearly, then, intercession must be a depth dimension of the vitality of any Christian community. The deepest kind of relationship to the other is that of praying-for, because it is an explicit relationship in God. Through the Spirit of Love we abide in God and in one another. Thus, we are prepared to express more particular relationships of communication. We are redeemed from the brittle, limited, forcing aspects of our communica-tion: mutual acceptance is grounded in its real foundation; our fiope for each other is enlarged to its real dimensions. A sharing of intercessory prayer heals polarizations and provokes honest, respectful communication. Intercession and Dialogue And so true dialogue becomes a possibility. It is not only a question of the community that prays together staying together. Doubtless, there is much merit in this hallowed dictum. Our more precise point is this: a community can begin the patient exercise of dialogue and open out a whole spectrum of redemptive relationships only when there is an atmo- Sphere of intercession. This means that not only does the individual pray for the community and the individuals in it, not only does the community pray for the individual, but that this attitude and activity is seen and felt. Then, the particularized relationships of mutual support and the psychological attitudes of accepta,nce and lov~ have their foundation in the most fundamental kind of co-humanity, that based on our common life in Christ, in the love of the Spirit that unites us: "Pray at all times, asking for what you need, praying in the Spirit on every possible occasion. Never get tired of staying awake to pray for all the saints . " (Eph 6: 18-20). The Vowed Life" Call, Response, Mission Anthony Tambasco, S.M.M. Father Anthony Tambasco, S.M.M., teaches in the Department of Theology of St. Louis University and lives at 3927 McPherson Avenue; St. Louis, Missouri 63108. One of the basic doctrines inculcated in religious life is that the vows are a deepening of-~the baptismal promises and a perfecting of the life of baptism. At this present time in the Church when stress is put less and less on religious life as a "more perfect way," and more and more on the vocation of every Christian to perfection, the religious begins to wonder what value there is in his vowed life. What can be added to the richness of baptismal life? Does not a "perfectifl'~,~ of baptism imply that baptism is really not quite enough for wholehearted sanctity? And implied behind these questions is often the unspoken, "What am I doing as a religious ~'hat I could not be doing as a good Christian lay person in the community?" Perhaps the answer to these questions lies in reappraising what has always been our basic affirmation concerning vows and in reconsidering how they relate to baptismal life. lncarnational Dimension The crux of our study will focus on the incarnational dimension of the three vows. Poverty, celibacy, and obedience do not add anything to the baptismal commitment as such, nor do they even deepen the essential commitment of baptism. Man is and .always remains given to the Lord in virtue of baptism, and that sacrament itself is a constant source of power, growth, and maturity of life. The value of the vows is not in adding to baptism, but rather in facilitating the full power of the sacrament, Their value lies in their incarnational witness, that is, they put into flesh and blood realities, into everyday human experiences, all that the sacrament 764 The Vowed Lile: Call, Response, Mission / 765 of baptism is trying to achieve. This is by no means an insignificant point. Man operates in the flesh. The more he can function as an enfleshed spirit, the more can the whole man penetrate the richness of life. Baptism is itself incarnational, since that is the very nature of a sacrament. The vows are intended to extend that incarnational dimension. They do not replace baptism or supersede it. They remind us of what baptism is doing. They point to it and thus facilitate its activity and creativity. It remains for us now to show how all this comes about, which leads us to consider the key words in the title for this article. They are chosen as summary themes behind what is really going on in baptism, and conse-quently as summaries also of what the vows should do. Before we focus in on the vows themselves, we should convince ourselves once again of just what baptism is doing. Let us take a few moments, then, to sum up the activity of baptism in terms of call, response, and mission. Baptism as the Call of God It is a common place of Biblical theology that all of salvation history begins with the divine initiative. This is most often expressed in the call of key figures at each stage of that history. Salvation events do not occur because man sees fit to undertake them, but because God has seen fit to call men to them. Now the same principle applies to each individual's salvation history. It all begins with the call of the Lord. This is the first basic .reality expressed by giving baptism. It signifies the call, the divine initiative in man's life. We may find numerous reasons for being Chris-tian: part of our heritage, the influence of some fine Christian friend, random hereditary selection, and so forth. All of these are not the ultimate source; baptism makes it clear that there is ultimately and continually an invitation of the Lord to new life in Him. A search through Biblical history reveals that there was not an epoch of that history which did not involve at the same time the call of significant personages by Yahweh. Most of the events could undoubtedly be explained by the natural flow of normal history; most were ordinary events of their time. But the Bible stresses constantly that the underlying truth was the call of God behind all the events. This remains the underlying truth expressed in baptism. By it, we hear the call of the Lord. Baptism and Response to God If this basic truth of baptism is clear, there is still another. No call is really effective if there is no response. Once again we see it clearly in all Biblical history. God breaks nobody's arm. Man remains free. In every epoch God awaits man's reply and consent. It is interesting to see the re-actions of various individuals in the Old Testament. Isaiah is overcome with awe at the encounter with the transcendent. His exclamation is "Woe is me!" Jeremiah is defensive and much concerned about his inability to 766 / Review Jor Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 meet his vocation. His reply is: "I am too young, Lord, send another" (Jer ,1:6). Ezechiel, on the other hand, is delighted with his call. When the Lord asks him to take in his words--to eat the scroll--the prophet says they are sweet as honey (Ez 3:lff). One is probably ~able to find the gamut of human reactions to the Lord's call in the various people of Old Testament history, including the reactions found in oneself. One thing is clear, nevertheless. Each man worked through his reactions to a total re-sponse to the Lord. The exercise of freedom was different in different men, but it was exercised. The response came through different attitudes and over different obstacles, but the Lord awaited a response. This same reality is present in baptism. The sacrament is designed as a response as well as a call. For one thing, the new rite begins with a request for baptism, and there is ample provision for man's reply to all that the Lord is doing and asking in the sacrament. In fact, every baptism requires an act of faith, at least on the part of the Church in the name of the person if the one baptized cannot do so himself. Baptism, then, becomes the beginning of man's re-sponse to the call of God. It is the beginning of faith life. Baptism and Mission A complete view of baptism demands one other theme or key word, that of mission. The very baptismal ceremony expresses an incorporation into a Church. It puts us in essential need of one another. It tells us that we cannot even hear the call of the Lord except with and through others, nor can. we respond except with and through others. Baptism begins and ends with a Church, a community within which one lives, and which one strives to share. A Christian is automatically a missionary; he has no choice, He has received his call and made his response through others, and he qn turn is the instrument for the call and response of others. No man is an island. The continual reality of baptism is hearing the call and making the response as a shared experience with others. There is call and response, but that is already mission. We have dwelt somewhat at length on what seems obvious, but the ob-vious is often what is overlooked. At any rate, if we can summarize baptism in terms of these three basic themes, then we have a convenient outline for seeing how the vows facilitate these functions of the sacrament. They become the incarnate realities of what baptism is doing. As we approach the vows, we could show how. each vow makes us more aware of each of the three aspects. We can sense the call of the Lord, for instance, behind material' goods; love of others, and our own personal.values and goals. We facilitate response in terms of our possessions, our affections, and our mind and will. We realize a mission to creation, to our own self-growth. Nevertheless, it seems that each vow has a special function' with. relation to one of the main aspects of baptism. I would like to suggest that each vow highlights one of the themes in a special way: poverty focuses on our The Vowed Life: Call, Response, Mission / 767 call from the Lord, celibacy on our wholehearted response, and obedience on our mission. Let us now consider each of these points in detail. Poverty and the Call ot the Lord The heart of the Christian life, we have said, begins in baptism with a call. Now if we take a deep enough and wide enough view of poverty, we will see how it reminds us constantly of the call of the Lord. I say deep and wide, because we must go much farther than a simple considera-tion of money or material goods. These enter in, and we will give thought to that aspect, but first we must have a broader view. When we speak of poverty, it is Biblical poverty, the spirit of anawim. We are talking of a concept that evolved over a long period of time in the Old Testament and culminated in a rich theological concept. The anawim were the physically poor to begin with, but under the influence of the prophets they came to be seen also as those whom Yahweh favored, who were his faithful rem-nant. In other words, there was another ingredient added to the sheer notion of being poor; the anawim were those who learned from their poor con-dition. Poverty became an occasion to learn dependence on the Eord, openness to His grace, trust in His love and providence. Isaiah sums that up when he says: "A remnant of Israel, the survivors of the house of Jacob, will no more lean upon him who struck them; but they will lean upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth" (Is 10:20). When we talk about poverty, we are talking about an attitude. It is man who can stand naked before the Lord, who is empty, not only of money and goods, but of true power and influence, of reputation and esteem. He is the man who can see with the eyes of truth thathe is not self-sufficient, but that his sufficiency comes from God. He leans on the Lord. The point that we are making is that the man with such an attitude and disposition is the one who hears more easily the voice of the Lord. He is beloved of the Lord, the one constantly being called by the Lord. Zepheniah warns Israel that the Day of Yahweh is coming, a day of judg-ment, but he holds out a promise: "Yes, at that time I will deal with all who oppress you: I will save the lame, and assemble the outcasts; I will giv~ them praise and renown in all the earth, when I bring about their restoration" (Zeph 3:19). Isaiah reminds us.again and again that the Lord reaches out to his poor: "A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse . The spirit 'of the Lord shall rest iupon him . He shall judge the poor with justice, and decide aright for the afflicted" (Is 11:1ff). The Lord Himself continues in that thqught of Isaiah when He describes His own role as the call to the poor. De says He fulfills the words of the prophet: "The spirit of the Lord is up, on me, because the Lord has anointed me: he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners" (Lk 4:17if). 768 / Review ]or Religious, Volume 32, 1973/4 Material Poverty In the light of all these statements, it seems to me that the vow of poverty is to put us in a condition where we can more readily hear the call of the Lord to love and life. In a very tangible and human way, in an incarnate way, it helps us realize the favor of the Lord by making us one of his beloved poor. This should lead us to take the vow seriously. It means a level of poverty, even on the material side, so that the vow will not be an empty formula. This leads us to the consideration of money and goods. However, we must keep the goal toward which the vow is aimed, that is, the attitude of dependence on the Lord. No level of poverty is going to be effective if one does not learn from that poverty as the anawim of the Old Testament. We do maintain, then, that material poverty is in some way a necessary ingredient of the vow, but we should also see why we cannot decide on one uniform standard of poverty for all. Each one has his own psychological and physical make-up. For each one in a different way, a certain level of poverty will teach dependence and openness, but a further level will destroy or preoccupy to the point of hindering a view of the Lord. Not all of Israel's poor were the anawim in our theological sense. Not all of Israel's poor in a theological sense were indigent. I be-lieve that there are some common traditions for community poverty, but I also believe that in most matters pertaining to personalities of individual religious, the community should be broad enough to allow various life styles and various levels of poverty. The most harmful approach to poverty today is to compare one's own life style and level of poverty to another's. If one religious has banners or an enjoyable painting, then all should, according to this approach. Or if one can live in the poor style of the inner city, then all can. In truth, one's poverty is not another's. Let each religious live in a way that will teach true dependence and openness to the Lord and hence will make him more aware of the voice of the Lord calling him from bap-tism, but calling him in the flesh and blood realities of his daily life. Celibacy and Consecration In considering poverty as emphasizing the call of the Lord, we have also seen how that already involves a response or an attitude of dependence. Now we can turn to celibacy to see how that vow stresses man's response of baptism and reinforces the attitudes described in poverty. When we talk of celibacy, we are talking about consecration. Once again, it is not that full consecration cannot be.made in baptism. It is rather that celibacy is more of a visible, incarnational expression of that consecration. It points out that the whole man, body and soul, is given to the Lord, and becomes a constant reminder of that fact. Inherent also in the vow of virginity is the concept of a direct relationship to the Lord that it bespea~ks more em-phatically than a life style of marriage. The Old Testament already had some notion of consecration of this type in the temporary vows of con- The Vowed Lile: Call, Response, Mission / 769 tinence to be practiced by soldiers engaged in a sacred war, or priests engaged in solemn temple worship. Rabbinic tradition speaks of how Moses separated from his wife after he had had the vision of the burning bush. Nevertheless, the full value and meaning of celibacy did not and could not come until the New Testament. Only with Christ did the defini-tive kingdom come. Only in Christ has God made his entrance into history in a final and evident way. From that point on, there is a new and enduring love existing in this life, a love that is now accessible and a love that is the culminating point toward which all love is headed. This is the love of Christ the risen Lord, present to us and communicating a love that enters into the divine itself. With the advent of Christ, history has been so trans-formed and so elevated, that man no longer remains tied solely to human history; he reaches the Lord also by .way of transcendence. He attains the love of Christ more directly and more immediately than was ever dreamed of in the Old Testament. This seems to be what Paul had in mind when he said the virgin is worried only about the affairs of the Lord, how to please and serve him, while the married person is worried about the affairs of the spouse. It is not that marriage is bad, nor that it is even wrong to worry about how to serve one's spouse and please him. Nevertheless, marriage is indirect and through the mediation of another, while celibacy gives one to the Lord directly and without mediators. Celibacy is itself a mirror of what the Church herself must be. Paul writes in 2 Cor 11:2: "I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God him-self, since I have given you in marriage to one husband, presenting you as a chaste virgin to Christ." This phrase applies to all Christians. All love must eventually arrive at Christ. However, there are man3; ways in which that love can be achieved, and there are some who strive to achieve that love of Christ as it is literally described by

Issue 50.3 of the Review for Religious, May/June 1991. ; Review for Religious Volume 50 Number 3 May/June 1991 Paradigms for Ministry ,Religious Life and Modernity Mary, Woman for Peacemakers Atheism in Our Prayer ANNIVERSARY VOLUME Rt~vmw vo~ R~.:t,tc~ous (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at St. Louis University by the Missouri Province Educational Institute of the Society of Jesus: Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard, Room 428: St. Louis. MO 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis. MO. POSTMASTER: Send address changes In Rr:v~:w ~'ou R~:~,l~;,ms: P.O. Bnx 6070: Duluth, MN 55806. Subscription rates: Single copy $3.50 plus mailing costs. One-year subscription $15.00 plus mailing costs: two-year subscription $28.00 plus mailing costs. See inside back cover for subscription informa-tion and mailing costs. © 1991 R~:w~:w David L. Fleming, S.J. Philip C. Fischer, S.J. Michael G. Harter, S.J. Elizabeth McDonough, O.P. Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors David J. Hassel, S.J. Iris Ann Ledden, S.S.N.D. Wendy Wright, Ph.D. Advisory Board Mary Margaret Johanning, S.S.N.D. Sean Sammon, F.M.S. Suzanne Zuercher, O.S.B. May/June 1991 Volume 50 Number 3 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor should be sent to R~:vl~:w ~'on R~:Lt{;tot~s; 3601 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the department "Cannnical Counsel" should be addressed to Elizabeth McDonough, O.P.; 5001 Eastern Avenue: P.O. Box 29260; Washingtnn, D.C. 20017. Back issues should be ordered from Rt~vt~:w vo~ RELI(;IOUS; 3601 Lindell Boulevard; St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. "Out of Print" issues are available from University Microfilms International; 300 N. Zeeb Road; Ann Arbor, MI 48106. A major portion of each issue is available on cassette recordings as a service for the visually impaired. Write to: Xavier Society for the Blind; 154 East 23rd Street; New York, NY 10010. PRISMS. Struggle marks these first few months of 1991. The struggle in the Middle East, whatever the good and bad results, has made even more evident in our time the futility of modern warfare as a way of solving human problems. Violent warfare breeds only further injustice in a down-ward spiral for humankind. Pope John Paul II, along with leaders in the other Christian churches, left no doubt that "just" wars (much less "holy" wars) are concepts with no meaning for our technological world. How painful a struggle it is for people of different races or ethnic origins to work together to form a single nation becomes daily more ap-parent in Africa, in India, in the Eastern European countries, and in North, Central, and South America. Poverty and wealth present another face of struggle---evident perhaps as close as our urban neighborhood and writ as large as the consumer societies of the northern hemisphere in relation to the debt-ridden nations of the southern hemisphere. And differences in religious belief and traditions still mix in with other fac-tors to stir up the seemingly endless struggle in situations as far apart as Northern Ireland, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka. In comparison with these world-situated struggles, our local strug-gles in parish life, in our religious communities, in family, and in our various ministry situations pale in significance. But local struggles still cause real pain and leave wounds that cripple our efforts, make us less faith-filled and less human, and ultimately tend to arouse in us the war-monger desires we decry "out there" in the bigger world. In the venerable tradition of the Catholic Church, Mary mother of the Lord, appears to take prominence in our faith lives at times of greater struggle. With reflections particularly appropriate to our present-day con-text, Patricia McCarthy, C.N.D., turns our focus to Mary as a woman for peacemakers. In a similar way, Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C., suggests that Mary may well play an integrating role in ecumenical relations rather than the divisive one that is traditionally projected. Perhaps with our hearts more attuned to the peacemaking role of Mary we can enter more reflectively into the struggle of our Christian and religious community lives and of our various ministries. James J. McEnroe explores new meanings for the images we use in regard to Chris-tian ministry as a way of presenting some reconciling paradigms. "The Ministry of BEing" represents Charleen Hug's attempt to bring balance to the interior struggle which people face in'the midst of their work. For his part, William Hogan, C.S.C., underscores mission as central to life together as well as to a vocational appeal. Dennis J. Billy, C.SS.R., 321 Review for Religious, May-June 1991 brings together some traditional and modern approaches taken to moral theology and the special symbol role of religious life within this disci-pline. Perhaps he points a way to understanding how religious life and peacemaking are meant necessarily to be congruent. Other writers turn our attention to some alleviating factors in the strug-gle areas of our community lives--whatever form community may take for us. Mary Carboy, S.S.J., stresses hospitality, Donald Macdonald, S.M.M., considers courtesy, and Melannie Svoboda, S.N.D., imagina-tively suggests various lubricants for community living. With a specific focus on the life of women and men religious, Albert Dilanni, S.M., pre-sents some insightful reflections to situate the current struggles about re-ligious- life identity. Gerald Arbuckle, S.M., looks at leadership and its organic role in the struggle of refounding. The area of formation in the light of structural sin and structural conversion is the concern of David Couturier, O.F.M.Cap. Doris Gottemoeller, R.S.M., gives us further food for thought about the confused issue of membership as new ways of associating people into religious organizations and activities are be-ing explored. Our ultimate struggle, of course, is our relationship with God. One very important aspect of that struggle is caught in the paradoxical title of David J. Hassel's "Atheism in Our Prayer." Just as the biblical ac-count of Jacob's wrestling with an angel mirrors at times our own strug-gles to respond to the continuing conversion calls from the Lord, so Has-sel tries to shed light into the areas of darkness and apparent absence of God that are often a part of developing faith life. In prayer, in community, and in mission we look to Mary to intro-duce us ever more deeply into the ways of her Son, the Son of peace. Perhaps the Marian mantra for our times is captured in the traditional "Mary, queen of peace, pray for us." David L. Fleming, S.J. Paradigms for Ministry: Old Images, New Meanings James J. McEnroe, Th.D. Father McEnroe, of the St. Louis archdiocese, teaches pastoral theology at Kenrick Seminary and has helped facilitate some programs for the archdiocesan Office of Min-istry. His address is Kenrick Seminary; 5200 Glennon Drive; St. Louis, Missouri 63119. Recently, during a class session in which the topic "Paradigms for Min-istry" was being discussed, a student observed that it is difficult to find meaning in some of the traditional paradigms for ministry, especially those derived from another culture and another time. ~ The paradigms that the student was referring to are some of the more traditional in Christian theology and in the Bible. These paradigms are pilgrim, servant, prophet, and shepherd.2 Each of them, if they are to be meaningful, must be retrieved and reinterpreted in the light of a contemporary understand-ing of ministry, including the skills necessary to live out those paradigms in ministry. In this article each paradigm will be discussed, with special consideration given to its biblical roots, its contemporary meaning, and the skills required to live it out in ministry. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn concerning ministry today, especially the demands placed on persons who are engaged in or preparing for ministry, in the church or in the marketplace. Paradigm (paradeigmatizo) means "to make an example of." Para-digms emerge from an attempt to think about something from within our own experience. Paradigms are by their very nature incomplete; that is, they are helpful constructs with which to speak about a particular reality but which always fall short of that reality. If paradigms are to make sense, therefore, they must resonate with our experience in ministry. 323 324 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 And, if we are to put those paradigms into practice in ministry, we must gain the skills necessary to do so. Pilgrim The paradigm of pilgrim evokes the image of a journey. The Greek word (anabaino) means "to go up to." In the New Testament the fol-lowers of Christ are called nonresident aliens (para-epi-demos), because they were on a pilgrimage to their true homeland, which is connected in-timately with the reign of God. The first epistle of Peter (1:1) is ad-dressed to "those who live as strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Gala-tia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.' ,3 The image conveyed in the para-digm, at least as it is found in the Christian Bible, is that of persons who know where they are going, but who need to travel through some un-known territory in order to get there. In the Bible these pilgrims are pre-sumed to be traveling on foot, taking one step at a time, and in a rather systematic, that is, orderly, way.4 As with any travelers, pilgrims must possess certain skills, which be-come tools of their trade. Pilgrims are confronted with the need to read road maps, recognize the meaning of signposts, and investigate the proper means of conveyance in order to reach their destination. Those traveling to areas with which they are unfamiliar, for example, soon dis-cover that, unless one of their party possesses a sense of direction and is skilled in the art of map reading, the journey can become inconven-ient, even treacherous. C.S. Lewis, in his Pilgrim's Regress, says that pilgrims must pos-sess the ability to use certain instrumentation on their journey. One of Lewis's characters, a young man named John, is being instructed in the ways of the world by his elders. He cannot understand their suggestions, however. The elders are supposed tO be his guides. Yet, as Lewis points out, if John does not learn to navigate on his own he will be forever at the mercy of other would-be guides.5 At one point in the story, a stew-ard slips a card containing some rules into John's hand, at which point a question is posed. "What use are rules to people who cannot read?''6 If those engaged in or preparing for ministry cannot use the tools of their trade and do not possess practical knowledge, they will be forever at the mercy of other, perhaps less competent, guides. The skills that are required for putting the paradigm of pilgrim into practice in ministry are called instrumental skills. They are the skills of the mind and of the hands: of cognition, of artisanship, and of one's min-istry. The origin of instrumental skills relates to the development of tools in the history of the human community, and to the personal dexterity re- Pardigms for Ministry quired to use them.7 It is difficult to imagine someone ministering in today's Church who is unable to use a computer, which is really an advanced form of the quill or pen. It is equally difficult to imagine someone ministering who is un-able to express himself or herself clearly and effectively, either in pub-lic speaking or in writing. Since ministry today requires both planning and evaluation, it is essential also for those engaged in it to be able to plan programs effectively and to evaluate them when they are completed. There is also a body of practical knowledge, for example, theology, Scrip-ture, and Church history, that is essential for ministry today. It is common to hear persons engaged in ministry complain about be-ing required to attend computer training courses, time-management and stress-management classes, or opportunities for continuing theological education. When asked why they are complaining, persons in ministry may say, "Because I am too busy and tired." Which perhaps demon-strates that time management and stress management are necessary in-strumental skills for today's ministers. While they may complain, min-isters are doing themselves, as well as those with whom and for whom they work, a great service by acquiring the necessary instrumental skills for their work. If we are going to be pilgrim people, we must possess the skills re-quired to be the best of pilgrims. We must, with God's help, be able to chart our course and read the signposts and thereby successfully negoti-ate the journey. Servant The second paradigm, that of servant, evokes an image of one who assists others. In the New Testament the word servant (doulos) is actu-ally a title of honor, which was claimed by Paul and by the disciples of Jesus. In the letter to the Romans (1:1), Paul refers to himself as a "ser-vant of Christ Jesus." The servant paradigm, at least among the early Christians, had lost its pejorative meaning. In fact, those who assisted others in the community were called servants (douleo) because that was their ministry.8 In the Church today there are many ministries that are ministries of service: for example, spiritual direction, pastoral counseling, evangeli-zation, and youth ministry. These,'and other ministries of service, re-quire certain skills that allow the ministers to walk with those with whom they minister and to whom they are sent. Karl Rahner, in his Servants of the Lord, says that ministry is by its very nature service, not status. He adds that service must be seen always 326 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 in reference to the community. Service requires ministers to be with and to walk with others who are on their own journeys in life.9 The skills necessary for serving others are called interpersonal skills. They bring about human cooperation, they enhance human interaction. ~0 In fact, the Church, in its traditional understanding of ministry, equates it with service. Ann Wilson Schaef, in her book The Addictive Organi-zation, points out that we live in a world of codependents, rather than in an interdependent world. Dysfunctions in the family of origin makes it very difficult for an incr.easingly large number of persons to work ef-fectively in cooperative and collaborative settings.t~ Since those preparing for or engaged in ministry are products of their environment, both familial and societal, and since environment deter-mines to a large extent the strengths as well as the weaknesses which per-sons bring to ministry, today's ministers must work especially hard to develop and maintain their interpersonal skills. In the Church today there is a clear call for collaborative ministry, that is, for teams of women and men working together for the good of the Church. Ironically, for some of the aforementioned reasons, many of those choosing ministry as their vocation would rather work alone. They are not team players, perhaps because they have not learned the skills necessary for cooperation and for successful human interaction. ~2 For a significant number of persons preparing for or engaged in min-istry, there are several interpersonal skills that are difficult to put into practice in their lives and in their ministries. One of those skills is con-frontation. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the assumption that confronta-tion, which requires the honest expression of emotion and assertiveness, is not the Christian thing to do. When those engaged in ministry experi-ence conflicts between themselves and others, they must confront the per-son or persons with whom there is a conflict--which is perhaps the only Christian thing to do. Confrontation is the ability to name and express one's inner reaction, usu-ally emotional, to an external event, especially but not exclusively when it involves an unpleasant encounter. Confrontation is like holding up a mir-ror so that others can see themselves. Confrontation should be used with honesty and care to address another person's behavior, when that behav-ior is appropriate and when it is inappropriate. It is essential, both for life and for ministry, to skillfully confront problematic situations so that com-munication and understanding can lead to more successful ministry. Instrumental and interpersonal skills, therefore, are basic skills for anyone engaged in or preparing for ministry. And, more often than not, Paradigms for Ministry / 327 instrumental and interpersonal skills are acquired at the same time. In fact, they are complementary. They enhance the minister's ability to meet the technical demands of ministry and to communicate more effec-tively with others on a daily basis. Perhaps a concrete example of the interaction and interdependence of instrumental and interpersonal skills will be helpful. The ministry of spiritual direction, which more and more persons are requesting, requires directors to possess certain instrumental skills. Directors must know the techniques of direction and be versed in spiritual theology and sacred Scripture. They must also possess certain interpersonal skills. They must hear accurately the issues presented by directees and reflect back to them what they hear. Instrumental skills, for the most part, must be acquired. Interpersonal skills, on the other hand, can be innate. But more often than not they need to be acquired. Perhaps, at meetings with technically competent per-sons, we have seen the participants "sharing" insights with one another and yet not hearing one another, or at least not reflecting back to the speak-ers what they heard. The purpose of such reflecting back, of course, is to give the speakers a sense of being heard and the listeners a chance to check out what the speakers are saying. Formation programs for minis-try, as well as many professional schools, teach and foster not only the instrumental skills necessary for their professions, but also the interper-sonal skills necessary for cooperation and collaboration. This is both en~ couraging and timely. Persons engaged in or preparing for ministry today face the challenge of acquiring the instrumental and interpersonal skills that are necessary for their vocation. Skilled helpers are not only good pilgrims, but they are also more effective servants, offering companionship, guidance, and support. Prophet The third paradigm is that of prophet, which all too often evokes the image of a wild-eyed eccentric ranting and raving against someone or something. In the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the prophets (nevi' im) are seers, interpreters of God's activity in the midst of the peo-ple. 13 The prophets see things that others have not seen, cannot see, or refuse to see. Because the prophets are persons of extraordinary faith and commitment to the community, they name the action of God in the midst of the community. In Luke's gospel (2:36-38), for example, the prophet Anna brings the news of the Messiah to those who wait for his coming. She sees, be- ~121~ / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 cause she is a woman of prayer and self-denial, what others have not seen. Like other prophet.s in the Bible, she possesses extraordinary vi-sion. In the Acts of the Apostles (2:4, 17-18; 19:6) and in the Book of Revelation (10:11 and 18:20), we are reminded that on Pentecost the gift of prophetic imagination was renewed by the Holy Spirit and the gift of prophetic vision was given to the community of faith. The disciples saw and heard. And they announced to others the Good News of salvation. More importantly, they exhorted the community to live in the light of the redemption, and they consoled those who were frightened or weary. Their prophetic vision was .their ministry and their gift to the commu-nity of faith, the Church. 14 Gerald Arbuckle says that the refounding of religious life, and per-haps of the Church itself, will be accomplished by persons who possess a charismatically inspired and well-developed imagination. 15 The proph-ets will be those who seek out new ways of doing things. They will be inspired by a prophetic imagination and by the Spirit of God. 16 They will be both intuitive and imaginative. And, at times, they will be misunder-stood by their contemporaries and even by their colleagues, sometimes simply because they will find it difficult to communicate their insights to others, for whom the insights will seem outrageous and ill-advised. 17 Walter Brueggemann, in his book The Prophetic Imagination, points out that the task of prophetic persons, like that of their forebears whose lives are recounted in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, is to nurture and to nourish their communities by evoking a consciousness and a per-ception of reality that is often different from that of the dominant cul-ture. 18 Prophetic persons challenge those within the dominant culture, who are unwilling to go beyond the scope of common sense or the pre-vailing wisdom and who say, "This is the way that we have always done things" or "If it is not broke then do not fix it." The key to cultivating a prophetic vision is to learn and to enhance imaginal skills. Those wanting to develop their imagination must engage in projects and educational experiences that encourage them to search for possibly better ways of doing things than the way they have always been done--even improvements on "common sense." Imaginal skills enable one to generate new ideas and alternative so-lutions. 19 Imaginal skills arise in the interaction between fantasy, emo-tions, and the reflective intellect. These skills allow persons to miniatur-ize, to organize, and to reflect accurately on data gathered from their en-vironment and from the five senses.2° Imaginal skills are acquired some-what differently than instrumental and interpersonal skills. To acquire or Paradigms for Ministry / 329 to develop imaginal skills, women and men must associate and work with other imaginative and creative persons. This, however, requires that cer-tain instrumental and interpersonal skills are firmly in place. Imagina-tion is developed also through attentiveness to, participating in, or ap-preciating the arts. For some, especially for those whose imaginal skills are less well developed, imaginative and creative persons often appear to be flying by the seat of their pants. And in some ways they are. Pro-phetic persons often find little support in their communities because their suggestions seem distant and even frightening to the less imaginative.2~ People commonly criticize persons in their community who are "pains." In reality, those "pains" may be creative and imaginative, but they may lack the necessary skills (instrumental and interpersonal) to communicate with others. Imaginal skills that are necessary for anyone attempting to live out the paradigm of prophet are resourcefulness and experimentation. These skills facilitate progress---even if their attempts sometimes lead to fail-ure. 22 At such times imaginative and creative persons may appear flighty and irresponsible. To prevent avoidable failure, they need to select from the imagined alternatives not only concrete but practical and construc-tive solutions to the problems with which their communities are faced.23 People usually acquire imaginal skills after acquiring instrumental and interpersonal skills because, with instrumental and interpersonal skills, they begin to experience and appreciate their autonomy while still rec-ognizing their connectedness to the community of faith.24 If persons are going to live out the paradigm of prophet, they must possess a prophetic imagination, as well as certain instrumental and in-terpersonal skills. Communities of faith need the gift of prophetic imagi-nation just as much today as at the time of the prophets of old. Shepherd Finally, there is the paradigm of shepherd, which evokes the rustic image of a person with staff in hand leading the sheep down a treacher-ous hillside. The paradigm may seem even more problematic if one re-alizes how dumb sheep really are. Yet in Luke's gospel it was the shep-herds who were among the first to be informed of the Messiah's birth (2:8-20). And in the epistle to the Ephesians (4:1 l) the apostles and their successors, who exercised a ministry of leadership in the community of faith, are referred to as shepherd-leaders ~n the Christian commumty. Gerald Arbuckle notes that leaders in religious congregations, and by analogy in the Church itself, are called to be problem solvers. They must be highly rational and organized persons. They must be able to Iogi- 330 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 cally analyze problems, to take the advice and counsel of others, and to implement the likely solutions.25 Leaders in ministry are called, there-fore, to help create and to share a vision with others, often in consulta-tion and in collaboration with prophetic persons, with servants, and with the great mass of those along their pilgrim way. Leadership in the Church today requires the development of system skills. Leadership requires both an acute sense of the direction in which commu-nities are headed and the ability to help them to get where they should be headed. Yet many persons with these system skills are frustrated. Their psychic and spiritual energies are drained because they face enormous fi-nancial problems and ever increasing personnel issues. Leaders today are expected to keep their communities financially stable and to meet the emo-tional and spiritual needs of the community members. Many leaders spend so much time maintaining the community and its members that they have little time or energy to help create the long-term solutions to the problems. As a friend said recently, "Anyone who yearns for or covets leadership in the Church today deserves to be a leader!" In light of the aforementioned demands, it is reasonable to assume that leaders do not have to be the prophetic or imaginative persons in the community, although a healthy dose of prophetic imagination helps. Lead-ership does require, however, the ability to recognize imaginative and creative solutions to problems and to coordinate the various gifts and skills of the community. System skills require a blend of imagination (imaginal skill), inter-personal sensitivity (interpersonal skill), and instrumental competence (in-strumental skill). System skills enable those who possess them to see how the parts of a community (diocese, religious congregation, parish, or organization) relate to the whole. System skills are not necessarily man-agement skills, although leadership may require a person to be a good manager, to make sound financial decisions (instrumental skill) and to relate well to persons within the system (interpersonal skill). System skills do, however, allow one to plan for change, especially when a change of direction is necessary for the health of the system in question. As Brian Hall says, persons who possess system skills see "the simple unity of it all."26 Shepherd-leaders see the big picture. And they are willing to take the necessary risks that will allow their communities to grow and to pros-per. Shepherd-leaders, because they possess system skills, seldom get trapped by shortsighted and wrongheaded solutions to complex prob-lems. While the solutions they endorse may sound extremely simple, Paradigms for Ministry / 331 even naive, they often embody an inherent wisdom and even God's will and desire for the community itself. An example of a system skill is system recognition, the ability to read the present and future needs of the community.27 At a deeper level, system recognition allows shepherd-leaders to read the signs of the times as they are significant for the community itself. Of course, the challenge to "read the signs of the times" was enunciated at the Second Vatican Council. Pope John XXIII possessed the skills necessary for his pro-phetic and imaginative shepherd-leadership. There is a picture, actually an icon, of Pope John holding a scroll on which the following verse ap-pears: "We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flour-ishing garden of life." The attitude behind that quotation summarizes the attitude with which shepherd-leaders carry out their task. Of course, shepherd-leaders must be able to distinguish between myth and reality, between a bright idea and a right idea.28 System skills allow those who possess them to discern more easily whether the direc-tion in which the system (diocese, congregation, parish, or organization) is headed is in accord with God's will and desire. Persons preparing for or engaged in leadership ministry must learn or develop system skills in order to be shepherd-leaders within their com-munities of faith. It has been said that the paradigm of the shepherd is both outdated and irrelevant. Perhaps, as we put the paradigm into a new context, namely into a system perspective, we can appreciate it in a new way by retrieving its original meaning and beauty, even within a largely nonagrarian culture. Through the Bible and through theology, the Church has been blessed with some very rich paradigms for life and for ministry. These paradigms (pilgrim, servant, prophet, and shepherd), if they are to be lived out in ministry, require the development of certain skills. Practical Conclusions There are some practical conclusions that flow from an understand-ing of the paradigms for ministry that were discussed in this article. First, skill development is sequential. Second, effective ministry requires that skills be identified in and shared among the members of a community. Third, as persons reach a certain level of skill development, they are con-fronted with the need to acquire higher levels of skills in the four skill areas (instrumental, interpersonal, imaginal, and system). Finally, life-long learning and continuing education are required for anyone engaged in ministry today. First, skill development is sequential. Instrumental and interpersonal 3~12 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 skills are developed conjointly. One learns to think and to perform man-ual tasks while learning to relate to other persons in the environment. Dur-ing childhood, for example, we learned to read and write while we learned to relate to others. The process is the same in adulthood, except that the reading, writing, and relating require a higher level of skill de-velopment. Formation programs for ministry in the Church are, hope-fully, teaching those who participate in them theology and the traditions of the Church and of the communities to which they will be sent. They are teaching the participants also to pray. All of these are instrumental skills. Formation programs teach people how to relate to others more ef-fectively and to integrate their lifestyle (married, single, or celibate) into their ministry; these are interpersonal skills. As persons acquire instrumental and interpersonal skills, through for-mal education their energies are directed toward convergent thinking, that is, toward remembering and reproducing what is already known. It is necessary, therefore, to develop within those preparing for ministry the capacity for divergent thinking, which is a requirement for prophetic ministry. 29 Divergent thinking leads to new ideas and new ways of doing things. Gerald Arbuckle describes divergent thinkers as "intrapreneurs," whose task is to revitalize existing corporate cultures (dioceses, congregations, parishes, or religious communities). He describes entrepreneurs as those whose task is to establish new ventures outside the existing corporate struc-ture, yet who have close ties to that structure.3° Intrapreneurs must pos-sess high levels of system skills, and entrepreneurs must possess high lev-els of imaginal skills. In order to be effective, ministers must continue to develop skills in the areas that are appropriate for the ministries in which they are engaged. Second, skills for ministry are most effective when they are shared among a group of persons working cooperatively and collaboratively. As St. Paul said in l Corinthians 12:4-7, "There are different gifts but the same Spirit; there are different ministries but the same Lord." While very few individuals possess notable skill in all of the skill areas, a team of persons may possess all those skills to a notable degree. The more gifted and skilled the collaborators, the more effective their ministry will be. One person, within a group of persons working together, may pos-sess the ability to commit the group's wisdom to paper or even to do some-thing as practical as writing a proposal or a request for a grant. Another person may possess the ability to relate to others in the group and in so Paradigms for Ministry ! 333 doing make the entire team more efficient and effective. Another team member may be imaginative, dreaming up solutions to problems facing the group. Another member may be able to see how the group's activi-ties fit into the overall scheme of the larger community's (diocese, par-ish, or religious congregation) life and mission. The more diverse the skills of the collaborators or coministers, the more efficient and effec-tive their ministry will be. Third, as ministers reach a certain level of skill development, they discover a need to acquire skills at higher levels in order to meet the in-creased demands of their life and ministry. Perhaps some examples will be helpful. Many persons in ministry today find themselves spending time and energy writing talks and proposals. They are learning, there-fore, to use computers and other high-tech communication equipment-- which, of course, requires them to develop more sophisticated instrumen-tal skills. It is also necessary today, especially for those engaged in ministry or in religious life, to become more skilled participants in meetings and in other group endeavors. This requires the development of better inter-personal skills. As ministers plan for their own corporate ministry and for ministering within their communities, there is an increasing need for persons with imaginal and system skills to be working with their col-leagues in ministry. Persons in ministry today must, then, bring to their cooperative en-deavors their own skills and talents. With those skills and talents, the ef-forts of the ministering community will be successful; without them those efforts may be in vain. Finally, if the skills needed to meet the inc.reasing demands of min-istry are to be developed, persons engaged in or preparing for ministry must make a commitment to lifelong learning. Perhaps congregations of men and women religious were the first to recognize this fact and to de-velop continuing-education programs for their members. Today dioceses are developing programs for the continuing education of priests and dea-cons, as well as formation programs and continuing-education programs for nonordained persons in ministry. Persons in ministry do value and use the continuing-education and formation programs at their disposal in order to meet the demands made upon them in the Church in particular and in society at large. Our theological and biblical heritage contains a wealth of paradigms for life and for ministry. We are pilgrims on a journey of faith. We are called to care for one another along that journey. We are invited to dis- 334/Review for Religious, May-June 1991 cern the movement of God's Spirit in our midst as we journey. Finally, we are commissioned to be shepherd-leaders. May our communities of faith be blessed with pilgrims, servants, prophets, and shepherd-leaders skilled enough to build up the body, the Church, and to usher in the reign of God. NOTES I Michael T. Winstanley's article "The Shepherd Image in the Scriptures: A Para-digm for Ministry" (Clergy Review 71 [June 1986]: 197-206), which focuses on the paradigm of shepherd from a biblical perspective, was an inspiration for the class presentation that elicited the student's observation. Winstanley's presentation of the shepherding image invited reflection on the skills that are necessary in order to put that image into practice. That reflection raised the issue of the need to put other equally helpful paradigms into a contemporary context. 2 I am using both prophet and shepherd as gender-inclusive words. 3 The biblical quotations in this article are from the New American Bible. 4 Xavier L6on-Dufour, Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. Terrence Prender-gast (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980), p. 324. 5 C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1944), pp. 15f. 6 lbid, p. 193. 7 Brian P. Hall, The Genesis Effect (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), pp. 99f. 8 L6on-Dufour, p. 368. 9 Karl Rahner, Servants of the Lord (Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1968), p. 6. 10 Hall, p. 100. 11 Anne Wilson Schaef, The Addictive Organization (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 96. 12 lbid, p. 100. 13 John E. Steinmueller and Kathryn Sullivan, R.S.C.J., Catholic Biblical Encyclo-pedia (New York: Joseph F. Wagner, 1950), p. 527. i,~ L~on-Dufour, p. 338. 15 Gerald A. Arbuckle, S.M. Out of Chaos: Refounding Religious Congregations (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), p: 1. 16 lbid, p. 14. 17 Ibid, pp. 30f. 18 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 13. 19 Hall, p. 100. 20 Janet Kalven, Larry Rosen, and Bruce Taylor, Value Development: A Practical Guide (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), p. 23. 2~ Arbuckle, pp. 30f. 26 Hall, p. 147. 22 Kalven et al., p. 26. 27 Kalven et al., p. 31. 23 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 24 Hall, p. 143. 29 Kalven et al., p. 125. 25 Arbuckle, p. 31. 30 Arbuckle, p. 33. The Ministry of BEing M. Charleen Hug, S.N.D. Sister Mary Charleen Hug, S.N.D., wrote "Celibacy: Gift of a Woman's Love" for our issue of September/October 1988. Her address is 3837 Secor Road; Toledo, Ohio 43623. What an exciting age for apostolic women religious! Never before in the history of the Church have there been so many diverse ministries open to them. My people are homeless, shelter them. My people are starving, feed them. My people are oppressed, unshackle them. My people are ignorant, teach them. The lure is there. The challenge is there. The need is there. Called and sent, committed and dedicated to the cause for peace and justice, women religious now head health clinics, retreat centers. They serve in parish ministry, as pastoral associates. They are found in class-rooms, in the mission fields, in hospices for the terminally ill. They are chairpersons on national committees and help staff diocesan offices. They are participants in marches for the plight of the homeless and in protest against nuclear buildup. They take their stand against abortion, racism, and the arms race. They are engaged in all of these ministries and more. More, because there will always be the more. With the two talents I give you, says Jesus in a parable, go and make two more; with five barley loaves and two fish, feed the five thousand; all that I have done, so will you do---all this and even more! In return for the more I will reward even a cup of cold water given in my name, says Jesus. Our present age takes this more seriously, for it is the age of minis- 335 336 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 try. One more act of service to perform, one more cause to support, one more lesson to prepare, one more meeting to attend. The global village is shrinking. Impersonal people "out there" have become our brothers and sisters with very real needs that we can no longer ignore. Address-ing these needs in Jesus' name in view of the gifts and abilities with which we have been blessed is what Christian ministry is all about. For the deeply committed religious it would seem at times that this very min-istry sustains, as though that were part of the hundredfold promised. This is indeed a very blessing because experience soon proves that no matter how many ministries we take on, no matter how effectively and effi-ciently we labor, there will always be the more that is needed--more that cries out to us for fulfillment. Without great vigilance on our part we can all too readily fall into the do-list trap of evaluating the seeming "suc-cess" and "failure" of any given day by the number of items we have managed to cross off our daily list come nightfall. Because continuous do-ing drains, our present age calls apostolic women religious just as loudly to the ministry basic to all ministries, the ministry without which all do-ing becomes meaningless, empty, namely the ministry of be-ing. This ministry will be neither underwritten nor ig-nored without serious consequences not only to do-ing, but also to all that we are. Is it because the ministry of be-ing is so basic to who we are in essence that we rarely take heed of it? Do we take it so for granted that we fail to provide the time and solitude necessary to cultivate, nour-ish, and cherish it? How often, amidst all of our do-ing, do we set aside time to praise and thank God for this ministry for which each person quali-fies, in which each person can excel? In solitude the truth of "what you do flows from who you are" takes in-depth meaning. In solitude we look to Jesus, for whom, to whom, through whom we minister. In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God . Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its be-ing but through him .The Word was made flesh and lived among us. (John 1:1, 14). The Word had so brief a time in which to perform the greatest min-istry this world would ever know. In the span of just thirty-three years Jesus had to be the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament, make his Fa-ther known and loved, and secure the redemption of every soul his Fa-ther would love into life. Given this ministry Jesus chose to devote the first thirty of these years to the ministry of be-ing God-made-man. When his active apostolic ministry did commence, "I AM!" identified who he was and why he "dwelt among us." He showed himself to be bread for The Ministry of BEing the hungry, drink for the thirsty, comfort for the sorrowing, compassion for the sinner, friend of simple souls, rest for the weary, light in the dark-ness, perfect image of the Father, I AM the way, the truth, the life. That Jesus' mission of be-ing was misunderstood by those to whom he minis-tered is evidenced by those who jeered. What good are you doing hanging there! Come down from the cross and do! There are still illnesses that need to be healed, sins that need to be forgiven, lessons that need to be taught, so much that we still do not un-derstand. Come down from the cross and do! By remaining on the cross Jesus became the supreme example of the relationship between be-ing and do-ing. It was in be-ing the sacrifical Lamb of God that all do-ing for all time would take on eternal value. By be-ing Resurrection and the Life he gave to each person (as inheritance!) eternal be-ing with the Father! Each of us is a be-ing created in the im-age of the Father! To remain true to this essence it is paramount that, in the midst of and because of all the ministries that demand our do-ing, we spend ample time daily in solitude. Then, while "surrounded on all sides by the crowds," as 'Jesus was, we, too, will know when someone has "touched us." We, too, will experience that "something has gone forth from [us]." Someone has called forth from "who we are" the very reason "that we are." We will discover why we are there: why we are there; why we are there amidst that particular crowd of people. In soli-tude we come to see that it is not sufficient that we praise God through our ministry; we long to be his praise. It is not sufficient that we thank God; we long to be his thanksgiving. We are not content to spread his goodness; we desire to be his goodness. It is not enough that we speak to others of his beauty; we long to be a tiny part of that beauty--and of that peace, that joy, that love! Such subtleties are not gleaned in the mar-ketplace. When it comes time for the belt that Jesus said would be tied around our waist leading us to where we would rather not go (see Jn 21 : 18), thus perhaps ending our ministry of do-ing, even if temporarily, we will em-brace that "belt." In the midst of our do-ing we will have sensitized our-selves to hear a Voice beckoning us: Be daughter of the Father, special possession of the Son, bride of the Spirit. Be she in whom the Father delights, she for whom the heavens were made. Be home of the Trinity, safekeeping for the kept secrets of the King. Be she whom the Father surrounds with his presence, enfolds with his tender love. Be faithful daughter of holy Mother the Church. Be an altar for the offering of a sacrifice of pure love, praise, and Review for Religious, May-June 1991 reverence to God. Be the dove sheltered in the clefts of the rocks, long-ing to see the face of God. Be garden enclosed, the fountain sealed. Be the fire set ablaze that Christ came to cast upon the earth. The Voice beckons further extending our parameters: My people are victims of injustice, be their righteousness. My people are suffering from painful diseases, be their relief. My people are lonely and without a shepherd, be their friend. My people are killing each other, be the peace between them. Be the missionary you always longed to be, spreading the joyful mes-sage that the kingdom of God is here, now. Be witness of the fidelity of a merciful God who loves jealously, passionately, infinitely. Be a bea-con of hope to those whose light has grown dim. Be a wounded healer by gathering up the pain of the world and offering it to the Father. Be a caring, compassionate, companion on the journey. Be for those en-trusted to you, those who depend on your be-ing. Be all things to all peo-ple. As in the case of the ministry of do-ing the ministry of be-ing like-wise demands the more, the infinitely more. More joy, more love, more peace, more patience . The more we embrace this ministry, the more it will embrace us. The more perceptive we become to living this minis-try, the more fully alive we become. The more we treasure this minis-try, the more it becomes our priceless treasure. It is an inexhaustible min-istry with inexhaustible fringe benefits just waiting to be claimed. The ministry of be-ing can be the pledge, the promise, and the prized pos-session of every apostolic woman religious. It is this reality that makes the present age an exciting one indeed in which to minister! Religious Life and Modernity Albert Dilanni, S.M. Father Dilanni taught philosophy for thirteen years, served as provincial of the North-east Province (U.S.A.) for six years, and has been vicar general of the Marist Fa-thers since 1985. His address is: Padri Maristi; Via Alessandro Poerio, 63; 00152 Roma, Italy. There are many ways of describing what has happened in the last twenty-five years since Vatican II. Historians say that there has been a shakeout after each ecumenical council and that approximately twenty-five years are required for the spirit of a council to take root and bear its best fruit. Commentators on the development of religious life since Vatican II seem to concur in this. They now present this development in three stages: (1) the rigidity prior to Vatican II, (2) the immediate chaos after Vatican II, and (3) the current period of sober reassessment with its talk of refoun-dation. Some CARA consultants name these stages Paradigms I, II, and III. Vatican II was an effort in openness and aggiornamento. Its changes were radical. The council recognized the ecclesial reality of other Chris-tian religions, opened the way to dialogue with non-Christian religions, took a radically new position on religious freedom, realized the independ-ent goodness of the secular world, called for a renewal of the liturgy and of religious life, recognizing that through baptism the laity are called to the same degree of holiness as priests and religious. All very heady at the time, exhilarating and in many ways very posi-tive and productive. Vatican II brought the Church face-to-face with the world and urged it to view it in its glory as well as its weakness. I do not think anyone really wants to go back. But even Vatican II had its shadow side. One of its results was that Catholicism in general and re-ligious life in particular seemed less important. When personal con- 339 ~141~ / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 science was exalted, when sin and hell were deemphasized in favor of love and heaven, when the great enemies of Protestant theology were quoted side by side with Rahner and Lonergan, when many distinctions were blurred and the Catholic ghetto vanished--there was no longer a dragon to kill. Now, while enemies, distinctions, ghettos, and dragons are not always eminently desirable, they did provide one thing: identity. Their removal was a major r.ea.son why the principal question exercising the Church and religious congregations since Vatican II has been ad nau-seam the question of identity. What does it mean to be a Catholic, a re-ligious, a Jesuit, a Carmelite, a Marist? But the identity question had other nonecclesiastical sources. The post-Vatican II world found itself engulfed in a cultural upheaval which it did not cause. Religious congregations were not simply surrounded by a materialistic and skeptical culture, they were immersed in it. It had in-filtrated the convent walls. Tillard says that the failure of enthusiasm, passion, and wholeheartedness apparent in religious is rooted in a shift in belief, a hesitancy of faith. Walter Kasper has remarked that what we combat today is not only an external atheism, but an atheism within our own hearts. Cultural modernity has been analyzed and reanalyzed as the on-slaught of secularization. ~ It was as if in the second half of our century the Enlightenment had reached the masses. What up to the present were ideas of intellectuals, philosophers, and cranky atheists, now, due to bet-ter communication and general education, became the fabric of culture at large. The well-documentated cultural revolution which has been play-ing itself out since the 1960s seemed to be a quantitative expansion of ideas which had been around since the eighteenth century. But Paul Ricoeur underlines that the Enlightenment has passed through two distinct stages. We might even speak of a first and second Enlightenment, that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the different one which began in the nineteenth and flowered in the twenti-eth century. Both began with doubt, methodic doubt, but the first went back to consciousness and found certitude, while the second in returning to con-sciousness found only suspicion. Descartes began by doubting everything methodically, but banished doubt because he believed we could find a place of certitude in consciousness. Even doubting was a form of think-ing, and the one thing I could .not doubt was that "I think." Cogito, ergo sum. At the center of consciousness was a source of clarity and dis-tinctness (les idles claires et distinctes), a way of banishing skepticism Religious Life and Modernity about the existence of the world or the truth of morality. Thus the first Enlightenment was characterized by an exaltation of the human subject and an overconfidence in a certain type of reason. Its champion was Kant, for whom the subject in the act of knowing became a partial crea-tor of the object known. But the second Enlightenment, grounded in Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, was quite different. Commencing similarly with scientific me-thodical doubt, these thinkers also turned to the conscious and thinking subject but found there not a place of certitude but another ground for suspicion. For them human consciousness turned out to be a creator of illusions, the fabricator of masks, the great pretender. Consciousness it-self was in need of unmasking. This is the case especially when it con-cocts religions. Religion was the deception par excellence. It was an opium creating lassitude among oppressed peoples (Marx), it was a col-lective obsessive neurosis (Freud), it was a cover for a will to power pres-ent in the hearts of the weak and envious (Nietzsche). Leaving aside the fine nuance present in their systems, we can say that for these thinkers consciousness spins illusory language about God to hide what men and women really desire: sexual gratification, wealth, and power. This modern atheism, the atheism of consciousness as pretender, has with legitimacy been called a "beautiful" atheism. It has an ethical side and bears a moral, attraction. It is born of the desire to avoid masks and pretensions. The modem atheist is an atheist because he does not want to remain in a false consciousness. He wants to be honest; he does not want to tell a lie. The great modern drive, the drive of the second En-lightenment is to be authentic, not to worship an idol. For this reason, too, its geniuses Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche can present themselves as moralists. This is why Sartre can present belief in God as bad faith. Con-sciousness, in the second Enlightenment, is the escape artist, the artful dodger. Consciousness reaches salvation when it strives to catch itself at its own artifices. In light of this we can explain two moral phenomena which have oc-curred in our lifetime. First, the fact that, for many people of the twen-tieth century, hypocrisy became the great sin and sincerity the great vir-tue. (This has been documented by Lionel Trilling.) It was hypocrisy not to admit who and what you were. If you were gay, you must say it. If you were committing adultery, you must admit it. Being moral meant coming out of various closets. But unfortunately many people failed to ask the question whether acting out according to the instincts of these closets was good or bad. Some decided that anything was allowed as :342 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 long as you owned up to it. Others, plagued by a secret guilt, tried to have everyone approve whht they were doing privately; they wanted their private morality publicly sanctioned. The other phenomenon characteristic of the second Enlightenment was that contemporary thinkers were more interested in meaning than in truth. This explains the death of apologetics in the last twenty-five years. Hugo Meynell bemoans the fact that the last real apologist was C.S. Le-wis. Today, he complains, theologians are more concerned to show that Christianity is relevant. What floods the market is writing on the social and political implications of Christianity, or on its power to lead us to a fuller and more authentic personal life. Admitting the importance of such writing, he believes, nevertheless, that a serious apologetic which looks beyond meaning to truth is absolutely indispensable for the Church and that many of its present ills are due to a neglect of it. Without a proper apologetics, says Meynell, "the unbeliever is apt to infer that edu-cated Christians have really grasped the fact that social reform, political action, and psychic hygiene are that to which religious aspiration ought to be directed."2 Related to this move from truth to meaning is the fact that for the last twenty years seminarians, both religious and diocesan, have unchar-acteristically manifested a distaste for intellectual argument. Even some of the most intelligent tended to shun involvement in debates about the truth and falsity of moral positions or thorny dogmatic issues like the in-terpretation of the Resurrection, and were satisfied if they were con-vinced that a particular doctrine of the Church held some meaning for people. More and more religious showed up on the Myers-Briggs test as feelers and not thinkers. Brought up in an Enlightenment of suspicion, they suspected intestinally that the search for truth is impossible and that the different philosophies are simply a parade of ideologies with no cri-terion for discerning which is right and which is wrong. This is prob-ably the deep side of the vocation crisis among the youth of the second Enlightenment. If consciousness suspects its very self and its powers, how can it commit itself to anything for a long-term future? Ricoeur believes that we must face head-on what he calls the "her-meneutics of suspicion." We must take seriously its originators and think-ers and recognize their contribution. We cannot return to a primitive naivet6. But he also insists that we cannot remain in a state of denial, in a vacuum of truth, in mere negation; we must move to a second naivet6, we must move to a new place of affirmation. In order to do this we must not only respect the creators of suspicion but also question Religious Life and Modernity them. We must suspect the suspicioners and put them to the test. We must transcend the Enlightenment in both its phases. We will not achieve this by attempting to return to a consciousness conceived of as pure thought, to a thinking self which is sufficient unto itself apart from the world. For contemporary philosophy such a move is impossible. Consciousness can only be encountered as already in and of the world. The only way to discover what the human mind or human consciousness is like is through an examination of the works it has strewn in the world down the centuries, that is, through an examination of the institutions and documents of culture. Ricoeur bets that after such a re-flection the scandal of the cross will remain as much a scandal for mod-ern consciousness as it was for an earlier consciousness. He bets that the scandal of the cross will be discovered to be transcultural, a scandal not merely for humans in one stage of history, but for the human condition as such. For the modern age, theology's method has itself changed. We do not go immediately to the transcendent, to God, to the sacred and then try to relate God to the world. We find God through the world; we dis-cover the transcendent as the depth of the world. We seek an incarna-tional approach to eschatology and transcendence. We try to find God within the world as the Creative Moment therein, as the source without which justice and equality, as absolute moral imperatives, lack motiva-tion and a rational ground. The Enlightenment andthe Redefinition of Religious Life Whether we consider it in its first or second phase, the Enlighten-ment is marked by the same ideals, the dethroning of authority and tra-dition in favor of reason, free thought, and humanistic brotherhood. The ideals of both Enlightenments can be summarized most easily in the slo-gan of the French Revolution whose 200th anniversary we celebrated in 1989: liberty, fraternity, and equality. It was onto these very three ideals that religious life fastened almost in sequence after Vatican II in an effort to redefine itself, to forge a new identity. It had to deal with them as reinforced by the genius of Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx. Note that these ideals are mirror-imaged in the three vows and are in a sense the concern of the vows: (liberty) obe-dience, (fraternity) chastity, and (equality) poverty. The first of the Enlightenment ideals to make dramatic entrance into our culture and religious life was the ideal of personal or individual free-dom (its hero, Nietzsche). Never in a general culture had the notion "I want x" enjoyed such power as a reason for morally justifying an ac- ~144 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 tion. In an earlier climate of opinion, the fact that someone strongly de-sired something rendered suspect his or her opinion about it. In this ear-lier climate it was because an issue like abortion was so important that it could not be decided principally by the person who was subjectively involved. She could hardly have an objective viewpoint. But now it was precisely because an issue was so important that it must be left up to in-dividual choice. Major books have been written documenting and decry-ing this shift to individualistic freedom: Mclntyre's After Virtue, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, and Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart. Some of its critics distinguish between a liberal spirit which is admirable in its pursuit of discussion and exchange of ideas, and a lib-eral dogma which in its exaggerations is pernicious because it has not allowed us to build a community upon agreed societal values. Enlightenment freedom and its individualism invaded religious life in the 60s and early 70s. The major concern of seminarians and religious of that era was self-fulfillment and the idea that they could not be ful-filled unless they made their own choices about lifestyle and ministry. This was also the age when many seminarians refused to kneel down in chapel and to acknowledge any difference between themselves and their professors. Their slogan was that of the youth culture of the sixties: "Don't trust anyone over thirty!" Articles on religious obedience ap-pearing in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS at the time had less to do with the su-perior's authority as representing God or as the leader of a group engaged in a religious cause, than with how he or she should be a caring person or a listener attentive to the needs of community members. The second Enlightenment ideal used in the attempted redefinition of religious life was the ideal of fraternity interpreted as intimacy (its hero, Freud; its favorite book, Fromm's The Art of Loving). In the 70s fraternity came to the fore in the form of the need for intimacy and com-munity. Some felt that religion itself was a projection of affective needs. Everyone seemed sure that, without at least psychological sexual rela-tions, you could not really develop as a person. A good number left re-ligious life while they were still nubile in the conviction that the Church would soon wake up and change the rules. Others adopted what for a brief time was called the "third way," that is, remaining somewhat celi-bate while dating. All of this was later exacerbated by the gay movement and the inability of some to realize that, whatever one might think of ho-moerotic relations in general, all religious, whether homosexually or heterosexually oriented, had taken the same vow. Those who chose to remain and to keep the vows fought for a more Religious Life and Modernity / 345 fraternal and intimate form of community life and began using the word "sharing" as an intransitive verb. "Sharing" went on till the wee hours of the morning. "Thanks for sharing" and a big hug seemed to end every conversation, even a conversation in which a provincial had in no uncertain terms said, "No.t'' For all its positive aspects, this age of individualistic freedom and of fraternity/intimacy/community was "the era of the divided heart." It was a time, not entirely past, in which many of us, ~11 of us to some degree, were sidetracked, distracted, not completely present to the task, unhappy. For many religious, life became not so much a vocation as an avocation. They did good work and were not completely disinterested in the religious community, but their treasure, their compelling interest seemed to be elsewhere. They did not realize it at the time and cannot be blamed, but absorbed in themselves, jettisoning traditional practices without replacing them with new communal structures, they were sap-ping the energy of the group. It was in subconscious reaction to this drift that there appeared in re-ligious- life circles the talk about the need for a shared vision or a com-mon sense of mission. Much effort went into writing mission statements which everyone signed and accepted mutteringly in paraliturgical cere-monies. But there was an unexamined assumption in writing such mis-sion declarations, the assumption that everyone wanted a common vi-sion. Though there has always been a degree of pluralism and confusion in the Church, what seemed different now was that some religious seemed almost to welcome the confusion. They gave up the search for a shared vision not simply because it is hard to attain, but because in a deep sense they did not want one. It may be a hard saying, but I believe it is true that many of us, all of us to some degree, did not desire a true unity of mind and vision, at least not one which was set down in great detail, one which invaded and interfered with our life. The third ideal of the French Revolution and Enlightenment to enter religious life in the time of attempted redefinition was that of equality (its hero, Marx). It was the same ideal which gave rise to liberation the-ology and to the preferential option for the poor. It came strongly to the fore in the 80s. Beginning with the 33rd General Congregation of Jesu-its it thundered into religious life under the title of faith and justice. So-cial analysis and peace-and-justice committees soon became the vogue. Religious, male and female, left long-standing apostolates in education and hospitals and went to work among the poor and oppressed of both the third and first worlds. Soon the movement became involved with jus- 346 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 tice questions within the Church as well as the world, in the first as well as the third world. Now suddenly every question was interpreted princi-pally in terms of the power-equality schema. Everywhere there was talk of the need for assertiveness, the tactics of confrontation, the evil of pa-triarchy, the lucha de clases. Not just politics but a liberal politics was brought to the center of religion and religious life. At Boston College in 1984 the Jesuit historian John Padberg said, "It must be admitted that from a historical point of view many of the changes which have taken place in feminine religious communities do not derive from Vatican II, but from the secular feminist movement." I believe that these attempted redefinitions of religious life have all failed because religious have remained at a superficial level in thinking about freedom, fraternity, and equality. In their general thrust these new values are wonderful and exhilarating and are here to stay. But they must be retrieved in their Christian depth and meaning. Secularization and the Return of Religion We are in a polarization situation in the Church today, liberals against conservatives. This can be documented by reading any theologi-cal review or religious newspaper. Avery Dulles, in fact, discerns four quasi-ideologies in the Church, liberal, traditionalist, neoconservative, and radical.3 Signs of the resistance appear not only in a growing funda-mentalism in Church practice, but in the "postliberal" or "postmod-ern" stances in academic theology championed by men like Lindbeck, Huston Smith, and Stanley Hauerwas. The resistance is also apparent in the area of religious and priestly vocations. In the entire industrialized world it is the progressive orders which continue to experience a decline, while conservative congregations enjoy substantial increases. But what is not understood is that the very fact of the polarization has a religious meaning. It means that modernity cannot be understood as a single phenomenon of ongoing secularization. There is something else occurring. The evident resistance to a liberal secularism hints at the possibility of a great reversal, a move to a higher synthesis. Many have been willing to see a religious significance in seculariza-tion. They interpret it as the desire to be authentic, to be rid of idols, to avoid at all costs the telling of a lie. But is there not also a deep mean-ing to the liberal/conservative split and the rise of fundamentalism and neoconservatism? Is this not also a sign of the times? It seems simplistic to view the resistance to tendencies which have been the vogue since Vati-can II as a mere knee-jerk reaction, a neurotic flight to security in the face of a secularized world. The very fact of these countermovements Religious Life and Modernity / 347 has a religious sense. It reveals, among other things, that modern men and women still recognize the presence of mystery and transcendence and feel that without it liberty, fraternity, and equality remain superfi-cial and, in the end, stifling. In an article entitled "Can the West be Converted?" Leslie Newbigin, the famous Anglican missionary to India, asks: Can there be an effective missionary encounter with this culture--this so powerful, per-suasive, and confident culture which (at least until very recently) simply regarded itself as "the coming world civilization"? He bemoans as excessive the criticism of the nineteenth-century mis-sionary on the part of socially-minded Christians, and disagrees with drop-ping the term "foreign missions" in favor of "overseas ministries" or "cross-cultural ministry." Says Newbigin: "The contemporary embar~ rassment about the missionary movement of the previous century is not, as we like to think, evidence that we have become more humble. It is, I fear, much more clearly evidence of shift in belief. It is evidence that we are less ready to affirm the uniqueness, the centrality, the decisive-ness of Jesus Christ as universal Lord and Savior, the Way by following whom the world is to find its true goal, the Truth by which every other claim to truth is to be tested, the Life in whom alone life in its fullness is to be found."4 Instead of weighing the Christian religious experience in the scale of reason as our culture understands reason, let us suppose, says Newbigin, that the Gospel is true; that, in the story of the Bible and in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the Creator and Lord of the universe has actually manifested himself to declare and effect his pur-pose; and that, therefore, everything else, including all the actions and assumptions of our culture, has to be assessed and can only be validly assessed in the scales which this revelation provides. What would it mean if, instead of trying to understand the gospel from the point of view of our culture, we tried to understand our culture from the point of view of the gospel? Rabbi Abraham Heschel said something similar when addressing theo-logians at a conference on the future of theology: "It has always seemed puzzling to me how greatly attached to the Bible you seem to be and yet how much like pagans you handle it. The great challenge to those of us who wish to take the Bible seriously is to let it teach us its own essential categories; and then for us to think with them, instead of just about them."5 Something new is stirring, something new striving to be born. A sig- 3411 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 nificant group of theologia.ns is reaching for a postliberal stance which might feed the hunger for truth and a deeper meaning which exists in America. Professor Huston Smith puts it as follows: "While the West's 'brain,' which for present purposes we can equate with the modern uni-versity, rolls ever further down the reductionistic path, other centers of society--our emotions, for example, as they find expression through our artists and our wills. --protest. These other centers of ourselves feel they are being dragged, kicking and screaming, down an ever-darken-ing tunnel."6 The first world turns to suicide, drugs, and hooliganism because of a lack of meaning in the lives of its members. Culture is the meaning system of society. According to some sociologists, religion is the deep-est aspect of that meaning system. But the religion which remains in West-ern society is impoverished. The religion of our secularized cultures is highly intellectualized, pared down, devoid of mystery and passion. Mys-teries are embarrassments and explained away reductively. Modern churches look like banks. In many Catholic churches statues of saints are either banished or shrunken to stand sheepishly in shadowy corners. Lit-tle remains of the sense of an invisible reality beyond the material one, of a grand communion of saints, of Blake's "infinity in a grain of sand" and "eternity in an hour." And what has sprung up in the desert of modernity? The so-called "pipeline religion" of charismatics and Pentecostals, a revival of an emo-tional type of prayer with a need for a personal attachment to Jesus ex-pressed emotionally and publicly, the ministry of healing in sum, the desire for a backdrop to life, a deeper dimension, an invisible world; the need once again to feel that God is near and that we are able to commune with him; the need for a God who is transcendent as well as immanent. We desire the divine face of Jesus as well as the human face of God. The pendulum swings of the Christological debates of the early Church are again in evidence. The third redefinition of religious life in terms of equality and jus-tice is an improvement over the first two redefinitions in terms of liberty and fraternity, especially where these are interpreted as individualistic freedom and a sentimentalized intimacy/community. Individualism can-not form community. Nor can we religious be merely intimiste in our spiri-tuality. We cannot be satisfied with simply voicing our affections of love toward others or even for the Lord. Love must be active, social, and even political. Christians cannot concentrate solely on their own salvation whether earthly or celestial. "What would the Lord say," asked Char- Religious Life and Modernity / 349 les P6guy, "if we go to him without all the others?" On the other hand, this third effort to redefine ourselves and discover a lost identity was (is) in some ways more seductive, more liable to be-come an idol, for in itself it is strongly rooted in the Gospel and demands great sacrifice. The quest for social justice is "a constitutive part" of the Gospel, says an oft-quoted text of the 1971 Synod of Bishops. But it, too, has its shadow side. It was an improvement because it took the focus off of the individual subject, the I, but it was not sufficient because it replaced the individual subject with another earthly subject, the spe-cies subject, Marx's Gattungswesen, or with a part of society, the poor, the oppressed of the human species. To define religious life principally in terms of social justice is to make the Marxian move of replacing re-ligion with the need to foster a truly socialized man and woman. While fear of idolatry caused men of earlier ages to set God above the world and beyond all images, the danger of idolatry returns a hun-dredfold when we look for him within the bowels of the world. Some will call this double-talk and say they will have nothing to do with liberation, equality, compassion, and the betterment of people. But such a conclusion does not follow from what I am saying. Just the oppo-site is true. Unless we live in light of the truth that the world belongs to God and that its primary duty is to praise him in gratitude for what has been given, we cannot even begin to construct a world of justice. Unless we see that God is first and creator and that the human is second and created, we cannot find any basis for human equality or for treating everyone with justice and care. Evolutionists turned philosophers say that humans are equal only by the accident that a group of beings with about the same size brain flow-ered at a certain period of time. As a result these thinkers can find no ground for the moral imperative of justice. Such an imperative appears only when and if we view humans as having a relationship to an Abso-lute whose essence is Love. Humans have a dignity not because they hap-pen to have a complex brain which gives them a kind of free will, but because they are loved and because the very meaning of their being is to love as the Father loves. As Martin Buber has said, whoever makes freedom the primary characteristic of humans is blind to the real nature of human existence which is "being sent and a being commissioned."7 It is because God's love for us does not rise out of a personal need but is gratuitous, that the universe has meaning and that social justice is an imperative. In this discovery we will find true freedom. For the God of the absolute future is a God of plenitude who does not enslave nor ~150 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 brook enslavement. Contemporary thinkers are obsessed by the thought that dualisms must be overcome at all cost, that all distinctions must be leveled, the natural and the supernatural, laity and clergy, Church and world. In this same vein, because of the doctrine that all are called to the same degree of holiness in baptism, they tend to believe that the distinction between laity and religious cannot ultimately be maintained. But in counteract-ing dualisms we must be careful not to submerge certain important dis-tinctions. There may be other distinctions between religious life and lay life which are .not connected with the call to holiness shared in baptism. Religious, I believe, are called to a different kind of separation from the world. Religious must be not above or beyond the world, nor seek to escape its toils. BUt yes, their life must be distinct and separate by tak-ing up the very different lifestyle of a pilgrim as did the apostles, not remaining at home but accompanying Jesus on the way. Again, if a religious must be a prophet, as many commentators urge, then he or she must be different from others in the way that a prophet is different from those to whom he or she prophesies. The prophet is one who shows the way. Religious must teach by their life that all Christians must be in the world but not of the world, that their greatness will not spring from surrender to the values of the world. Without a distinction between religious and laity the significance and identity of a truly Chris-tian laity may also be in danger of being lost. Something new is being born: a higher synthesis. It will consist es-sentially in a rewinning for human consciousness the sense of the tran-scendent and a new understanding of what is meant by a separation from the world. The problem of the third world is poverty; the problem of the first world is paganism. The third world retains the sense of the transcen-dent, though the embrace may at times be cluttered with emotion and su-perstitions and not translate into social action. The first world has in many cases simply given up the embrace. And in doing so it finds no adequate ground for love of neighbor, enemy, or stranger. Earlier spirituality taught that only in recognizing God's sovereignty can we avoid pride. It is through the same recognition that we will be-come compassionate and work for justice. True kenosis lies in the reali-zation that all humans--poor or rich, woman or man, ourselves or oth-ers- are of secondary importance. What is of prime importance is be-yond. But the God beyond sends us back to the world whose inhabitants he loves unconditionally as individual persons and as societies. He places upon us the moral imperative of justice and the command of love. Religious Life and Modernity Through a relationship with the Lord established in prayer, the extent of our task as Christians will be revealed. In transcendence we will redis-cover immanence. Modernity and its religious need again to ponder the words of the psalmist: "In your light we shall see light." NOTES I In support of a minority dissenting position, see Andrew Greeley and Michael Hout, "The secularisation myth," The Tablet, June 10, 1989, pp. 665-667. 2 "Faith and Reason," The Tablet, March I 1, 1989, p. 276. 3 See "Catholicism and American Culture," America, January 27, 1990, pp. 54- 59. 4 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, April 1988, p. 51. 5 Quoted by Prof. Albert Outler, "Toward a Post-liberal Hermeneutics," Theology Today, October 1985, p. 290. 6 Toward the Post-Modern Mind (Crossroad, 1982), p. 25. 7 Martin Buber, The Eclipse of God (Harper and Row, 1962), p. 69. A Celibate Dialogues with God I asked God: "Must I be my last and only word? Will this who-I-am be heard no more when I am dead? Who will know what I have said? Who will weave my melody into their song or hum at least my harmonies along with theirs? Who will? Who will?" And God said: "Peace. Be still." Irene Zimmerman, S.S.S.F. 3601 South 41 Street Milwaukee, Wl 53221 Focus: The Mission William F. Hogan, C.S.C. Father William Hogan, C.S.C., wrote "Chapters and Structures" for our issue of January/February 1989. His address remains Fratelli Cristiani; Via della Maglian-ella 375; 00166 Roma, Italy. Mission is the most written about concept in religious institutes and it sets the tone of most revised constitutions. Furthering the mission of Jesus in today's world has provided the framework for renewal programs and processes in communities of the consecrated life. The concerns that pre-occupy us affect our lives in many ways, providing an overall orienta-tion for judgments, the determination of choices, the perception of life and reality, the measurement of problems. And yet, all too often con-cern for the mission is not carried over into the nitty-gritty of daily life; we can find in ourselves a gap between the intellectual approach to mis-sion and what motivates our actual responses in concrete situations. Con-tradictions can abound in our human persons! The morale of many religious today is deeply affected by dwindling numbers, aging, and the lack of new members to carry on the life and work. Some give in to discouragement and the tendency to pull in on self; survival looms as a major concern and the scope of vision becomes quite narrow. Surely the Lord does not want a yielding to inclinations along this line because they are contrary to the tenor of the Gospel, which would focus our attention with largeness of heart and vision on the mis-sion of Jesus and the call to live, be, and do in response to the mission today, no matter what. The Christian must be an apostolic person in all the phases and situations of life with their ups and downs. It is understandable that there be a human reaction of preoccupation with self-preservation and self-survival, given the innate drive for the self 352 Focus: The Mission / 353 to live on and the desire to continue a form of life in which one believes. At the same time we must confront within ourselves some very real is-sues, the most basic of which centers around whose mission it is we are called to serve. This is the struggle of God and the "me," the struggle with which we have to cope in one way or another all through life, the struggle of sinfulness. "Your thoughts are not my thoughts, nor my ways your ways" (Is 55:8). What does our God seem to be asking of religious today, especially in institutes that appear to be dying? It surely is not pious platitudes: "God's will"; "God will provide"; "History will repeat itself"; "It happened before." While it may be hard to read what is happening, we can surmise a few points about basic attitudes to which the Lord may be calling us. Most basic of these is to expand our vision beyond our own religious institutes to see how the Spirit is active in the birthing of so many new forms of consecration for mission. Despite secularism and other "isms"--perhaps because of them--our times are seeing all kinds of new Christian community foundations with a variety of time-tested and new elements. We are living in an era as rich as the nineteenth cen-tury, as far as new religious ventures are concerned, although the em-phasis on some aspects of consecration may differ. In many parts of the world the Spirit is pouring forth founding charisms on individuals to wit-ness to Christ in discipleship in new ways. In some instances there are blends of various long-standing spiritual traditions; others are different combinations of the monastic and actively apostolic; still others would appear to be revivals of forms that have passed out of existence over the centuries; some are entirely new. One can look at the community movements springing up and won-der why these people do not simply join already existing religious con-gregations that are in need of new members in order to continue. And we just cannot find adequate answers on a human level. It is not enough to say that today's individuals want less structure because some of the emerging groups are very highly structured. Nor can one merely explain that people want to be unencumbered, free of age-old traditions and in-stitutionalism, since many are deeply rooted in traditions and some have picked up practices that religious congregations have laid aside. Is it the attraction of the new? Who knows? What is important is to have a vi-sion that embraces what the Spirit of God is doing to further the mission of Jesus in our age. If all disciples of Christ are people of mission, the challenge is to keep one's attention on the accomplishment of the mis-sion and not just one's own particular part in it. The glory of God Review for Religious, May-June 1991 through the restoration of creation in Christ is what matters and not how we think we are glorifying God. We are face-to-face with the issue of whose mission this is, God's or ours, and whether we have fallen into the trap of overestimating the importance of our own role in the mission. A breadth of vision is needed, with the focal point being Christ and the continuation of Christ's message and work. We share in that work; we witness to Christ's person and message. The continuation of the mission is what counts, not so much who accomplishes it. Religious today may find themselves in a situation somewhat analo-gous to some incidents described in the Bible: Now two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, were not in the gathering but had been left in the camp. They too had been on the list, but had not gone out to the tent; yet the spirit came to rest on them also, and they prophesied in the camp. So, when a young man quickly told Moses, "Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp," Joshua, son of Nun, who from his youth had been Moses' aide, said, "Moses, my lord, stop them." But Moses answered him, "Are you jea.lous for my sake? Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!" (Nb 11:26-29). John said to him, "Master, we saw a man who is not one of us cast-ing out devils in your name; and because he was not one of us we tried to stop him." But Jesus said, "You must not stop him: no one who works a miracle in my name is likely to speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us" (Mk 9:38-40). If God was giving them the same gift he gave us when we first be-lieved in the Lord Jesus Christ, who am I to impede the action of God? (Ac 11:17). Perhaps individuals experience pain when they see others in search of values in new groups and it appears that the ideals are the same that they themselves are trying to live. Yet the attention must be on Christ and ful-fillment of his plan now, what is needed for the mission now, and not on one's own pain. Granted that this is easier said than done, but we must keep trying to be conscious of the mission that is the very reason for our being. Our faith would tell us that the Lord is very much present in the cur-rent situation, though not necessarily in the way that we would like the Lord to be present, that is, according to our desires and plans. And that is another aspect of what God is asking of religious today: to find him present in the decline as much as in the previous rise in religious life. This entails hope, defined in the dictionary as desire joined with the ex- Focus: The Mission pectation of getting what is desired. The "what is desired," however, constitutes a problem area. Most religious say that they hope there will be a resurgence of vocations to their institutes and they frequently wit-ness to their words through intense prayer for vocations, both in personal prayer and in petitions during the Prayers of the Faithful at Eucharistic celebrations and the liturgy of the hours. Christian hope must be founded on the person of Jesus Christ, whose power gives us the basis for expectations to be fulfilled. Jesus' mission/ kingdom are inseparable from his person and to hope in him touches upon his mission and his ways of bringing it about rather than our own projections of what the mission demands according to our viewpoints-- in particular, the preservation of our particular religious institutes. We hope, but in what way'?. In total openness to God's ways? Genuine hope involves a finding of the Lord present in situations that may lead to a cer-tain type of dying; hope in the Lord may mean a letting go of some of our desires and false hopes, and even of any panicky types of prayer for vocations. Now is a time for deep inner calm founded on the Lord Jesus who is at work among his people, accomplishing the mission, though our vision be obscured through personal suffering over the decline of reli-gious life. Not resignation, but a lively hope in the Lord! How frequently the Word of God calls us to wait on the Lord in a spirit of peace, "singing the favors of the Lord" even when we feel weighed down with concerns. The Lord's time and way so often are not our times, ways, and vision; thus he challenges us to a patient engaging trust in him, as he did Habakkuk of old: Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late (Hab 2:2-3). This waiting in patience is not passive, for it demands a struggle for faith in and openness to God's ways in the accomplishment .of the mission. And it charges us to keep on going in what we are living, giving, and doing and not to pull into self, overwhelmed by feelings of discourage-ment. The blindness of faith and surrender to the Lord's way are invoked by waiting on the Lord. St. Therese of Lisieux described herself as a little ball: "You [God] throw me to someplace in a corner; maybe ten years later you pick me up again." Catherine de Hueck Doherty mentions in her writings a starets who said that we should be like rag dolls that can be picked up 356 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 by the hand, foot, or head, thrown in the bushes, hugged, thrown in the toy box. These figures of speech point to the self-emptying at the heart of waiting on the Lord--the painful surrenders to go the Lord's way and not our own, holding on in faith as we try to let go of our ways and yield to the divine ways. It is a movement to selflessness with conviction that God knows what he is doing, even when it is beyond our comprehen-sion. Human solutions to problems and techniques for attracting possible vocations are important, but none are miraculous. There is no mystical, magical solution for the vocational crisis in religious institutes. No mat-ter what human avenues and approaches are pursued, we must look to the basic point of attitudes our God wants of us now: faith; largeness of vision of the mission and how it is being realized today and by whom it is being promoted; and awareness that the Lord is calling us to a kenosis beyond what we have experienced in the recent past. And all of this would appear to be part of the divine plan for greater growth in open-ness to God's ways. The alternative prayer for the fourth Sunday of Eas-ter expresses it powerfully: God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, though your people walk in the valley of darkness, no evil should they fear; for they follow in faith the call of the shepherd whom you have sent for their hope and strength. Attune our minds to the sound of his voice, lead our steps in the path he has shown, that we may know the strength of his outstretched arm and enjoy the light of your presence for ever. We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. Participative Leadership for Refounding: Reflections Gerald A. Arbuckle, S.M. Father Arbuckle is well known to many of our readers around the world for his arti-cles, books, and workshops. His address: Catholic Theological Union; ! Mary Street; Hunters Hill, Sydney, N.S.W.; Australia 2110. Refounding is the process whereby an apostolic congregation, under the inspiration and leadership of creatively pastoral people, relates the Gos-pel message to the critically challenging problems within contemporary cultures (for example, secularism and injustice) according to the spirit of the original founding vision. ~ These imaginative people cannot emerge and act, however, if their officially appointed congregational leadership team fails to realize its primary function: to foster an atmosphere condu-cive to pastoral creativity within the religious community. I believe that the decision-making processes of the leadership team that aim to facilitate refounding must be based on the principles of parti-cipative (or collaborative) leadership. However, considerable confusion can exist about precisely what is meant by participative government. In this article I seek to clarify what is meant by "participative lead-ership for refounding." I concentrate on the dynamics of participative leadership within the officially appointed congregational leadership teams at the provincial and general levels. By extension, what I say of the participative process within these teams will apply mutatis mutandis to all other congregational leadership groups. Leadership for Refounding: Clarifying the Model Two relevant models of administrative style can be distinguished-- the "mechanistic" and the "organic"; they differ according to the pur- 357 Review for Religious, May-June 1991 pose for which an organization exists.2 In the mechanistic style, the tasks of the organization are considered predictable or unchanging. The organi-zation is characterized by many rules and regulations; the leadership's role is to make sure that these long-established and neatly set-out rules of operation are being followed. Creativity is discouraged because it threatens a predictable way of acting. Thus, the mechanistic style of lead-ership is totally unsuited to a world of change. Within the Church, the methods of evangelization and pastoral care changed little over several centuries prior to Vatican II. The world had to adapt to the Church, not vice versa. The administrative style of the ecclesiastical and religious congregations had become mechanistic. Re-cently I reviewed the provincial-chapter decrees of an apostolic male cleri-cal congregation from 1894 to 1956. Never at any point is there refer-ence to the need for pastoral creativity; instead the emphasis is on con-trol through the maintenance of detailed discipline rules. For example, in the decrees of 1900, phrases like "the present Chapter reasserts the prohibition against." are commonplace. Little wonder that our pastoral administrators failed to take note of the emergence of the urban/factory working class in the nineteenth cen-tury. Pastoral care remained predictably and "pleasantly" rural in ori-entation. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of this often oppressed class became alienated from the Church and continue to remain so. The second style of administration is organic. There are few rules and regulations in the organization. The emphasis is on constant inno-vation, creativity, and evaluative feedback because the marketplace de-mands an ever-increasing variety of new products, devices, and designs. The leadership fosters in the organization a participative atmosphere in which people feel they can create and be supported by other members in the group. Decision making is primarily proactive rather than reactive or crisis solving. By this we mean that organic administrations are "an-ticipative people," that is, they see change coming and then begin to plan and discuss different ways to adapt to it. They begin to create and control change rather than succumb to it.3 Organic-oriented leadership is founded on six assumptions. First, the process of creativity and innovation is a generally very messy one, be-cause it is a human activity that "involves the personalities, emotions, and quirks of many creative people. It does not always work cleanly; it does not always work well; it certainly does not usually work effi-ciently.' ,4 Second, leadership teams need space and time in which to ponder Participative Leadership / 359 over the implications of the information coming .to them. If leaders do not have this sacred space and time, they will, without realizing it, re-gress to an authoritarian style of leadership. Today congregational lead-ership, especially at the provincial level, must carry unprecedented bur-dens. For example, as a consequence of the inevitable contemporary "re-ligious- life chaos," congregational leadership must be involved in press-ing maintenance issues, such as the closing of houses because of the de-cline in membership and the development of new ministries, the pastoral care of religious who are confused by the chaos within and outside re-ligious life, and the finding of finances to cover health and retirement costs. At the same time they must be giving priority to the future of the congregation, its mission, new and creative responses. If congregational leadership is not ruthlessly careful, it will be exhausted with maintenance demands. Creativity space will be choked out. Third, because the organization exists to respond to the needs of a rapidly changing world, the communication about these needs and the creative responses to them must be fast, two-way, and accurate. The lead-ership team is concerned to get the right information at the right time and to pass it on to the people who need it, to get the message understood and acted upon. Fourth, the temptation to spend an excessive amount of time on analy-sis of the information being received must be resisted. Organizations can become so caught up in more and more analysis and information gather-ing that they become paralyzed. On the other hand, paralysis can also develop if organizations are consistently rushing into decision making without sufficient research and information. Creative risk takers become deenergized not only with excessive, introverted meetings and analysis, but also by having to interact with groups that constantly fail to listen to reality.5 In whatever way group paralysis occurs, we have a recipe for organizational suicide. Fifth, even the most creative leadership teams can develop middle-life weariness. They can lose their drive and enthusiasm and adopt a mechanistic leadership style; they fall victim to the deadly temptation to spend their time solving the problems of yesterday rather than anticipat-ing the challenges of tomorrow. Bureaucracy, red tape, and complacency are the symptoms of this mortal disease.6 Sixth, organizations that have become bureaucratic, inward-looking, or unresponsive to changing needs can only be refounded if their leadership is prepared to adopt the organic style. The resistance to change and to creative persons, however, could be so great that the pro- 3130 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 cess of refounding is impossible. The leadership team is powerless. But the team should not lightly surrender to resistance---on the other hand, ,the real obstacles to refounding may well be within the leadership group itself. Seventh, every leadership team needs skills for interpreting what is happening within its own group and within the wider society it seeks to serve. If a team is unable to be honest and courageous enough to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of its own interrelationships, it will re-main insensitive to what is taking place within the wider organizational culture.7 Organic Leadership Style and Religious Life Apostolic religious congregations exist to minister to the changing pastoral needs of people and cultures.8 An essential reason for their ex-istence is that they be bold in apostolic initiatives.9 This ministry de-mands an organic leadership style in congregational administrations. 10 The Ignatian discernment method of coming to decisions is a form of the organic leadership style. The organic style finds support in the approach of St. Paul to evangel-ization. While there must be respect for the unchanging values of the teaching of Jesus Christ, there must be an openness to the use of the di-verse girls of people in preaching the Good News: "Now Christ's body is yourselves, each of you with a part to play in the whole" (1 Co 12:27). Paul lists the girls in order of importance. After the apostles (and their successors) came prophets (v.28). The prophets, whose distinguishing qualities are spelled out by Paul in writing to the Galatians (5:22), are the imaginative and creative persons within the Church (and religious con-gregations). Their role is to challenge Gospel communities constantly to develop new ways to preach the Good News to the world of today. Paul assumes that leaders of Christian communities must allow authentic proph-ets and pastorally creative persons to emerge and function. There is nothing nonincarnational, stuffy, bureaucratic, or mecha-nistic about Paul's thinking. Achieving Organic Leadership: Practical Guidelines If religious leadership teams are to have an organic leadership style, they must: 1. Formulate a clear team vision of goals and strategies. If a team does not know what it is aiming for, it will be equally fuzzy about what it should be doing; personal and group energy will dissipate Participative Leadership / 361 on minutiae or nonessential issues. The forming of a vision of realistic goals and the strategies to achieve them is at first sight deceptively simple. The formulation of practical strategies, for example, demands precise thinking and forecasting as well as making commitments involving others; most superiors are not accus-tomed to viewing the process in this way. ~ 2. Be aware of differing forms of participative leadership. The participative approach means that all team members share in the decision-making process. They do this in various ways, for example: dis-cussion leads to consensus or a majority vote or after consultation of mem-bers or their free offer of advice, the team leader or a delegated member decides. The preference is the first option: full involvement in decision mak-ing through consensus. However, there must be flexibility. The group should learn what option is the most appropriate at a given time. For ex-ample, the urgency for decision and action may allow only the last op-tion, that is, a decision made by the one with the most authority. Deci-sion making through consensus normally takes considerable time. Canon law and congregational constitutions do prescribe that some matters be decided, for example, by the major superior with the consent or advice of other members of the leadership team. If lengthy or wide consultation or majority voting is made the unchanging rule, then decisions may never be made and the urgent apostolic needs are left unattended. The conse-quence is that an organic style of leadership is turned into an oppressive mechanistic one. Decision making through consensus needs to be carefully under-stood. By consensus is meant that all parties agree what the decision should be and feel that they have been thoroughly involved at all stages. However, if consensus decision making is pursued at all costs, that is, if it is made into a rigid ideology, then points of conflict and disagree-ment are forced underground. If these issues remain unattended to, then all kinds of unresolved negative feelings or hurts will haunt the group and threaten to split it apart. The same danger exists if the majority vot-ing option is pushed through too quickly, because then disagreements and differences of opinion also remain unresolved. Pseudoconsultation is to be ruthlessly avoided; this involves the il-lusion of participation without the substance. Decisions have already been made by leaders, but other team members are then "consulted to keep them happy." There is no intention of changing the original deci-sions. This leads to disillusionment, disaffection, and cynicism. 362 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 I find that major superiors can unwittingly raise false expectations within their leadership teams (and within their province or congregation) simply by failing to specify the particular form of participation they ex-pect at a particular time. Sometimes the word "collegiality" is used interchangeably with "participative government," but this can also cause needless confusion. Strictly speaking, collegiality connotes a particular relationship between the college of bishops and the pope. The term can be applied to religious life only with extreme care. Collegiality has come to be synonymous with "participatory democracy," which assumes that in all decisions every member of a team o.r province must be fully acquainted with every detail and that decision making must be always according to the major-ity vote. 12 Collegial government in religious life, that is, where all mem-bers have equal rights in decision making by law, exists only at general and provincial chapters. 3. Adhere to subsidiarity. Whatever individuals or committees of councilors are able to do for themselves ought not to be removed from their competence and taken over by other people, for example, major superiors. Canon law or. the constitution will set out precisely those decisions that must be made by the major superior with the consent or consultation of the council. In other matters he or she can lawfully delegate authority to congregational team members. I find, however, that subsidiarity fails to work whenever team mem-bers are unsure precisely who has the delegated authority or authoriza-tion. Team members and the province or congregation as a whole must know who has the right to make decisions and takes responsibility for them. Secondly, when the major superior attempts to take back the author-ity without justification or when other team members try to interfere, un-necessary frustration occurs. Team members feel used, irrelevant, and deenergized as persons and leaders within the community. One practical consequence of adhering to the principle of subsidiarity is that great care must be taken to see that the agendas for congregational team meetings be carefully screened. No matter should come to team meetings that can and should be dealt with at lower levels. If this screen-ing does not take place, the team is back to the limitations of participa-tory- democracy procedures. They become bogged down by irrelevant mi-nutiae, and the critically important issues for team consideration become crowded out. Participative Leadership 4. Delegate maintenance tasks. Remember that the primary role of congregational leadership teams is to challenge their religious communities to face the realities of the fu-ture. They cannot even begin this task if they are constantly burdened at meetings with maintenance and personnel issues. This is not to deny the pastoral importance of such issues, but merely to highlight the key function of leadership teams. As far as possible, the maintenance requirements of congregations must be delegated to others. This will demand of leaders a ruthless self-discipline to prevent them from becoming smothered in maintenance prob-lems. Without such self-discipline there can be no congregational fu-ture. ~ 3 5. Be accountable. Every team member must be accountable for his or her performance to the group and through the majo.r superior and team to the whole prov-ince or congregation. But a warning: If delegation is working effectively, then the amount of material being made available to other members of the council or team for the sake of accountability should be controlled; otherwise they will again be swamped within a paper jungle. Leadership teams must be alert to the fact that they can easily be-come trapped in their own busyness so that they have no idea where they are going or what is really important, and end up experiencing rather than inventing the future. Busyness is apt to lull leaders into thinking that their decisions are relevant when in fact the opposite is the reality. 6. Understand and use power. Though power is a commonly used word, it is nonetheless frequently misunderstood. However, it is critically important to grasp its meaning and its various types because the failure to do so can frustrate the work of a congregational team's involvement in the refounding process. Power is the ability to influence the values and behavior of the or-ganizations or cultures in which we find ourselves. Structural power de-rives from the roles that we officially hold in an organization, for exam-ple, congregational leader or team member. Functional power derives from the skill we use within a group, for example, the skill of animation or coriamunication; personal power derives from our personality.14 Again recall that the primary task of a congregational team commit-ted to the refounding process is that of finding, empowering, and sup-porting the right people. On their own team and in the province or con-gregation they serve, these persons must be enabled tO create, not made 364 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 to devise elaborate controls to make less creative or resilient persons do what they should be doing. This requires that the congregational team, first, use its functional and personal power to find the right people and empower them to act and, second, use its structural power to open up the congregational struc-tures to allow the creative persons to operate without unnecessary inter-ference from other sections of the leadership team or the congregation or province as a whole. In brief, a creative team allows for and fosters the "pastorally in-novative eccentric." This may even mean applying the axiom "The new belongs elsewhere," which I have described at length in a recent book. ~5 That is, through the application of structural power, the team establishes structures that permit the "innovative eccentrics" to act without having to be accountable to a large number of people for what they are doing. The leadership team assumes the initiative of explaining to others the na-ture and progress of the creative pastoral project, thus allowing the in-novative people to concentrate on their new apostolic ventures. 7. Foster team trust. Congregational leadership groups must learn to see themselves as teams, not as a set of individuals. On a team, members are aware of each other's strengths and weaknesses; they aim to act in a manner which uses their individual diversity to serve the group. The group needs to ask itself three questions if it is to assess the qual-ity of its teamwork: (1) Does the group have the necessary skills and struc-tures to work together cooperatively and effectively? (2) If the team has not the necessary skills, can it develop them or should it seek them from outsiders? (3) Does the group have the attitudes, values, and norms that foster the required skills and support the required structures? If members do not trust one another, they will communicate inadequately. They will hold back information, thus weakening the quality of the team's deci-sion making. Maybe such lack of trust comes from conflict or the fear of it. Yet conflict is unavoidable even on the best teams. Members should npt try to hide it, but should try to recognize its causes and develop methods of resolving it. Robert Bolton distinguishes between the emotional and the substantive dimensions of conflict. The former include anger, distrust, defensiveness, fear, and resentment. Substantive dimensions involve con-flicting needs, disagreements over policies and practices, and divergent views of roles and the uses of resources. These substantive issues can-not be resolved until the emotional aspects are faced up to; the team may Participative Leadership / 365 require an outside facilitator for this to take place. 16 Members need to realize that the primary concern of team building is not the individual needs of the group's members, but the welfare of the congregation and the Church it serves. Members can become so con° cerned to achieve collaboration and cohesion that these qualities become not a means but an end in themselves. The team style then changes from an organic to a mechanistic one, and a rigid conformity to rules of unity predominates. The creativity of individual team members is then stifled or crushed. This is what William G. Dyer means when he writes: "Crea-tivity is often at odds with the conditions that foster collaboration. It is possible to increase team work while inhibiting creativity, which seems to stem from the less fettered individual.''~7 8. Nurture group life humanly and spiritually. A task-oriented congregational team expends considerable energy. Unless individuals and the group have space and time to restore this en-ergy, problems develop: bickering, excessive tiredness, poor concentra-tion, and individual and group burnout. Organizational and leadership culture must, then, be cared for if ap-ostolic effectiveness is to be maintained and grow. The group can revi-talize its own energies in a variety of ways. The options chosen will de-pend on what the group enjoys doing. One team, for example, may en-joy a regular meal together well away from their place of meeting; an-other team may receive energy through open-ended discussion on par-ticular topics. A group that has fun together is more likely to be a group that can stay and work together.18 As a top priority the spiritual life of the group needs nurturing. When the members are unable to share in prayer their faith experiences, they will lack the inner freedom for honesty and openness. I have seen the energy of individuals and groups rise with extraordinary rapidity as a con-sequence of members sharing their reflections on scriptural passages. Shar-ing cannot be pushed; it grows under the power of the Holy Spirit as mem-bers become more comfortable with one another and with the presence o~ the Lord in their midst. 9. Be flexible with meeting styles. Meetings need variety. Formal meetings, namely, regular team gath-erings that have agendas in advance, are essential. But, since these gen-erally are not the occasions for inspiration and energy-creating interac-tion, from time to time there should be team meetings with no detailed and set agendas. At these informal meetings the group could benefit from 366 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 a clear and simple process of critical self-reflection. Questions like the following could be used: How do you think the team is working together? Are our objectives being realized? Do the objectives need sharpening? Do individual members want to share the major concerns of their depart-ments? These gatherings become a mixture of sharing worries and suc-cesses, of.dreaming about the future of the province or congregation, of brainstorming about strategies. lO. Implement reality-testing sessions. A congregational team, like any human group, can lose touch with reality--for many reasons. For example, the group may become so anx-ious about the difficulties it faces in its leadership task that it uncon-sciously denies and represses much reality and so ignores it in its deci-sion making. To forestall such an eventuality, the team desperately needs regular reality-testing sessions: Are the usual staying-in-touch methods still working? Have they outlived their usefulness? Are they blocking the flow of information in and out of the group? Are members of the team continuing to listen to and communicate with one another? Have barri-ers developed between members? This can be a thoroughly uncomfort-able exercise, but without it much well-intentioned apostolic energy can dissipate. 19 Conclusion We read that the early Christian communities were "united, heart and soul; no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, as ev-erything they owned was held in common" (Ac 4:32). This aptly de-scribes what congregational leadership teams should strive to be like, plac-ing their possessions--their talents and their skills--at the service of the team and the congregation, making that effort even if it be painful. Such unity is achievable only if the efforts of the team members are earthed in the power of Christ's resurrection (see Ac 4:33). It is only through resurrection love that members can learn to find "joy in the truth., to make allowances, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes" (1 Co 13:7). Then there will be an organic, flexible style of lead-ership within congregational teams, and it will be apostolically energiz-ing for all who experience it.2° NOTES ~ See G.A. Arbuckle, Out of Chaos: Refounding Religious Congregations (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp. 88-135, and Earthing the Gospel: An Inculturation Participative Leadership / 367 Handbook for the Pastoral Worker (London: Geoffrey Chapman; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990), chap. 12. 2 See T. Burns and G.M. Stalker, The Management oflnnovation (Chicago: Quad-rangle Books), passim. 3 See C.R. Hickman and M.A. Silva, Creating Excellence: Managing Corporate Cul-ture (New York: New American Library, 1984), p. 191. 4 K. Albrecht, The Creative Corporation (Homewood, I11.: Dow Jones-Irwin, 1987), pp. 46f. 5 See G. Pinchot, lntrapreneuring (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), pp. 224f.; see also the helpful insights of I. Briggs Myers, Gifts Differing (Palo Alto, Calif.: Con-sulting Psychologists Press, 1980), pp. 69-75. 6 See P. Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 149. 7 See E.H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987), pp. 137-147,270-296, and D. Graves, Corporate Cul-ture: Diagnosis and Change (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 120-144. 8 See J. O'Malley, "Priesthood, Ministry, and Religious Life: Some Historical and Historiographical Considerations," Theological Studies 49 (1988): 223-257. 9 See Congregations for Religious and Bishops, Directives for the Mutual Relations between Bishops and Religious in the Church (Sydney: St. Paul Publications, 1978), para. 12. 10 See comments on the New Code of Canon Law in G.A. Arb'uckle, Strategies for Growth in Religious Life (New York: Alba House, 1986), p. 137. i~ See G.A. Arbuckle, Out of Chaos, pp. 30-33, 105f. 12 See L. Schaller, The Change Agent: The Strategy of Innovative Leadership (Nash-ville: Abingdon Press, 1972), pp. 14, 152-154. ~3 See K. Albrecht, Successful Management by Objectives: An Action Manual (Engle-wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), pp. 176f. ~4 Definitions and clarifications on power are provided by Jane Blaxland. See als6 " G.A. Arbuckle, Strategies for Growth in Religious Life (New York: Alba House, 1987), pp. 134-139. 15 See G.A. Arbuckle, Out of Chaos, pp. 112-135. 16 See R. Bolton People Skills (Brookvale: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 217; see also J.F. Benson, Working More Creatively with Groups (London: Tavistock, ! 987), pp. 130-145, l19f. 17 W.G. Dyer, Strategies for Managing Change (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1984), p. 176. 18 See J.F. Benson, Working More Creatively, pp. 184-186. 19 See the helpful insights of M.F. Kets de Vries and D. Miller, The Neurotic Or-ganization: Diagnosing and Changing Counterproductive Styles of Management (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985), pp. 15-45, 133-205; and E.H. Schein, Organizational Culture, pp. 185-208, 311-327. 2°I am grateful for the help of Jane Blaxland and Michael A. Mullins, S.M., in the preparation of this article. Mary, Woman for Peacemakers Patricia McCarthy, C.N.D. Sister Patricia McCarthy, C.N.D., may be addressed at Congregation of Notre Dame; 41 Cole Street; East Providence, Rhode Island 02914. Before much time in the field has elapsed, a worker for peace usually dis-covers, by need, the meaning behind Gandhi's claim that mute prayer was his greatest weapon. Fidelity to truth and perseverance in justice are fruits that can only be produced if prayer is the seed. Such prayer begins with a choice--a choice to respond to the call from God, a choice to take the first commandment seriously and to kneel before God. The choice is to hear and acknowledge the call to worship, to invest time, effort, and attention to this call. The choice is to be there listening day after day, to be there loving hour after hour, and to be there receiving love moment by moment. It is when we make that move from listening and loving to the realization of being loved that prayer becomes relationship. Out of this relationship, we no longer see ourselves as only workers for peace, we become united with Jesus Christ the one peace-maker. From union with his heart, we understand the work of peace to-day and embrace the call to share in it. If we have felt the call to enter into this prayer-love relationship with Christ, our first step is to turn to Mary. Our reasons for this are many. We come to Mary as to an intimate friend, we come asking to know her, to love her, and to realize her love for us. We come to Mary because she is the virgin Mother of God. We come to Mary because she was the most faithful disciple of Christ during her time on earth. We come to Mary because Christ gave her to us from the cross. We come to her be-cause we believe she is our loyal advocate from heaven. We come to Mary because she passionately offered herself to God for the sake of his 368 Mary, Woman for Peacemakers people at the Annunciation. God blessed and accepted that offering two thousand years ago, impregnated her with the seed of God so she could give birth in flesh and blood to Jesus. Finally, we come to Mary because she was faithfully present when Jesus abandoned himself to his Father. Mary was the Mother of God in Bethlehem when the Word of God became flesh to be among us; and Mary was the Mother of God on Calvary when the Word of God surren-dered his flesh to redeem us. Mary was mother and companion to the Son of Peace while he walked this fragile earth. Let us ask her to accompany us as we journey toward peace. For the sake of clarity, let us consider three specific as-pects of our life with her: prayer, mission, and prophecy. Prayer Why Mary with regard to prayer? Devotion to Mary does not come out of some private practice covered with sentimentality. Devotion to Mary comes from the heart of the mysteries of redemption and salvation. From the time angels chose not to worship God and refused to ac-knowledge God as God, evil has existed. It entered into humanity through our ancestors who also chose a created good over the Creator. Along with the existence of sin, however, was the promise of redemp-tion. God never left us without hope even when we did not know enough to care. For years, God formed covenants with us and reformed them af-ter we broke them. God spoke to us to admonish us, to encourage us, to instruct us; God spoke through generations of holy men and women. And, finally, when the fullness of time had arrived God chose to speak through Jesus Christ. With the greate.st risk, God let this divine intervention wait upon the word of a virgin daughter of Israel. Mary. had been chosen and prepared, kept free of any remnant of our ancestral tendency to sin. She had been formed in the covenants of Yahweh, desirous of the coming of the Mes-siah. She had learned to kneel before Yahweh, to worship, to find her joy and hope in her God. Mary understood the angels who were beings of praise, and she knew there were also angels who had chosen differ-ently. She knew the history of her people, the faithful and the unfaith-ful. Her whole being grew in anticipation for Yahweh to come again. Mary's receptivity to the Word of God was the essence of her virginity. She became the virgin Mother of.God because she allowed the power of God to overshadow her. This is also our model for virginity: To understand the yes Mary said at the Annunciation, we have to see her clearly as virgin. Before we can 370 / Review for Religious, May-June 1991 say yes, we have to see ourselves just as clearly as virgins. Virginity is a reality today that is poorly understood at best. Virginity, in its narrow-est sense, can be applied to a person, male or female, who has not had sexual intercourse. The virginity of Mary calls us to far more than that. In her virginity, Mary gives us the model for our own. Virginity is receptivity and openness to God's working with us and through us. It is total surrender to the loved one, the abandonment of all defenses and re-serves in the presence of the beloved. It is the willingness to take on a destiny utterly contrary to the culture of the day. It is the commitment to accept the seed of God in order to give the life of Christ to the world. Once we accept the seed we are committed to nourish it. The child will grow and be born of us and we will be responsible for him from that mo-ment on. This is the grace of virginity we received with our baptism, the grace to open ourselves to Christ, the grace that we can choose to coop-erate with whether we are male or female, married or single, religious or lay. This is the grace of virginity that calls us to a passionate chas-tity. This is the grace of virginity that Mary embraced. Mary has also shown us the call to motherhood, the call to bring Christ into the world. To the beauty of virginity God offered mother-hood, an inconceivable reality that Mary freely assented to. With that sin-gle yes, the Savior and Redeemer of the world was conceived. As no one else ever could, Mary in the ecstasy of her surrendered virginity em-bodied the Word of God. "The one whom the universe cannot contain is contained within your womb." She gave flesh to the good news, she brought forth the Prince of Peace. We owe Mary love, because it is through her tha

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